NEW YORK: Thirty-four people were injured late Saturday when a charter bus traveling on a highway hit an overpass in Boston, Massachusetts, US media reported.
NBC News said the accident happened on Soldiers Field Road about 7:30 pm (0030 GMT Sunday).
The bus was returning to Pennsylvania from Harvard University with 42 people on board, the network said.
The injured have been taken to local hospitals. One them is reported to have life-threatening injuries.
-AFP/ac
Speaking at the International Advertising Association's first IAA Leadership Awards function in Mumbai on Saturday night, Manish Tewari listed out paradoxes associated with the media and entertainment industry - self regulation, skewed revenue model, imperfect audience measurement models, among others.
He said, "issues are contentious, no doubt, but if you delay decisions, situation will engulf you completely".
Over-arching regulatory architecture
The minister highlighted the need to create a statutory mechanism to address issues related to convergence across media, entertainment and telecom.
He said, "convergence across media, entertainment and telecom space, especially with digitization kicking in, is inevitable. Therefore, at some point in time there will have to be an over-arching statutory architecture to look into the issues."
He, however, said that self regulation of content remained the preferred option, but it had to be broad-based and balanced.
Manish Tewari said "freedom of speech should not extend to the right to offend and individual's right to privacy must be respected".
Digitization benefits
Giving details about the government's digitization programme, Manish Tewari said his ministry is on the course of implementing the second phase of digitization in 38 cities with million plus population.
He said digitization, besides benefitting consumers in terms of better viewing quality, would also address the skewed revenue model of the media and entertainment industry by bringing in clarity about the customer base. He hoped, that the move would prompt the industry to observe limits on advertising time.
Tewari also made a mention about the imperfect model of audience measurement, and called for development of a 'far more qualitative model' to address the issue of television viewership.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.
For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.
Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.
The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.
Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.
"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.
The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.
The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.
"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.
Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.
The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.
Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.
Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.
"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.
The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.
A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.
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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
It took the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to prompt lawmakers to call for stricter gun legislation. But the reality is that in a city like Chicago, where 515 murders took place last year and more than 100 shooting incidents have occurred since January 1, gun violence is an ongoing issue and it has been for years. Only, these shootings have become so common that they don't make national headlines.
"We lost a classroom full of children in Connecticut which sparked national outrage that needs to be translated into action, but in Chicago, we sometimes lose a dozen or more young people every weekend," Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois), who serves the Chicago area, said in a statement. "Too many bullets and too many guns are killing the next generation and we have got to make it stop."
Gutierrez, like many others, believe that any debate about gun violence shouldn't just take into account mass shootings that make headline news. It should also consider the chronic gun violence that takes place on a daily basis across the U.S.
In Chicago's case, many of the victims are young minorities growing up in poor, gang-ridden neighborhoods on the south and west side of the city.
Just earlier this week a 15-year-old girl who performed at President Barack Obama's recent inauguration was gunned down, The Washington Post reported.
The teen, Hadiya Pendleton, was hanging out in a park with about a dozen other young people when she was shot. Two other victims were reportedly wounded. By all accounts she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Reports indicate that the gunman was not even aiming at her.
And Pendleton is just the latest example. Chicago police officer Ron Holt lost his son, Blair, to gun violence in the spring of 2007. The 16-year-old was shot and killed while riding a bus after school.
Holt now works with young people in the community, particularly minorities at an increased risk of engaging in dangerous behavior, to encourage them to focus on their education instead of turning to violence.
"I explain to them that if they continue to ascribe to this diabolical idea of resolving conflict with firearms they're depleting the most precious natural resource in the community, and that is them," Holt said.
What's clear is that the root of the gun problem is not just the guns. There are several factors that play a role, many of which are rarely discussed. For example, for minority youth living in urban communities characterized by poverty, violence, particularly gun violence, tends to be chronic. And the groups largely impacted tend to be African American and Hispanic.
A lot of that has to do with acculturation, according to Rahsmia Zatar, executive director of Strong Youth, a gang prevention and intervention organization. There is a sense that it's difficult to move beyond one's cultural sphere.
As a result, minorities often tend to gravitate toward other young minorities in similar situations, and turn to violence to gain a sense of control, however false it really is.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo
"It's easy to fall victim to feeling a sense of empowerment through violence," Zatar said. "They feel they have limited opportunities and they don't have a sense of 'I can achieve,' [or] that there is something here for me that's better."
According to the 2011 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 30 percent of Chicago's African-American population and nearly 27 percent of Hispanics live below the poverty line. Perhaps more importantly, blacks and whites remain largely segregated, with African-Americans making up the vast majority of neighborhoods in the south, and whites comprising most of the north. Latinos are somewhat more mixed, often living in "buffer" communities between blacks and whites, which could exacerbate the pressure to conform to two cultures, neither of which is entirely comfortable.
These various enclaves also suffer from a distinct gang problem. Chicago Police Commissioner Garry McCarthy told Reuters the city is plagued by the breakup of larger more established gangs into new factions that are fighting over everything from turf to money.
Then there's the city's illicit gun issue, which is bigger than New York's or Los Angeles' despite strict laws to limit weapons. Gun shops are actually outlawed in Chicago, as are assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Handguns were even banned until 2010.
Still, in a place like Chicago it's handguns doing the most damage. According to statistics from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, most of the guns they recovered in Illinois were pistols, followed by revolvers and rifles. Machine guns come in a distant sixth.
Why so many guns? Gun laws in neighboring communities are not as strict, and firearms make their way into the city. According to a recent article by The New York Times, officials "seized 7,400 guns [in Chicago] in crimes or unpermitted uses last year (compared with 3,285 in New York City), and have confiscated 574 guns just since Jan. 1 — 124 of them last week alone."
And while Chicago residents are required to report the loss or theft of a handgun, that same law does not apply to all of Illinois, so a stolen firearm could easily make its way into Chicago without the owner ever reporting it missing.
The dynamics created in poor minority communities like those in Chicago combined with the sheer number of guns that make their way into such a city bear out in the overall statistics.
According to the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, African Americans were disproportionately represented among homicide victims and offenders between 1980 and 2008. They were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicides.
Latinos don't fare much better. According to the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy organization, "Today in America, every three hours a young person is killed by firearm violence. Every 14 hours, that teen or child is Latino."
Young Latinos are especially likely to be impacted by gang violence in places like Chicago. Nationally, Hispanics are also more likely than non-Hispanics to be victims of violent crimes committed by gang members.
The impact of guns on the Latino community may explain why they're inclined to favor increased gun control. According to the Pew Research Center, while 57 percent of whites think it's more important to protect the rights of Americans to own guns than to protect gun ownership, only 29 percent of Latinos feel the same way.
Holt would certainly like to see something change. Several days after his son was killed, he received a voicemail. It was then-Senator Barack Obama. The young lawmaker had called Holt to express his condolences and to promise that if there was anything he could do in the future to help curb gun violence, he was prepared to do it. The two never spoke on the phone, but Holt remembers the message.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its "slave" carried out a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, the Ankara governor's office cited DNA tests as showing on Saturday.
Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.
The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a U.S. "puppet".
"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.
It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.
Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their nation.
DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor's office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.
Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.
Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.
Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.
Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.
The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. U.S. officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.
Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.
SYRIA
The DHKP-C statement called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil.
The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard Turkey, a NATO member, against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.
"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.
Turkey has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria and has become one of President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics, a stance groups such as the DHKP-C view as submission to an imperialist agenda.
"Organizations of the sectarian sort like the DHKP-C have been gaining ground as a result of circumstances surrounding the Syrian civil war," security analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan wrote in a column in Turkey's Daily News.
The Ankara attack was the second on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War, and it fired rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.
It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. It has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.
Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.
(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
WASHINGTON: The United States will have to keep up an open-ended drone war against Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan and elsewhere to prevent another terror attack on America, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.
The assassination of Al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia with unmanned, robotic aircraft has provoked widespread criticism from human rights groups and some US allies, but Panetta said the US campaign has been effective.
Asked if the CIA "targeted killings" should be curtailed in coming years, Panetta told AFP in an interview Friday that there was still a need to continue the drone strikes more than a decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"I think it depends on the nature of the threat that we're confronting. We are in a war. We're in a war on terrorism and we've been in that war since 9/11.
"The whole purpose of our operations were aimed at those who attacked this country and killed 3,000 innocent people in New York as well as 200 people here at the Pentagon," said Panetta, who is days away from retiring as Pentagon chief.
Before taking over as defense secretary, Panetta oversaw a dramatic increase in drone raids in Pakistan as head of the CIA from 2009-2011.
"I think we had a responsibility to use whatever technology we could to be able to go after those who not only conducted that attack but were planning to continue to attack this country," he said.
"It's been an important part of our operations against Al-Qaeda, not just in Pakistan, but also in Yemen, in Somalia and I think it ought to continue to be a tool we ought to use where necessary," he said.
"And also where we can use it in conjunction with other countries that are pursuing the same goal," said Panetta, citing Yemen's strong support for drone strikes.
The CIA drone bombing raids, by Predator and Reaper aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles, have caused an unknown number of civilian casualties and prompted accusations that Washington is carrying out extrajudicial killings in the shadows with no genuine oversight by courts or lawmakers.
Panetta, who as CIA director presided over the successful raid that killed Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, said the campaign still needed to be regularly reviewed but did not say he favored turning over the spy agency's drone war to the military.
Some critics have called for giving the US military authority over the drone air strikes, which would require openly reporting every operation.
"Having said that, we always need to continue to look at it, to make sure we develop the right standards, that we're abiding by the laws of this country, that we're doing it in a way that hopefully can be a little more transparent with the American people."
But he said "to protect this country" it was not enough to have operations carried out openly by the military.
Secret action led by the CIA was also needed "when you got those kind of operations where, because of the nature of the country you're in or the nature of the situation you're dealing with, it's got to be covert."
According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, between 2,627 and 3,457 people have been reportedly killed by US drones in Pakistan since 2004, including between 475 and nearly 900 civilians.
-AFP/ac
The counsels for accused and prosecution have concluded their arguments on charges against five of the six accused in the gang rape.
The Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) declared the sixth accused a minor last month, and his case will be heard by the board.
The five accused are: bus driver Ram Singh, his brother Mukesh, fruit seller Pawan Gupta, gym instructor Vinay Sharma and bus cleaner Akshay Thakur. All of them are now in Delhi's Tihar Central Jail.
The hearing in the case had started Jan 21 at the fast-track court which was set up to try the case that had led to a nation-wide outrage against crimes against women.
The accused were formally charged in the Saket court 18 days after they gang-raped and tortured the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in a moving bus, causing multiple-organ failure that led to her death.
They also assaulted her 28-year-old male friend. Both were thrown out of the bus after around 40 minutes, naked, bleeding and shivering. The friend is the main witness in the case.
The chargesheet, with annexures, runs into thousands of pages and includes the victim's statement, details of the accused, evidence and forensic reports.
Police have charged the five accused under 13 sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC): sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 376 (2)(g) (gang-rape), 377 (unnatural offences), 395 (dacoity), 396 (murder in dacoity), 365 (kidnapping or abduction with intent to secretly or wrongfully confine a person), 394 (hurting in dacoity), 201 (destruction of evidence), 120B (conspiracy), 34 (common intention), 412 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), and 397 (robbery or dacoity with attempt to cause death or grievous hurt).
All the accused were arrested between Dec 17-21 following a nationwide outcry over the crime, which also triggered protests in several cities. In Delhi, protesters clashed with security forces.
The union cabinet on Friday approved an ordinance for enhanced punishment in cases of crimes against women, including sexual assault, acid attacks, voyeurism and trafficking, as suggested by the Justice J.S. Verma Committee.
The government had recommended to President Pranab Mukherjee that an ordinance be issued.
The Verma Committee, set up by the government on Dec 23 to review laws to provide speedier justice and enhanced punishment in cases of aggravated sexual assault, submitted its report to the government Jan 23. The panel was set up after the Dec 16 incident.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas.
The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus.
Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead. Lunchrooms that now sell fatty "a la carte" items like mozzarella sticks and nachos would have to switch to healthier pizzas, low-fat hamburgers, fruit cups and yogurt.
The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have made improvements in their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.
Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunch rooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. And food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has not been federally regulated.
"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools, and 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.
The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.
The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.
"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.
Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.
The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.
Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.
Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says surveys done by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.
"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.
The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.
A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.
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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
The newly-elected attorney general of Pennsylvania is going after the state's governor, Tom Corbett, who was attorney general when child sex allegations against Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky were first brought forward.
Kathleen Kane, a Democrat who was sworn in as attorney general on Jan. 15, said that she will name a special prosecutor in the coming days to investigate Corbett's handling of the Sandusky case. Corbett is a Republican.
The investigation will look specifically at why it took the attorney general's office three years to bring criminal charges against Sandusky while he continued to have access to children.
"Attorney General Kane will appoint a special prosecutor to lead the office's internal investigation into how the Sandusky child abuse investigation was handled by the Office of the Attorney General," Kane's office said in a statement released today.
Corbett's attorney general's office was first notified of the allegations against Sandusky in 2008 when a high school student told his mother and school that Sandusky had molested him. The local district attorney passed the allegation on to the attorney general, then Corbett. Corbett convened a grand jury.
Mario Tama; Patrick Smith/Getty Images
It wasn't until 2011 that sex abuse charges were filed against Sandusky while Corbett had since become governor. Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of sex abuse in June 2012.
The charges sent shockwaves throughout Pennsylvania, as Penn State's president, two top officials, and legendary coach Joe Paterno all lost their jobs over the scandal.
"Why did it take 33 months to get Sandusky off the streets? Was the use of a grand jury the right decision? Why were there so few resources dedicated to the investigation? Were the best practices implemented?" the statement from Kane's office read.
"At the end of this investigation, we will know the answers to these questions and be able to tell the people of Pennsylvania the facts and give them answers that they deserve," the statement said.
Describing an interview Kane gave the New York Times, the Times said Kane suggested that Corbett did not want to upset voters or donors in the Penn State community before his gubernatorial run in 2009.
Corbett has denied those suggestions. His office did not immediately return calls for comment.
Kane's office preemptively fought back against the idea that the investigation is politically motivated. Kane, a Democrat, defeated the incumbent attorney general, Linda Kelly, a Republican in November 2011. Corbett is a Republican.
"The speculation that this is about politics is insane," a staff member in Kane's office told ABC News today. "You go anywhere in Pennsylvania and anywhere across the country and you'll find individuals asking, 'why did it take three years? Why was there a grand jury? Why make these kids talk to 30 different people about what happened?"
ANKARA (Reuters) - A far-leftist suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, officials said, blowing open an entrance and sending debris flying through the air.
The attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body after entering an embassy gatehouse. The blast could be heard a mile away. A lower leg and other human remains lay on the street.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left group which is virulently anti-U.S. and anti-NATO and is listed as a terrorist organisation by Washington.
The White House said the suicide attack was an "act of terror" but that the motivation was unclear. U.S. officials said the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.
Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. There was no claim of responsibility.
"The suicide bomber was ripped apart and one or two citizens from the special security team passed away," said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
"This event shows that we need to fight together everywhere in the world against these terrorist elements," he said.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the attack as a heinous act.
Turkish media reports identified the bomber as DHKP-C member Ecevit Sanli, who was involved in attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul in 1997.
KEY ALLY
Turkey is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism and has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.
Around 400 U.S. soldiers have arrived in Turkey over the past few weeks to operate Patriot anti-missile batteries meant to defend against any spillover of Syria's civil war, part of a NATO deployment due to be fully operational in the coming days.
The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War and launched rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.
Deemed a terrorist organisation by both the United States and Turkey, the DHKP-C has been blamed for suicide attacks in the past, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square.
The group, formed in 1978, has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.
The attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.
"HUGE EXPLOSION"
U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the embassy shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.
"We're very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone said, describing the victim as a "hero" and thanking Turkish authorities for a prompt response.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the attack on the checkpoint on the perimeter of the embassy and said several U.S. and Turkish staff were injured by debris.
"The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries than there could have been," she told reporters.
It was the second attack on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The attack in Benghazi, blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants, sparked a political furore in Washington over accusations that U.S. missions were not adequately safeguarded.
A well-known Turkish journalist, Didem Tuncay, who was on her way in to the embassy to meet Ricciardone when the attack took place, was in a critical condition in hospital.
"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos, whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.
CALL FOR VIGILANCE
The U.S. consulate in Istanbul warned its citizens to be vigilant and to avoid large gatherings, while the British mission in Istanbul called on British businesses to tighten security after what it called a "suspected terrorist attack".
In 2008, Turkish gunmen with suspected links to al Qaeda, opened fire on the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, killing three Turkish policemen. The gunmen died in the subsequent firefight.
The most serious bombings in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed 32 people less than a week later. Authorities said those attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
(Additional reporting by Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Mohammed Arshad and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Stephen Powell and Sandra Maler)
SINGAPORE: MediaCorp's personal entertainment service, Toggle, is now available on multiple devices to offer an uninterrupted and engaging viewing experience.
Its over-the-top service offers entertainment, information and news to viewers online, on smartphones, tablets and smart TV.
Users can subscribe to their favourite channels and movies.
They can also register - at no cost - to watch free local content which MediaCorp has rights to, such as programmes from the free-to-air channels in the form of Catch-up, as well as the linear streaming of Channel NewsAsia.
For its Catch-Up service, viewers can subscribe to Toggle-It-First to watch the next five episodes of their Channel 8 dramas before they are shown on TV.
Toggle viewers can choose to buy content on an a la carte basis, without having to subscribe to a basic bundle of programmes beforehand.
They can access content via any internet service provider.
Viewers can now enjoy 21 days of free preview when they register before 17 February.
Viewers can visit www.toggle.sg or download the app on their iPhone or iPad from the App Store.
Toggle will soon be made available on smart TV and Android devices.
For information on subscription plans, log on to www.toggle.sg or call 6388-3888.
By mid-2013, Toggle plans to offer local content to Singaporeans overseas.
Mr Philip Koh, managing director of MediaCorp's Convergent Media Division, said: "Toggle offers this experience by allowing you to choose the content you want, plus where and how you want to consume it.
"It is that personal. This means Toggle's content goes where you go, allowing you to switch from watching on your PC to your mobile phone when you leave home. And with the wide range of content offered from different channels and movies to original productions, viewers will have a lot to keep them toggling."
- CNA/ir
Chandigarh saw a low of 8.5 deg C, up by two notches above normal, the Met office said today.
Among other places in Punjab, Amritsar saw a minimum of 6 degrees Celsius while Ludhiana and Patiala recorded a minimum of 7 degrees C each.
In Haryana, Ambala, Karnal and Bhiwani saw a low of 8.4 deg C, 7 deg C and 8 deg C respectively. Hisar experienced cold at 5.4 deg C, two degrees below normal while Narnaul had a low of 7 deg C, up by two degrees above normal.
Fog disrupted normal life in Amritsar, Karnal, Ludhiana, Ambala and Patiala.
Met has forecast light rain at isolated places in Punjab and Haryana.
NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.
In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.
The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.
Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.
Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.
In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.
Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.
Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.
The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.
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Online:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
Accused murderer Jodi Arias was kept away from the Mormon friends of her lover Travis Alexander and their torrid sex affair was kept secret by Alexander, even as he sent lewd photos of himself to her online, according to court testimony today.
The testimony in Arias' trial for killing Alexander in 2008 was intended to bolster the defense's argument that she killed him in self defense, that Alexander was a sexual deviant who treated Arias as his "dirty little secret."
Arias' attorneys introduced as evidence photos that Alexander took of his penis and sent to Arias, part of a string of graphic messages and sexual phone calls the two engaged in while Alexander, an elder in the Mormon church, was supposed to be chaste.
Today's witness was the latest in a string called by the defense, including Alexander's former girlfriend Lisa Daidone, who told the court that Alexander had professed to be a virgin.
Daniel Freeman continued his testimony today, describing how he was a friend of both Arias and Alexander but that Alexander kept Arias distanced from his Mormon pals.
"Travis had made more friends at (the Mormon) ward, and had (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fight nights at his house many times, and Jodi was in town, but she wasn't there," Freeman said.
"There was that group of friends, them and Jodi, two different groups, and so Lisa [Daidone] and friends from church were there, but Jodi wasn't there," Freeman said.
Alexander's behavior, the defense hopes to prove, shows that he mistreated Arias.
Arias, 32, is on trial for murdering Alexander, whom she dated for a year and continued to have a sexual relationship for a year after that. Her attorneys claim that Alexander was abusive and controlling toward Arias, and that she was forced to kill him.
Freeman described how he took a trip with his sister, Alexander, and Arias, and how Alexander had asked him to come along so that he and Arias "would not get physical."
"I don't know that I can say he didn't want to be alone with her, but he liked that when I was there, and my sister was there. They weren't as physical," Freeman said.
Freeman admitted that he had no idea Alexander and Arias had been having a sexual relationship the entire time they were together. He said Alexander never mentioned that to his friends.
In fact, Freeman noted that Alexander was considered to be a church elder when he baptized Arias into the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Both a church elder and a convert were expected to abide by the church's strict law of chastity, which banned any sexual relations outside of marriage.
"One thing people give up in this baptism process was sex," prosecutor Juan Martinez said. "Did you know she was having oral sex with Mr. Alexander at the time of her baptism? Would that be an insincere baptism?"
"She would not be ready to be baptized in that case," Freeman said.
"You were asked about Miss Arias, whether she was worthy of baptism if she was performing oral sex, but what about the elder receiving oral sex?" defense attorney Kirk Nurmi said.
"They would not be worthy of performing that ordinance at that time until they had gone through repentance," Freeman said. "They would go to a discipline council and could face excommunication or a probation period or have their priesthood removed."
Freeman said that Alexander never confessed to having a sexual relationship with Arias.
Freeman's testimony came on the third day of the defense's attempt to paint Alexander as a controlling, sex-obsessed liar who was cruel to Arias. Other witnesses have said that Alexander cheated on other women he dated with Arias, and lied to his friends and family about their relationship.
The defense also had Freeman point out that Alexander was strong and fit. They are expected to conclude that Alexander was physically threatening Arias when she killed him.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A powerful explosion rocked the Mexico City headquarters of state-owned oil giant Pemex on Thursday, killing at least 25 people, injuring more than 100 and trapping others inside.
The mid-afternoon blast in a neighboring building shattered the lower floors of the downtown tower, throwing debris into the streets and sending frightened workers running outside.
A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a preliminary line of investigation was that the blast came from a gas boiler that exploded in the adjacent Pemex building. But the cause was still being determined, the official added.
The explosion at the building complex, where thousands of Pemex employees worked, was the latest in a series of serious safety problems to hit Mexico's national oil monopoly.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said the blast killed at least 25 people, injured over 100, and that the number of casualties could rise.
Rescue workers were still searching for employees trapped inside the Pemex skyscraper on Thursday night. At least one person had been rescued alive, Osorio Chong said.
Mauricio Parra, a paramedic at the scene, said that as many as 100 people could be trapped at the offices of Pemex, a national institution that President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration has pledged to reform this year.
Police quickly cordoned off the building, and television images showed the explosion caused major damage to the ground floor and blew out windows on the lower floors of the tower.
"You could feel it all through the building," said Mario Guzman, a Pemex worker who was on the 10th floor of the building, which is more than 50 stories high.
First mistaking the blast for an earthquake, Guzman, who said he escaped after running down the stairs, feared the building would collapse on top of him and his colleagues, "and that we would end up like a sandwich."
Pemex said initially the tower was evacuated due to a problem with its electricity supply. It then said there had been an explosion, but did not say what caused it.
The Pemex blast occurred shortly before many workers were due to end their shifts at the complex.
The company said its business would not be affected by the incident and that it would continue to operate normally.
FORCE OF LAW
Earlier in the evening, Pena Nieto, who took office in December, went to the scene and said the explosion would be thoroughly investigated. He vowed to apply "the force of the law" if anyone was found to be responsible for it.
Mexican media reported that after the blast, security officials carried out a precautionary search of Congress for explosive devices, but found nothing.
Asked about this, Osorio Chong said normal security procedures were being followed, but added that "additional care" was being taken while the blast was being cleared up.
Helicopters buzzed around the building and lines of fire trucks sped to the entrance, while emergency workers ferried injured people through wreckage strewn on the street.
Search-and-rescue dogs were sent into the skyscraper, a Mexico City landmark that sports a distinctive "hat" on top.
Some families of people working in the tower were impatient for news about missing relatives.
Gloria Garcia, 53, herself a Pemex worker who was not in the building during the explosion, came to see if she could track down her son, who worked in one of the floors hit.
"I'm calling his phone and he's not answering," Garcia said, weeping as she called repeatedly on her phone. "Nobody knows anything. They won't let me through. I want to see my son whatever state he's in."
DEADLY ACCIDENTS
Pemex has experienced a number of deadly accidents in recent years and lesser safety problems have been a regular occurrence. In September, 30 people died after an explosion at a Pemex natural gas facility in northern Mexico.
More than 300 were killed when a Pemex natural gas plant on the outskirts of Mexico City exploded in 1984.
Eight years later, about 200 people were killed and 1,500 injured after a series of underground gas explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city. An official investigation found Pemex was partly to blame.
Alberto Islas, a security analyst at consultancy Risk Evaluation, said the explosion at the Pemex offices was another blot against the company's safety record.
"We've seen this time and again at Pemex. They don't have a well-integrated policy," Islas said, noting it would probably take several hours before investigators would be able to determine the cause of the explosion.
Pemex, a symbol of Mexican self-sufficiency since the oil industry was nationalized in 1938, has been held back by inefficiency and corruption and by the burden it shoulders of providing about a third of federal tax revenues.
Pena Nieto has pledged to open up the company to more private investment to improve its performance.
(Additional reporting by Krista Hughes, Cyntia Barrera, Gabriel Stargardter and Liz Diaz; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Kieran Murray, Peter Cooney and Eric Walsh)
SINGAPORE: Business sentiments in Singapore's manufacturing sector are expected to remain weak in the first half of this year, as slow global economic growth continues.
According to the latest survey by the Economic Development Board, a net weighted balance of 10 per cent of manufacturers anticipate a less favourable business situation in the period January to June this year, compared to the fourth quarter of 2012.
Within the manufacturing sector, EDB said the biomedical cluster is the most optimistic, with a net weighted balance of 7 per cent of firms anticipating better business prospects in the months ahead. Part of this optimism stems from the pharmaceutical segment which is foreseeing higher demand from overseas.
In the general manufacturing industries cluster, a net weighted balance of just one per cent of businesses project an improved performance in the first half of the year. This is due mainly to the food, beverages and tobacco segment, which is anticipating stronger demand due to seasonal factors such as the Lunar New Year.
On the other hand, the electronics cluster is the least upbeat about business prospects in the next two quarters. A net weighted balance of 28 per cent of electronics firms expect weak demand conditions to persist amid slow economic growth in Europe and US.
The precision engineering segment is also projecting a less favourable outlook on the back of weak equipment spending and low demand for precision components.
Meanwhile, business outlook for the chemical cluster is also weak. This is largely due to the petroleum segment, which is expecting refining margins to come under pressure with increased capacity from new plants overseas.
EDB said a net weighted balance of 10 per cent of manufacturers expect output to decline in the first quarter this year.
It added that employment prospects in the manufacturing sector in the first quarter of 2013 are likely to remain similar to the fourth quarter of 2012.
In particular, the transport engineering and general manufacturing industries clusters are most optimistic about employment opportunities between January and March 2013.
A weighted 45 per cent of the manufacturers said there are no limiting factors which could affect their ability to obtain direct export orders in the first quarter.
The weighted 48 per cent of firms that indicated export constraints cited price competition from overseas competitors, and economic and political conditions abroad as the most important limiting factors.
- CNA/al
"I still have hope things may be settled with Tamil Nadu government. For now, I may wait before moving to Supreme Court," said Kamal.
On Jan 30, a Madras HC bench chaired by Justice Dharma Rao re-imposed the ban on the film and nullified the revocation of an earlier ban on the film by Justice K. Venkataraman on Jan 29.
The final hearing on the case is due February 6.
The Rs 95 crore espionage thriller was originally scheduled to release in Tamil and Telugu on Jan 25, but a day before the screenings, the Tamil Nadu government imposed a two-week ban on the film after some Muslim groups complained that some scenes in the film portrayed the community in a bad light.
Kamal on Wednesday also agreed to cut a few scenes that were pointed out as controversial to him by his Muslim brothers.
"My Muslim brothers have pointed out few scenes in my film which I'm ready to cut in order to settle the matter between us amicably," said Kamal.
Kamal, 58, described the ban as "cultural terrorism" and added: "Any neutral and patriotic Muslim will surely feel pride on seeing my film. It was designed for that purpose."
"Vishwaroopam" was also initially banned in places such as Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Malayasia.
Written, produced and directed by Kamal, "Vishwaroopam" features him in the title role. Other members of the cast include Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah, Rahul Bose, Shekhar Kapur and Jaideep Ahlawat. Its Hindi version "Vishwaroop" is slated to release Friday.
Fact or fiction? Sex burns a lot of calories. Snacking or skipping breakfast is bad. School gym classes make a big difference in kids' weight.
All are myths or at least presumptions that may not be true, say researchers who reviewed the science behind some widely held obesity beliefs and found it lacking.
Their report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine says dogma and fallacies are detracting from real solutions to the nation's weight problems.
"The evidence is what matters," and many feel-good ideas repeated by well-meaning health experts just don't have it, said the lead author, David Allison, a biostatistician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Independent researchers say the authors have some valid points. But many of the report's authors also have deep financial ties to food, beverage and weight-loss product makers — the disclosures take up half a page of fine print in the journal.
"It raises questions about what the purpose of this paper is" and whether it's aimed at promoting drugs, meal replacement products and bariatric surgery as solutions, said Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and food studies.
"The big issues in weight loss are how you change the food environment in order for people to make healthy choices," such as limits on soda sizes and marketing junk food to children, she said. Some of the myths they cite are "straw men" issues, she said.
But some are pretty interesting.
Sex, for instance. Not that people do it to try to lose weight, but claims that it burns 100 to 300 calories are common, Allison said. Yet the only study that scientifically measured the energy output found that sex lasted six minutes on average — "disappointing, isn't it?" — and burned a mere 21 calories, about as much as walking, he said.
That's for a man. The study was done in 1984 and didn't measure the women's experience.
Among the other myths or assumptions the authors cite, based on their review of the most rigorous studies on each topic:
—Small changes in diet or exercise lead to large, long-term weight changes. Fact: The body adapts to changes, so small steps to cut calories don't have the same effect over time, studies suggest. At least one outside expert agrees with the authors that the "small changes" concept is based on an "oversimplified" 3,500-calorie rule, that adding or cutting that many calories alters weight by one pound.
—School gym classes have a big impact on kids' weight. Fact: Classes typically are not long, often or intense enough to make much difference.
—Losing a lot of weight quickly is worse than losing a little slowly over the long term. Fact: Although many dieters regain weight, those who lose a lot to start with often end up at a lower weight than people who drop more modest amounts.
—Snacking leads to weight gain. Fact: No high quality studies support that, the authors say.
—Regularly eating breakfast helps prevent obesity. Fact: Two studies found no effect on weight and one suggested that the effect depended on whether people were used to skipping breakfast or not.
—Setting overly ambitious goals leads to frustration and less weight loss. Fact: Some studies suggest people do better with high goals.
Some things may not have the strongest evidence for preventing obesity but are good for other reasons, such as breastfeeding and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, the authors write. And exercise helps prevent a host of health problems regardless of whether it helps a person shed weight.
"I agree with most of the points" except the authors' conclusions that meal replacement products and diet drugs work for battling obesity, said Dr. David Ludwig, a prominent obesity research with Boston Children's Hospital who has no industry ties. Most weight-loss drugs sold over the last century had to be recalled because of serious side effects, so "there's much more evidence of failure than success," he said.
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Online:
Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
As the long-term consequences of concussions become clearer, a cottage industry has popped up to sell athletes and worried parents products designed to mitigate risks of concussions that even helmets cannot prevent.
Despite the bold claims of some companies, however, many experts say the Holy Grail in contact sports -- a device that prevents concussions -- simply does not exist. Indeed, experts say, there is no proof that any current device significantly reduces the risk of concussions beyond the protections already provided by helmets.
"Nightline" found several products for sale online that aim to reduce the risk of concussions or even alert parents and coaches when a kid has supposedly taken a concussion-level hit. The claims the manufacturers make are often breathtakingly reassuring.
Concern about the risk of concussion is mounting at every level of the gridiron from the NFL to colleges and even high schools. Concussions are the most common injury among high school football players.
Jennifer Branin, whose son Tyler Branin is one of the stars of the Woodbridge Warriors high school football team in Irvine, Calif., said "it was scary" the first time he had a concussion.
"He had lost his balance on the field," she said. "He got up and tried to continue, but couldn't keep his balance."
She said the effects of the concussion lingered, causing Tyler to miss a week of school and football practice. Even months later, he complained of difficulty concentrating in class.
Parents such as Jennifer Branin, who is president of the team's booster club, and her husband, Andy Branin, a former college football player himself, were looking for a way to support their son's desire to play football while also keeping him safe.
"He wants to play and, as a mom, you may want to put bubble-wrap around them and protect them forever, but that's not going to happen," she said.
So Jennifer Branin decided to do something. She raised money to buy the team helmet inserts by Unequal Technologies for added protection.
Unequal Technologies, one of the highest profile players in this new market, described its product explicitly on the box as "Concussion Reduction Technology," or "CRT." It is a strip of composite material including bullet-proof Kevlar that is designed to stick inside the helmet as a liner to the existing helmet pads.
Unequal Technologies uses its material in products ranging from padded sleeves to shin guards. The company counts NFL players and X-Games athletes among its fans.
On board as paid spokesmen are Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick and James Harrison, a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Harrison is one of the hardest-hitting guys in the NFL and said he uses Unequal Technology's liners in his helmet.
"I don't know what it's made of but it works," Harrison says in one of Unequal's promotional videos. "I really don't feel like I'm taking a risk."
Vick wasn't wearing the CRT product when he suffered a season-ending concussion in November, but he has since promised that he will be wearing it when he returns to the field next season.
Rob Vito, founder and CEO of the Kennett Square, Pa.-based company, said he worked with scientists to create a military-grade composite material that can help protect athletes from all kinds of injuries from head to toe.
DOUENTZA, Mali/PARIS (Reuters) - French troops seized the airport in Mali's northern town of Kidal, the last urban stronghold held by Islamist insurgents, as they moved to wrap up the first phase of a military operation to wrest northern Mali from rebel hands.
France has deployed some 4,500 troops in a three-week ground and air offensive to break the Islamist rebels' 10-month grip on major northern towns. The mission is aimed at heading off the risk of Mali being used as a springboard for jihadist attacks in the wider region or Europe.
The French military plans to gradually hand over to a larger African force, tasked with rooting out insurgents in their mountain redoubts near Algeria's border.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French forces using planes and helicopters defied a sandstorm late on Tuesday to capture the airport but had been prevented by the bad weather from entering the town itself.
"The terrorist forces are pulling back to the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains which are difficult to access," Le Drian told a news conference. "There is support from Chadian and Nigerian troops coming from the south."
The deployment of French troops to remote Kidal puts them in direct contact with pro-autonomy Tuareg MNLA rebels, whose rebellion last year was hijacked by the Islamist radicals. Le Drian said France had established good relations with local Tuareg chieftains before sending in troops.
MNLA leaders say they are ready to fight al Qaeda but many Malians, including the powerful military top brass in the capital Bamako, blame them for the division of the country. They view Paris' liaisons with the Tuaregs with suspicion.
French and Malian troops retook the major Saharan trading towns of Gao and Timbuktu at the weekend.
There were fears that many thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts held in Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site, might have been lost during the rebel occupation, but experts said the bulk of the texts were safe.
The United States and European governments strongly support the Mali intervention and are providing logistical and surveillance backing but do not intend to send combat troops.
The MNLA rebels, who want greater autonomy for the desert north, said they had moved fighters into Kidal after Islamists left the town earlier this week.
"For the moment, there is a coordination with the French troops," said Moussa Ag Assarid, the MNLA spokesman in Paris.
A spokesman for the Malian army said its soldiers were securing Gao and Timbuktu and were not heading to Kidal.
The MNLA took up arms against the Bamako government a year ago, seeking to carve out a new independent desert state.
After initially fighting alongside the Islamists, by June they had been forced out by their better armed and financed former allies, who include al Qaeda North Africa's wing, AQIM, a splinter wing called MUJWA and Ansar Dine, a Malian group.
RISK OF ATTACKS, KIDNAPPINGS
As the French wind up the first phase of their offensive, doubts remain about just how quickly the U.N.-backed African intervention force can be fully deployed in Mali to hunt down the retreating al Qaeda-allied insurgents. Known as AFISMA, the force is now expected to exceed 8,000 troops.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France's military operation, codenamed Serval (Wildcat), was planned as a lightning mission lasting a few weeks.
"Liberating Gao and Timbuktu very quickly was part of the plan. Now it's up to the African countries to take over," he told the Le Parisien daily. "We decided to put in the means and the necessary number of soldiers to strike hard. But the French contingent will not stay like this. We will leave very quickly."
One French soldier has been killed in the mission, and Fabius warned that things could now get more difficult, as the offensive seeks to flush out insurgents with experience of fighting in the desert from their wilderness hideouts.
"We have to be careful. We are entering a complicated phase where the risks of attacks or kidnappings are extremely high. French interests are threatened throughout the entire Sahel."
An attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria earlier this month by Islamist fighters opposing the French intervention in Mali led to the deaths of dozens of foreign hostages and raised fears of similar reprisal strikes across North and West Africa.
NEED FOR RECONCILIATION
The French operation has destroyed the Islamists' training camps and logistics bases but analysts say a long term solution for Mali hinges on finding a political settlement between the northern communities and the southern capital Bamako.
Interim President Dioncounda Traore said on Tuesday his government would aim to hold national elections on July 31. Paris is pushing strongly for Traore's government to hold talks with the MNLA, which has dropped its claims for independence.
"The Malian authorities must begin without delay talks with the legitimate representatives of the northern population and non-terrorist armed groups that recognize Mali's integrity," French Foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said.
After months of being kept on the political sidelines, the MNLA said they were in contact with West African mediators who are trying to forge a national settlement to reunite Mali.
"We reiterate that we are ready to talk with Bamako and to find a political solution. We want self-determination, but all that will be up to negotiations which will determine at what level both parties can go," Ag Assarid said.
There have been cases in Gao and Timbuktu and other recaptured towns of reprisal attacks and looting of shops and residences belonging to Malian Tuaregs and Arabs suspected of sympathizing with the MNLA and the Islamist rebels.
(Additional reporting John Irish and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris, David Lewis and Pascal Fletcher in Dakar; Writing by David Lewis and Daniel Flynn; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Rosalind Russell)
TOKYO: Tokyo stocks jumped 2.28 per cent on Wednesday to close at their highest level in nearly three years thanks to a weaker yen and receding concerns over Europe's debt crisis.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed up 247.23 points at 11,113.95, its highest finish since April 2010, while the Topix index of all first-section shares rose 1.51 per cent, or 13.91 points, to 934.67.
"Europe's problems have eased quite a bit," said Hideyuki Ishiguro, senior strategist at investment at Okasan Securities.
He pointed to data Tuesday showing net lending by Europe's central banks to credit institutions had fallen, the latest sign of easing tensions in the financial system.
The data showed the size of the balance sheet of the Eurosystem, consisting of the European Central Bank and the 17 eurozone national central banks, has fallen to its lowest in almost a year.
"The global economy is in a trend of improving. A shift to stocks from bonds is likely to happen," Ishiguro said.
The Tokyo market's rise also came after Japan's new government on Tuesday approved a $1.02 trillion annual budget as part of its renewed assault on the deflation that has plagued the economy for years.
The Nikkei has been soaring in recent months as Tokyo's drive for aggressive monetary easing pushed down the value of the yen, lifting exporters.
Hopes that the government led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will succeed in boosting the limp economy was helping drive the Nikkei's ascent, said Hiroichi Nishi, general manager of equity at SMBC Nikko Securities.
"Both domestic and external demand show signs of firming amid continuing expectations for 'Abenomics' and a recovery trend in the US economy," he told Dow Jones Newswires.
On Wall Street Tuesday, the Dow provided a solid lead as it climbed to within just 1.5 per cent of its all-time closing high seen in October 2007.
In Tokyo, companies reporting quarterly earnings included Canon, which jumped 2.88 per cent to 3,385 yen, while mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo was up 0.97 per cent to 134,900 yen and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group climbed 1.15 per cent to 3,490 yen.
Videogame giant Nintendo slipped 2.40 per cent to 9,350 yen ahead of the release of earnings later in the day.
In Tokyo forex trade, the dollar strengthened to 90.93 yen, from 90.72 yen in New York late Tuesday.
The euro fetched 122.56 yen and $1.3485 against 122.42 yen and $1.3493.
- AFP/ck
The highlight of these sops is likely to be the Rs 240 bonus on the MSP of paddy for the year 2013-14.
If sources close to the chief minister are to be believed, Raman Singh and other senior party leaders are "seriously" contemplating the massive hike in MSP to woo the farmers. If it was the Rs 3 per kg rice and Rs 10 per litre Kerosene for BPL families' scheme that helped Raman Singh romp home victorious in 2008, he is all set to play his "pro farmers" card, hoping to turn the tables on the Congress once again and score a hat trick.
The 2008 cheap rice and kerosene scheme was specifically announced to target pool rural voters, who constitute 42 per cent of the BPL population. With Chhattisgarh, also know an the rice bowl of the country, producing 19116 varieties of rice and 80% of population relying on agriculture, the Rs 240 bonus on paddy could mean a lot and possibly be Raman Singh's trump card.
The state is already paying a bonus of Rs 50 on the MSP and if it hikes it by another Rs 200, the additional burden on the exchequer would be anywhere close to Rs 115 crores (based on last year's procurement of 60 lakhs metric tones). The government agencies had procured close to 60 lakh MT in 2011-12 and this figure is likely to be higher as production has exceeded by near 20% this fiscal. As compared to 95 lakh MT production in the last fiscal, the output has been 110 lakh MT this year.
With still few more days to go for the Kharif procurement to be over, the government agencies expect to procure 64 lakh tones. According to officials of the 60 lakh MT procured last year, 43 lakh MT was converted to rice of which 16 lakh MT was picked up by FCI and 27 lakh MT was sent to the civil supplies department for PDS.
BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.
Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.
Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.
"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.
That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.
"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."
Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.
Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."
Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.
Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.
Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."
The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.
"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.
For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.
The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.
Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.
The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.
"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."
Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.
A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.
"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.
He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.
Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.
And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.
"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.
Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.
Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.
"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.
His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."
"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."
___
Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.
In her final television interview as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton told ABC's Cynthia McFadden that she is "flattered and honored" at the intense interest in whether she might run for president in 2016.
But Clinton maintained that right now she's "not focused" on a presidential campaign; instead she said she wants to return to a "normal" life when she steps down from office on Friday.
Watch Cynthia McFadden's full interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET
Clinton's first order of business, she said, will be sleep.
"I hope I get to sleep in," she told McFadden with a laugh. "It will be the first time in many years. I have no office to go to, no schedule to keep, no work to do. That will probably last a few days then I will be up and going with my new projects," she said.
"I have been working or attending school full-time since I was 13. This is going to be new for me. I don't know how I'm going to react to it, to be honest."
PHOTOS: Hillary Clinton Through the Years: From Wellesley to the White House, and Beyond
Clinton has had no trouble articulating her reaction to what has arguably been the darkest chapter of her tenure as Secretary of State: the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.
Secretary Clinton had a heated exchange with Republican Senator Ron Johnson during her five hours of testimony before Congress about the attack last week. Johnson accused the administration of misleading the American people about the cause of the attack, when UN Ambassador Susan Rice, on Sunday political talk shows, blamed it on protesters.
Clinton snapped back at Johnson, "Four Americans are dead. What difference does it make?" For that, she has been sharply criticized by some conservatives.
Clinton said she "absolutely" stands by her response to Johnson, maintaining that the administration has been transparent with the information it knew, when it was available. Clinton said partisan politics have no place in a response to a terrorist attack against Americans.
"I believe that we should in public life, whether you're in the administration or the Congress, de-politicize crisis and work together to figure out what happened, what we can do to prevent it and then put into place both the institutional changes and the budgetary changes that are necessary, " she said.
"When someone tries to put into a partisan lens, when they focus not on the fact that we have such a terrible event happening with four dead Americans but instead what did somebody say on a Sunday morning talk show? That to me is not in keeping with the seriousness of the issue and the obligation we all have as public servants"
FULL TRANSCRIPT: Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's "Nightline" Interview
Asked about her health, Clinton said her recent illness, concussion and blood clot were all a surprise.
"When I got sick and fainted and hit my head I was so surprised, and I thought I would just get up and go to work. And thankfully I had very good medical care and doctors who said, 'No we'd better do an MRI, we'd better do this, we'd better do that,'" she said, calling herself "lucky."
"I know now how split second beset by a virus and dehydrated, what it can do to you."
Though she confirmed she is wearing special glasses to help with double vision, a lingering issue following her illness, Clinton said that she expects to be fully recovered and operating at "full speed" soon.
The Secretary told McFadden that if she does decide to run, she would have "no problem" making her health records public.
"Of course, that goes with the territory," she said.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 65 people were found shot dead with their hands bound in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday in a "new massacre" in the near two-year revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.
Opposition campaigners blamed the government but it was impossible to confirm who was responsible. Assad's forces and rebels have been battling in Syria's commercial hub since July and both have been accused of carrying out summary executions.
U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi told the U.N. Security Council "unprecedented levels of horror" had been reached in Syria, and that both the government and rebels had committed atrocious crimes, diplomats said.
He appealed to the 15-nation council to overcome its deadlock and take action to help end the civil war in which Syria is "breaking up before everyone's eyes".
More than 60,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began throughout the Arab world two years ago.
The U.N. refugee agency said the fighting had forced more than 700,000 people to flee. World powers fear the conflict could envelop Syria's neighbors including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, further destabilizing an already explosive region.
Opposition activists posted a video of at least 51 muddied male bodies alongside what they said was the Queiq River in Aleppo's rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood.
The bodies had what looked like bullet wounds in their heads and some of the victims appeared to be young, possibly teenagers, dressed in jeans, shirts and trainers.
Aleppo-based opposition activists who asked not to be named for security reasons blamed pro-Assad militia fighters.
They said the men had been executed and dumped in the river before floating downstream into the rebel area. State media did not mention the incident.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says it provides objective information about casualties on both sides of Syria's war from a network of monitors, said the footage was evidence of a new massacre and the death toll could rise as high as 80.
"They were killed only because they are Muslims," said a bearded man in another video said to have been filmed in central Bustan al-Qasr after the bodies were removed from the river. A pickup truck with a pile of corpses was parked behind him.
STALEMATE
It is hard for Reuters to verify such reports from inside Syria because of restrictions on independent media.
Rebels are stuck in a stalemate with government forces in Aleppo - Syria's most populous city which is divided roughly in half between the two sides.
The revolt started as a peaceful protest movement against more than four decades of rule by Assad and his family, but turned into an armed rebellion after a government crackdown.
About 712,000 Syrian refugees have registered in other countries in the region or are awaiting processing as of Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency said.
"We have seen an unrelenting flow of refugees across all borders. We are running double shifts to register people," Sybella Wilkes, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters in Geneva.
The United Nations said it had received aid promises ahead of a donor conference in Kuwait on Wednesday where it is seeking $1.5 billion for refugees and people inside Syria. Washington announced an additional $155 million that its said brought the total U.S. humanitarian aid to the crisis to some $365 million.
Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said the bulk of the current aid was going to government-controlled areas in Syria and called on donors to make sure they were even-handed.
MISSILES
In the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, insurgents including al Qaeda-linked Islamists captured a security agency after days of heavy fighting, according to an activist.
Some of the fighters were shown carrying a black flag with the Islamic declaration of faith and the name of the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al Qaeda in neighboring Iraq.
The war has become heavily sectarian, with rebels who mostly come from the Sunni Muslim majority fighting an army whose top generals are mostly from Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Assad has framed the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy and blames the West and Sunni Gulf states.
Fighting also took place in the northern town of Ras al-Ain, on the border with Turkey, between rebels and Kurdish militants, the Observatory said.
In Turkey, a second pair of Patriot missile batteries being sent by NATO countries are now operational, a German security official said.
The United States, Germany and the Netherlands each committed to sending two batteries and up to 400 soldiers to operate them after Ankara asked for help to bolster its air defenses against possible missile attack from Syria.
(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall in Kuwait, Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Robin Pomeroy)
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