Chavez working amid chemotherapy: VP






CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is still in charge and mulling political, social and economic policies even as he receives a new round of chemotherapy, his vice president said Saturday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said that the socialist leader, who is convalescing in seclusion at a Caracas military hospital, sent "guidance" to his Cabinet as recently as Friday.

"He is staying informed and in charge as chief who was ratified by our people various times," Maduro said during an event broadcast on state-run television. "Comandante Chavez is the supreme leader of the Bolivarian revolution."

The opposition says the government is lying about Chavez's condition and has voiced doubts that the 58-year-old president held a five-hour meeting with his Cabinet on February 22 as the government claims.

But Maduro repeated that the meeting took place and that the president sent more instructions the next day with Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, his son-in-law, before giving more guidance on Friday.

The leftist leader's chosen successor showed a dossier containing "political, social and economic actions" that Chavez has requested "to continue strengthening the economy to face the economic war of the parasitic bourgeoisie."

The "central document" will be sent to Chavez, he said, adding that the government was "respecting his treatment, we are not acting in an invasive way in his treatment."

Chavez, who was first diagnosed with cancer in June 2011, underwent a fourth round of surgery in Cuba in December.

Maduro disclosed for the first time late Friday that Chavez began a new cycle of chemotherapy in January and decided to return to Caracas last month to continue a "more intense" phase of treatment.

- AFP/ir



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'Maharashtra sisters were sexually assaulted’

MUMBAI/NAGPUR/LAKHNI: A fortnight after the suspicious deaths of three sisters in Bhandara, Maharashtra DGP Sanjeev Dayal on Saturday said that, going by preliminary reports, it appeared that the girls had been sexually assaulted and their bodies bore injury marks.

Meanwhile, a senior bureaucrat said it was "shocking" that the post-mortem report was still with health officials and had not been forwarded to the police.

The bureaucrat added that while sexual assault was certain, it was not known if rape occurred. He also said no conclusion has been drawn as yet on the cause of death and if it was murder.

Reportedly, the post-mortem report doesn't specifically say whether the girls were sexually assaulted or murdered. It says the youngest girl had a huge injury in her anus and scratch marks on her inner thighs; the hymens of all three were ruptured; the eldest girl had injuries below her elbows and the clothes of all three girls were intact. The report also says semen was not found on the girls' clothes or in chemical and swab analyses. There was also no bleeding in the vaginal areas of all three.

"We have accepted the preliminary findings of the five-member team of doctors set up by the Bhandara civil surgeon. From the reports, it appears that there had been a sexual assault on the sisters and there were signs of injuries. Our investigation is based on the findings of the medical team. However, no written report has been submitted to us," Dayal told TOI.

The bureaucrat said, "The preliminary findings show there is no disputing the fact that the sisters were sexually assaulted, but there is no confirmation on whether it amounted to rape. The hymens of all three were ruptured. Even the cause of death is not known. Efforts are on to ascertain whether they were murdered or drowned in the well."

He added, "It's shocking that 15 days after the incident, the civil surgeon has not submitted the post-mortem report." He said it was a goof-up of the highest order. "In fact, the public health department woke up only after there was a protest in the region," he said. In the wake of the deaths, the Bhandara civil surgeon had set up a fivemember team of doctors to conduct the post-mortem. "Despite the serious nature of the case, it has been left to the junior-most officers," the bureaucrat said.

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..

US Seeks to Confirm Report of Terror Leader's Death












American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.


If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat in northern Africa.


Belmokhtar's killing was announced on Chadian national television by armed forces spokesperson Gen. Zacharia Gobongue, who said Chadian troops "operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base."


"The [death] toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar," he said.


However, an unidentified elected official in Mali told The Associated Press he doubted Belmokhtar had actually been killed and said he suspected the Chadian government of pushing the story to ease the loss of dozens of Chadian troops in operations in northern Africa.






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Belmokhtar is known as Mr. Marlboro because of the millions he made smuggling cigarettes across the Sahara, but in the last few months the one-eyed terrorist leader has become one of the most sought after terrorists in the world. The attack on the plant near In Amenas in eastern Algeria left dozens of Westerns and at least three Americans dead.


Belmokhtar had formed his own al Qaeda splinter group and announced he would use his wealth to finance more attacks against American and Western interests in the region and beyond.


The U.S. has badly wanted Belmokhtar stopped and actively helped in the search by French and African military units to find him, as well as another top al Qaeda leader who was reported killed yesterday.


After the Chadian announcement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Belmokhtar's death, if confirmed, "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."


Steve Wysocki, a plant worker who survived the attack in In Amenas thanked "military forces from around the world," especially the Chadian military, for bringing "this terrorist to an expedient justice."


"My family and I continue to mourn for our friends and colleagues who didn't make it home and pray for their families," Wysocki told ABC News.


The CIA has been after Belmokhtar since the early 1990s, Royce's statement said.


ABC News' Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.



Read More..

Chilling documentary accuses Sri Lanka of war crimes






GENEVA: The Sri Lankan military committed numerous war crimes during the final months of the country's 26-year civil war, according to a documentary aired for the first time on Friday, amid vigorous protests from Colombo.

Using graphic video and pictures taken both by retreating Tamil Tiger rebels, civilians and victorious Sri Lankan troops, "No Fire Zone -- The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka" presents a chilling picture of the final 138 days of the conflict that ended in May 2009.

Filmmaker Callum Macrae insisted before the screening that the film at the UN headquarters in Geneva that it should be seen as "evidence" of the "war crimes and crimes against humanity" committed by government troops.

"The real truth is coming out," he said.

Sri Lanka's ambassador in Geneva, Ravinatha Aryasinha, strongly protested the screening of the film on the sidelines of the ongoing UN Human Rights Council.

He described it as "part of a cynical, concerted and orchestrated campaign" to influence the debate in the council about his country.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which hosted the screening, are calling for the council to order an international probe.

They charge that Sri Lanka's domestic Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has glossed over the military's role.

The film for instance alleges that a "no fire zone" set up by the government in January, 2009, basically functioned as a trap for the hundreds of thousands of civilians who flooded into it in the hope of finding safety.

The area was heavily shelled, and in the film maimed and bloodied bodies, of men, women and children, lay strewn.

The UN has estimated that some 40,000 people were killed in the final months of the war, most of them due to indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military.

Peter Mackay, a UN worker who was trapped inside the zone for two weeks, questioned in the film why the government would set up the "no fire zone" within range of all of their artillery.

"Either you don't care if you kill the people in that safe zone or you are actively targeting them," he said, adding that he believed the latter was true.

He and others describe how aid-centres and make-shift hospitals were shelled soon after UN or Red Cross workers informed the government of their coordinates, which is ironically standard practice to ensure that such places are spared in bombing campaigns.

The footage provided by the retreating Tamil Tigers and civilians is devastating, showing parents wailing over their dying and dead children, but the images provided by the government forces are perhaps even more shocking.

Video of a Tamil Tigers commander first being interrogated, and then a picture of his mutilated body in the dirt; naked and bound prisoners coldly executed; dead, naked women, who have clearly been sexually abused filmed amid degrading comments by onlooking soldiers.

And then there is footage of the 12-year-old son of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, Balachandran, whose body is seen with five bullet holes in his chest.

He was not caught in cross-fire: a separate video shot two hours earlier, shows him sitting in military custody in a bunker eating a biscuit.

The Sri Lankan government has cast doubt on the authenticity of the footage, with Aryasinha insisting on Friday it was of "dubious origin".

Macrae however insisted that all the footage had been carefully checked and analysed to ensure none of it had been tampered with.

"All of it is, I'm afraid, genuine," he said.

- AFP/fa



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Sarabjit Singh's lawyer receives death threat from Pakistani Taliban

LAHORE: The lawyer of Sarabjit Singh, who is on death row in a Pakistani prison, on Friday said he had received a death threat from the Taliban for pursuing the case of the Indian national.

Awais Shiekh said a letter written by an anonymous activist of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan had warned his wife to stop her husband from pursuing the case of Sarabjit.

He said the letter read: "I belong to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and I am a resident of Faisalabad district (150km from Lahore). I want to tell you that your husband is representing the case of Sarabjit Singh, who is responsible of killing my whole family in a bomb blast.

"Your husband is addressing a press conference about Sarabjit Singh. If this is held, it would be the last day of your husband and every single member of your family will be killed. You will find dead bodies of your children by tomorrow morning.

"I know your children. I will kidnap them and will send their dead bodies to you. If you want your children to live, refrain from doing this."

Shiekh claimed he was barred from holding a planned news conference at the Lahore Press Club to launch his book on Sarabjit. "My son also received a threatening call from an anonymous person. I will lodge a complaint with police and seek security," Sheikh told PTI.

He said that when he reached the Press Club, he was informed by its administration that the news conference could not be held as there was a "security threat".

Hamid Khan, former president of the Supreme Court bar association, IA Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and other persons were present for the news conference. They condemned the press club's decision to block the news conference.

"The reality of Sarabjit's case will be known to the people through this book. A gross mischarge of justice has been done in Sarabjit's case," Sheikh said.

Sarabjit was convicted for alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks that killed 14 people in 1990. His family has said that he was a victim of mistaken identity.

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 Signs Order to Begin 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.


President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.


He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning 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."


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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.








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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.


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.






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Needy families on public assistance scheme to get higher payouts






SINGAPORE: From April, Public Assistance (PA) recipients can look forward to a higher level of assistance that is flexible and customised to their needs.

The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) will enhance the PA scheme by providing additional assistance, other than a higher direct cash handout.

The change will mainly benefit those with special or once-off needs.

For example, additional assistance will be given to those who need healthcare and hygiene products such as adult diapers and nutritional milk supplements, or those who need once-off purchase or replacement of equipment such as a commode.

The ministry expects about one-third of existing PA households to benefit from the additional forms of assistance.

There are currently over 3,000 households on public assistance.

The cash assistance for all PA households will also be increased. The increase will range from S$50 per month for a one-person PA household to S$130 per month for a four-person PA household.

PA families with dependent children will continue to receive additional cash assistance of S$150 per child.

The ministry also added that the revision is part of the regular review of basic cash assistance rates to ensure that they are adequate to meet the needs of PA households.

- CNA/ck



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Sariska villagers block tourists’ entry

ALWAR: About 2,500 villagers on Thursday blocked the main entrance of the Sariska Tiger Reserve, protesting their relocation from areas near the sanctuary.

Sariska field director RS Shekhawat said the villagers had locked the entrance and didn't allow tourists to enter the park. "We are trying to sort out the problem on a priority basis," Shekhawat said.

The villagers, who are on an indefinite sit-in, said they would not clear the blockade unless their demands were met. This is the third such protest in the past eight months against the relocation plan.

Tension began in Sariska when about 2,500 people from 50 villages gathered for a mahapanchayat against the alleged "cheating" by the district administration. "We had called off the agitation in May last year when the district administration agreed on some of our demands including lifting ban on the registry of land, construction of a concrete road and earmarking a grazing area. But now they have backtracked on the promise citing the Supreme Court orders," said Jaikishan Gujjar, a villager.

Since 2008, the farmers in the periphery of the reserve have been protesting the state government and wildlife authorities' decision to relocate them. On February 20, villagers thrashed a few senior sanctuary officials when 70 cattle were seized while grazing in the sanctuary area.

Read More..

Arias Recounts Each Moment of Stabbing, Slashing












Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.


During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.


"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.


"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.


"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"


Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."


Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.


Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.


Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.


Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.


"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.


"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.








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"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."


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Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial


"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."


Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.


Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.


According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.


It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.


At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.


After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"


"I don't remember," Arias moaned.


"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"


"I don't remember, I don't know."


Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"


"Yes."


"So then take a look at it," he barked.


Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."


Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.


Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.






Read More..

New SDPC mark for cigarettes from 1 March






SINGAPORE: From 1 March, cigarettes sold in Singapore which do not bear the new Singapore Duty-Paid Cigarette (SDPC) mark will be deemed duty-unpaid and illegal.

The new SDPC mark features a series of vertical bars around the cigarette stick.

The Singapore Customs said this allows enforcement officers and the public to easily differentiate duty-paid cigarettes from duty-unpaid or contraband cigarettes.

This measure will also enhance the effectiveness of the anti-contraband cigarette operations that Singapore Customs conducts across the island to curb the selling, buying and possession of contraband cigarettes.

To give manufacturers and retailers sufficient time to phase in the new SDPC mark, cigarettes bearing the new SDPC mark were allowed to be sold from 1 December 2012.

Travellers who bring in cigarettes from overseas for their own consumption are required to declare them at the Customs Red Channel for payment of duty and Goods and Services Tax (GST).

And they are advised to keep the receipt issued by Singapore Customs as proof of payment of duty and GST.

Those who buy, sell, deliver, store, keep, possess or deal with duty-unpaid goods face stiff penalties.

They could be fined up to 40 times the amount of duty evaded and jailed for up to six years.

Members of the public with information on smuggling activities or evasion of Customs duty or GST should contact Singapore Customs on its hotline 1800-2330000 or email customs_intelligence@customs.gov.sg.

- CNA/ck



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Assembly polls: Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura to get new govts today


NEW DELHI/KOHIMA/AGARTALA/ SHILLONG: Meghalaya, Nagaland and Tripura will get new governments today. Counting of votes began at 8am in all the three northeast states.

Tight security for Nagaland assembly poll counting

Adequate security arrangements have been made for the counting of votes to the 59 assembly seats of the 60-member House in Nagaland today.

Peaceful elections were held in the state on February 23 while re-polling was done in nine polling stations at eight assembly constituencies spread over seven districts on Wednesday.

CEO Nagaland J Alam said that counting will be held in 12 districts, which includes Pughoboto electoral district.

A total of 59 halls have been provided in the districts with three-tier security layers created in each counting hall.

Over 10,000 counting personnel including counting supervisors and counting assistants will be engaged in the counting process along with micro observers and Election Commission appointed observers.

In consonance with an Election Commission directive, the international border has been sealed so that no unwanted elements can enter into the state during the counting of votes.

The entire process will be videographed, he said.

PARTY LEADS WINS
CONGRESS 0 0
UNDP 0 0
NPF 0 0
OTHERS 0 0

Meghalaya: Amid split verdict fears, Congress dreams victory

With counting of votes underway in Meghalaya, both the ruling Congress and non-Congress parties are confident of winning the elections.

A whopping 88 percent of the 1.5 million voters exercised their franchise Feb 16 to pick a new 60-member house in the state bordering Bangladesh.

There were 345 candidates, including 25 women and 122 independents.

But some experts fear that Meghalaya may be headed for a fractured mandate.

"I have always believed that Meghalaya will never get a clear mandate since elections here are conducted based on the personality of the candidate and trivial issues," AK Baruah, a retired professor of political science who taught at the North Eastern Hill University said.

Carved out of Assam in 1972, Meghalaya has seen 23 chief ministers in a span of 41 years.

Captain Williamson Sangma, who led the government for the first time, was the only one to ever lead a single-party government in the state.

Since then, Meghalaya has seen fractured mandates, leading to volatile coalition governments.

However, outgoing chief minster Mukul Sangma, 47, hopes to return to the assembly for a fifth consecutive time from Ampati constituency.

"We are close to half-way mark and we are hoping to get more," the Congress leader told IANS on telephone from Tura in West Garo Hills.

The Congress fielded candidates in all 60 constituencies while the United Democratic Party (UDP) contested 50 seats.

The Purno Sangma-led Nationalist People's Party (NPP) had 32 candidates, and the Nationalist Congress Party 21.

The UDP is confident of ousting the Congress.

"We will cross 15 seats and if luck favours we might even cross 20," UDP leader Bindo M Lanong said.

Lanong said UDP was in touch with "like-minded parties" for post-poll alliances.

Predicting a Congress failure, Purno Sangma's son Conrad, leader of the opposition in the assembly, claimed that Chief Minister Mukul Sangma would bite the dust.

"We are hopeful of increasing our tally," Conrad said.

PARTY LEADS WINS
CONGRESS 0 0
UDP 0 0
NCP 0 0
OTHERS 0 0

Tripura: Counting being held at 17 venues

Counting of votes for the 60 assembly seats in Tripura underway amid tight security.

Elections were held on February 14.

Around 2500 employees including counting supervisors and counting assistants will be engaged in the counting process along with micro observers and Election Commission appointed observers.

Prohibitory orders have been imposed within 100 meter of each counting hall and the entire counting process will be done under CCTV surveillance.

Official sources said the 856 KM long border with neighbouring Bangladesh was sealed today so that no unwanted elements could enter into the state during counting of votes.

PARTY LEADS WINS
CONGRESS 0 0
CPM 0 0
CPI 0 0
OTHERS 0 0

(With inputs from agencies)

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Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links


WASHINGTON (AP) — The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.


The disorders — autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia — are considered distinct problems. But findings published online Wednesday suggest they're related in some way.


"These disorders that we thought of as quite different may not have such sharp boundaries," said Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the lead researchers for the international study appearing in The Lancet.


That has implications for learning how to diagnose mental illnesses with the same precision that physical illnesses are diagnosed, said Dr. Bruce Cuthbert of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the research.


Consider: Just because someone has chest pain doesn't mean it's a heart attack; doctors have a variety of tests to find out. But there's no blood test for schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. Instead, doctors rely on symptoms agreed upon by experts. Learning the genetic underpinnings of mental illnesses is part of one day knowing if someone's symptoms really are schizophrenia and not something a bit different.


"If we really want to diagnose and treat people effectively, we have to get to these more fine-grained understandings of what's actually going wrong biologically," Cuthbert explained.


Added Mass General's Smoller: "We are still in the early stages of understanding what are the causes of mental illnesses, so these are clues."


The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, a collaboration of researchers in 19 countries, analyzed the genomes of more than 61,000 people, some with one of the five disorders and some without. They found four regions of the genetic code where variation was linked to all five disorders.


Of particular interest are disruptions in two specific genes that regulate the flow of calcium in brain cells, key to how neurons signal each other. That suggests that this change in a basic brain function could be one early pathway that leaves someone vulnerable to developing these disorders, depending on what else goes wrong.


For patients and their families, the research offers no immediate benefit. These disorders are thought to be caused by a complex mix of numerous genes and other risk factors that range from exposures in the womb to the experiences of daily life.


"There may be many paths to each of these illnesses," Smoller cautioned.


But the study offers a lead in the hunt for psychiatric treatments, said NIMH's Cuthbert. Drugs that affect calcium channels in other parts of the body are used for such conditions as high blood pressure, and scientists could explore whether they'd be useful for psychiatric disorders as well.


The findings make sense, as there is some overlap in the symptoms of the different disorders, he said. People with schizophrenia can have some of the same social withdrawal that's so characteristic of autism, for example. Nor is it uncommon for people to be affected by more than one psychiatric disorder.


___


Online:


http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)60223-8/abstract


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Arias Prosecutor Too Combative, Experts Say












He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.


And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.


"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."


"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.


"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.


Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.


Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.


Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.








Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video









Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video





Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.


"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.


"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.


Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"


"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"


During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.


"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."


Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.


Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.


"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."






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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)



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Yahoo! fuels fresh debate on telecommuting






WASHINGTON: Telecommuting, a growing trend in the US workplace, is coming under fresh scrutiny following news that Yahoo! is curbing the practice.

The trend of working from home has been gaining steam for decades, as part of a workplace evolution which allows greater family-work balance and saves energy and commuting costs.

An internal Yahoo! memo from chief executive Marissa Meyer posted this week by the Wall Street Journal said employees will be required to come to their offices to "feel the energy and buzz" of the workplace.

"Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together," according to the report.

Asked about the memo, a Yahoo! spokesman said Tuesday, "We don't discuss internal matters," but essentially confirmed the news by saying: "This isn't a broad industry view on working from home -- this is about what is right for Yahoo!, right now."

The shift counters the overall trend: some 53 per cent of US employers offered flexible work options in 2012, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. That compares with 48 per cent in 2007.

A 2011 report by the US Labor Department found 24 per cent of employed Americans reporting that they work at least some hours at home each week.

The trend is particularly noticeable in IT firms, where companies take advantage of technology to have virtual access to what they would have at the office.

Cisco Systems, which develops virtual private networks for remote access, said 40 per cent of its employees are not in the same city as their manager, and the average employee telecommutes two days a week.

IBM, another strong telework advocate, said 29 per cent of its 128,000 employees participate in a flex-work or work at home program, and that in 2011, in the US alone, this saved 6.4 million gallons of fuel and avoided more than 50,000 metric tons of carbon emissions.

The move by Yahoo! "goes against the grain of where a lot of organizations are going today," said Cindy Auten, general manager of Mobile Work Exchange, a public-private partnership that promotes telework.

"This is especially important in the tech industry; they are focused on recruiting and retaining the best and brightest."

Auten said telework is "a huge recruitment and retention tool," seen as a near necessity at some firms now, with the option offered in 85 per cent of the employers rated as "best places to work."

She said telecommuting often improves productivity, but that in cases where it fails, "it may uncover other weaknesses" in an organization.

The Yahoo! decision drew criticism from others, including Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, who said in a tweet: "Perplexed by Yahoo! stopping remote working. Give people the freedom of where to work & they will excel."

Kelly Ann Collins, a Washington marketing consultant who blogs on work and family issues, called the Yahoo! move confusing.

"High-tech companies like Yahoo! that are completely digital have the ability to make the lives of their employees so much better," she wrote.

"Telecommuting is not only efficient, it is better for team morale and employee retention. It makes for happier employees that (actually like to) produce top-notch work."

But some analysts say Yahoo!'s move could be positive, even if it drives away those seeking a more flexible environment.

"Yahoo! is in a creative innovation race and they need to get back to their roots," said John Challenger, chief executive of the consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"There are great benefits to telecommuting, and there are more companies that need to do more telecommuting, but (Yahoo!) is a case where they are seeking to pull themselves out from a position where they have been behind the curve."

Even before the Yahoo! news, some data suggested telecommuting was not the panacea it was cracked up to be.

The Labor Department report found that telecommuters often ended up working more hours than if they had come into the office, effectively doing overtime work without compensation.

"The ability of employees to work at home may actually allow employers to raise expectations for work availability during evenings and weekends and foster longer workdays and workweeks," the report said.

But Challenger said Yahoo! will not be able to turn back the clock completely, and that some employees are likely to do some of their work from home, despite the new policy,

"Some people have always worked from home," he said. "And now technology allows them to work on the weekends, at night or on vacation. There is no boundary between work and home anymore."

- AFP/ck



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Rape victim attempts suicide in Gujarat high court

AHMEDABAD: A rape victim attempted suicide in the courtroom of Gujarat high court on Tuesday by consuming pesticide. She was rushed to the Sola Civil Hospital, where her condition is said to be critical. This is the second such incident since January when a rape victim attempted suicide in a courtroom.

In this case, the 27-year old woman had moved Gujarat HC to appeal against a city sessions court's decision to grant anticipatory bail to the rape accused, Sandeep Panchal. On Tuesday, her lawyer could not attend court due to the demise of his grandmother and Justice Ashish Desai adjourned the hearing.

As soon as the woman heard about the adjournment, she rushed to the courtroom and consumed poison. She was accompanied by her three-year old son. Advocate B M Mangukiya, who was present in the courtroom, took her to the hospital.

He later said that the victim had audio clips in her mobile phone establishing that the accused was threatening that she would meet the same fate as the Delhi gang-rape victim, Nirbhaya. When Sola police later recorded the victim's statement, she handed over this evidence to them.

After the incident, Justice Desai scheduled hearing on the case on Wednesday.

HC's registrar general R P Dholeria said, "She has grievances against police and her family members, not against the court." In her petition at HC the victim has complained about "ill treatment" by city cops.

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C. Everett Koop, 'rock star' surgeon general, dies


NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. C. Everett Koop has long been regarded as the nation's doctor— even though it has been nearly a quarter-century since he was surgeon general.


Koop, who died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96, was by far the best known and most influential person to carry that title. Koop, a 6-foot-1 evangelical Presbyterian with a biblical prophet's beard, donned a public health uniform in the early 1980s and became an enduring, science-based national spokesman on health issues.


He served for eight years during the Reagan administration and was a breed apart from his political bosses. He thundered about the evils of tobacco companies during a multiyear campaign to drive down smoking rates, and he became the government's spokesman on AIDS when it was still considered a "gay disease" by much of the public.


"He really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," said Chris Collins, a vice president of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.


Even before that, he had been a leading figure in medicine. He was one of the first U.S. doctors to specialize in pediatric surgery at a time when children with complicated conditions were often simply written off as untreatable. In the 1950s, he drew national headlines for innovative surgeries such as separating conjoined twins.


His medical heroics are well noted, but he may be better remembered for transforming from a pariah in the eyes of the public health community into a remarkable servant who elevated the influence of the surgeon general — if only temporarily.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," said Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade later under President George W. Bush.


Koop's religious beliefs grew after the 1968 death of his son David in a mountain-climbing accident, and he became an outspoken opponent of abortion. His activism is what brought him to the attention of the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who decided to nominate him for surgeon general in 1981. Though once a position with real power, surgeon generals had been stripped of most of their responsibilities in the 1960s.


By the time Koop got the job, the position was kind of a glorified health educator.


But Koop ran with it. One of his early steps involved the admiral's uniform that is bestowed to the surgeon general but that Koop's predecessors had worn only on ceremonial occasions. In his first year in the post, Koop stopped wearing his trademark bowties and suit jackets and instead began wearing the uniform, seeing it as a way to raise the visual prestige of the office.


In those military suits, he surprised the officials who had appointed him by setting aside his religious beliefs and feelings about abortion and instead waging a series of science-based public health crusades.


He was arguably most effective on smoking. He issued a series of reports that detailed the dangers of tobacco smoke, and in speeches began calling for a smoke-free society by the year 2000. He didn't get his wish, but smoking rates did drop from 38 percent to 27 percent while he was in office — a huge decline.


Koop led other groundbreaking initiatives, but perhaps none is better remembered than his work on AIDS.


The disease was first identified in 1981, before Koop was officially in office, and it changed U.S. society. It destroyed the body's immune system and led to ghastly death, but initially was identified in gay men, and many people thought of it as something most heterosexuals didn't have to worry about.


U.S. scientists worked hard to identify the virus and work on ways to fight it, but the government's health education and policy efforts moved far more slowly. Reagan for years was silent on the issue. Following mounting criticism, Reagan in 1986 asked Koop to prepare a report on AIDS for the American public.


His report, released later that year, stressed that AIDS was a threat to all Americans and called for wider use of condoms and more comprehensive sex education, as early as the third grade. He went on to speak frankly about AIDS in an HBO special and engineered the mailing of an educational pamphlet on AIDS to more than 100 million U.S. households in 1988.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop's speeches and empathetic approach made him a hero to a wide swath of America, including public health workers, gay activists and journalists. Some called him a "scientific Bruce Springsteen." AIDS activists chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances and booed other officials.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


Koop angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


He got static from some staff at the White House for his actions, but Reagan himself never tried to silence Koop. At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day.


After his death was reported Monday, the tributes poured forth, including a statement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has made smoking restrictions a hallmark of his tenure.


"The nation has lost a visionary public health leader today with the passing of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who was born and raised in Brooklyn," Bloomberg said. "Outspoken on the dangers of smoking, his leadership led to stronger warning labels on cigarettes and increased awareness about second-hand smoke, creating an environment that helped millions of Americans to stop smoking — and setting the stage for the dramatic changes in smoking laws that have occurred over the past decade."


Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health taught Koop what was known about AIDS during quiet after-hours talks in the early 1980s and became a close friend.


"A less strong person would have bent under the pressure," Fauci said. "He was driven by what's the right thing to do."


Carmona, a surgeon general years later, said Koop was a mentor who preached the importance of staying true to the science in speeches and reports — even when it made certain politicians uncomfortable.


"We remember him for the example he set for all of us," Carmona said.


Koop's nomination originally was met with staunch opposition. Women's groups and liberal politicians complained Reagan had selected him only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed as surgeon general after he told a Senate panel he would not use the post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word and eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy.


Koop was modest about his accomplishments, saying before leaving office in 1989, "My only influence was through moral suasion."


The office declined after that. Few of his successors had his speaking ability or stage presence. Fewer still were able to secure the support of key political bosses and overcome the meddling of everyone else. The office gradually lost prestige and visibility, and now has come to a point where most people can't name the current surgeon general. (It's Dr. Regina Benjamin.)


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


He maintained his personal opposition to abortion. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


Worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, Koop opened an institute at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats. He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


He received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it. In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children. Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


___


Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.; Jeff McMillan in Philadelphia; and AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington.


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Arias Liked Some Kinky Sex, She Admits












Though accused murderer Jodi Arias said she sometimes felt "like a prostitute" at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, she admitted today that she often enjoyed their sex life and even suggested sex acts they could try.


Prosecutor Juan Martinez, after a day of aggressive questioning and bickering with Arias, asked her about her own suggestions for her sex life with Alexander, including a phone conversation in which she suggested using sexual lubricant.


Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander, but claims it was in self-defense.
Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial


"You introduced KY Jelly into the relationship to make it more sexually enjoyable, right? When we're talking about the level of experimentation, it looks like both of you were experimenting together sexually. So when we hear things like, 'I felt like a prostitute,' that's not exactly true, is it?" Martinez said.


"It was often mutual," Arias said. "I didn't feel like a prostitute during, just after."








Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video











Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video





Martinez showed the jury a text message Arias sent offering to perform oral sex on Alexander, comparing it to a statement she made on direct testimony saying that she once felt like a prostitute when Alexander tossed a piece of chocolate at her and walked away without a word after she performed oral sex.


"How is it you can say you 'felt like a prostitute' when you're moving the relationship ahead like this?" Martinez asked. "The act itself is the same thing, and here you're requesting it. The geography is different, but that aside, isn't it the same act? And you're requesting it?"


"When he (ejaculated) and left afterward I felt like a prostitute. When we mutually went through things together I didn't," she said.


Arias also admitted that she sent Alexander a topless photo of herself after he sent her photos of his penis, and that she only did it after she had her breasts enhanced surgically.


Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage


The testimony came as Martinez continued his efforts to discredit Arias' testimony on the stand, including her statements that she often succumbed to Alexander's sexual fantasies so she wouldn't hurt his feelings. Martinez has focused on portraying Arias as a liar for much of his direct examination.


Arias is charged with murder for killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander at his home in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008. She claims she killed him in self defense and that he had been increasingly violent and sexually demanding in the months before the confrontation. She also claimed he was interested in young boys.


The prosecution claims she killed him in a jealous rage. She could face the death penalty if convicted of first degree murder.

Jodi Arias Trial See Tempers Flare



Earlier in the day,tempers flared between Arias and prosecutor Martinez as the prosecutor tried to detail Arias' history of spying on her boyfriends, but Arias complained that his aggressive style of questioning made her "brain scramble."


Arias and Martinez, who have sparred throughout two prior days of cross-examination, spent more than 10 minutes bickering over Martinez's word choices and his apparent "anger."


The morning's testimony, and Martinez's points about Arias' alleged spying, were largely interrupted by the spats.


"Are you having trouble understanding me?" Martinez yelled.


"Yes because sometimes cause you go in circles," Arias answered.






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DKNY apologizes for using photos without permission






NEW YORK: Donna Karan New York apologised Monday for having displayed, without permission, portraits taken by a New York photographer in its Bangkok shop windows.

The fashion house also announced, in its statement, that it was donating $25,000 to a charity chosen by and in the name of the photographer, Brandon Stanton.

Stanton, who was alerted to the Bangkok display by a fan, wrote a post Monday morning on the Facebook page of his blog "Humans of New York," condemning the use of his photos without his authorisation.

The photographer said that, several months ago, DKNY had offered him $15,000 to buy 300 photos to display in their shop windows around the world, but that he refused, judging the offer insufficient.

"I don't want any money. But please REBLOG this post if you think that DKNY should donate $100,000 on my behalf to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn," he wrote.

By Monday afternoon, Stanton's post was shared more than 35,000 times on Facebook, prompting DKNY's response.

The company apologised, saying the Bangkok store had mistakenly used the images from an internal mock-up.

"We apologize for this error and are working to ensure that only the approved artwork is used," the statement said.

Stanton, 27, launched his blog featuring his photos of people and life in New York City in 2010. The blog's Facebook page has more than 560,000 "likes."

-AFP/sb



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Isro does it again, 7 SATS in orbit

A five-minute delay to pre-empt an encounter withdebrisdid not dampen the spirit at Sriharikota on Monday as the satellite launch vehicle PSLV-C20 took to the skies to catapult seven satellites into orbit,including Indo-Frenchsatellite SARAL.

While initially the control room at Sriharikota was bristling with activity, a deadsilence prevailed as launch time drew close. While initially the launch time was slated for 5.56pm, the PSLV, dubbed workhorse of the Indian Space Research Organisation, took off at 6.01pm after Isro officials got wind of some debris, close to three hours before the scheduled lift-off time.

Five minutes is a significant amountof timeduring a launch since any object in space at above 500km moves at 8km per second. The delay ensured that the rocket reached the altitude after thedebrishad moved away.

Besides the Indo-French satellite with ARgos and ALtika (SARAL), India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C20), on its 23rd flight, also launched six commercial payloads from Austria, Britain, Canada and Denmark into a 785km polar sun synchronous orbit.

With seven satellites in total, this is the second highest number of satellites to be flown on a PSLV. In April 2008, it put in orbit 10 satellites, including the national Cartosat-2A, on the PSLV-C9 rocket.

The 668.5kg 44.4-metre tall rocket, with a lift-off mass of 229.7 tonnes, has been configured in a 'core-alone' format without solid strap-on motors. According to officials this is the ninthcore-aloneflightof a PSLV.

The PSLV put the 407-kg Indo-French satellite with ARgos and ALtika (SARAL) into orbit in 1077-72 seconds. SARAL will help study ocean surface and the environment using the two devices — ARgos and the ALtika. The French ALtika altimeter works on the principle of RADAR,emitting microwave pulse and picking up signals that bounce back. The time taken for the signal to return provides the distance between satellite and the sea. "This way we'll be able to measure the height of the waves and assess changes in the ocean,"said an Isro official.

Of the six smaller satellites, two each are from Canada and Austria and one each from the U K and Denmark. This includes NEOSSAT from Canada which will detect and track either near-earth asteroids or satellites in geostationary orbit.

President Pranab Mukherjee, who witnessed the launch, hailed Isro for its track record and wished the team success in its future ventures.

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Koop, who transformed surgeon general post, dies


With his striking beard and starched uniform, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop became one of the most recognizable figures of the Reagan era — and one of the most unexpectedly enduring.


His nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians, who complained President Ronald Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon and evangelical Christian from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Soon, though, he was a hero to AIDS activists, who chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances but booed other officials. And when he left his post in 1989, he left behind a landscape where AIDS was a top research and educational priority, smoking was considered a public health hazard, and access to abortion remained largely intact.


Koop, who turned his once-obscure post into a bully pulpit for seven years during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and who surprised both ends of the political spectrum by setting aside his conservative personal views on issues such as homosexuality and abortion to keep his focus sharply medical, died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.


An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth College institute, Susan Wills, confirmed his death but didn't disclose its cause.


Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade ago under President George W. Bush, said Koop was a mentor to him and preached the importance of staying true to the science even if it made politicians uncomfortable.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," Carmona said.


Although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy, Koop described himself as "the health conscience of the country" and said modestly just before leaving his post that "my only influence was through moral suasion."


A former pipe smoker, Koop carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States; his goal had been to do so by 2000. He said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine. And he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.


Chris Collins, a vice president of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said many people don't realize what an important role Koop played in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.


"At the time, he really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," Collins said.


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


Although Koop eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, his nomination met staunch opposition.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.


In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.


He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop further angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


Koop maintained his personal opposition to abortion, however. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day, but Reagan would not interfere.


Koop, worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, opened his institute at Dartmouth to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.


He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


Koop received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it.


In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children, one of whom died in a mountain climbing accident when he was 20.


Koop was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.


He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was by far the best-known surgeon general and for decades afterward was still a recognized personality.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


___


Ring reported from Montpelier, Vt. Cass reported from Washington. AP Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.


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