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PMO: Sheikh Jarrah demolition 'in accordance with law'.

In wake of int'l condemnation, Netanyahu's
bureau defends construction of Jewish homes in
e. J'lem neighborhood: "State of Israel can't ban
Jews purchasing private property in J'lem"
The Prime Minister's Office on Monday defended
the bulldozing of the old Shepherd Hotel in east
Jerusalem that has drawn international
condemnation.
In a statement, Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu's bureau said that actions undertaken
Sunday at the Shepherd Hotel were conducted by
private individuals in accordance with Israeli law.
The Israeli government was not involved."
The statement went on to explain that "there
should be no expectation that the State of Israel
will impose a ban on Jews purchasing private
property in Jerusalem. No democratic
government would impose such a ban on Jews
and Israel will certainly not do so."
"Just as Arab residents of Jerusalem can buy or
rent property in predominantly Jewish
neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jews can buy or
rent property in predominantly Arab
neighborhoods in Jerusalem," the statement
added.
Earlier on Monday, Egypt and Jordan criticized
Israel for the demolition, AFP reported. The two
countries also warned against a violent backlash
in the wake of the demolition.
The Egyptian Foreign Affairs issued a statement
claiming that continuing Israeli settlement projects
will cause a "new explosion of violence" in the
West Bank.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also
strongly criticized Israel for the demolition of the
vacant but historic hotel in east Jerusalem, saying
that the move undermines US efforts to restart
stalled peace talks.
In a statement released from Abu Dhabi, where
she was beginning a tour of the Persian Gulf,
Clinton said late Sunday that the destruction of the
Shepherd Hotel to make way for a new Jewish
housing development "contradicts the logic" of
Israel and the Palestinians negotiating a solution to
their differences over Jerusalem, one of the most
explosive issues in Israeli-Palestinian
peacemaking. Clinton said the United States is
"very concerned" about the demolition.
Demolition of the Shepherd Hotel, in east
Jerusalem ’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, began at
dawn on Sunday.
It came after a long battle over construction rights
that drew condemnation from US President
Barack Obama and other leaders around the
world over the past few years.
The hotel, which was built in the 1930s by the
mufti of Jerusalem Haj Muhammad Amin al-
Husseini (1921- 1948), was bought in 1985 by
American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who has
bankrolled other Jewish housing projects in Arab
neighborhoods in the capital. Moskowitz,
partnering with the Ateret Cohanim organization,
plans to turn the complex into 20 apartments for
religious Jewish families.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=202950

S.Sudan: 20 police die in attack by Arab tribe.

JUBA, Sudan (AP) — Arab tribesmen
accompanied by a northern Sudanese
government-backed militia killed 20 policemen in
the disputed region of Abyei, a southern military
spokesman said Monday, raising concerns of
violence as the south holds its independence
referendum.
The attack came Sunday, the first day of voting in
Southern Sudan's weeklong referendum, which
is widely predicted to break Africa's largest
country in two.
Abyei, which straddles the north-south divide
and holds oil deposits, had been promised its
own self-determination vote, but now its future
will be decided by north-south negotiations that
have so far made little progress.
Col. Philip Aguer, the spokesman for Southern
Sudan's army, said that the Misseriya, an Arab
tribe that moves its cattle herds through Abyei,
attacked the village of Maker-Adhar on Sunday
with anti-tank weapons and artillery. Aguer said
he believes the attack was planned.
"They were not with cattle, they were coming for
(an) attack," Aguer said.
Aguer said the Misseriya were accompanied by
uniformed militia men known as the Popular
Defense Forces, a Khartoum-backed militia whose
existence was outlawed by the 2005 peace
agreement that ended the 23-year north-south
civil war.
Aguer said 20 police serving with Abyei's joint
integrated police unit were killed. Another 30 were
wounded.
Jubilant voters flooded polling stations in
Southern Sudan on Sunday and again on
Monday, and the seven days of balloting are likely
to produce an overwhelming vote for
independence. Sudan President Omar al-Bashir
has said he will let the south secede peacefully.
But Abyei is still a major sticking point, and
officials from former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
to Sudan activist and actor George Clooney have
warned that Abyei holds the potential to reverse
the south's gains and send the north and south
back toward conflict. Clooney helped set up a
project for satellites to watch any possible troop
movements in Abyei.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jW6-Fl8VnxxIvEDYpmg40VDoQuTA?docId=010b2de9ab5a433b9bdc30a6caeb857a

Mumtaz Qadri admits killing Governor Salman Taseer.

The bodyguard accused of shooting
Pakistani governor Salman Taseer has
confessed in court to the killing.
Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri told the Anti-
Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi that he had acted
alone in the attack.
He was whisked into court a day earlier than
scheduled to prevent supporters showing up,
correspondents say.
It comes a day after 50,000 protesters marched
in Karachi against proposed amendments -
backed by the slain Punjab governor - to the
blasphemy law.
Mumtaz Qadri
admits killing
Governor Salman

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12149607

Consumer Electronics Show: Three directors ponder film's future.

At the Las Vegas expo, Oliver Stone, Michael
Mann and Baz Luhrmann talk Blu-ray, 3-D and
other technology, the integrity of classic films,
and new ways of watching movies.Reporting from Las Vegas — — At the
International Consumer Electronics Show, the
massive annual expo in Las Vegas devoted to the
hard sell of high tech, it's just assumed that the
next big thing is always better than what came
before. That's why director Oliver Stone
managed to sound lonely in a crowded room
Saturday when he suggested that, for cinema,
the future just doesn't look so bright.
"Watching my children and friends look at a
computer screen with a movie — with the lights
on, with interruptions, trying to multitask — is
very depressing to people like me," Stone said at
a filmmaker panel discussion on the Las Vegas
Convention Center floor. "Now, my daughter had
[a movie on] a phone the other day. I found it,
literally, sad. I feel like we are the last of the
Mohicans, in a way."
Stone made that fading-frontier analogy for the
benefit of director Michael Mann, his generational
peer who was sitting beside him and who had
just shown the crowd an especially vivid
sequence from the new Blu-ray edition of his
1992 epic, "The Last of the Mohicans."Mann chuckled, but Stone wasn't smiling. As
Hollywood moves further into the era of
portability and pixels, the "Sunset Blvd." words of
Norma Desmond spring to mind: "I am big. It's
the pictures that got small."
The panel, which also included "Moulin Rouge!"
director Baz Luhrmann, was a bit of an anomaly
at the hardware-obsessed event. The discussion,
organized by Fox Home Entertainment and
moderated by this reporter, was focused on
high-definition Blu-ray discs.
While all three of the famous perfectionists
expressed enthusiasm for the format — Mann
said "Blu-ray does a better job [than DVD] by a
factor of about 12 or 13" — they voiced less
certainty and even flashes of anxiety when the
talk turned to other technology topics.
Luhrmann, 48, said he worries about the integrity
of classic films when modern technology adds
too much clarity to the images — for example,
when the wires holding the flying monkeys can
be seen in new versions of "The Wizard of Oz."
And Mann, who spent months preparing
"Mohicans" for last year's Blu-ray version, noted
that despite his affection for the format, he could
guess that it might last eight more years.
Still, Luhrmann said he is "fantastically optimistic"
about technology in general and eager to see
where 3-D leads to as stereoscopic approaches
and gear improve. Backstage, he spoke with
crackling enthusiasm about his investigation into
3-D for an upcoming adaption of "The Great
Gatsby." Mann also said he would like to see what
3-D might bring to a carefully constructed
dialogue drama as opposed to the action
spectacle films that dominate the sector now.
The directors were part of a slightly greater
emphasis on content at CES, but gear and gizmos
really still ruled the four-day event that came to a
close Sunday. More than 2,700 technology
companies came to sell themselves to 140,000
hard-wired professionals from 80 countries.
Computer tablets, smart appliances and Ford's
first electric vehicle were the talk of the show,
whereas the entertainment sector seemed to
have less eye-popping offerings than last year,
when 3-D TV was a hot topic.
Although more and more entertainment is
moving toward digital delivery, Stone said the
Blu-ray format may be able to extend its life if
people consider it a collectible.
"This is about film preservation … it's the last
hardware, the best of the last hardware. There
won't be any other hardware now," he said. "It's
going to be on a digital phone or on a computer
or on a TV screen."

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ces-film-directors-20110110,0,1367170.story

Massive Karachi rally in support of blasphemy law.

Up to 50,000 people have staged a protest
in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi
against a proposed softening of strict
blasphemy laws.
The rally was attended by all major Muslim
groups and sects in the city, including moderates
and conservatives.
The demonstration comes days after the killing of
Punjab Province Governor Salman Taseer, who
had backed the proposed amendments.
The governor was allegedly shot by one of his
own bodyguards.
The killing has divided Pakistani society.
'No compromise'
Religious groups blocked a main street in Karachi,
holding banners in support of Malik Mumtaz
Hussein Qadri, who is accused of shooting dead
Mr Taseer last Tuesday.
"Mumtaz Qadri is not a murderer, he is a hero,"
read one banner at the Sunday's rally, news
agency AFP reports.
"We salute the courage of Qadri," said another.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was quoted by
AFP news agency as saying in Islamabad: "I have
already clarified and our religious affairs minister
has also said that we have no intentions to
amend this law."
Mr Taseer - a senior member of the governing
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - had recently
angered Islamists by calling for a Christian
woman, Asia Bibi, sentenced to death for
blasphemy, to be pardoned.
Mumtaz Qadri was detained after the shooting
and is said to have confessed to the murder.
At his first court appearance in Islamabad the
guard was showered with rose petals by lawyers
and hugged by other supporters.
Mr Qadri said he had been angered by Mr
Taseer's stance against the blasphemy laws.
Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for allegedly
insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an
argument with other farmhands in a Punjab
village in June 2009. She denies the charge.
Under Pakistan's blasphemy law, insulting Islam
is a capital offence.
Critics say the law has been used to persecute
minority faiths in Pakistan and is exploited by
people with personal grudges.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12149011

Microsoft's Xbox Kinect beyond hackers, hobbyists.

For the past two months, the Microsoft Kinect has
enabled scientists to create hologram-like images,
build 3-D models of homes and even make
robots do pushups.
Soon, it may help NASA scientists teleconference
in three dimensions.
Researchers at the NASA Astrobiology Institute
outside Mountain View are considering the
purchase of several Kinects to enable scientists to
cheaply teleconference and share 3-D data, using
nothing more than Microsoft's gaming peripheral
and some software developed at UC Davis.
It's all because of a $150 device that hackers,
hobbyists and even government scientists are
using in ways it was never intended: the Kinect, a
motion-tracking peripheral for the Xbox console
that is packed with an irresistible blend of
cameras and sensors.
Microsoft reportedly spent hundreds of millions
of dollars to develop the Kinect, which has been a
runaway hit. The company has sold 8 million of
the devices since it was released, Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer announced at last week's
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
While Kinect hacking became a popular pastime
worldwide shortly after the device's Nov. 4
release, much of the most prominent work has
taken place in and around Silicon Valley.
This month, Menlo Park technology incubator
Willow Garage is sponsoring a contest for the
most interesting new use of the Kinect's depth
sensor with a robot. The top prize is $3,000, and
entries are beginning to roll in. Early entries have
shown inventors controlling robots with their
arms, making the robots do pushups and other
tasks.
"We've always had sensors like these available,
but they were very expensive," said Tim Conley,
the contest's senior software engineer at Willow
Garage. "As soon as the Kinect came out,
everyone in the office could buy one. When
something is cheap and almost disposable, you
can play with it in ways you wouldn't with
something that's much more expensive. You can
endanger it."
Much of the hacking to date has involved a 3-D
camera, built by the Israeli company PrimeSense,
which Microsoft licensed for the Kinect. When
attached to a robot, the camera allows its host to
perceive depth accurately - an ability essential to
robots being able to navigate.
That's important if your robot, like Patrick
Bouffard's, is airborne.
Late at night, after his children have gone to bed,
Bouffard enters his laboratory at UC Berkeley and
begins working with his small Kinect-enhanced
helicopter.
Project Natal
Bouffard, 33, is a graduate student working on
ways to help computer-guided vehicles avoid
collisions. Last year, he began to hear chatter
around the lab about the technology embedded
in Project Natal, Microsoft's codename for the
product that became Kinect.
When the device came out, Bouffard read a
posting on a Web forum challenging developers
to take data from the Kinect and integrate it with
Robot Operating System, the open-source
software Bouffard and others use to create
smarter robots.
Shortly afterward, following a meeting with his
adviser, Bouffard and a fellow student both
requested to speak with her. Both wanted to ask
the same question: Can we buy some Kinects for
the lab?
The adviser, Claire Tomlin, said yes, and Bouffard
got his Kinect. With the Kinect attached,
Bouffard's 4-pound helicopter, called a quadrotor,
could suddenly perceive objects in its path. He
posted a video to YouTube of the quadrotor
detecting an object in front of it and then
stopping. The video was a viral hit; to date it has
attracted nearly 800,000 views.
The project started off as something of a lark,
Bouffard said, but he expects the Kinect will play a
role in his research as he continues his work in
robotics and collision avoidance.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F01%2F09%2FBUO01H4ISI.DTL

David and Victoria Beckham pregnancy: from Spice Girl to fashion royalty.

From the early days as a member of one of
Britain's most successful girlbands Victoria
Beckham, the former Spice Girl, has cemented
herself as one of the country's most recognisable
and photographed stars.
Despite being married to arguably the world's
most famous footballer and style icons, the 36
year-old has has scaled the heady heights of
celebrity to become fashion royalty.
Entering the limelight as Victoria Adams, "Posh
Spice" was central to the Spice Girls, the five-piece
group that hit the charts with its first single
Wannabe in 1996 and changed the face of British
culture over the coming years.
The mother of three boys became known for her
love of her ''little black dress'' and killer heels,
marking her early interest of fashion.
The Spice Girls' message of ''girl power'' spread
with sell-out tours and chart-topping albums and
attracted a massive following, which included the
then-Manchester United midfielder David
Beckham, 35.
Victoria and David, whose performances on the
football pitch earned him the nickname "Golden
Balls", met in 1997 and the chemistry was almost
instant.
The pair soon became Britain's golden celebrity
couple and were engaged a year later.
In March 1999, Victoria gave birth to her first son
Brooklyn, which is said to be the name of the
location where he was conceived.
Four months later, the Beckhams enjoyed a
sumptuous wedding at Luttrellstown Castle in
Ireland, with Victoria opting for a £60,000 Vera
Wang wedding dress.
Meanwhile, the Spice Girls were rocked when Geri
Halliwell quit the band and decided to take a break
from recording in 2000.
Victoria seized the chance to launch an
eponymous solo album in 2001, which featured
the single Not Such An Innocent Girl, but the
record could not match the success she enjoyed
with the band.
The ambitious former Spice Girl collaborated with
Damon Dash, an American hip hop producer,
making frequent trips to the US in a bid to boost
her solo career.
But despite failing to impress the critics with her
efforts, Victoria achieved four top-ten singles
between 2000 and 2004 including Out Of Your
Mind, a collaboration with Dane Bowers.
As well as her solo career, Victoria also had to
contend with rumours that her marriage was in
crisis amid allegations that David had been
unfaithful.
But she tackled the media assault with a flurry of
television appearances in which she stressed her
commitment to David and the couple's desire for
more children.
She also began her transition from the music
business to the fashion world after her first
appearance on the runway for London Fashion
Week in 2000.
Since then, she has been the face of Dolce and
Gabbana and Marc Jacobs, as well as teaming up
with her husband to model for Armani.
Victoria launched her first dress collection in 2008
at New York's Fashion Week for Spring 2009 and
received plaudits from critics and peers alike.
Her elegant designs are now regularly seen on
the red carpet, with actresses Drew Barrymore
and Gwyneth Paltrow, and even chat show host
Oprah Winfrey among her fans.
Despite a hectic schedule, Victoria is often
photographed spending time with her sons
Brooklyn, 11, Romeo, eight, and Cruz, five, and
has spoken of her desire for a daughter.
In 2005, she told a Spanish magazine she could
imagine ''painting her nails, putting on make-up
and choosing clothes'' with her.
The couple has also had to handle huge media
interest in Beckham's career, which has seen his
tenure as England captain end followed by a
disagreement with manager Fabio Capello over
his ability to play at international level.
He was also part of the contingent in Zurich
alongside Prime Minister David Cameron and
Prince William for the ultimately unsuccessful bid
to host the 2018 World Cup.
He is currently plying his trade in the US at LA
Galaxy. Such is the interest in the couple, their 11-
year marriage is also a marketable commodity,
known as "Brand Beckham".
The sportsman tops football's rich list, with the
most recent estimate placing his fortune at £125
million. He has multi-million pound sponsorship
deals with Adidas, Giorgio Armani and Motorola.
The couple have a his-and-hers fragrance line, the
latest product of which is called Intimately Yours
and is "designed to capture the essence of David
and Victoria Beckham's passion and the power of
their relationship".
The couple were recently featured in an advert
that shows them enjoying a passionate
encounter in a lift.
In an interview with the February issue of Vogue
magazine Victoria said that she was open to the
idea of another child but resigned to the fact that
she may never have a daughter.
"Maybe one day another baby, but at this stage I
think the chances of a girl are quite slim," she told
the magazine, which placed her on the cover this
month for a sixth time.
In another interview she said: "I think one day,
if we're blessed to have more children, it would
be amazing," Victoria, 36, said when asked about
additional kids with her soccer star husband. "It's
a lot having three boys ... But who knows, one
day?"
In that same Vogue interview admitted that she
had her breast implants removed in an effort to
get back to a more natural figure.
Friends say the baby is almost certainly going to
be born in America and dismiss suggestions that
the couple will return home.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/david-beckham/8249368/David-and-Victoria-Beckham-pregnancy-from-Spice-Girl-to-fashion-royalty.html

Verizon Wireless Confident It's Got Muscle for iPhone.

Verizon Wireless has been beefing up its network
and believes it will have no problem handling
iPhone-type loads, a claim that could be put to
the test this year if the carrier signs up millions of
subscribers using the Apple Inc. device.
Verizon Wireless, the country's largest wireless
carrier, is confident enough in its network that it
will offer unlimited data-use plans when it starts
selling the iPhone around the end of this month, a
person familiar with the matter said. Such plans
would provide a key means of distinguishing its
service from rival AT&T Inc., which limits how
much Internet data such as videos and photos its
customers may use each month.
AT&T has struggled to overcome complaints
about network quality ever since it started
exclusively selling the iPhone in the U.S. in 2007.
That contributed to a decision last summer to
offer new iPhone and other smartphone
customers only pricing plans that cap how much
data they send and receive..
The move was aimed in part at gaining a
measure of control over heavy iPhone users,
who have overtaxed the carrier's network,
leading to complaints about dropped calls and
spotty service.
It wasn't clear how long Verizon would offer
unlimited-data plans. Its executives have said
repeatedly that the industry needs to move to
some form of tiered pricing —charging different
prices for different amounts of data use—as
mobile Internet service use rises, but for the
moment the carrier is sticking to its existing plans.
Verizon Wireless, majority-owned by Verizon
Communications Inc., has a lot at stake as it starts
to carry the iPhone, which it will announce
Tuesday at an event in New York City, people
familiar with the matter say. Verizon more than
any other U.S. carrier has built its reputation on
its network quality, and any stumble in handling
iPhone traffic will call into question Verizon's
major selling point. On the other hand, if it does
handle the iPhone well, then AT&T will have a
harder time arguing it didn't mismanage its own
network.
Verizon executives point to their network's
success handling already heavy laptop traffic and
a growing number of data-guzzling Android-
based smartphone users on its main, 3G
network.
"Whether they are iPhones or Droids, they are
smartphones," Verizon Chief Executive Ivan G.
Seidenberg said in a mid-November interview.
"Regardless of the mix, we are prepared to carry
more data."
Anthony J. Melone, Verizon's chief technology
officer, said Sunday the company invested
heavily in its 3G network last year to handle
surging smartphone traffic. At the end of
September, the carrier had some nine million
Android subscribers, up from none a year earlier,
according to Majestic Research.
Verizon also has been building a new, faster 4G
network that it launched in December. Mr. Melone
said that network will help by handling a lot of
new data traffic and offloading demand from its
3G network as existing customers upgrade to
faster wireless service.
"We added enormous capacity to the network in
one fell swoop," Mr. Melone said. "It is there
waiting for us to grow into it. That will help me
tremendously with my 3G network."
Mr. Melone wouldn't comment on how the
network would handle the iPhone, but said, "All
of this planning can support any successful
device."
AT&T has acknowledged it underestimated the
stress the iPhone would put on its network. The
carrier boosted spending this year particularly in
the key markets of New York City and San
Francisco, but still struggles with the perception
its network is weak.
In December, a survey by Consumer Reports put
AT&T's network quality in last place. Verizon,
meanwhile, was the top-ranked major carrier.
AT&T says its network is faster and has
advantages like allowing users to browse the
Web while talking on the phone.
The design of Verizon's network, which uses a
different technology called CDMA, has to this
point allowed only one or the other.
"We think customers will prefer AT&T's faster
speeds and better functionality," said an AT&T
spokesman said.
Brisk demand is expected. Analysts think Verizon,
which has 93 million subscribers, could sell nine
million to 12 million iPhones this year, a huge
boost in the phone's key U.S. market.
To put that into perspective,AT&T sold 11.1 million
iPhones in the first nine months of 2010. Piper
Jaffray & Co. projects a full-year total of 14.5
million iPhones for AT&T, accounting for 12% of
Apple's overall revenue and 30% of its iPhone
sales. In its fiscal year ended in September, Apple
reported revenue of $20.34 billion.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said Wall
Street is expecting sales of the Verizon iPhone to
boost Apple's overall sales by 5% —or more if
Verizon does a better job of luring new
customers than it does turncoats from AT&T.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576072110862862244.html

Sibling spacing may be tied to autism risk: study.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study
suggests that kids who are born only a year or
two after an older sibling might be more likely to
be diagnosed with autism than those with a
bigger age gap.
Of all second siblings whose mothers became
pregnant with them less than a year after giving
birth to the older sibling, about 7.5 in every
1,000 were diagnosed with autism. When
mothers became pregnant three years or more
after giving birth, about 2.5 out of every 1,000
younger siblings were diagnosed with autism.
Rates were somewhere in the middle for
mothers who became pregnant between one
and three years after giving birth to their first kid.
But the authors of the research, published today
in Pediatrics, say they don't know if younger
siblings of closely spaced pairs are actually more
likely to have autism. It could also be that
parents can more easily recognize warning signs
of autism when they have more recently
watched another kid pass through
developmental stages, the researchers say.
"There's one possible explanation, (which) is that
there is some biological factor" such as a
mother's nutrient levels or stress that makes a
second child more at risk for autism when
siblings are closely spaced, Dr. Keely Cheslack-
Postava, the study's lead author, from Columbia
University, told Reuters Health.
Another explanation "is just better diagnosis and
better picking up on symptoms," Cheslack-
Postava said, "in which case it would be an
advantage to be more closely spaced."
According to estimates by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, slightly less than
one percent of kids in America have autism.
Researchers have not identified a clear cause, but
some think it might be linked to conditions in the
womb - which could be different depending on
how closely siblings are spaced.
Cheslack-Postava and her colleagues used
California birth records to find all pairs of first and
second full siblings born in the state between
1992 and 2002. Combining that with information
on all autism diagnoses from the California
Department of Developmental Services, they
were able to match up in which sibling pairs
one, both, or neither child was diagnosed with
autism.
Because they were interested in the impact of the
length between pregnancies on autism, the
researchers focused on tracking second siblings
that were born with or without autism following
a first sibling that didn't have the condition. Out
of more than 600,000 pairs of siblings in which
the older sibling didn't have autism, about 3,000
younger siblings were diagnosed with autism.
When the authors controlled for certain
characteristics that may affect the risk of autism -
including the mother's age and race, and the
child's gender and birth year - the pattern of
spacing and autism rates remained the same.
The study does not prove that spacing children
closer together causes autism in the second
sibling, and Cheslack-Postava said there are
many possible ways to explain the link - and that
she "can't speculate as to what's the most likely."
One possible explanation is that mothers who
got pregnant soon after giving birth the first time
had low levels of certain nutrients like iron and
folate, or that their bodies were still under stress
from the first pregnancy, and that affected the
second child's development.
While it could also be that something about
parents who choose to have children close
together - such as their genes or hormones -
makes them more likely to have kids with
autism, the authors say this is probably not the
case. If it were, firstborn children in closely
spaced sibling pairs would also be more likely to
have autism, but that pattern didn't turn up in
the results.
The trend could, however, be explained by social
factors, Cheslack-Postava said. Parents may be
more likely to take a younger sibling to the
doctor to be checked out for autism if they
remember that only a year or two ago, when
their older sibling was the same age, he or she
was much farther along in development in
certain areas.
If that were true, some younger siblings in pairs
who were spaced far apart might not have been
diagnosed yet by the time the researchers
collected the study data.
Future studies will need to look more closely at
specific factors that could explain the link
between close pregnancy spacing and autism
risk, Cheslack-Postava said. For now, it's too
early to make recommendations to parents
about how to space their children if they are
trying to minimize the chance that a child will
have autism, she said.
"There are a number of reasons for why people
would choose to have children closer together
or farther apart," Cheslack-Postava said. "It's a
very individual decision including many factors."
And the findings, she said, shouldn't have any
impact on that decision.

Source: http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7091HQ20110110?ca=rdt

Jared Lee Loughner note reveals aim to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords.

A note written by Jared Lee Loughner ahead of
his shooting rampage in Tucson appears to show
that he made careful preparations to assassinate
Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman gravely
wounded in the attack that also killed six other
people.
The existence of the note is revealed in court
papers filed after Loughner, 22, was charged on
Sunday with murder and attempted
assassination. The FBI document says that
Loughner wrote on an envelope the words "I
planned ahead", "My assassination" and
"Giffords". He then signed the note.
The envelope was kept in a safe at Loughner's
home alongside a letter from Giffords in 2007
thanking him for attending an earlier open air
constituency meeting of the kind he attacked on
Saturday.
The court document also reveals that Loughner
bought the semi-automatic Glock pistol six weeks
ago.
Giffords, 40, is in a critical condition after being
shot in the head at close range. Loughner is
expected to appear in court later today as the FBI
continues to try to establish a motive for the
attack.
The FBI director, Robert Mueller, who travelled to
Tucson to take charge of the investigation, said
that one focus of the inquiry is whether far-right
organisations and websites played a role.
"The ubiquitous nature of the internet means that
not only threats, but hate speech and other
insightful speech is much more readily available
to individuals than quite clearly it was eight or 10
or 15 years ago," he said.
Investigators are exploring suspected links
between Loughner and an online publication
known for its strongly anti-immigrant stance,
American Renaissance. It has denied any links to
the accused killer.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, one of the
US's leading trackers of hate crimes, said there
are signs in some of Loughner's writings of far-
right influence. Mark Potok, the director of
research on hate groups at the centre, drew
attention to Loughner's online ramblings that
reject the US currency.
"At one point, Loughner refers disparagingly to
'currency that's not backed by gold or silver'. The
idea that silver and gold are the only
'constitutional' money is widespread in the anti-
government 'Patriot' movement that produced so
much violence in the 1990s," he said.
Potok said the Patriot movement believes that
paper money issued by the government is not
legal tender. He said there were also clues to
Loughner's thinking in his rambling internet
postings accusing the government of "mind
control on the people by controlling grammar".
Potok says that fits with the theory of a Patriot
conspiracy theorist who claims that the
government uses grammar to "enslave"
Americans.
Other organisations monitoring extremist groups
have noted that Loughner spoke despairingly of a
"second American constitution", a reference used
by some extreme rightwingers to post-civil war
constitutional amendments that ended slavery
and gave them citizenship.
"One thing that seems clear is that Giffords, who
was terribly wounded but survived, was the
nearest and most obvious representative of 'the
government' that Loughner could find. Another is
that he likely absorbed some of his anger from
the vitriolic political atmosphere in the United
States in general and Arizona in particular," said
Potok.
Acquaintances of Loughner have related hearing
him rant about issues such as the national
currency and language control.
Lynda Sorenson, 52, who attended a community
college algebra class with Loughner last year,
wrote emails to friends describing him causing
disruption and expressing fears that he might be
dangerous.
"We do have one student in the class who was
disruptive today, I'm not certain yet if he was on
drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He
scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him
out and he refused to go, so I talked to the
teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of
class very soon, and not come back with an
automatic weapon," Sorenson wrote on 1 June.
A fortnight later, Sorenson said of Loughner: "We
have a mentally unstable person in the class that
scares the living crap out of me. He is one of
those whose picture you see on the news, after
he has come into class with an automatic
weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah,
he was in my math class and he was really
weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If
you see it on the news one night, know that I got
out fast …"
Loughner was later asked to leave the class.
Giffords's doctors say her chances of survival are
good but have not said how complete her
recovery will be. One of her surgeons, Dr Peter
Rhee, has experience as a military doctor in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I never thought I would experience something
like this in my own backyard," he said.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/10/jared-lee-loughner-gabrielle-giffords

Gates in Beijing to build on military ties.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates
held talks with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing
on Monday on the first stop of his weeklong trip
to Asia.
It is Gates' second visit to the country since he
assumed the post in December 2006.
The trip is intended to deepen the military
relationship between the United States and China
-- a relationship that suffered a setback last year
when Beijing objected to Washington's sale of
defensive weapons to Taiwan.
Ahead of his arrival in Beijing, Gates told reporters
traveling with him that he intended to discuss
strategies and policies to avoid "miscalculations
and misunderstandings and
miscommunications."
Gates also wants the two nations to hold more
high-level visits, he said.
"My own view is that a positive, constructive,
comprehensive relationship between the United
States and China is not just in the mutual interest
of the two countries, but in the interests of the
region, and I would say the globe," he said.
For his part, Chinese Defense Minister Liang
Guanglie told Gates that the relationship will
require efforts from both sides to resolve
disagreements.
"The Sino-U.S. military relationship has new
opportunities for development. It also faces
challenges," Liang was quoted as saying by the
state run Xinhua news agency.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/10/china.gates.visit/

Vick's magical run for Eagles comes to a halt.

PHILADELPHIA - With the
Philadelphia Eagles trailing by
five points, with less than a
minute to go, and with
Michael Vick dropping back -
looking squarely downfield -
there was little reason to
believe a ball wouldn't drop
from the sky and settle into
the hands of rookie wide
receiver Riley Cooper.
"I was kind of by my guy,"
Cooper said, and that he was,
drifting to the back of the end
zone with Green Bay defensive
back Tramon Williams gliding
with him. Vick, the Eagles
quarterback, let loose from
the 35-yard line. He didn't
need to go for the end zone,
but he did.
"I got greedy," he said.
Why, in this season of Vick's
personal and professional
turnabout, wouldn't he? He
needed one more play in a
season full of them. Just one
more.
"I thought we were going to
win the game," Vick said.
They did not, however,
because Williams intercepted
the ball, sealing the Packers'
21-16 victory with 33 seconds
remaining Sunday evening in
an NFC first-round playoff
game, the last play of Vick's
comeback year. NFL seasons
end abruptly, not with the
seven-game grind of Major
League Baseball or the NBA.
And when Vick's pass settled
into Williams's hands, his first
season as a starter since he
pleaded guilty to federal
charges involving a
dogfighting ring - indeed, since
he spent 21 months in prison -
crashed to a halt. In 2010, he
was more MVP candidate than
felon, and Sunday night, he
was left to answer the same
questions elite quarterbacks
deal with in such situations,
regardless of their pasts.
"This one hurt more than any
of my previous seasons that I
played a full season and had
an opportunity to play in the
playoffs," Vick said. "I didn't
finish."
Vick and the Eagles didn't
finish for a variety of reasons,
some of them self-inflicted -
missed field goals of 41 and 34
yards by place kicker David
Akers, seven penalties - and
some delivered directly by the
Packers. Green Bay
quarterback Aaron Rodgers
threw for three touchdowns
and rookie running back James
Starks, who Coach Mike
McCarthy listed as inactive as
recently as two weeks ago,
rushed for 123 yards, 22 more
than he had gained all season.
Outside linebacker Clay
Matthews was a menace, and
the Packers, a wild-card entry,
will play at top-seeded Atlanta
on Saturday night for a chance
to advance to the NFC
championship game for the
first time since 2007 - when
Rodgers still served as Brett
Favre's backup.
"This is the way it's going to
be," McCarthy said. "We're on
the road. You play uphill when
you get off the bus, and you
have to overcome the
atmosphere that you're
playing in. . . . It feels good."
A much different sentiment
rippled through the home
locker room. The Eagles lost
in the wild-card round of the
playoffs for the second
straight year, and as wide
receiver DeSean Jackson said:
"It's not almost. It is the same
feeling from last year."
Last year, though, Donovan
McNabb still quarterbacked
the Eagles, and Vick was a
backup trying to restore his
image. McNabb's offseason
trade to Washington,
however, gave Vick the
opportunity for a transcendent
season. He took the starting
job from Kevin Kolb in
September, and by midseason,
he was the talk of the league.
"Just to see how he continues
to redeem himself, that's
amazing," Packers wide
receiver Donald Driver said.
"Everybody gets a second
chance in life, and he got a
second chance to prove to the
world that he's still one of the
best quarterbacks in the
game."

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/09/AR2011010904405.html

Cowlishaw: Michael Vick's magical season comes to an abrupt end.

PHILADELPHIA – You can debate whether or not
Michael Vick taking center stage at the Super Bowl
would have been a nightmare for the NFL. But
there's no question that the Eagles coming to
town for Super Bowl XLV would have been an
unpleasant sight for Cowboys fans.
Philadelphia's dream and Vick's storybook season
ended with a rather pedestrian-looking
interception Sunday night as the Green Bay
Packers held on for a 21-16 playoff win at Lincoln
Financial Field.
Mark it down. No home team with a winning
record won a first-round playoff game over the
weekend.
Vick tried to rally the Eagles to victory, marching
them into scoring position with no timeouts
before, in his own words, getting greedy.
After hitting rookie Riley Cooper with a big third-
down catch to advance to the Packers' 27 with 44
seconds to go, Vick went for Cooper again in the
end zone.
His pass came up short and Cooper failed to
contest cornerback Tramon Williams for the ball.
"To be at the 27-yard line and make the decision I
made, it's something I definitely have to work
on," said Vick. "I got greedy. I could have thrown
to the back. It's a bad way to go out, but I went
out swinging."
The Eagles were hoping to advance to play
Chicago where, on Nov. 28, Vick looked
vulnerable for the first time in this comeback
season. In seven games prior to that, he had 11
touchdown passes and no interceptions. The
Eagles' only two losses in that stretch were one
game that Vick didn't start and another in which
he failed to finish.
But starting in Chicago, Vick was intercepted at
least once in each of his final six games. The
Eagles went 3-3. Vick got beat up and the Eagles
became very beatable.
Now they are done.
Vick finished with 292 yards passing Sunday as
he threw for one touchdown and ran for another.
He was outplayed by Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers
(three TD passes, no interceptions), but probably
not by the level that the numbers would suggest.
The Packers had the superior defense as
anticipated. The Packers also had the better
running game which came as the surprise of the
day. It would have ranked as the surprise of the
weekend if not for what took place in Seattle.
Rookie sixth-round pick James Starks, who ran
for 101 yards all season (73 in one game), carried
23 times for 123 yards. That kept Rodgers from
having to do it all himself against the Eagles. The
unexpected presence of a running attack will
make Green Bay a factor Saturday night in
Atlanta.
If a failure to match the Packers' run game was
damaging, so was an unlikely disadvantage at
kicker. David Akers, who holds the NFL record in
making 19 consecutive playoff field goals, missed
two Sunday.
It was a cold and windy afternoon, but no one,
least of all coach Andy Reid, expected to see
Akers miss wide right at both ends of the field
from 41 and 34 yards.
"We can all count," Reid said. "Those points
would have helped."
The Eagles' failure to advance does not come as a
surprise if you go back to the start of the season.
Philadelphia lost its last two games to Dallas,
including the wild-card weekend game, a year
ago. That set in motion the exit of Donovan
McNabb and the expected beginning of the Kevin
Kolb Era.
Vick, in the second year of his comeback from
prison, intervened. While making what appears
to be a genuine comeback off the field, Vick made
himself part of the MVP discussion opposite Tom
Brady less than a month ago when he helped
guide the Eagles to essentially an NFC East-
winning comeback in New York.
Vick was essential to his team's revival, but his
status as a free agent leaves Eagles' fans guessing
as to his future relevance here.
"I don't even know what's going to happen next
year or where I'm going to be, so I can't even
say we're going to have the opportunity to do it
next year. But I enjoyed this season," Vick said. "I
still feel like I can play at a high level for the next
couple of years. Still have a lot of work to do,
though, and I'm conscious of that."
But on the coming-back-from-bad-
decisions scale, for Michael Vick, this one doesn't
even rank.

Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/stories/011011dnspocowlishawcol.4c6a9b.html

Doctors see signs of hope for Giffords's recovery.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was
fighting for her life Sunday
after being shot through the
head, but doctors said the
passage of the bullet through
only one side of her brain and
her initial responsiveness give
hope she could survive and
even possibly recover.
Giffords, however, has
entered a crucial 48-hour
period when swelling from the
trauma of the bullet blast
could cause as much damage
to her brain as the initial
wound, possibly triggering a
major deterioration of her
condition. The Arizona
Democrat also faces many
additional risks, including
possible infections, more
bleeding, and a long period of
rehabilitation to limit
permanent disabilities.
While most people who are
shot in the head or suffer
other severe head trauma do
not survive, there have been
remarkable cases of victims
who have come back- such as
Jim Brady, President Ronald
Reagan's press secretary, who
survived a gunshot wound to
the head during the 1981
assassination attempt. Brady
lost the use of his left arm
and leg, but largely recovered
otherwise.
"It's hard to say anyone is
ever really completely okay
after being shot in the head,
but [Giffords] has a good
chance of being able to walk
away from this," said Arthur
Kobrine, a professor of
neurosurgery at Georgetown
University Hospital who
treated Brady's injuries. "She
has the chance to move
around and laugh and walk
and cry and talk and maybe
even return to Congress."
Brady's injury was much more
serious than Giffords's, yet he
made a "miraculous"
recovery, Kobrine said. Still,
doctors said there is no way to
predict Giffords's prognosis.
"Everyone is cautious about
calling it, but I am optimistic,"
said Peter Rhee, trauma
medical director at the
University Medical Center in
Tucson, whose team got
Giffords into neurosurgery
within 38 minutes after first
seeing her.
"This is about as good as it
gets," Rhee said. "When you
get shot and the bullet goes
through your brain, the
chances of your living are very
small."
The shot, allegedly from 22-
year-old Jared Loughner, was
fired at close range, entered
the congresswoman's brain at
the back and exited from the
front, which suggests she was
turned - or turning - away
from him as the shot was
fired.
The bullet traveled through a
significant portion of Giffords's
brain, Rhee said, but
fortunately did not cross from
the left hemisphere to the
right hemisphere, or vice
versa. When a bullet passes
across a brain, it is much
more likely to do more
devastating damage, including
to life-sustaining areas such as
the brain stem.
"The people who tend to do
best are the ones who have
gunshots that do not cross
through the midline," said
Christopher Kalhorn, associate
professor of neurology at
Georgetown University
Hospital. "When gunshots
cross the midline, the
prognosis is much poorer."
In Giffords's case, only the left
side of the brain was damaged
by the bullet. An intact left or
right hemisphere means a
victim can retain significant
functioning even with the
other side severely damaged.
Damage to the left
hemisphere, however, can be
more serious than damage to
the right. The left side of the
brain controls movement on
the right side of the body and,
for all right-handed people
and most lefties, is also
largely responsible for speech
and the ability to understand
speech. Doctors said this
makes the congresswoman's
responsiveness to basic
commands remarkable.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/09/AR2011010904439.html

NATO kills more than 10 insurgents in Afghanistan.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – NATO says it has killed
more than 10 insurgents and captured two others
in an operation targeting a leader in north
.
The coalition said in a statement Monday that its
forces, along with their Afghan counterparts,
were searching for a Taliban leader who was the
district leader of Khanabad in Kunduz province.
The coalition says he is linked to Taliban leaders in
and is involved in aiding the insurgents
with roadside bombs and weapons.
NATO said troops attempted to draw the
occupants out of the compound where the man
was believed to be. When that failed, they entered
the compound, a gunbattle ensured, and several
insurgents were killed.
Kunduz police chief Abdul Rahman Sayedhkaili
said 13 people were killed.

SOURCE: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/01/10/nato-kills-insurgents-afghanistan/

Iran plane crash pushes death toll to 77.

TEHRAN (ISNA)-Deadly plane crash in
northwestern Iran pushed death toll to 77 and left
some 26 others injured.
The Head of crisis management organization of
Iranian Ministry of Road and Transportation
Ahmad Majidi said, "105 people including 94
passengers and 11 crew members were on board
at the time of the incident."
The aircraft was heading from capital Tehran to
northwestern city of Orumiyeh.
"26 wounded individuals are hospitalized in
Orumiyeh, one of them in critical condition,"
Majidi told ISNA adding an individual has went
missing in the accident.
Iranian Deputy Minister of Road and
Transportation confirmed the plane was wrecked
and said, "the pilot intended to return to Tehran
after bad weather had made it impossible for him
pilot to land."
He also said, "pilot was dead after the crash."
The pilot reported to lack enough sight to land at
the airport was made to bring down the plane in
farmland where the accident occurred.
"3 crew members are alive," he said adding, "the
black box has not been found, off course a device
was found by local people and rescue teams and
delivered to West Azerbaijan province's
gubernatorial officials."
He stressed it is still unclear whether the device is
black box or not.
The dead include 12 women and 42 men, but the
identities of other 23 people have not been found
yet.
He added the injured include18 men and 9
women.
The Boeing 727 operated by Iran's national airline
crashed at 19:45 pm local time on Sunday.

Source: http://www.isna.ir/ISNA/NewsView.aspx?ID=News-1691496&Lang=E

Factbox: Issues to watch on defense chief's China trip.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert
Gates is seeking to ease Sino-U.S. military
tensions during a visit to China, but mistrust
runs deep between the U.S. armed forces and
the People's Liberation Army.
Here are some of the top issues Gates will
grapple with in Beijing in a trip from Sunday to
Wednesday, which precedes a visit to the United
States by Chinese President Hu Jintao.
TAIWAN
U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are the biggest irritant
in U.S.-China military relations. Beijing has used
strong language and even threatened sanctions
on U.S. firms that sell arms to Taiwan in an
attempt to deter them.
China cut off many ties with the U.S. military for
most of 2010 and turned down a proposed
fence-mending visit by Gates last summer,
because of the Obama administration's
proposed $6.4 billion arms package to Taiwan.
China deems Taiwan a renegade province.
Gates is expected to again seek to convince the
People's Liberation Army that the U.S. and
Chinese militaries need to maintain stable
communication -- despite differences over
Taiwan -- to prevent misunderstandings that
could trigger confrontation.
China has never renounced the use of force to
bring Taiwan under its control, and the Pentagon
warned last year that Beijing had expanded its
military edge over the island. The United States is
Taiwan's top arms supplier and is obliged by the
1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help the island
defend itself.
NORTH KOREA
U.S. officials, including Gates, believe China is
best positioned to avert a conflict on the Korean
peninsula by using its influence over North
Korea, which alarmed the region by shelling a
South Korean island and revealing advances in
its nuclear program. China is Pyongyang's only
major economic and diplomatic partner.
China voiced misgivings about U.S. and South
Korean joint military drills mounted in response
to North Korea's shelling of the South Korean
island in November and the sinking of a South
Korean warship in March.
Gates, who travels to South Korea and Japan
after China, will likely press Chinese officials
about North Korea, including about Pyongyang's
nuclear ambitions.
TERRITORIAL DISPUTES
The Obama administration has made a point of
bolstering ties with Asian allies since taking office
in 2009, sometimes irritating Beijing, which fears
strategic encirclement.
One flashpoint is the South China Sea, where
Beijing is wary of perceived meddling by
Washington in China's territorial disputes with
Southeast Asian nations over an area rich in
energy and key to shipping.
Beijing has also looked warily on U.S. military
drills near its waters, despite South Korean and
U.S. insistence they are a response to North
Korean provocations.
U.S. ally Japan has been involved in a high-
profile territorial dispute with China over islands
known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in
China.
Beijing has long accused the U.S. military of
illegal trespass into its Exclusive Economic Zones,
or EEZs, defined by a U.N. treaty as waters
within 200 nautical miles of its coast. The United
States says it has the right to conduct
intelligence-gathering activities in EEZs.
MILITARY BUILD-UP
With its economy booming, China has
significantly increased its military spending,
developing capabilities that expand its reach and
increase the chance of friction with U.S. forces in
the Pacific.
Already boasting the largest army in the world,
China is upgrading its combat aircraft, missile
capabilities and naval forces. Photos published
on websites and other media in recent weeks
appear to show that China has a prototype of a
stealth fighter jet.
China may be ready to launch its first aircraft
carrier in 2011, according to Chinese military and
political sources. It has also made advances in its
anti-ship ballistic missile program, according to
the U.S. military.
Also, the Pentagon has been plain-spoken about
its belief that many of the cyber attacks on U.S.
government computer systems are believed to
originate in China.
Chinese officials point out their defense spending
is still far lower than that of the United States and
that China is not seeking confrontation. But
Washington and its allies say they want more
clarity about China's military intentions.
China set its military budget for 2010 at 532.1
billion yuan, ($80.3 billion), a 7.5 percent rise on
2009. It has yet to unveil its budget for 2011. The
Obama administration last year set the U.S.
Defense budget for the fiscal year of 2011 at $708
billion.
RARE EARTHS
The Pentagon is due to release a report in
coming weeks on rare earth minerals, vital in a
slew of high-tech products that are used in
some U.S. weapons systems.
China produces about 97 percent of the global
supply of rare earths, and at the end of
December cut its export quotas by 35 percent
for the first half of 2011 versus a year ago, saying
it wanted to preserve ample reserves.
MILITARY EXCHANGES
Restrictions imposed by the U.S. Congress more
than decade ago on military-to-military
exchanges are another long-term irritant in U.S.-
China military relations.
Current legislation prohibits military exchanges
that could "create a national security risk" by
exposing PLA representatives to certain U.S.
capabilities including nuclear operations, military
space operations and reconnaissance operations.
The PLA strongly opposes such restrictions.
Source: http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7090V620110110?ca=rdt

Ten reasons Oregon/Auburn will win.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Oregon will try to win its
first football national title in Monday night's
Tostitos BCS National Championship Game at
University of Phoenix Stadium, while Auburn will
try to give the SEC its fifth consecutive national
champion.
Both teams have explosive offenses and star
quarterbacks. Neither team is known for playing
very stout defense.

Here are 10 reasons each team could win the
game.

Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/bowls10/news/story?id=6005243

Giffords Shooting in Arizona May Soften Rhetoric, Hurt Palin.

The shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, that
killed six people and left U.S. Representative
Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition is
contributing at least momentarily to a cooling of
U.S. political rhetoric.
The incident on Jan. 8, coming after the Jan. 5
opening of a new Congress in which Republicans
took control of the U.S. House, led the House to
postpone legislative business for the coming
week as both parties rushed to condemn the
attack.
It is also likely to hurt the image of former Alaska
Governor Sarah Palin, said Ross Baker, a
congressional scholar at Rutgers University in
New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The former Republican vice presidential candidate
has posted on the Internet a map of the U.S. with
the cross-hair symbols for a rifle scope dotting
the home states of lawmakers, including Giffords,
whom she was targeting for defeat in the 2010
congressional election.
The tragedy “will take some of the edge off of the
polarization” and “will be used by lots of people
as an exhortation for people to be kinder to each
other, ” said Baker. At the same time, Palin’s brand
of “female macho,” he said, “is not going to wear
very well after this.”
Lawmakers were careful to stress that the
suspected shooter, identified as 22-year-old Jared
Loughner, has a troubled past and appears
mentally unstable. Regardless of whether it is
determined that Loughner also had political
motivations, members of both parties said
politicians and the media play a role in setting an
example of civility.
Toxic Atmosphere
“We are in a dark place in this country right now;
the atmospheric condition is toxic,”
Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri
Democrat, said yesterday on NBC ’s “Meet the
Press” program. “Much of it originates here in
Washington D.C., and we export it around the
country. ”
“My colleagues are very concerned about the
environment in which they are operating,” House
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said on CBS’s “Face
the Nation.” The Maryland Democrat termed the
political climate in recent years an “angrier,
confrontational environment,” and cautioned that
“what we say can, in fact, have consequences.”
Republicans also said it’s time for members of
both parties to come together.
‘Cool It’
“We ought to cool it, tone it down, treat each
other with great respect,” Tennessee Republican
Senator Lamar Alexander said on CNN’s “State of
the Union.”
House Speaker John Boehner ordered flags on the
House side of the U.S. Capitol flown at half-staff to
commemorate those killed, who included U.S.
District Judge John Roll. “An attack on one who
serves is an attack on all who serve,” Boehner
said at a press conference yesterday in West
Chester, Ohio. “Such acts of violence have no
place in our society.”
Senator Mike Lee, a newly elected Republican
from Utah interviewed on CNN, said “any time
you have political rhetoric that rises to the level of
personal, you have a problem. ”
Planned legislative business in the House is being
postponed for the coming week, House Majority
Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, said in a
statement yesterday. The House had planned to
vote Jan. 12 on a repeal of Obama ’s health-care
overhaul. The House instead will consider that
day at least one resolution honoring Giffords and
other victims in the attack, according to Cantor ’s
office.
President Barack Obama has postponed a Jan. 11
trip to Schenectady, New York, and called for a
national moment of silence today at 11 a.m.
Eastern time.
Sarah Palin
The shooting put a spotlight on Palin. Last year,
Giffords was one of 20 Democrats who
supported health-care legislation who were
targeted on the crosshairs map for defeat by
Palin ’s political action committee, SarahPAC, in
last November’s elections.
An aide to Palin, the 2008 Republican vice
presidential candidate, said the images were
never meant to evoke violence. “We never ever,
ever intended it to be gun sights,” Rebecca
Mansour told the talk radio host Tammy Bruce in
an interview transcribed by the Alaska Dispatch.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No.
2 Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”
that such images aren’t helpful. “These sorts of
things, I think, invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that
can lead unstable people to believe this is an
acceptable response. ”
Media Role
Conservative public relations executive Keith
Appell issued a statement saying “some in the
media have implicated conservatives, the Tea
Party, talk radio, Republicans, etc., by extension”
in the shooting and that those efforts are
“ insidious, dishonest and divorced from reality.”
He cited a posting on the Website redstate.com
saying the media is trying to blame conservatives
for the shootings.
The tragedy is also prompting calls from
lawmakers for greater security at political events
that are often open to the public.
“It needs to be a wake-up call for members
who’ve treated their own personal security in a
cavalier way,” said Representative Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat who
said she always has police officers present at her
events.
“It’s not just our personal safety that matters, it’s
also the personal safety of our constituents,” she
said on the “Meet the Press” program. “We need
to strike a balance.”
Impossible to Stop
Still, some security experts are cautioning there
are no easy solutions. “It’s impossible to stop,”
William Pickle, a former Senate Sergeant at Arms,
said on CNN ’s “State of the Union.”
“Until candidates stop campaigning, these things
are going to continue to happen,” said Pickle,
who also said there aren’t resources to protect
535 congressmen and senators.
Boehner said he has asked the House’s Sergeant
at Arms, U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI to
conduct a security overview for members on
Jan. 12.
Giffords, 40, herself warned last year about the
tone of the rhetoric in her district after her office
was vandalized.
“The way that she has it depicted has the
crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When
people do that, they have to realize that there are
consequences to that action, ” Giffords said in an
interview with MSNBC.
Tea Party
Her father told the New York Post that “the whole
Tea Party” was her enemy, referring to the loose-
knit national group pressing for smaller
government and less taxes.
Giffords, first elected to her seat in 2006,
narrowly won a third term in November over a
Tea-Party backed Republican.
Representative Raul Labrador, a newly elected
Republican from Idaho elected with Tea Party
support, said on “Meet the Press” that a level of
vitriol exists on both sides of the ideological
divide.
“We have to be careful not to blame one side or
the other,” Labrador said. “You have crazy people
on both sides.”
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, whose
jurisdiction includes Tucson, said yesterday that
while officials don ’t know the gunman’s motives,
he was concerned about extreme rhetoric in the
U.S.
“The anger, the hatred, the bigotry has gotten out
of control,” Dupnik said. “Unfortunately, Arizona
has become sort of the capital. This has become
the Mecca for bigotry and prejudice. ”
Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona
Republican, said on “Meet the Press” that
Loughner is “a deranged lunatic that had no
respect for his fellow human beings and
completely rejected any kind of constitutional
foundation of this nation. ”

Source:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-09/lawmakers-urge-end-to-political-rhetoric-after-tucson-shootings.html

Kerry hails peaceful independence vote in southern Sudan

Senator John Kerry, who has worked for months
to prevent an outbreak of renewed civil war in
Sudan, watched yesterday as millions in southern
Sudan lined up to vote for the creation of an
independent country in a largely peaceful — and
historic — referendum.
“To be present at the potential birth of a nation
and to see the exuberance and the emotion and
the gratitude in the people at the grass-roots level,
it ’s very special,’’ Kerry, who heads the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone
interview. “You can’t help but be touched by that.
It made me proud of what our country has done
to make that happen. ’’
The Massachusetts Democrat has traveled three
times to Sudan since October, relaying carefully
worded messages from President Obama ’s
administration aimed at staving off a new
outbreak of violence. A decades-old conflict
between the north and south has already taken
the lives of some 2 million people.
So far, it appears that Kerry’s efforts — along with
the work of other envoys from the United States,
Europe, and Africa —have worked. Despite some
skirmishes in the border town of Abyei, dire
warnings of a potential explosion of ethnic tension
appear to have been overblown.
The weeklong referendum began despite
assertions from some analysts that not enough
preparations had been done.
“They were flat wrong,’’ Kerry said by telephone
from Jerusalem, where he stopped to have
dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, on his way back to Washington.
Much of Kerry’s efforts in Sudan have centered
on presenting the Obama administration’s offer of
incentives to Arab leaders of the north, including
removal from the state sponsors of terrorism list,
to encourage them to accept the loss of a third of
their territory and a significant portion of their oil.
Yesterday, Kerry seemed optimistic that the
possibility of renewed war had been averted.
“I think the fundamental judgment of both the
north and the south is that war will not benefit
either of them, ’’ he said. But he acknowledged
that thorny issues remain, such as demarcation
of borders, determining citizenship, and sharing
of oil revenue.
“There is potential for misunderstanding, for
mistakes, for bad politics,’’ he said.
Kerry said the successful referendum in the south
has the potential to change the dynamics in the
entire war-torn region, as well as in Darfur, an
area in western Sudan where a separate
insurgency against Khartoum was crushed by
government-backed Arab militias that launched
extermination campaigns that have been widely
viewed as genocide.
He said the peaceful vote in the south could
bolster peace in Darfur, providing momentum to
peace talks and helping the international
community single out those who have been
dragging their feet on a peace agreement.
“I believe Darfur can be resolved,’’ said Kerry,
who traveled to the troubled region on Friday.
Yesterday, Kerry marked the historic moment
with a speech that quoted Scripture at a packed
cathedral in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan, a
region the size of Texas that is poised to become
the world ’s newest country.
“As a Catholic and person of faith, and person in
public life, I can’t help but feel the relevance of
what brings us here to this place of worship and
what brings us to the challenge of building a
nation, ’’ he told a standing-room-only crowd.
Kerry arrived in Sudan on Tuesday and spent
two days with leaders in Khartoum, the capital of
the mostly Arab north, which has tried to impose
Islamic law on the mostly Christian and animist
South. Ever the diplomat, Kerry praised the
leaders of the north yesterday, saying: “The
north, to some degree, stayed out of the way,
which was critical. ’’
Yesterday morning, Kerry visited the mausoleum
of John Garang, the southern rebel leader who
articulated a democratic vision for Sudan who
was killed in an airplane crash in 2005, in Juba.
Then he toured polling stations, talking with
people who had waited in line all night to vote. At
the Kator Cathedral, he sat beside Salva Kiir, the
president of southern Sudan, and gave Kiir a
cowboy hat.
“Good luck to you all and godspeed on the
journey ahead,’’ he told the audience.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2011/01/10/kerry_hails_peaceful_independence_vote_in_southern_sudan/

China defense chief says military hardware drive no threat

BEIJING, Jan 9 (Reuters) - China's
military technology lags decades behind the
world's most advanced armed forces and does
not threaten any country, the Chinese defense
minister said on Monday after talks with Defense
Secretary Robert Gates. Gates's visit from
Sunday to Wednesday comes a week before
Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to
Washington.
"The efforts that we place on the research and
development of weapons systems are by no
means targeted at any third country or any
other countries in the world, and it will by no
means threaten any other country in the world,"
Chinese Minister of Defense Liang Guanglie told
reporters after talks with Gates.
U.S. officials have noted quick advances in
China's anti-ship ballistic missile programme,
which could challenge U.S. aircraft carriers.
China may also be preparing to launch its first
aircraft carrier in 2011, faster than some
estimates, and new photos indicate it has a
prototype of a stealth fighter jet.

Source: http://us.mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7090Z620110110?ca=rdt

George Clooney focuses the camera on Sudan.

The actor's Satellite Sentinel Project is
collaborating with other organizations to aim
commercial satellites at the nation's north-south
border in hopes of preventing possible genocide.George Clooney would like to bring a bit of
Hollywood to one of the most remote and tense
regions in Africa. Not red carpets and swag bags
but the cold, intrusive, constant eye of a camera.
"You can go on Google Earth and Google my
house," said the actor. "I thought, if that's the
way it is and they're gonna be able to Google my
house, then people who are committing war
crimes, specifically the government of Sudan,
should be able to enjoy the same level of celebrity
that I do. These people are public figures, and
we're gonna take their pictures."
Clooney is spearheading an effort to deploy
commercial satellites to monitor the border
between northern and southern Sudan as the
country faces a referendum starting Sunday that
is likely to split it in two. Should fighting break
out, his wildly ambitious goal — the culmination
of his years of engagement with the war-torn
country — is to do no less than prevent
genocide.
The Satellite Sentinel Project is a collaboration
among Not on Our Watch (the human rights
organization Clooney co-founded), the Enough
Project (an anti-genocide group), the United
Nations, Harvard University, Google and Trellon,
a company that builds websites. On the project's
site, http://www.satsentinel.org, anyone will be
able to see high-resolution images of the 1,250-
mile border. If violence breaks out, the site's
backers hope its photographic evidence will put
pressure on the U.N. Security Council or other
countries to intervene.
Not on Our Watch, which Clooney founded with
actors Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon
plus producer Jerry Weintraub and former
Clinton State Department official David Pressman,
provided the project's $650,000 in startup funds.
"We have the ability to create deterrence," said
Clooney, now on his seventh trip to Sudan and
its bordering nation of Chad. "You might not
want to put tanks, helicopters or planes on the
ground or in these border regions, 'cause we're
watching."
More than 2 million people died in Sudan's
1983-2005 civil war, and sporadic fighting has
continued since then between the lighter-skinned
Sudanese Arabs in the north who want Islamic
law and the darker-skinned Africans of the
semiautonomous south. President Omar Hassan
Ahmed Bashir, based in Khartoum in the north, is
wanted by the International Criminal Court on
charges of genocide and crimes against humanity
stemming from the violence. If southern
Sudanese, who are largely Christian and animist,
vote to secede from the north, the south would
take with it about 80% of Sudan's oil output, a
vexing problem for Bashir.
Clooney first visited Sudan in 2006 and filmed a
documentary there with his father, broadcast
journalist Nick Clooney. Later that year, the actor
addressed the U.N. Security Council about the
issue and traveled to China and Egypt with
Cheadle to try to persuade officials there to use
their ties with Sudan's government to help stop
the violence.
"George keeps showing up," said John
Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project,
who has traveled with Clooney in Sudan. "He's a
very serious and committed analyst. He's gone to
remote locations. He's put himself at extreme risk.
He stays in mud huts and straw huts, he gets
sick because of the sanitation."
Clooney's pleas for peace in Sudan have taken
him from the White House, where he met with
President Obama a month after his inauguration,
to remote border villages. In one attempt to
persuade a rebel leader to attend a peace
conference, the actor donated money to his
father's shoe store. (It didn't work.)
For someone who leads the peculiar life of a
celebrity, Clooney can find a rare anonymity in
Sudan.
"It's kind of calm for him," said Prendergast.
"When we go to New York and L.A., they're all
over him. But you go out to a village or refugee
camp, and he's just some aid worker or human
rights analyst who shows up."
Clooney's idea for the Satellite Sentinel Project
began to take shape on a trip to Sudan in
October. After Not On Our Watch provided the
start-up money, other organizations and
companies quickly joined the partnership in time
for its launch in late December.
"This is George Clooney's brainchild, and the
scope of it is unprecedented," said David
Yanagizawa-Drott, an assistant professor of
public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government, who will be evaluating the
program's results for the Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative. "It takes state-of-the-art technology and
makes human rights documentation public and
visual in near real time. This is not just
postmortem documentation of a conflict. This is
saying, before a potential civil war breaks out, we
will document it."
Clooney is well aware that geopolitical activism by
Hollywood figures is often met with cynicism, if
not outright scorn, but he's undeterred.
"The people who roll their eyes, most of those
people don't know anything," he said. "I have
rebel leaders on my speed dial. I've spent time
with the president of Chad, of south Sudan. I've
been to Khartoum. I know most of the factions
personally. So I have at least a rudimentary
understanding of what's going on, which is more
than most. If that means I'm able to get in the
mix and to bring attention to people who really
know what they're doing, then I'm doing my
job."
Still, Clooney has been circumspect about his
work in the region, calling his efforts "the greatest
failure of my life" in an interview with Britain's the
Sun newspaper last September.
"Nothing's really changed," he said this week.
"When 300,000 innocent civilians are
systematically raped and murdered, then it's a
failure on every level. I'm old-fashioned. I like to
win the ballgame, not just say we played really
well and lost."

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-clooney-sudan-20110110,0,2121388.story

Eagles No Match for Aaron Rodgers Show.

PHILADELPHIA -- Now that the "X'' factor has
been booted from the NFC playoffs, now that
Michael Vick has been out-Vicked by Aaron
Rodgers, we can turn our attention to the NFC
quarterback quartet that remains.
Jay Cutler in Chicago. Matt Ryan in Atlanta. Matt
Hasselbeck in Seattle.
Not even close. Aaron Rodgers is the cream of
that bunch.
And if quarterbacks color the personalities of their
teams, if the NFL is such a quarterback-driven
league, if Aaron Rodgers is the diva left in the
dance, then, the Green Bay Packers are flirting
with NFC supremacy. They are eight winning
quarters shy of reaching Super Bowl XLV.
With Rodgers looking every bit capable of making
it happen.He's a composed quarterback,'' Eagles linebacker
Moise Fokou said after his team was dumped,
21-16, here on Sunday night by Rodgers and the
Packers. Eagles season smashed. Green Bay
moves on to divisional playoff action at Atlanta on
Saturday night.
"We threw a lot of different things at him, some
different pressures and rushes,'' Fokou said. "He
wasn't rattled. He has all the intangibles you want
in your quarterback. He's a top-five quarterback
in this league. And of the NFC quarterback's left,
he's easily the top dog.''
The NFL had visions of Vick dancing in Atlanta, in
the Georgia Dome once again. So did Falcons and
Eagles fans. Vick was often described by his
teammates as the "X'' factor -- you just never
knew what he would do next that would make a
difference. He routinely crushed the hopes of
teams defending him.
But Rodgers swiped that role in this matchup.
Vick threw a touchdown pass and an
interception. Rodgers tossed three touchdown
passes and was not intercepted. Vick's passer
rating was 79.9. Rodgers' was 122.5.
The real shocker was how Rodgers was as
nimble as Vick in the pocket. How Rodgers
danced for time. How he extended plays. How he
used his feet before slicing the Eagles with his
arm.
Very Vick-like.
"Aaron Rodgers is as good as any out-of-the-
pocket quarterback there is in football today,'' his
coach, Mike McCarthy, said, adding he was
biased, but really, not needing a disclaimer. With
both quarterbacks on the same field, it was easy
for all to see.
"His ability in the pocket,'' said McCarthy, "trusting
his footwork, the time clock, the ability to come
out of the pocket to buy time, that's Aaron's
strength. He has the arm strength to make all the
throws. He gives you a lot of versatility as a play
caller and as an offensive schemer. Now with his
experience, he's a special player.''
He has the Packers playing in a composed,
confident, cool way, in just the way he is
performing. It is clear to see in the players around
him, even from rookie running back James Starks
who busted the Eagles for 123 rushing yards. All
of his receivers and linemen follow Rodgers'
confidence.
Even the Packers defense senses it, uses it, feeds
off of it.
"Every day we go against his accuracy, his
attention to detail and see the way he points
things out to his offense,'' Packers nose tackle B.J.
Raji said. "Everybody on defense has complete
confidence in him.''
They see how Rodgers handled waiting behind
Brett Favre and how he handled himself when he
took over for Favre, dealing deftly with the ruckus
before, during and afterward.
"We were at a family night, a scrimmage in
Lambeau Field for our team soon after Aaron
took over for Brett and the fans booed Aaron,''
Packers receiver Greg Jennings said. "I'll always
remember that. And I never understood why
they booed the next guy up like that. Aaron was
the next guy up. But he handled it professionally.
He took the disappointments and the negatives
and knew how to handle them. I think that's real
poise. It's part of the poise you see now, how he
built it from then to now.
"In our practices, he will tell you where you
messed up. If he messes up, he will tell you how
and what he did and admit it. He demands a lot in
practice that builds confidence in games.''
This is the key, Rodgers said, that the Packers are
playing now like they practice. Fast, smart and full
of confidence.
They took Vick's best shot, his team's best in a
noisy stadium where these NFC East champion
Eagles were sure that their season would produce
so much more.
But Rodgers had the Packers playing fast from
the start and steady throughout. Green Bay was
8 of 13 on third-down conversion plays. The
Packers were three for three in the red zone.
It was Rodgers in the pocket, Rodgers on the
edge, Rodgers standing firm, Rodgers on the run
completing dagger-like passes, pushing the
Eagles and Vick aside. Down the sidelines, across
the middle, in the flat, Rodgers shredding the
Eagles.
He is returning to the Georgia Dome, a place
where he lost a close game in late November.
And if he wins there, he goes to Chicago, a team
and city he knows well from the NFC North. Or
he could play against Seattle. Either of those
games would be for the NFC championship and a
Super Bowl ticket.
Aaron Rodgers is going places. He is the best of
the NFC quarterbacks alive.
As he left the stadium on Sunday night, he was
told his teammates said he was their leader in
practices as much as in games, that he pushes
them and himself in ways that matter when the
games are in crucial stages.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2011%2F01%2F09%2Ffanhouseeaglesnomatchforaaro.DTL

HK arrests 8 in Canada disguised passenger case.

HONG KONG – Hong Kong authorities have
arrested eight people suspected of helping
smuggle a young Chinese passenger onto a flight
to Canada wearing a Hollywood-style disguise as
an elderly white man.
The man, believed to be in his 20s, , sought
asylum after arriving in Vancouver on Oct. 29. He
is suspected of traveling to Hong Kong with
genuine Chinese travel documents, then
swapping them for fake papers and donning the
remarkably detailed silicone mask to change his
appearance before boarding the Air Canada flight.
Canadian authorities the man removed the mask
in a washroom mid-flight.
Hong Kong officials arrested five men and three
women from Friday to Sunday, Elly Au Yeung,
an information officer for the Hong Kong
Immigration Department, told The Associated
Press on Monday. She said a member of the
Hong Kong International Airport ground staff and
two former employees were among the arrested
suspects.
The eight are suspected smugglers who supplied
the passenger with his new travel papers at the
Hong Kong airport, Au Yeung said.
It is unclear if they have been charged, but they
were arrested on suspicion of swapping boarding
passes, selling passports and conspiracy to
defraud an airline operator, she said. The
suspected smugglers charged clients about
300,000 Chinese yuan ($45,000) each, she said.
A Hollywood-based company, SPFXMasks, later
said the mask was one of its models, called The
Elder. The company said it was proud of how
authentic it products look but never intended
them to be misused.
The Chinese man, whose name has been banned
from publication, remains in custody in Canada
pending confirmation of his identity and a ruling
on his request for political asylum. Canadian
border officials described him in an internal
bulletin as appearing to be in his 20s.

Source: http//www.foxnews.com/world/2011/01/09/hk-arrests-canada-disguised-passenger-case/

Suspect charged in congresswoman's attack.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Federal prosecutors brought charges Sunday against the gunman accused of attempting to assassinate U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six people at a political event in Arizona. Investigators said they carried out a search warrant at suspect Jared Loughner's Tucson home and seized an envelope from a safe with messages such as "I planned ahead," "My assassination" and the name "Giffords" next to what appears to be the man's signature. He allegedly purchased the Glock pistol used in the attack in November at Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson. Court documents also show that Loughner had contact with Giffords in the past. Other evidence included a letter addressed to him on Giffords' congressional stationery in which she thanked him for attending a "Congress on your Corner" event at a mall in Tucson in 2007. Giffords was shot at her first "Congress on your Corner" event with constituents of the new year. Authorities weren't saying Sunday where Loughner was being held, and officials were working to appoint an attorney for him ahead of a scheduled Monday afternoon court appearance in Phoenix. Heather Williams, the first assistant federal public defender in Arizona, said they're asking that San Diego attorney Judy Clarke be appointed. Clarke, a former federal public defender in San Diego and Spokane, Washington, served on teams that defended Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Timothy McVeigh, "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and Susan Smith, a South Carolina woman who drowned her two sons in 1994. Williams' office is asking for an outside attorney because one of those killed was U.S. District Judge John M. Roll. Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said Sunday that Loughner acted alone. Meanwhile, authorities released emergency calls in which a person witnessing the mass shooting outside a grocery store in Tucson describes a frantic scene and says, "I do believe Gabby Giffords was hit." Loughner fired at Giffords' district director and shot indiscriminately at staffers and others standing in line to talk to the congresswoman, said Mark Kimble, a communications staffer for Giffords. "He was not more than three or four feet from the congresswoman and the district director," Kimble said, describing the scene as "just complete chaos, people screaming, crying." Loughner is accused of killing six people, including a federal judge, an aide to Giffords and a 9-year-old girl who was born on Sept. 11, 2001. Fourteen others were wounded, including the three-term Democratic lawmaker. FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was sent by Attorney General Eric Holder to Arizona to help coordinate the investigation, said the shooter's motive for the 10 a.m. attack was not known. Video: Sheriff: Bravery of 3 prevented 'greater catastrophe ’ Agents are "working around the clock to gather the facts to determine why someone would commit such heinous acts," Mueller said during a news conference. Federal prosecutors charged Loughner with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the federal government and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. He also could face state charges in the killings. Meanwhile, Doctors treating Giffords at Tucson's University Medical Center provided an optimistic update about her chances for survival, saying they are "very, very encouraged" by her ability to respond to simple commands along with their success in controlling her bleeding. Mourners crammed into the tiny sanctuary of Giffords' synagogue in Tucson to pray for her quick recovery. Outside the hospital, candles flickered at a makeshift memorial. Signs read "Peace + love are stronger," "God bless America and "We love you, Gabrielle." People also laid down bouquets of flowers, American flags and pictures of Giffords. One of the victims was 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who was a member of the student council at her local school and went to the event because of her interest in government. She is the granddaughter of Dallas Green, former manager of the Philadelphia Phillies major league baseball team. Her father, John Green, is as a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Video: Suspect: 'You could call me a terrorist' She was born on 9/11 and featured in a book called "Faces of Hope" that chronicled one baby from each state born on the day terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people in the U.S. The fact that Christina's life ended in tragedy was especially tragic to those who knew her. "Tragedy seems to have happened again," said the author of the book, Christine Naman. "In the form of this awful event." Authorities said the dead included U.S. District Judge John M. Roll; Green; Giffords aide Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79. Judge Roll had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after attending Mass. An unidentified man who authorities earlier said might have acted as an accomplice was cleared Sunday of any involvement in the attack. A security camera captured an image of a man with Loughner shortly before the attack. Dupnik said the man was a cab driver who walked into the Safeway grocery store with Loughner because the driver didn't have change for a $20 bill. He said the shooting occurred just after the two exchanged money. In one of several YouTube videos, which featured text against a dark background, Loughner described inventing a new U.S. currency and complained about the illiteracy rate among people living in Giffords' congressional district in Arizona. "I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People," Loughner wrote. "Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen (sic)." In Loughner's middle-class neighborhood — about a five-minute drive from the scene — sheriff's deputies had much of the street blocked off. The neighborhood sits just off a bustling Tucson street and is lined with desert landscaping and palm trees. Neighbors said Loughner lived with his parents and kept to himself. He was often seen walking his dog, almost always wearing a hooded sweat shirt and listening to his iPod. The assassination attempt left Americans questioning whether divisive politics had pushed the suspect over the edge. A shaken President Barack Obama called the attack "a tragedy for our entire country." "We are in a dark place in this country right now and the atmospheric condition is toxic," Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver told NBC's "Meet the Press." Story: Politicians split on meaning of Giffords shooting In a brief statement Sunday morning, House Speaker John Boehner said flags on the House side of the Capitol in Washington will be flown at half staff to honor Giffords' slain aide, Gabe Zimmerman. Boehner says normal House business this week is postponed to focus on any necessary actions in the shooting aftermath. Giffords faced frequent backlash from the right over her support of the health care reform last year, and had her office vandalized the day the House approved the landmark measure. Dupnik lashed out at what he called an excessively "vitriolic" atmosphere in the months leading up to the rampage as he described the chaos of the day. The sheriff said three people helped subdue the gunman. Dupnik said Patricia Maisch was waiting in line with her husband to get a photo with Giffords. When the shooting started, she ran up to the suspect and grabbed the empty magazine, then grabbed a full magazine as he was loading it into the gun. Two men helped subdue the suspect — Roger Sulzgeber, who was also in line, and Joseph Zimudie, who was at a nearby drug store and heard the shooting, Dupnik said. "He was definitely on a mission," according to event volunteer Alex Villec, former Giffords intern. Strong reaction came from overseas, as well. British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed shock at the shooting, and added that he shared President Barack Obama's belief that "we must never allow violence and hate to extinguish the open political discourse which is our surest protection." Fidel Castro also denounced the attack as atrocious. "Even those of us who don't share at all the politics and philosophies (of the Obama administration) sincerely desire that no children, judges, legislators or citizens of the United States die in such an absurd and unjustifiable way," Castro said in an opinion piece titled "An Atrocious Act," published in Cuban state-controlled media. Giffords is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law. Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon. Giffords had expressed concerns about inflammatory political rhetoric, even before the shooting. In an interview after her office was vandalized, she referred to the animosity against her by conservatives, including Sarah Palin's decision to list Giffords' seat as one of the top "targets" in the midterm elections. "For example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC. In the hours after the shooting, Palin issued a statement in which she expressed her "sincere condolences" to the family of Giffords and the other victims. Story: Profile of suspect Jared Loughner: ‘I can't trust the current government’ During his campaign effort to unseat Giffords in November, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly held fundraisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle. Kelly is a former Marine who served in Iraq and was pictured on his website in military gear holding his automatic weapon and promoting the event. "I don't see the connection," between the fundraisers featuring weapons and Saturday's shooting, said John Ellinwood, Kelly's spokesman. "I don't know this person, we cannot find any records that he was associated with the campaign in any way. I just don't see the connection. "Arizona is a state where people are firearms owners — this was just a deranged individual." Law enforcement officials said members of Congress reported 42 cases of threats or violence in the first three months of 2010, nearly three times the 15 cases reported during the same period a year earlier. Nearly all dealt with the health care bill, and Giffords was among the targets. The shooting cast a pall over the Capitol as politicians of all stripes denounced the attack as a horrific. Capitol police asked members of Congress to be more vigilant about security in the wake of the shooting.The suspect Loughner was described by a former classmate as a pot-smoking loner, and the Army said he tried to enlist in December 2008 but was rejected for reasons not disclosed. Federal law enforcement officials were poring over versions of a MySpace page that included a mysterious "Goodbye friends" message published hours before the shooting and exhorted his friends to "Please don't be mad at me."In one of several YouTube videos, which featured text against a dark background, Loughner described inventing a new U.S. currency and complained about the illiteracy rate among people living in Giffords' congressional district in Arizona. "I know who's listening: Government Officials, and the People," Loughner wrote. "Nearly all the people, who don't know this accurate information of a new currency, aren't aware of mind control and brainwash methods. If I have my civil rights, then this message wouldn't have happen (sic)." Video: An outpouring of grief in stricken Tucson High school classmate Grant Wiens, 22, said Loughner seemed to be "floating through life" and "doing his own thing." "Sometimes religion was brought up or drugs. He smoked pot, I don't know how regularly. And he wasn't too keen on religion, from what I could tell," Wiens said. Lynda Sorenson said she took a math class with Loughner last summer at Pima Community College's Northwest campus and told the Arizona Daily Star he was "obviously very disturbed." "He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts," she said. In October 2007, Loughner was cited in Pima County for possession of drug paraphernalia, which was dismissed after he completed a diversion program, according to online records. Giffords was first elected to Congress amid a wave of Democratic victories in the 2006 election, and has been mentioned as a possible Senate candidate in 2012 and a gubernatorial prospect in 2014. She is married to astronaut Mark E. Kelly, who has piloted space shuttles Endeavour and Discovery. The two met in China in 2003 while they were serving on a committee there, and were married in January 2007. Sen. Bill Nelson, chairman of the Senate Commerce Space and Science Subcommittee, said Kelly is training to be the next commander of the space shuttle mission slated for April. His brother is currently serving aboard the International Space Station, Nelson said. ___ Associated Press Writers Amanda Lee Myers and Terry Tang in Tucson, Jacques Billeaud, Bob Christie and Paul Davenport in Phoenix, and David Espo, Matt Apuzzo, Eileen Sullivan, Adam Goldman and Charles Babington in Washington contributed to this report. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40988567/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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