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BEIJING ? Militants apparently captured 29 Chinese workers after attacking a remote worksite in a volatile region of Sudan, and Sudanese forces were increasing security for Chinese projects and personnel there, China said Sunday.
China has close political and economic relations with Sudan, especially in the energy sector.
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the militants attacked Saturday and Sudanese forces launched a rescue mission Sunday in coordination with the Chinese embassy in Khartoum.
The Ministry's head of consular affairs met with the Sudanese ambassador in Beijing and "urged him to actively conduct rescue missions under the prerequisite of ensuring the safety of the Chinese personnel," the statement said.
In Khartoum, a Chinese embassy spokesman said the northern branch of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement announced that 29 Chinese workers had been captured in the attack. The spokesman, who asked not be identified, gave no other details and it wasn't clear if the militants had demanded conditions for their return.
Other details weren't given. The official Xinhua News Agency cited the state governor as saying the Sudan People's Liberation Movement attacked a road-building site in South Kordofan and seized the workers.
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement are a guerrilla force that has fought against Sudan's regime. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country only six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.
Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan has called such accusations a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.
China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan and last year was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.
China has consistently used its clout in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations to defend Sudan and its longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. In recent years, it has also sought to build good relations with leaders from the south, where most of Sudan's oil is located.
Chinese companies have also invested heavily in Sudanese oil production, along with companies India and elsewhere.
___
Associated Press writer Mohamed Saeed contributed to this report from Khartoum.
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SINGAPORE (Reuters) ? Asia's central bankers have yet another reason to hesitate now that the U.S. Federal Reserve looks likely to keep interest rates low for longer.
Indonesia, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines have all cut interest rates at least once in the past three months to try to shore up economic growth, and many economists predict more easing to come this year from India and South Korea.
But as the U.S. central bank extends the horizon for its first rate hike, it changes the Asian equation. Instead of lowering interest rates, which may have unintended consequences when the Fed is on hyper-extended hold, it may make more sense for some economies to tinker with currency exchange rates.
Forecasts released last week from Fed officials show that it will probably be late 2014 before rates rise from the current level near zero -- considerably longer than the mid-2013 low-rate pledge the central bank had made back in November.
That could provide a "policy breather" for emerging markets if it helps sustain U.S. growth, which is essential to export-sensitive Asia, Philippines central bank Governor Amando Tetangco said on Thursday.
However, the Fed's forecasts are conditional. If the U.S. economy strengthens more than expected or inflation threatens to build, the Fed is under no obligation to stick to a late 2014 timetable for tightening.
"There is still much confusion over what the Fed did or didn't do," said Thomas Lam, chief economist at OSK-DMG in Singapore. "That's going to add another layer of complexity for Asian policymakers."
Asia's central bankers typically set interest rates with an eye on currency values because so many of the region's economies are driven by exports. An ultra-easy Fed probably means a weaker dollar, which eats into Asia's export price advantage.
That is why Lam expects Asian officials to rely on currency market intervention more than interest rate cuts to try to bolster economic growth. In Singapore, where exports are larger than the city-state's entire annual output, the exchange rate is the primary policy tool.
"There's never a disconnect between interest and exchange rates, particularly in Asia," he said. "Most of the Asian economies are export-driven, so even though they have an interest rate policy, exchange rates always play a key role in their decision making."
OUT OF SYNC
When the Fed embarked on its aggressive easing campaign, which eventually took rates to near-zero in December 2008, the global financial crisis was raging and the rest of the world was cutting rates as well.
But the world is not really in sync now.
Economies such as Hong Kong, China and Singapore effectively cede some control over monetary policy to Washington because they tightly manage their currencies against the U.S. dollar, which can cause headaches when growth rates diverge.
The Fed's easy-money policy can weaken the dollar, putting a drag on Asia's dollar-linked currencies and driving up imported inflation. Hong Kong, Singapore and China are already grappling with inflation rates running above policymakers' comfort levels.
Even those countries that keep a looser grip on foreign exchange rates must be mindful of Fed policy when setting their own interest rates. Cut too far and the gap between the two rates narrows, making it less attractive for foreign investors; hike too much and it could draw an onslaught of speculative money that drives up inflation.
Rahul Bajoria, an economist with Barclays Capital in Singapore, said emerging Asia's rate-cutting cycle was "pretty much done" for now, with the exception of India where domestic growth and inflation are both slowing sharply.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
The Fed also said it was ready to provide more economic stimulus should growth falter, which economists took to mean it would probably buy more government bonds or mortgage-related securities. It has already more than tripled its balance sheet to $2.9 trillion through two sets of bond purchase programs.
The second round of bond purchases, launched in 2010, provoked howls of protest from Asian officials, who blamed it for stoking inflation and sending uncontrollable waves of speculative money into emerging markets. But talk of a third batch has so far elicited few, if any, complaints.
Part of the reason is that Asia's own growth is slowing, unlike in 2010 when it came charging back from the global slump. In addition, some Asian economies such as India and China have been more worried lately about capital flowing out rather than in, and would welcome a little more foreign capital.
In the first four months of 2011, emerging market foreign exchange reserves shot up at a nearly 30 percent annualized pace, according to data from J.P. Morgan. But the pace tapered off in the second half of the year as investors shied away from riskier markets. China's official reserves recorded a rare decline in the final quarter of 2011.
But if the Fed's easy-money stance helps boost U.S. growth and Europe's debt troubles simmer down, Asia could soon be back to worrying about inflation instead of growth, and a wave of foreign money might once again be unwelcome.
"Given the point in the (economic) cycle we are at, I don't think they will be very concerned about capital flows, but six months down the line, the outlook could change once the worst is behind us," Barclays' Bajoria said.
"Policymaking has to be pretty nimble on both sides."
(Reporting by Emily Kaiser; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott)
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Survival story "The Grey" starring Liam Neeson topped the weekend movie box office charts with an estimated $20 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales, according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
"The Grey" knocked last weekend's winner, "Underworld: Awakening," to second place. The vampire and werewolf sequel starring Kate Beckinsale brought in $12.5 million from Friday through Sunday.
New Katherine Heigl comedy "One for the Money" finished third with $11.8 million.
Open Road Films, a joint venture between theater owners Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc, released "The Grey." The film unit of Sony Corp distributed "Underworld: Awakening." "One for the Money" was released by Lions Gate Entertainment.
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Xavier Briand)
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LOS ANGELES ? The "Harry Potter" finale has earned some love from Hollywood's top acting union, winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for best big-screen stunt ensemble Sunday.
The win for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" was a final triumph for the fantasy franchise that concluded last summer after a run of eight blockbusters.
Winning the TV stunt ensemble prize was "Game of Thrones." The stunt awards were announced on the arrivals red carpet before the show began.
Among the early arrivals to the cheers of enthusiastic fans on a warm afternoon were Patrick Duffy and Linda Gray of the old "Dallas" TV series, soon to be the new "Dallas" TV series on TNT.
For the main event, Sunday's 18th annual SAG ceremony is heavy on actors playing illustrious real-life figures.
Among them: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady"; Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover in "J. Edgar"; and Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier in "My Week With Marilyn."
Streep won a Golden Globe for "The Iron Lady" and is considered a favorite for the SAG prize and for her third win at the Academy Awards, which are set for Feb. 26.
The front-runners for the other SAG awards are actors in fictional roles, though, among them George Clooney as a dad in crisis in "The Descendants" and Jean Dujardin as a silent-film star fallen on hard times in "The Artist." Both are up for best actor, and both won Globes ? Clooney as dramatic actor, Dujardin as musical or comedy actor.
Octavia Spencer as a brassy Mississippi maid in "The Help" and Christopher Plummer as an elderly dad who comes out as gay in "Beginners" won Globes for supporting performances and have strong prospects for the same honors at the SAG Awards.
The winners at the SAG ceremony typically go on to earn Oscars. All four acting recipients at SAG last year later took home Oscars ? Colin Firth for "The King's Speech," Natalie Portman for "Black Swan" and Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for "The Fighter."
The same generally holds true for the weekend's other big Hollywood honors, the Directors Guild of America Awards, where Michel Hazanavicius won the feature-film prize Saturday for "The Artist." The Directors Guild winner has gone on to earn the best-director Oscar 57 times in the 63-year history of the union's awards show.
SAG also presents an award for overall cast performance, a prize that's loosely considered the ceremony's equivalent of a best-picture honor. However, the cast award has a spotty record at predicting what will win best picture at the Oscars.
While "The King's Speech" won both honors a year ago, the SAG cast recipient has gone on to claim the top Oscar only eight times in the 16 years since the guild added the category.
Airing live on TNT and TBS from the Shrine Exhibition Center in downtown Los Angeles, the show features nine television categories, as well.
Receiving the guild's life-achievement award is Mary Tyler Moore. The prize was to be presented by Dick Van Dyke, her co-star on the 1960s sit-com "The Dick Van Dyke Show."
___
Online:
http://www.sagawards.com
http://www.sagawards.com
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Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, center, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, left, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, center, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, left, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai arrives prior to laying a wreath on the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, second from right, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, third from right, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, fourth from right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, front right, and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, second from left, sign a friendship and cooperation treaty at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Philippe Wojazer, Pool)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? France's plans to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan a year early drew harsh words Saturday in the Afghan capital, with critics accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of putting his re-election campaign ahead of Afghans' safety.
A wider proposal by Sarkozy for NATO to hand over all security to Afghans by the end of next year also came under fire, with one Afghan lawmaker saying it would be "a big mistake" that would leave security forces unprepared to fight the Taliban insurgency and threaten a new descent into violence in the 10-year-old war.
Sarkozy's decision, which came a week after four French troops were shot dead by an Afghan army trainee suspected of being a Taliban infiltrator, raises new questions about the unity of the U.S.-led military coalition.
It also reopens the debate over whether setting a deadline for troop withdrawals will allow the Taliban to run out the clock and seize more territory once foreign forces are gone.
"Afghan forces are not self-sufficient yet. They still need more training, more equipment and they need to be stronger," said military analyst Abdul Hadi Khalid, Afghanistan's former minister of interior.
Khalid said the decision by Sarkozy was clearly political. The French president is facing a tough election this year, and the population's already deep discontent with the Afghan war only intensified when unarmed French troops were gunned down by a supposed ally Jan. 20 at a joint base in the eastern province of Kapisa.
Sarkozy announced France's new timetable on Friday alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was in Paris for a previously planned visit. He also said Karzai had agreed with him to ask for all international forces to hand security over to the Afghan army and police in 2013, a plan he would present it at a Feb. 2-3 meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. He said he would call President Barack Obama about his plan on Saturday.
Afghan lawmaker Tahira Mujadedi said Afghan security forces will not be ready in time for any early NATO withdrawal, saying the current timetable already is rushing the training of national forces.
"That would be a big mistake by the Afghan government if they accept it," she said of Sarkozy's plan. "In my view, they should extend 2014 by more years instead of cutting it short to 2013."
She said she sympathizes in the matter of the French soldiers' deaths, but argued that they present no logical reason for France to deviate from the U.S. timetable for NATO to hand over security by 2014.
"When military forces are present in a war zone, anything can happen," Mujadedi said. The French troops "are not here for a holiday," she added.
France now has about 3,600 soldiers in the international force, which is mostly made up of American troops.
Afghan forces started taking the lead for security in certain areas of the country last year and the plan has been to add more areas, as Afghan police and soldiers were deemed ready to take over from foreign forces.
According to drawdown plans already announced by the U.S. and more than a dozen other nations, the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan will shrink by an estimated 40,000 troops at the close of this year. Washington is pulling out the most ? 33,000 by the end of the year. That's one-third of 101,000 U.S. troops that were in Afghanistan in June, the peak of the U.S. military presence in the war, Pentagon figures show.
Sarkozy also said France would hand over authority in the province of Kapisa, where the French troops were killed this month, by the end of March. Karzai's office confirmed that decision Saturday, saying it was made at the French president's request.
The NATO coalition has started to hand over security in several areas of Afghanistan, aiming to transfer about half of the country in the coming months. But Kapisa was not one of the provinces earmarked for handover, according to U.S. Navy Lt. James McCue, a coalition spokesman.
Kapisa lawmaker Mujadedi argued that Afghan forces in her province particularly are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province's districts. She warned that if NATO forces do pull back from Kapisa, it could also destabilize nearby Kabul.
"We have had so many attacks, ambushes and also suicide attacks in Kapisa," Mujadedi said. "Unfortunately, our national police and army, while present in Kapisa, are unable to provide good security for people."
France's early withdrawal announcement could step up pressure on other European governments like Britain, Italy and Germany, which also have important roles in Afghanistan ? even if the U.S. has the lion's share by far.
Karzai, who praised the role of France and other NATO allies, didn't object at Friday's joint news conference when Sarkozy said the 2013 NATO withdrawal timetable was sought by both France and Afghanistan.
However, the Afghan leader appeared to suggest that it was a high-end target.
"We hope to finish the transition ... by the end of 2013 at the earliest ? or by the latest as has been agreed upon ? by the end of 2014," Karzai said.
Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the Paris-based European Council on Foreign Relations, said public support of the war in Europe started sliding fast after the coalition agreed to end the combat mission in 2014.
"It has become more and more difficult to justify every single casualty, since it's now clear that these are wasted lives," said Witney, a former head of the European Defense Agency.
"Most European policymakers realize that on a purely cost-benefit assessment, we would all leave Afghanistan tomorrow," Witney said.
___
Associated Press writers Kay Johnson in Kabul and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.
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TEMPE, Ariz. -- Tony Wroten patiently prodded the defense, found an opening and took off.
Seeing an opposing player slide under the basket, the freshman didn't hesitate, launching himself into the air to throw down a rim-shaking dunk, sending the defender sprawling to the floor.
His team in need of a basket against a gritty opponent, Wroten provided an emphatic one that had even him amazed.
Wroten scored 22 points and ended a pair of rallies with three-point plays, including a dunk over Arizona State's Jonathan Gilling, lifting Washington to a 60-54 win over the Sun Devils on Thursday night.
"That might have been the best dunk I've ever had," said Wroten, who screamed and pointed to the crowd after the dunk. "I wasn't even expecting that to happen. He just moved over and I just dunked on him, I guess."
Washington (13-7, 6-2 Pac-12) labored offensively in the first half and struggled from the perimeter all night, making just 1 of 8 from 3-point range. Second-leading scorer Terrence Ross struggled to find his shot, missing his only two shots of the second half while going 4 of 13 from the floor.
No need to worry with Wroten on the floor.
The athletic, 6-foot-5 guard gave the Huskies a spark, hitting 9 of 12 shots, grabbing six rebounds and handing out three assists. He also had the two biggest plays of the game, the dunk over Gilling for a three-point play to put Washington up seven and a putback to make it 53-46 with just over a minute left.
"He was the difference in the game tonight," Arizona State coach Herb Sendek said.
Arizona State (6-14, 2-6) had its chances before Wroten's big plays.
The Sun Devils kept the high-scoring Huskies in check in the first half and fell into a big hole after going scoreless for more than 6 minutes to open the second, yet found a way to claw their way back behind Gilling.
He hit two of his five 3-pointers in the final 6 minutes to keep Arizona State close, but the Sun Devils never made it all the way back from the early hole to lose their third straight without leading scorer Trent Lockett, out with a right ankle sprain.
"I really thought we could beat these guys," said Gilling, who finished with 20 points and five rebounds. "Maybe they're more athletic than us, but I don't think their players are better than us, so I'm really disappointed."
After an up-and-down nonconference season, Washington has pulled it together in the Pac-12.
The Huskies entered Thursday night's game just a half-game behind California and Oregon after winning four of five, and have been rolling with their up-tempo style, leading the conference in scoring at 78 points per game. Washington rolled in its last game, bouncing back from a loss to Cal with a 76-63 win over Stanford behind Wroten's 21 points.
The Huskies figured to have another easy game lined up against wobbly Arizona State.
The senior-less Sun Devils struggled the start of the season, struggling with turnovers, suspensions and injuries.
Arizona State has been unsteady at the point, even before Keala King was dismissed from the team earlier this month, and entering Thursday ranked 333rd out of 336 teams in turnover margin, forcing 10.3 per game while giving it away an average of 16.6 times.
The Sun Devils have struggled offensively all season, and it's gotten worse since Lockett went down against Oregon State. They managed to beat the Beavers, but scored just 54 points in a lopsided loss to Colorado and 43 in a blowout against Utah on Saturday, one of its worst games in Sendek's six seasons in the desert.
It didn't start off as a walkover.
Arizona State struggled early against Washington, missing eight of its first 11 shots, and went more than 4 minutes without a field goal later in the half. The Sun Devils made up for it with solid defense and kept the game at a favorable-to-them slow pace to lead 24-22 at halftime after Chris Colvin's buzzer-beating, coast-to-coast layup.
The Huskies struggled against Arizona State's zone, taking tough shots against pressure and dribbling into the lane with nowhere to go. Washington missed all three of its 3-point attempts and was 10 of 26 overall in its lowest-scoring half of the season.
Washington started to find a rhythm on offense in the second half, hitting five of its first six shots while tightening up defensively to open with a 14-1 run.
The Huskies hounded Colvin into three turnovers in the first 5 minutes -- two that sailed into the crowd -- and held the Sun Devils scoreless until Ruslan Pateev hit a layup at 13:52.
"We came out early and were hardly contesting any of their shots," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said. "More on the defensive end, we came out (in the second half) and didn't leave their shooters open, had better position."
Arizona State clawed its way back to within four, but the Wroten dunk over Gilling put the Huskies up 46-39 with 5 1/2 minutes left.
The Sun Devils pulled within four on a 3-pointer by Gilling with 1:39 left, but Wroten answered with another three-point play on a putback, and the Huskies maintained their cushion over the closing seconds to send Arizona State to its ninth loss in 11 games.
"It just wasn't so much a function of actions or things like that, (it's) just our awareness, especially on the defensive end and our constitution of making plays that we're capable of making," Sendek said.
Source: http://www.king5.com/sports/Washington-holds-off-Arizona-State-for-60-54-win-138178344.html
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It's too early to talk of her legacy, or to grade the Obama administration's foreign policy, but four years of repairing relationships and defending US interests have taken a physical toll.?
No matter what happens in the 2012 US presidential elections, Hillary Clinton will not be America?s chief diplomat for much longer.
Skip to next paragraphAt a State Department press conference yesterday, she announced that she would be stepping down from the ?high wire of American politics? after 20 years, as first lady, as a senator from New York, and finally as US Secretary of State. At the press conference, she told reporters that ?it would be a good idea to find out how tired I really am.?
Diplomacy is a largely thankless task in America. In France, diplomats are practically rock stars, and the actions and speeches of senior French diplomats abroad are noted closely as to whether they match the standards of French diplomats of the past. Not so in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times may have front-page articles about the US secretary of State?s latest foreign trip to Myanmar, for instance, but the vast majority of Americans are blissfully unaware of what their government is doing overseas. ?
Ms. Clinton inherited a job when American diplomacy was every bit as messy as the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Many nations that initially felt sympathy for the US after the Sept. 11 attacks had grown quickly tired of American statements such as, ?You?re either with us or against us.? Changing the tone of American foreign policy meant bringing back a level of trust, and to do that meant thousands of foreign trips.
Here?s the US State Department's interactive map showing Hillary Clinton?s hundreds of foreign and domestic trips.
Rumors have been flying around for weeks that Hillary Clinton was planning to bow out.
Chris McGreal, the Guardian?s man in Washington, quoted a keen diplomacy-watcher, John Norris of the Center for American Progress, as saying that Clinton?s legacy abroad will be her dogged attempts to reverse hostility.
"I have a hard time thinking of a secretary of state in recent memory who inherited a portfolio that was more of a mess. She had wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a very troubled relationship with Pakistan, and a full-blown economic crisis on her watch," he said.
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The Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janerio was the busiest of all slave ports in the Americas and has been buried for almost two centuries.
? A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Skip to next paragraphNot far from here at least 500,000 Africans took their first steps into slavery in colonial Brazil, which took in far more slaves than the United States and where now half of its 200 million citizens claim African descent.
The ?Cais do Valongo? ? the Valongo Wharf ? was the busiest of all slave ports in the Americas and has been buried for almost two centuries under subsequent infrastructure projects and dirt.
That is, until developers seeking to turn Rio?s shabby port neighborhood into a posh tourist center allowed teams of archaeologists to check out what was being unearthed.
?We knew we had found the wharf,? says archaeologist Tania Andrade Lima, showing a ramp made up of knobbly, uneven stones used by slaves. It lay beneath a layer of smoother cobblestones from a dock installed later for the arrival of a Portuguese royal.
Ms. Lima and other community leaders are creating a walking tour that will include the wharf, a nearby cemetery for Africans who died soon after their arrival, and a holding pen called the ?Lazareto,? derived from Jesus? parable about a beggar named Lazarus, where newly arrived Africans were checked for diseases.
The wharf alone is nearly 22,000 square feet. ?This gives a dimension to how huge the influx of slaves was,? says Lima.
Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox.?Sign up today.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/C8HzhyUXmb0/Slave-port-unearthed-in-Brazil
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Humane Society of the United States
For decades, animal activists have gone undercover to take jobs inside large-scale livestock farms in order to document conditions for farm animals that they say are routinely inhumane. Their hidden camera footage has resulted in criminal charges against owners and workers, plant shutdowns, and after one at a California slaughterhouse in 2008, the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
But these images could soon be made illegal. Legislation pending in five states ? Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and New York ? would criminalize the actions of activists who covertly film farms. Proponents of the various pieces legislation say that their proposed laws would lead to beneficial consequences, including the protection of such farms from potential terrorist infiltration (preserving the integrity of the food supply) and espionage; the prevention of images that mislead consumers; as well as regulating the job application process to circumvent potential employees from lying in order to be hired. See the legal assault on animal-abuse whistleblowers.
These so-called "ag-gag" bills have ignited a national debate about undercover videos and have raised concerns about free speech and journalists' and whistleblowers' ability to report on the farming industry.
TIME traveled to Iowa, the nation's leading producer of eggs and pork and the first state to propose a ban on undercover videos, with one former investigator for a rare glimpse at how these videos are made and why they are so controversial.
LIST: Top 10 Pictures of the Year of 2011
SPECIAL: TIME's 2011 Person of the Year: The Protester
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AMMAN, Jordan ? A low-level dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians is not at a dead end, the European Union's foreign policy chief said Thursday, hoping that contacts to get "real negotiations under way" will continue.
"I don't think there's an impasse," Ashton told reporters following talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Jordanian capital.
Her remarks come a day after Abbas said informal talks between Israelis and Palestinians about the border of a future Palestinian state ended without any breakthrough.
"President Abbas is thinking carefully about how to move forward," Ashton said. Abbas has said he will consult on his next moves with the Arab League in a meeting planned for Feb. 4 in Cairo.
While frustrated with the lack of progress, Abbas is under pressure to extend the Jordan-hosted exploratory talks, which the international community hopes will lead to a resumption of long-stalled formal negotiations on establishing an independent Palestinian state.
The Arab League consultation stage could leave the door open to continue the low-level meetings.
A Palestinian walkout could cost Abbas international sympathy at a time when he seeks global recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
The border issue is at the heart of the current standoff. The Palestinians want Israel to halt construction in settlements in the territories they claim, along with an Israeli commitment to make the pre-1967 war lines the basis of a future agreement.
In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said they hoped Abbas would not end the talks. An official familiar with the negotiations said that during Wednesday night's meeting, the Israelis gave their "principles" for setting a border.
"We presented the Palestinian side the central points that determine our policy on dealing with the territorial issue," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive negotiations.
He refused to elaborate on what was presented, or even to term it a proposal. He said the Palestinians had requested "clarifications on a number of issues," and Israel had also asked for clarifications on some Palestinian proposals presented so far.
The official said the Israelis believe it's "very important" to continue the newly resumed talks, with the goal of forging a comprehensive peace this year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rules out a return to the pre-1967 war lines. He opposes any withdrawal from east Jerusalem and has signaled that he wants to retain an Israeli presence in key parts of the West Bank. Palestinians reject those positions.
Israel withdrew from Gaza, the other part of the state the Palestinians seek, in 2005.
After meeting with Abbas and Israelis in the past few days, Ashton said, "I still remain hopeful that with goodwill, they can continue to talk."
Under Jordanian mediation, Israeli and Palestinian envoys have met several times over the past month. The Quartet of international mediators ? the U.S., the U.N., the EU and Russia ? said last fall that it expected both sides to submit detailed proposals on borders and security arrangements in these meetings.
The Palestinians say that Thursday is a deadline for the proposals, while Israel says it is only in April. Ashton said the deadline was not "written in stone, but was there to give a sense of dynamic or momentum."
___
Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
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Demi Moore was rushed to the hospital Monday night, and sources are saying she was seeking treatment for substance-abuse issues. According to TMZ, paramedics were dispatched to the Margin Call star's home in Los Angeles after 911 received a call at 10:49 p.m. Jan. 23. After a 30-minute evaluation, Moore was taken to a local hospital.
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Elaine Thompson / AP
Amanda Knox, left, is comforted by her sister, Deanna Knox, during a news conference shortly after her return to the US on Oct. 4, 2011, in Seattle.
By msnbc.com staff
Amanda Knox "loves Italy" and would like to return despite having spent four years in a prison there before a murder conviction was overturned last year, her lawyer reportedly said.
The 24-year-old may go back to Italy as early as September because her parents are charged with slandering the Perugia police, according to?an ABC News report,?citing the Italian news service ANSA.
The Italian appeals court that overturned the murder conviction of American student Amanda Knox is now explaining its ruling in a newly-released report. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
Knox's mother and father face a prison sentence if found guilty of slandering police officers in a 2009 interview with London's Sunday Times newspaper in which they?alleged?their daughter?was physically abused and threatened while being questioned.
Knox spent four years of a 26-year sentence in a Perugia prison on charges that she killed her British roommate Meredith Kercher.
?
Her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted. A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted of taking part in the murder in a separate trial.
Knox and Sollecito were cleared of the murder last year, but Knox was convicted of a separate charge of slandering her former boss by saying he was involved in the murder.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
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A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles past Earth on Tuesday, as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun overnight (10:59 p.m. ET Sunday, or 0359 GMT Monday), according to SpaceWeather.com.
The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory and the STEREO spacecraft, observed the massive sun storm.
A barrage of charged particles triggered by the outburst is expected to hit Earth at around 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [Video and photos of the solar flare]
NOAA's forecasters say this is the strongest solar radiation storm since May 2005. As a precaution, polar flights on Earth are expected to be rerouted, the agency's deputy administrator, Kathy Sullivan, said Monday at the 92nd annual American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans.
Scientists call these electromagnetic bursts "coronal mass ejections," and they are closely studied because they can produce potentially harmful geomagnetic storms when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with Earth's magnetic field.
In addition to generating stronger than normal displays of Earth's auroras (also known as the northern and southern lights), geomagnetic storms aimed directly at our planet can also disrupt satellites in orbit, cause widespread communications interference and damage other electronic infrastructures.
"There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth," SpaceWeather.com said? in an alert. "A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet."
More space news from msnbc.com
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Reality-TV impresario Simon Cowell says the winner of "Britain's Got Talent" could go into outer space on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.
Sunday's solar flare was rated an M9-class eruption, which placed it just on the verge of being an X-class flare, the most powerful type of solar storm. M-class sun storms are powerful but midrange, while C-class flares are weaker.
Last week, a separate sunspot group unleashed several M-class flares. SDO scientists said these types of flares are occurring almost daily as the sun's rotation slowly turns the region toward Earth.
The sun's activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. Currently, our planet's nearest star is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to ramp up toward solar maximum in 2013.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing northern lights photo, or other skywatching image, and would like to share it for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.
OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer Brett Israel contributed to this report from New Orleans. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom? and on Facebook.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46102926/ns/technology_and_science-space/
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SUNDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified three new genomic regions they believe are linked with breast cancer that may help explain why some women develop the disease.
All three newly identified areas "contain interesting genes that open up new avenues for biological and clinical research," said researcher Douglas Easton, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge in England.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with about 1 million new cases annually worldwide and more than 400,000 deaths a year.
Scientists conducting genome-wide association studies -- research that looks at the association between genetic factors and disease to pinpoint possible causes -- had already identified 22 breast cancer susceptibility loci. Locus is the physical location of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.
"The three [newly identified] loci take the number of common susceptibility loci from 22 to 25," said Easton.
However, the three new susceptibility loci might explain only about 0.7 percent of the familial risks of breast cancer, bringing the total contribution to about 9 percent, the researchers said.
Michael Melner, scientific program director for the American Cancer Society, said this current research adds some important new clues to existing evidence, but he agreed that the number of cases likely associated with these three variants is probably low.
"So the total impact in terms of patients would be fairly small," Melner said.
The study is published online Jan. 22 in Nature Genetics.
To find the new clues, Easton's team worked with genetic information on about 57,000 breast cancer patients and 58,000 healthy women obtained from two genome-wide association studies.
The investigators zeroed in on 72 different single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP -- pronounced "snip" -- is a change in which a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base. The human genome has millions of SNPs, some linked with disease, while others are normal variations.
The researchers focused on three SNPs -- on chromosomes 12p11, 12q24 and 21q21.
Easton's team found that the variant on the 12p11 chromosome is linked with both estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (which needs estrogen to grow) and estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. The other two variants are only linked with ER-positive cancers, they said.
One of the newly identified variants is in an area with a gene that has a role in the development of mammary glands and bones. Easton said it was already known that mammary gland development in puberty is an important period in terms of determining later cancer risk. "But these are the first susceptibility genes to be shown to be involved in this process," he said.
One of the other SNPs is in an area that can affect estrogen receptor signaling, the researchers found.
Melner, noting some of the research is "fine tuning" of other work, said in his view the new understanding of the signaling pathways and their genetic links is the most important finding.
"When you delineate a pathway, you bring up new potential targets for therapy," he said. "The more targets you have, you open up the potential for having multiple drugs and attacking a cancer more easily, without it becoming more resistant."
Overall, Melner added, the results underscore the complexity of the different mechanisms involved in breast cancer development.
More information
For more about the genetics of breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.
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Paul Sullivan writes this week in his Wealth Matters column about force-placed insurance ? something that most homeowners don?t know about until their mortgage lender sends them a letter telling them they need it. If the homeowners don?t act quickly, the lender will buy the insurance for them, almost always at a price that?s a lot higher than the market rate.
Experts told Paul that homeowners should immediately deal with the initial letter from a lender saying that insurance is needed. Once the force-placed insurance is imposed, it is much harder, they say, to fight the lender.
While there are no figures on how many times lenders are imposing force-placed insurance, lawyers say they suspect the numbers are higher in the last couple of years.
Have you had any experience with this kind of insurance? Tell us about it below.
Source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/an-often-painful-lesson-in-insurance/
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Federal Reserve could take the historic step this week of announcing an explicit target for inflation, a move that would fulfill a multi-year quest of the central bank's chairman, Ben Bernanke.
An inflation target would be the capstone of Bernanke's crusade to improve the Fed's communications, an initiative aimed at making the central bank more effective at controlling growth and inflation. It would, at long last, bring the Fed into line with a policy framework used by most other major central banks.
Bernanke has made clearer communications a hallmark of his leadership, and bit by bit, he has worked to cast light on what for years had been purposefully opaque and secretive deliberations.
He has even given the campaign a personal stamp, contrasting his plainspoken and unaffected persona with that of his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, whose ruminations were notoriously oblique and who was associated with an aloof cadre of policy mandarins.
While Bernanke has touted a numerical inflation goal as a cornerstone of central bank best practices for years, the idea has become timely because it could help quell nagging doubts that the Fed's unprecedented easy money policies are setting the stage for a nasty bout of inflation.
The U.S. economy strengthened toward the end of last year, with job growth accelerating and the unemployment rate dropping to a near three-year low of 8.5 percent.
But the recovery is not expected to retain the momentum.
By announcing a target, the Fed could smooth the path to another round of bond buying should the recovery falter.
"It's a good idea whose time has come," said Marvin Goodfriend, a professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a former senior Fed policy adviser.
In the eyes of Goodfriend and some policymakers, laying out an agreed inflation goal would squelch the idea that the Fed might allow for a faster pace of price gains as it tries to drive unemployment lower.
It would also put the brakes on any notion that the central bank could resort to quicker inflation to ease debt burdens, as some academic economists have suggested as the needed salve for the painfully slow U.S. recovery.
"One of the reasons to announce a formal inflation objective is to indicate that the Fed does not believe it needs to stimulate inflation in order to stimulate the economy," Goodfriend said.
ACADEMICS AND POLITICIANS
Some question whether the change would be little more than an academic exercise, since the central bank already publishes quarterly forecasts that show most officials believe consumer prices should rise between 1.7 percent and 2 percent a year.
This long-term forecast is viewed as an ersatz target, and the Fed seems likely to simply formally enshrine it or a similar formulation.
While food and energy costs drove consumer prices well above the central bank's desired levels last year, inflation is receding quickly and "core" prices and financial market expectations of future inflation have been largely contained.
The Fed's preferred core price gauge was up just 1.7 percent in the 12 months through November, while bond markets see inflation of just 2.1 percent 10 years out.
Explicit targeting has eluded U.S. proponents in part because skeptics, particularly among congressional Democrats, worried it would relegate the Fed's other congressionally set mandate - full employment - to the back burner.
"Discussions of inflation targeting in the American media remind me of the way some Americans deal with the metric system - they don't really know what it is, but they think of it as foreign, impenetrable, and possibly slightly subversive," Bernanke said in 2003.
However, the political climate has shifted. The Fed has drawn fire from Republican lawmakers and presidential hopefuls for risking inflation with its efforts to spur stronger job growth.
The central bank cut interest rates to near zero more than three years ago and has vacuumed up $2.3 trillion worth of bonds to pump cash into the financial system and energize growth.
Still, the Fed will need to tread carefully and accompany any inflation target with a description of what it views as constituting full employment.
Officials say that while monetary policy ultimately determines the rate of inflation, labor markets are often affected by structural issues beyond the central bank's control. Because of that, they are hesitant to put a fixed number on the level of unemployment that can be achieved without generating a self-defeating inflation.
As part of a communications review, officials in December debated a draft statement on their longer-run goals and policy strategy. Policymakers are set to discuss a refined draft at a policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is this statement that is widely expected to include an explicit inflation target.
"We are very close to having inflation targeting in the U.S.," James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, told Bloomberg Radio in an interview on January 5.
Although there is no guarantee the Fed will announce a target this week, the communications review has already led to another innovation. For the first time ever, the Fed on Wednesday will release forecasts for the path of interest rates.
CENTRAL BANKING 101
Officials argue an explicit target would be an improvement on the longer-run inflation forecasts they now provide because it would strengthen the central bank's commitment to low inflation, even as it casts about for ways to coax the economy into a higher gear.
Also, the long-range forecasts are simply an amalgamation of the individual views of all 17 Fed policymakers. An explicit target would be an agreed-upon common goal that could help bolster the central bank's already high anti-inflation credibility in financial markets.
It could also help the Fed politically and strategically.
The central bank has taken lumps, mostly from congressional Republicans, who saw its second round of bond buying as an egregious episode of big government overreach.
The concerns of these Republican lawmakers, some of whom have broached the idea of narrowing the Fed's mandate to only price stability, might be mollified, potentially offering some political cover to an institution that has had few friends in the public arena since the financial crisis and recession of 2007-2009.
A target could also help Bernanke keep a critical mass of support behind his policy decisions within the central bank, where at any given time, three or four of the current roster of policymakers are known to object to the Fed's ultra-easy stance.
"Having an inflation target is central banking 101," said Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, one of the Fed's top inflation hawks. "It's what most major central banks do."
(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Jan Paschal)
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Proposed changes in the definition of autism would sharply reduce the skyrocketing rate at which the disorder is diagnosed and may make it harder for many to get health, educational and social services, a new analysis suggests.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46062973#46062973
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KANO, Nigeria ? Coordinated attacks claimed by a radical Islamist sect killed at least 143 people in north Nigeria's largest city, a hospital official said Saturday, as gunfire still echoed around some areas of the sprawling city.
Soldiers and police officers swarmed over streets Saturday in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious hub in Nigeria's Muslim north. But their effectiveness remains in question, as the uniformed bodies of many of their colleagues lay in the overflowing mortuary of Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital, Kano's largest hospital.
A hospital official there said at least 143 people died in the attacks Friday. The count included some bodies already claimed by families for immediate burial per Islamic law, the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to disclose the figure to journalists.
Other bodies could be lying at other clinics and hospitals in the city.
In a statement issued late Friday, federal police spokesman Olusola Amore said attackers targeted five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the State Security Service, Nigeria's secret police.
Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. He said officials continued to collect corpses scattered around sites of the attacks. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday's attack, he said.
State authorities declared a 24-hour curfew late Friday as residents hid inside their homes amid the fighting.
A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists. He said the attack came as the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.
Boko Haram has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict Shariah law across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, is responsible for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to an AP count. So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 219 killings, according to an AP count.
The sect's targets have included both Muslims and Christians. However, the group has begun specifically targeting Christians after promising it will kill any Christians living in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north. That has further inflamed religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria, which has seen ethnic violence kill thousands in recent years along the divide between the north and the largely Christian south.
Friday's attacks also could cause more unrest, as violence in Kano has set off attacks throughout the north in the past, including postelection violence in April that saw 800 people killed. Kano, an ancient city, remains important in the history of Islam in Nigeria and has important religious figures there today.
Amid the recent unrest and attacks, at least two journalists have been killed in Nigeria. Journalist Enenche Akogwu, who worked as a correspondent in Kano for private news station Channels Television, was shot and killed Friday while reporting on the attacks, colleagues said. In central Nigeria's city of Jos, Nansok Sallah, a news editor for a government-owned radio station called Highland FM, was found dead in a shallow stream Thursday, the victim of an apparent murder, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.
___
Associated Press writer Salisu Rabiu in Kano, Nigeria contributed to this report.
___
Jon Gambrell reported from Lagos, Nigeria and can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
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A Delta IV rocket lauches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Complex 37 carrying a United Launch Alliance Wideband Global Positioning satellite Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, as seen from the Ocean Club in Port Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Florida Today, Malcolm Denemark)
A Delta IV rocket lauches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Complex 37 carrying a United Launch Alliance Wideband Global Positioning satellite Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, as seen from the Ocean Club in Port Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Florida Today, Malcolm Denemark)
Members of the media photograph the liftoff of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. The rocket is carrying another satellite in the Wideband Global SATCOM series for the Department of Defense. (AP Photo/Florida Today, Craig Bailey) NO SALES
A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. The rocket is carrying another satellite in the Wideband Global SATCOM series for the Department of Defense. (AP Photo/Florida Today, Craig Bailey) NO SALES
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) ? The Air Force has sent into space a satellite that is expected to improve communications with military drones in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Officials say a Delta 4 rocket carried the WGS 4 satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:38 p.m. Thursday.
It's the fourth in a series of military satellites that have been put into place since 2007. The next one is expected to be ready to launch next year.
WGS stands for Wideband Global SATCOM. The satellites are replacing aging Defense Satellite Communications System spacecraft and have 10 times the speed and capacity of the older satellites.
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