President Obama, so often cool and unemotional, struggled to maintain his composure Friday as he addressed a nation reeling from a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.
“The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said partway into a four-minute statement.
SINGAPORE: Daredevils can rejoice, as there are plans for a yearly public skydiving event to be held in Singapore, subject to authorities' approval.
The first of the plunges took place on Saturday above Sentosa, where 15 thrill-seekers took the leap of faith.
It was held in conjunction with Asia Pacific's inaugural indoor skydiving world championships, which runs from 14 to 16 December at iFly Singapore in Sentosa.
"The key thing about this tandem jump is to make the sports available to the Singaporeans," said Lawrence Koh, the founder of iFly.
"Skydiving seems to be very niche in Singapore, so we can show that we can actually do skydiving here, occasionally."
Some of the skydiving participants were children.
"As a tandem passenger, as long as you're (physically) fit, you can do it," said Pierre-Francois Vilquin, the tandem skydiving instructor at iFly.
"You know, we've taken people that are over 80 years old."
The event organisers had to seek clearance from agencies like the Defence Ministry, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and police.
A basic tandem skydiving package costs around S$1,400.
- CNA/xq
"If voting is done on the Bill in the House, I will reconsider my party's support to the government.... We will review party's outside support to the government," he told reporters here.
"The bill is anti-national and will divide the people. My party has opposed the bill inside and outside the House and will continue its opposition," Yadav said.
He said it was unfortunate that his party members who were opposing the "anti-people" bill were thrown out of the House.
Yadav said that he had asked the Prime Minister why he was not "bringing out the facts about the posts that will be captured by people" due to reservation in promotion.
"For just 22 per cent people, rest of the population including general candidates, backward castes and other communities will suffer immensely creating problem in society," he warned.
Yadav claimed that if the bill was passed "then no Prime Minister will get a cabinet secretary nor any chief minister will get chief secretary of any other caste".
The UPA has just over 250 MPs in the Lok Sabha after the TMC withdrew support from the government. The UPA is provided crucial support from outside by 21 MPs of the Samajwadi Party and 22 MPs of Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party, which is batting for the quota bill.
Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.
A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.
After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)
Published December 14, 2012
The FBI is in at least three states interviewing relatives and friends of the elementary school gunman who killed 20 children, seven adults and himself, trying to put together a better picture of the shooter and uncover any possible explanation for the massacre, ABC News has learned.
The authorities have fanned out to New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts to interview relatives of Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, who was one of Lanza's shooting victims.
The victims died Friday when Lanza invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and sprayed staff and students with bullets, officials said. Lanza also was found dead in the school.
Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died later in a hospital.
Six adults also were slain, bringing the total to 26. Among them was the school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, multiple sources told ABC News. Another adult victim was teacher Vicki Soto, her cousin confirmed.
In addition to the casualties at the school, Lanza's mother, Nancy Lanza, was killed in her home, federal and state sources told ABC News.
According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his house armed with at least two semi-automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a semi-automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bulletproof vest.
READ: Connecticut Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'
Lanza then drove to the elementary school and continued his rampage, authorities said.
It appeared that Lanza died from what was believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The rifle was found in his car.
"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dan Malloy said at a news conference Friday evening.
CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.
In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24. Identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the shooting scene, federal sources told ABC News.
Ryan Lanza soon took to Facebook to say he was alive and not responsible for the shooting. He later was questioned by police.
During the rampage, first-grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.
"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."
She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas. ... I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."
A tearful President Obama said Friday that there was "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."
The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were "beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10."
As he continued with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye. He has ordered flags flown as half staff.
It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the shooter turned the gun on himself. The carnage in Connecticut exceeded the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.
Friday's shooting came three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun on himself.
The Connecticut shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles east of Danbury, Conn.
The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said.
KUALA LUMPUR: World number 20 Sergio Garcia of Spain charged up the leaderboard to hold the second-round lead at nine-under through 12 holes at the weather-interrupted $2 million Iskandar Johor Open on Friday.
Almost three hours of play was lost to bad weather and play was suspended as darkness began falling, leaving 117 players to return at 7.30 am on Saturday to resume their round.
Opening round leader David Lipsky of the United States, who has yet to start his second round, shared the lead with Garcia after signing for a 63 in the morning.
Three-time Asian Tour Order of Merit winner Thongchai Jaidee of Thailand is six-under through 13 holes. He is among the five players who are three shots behind Garcia and Lipsky at the event, which ends the Asian Tour season.
Singapore's Lam Chih Bing returned with a four-under-par 68 and was one of only three players who managed to complete their round.
Garcia, who starred in Europe's Ryder Cup win in September, could only play three holes on the opening day. But he returned with a vengeance by snaring 10 birdies against one bogey over 33 holes.
"It was good. It has been a long day but it has been quite positive," the event's highest ranked player said in comments released by the organisers.
"I just hope I can keep going in the right direction and see what happens. Hopefully we will get lucky and can get all four rounds in."
Lipsky, who returned to complete two holes, did not manage to start his round but will head into the weekend atop the leaderboard with Garcia
Thongchai hopes to shake off fatigue when he resumes his title charge on Saturday.
"I'm happy with the way I played but I felt tired because of the suspensions. It was quite difficult to play on the course because the fairways are a bit wet. The greens are okay," he said.
"I played very solid. I think I played about 30 holes. I woke up at 5.15am and it will be the same tomorrow."
- AFP/de
Speaking to the media soon after his arrival on a three-day visit, Malik also promised to arrest Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed if New Delhi provided credible evidence about his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
"Pakistan and India have to be friends," Malik said, adding that this would only be possible when there was deeper people-to-people interaction among the two peoples.
He said because of the meetings between the leaders of India and Pakistan, the "journey to peace is progressing very well".
"For this, I must give full credit to my leader, President (Asif Ali) Zardari, the prime minister, and equal credit to the Indian Prime Minister and (now finance minister) Chidambaram".
He said he would discuss with Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde ways to facilitate the entry of Indians and Pakistanis into each other's territory once the new visa regime became operational.
"When they (Indians) enter Pakistan, they should feel they are coming to their own home," he said. "Similar should be the case when people of Pakistan enter India.
"We are all here to take the peace process forward," he added.
Malik recalled how the India-Pakistan relationship had soured in the immediate aftermath of the November 2008 terror attack on Mumbai that was blamed on Pakistani terrorists.
Asked about Indian demands for Hafiz Saeed's arrest and deportation, he said: "Just a statement from (hanged Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Amir) Kasab is not enough.
"We have to follow the law of the land. And of course (satisfy) the court ... There has been a lot of propaganda about Hafiz Saeed.
"I assure you that we are still investigating the (Indian) evidence. And if that evidence can stand the test of courts of international standards, I will order his arrest even before returning home.
"We have no love lost for Hafiz Saeed," he added. "Our intentions are clear. Whoever does a crime, should be punished."
"I come with a message of love and peace from the people of Pakistan," he said.
Malik said Pakistan had always condemned terrorism.
"We have lost 40,000 innocent people (to terrorism), 42,000 have become handicapped (in terror attacks)... We all want peace ... India has also suffered (because of terrorism)."
If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.
The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.
It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).
First, the good news:
We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.
Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.
Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.
Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.
We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.
And the bad:
Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.
Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.
We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.
Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.
To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice removed herself from possible consideration as secretary of state after becoming yet another player in the divide between the left and right.
Rice, who withdrew her name Thursday, has faced months of criticism over how she characterized the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She also has come under fire for her approach to dealing with African strongmen.
Rice became a target for conservatives when she went on Sunday morning current affairs shows such as ABC News' "This Week" following the Benghazi attack and failed to characterize it as a pre-meditated act of terror. Instead, she said it was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film produced in the United States and cited in the region as an example of anti-Islamicism in the West.
After it became clear that Rice's assertions were untrue and elements of the Obama administration may have known that to be the case, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Kelly Ayotte said they would do whatever they could to block Rice's possible nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
"This is about the role she played around four dead Americans when it seems to be that the story coming out of the administration -- and she's the point person -- is so disconnected to reality, I don't trust her," Graham said. "And the reason I don't trust her is because I think she knew better. And if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of America."
Members of the administration defended Rice. At his testimony before Congress, Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director, said Rice was speaking from unclassified talking points given to her by the CIA.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reiterated what Petraeus said outside his closed-door hearing before the Senate.
"The key is that they were unclassified talking points at a very early stage. And I don't think she should be pilloried for this. She did what I would have done or anyone else would have done that was going on a weekend show," Feinstein said. "To say that she is unqualified to be secretary of state, I think, is a mistake. And the way it keeps going, it's almost as if the intent is to assassinate her character."
Minutes after she announced her withdrawal from the process, Graham tweeted, "I respect Ambassador Rice's decision."
McCain's office released a paper statement saying, "Senator McCain thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that killed four brave Americans."
Over the last few weeks, criticism of Rice had grown beyond her response to Benghazi to include a closer scrutiny of her work in Africa, where she had influence over U.S. policy during the Clinton administration.
Critics of her Africa dealings were not partisan -- but included human rights workers, journalists and some Africans themselves.
Among the most serious critiques was the accusation that she actively protected Rwandan President Paul Kagame and senior members of his government from being sanctioned for funding and supporting the rebels that caused Eastern Congo's recent violence.
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.
Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”
Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12
Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11
Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11
Also in The Reliable Source:
Jenna Bush Hager announces pregnancy on ‘Today’
Hey, isn’t that. . .?: Steve Harvey; Max Baucus and Tim Geithner
Quoted: Marco Rubio on his hair loss
D.C. power players appear in new video portrait — but is it art?
Elizabeth Kucinich becomes a real-estate agent; will keep public-affairs job, too
Albert Small buys George Washington letter for $290,000 — but don’t tell his wife
SINGAPORE: The tender for a land parcel located at Sembawang Crescent/Sembawang Drive closed on Thursday with a top bid of $211.92 million.
The site, measuring 21,718.4 square metres, received a total of eight bids.
In a statement, the Housing and Development Board (HDB) said the top bid came from boutique developer JBE Holdings, while the second highest bid of S$210.1 million was handed in by FCL Place Pte. Ltd. and Hytech Builders.
Meanwhile, two joint bidders submitted the third highest tender price of S$208.5 million. They were Master Contract Services Pte Ltd & Keong Hong Construction and Peak Square Pte. Ltd. & Low Keng Huat (Singapore) Limited.
The lowest bid of S$184 million came from Mezzo Development.
The site can be developed into an executive condominium housing with around 650 units. It has a maximum gross floor area of 60,811.52 square metres and gross plot ratio of 2.8. The lease term is 99 years.
HDB said the decision on the tender award will be announced at a later date after the bids have been evaluated.
- CNA/de
"Shaheen and Renu have been invited to interact with the students and teachers of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They will be meeting with the professors and students of the institute Dec 21 and 22," Shaheen's father Farooq Dhada told IANS Thursday.
On Nov 18, police arrested Shaheen, who posted a comment on her Facebook questioning the shutdown after Thackeray's death Nov 17 and when he was given a public cremation the next day. Her friend Renu, who had 'liked' the Facebook comment, was also arrested.
"I am glad that I will be able to interact with students and teachers of the top B-school. Professor Anil Gupta emailed us and then spoke to us over the phone. He invited us to meet the students of IIM so that we could share our experiences over the controversy," Shaheen said.
On Nov 29, Mahrashtra DGP Sanjeev Dayal had said that a closure report will be filed in the case. However, it has not been filed yet.
The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.
The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.
"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.
Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.
The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")
Baby Pictures
The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."
These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.
The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)
"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."
John McAfee's month-long international run from police through two Central American nations ended with a flight to Miami, where the businessman who says he abandoned his fortune admitted to playing the "crazy card."
As a gaggle of media waited near several exit doors at the airport Wednesday night, federal authorities whisked the founder of McAfee anti-virus software off the plane and into a van.
"They said, 'Mr. McAfee, please step forward,'" McAfee, 67, later told ABC News exclusively overnight at a Miami Beach hotel. "I was met by a dozen or maybe fewer officers. I said, 'Am I arrested?' They said, 'No, sir, I am here to help you.' That felt the best of all."
He eventually snuck out of the airport in a cab and headed to South Beach. After walking down famed Ocean Drive to the bewilderment of tourists and eating sushi, his first meal in three days, he sat down with ABC News and admitted to playing the "crazy card" and says he is broke.
"I have nothing now," McAfee said. He claims he left everything behind in Belize, including $20 million in investments and about 15 properties. "I've got a pair of clothes and shoes, my friend dropped off some cash."
Just hours earlier, the self-made millionaire was deported by Guatemalan police who forced him aboard his U.S.-bound flight away from the home and the two women he said he loves. After he arrived on South Beach, he said, a mysterious "Canadian friend" ordered another man he'd never met to drop off a wad of fresh $5 bills that McAfee later displayed to ABC News, pulling them from his coat pocket.
He says he left his fortune, including a beachfront compound, behind after his neighbor Greg Faull was found shot to death in Belize on Nov. 10.
Belize officials said he isn't a suspect, but when they asked to question him, McAfee disguised himself and ran.
After three weeks ducking authorities in Belize, by hiding in attics, in the jungle and in dingy hotels, he turned up in Guatemala Dec. 3.
Barely a day later he was detained for entering the country illegally. As Guatemala officials grappled with how to handle his request for asylum and the Belize government's demand for his deportation, McAfee fell ill. The mysterious illness, described by his attorney alternately as a heart ailment or a nervous breakdown, led to a scene with reporters chasing his ambulance down the narrow streets of Guatemala City and right into the emergency room, where McAfee appeared unresponsive.
He now says it was all a ruse:
"It was a deception but who did it hurt? I look pretty healthy, don't I?"
He says he faked the illness in order to buy some time for a judge to hear his case and stay his deportation to Belize, a government he believes wants him dead. When asked whether he believes Belize officials where inept, he didn't mince words.
"I was on the run with a 20-year-old girl for three and a half weeks inside their borders and everyone was looking for me, and they did not catch me," he said. "I escaped, was captured and they tried to send me back. Now I'm sitting in Miami. There had to be some ineptness."
The man who many believe only wants attention answered critics who called his month-long odyssey and blog posts a publicity stunt by simply saying, "What's a better story, millionaire mad man on the run. You [the media] saved my ass. Because you paid attention to the story. As long as you are reporting, it is hard to whack somebody that the world is watching."
He denies any involvement in his neighbor's death but adds that he is not particularly concerned about clearing his name. He is focused on getting his 20-year-old and 17-year-old girlfriends out of Belize and says he has no idea what he'll do next, where he'll live or how he'll support himself.
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SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said he will carefully consider whether to call a by-election in Punggol East and, if so, when.
This follows the resignation of Michael Palmer as MP for the area.
In a statement to the media on Wednesday, Mr Lee also assured Singaporeans that he will make his decision based on what he said, "is best for the constituents of Punggol East and the country."
Mr Lee pointed out that Singapore is currently focused on several national issues.
He cited the 'Our Singapore Conversation', which he said is making good progress.
Mr Lee added the White Paper on Population will be debated in Parliament in January.
Separately, the government is also preparing for Budget 2013.
Mr Lee said his first priority is to ensure that the residents of Punggol East continue to be well taken care of.
"We have appointed Mr Teo Ser Luck to oversee Punggol East constituency, and Mr Zainal Sapari to chair the Pasir Ris-Punggol Town Council. DPM Teo Chee Hean, who himself is in Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC, will also take a personal interest in the welfare of Punggol East residents," said Mr Lee.
The Constitution does not require the prime minister to call a by-election within any fixed time frame.
The Workers' Party (WP) and the Singapore People's Party (SPP) have urged the prime minister to call a by-election as soon as possible.
And speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Meet-the-People Session on Wednesday, WP chief Low Thia Khiang said he was surprised by Mr Palmer's resignation, which he said was unexpected.
Mr Low also said it was not fair to draw a comparison between Mr Palmer's situation and that of former WP MP Yaw Shin Leong, who was sacked by the party due to personal indiscretions.
Mr Low said his party is ready to contest in the event a by-election in the Punggol East ward is held.
"It's premature at this point to speculate who will be the candidate. Anyway we don't know whether the prime minister is going to call a by-election at all. We'll let you know the moment by-election is announced. We'll decide who to field," he added.
Mr Low also said that in the selection of political candidates, no process was foolproof.
- CNA/ir
AMRITSAR: Rejecting assertions regarding the plight of Hindus, the Pakistan High Commission on Wednesday reiterated full commitment of the government of Pakistan in ensuring the welfare and well-being of the Hindu community in Pakistan.
In past there have been various instances of persecutions of Hindus by Islamic fundamentalists forcing them to migrate to India.
Recently the community was once again in grip of fear following demolition of Sri Rama Peer temple in Karachi.
The temple was allegedly brought down by a real estate developer. A statement issued by Pak High Commission on Wednesday said that "As equal citizens, the Hindus in Pakistan enjoy all the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan, including the right to freely practice their religion". It also informed that the government has taken important steps towards promoting interfaith harmony as well as for ensuring protection and promotion of the cultural heritage of all communities in Pakistan.
Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory
This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.
To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.
"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.
Full story>>
Why We Love It
"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor
Published December 11, 2012
The masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two and seriously injuring a third before killing himself, was trying to "kill as many people as possible."
The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall just before 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and heading to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.
Police have identified the gunman, but have not released his name, Sheriff Craig Roberts told "Good Morning America."
"We have been able to identify the shooter over this last night," Roberts said. "I believe, at least from the information that's been provided to me at this point in time, it really was a killing of total strangers. To my knowledge at this point in time he was really trying, I think, to kill as many people as possible."
Police have not released the names of the shooter's victims. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.
The injured victim, identified by hospital officials as Kristina Shevchenko, has been taken to a hospital, according to Roberts.
PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting
Craig Mitchelldyer/Getty Images
Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of Shevchenko, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.
"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University Hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."
Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager, ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.
By 4:40 p.m., police reported finding a group of people hiding in a storeroom. In a surreal moment, even the mall Santa was seen running for his life.
"I didn't know where the gunman was, so I decided to kind of eased my way out," said the mall Santa, who the AP identified as 68-year-old Brance Wilson.
More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, according to police. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.
"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."
Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are working with local agencies to trace the shooter's weapon.
Cell phone video shot at the scene shows the chaos soon after the shooting. When police arrived they were met head on by terrified shoppers, children and employees streaming out. Customers, even a little girl, were being lead out with their hands up.
"I think a variety of things happened that I think this could have been much, much worse," Roberts told "GMA." "And to give you some ideas, we got the call at 3:29, we had someone on scene within a minute, 30 seconds.
SINGAPORE: Changi General Hospital (CGH) said on Tuesday that Navy serviceman ME2 Jason Chee Weng Fai is still in critical condition and is expected to be in the Intensive Care Unit for a few days.
The hospital says Mr Chee has undergone surgery and is in the process of recovery.
The Weapon Systems Supervisor was injured on Monday when he got caught between a motorised winch and a rope on the Landing Ship Tank RSS Endeavour.
The serviceman was checking on a berthing rope that was being tightened when the incident happened.
The Singapore Armed Forces has said that it is investigating the cause of the incident.
- CNA/jc
NEW DELHI: The government will raise the cap on supply of subsidized cooking gas (LPG) to nine cylinders per household in a year from current restriction of six, oil minister M Veerappa Moily said.
"I think it is likely to go up definitely from six (cylinders) to 9 (cylinders)," he told reporters here.
The government had in September capped supply of subsidized LPG to six cylinders per household in a year. Any additional requirement is to be bought at market price of Rs 931 per 14.2-kg bottle.
Subsidized LPG costs Rs 410.50 per cylinder at present. Moily said the decision to raise the cap will be taken by the Cabinet "very shortly".
The original decision to cap supply at 6 cylinders was taken by the Cabinet committee on political affairs on September 13 and the decision to raise it would also have to be taken by the Cabinet panel, he said.
"I think as early as possible," he added. Moily said he has had two rounds of discussions with finance minister P Chidambaram on the impact of the decision to raise the cap.
The government will have to provide an additional Rs 9,000 crore annually if the cap is raised.
"We are working on that," he said on ways to mitigate the additional subsidy requirement. "We are working on certain formula to neutralise it," Moily said.
Thomas K. Grose in London
The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.
As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.
In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")
A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.
Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."
The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")
Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."
A Big Role for Gas
If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")
The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.
As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.
Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.
The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")
A Tougher Road
But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.
A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.
Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.
Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."
In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.
Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
Closing "corporate tax loopholes" sure sounds good to the average, non-corporate American -- so good, in fact, that politicians talk about it all the time.
House Speaker John Boehner's fiscal-cliff proposal purports to raise $1.6 trillion in revenue by "clos[ing] special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates."
The White House, meanwhile, has complained that Boehner hasn't offered specific loopholes to cut.
On the other side of the aisle, House Democrats have repeatedly offered up "closing overseas tax loopholes" as a means to pay for spending bills -- a plan Republicans routinely reject. In the last two and a half years, President Obama has often been heard griping about writeoffs for corporate jets.
For both Republicans and Democrats, "corporate tax loopholes" are an old saw. But, like most things in politics, raising revenue from "loopholes" gets a bit stickier when the specifics are hashed out.
A misconception about tax "loopholes," some experts say, is that they're loopholes -- gaps in the tax law that corporations have exploited against the law's intent.
Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
"Most of these proposals were not 'loopholes,' these were incentives," said Eric Toder, co-director of the left-leaning Tax Policy Center.
For example, take the research-and-development tax credit. During the campaign, both Obama and Mitt Romney suggested making it permanent.
"One wouldn't call the research credit a loophole," Toder said.
Cashing in by closing the biggest "loopholes" could be a politically fraught endeavor. To generate meaningful revenue, House Republicans would have to sign off on measures that raised it from taxing the overseas profits of multinational corporations, from ending immediate writeoffs of equipment purchases, or from ending a credit for domestic manufacturing.
When the Joint Committee on Taxation scored some of these provisions, as part of a tax-reform bill pushed by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and then-GOP-senator Judd Gregg, it found the government could save significantly:
Savings Over 10 Years: 2011-2021
Taxing Overseas Profits of Multinational Corps: $582.7 billion. In other words, the "overseas tax loophole" Democrats are fond of trashing. While most countries with large economies tax only profits made at home, the U.S. code taxes all income everywhere. To offset the different, U.S. multinational corporations receive credits to prevent double taxing. They also can defer paying any tax on foreign income, until they transfer the money back to the United States.
Taxing that profit could generate significant revenue. But this could be controversial, and large corporations would fight it. A senior aide to one business lobbying group said ending foreign-income deferral would amount to double-taxing U.S. companies and put them at a disadvantage to foreign competitors; one supporter of ending deferral suggested U.S. companies have been able to hide profits overseas, avoiding taxes altogether.
SINGAPORE: A group of workers, including 13 Singaporeans, gathered at their security firm on Monday morning demanding for payment of their wages.
21 local and Malaysian workers accused Elk Security for failing to pay their wages on time as well as contribute to their CPF accounts.
Following discussions between the Manpower Ministry (MOM) and the firm, all parties agreed that the November salaries will be paid on December 11.
MOM said there was a delay in the payment of the workers' salary for the month of November as the company director was overseas and the cheques could not be issued on time.
The ministry will also be investigating the employers for possible offences under the Employment Act.
- CNA/lp
"The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030," says the fifth installment in the US National Intelligence Council's series aimed at providing a framework for thinking about the future released here Monday.
The report "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds," released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the apex body of 16 US intelligence agencies, says China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030.
"In a tectonic shift, the health of the global economy increasingly will be linked to how well the developing world does-more so than the traditional West," the report said.
"In addition to China, India, and Brazil, regional players such as Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey will become especially important to the global economy.
"Meanwhile, the economies of Europe, Japan, and Russia are likely to continue their slow relative declines," the report said.
Despite their growing economic clout, developing countries will face their own challenges, especially in their efforts to continue the momentum behind their rapid economic growth, it said.
With slowing growth China "faces the prospect of being trapped in middle-income status, with its per capita income not continuing to increase to the level of the world's advanced economies."
"India faces many of the same problems and traps accompanying rapid growth as China: large inequities between rural and urban sectors and within society; increasing constraints on resources such as water; and a need for greater investment in science and technology to continue to move its economy up the value chain," the report said.
"Insufficient natural resources - such as water and arable land - in many of the same countries that will have disproportionate levels of young men increase the risks of intrastate conflict breaking out, particularly in Sub-Saharan African and South and East Asian countries, including China and India," it said.
"Three different baskets of risks could conspire to increase the chances of an outbreak of interstate conflict: changing calculations of key players- particularly China, India, and Russia; increasing contention over resource issues; and a wider spectrum of more accessible instruments of war."
South Asia, the report said: "faces a series of internal and external shocks during the next 15-20 years. Low growth, rising food prices, and energy shortages will pose stiff challenges to governance in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
"Afghanistan's and Pakistan's youth bulges are large-similar in size to those found in many African countries. When these youth bulges are combined with a slow-growing economy, they portend increased instability."
However, it said, "India is in a better position, benefiting from higher growth, but it will still be challenged to find jobs for its large youth population. Inequality, lack of infrastructure, and education deficiencies are key weaknesses in India."
How the United States' international role evolves during the next 15-20 years was a big uncertainty, the report said.
"Whether the US will be able to work with new partners to reinvent the international system will be among the most important variables in the future shape of the global order," it said.
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
The two Australian radio DJs who prank-called the London hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated last week said they were "shattered" and "gutted" after the nurse who answered their call apparently killed herself.
Shock jocks Mel Greig, 30, and Michael Christian, 25, cried as they spoke to Australia's Channel 9 overnight in their first public interview since Jacintha Saldanha, 46, the nurse who last week connected the pair to the duchess' room, was found dead Friday morning.
"I'm shattered, gutted, heartbroken," Christian said. "Mel and myself are incredibly sorry for the situation and what's happened. I had the idea. … It was just a simple harmless phone call. It was going to go on for 30 seconds. We were going to get hung up on."
FULL COVERAGE: Royal Baby
The host of the "2Day" FM radio show pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, asking for an update on Middleton's condition when they called up King Edward VII Hospital in central London. With no receptionist on duty overnight, Saldanha answered the prank call and put it through.
"It was just something that was fun and light-hearted and a tragic turn of events that I don't think anyone had expected," Christian said.
A Current Affair/ABC News
Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard.
Investigators have not said how she might have killed herself.
Greig cried today when asked about the moment she heard of the death of Saldanha, a mother of two.
"It was the worst phone call I've ever had in my life," she said through tears. "There's not a minute that goes by that we don't think about her family and the thought that we may have played a part in that is gut-wrenching."
The DJs said they never expected to get through to Middleton's nurse and assumed "the same phone calls had been made 100 times that morning," Christian said.
Grieg said, "We wanted to be hung up on with our silly voices and wanted a 20-second segment to air of us doing stupid voice. … Not for a second did we expect to even speak to Kate or even have a conversation with anyone at the hospital. We wanted to be hung up on."
The global backlash against the duo has been fierce, from online death threats to calls for prison time. Their radio station has announced it is banning phony phone calls altogether, and suspending advertising indefinitely.
Max Moore-Wilton, the chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, said in a letter Sunday to Lord Glenarthur, chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, that the company is reviewing the station's broadcast policies, the AP reported.
"I can assure you we are taking immediate action and reviewing the broadcast and processes involved," Moore-Wilton said in the letter. "As we have said in our own statements on the matter, the outcome was unforeseeable and very regrettable."
Greig and Michael have been taken off the air, silenced indefinitely.
TAIPEI: Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou on Sunday urged Japan to apologise for using sex slaves from across Asia during World War II, local media reported.
Ma made the call at a conference in Taiwan on sexual slavery attended by elderly women from Taiwan, South Korea and the Philippines who had been forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during the war.
"Historical mistakes can be forgiven, but the lessons of history should not be forgotten," Ma said, according to the state-run Central News Agency.
"I feel that such an apology and compensation can sometimes be (most powerful)."
Time is running out as the number of surviving sex slaves -- referred to euphemistically as "comfort women" by Japan during the war -- is falling rapidly due to old age.
In Taiwan, a movement advocating the rights of former comfort women emerged two decades ago, when a total of 58 former sex slaves came forward, but the number is now down to eight, according to the news agency.
Historians say up to 200,000 young women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.
The issue of a Japanese apology for using sex slaves is a long-running and contentious one.
In a landmark 1993 statement, then chief Japanese government spokesman Yohei Kono apologised to former comfort women and acknowledged Japan's involvement in causing their suffering.
But in remarks in 2007 that triggered a region-wide uproar, when then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said there was no evidence that Japan directly forced women to work as sex slaves.
- AFP/xq
MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.
With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.
This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.
"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.
Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.
READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage
A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.
The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.
In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Check Out Same-Sex Marriage Status in the U.S. State By State
It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.
While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."
Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."
Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.
"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."
Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.
Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?
"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"
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