Ron Barber defeats Martha McSally in race for Giffords’s former seat

PHOENIX — Democrat Ron Barber has won a full term representing Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, squeaking out a win over Republican Martha McSally and giving Democrats a sweep of the state’s three competitive races for U.S. House seats.

Voters decisively picked Barber to fill out the remainder of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords term in a special election in June, but last week’s election was for a full term and was so tight it took until Saturday before a winner was clear. Barber and McSally each held leads since election night, with a difference of only a few dozen votes at times, before Barber steadily began pulling ahead.

Read More..

Southeast Asian leaders meet in Phnom Penh amid tensions

PHNOM PENH: Southeast Asian leaders will hold annual talks on Sunday that are set to focus on bruising territorial rows, a controversial pact on human rights and deadly ethnic unrest in Myanmar.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit is being held following months of acrimony within the 10-member bloc over how to handle disputes with China over competing claims to the strategically vital South China Sea.

The maritime tensions are expected to be high on the agenda at the summit in Cambodia, as well as two days of expanded talks starting on Monday that will include US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

After Southeast Asian foreign ministers met in Phnom Penh on Saturday to prepare for their leaders' events, ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said the bloc was determined to lower the diplomatic temperature with China.

"Both sides, all sides, are committed to communicate... to the global community that things are under control. We have differences but we can manage," Surin told reporters.

As a confidence-building mechanism, he said ASEAN would propose to China that a hotline be set up to allow a direct line of communication in the event of incidents in disputed waters.

Rival claims to the South China Sea have for decades made the waterways, home to some of the world's most important shipping lanes and believed to sit atop vast natural resources, a potential military flashpoint.

China insists it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the sea, including waters close to the coasts of its Asian neighbours.

ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, also have sometimes overlapping claims to the sea.

Tensions escalated this year amid complaints by the Philippines and Vietnam that China was becoming increasingly aggressive in staking its claim to the sea, including by employing bullying diplomatic tactics.

An ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Phnom Penh ended in July without issuing a joint communique for the first time in the bloc's 45-year history because of divisions over how to handle the South China Sea issue.

The Philippines and Vietnam had wanted the communique to make specific reference to their disputes with China.

But Cambodia, the host of the talks and a close China ally, blocked the moves.

While Surin insisted that tensions had eased since then, analysts said the presence of Obama and Wen at the two-day East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh starting on Monday risked inflaming the situation.

The East Asia Summit brings together the leaders of ASEAN, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Obama is likely to reiterate that the United States has a fundamental interest in freedom of navigation in the sea and emphasise the need for a code of conduct among rival claimants, according to analysts.

China has long insisted the United States has no right to comment on the dispute. Chinese vice foreign minister Fu Ying warned on Saturday that it did not want the South China Sea brought up at the East Asia Summit.

In one of the major set pieces on Sunday, ASEAN leaders are scheduled to endorse a pact they say will enshrine human right protections for the bloc's 600 million people.

However the pact, drafts of which have been released to the media, has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups which say it allows loopholes for governments.

ASEAN's members have a wide range of political systems, from authoritarian regimes in Vietnam and Laos at one end of the spectrum to the freewheeling democracy of the Philippines at the other.

And even as the rights pact is signed, ASEAN leaders will on Sunday have to focus on sectarian violence in Myanmar's Rakhine that has left 180 dead since June.

Surin said ASEAN foreign ministers discussed the unrest on Saturday, with some expressing concern about the situation and whether it would impact the political transformation underway in Myanmar away from military rule.

- AFP/de

Read More..

Bodoland Territorial Council member held with weapons, 5 more killed

GUWAHATI: Assam Police have arrested a key administrator of Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) with two AK 47s and ammunition hours after five villagers were shot dead in Kokrajhar on Friday night. Since November 10, 11 persons have died in renewed ethnic violence.

Unidentified gunmen raided Jiabari village near Kokrajhar at 11.30 pm on Friday night and shot dead four of a family, including three women, and left a child injured. Another woman, who was shot earlier in the evening at Barkhas Nalbari, also died at a Bilasipara hospital. In curfew-bound Kokrajhar, miscreants fired at a Special Police Officer (SPO) while he was guarding National Highway 31 at Serfanguri at 6 pm on Saturday and snatched away his self- loading rifle. The SPO, Biraj Das, has been admitted to a private hospital in Bongaigaon in a critical condition.

Police have also imposed restrictions on use of personal security by all members of the council, most of whom are of Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT), which was disbanded in 2003 following the peace accord. They later floated the Bodoland People's Front (BPF) which is power in the council since then. The ministry of home affairs on Friday sent an advisory to the state government to seize a large number of illegal weapons in Bodo pockets to contain unabated violence. "Chief minister Tarun Gogoi has asked the police to go all out to bring the situation under control. Police are on zero-tolerance mode," a top government official said.

Police have sent the two weapons recovered from BTC executive member Mono Kumar Brahma's house to the forensic laboratory to verify if they were used in the recent incidents. Two magazines and 60 rounds of ammunition have also been recovered along with the two guns. "We had information about illegal weapons with Brahma and we raided his house and found them. Brahma has been sent to 2-day police custody by a local court," police said.

DGP Jayanto Narayan Choudhury, while talking about the crackdown, said there are at least 100 illegal sophisticated weapons and a large number of countrymade weapons in use.

The police administration also extended its crackdown in pulling out house guards attached to executive members of the council, most of who are former members of now disbanded Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT). "The extra security cover of these leaders has been pulled out. The security personnel, who will remain attached to them, have been asked to be in uniform while on duty and will no longer be armed with AK series rifles. Instead, they will be given 303 rifles and carbines," a home department source said. Security cover allocated to the council's chief executive member Hagrama Mohilary, his deputy Khampa Borgoyari and transport minister Chandan Brahma have not been changed, the source added.

The Bodoland People's Front (BPF), in which Mono Kumar Brahma is a senior leader, is an ally of the Congress in the state government. Brahma's arrest, however, has not evoked any mass reaction. Senior BPF leader Chandan Brahma, who is the transport minister, said, "This is not good. I smell a conspiracy. Mono Kumar Brahma is not the person to possess a weapon. He is a senior leader of BPF and has been actively involved in rehabilitation of people displaced in the July violence." CM Tarun Gogoi refused to link Brahma's arrest to any impact on the alliance. "Brahma has been arrested because some illegal weapons have been recovered from his house. This will have no impact on our alliance with BPF."

Read More..

Lonesome George Not the Last of His Kind, After All?

The tide may be turning for the rare subspecies of giant tortoise thought to have gone extinct when its last known member, the beloved Lonesome George, died in June.

A new study by Yale University researchers reveals that DNA from George's ancestors lives on—and that more of his kind may still be alive in a remote area of Ecuador's Galápagos Islands.

This isn't the first time Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni has been revived: The massive reptiles were last seen in 1906 and considered extinct until the 1972 discovery of Lonesome George, then around 60 years old, on Pinta Island. The population had been wiped out by human settlers, who overharvested the tortoises for meat and introduced goats and pigs that destroyed the tortoises' habitat and much of the island's vegetation.

Now, in an area known as Volcano Wolf—on the secluded northern tip of Isabela, another Galápagos island—the researchers have identified 17 hybrid descendants of C.n. abingdoni within a population of 1,667 tortoises.

Genetic testing identified three males, nine females, and five juveniles (under the age of 20) with DNA from C.n. abingdoni. The presence of juveniles suggests that purebred specimens may exist on the island too, the researchers said.

"Even the parents of some of the older individuals may still be alive today, given that tortoises live for so long and that we detected high levels of ancestry in a few of these hybrids," Yale evolutionary biologist Danielle Edwards said.

(See pictures of Galápagos animals.)

Galápagos Castaways

How did Lonesome George's relatives end up some 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Pinta Island? Edwards said ocean currents, which would have carried the tortoises to other areas, had nothing to do with it. Instead, she thinks humans likely transported the animals.

Crews on 19th-century whaling and naval vessels hunted accessible islands like Pinta for oil and meat, carrying live tortoises back to their ships.

Tortoises can survive up to 12 months without food or water because of their slow metabolisms, making the creatures a useful source of meat to stave off scurvy on long sea voyages. But during naval conflicts, the giant tortoises—which weighed between 200 and 600 pounds (90 and 270 kilograms) each—were often thrown overboard to lighten the ship's load.

That could also explain why one of the Volcano Wolf tortoises contains DNA from the tortoise species Chelonoidis elephantopus, which is native to another island, as a previous study revealed. That species is also extinct in its native habitat, Floreana Island.

(Related: "No Lovin' for Lonesome George.")

Life After Extinction?

Giant tortoises are essential to the Galápagos Island ecosystem, Edwards said. They scatter soil and seeds, and their eating habits help maintain the population balance of woody vegetation and cacti. Now, scientists have another chance to save C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus.

With a grant from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, which also helped fund the current study, the researchers plan to return to Volcano Wolf's rugged countryside to collect hybrid tortoises—and purebreds, if the team can find them—and begin a captive-breeding program. (National Geographic News is part of the Society.)

If all goes well, both C.n. abingdoni and C. elephantopus may someday be restored to their wild homes in the Galápagos. (Learn more about the effort to revive the Floreana Galápagos tortoises.)

"The word 'extinction' signifies the point of no return," senior research scientist Adalgisa Caccone wrote in the team's grant proposal. "Yet new technology can sometimes provide hope in challenging the irrevocable nature of this concept."

More: "Galápagos Expedition Journal: Face to Face With Giant Tortoises" >>

The new Lonesome George study was published by the journal Biological Conservation.

Read More..

GOP Mourning for Mitt Romney? Not So Much

Republicans are over it.

And most of them aren't doing much mourning for Mitt Romney.

Just over a week since the two-time Republican presidential hopeful failed to deny President Obama a second term, instead of offering up condolences for a candidate who garnered 48 percent of the popular vote, GOP leaders seem to be keeping Romney at arm's length.

"I've never run for president -- I've lost elections but never for the presidency -- and I'm sure it stings terribly," New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview Friday morning with MSNBC, but added: "When you lose, you lost."

New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, an early endorser and a frequent presence by Romney's side on the campaign trail, echoed Christie.

"The campaign is over," she said in an MSNBC interview on Thursday, "and what the voters are looking for us to do is to accept their votes and go forward."

A period of blame and soul-searching was inevitable for Republicans after Nov. 6, but Romney hastened it with his candid comments on a conference call with donors this week in which he attributed President Obama's win to the "gifts" he gave to key voting blocs.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Specifically, Romney told some of his top campaign contributors that he lost because, in his words, "what the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked."

According to Romney, some of the best "gifts" went to Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly supported President Obama.

"One, he gave them a big gift on immigration with the Dream Act amnesty program, which was obviously very, very popular with Hispanic voters, and then No. 2 was Obamacare," Romney said on a conference call, audio of which was obtained by ABC News.

It took almost no time for GOP leaders to disavow Romney's assessment.

"I don't think that represents where we are as a party and where we're going as a party," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, said at a press conference at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas earlier this week. "If we're going to continue to be a competitive party and win elections on the national stage and continue to fight for our conservative principles, we need two messages to get out loudly and clearly: One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the votes, and second, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American dream."

Ayotte also refused to give Romney any cover: "I don't agree with the comments."

Neither did former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, one of Romney's primary rivals who went on to become one of his most ardent surrogates.

"I don't think it's as simple as saying the president gave out gifts," he said in an interview with C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program that is set to air this weekend.

Pawlenty said that President Obama "just tactically did a better job getting out the vote in his campaign" and "at least at the margins, was better able to connect with people in this campaign."

His view is backed up by the national exit polls, which show that 53 percent of voters said that President Obama was "more in touch" with people like them compared with 43 percent who said the same of Romney.

Read More..