In immigration debate, same-sex marriage comes to the fore

In his final legislative act as a senator, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sought to resolve an international dilemma. He filed Senate Bill 48, seeking “permanent resident status for Genesio Januario Oliveira,” a gay Brazilian national facing deportation because he does not qualify for a spousal visa. Now, President Obama is aiming to grant same-sex couples like Oliveira and his American...

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Tennis: Nadal shrugs off talk of return to number one

VINA DEL MAR, Chile: Rafael Nadal shrugged off talk of reclaiming the world number one spot on Saturday as the 11-time Grand Slam title winner prepared to return after a seven-month injury lay-off.Nadal, now at five in the world after not having played since his shock second round defeat at Wimbledon in June, will be top seed at the Vina del Mar claycourt event next week.But he is desperate...

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Bastawade gives account of how Koda siphoned money

RANCHI: Enforcement directorate officials questioning Anil Bastawade for the past two days have got vital clues on how the close aide of former chief minister Madhu Koda siphoned off money through the hawala channel. The mining kingpin allegedly involved in the Rs 4,000 cr scam, was arrested from Indonesia and brought to India on Tuesday. According to Times Now reports, Bastawade had confessed...

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Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, APThe magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg...

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Body of Missing Mom Reportedly Found in Turkey

The body of an American woman who went missing while on a solo trip to Turkey has been pulled from a bay in Istanbul, and nine people have been held for questioning, according to local media.Sarai Sierra, 33, was last heard from on Jan. 21, the day she was due to board a flight home to New York City.The state-run Andolu Agency reported that residents found a woman's body today...

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VA study finds more veterans committing suicide

Every day about 22 veterans in the United States kill themselves, a rate that is about 20 percent higher than the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2007 estimate, according to a two-year study by a VA researcher. The VA study indicates that more than two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are 50 or older, suggesting that the increase in veterans’ suicides is not primarily driven by...

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Apple is tops in US in mobile phones: surveys

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple dethroned Samsung as the top US mobile phone vendor in the final quarter of last year, claiming a record share of 34 per cent, research firm Strategy Analytics reported Friday.Apple shipped an estimated 17.7 million iPhones as "robust demand" for Internet connections on the move caused overall shipments of mobile phones to grow to 52 million in the United States, up...

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Time has come to think in terms of high-speed trains, Bansal says

NEW DELHI: Railway minister Pawan Bansal on Friday said it was high time to think of high-speed trains to cater to the increasing demand of faster inter-city travel in a growing economy. Considering the monetary constraints and high cost involved, Bansal stressed on the need to develop financial models for high speed train services to make them inclusive and a win-win proposition for all stakeholders....

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Best Science Pictures of 2012 Announced

Image courtesy Pupa U.P.A. Gilbert and Christopher E. Killian, U.W. Madison via Science/AAASA micrograph, or microphotograph, of a sea urchin's crystalline tooth won first place and people's choice for photography in the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.Colors applied with Photoshop reveal the interlocking crystals that form the choppers of Arbacia punctulata. The...

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Secret Video Shows Bomb Dogs Failing Tests

A new government investigation suggests that the Transportation Security Administration is not collecting enough detailed information to know if its bomb dogs are well trained and capable of finding bombs at the nation's airports, and includes secret video that shows the dogs failing tests to detect explosives.TSA has been testing bomb dogs in Miami and Oklahoma City and will...

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Wall Street Journal says hit by Chinese hackers too

WASHINGTON: The Wall Street Journal said Thursday its computers were hit by Chinese hackers, the latest US media organisation citing an effort to spy on its journalists covering China.The Journal made the announcement a day after The New York Times said hackers, possibly connected to China's military, had infiltrated its computers in response to its expose of the vast wealth amassed by...

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Manmohan assures Pawar over Telangana, says still to decide on timing

NEW DELHI: Formation of Telangana appeared that bit closer on Thursday after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reportedly said the government only has to decide upon the timing of the announcement. NCP chief and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar told reporters that Singh indicated to him that the ongoing deliberations in Congress were only about when to announce the decision. Pawar's comment was interpreted...

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How Drought on Mississippi River Impacts You

Woe is the Mississippi. A barge carrying light crude hit a bridge near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Sunday, causing an oil spill.But if you think that is the worst thing that's happened this winter to the river, you'd be wrong.The middle Mississippi—the 200-mile (322-kilometer) stretch from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois—is experiencing drought conditions unrivaled in the last 50 years. That's...

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Arias' Ex-Boyfriend Kept Affair Secret

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was kept away from the Mormon friends of her lover Travis Alexander and their torrid sex affair was kept secret by Alexander who was an elder in the Mormon church and was supposed to be a virgin, according to court testimony today.The testimony in Arias' trial for killing Alexander in 2008 was intended to bolster the defense's argument that she killed...

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Brazil night club owner attempts suicide

SANTA MARIA: An owner of the Brazilian night club where 235 people perished in a weekend fire tried to commit suicide, police said Wednesday, as the number of survivors seeking medical treatment after the disaster continued to rise.Elissandro Sphor tried to kill himself with a plastic shower hose, said senior police official Lilian Carus in the town of Cruz Alta 125 kilometres from Santa...

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Anna launches 'Jantantra Morcha', aims to change system

PATNA: Anna Hazare on Wednesday launched a new outfit " Jantantra Morcha" at a rally in Patna. "Now a change in the system is our aim. The change can be brought about by passing the Jan lokpal Bill and decentralizing power to gram sabhas and ward sabhas," he told a public meeting. The social activist said the new outfit would not join electoral politics and the occasion marked the beginning of the...

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Water Demand for Energy to Double by 2035

Marianne Lavelle and Thomas K. Grose The amount of fresh water consumed for world energy production is on track to double within the next 25 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects.And even though fracking—high-pressure hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations for natural gas and oil—might grab headlines, IEA sees its future impact as relatively small.By far the...

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Jodi Arias Trial: Defense Attacks Ex-Boyfriend

Defense attorneys for accused murderer Jodi Arias went on the attack today, drawing testimony from an ex-girlfriend of Travis Alexander in order to portray Alexander as an insensitive philanderer who was obsessed with sex.Arias is charged with killing Alexander in a jealous rage in June 2008, and her lawyers are attempting to convince the jury that it was a case of self defense...

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US Senate confirms Kerry as next secretary of state

WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Tuesday confirmed Senator John Kerry as the next secretary of state, approving President Barack Obama's pick to replace Hillary Clinton by a wide majority.The Senate voted 94-3 in favour of Kerry, after the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination earlier in the day.His nomination was pushed through the Senate in a matter of days, given...

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Intellectuals come out in support of Ashis Nandy

NEW DELHI: The paradox of a champion of social justice being booked under the caste atrocities law has prompted an array of intellectuals and artistes to come out in support of academic Ashis Nandy from India and abroad. They include Romila Thapar, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, Aparna Sen, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Charles Taylor, Rajeev Bhargava and Yogendra Yadav. Referring...

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"

French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier. But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several...

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Palin and Fox Part Ways, but Is She Really Over?

Sarah Palin's break up with Fox News should not have been, well, breaking news, as she had publicly complained in August on Facebook that the network had canceled her appearances at the Republican National Convention. And going back even further, Palin didn't give Fox the scoop in October 2011 when she announced she wasn't going to run for president. Still, the news of the...

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Bipartisan group of senators to unveil framework for immigration overhaul

A key group of senators from both parties will unveil on Monday the framework of a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, including a pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million illegal immigrants. The detailed, four-page statement of principles will carry the signatures of four Republicans and four Democrats, a bipartisan push that would have been unimaginable just...

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Cycling: UCI disbands independent Armstrong commission

LONDON: The International Cycling Union (UCI) announced Monday it had disbanded the independent commission it had set up to investigate any alleged involvement by the global governing body in the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.The UCI said it had pulled the plug on the commission, which only met in public for the first time last week, because both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and...

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Telangana Cong MPs to send resignation to Sonia

HYDERABAD: At least seven Telangana Congress MPs precipitated matters on Monday saying that they would send their resignations to party president Sonia Gandhi, even as ministers from the Telangana region said they would wait before they take a similar step. Their decision to send their resignations to Sonia and not the Speaker is being seen as an ultimatum to the Congress high command to act before...

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Urban Heat May Warm Faraway Places

The massive amounts of heat produced by cities may be heating up rural areas 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, atmospheric researchers have found in a new modeling study.Scientists have long invoked the "urban island heat effect" to explain why cities are generally hotter than suburban and rural areas. More people, as well as more cars, houses, and paved surfaces, turn energy into heat,...

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