Obama pays tribute to Leon Panetta at the Pentagon chief’s farewell ceremony

President Obama paid tribute Friday to outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, hailing him for presiding over victories against terrorists and the expansion of opportunity in the U.S. armed forces. In a speech at Fort Myer, Va., for the “Armed Forces Farewell Tribute” to Panetta, the president called the Pentagon chief “a man who hasn’t simply lived up to the American dream but has...

Read More..

Tennis: Czechs lead Australia 2-0 in Fed Cup

PRAGUE: Petra Kvitova and Lucie Safarova handed holders Czech Republic a 2-0 lead over Australia after the first day of their Fed Cup World Group tie in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava on Saturday.In the first rubber, Kvitova, the Czech number one and world number eight, beat Australia's 168-ranked Jarmila Gajdosova 7-6 (7/2), 6-3 in an hour and 35 minutes.Safarova, the world number...

Read More..

Doctors to pay Rs 38.4 lakh for brain damage after fertility test

NEW DELHI: A compensation of Rs 38.4 lakh has been awarded to the family of a woman chartered accountant, who suffered brain damage and is in vegetative state since 1999 after undergoing a fertility test at a Hyderabad-based maternity clinic, by the apex consumer commission. The clinic and its two doctors were directed by the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) to pay the compensation...

Read More..

Space Pictures This Week: Sun Dragon, Celestial Seagull

Solar DragonImage courtesy SDO/NASAResembling a dragon's tail, remnants of a solar filament strain to escape the sun's gravity in an image released this week by NASA's Solar Dynamics...

Read More..

Storm Drops More Than 2 Feet of Snow on Northeast

A fierce winter storm brought blizzard conditions and hurricane force winds as the anticipated snowstorm descended across much of the Northeast overnight.By early Saturday morning, 650,000 homes and businesses were without power and at least five deaths were being blamed on the storm, three in Canada, one in New York and one in Connecticut, The Associated Press reported.The...

Read More..

Football: Kelly signs new Liverpool contract

LONDON: Liverpool defender Martin Kelly signed a new long-term contract with the Premier League club on Friday.Kelly, 22, is currently sidelined due to a knee ligament injury, but the England international has been rewarded for his impressive displays at full-back earlier this season.The day after team-mate Jamie Carragher announced he will retire at the end of the season, Liverpool manager...

Read More..

No anger over 'Vishwaroopam' row, it made me feel sorry: Kamal

HYDERABAD: The controversy over his film " Vishwaroopam" did not make actor Kamal Haasan angry but he felt "sorrow" and like Socrates, he would "sip the cup of poison" to speak his "freedom". Speaking at a meeting, he said, "I am not angry (over the issue), only (felt) sorrow, that in a great country, free country like India, an artist would be insulted so. Because, very rarely have artistes been...

Read More..

Mexico's Robust Wind Energy Prospects Ruffle Nearby Villages

Photograph by Mark Stevenson, APWind turbines tower over indigenous villagers who turned out to see then-Mexican President Felipe Calderón inaugurate a $550 million wind project in the state of Oaxaca in 2009.It was the start of new cleaner energy drive for an oil-reliant nation, but one that has upended lives in the region's native farming and fishing villages. The battle between new energy and traditional...

Read More..

Rescued Ethan Spends Birthday With SWAT Heroes

As a beaming 6-year-old Ethan said "cheese" for photos and played with toy cars at his birthday party, there were no immediate signs of the turmoil the young boy had endured just days earlier.The boy, identified only as Ethan, was held hostage in a nearly week-long standoff in Alabama. He was physically unharmed after Jimmy Lee Dykes kidnapped him from a school bus and held...

Read More..

War crimes court wants Gaddafi spy chief handed over

THE HAGUE: International Criminal Court judges on Thursday demanded Libya hand over Muammar Gaddafi's former spy chief Abdullah Senussi to face charges of crimes against humanity.The latest broadside in the legal tug-of-war between The Hague-based ICC and Tripoli over where Senussi and Gaddafi's son Seif al-Islam should be tried repeated a demand for Senussi to be handed over.The ICC "orders...

Read More..

SC pulls up CBI in Babri Masjid demolition case

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Thursday pulled up the CBI for its submission that BJP leader LK Advani and other party leaders present at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, had committed a "national crime" in the conspiracy that led to demolition of the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid structure. Taking a dim view of the submission, a bench of Justice H.L. Dattu and Justice Ranjan Gogoi said that...

Read More..

Severed Heads Were Sacrifices in Ancient Mexico

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of more than 150 skulls from an ancient shrine in central Mexico—evidence of one of the largest mass sacrifices of humans in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica.The skulls, many facing east, lay beneath a crude, slightly elevated mound of crushed stone on what was once an artificial island in a vast shallow lake, now completely dry."The site is barely a bump...

Read More..

Ex-LA Cop Sought in Shootings of 3 Cops, 2 Slayings

Police in Southern California say they suspect that a fired cop is connected to the shootings -- one fatal -- of three police officers this morning, as well as the weekend slayings of an assistant women's college basketball coach and her fiancé in what cops believe are acts of revenge against the LAPD, as suggested in the suspect's online manifesto.Former police officer Christopher...

Read More..

Boeing 787 probe results weeks away, says NTSB chief

WASHINGTON: The results of the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into the causes of a battery fire on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner are expected in the coming weeks, NTSB chair Deborah Hersman said on Wednesday."We're probably weeks away from being able to tell people what happened and what needs to be changed," Hersman said at a news conference.The NTSB chief said investigators...

Read More..

Notice to Buddhadeb for questioning Mamata's honesty

KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress Wednesday slapped a legal notice on former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and demanded an apology from him for questioning his successor Mamata Banerjee's honesty. The notice, sent by lawyer Rajdeep Mazumdar following the directive of the party's all India general secretary Mukul Roy, asked Bhattacharjee to apologise publicly within 48 hours for...

Read More..

The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues...

Read More..

US Postal Service to End Saturday Mail Delivery

Feb 6, 2013 8:28am Weekend mail delivery is about to come to an end.The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays, but will continue to deliver packages six days a week, the USPS announced at a news conference this morning.While post offices that open on Saturdays will continue to do so, the initiative, which is expected to begin the week of August...

Read More..

Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks. In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director...

Read More..

BP profits slide on US oil spill fallout

LONDON: British energy giant BP on Tuesday said its net profits slumped by more than half last year on fines and asset sales linked to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, ahead of a US trial later this month.Earnings after tax tumbled 54 percent to $11.58 billion (8.6 billion euros) in 2012, compared with $25.7 billion in 2011, BP said in a results statement.Adjusted net profit,...

Read More..

VHP's PIL against Shinde's 'Hindu terror' remarks dismissed

ALLAHABAD: A petition filed by Vishwa Hindu Parishad against Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde's "Hindu terror" remarks was dismissed by the Allahabad high court today. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Shiva Kirti Singh and Justice Dilip Gupta dismissed in limine the Public Interest Litigation which had sought to make Shinde, the Cabinet Secretary and the Union Home Secretary respondents....

Read More..

Meow! Claws out on Facebook Over Killer Cat Stats

"Good for them, go cats!""Sorry cats but you've gotta go.""Do you get paid to write this?"Well, nobody ever said cat lovers were mellow. But I was taken by surprise to see the number (and intensity) of comments on National Geographic's Facebook page and Daily News website after I wrote a story about a new study on the hunting habits of the domestic cat.To recap: Cats stand accused of killing...

Read More..

Boy Rescued in Ala. Standoff 'Laughing, Joking'

The 5-year-old boy held hostage in a nearly week-long standoff in Alabama is in good spirits and apparently unharmed after being reunited with his family at a hospital, according to his family and law enforcement officials.The boy, identified only as Ethan, was rescued by the FBI Monday afternoon after they rushed the underground bunker where suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, was...

Read More..

Both sides of gun control issue turn to women as spokespeople and symbols

In the increasingly confrontational debate over the nation’s gun laws, two female archetypes have emerged. There’s the grieving mother whose child died in a shooting and whose pleas for stricter regulation seem unassailable. And there’s the flinty mother who wants maximum firepower to take matters into her own hands in protecting her brood. As Congress weighs President Obama’s agenda...

Read More..

Israel preparing for post-Assad Syria chaos

JERUSALEM: Israel has implicitly confirmed it carried out an air strike in Syria, sparking a warning from Iran, but the Jewish state's next step in anticipation of a post-Bashar al-Assad era remains a mystery.Defence Minister Ehud Barak told a defence conference in Munich on Sunday that an air raid last week that Syria said targeted a military complex near its capital was "another proof...

Read More..

India's reaction to Mali conflict differs from Syrian, Libyan crises

NEW DELHI: The conflict in Mali has evoked a very different reaction from India as compared to Syrian or Libyan unrest. Last week, India committed $1 million to the upgrade of the Mali army as it gears up to fight Islamists and fighters of the al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. In fact, New Delhi has even committed to ramp up its contribution to $100 million after the conflict in the African nation....

Read More..