India sex scandal guru arrested

Police in India say a controversial Hindu holy man facing charges of obscenity has been arrested.

Nithyananda Swami was detained in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh where police said he had been hiding.

The guru stepped down last month as head of a religious organization based in the southern city of Bangalore.
His announcement came after a video apparently showing him engaging in sexual acts with two women. He says he is innocent and the video is a fake.

Nithyananda Swami has a huge following in southern India and his mission has branches in several countries, including the US and Europe.


"Nithyananda Swami was arrested at Solan [in Himachal Pradesh] along with his associate Gopal Seelam Reddy and they would be brought to Bangalore soon," the city's director general of police, DV Guruprasaad, said.

On Tuesday, the authorities raided the swami's sprawling centre near Bangalore.

Nithyananda Swami, 32, stepped down as leader of the global Dhyanapeetam (Knowledge Centre) organisation soon after the police inquiry was launched.

"I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion for some indefinite time," the guru said in a statement.
"If required, I will return and talk about all that had happened as an independent witness to my conduct with a clean heart and pure soul and in a less prejudiced atmosphere."

The video shocked his devotees and angered locals - his ashram near Bangalore was vandalised after TV channels broadcast the video.

The guru's followers allege the video was created and distributed by a jealous inmate of the ashram in a bid to defame him.

Rovos Rail train derails in South Africa

A luxury tourist train has derailed near the South African capital, Pretoria, killing at least two people and injuring at least 25 more.

The dead include a woman and her baby, who was born moments after the derailment, reports AFP news agency.

The train is run by Rovos Rail, which offers "unique train safaris" in its wood-panelled carriages, some of which have hot showers and air conditioning.


The nationalities of the casualties are not known.

"We are dealing with a mixture of foreigners and South Africans," said Johan Pieterse, spokesperson for Emergency Medical Services (EMS), reports South Africa's Business Day.


A spokesperson for Rovos Rail told AFP that most of its customers were from Europe and the US.


"It's absolute carnage," emergency worker Chris Botha told AFP.
"Some of the railway coaches are lying on top of each other and absolute wreckages.

"They had to use hydraulic rescue equipment to cut some of the people free," he said.
The train was carrying 55 passengers and had come from Cape Town.

The derailment occurred outside the Blue Train depot in Pretoria, says AFP.
The Blue Train is another luxury tourist train which runs between Cape Town and Pretoria, but only Rovos Rail uses restored antique trains.

Safety inspectors told AFP that it appeared the accident happened during the switch from an electric locomotive to the steam engine Rovos Rail sometimes uses to pull its carriages.


The part of the line affected by the accident has been closed until further notice.
The accident comes 50 days before South Africa hosts the World Cup.

Would you be scared to fly through the ash cloud?

As travelers around the world battle with days of canceled flights and disrupted travel plans, another war between the airlines and air safety authorities is beginning.

Commercial European flights continued to be disrupted for a fifth straight day as the UK Civil Aviation Authority told  that there were still detectable levels of ash in the air.
A spokesman from NATS, the British air traffic control provider also said that it would not lift restriction on air travel in the current circumstances.
This is despite growing pressure from air travel groups such as the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and major airlines that are criticizing the tough restrictions.
Several airlines including British Airways have recently conducted test flights and have said that the aircraft sustained no damage.
British Airways' Chief Executive Willie Walsh said: "The analysis we have done so far, alongside that from other airlines' trial flights, provides fresh evidence that the current blanket restrictions on airspace are unnecessary.
"We believe airlines are best positioned to assess all available information and determine what, if any, risk exists to aircraft, crew and passengers."
However, some test flights by military planes have indicated that the ash cloud does indeed damage aircraft.
Several Finnish Air Force F-18 Hornet fighters that flew training missions over northern Finland last Thursday morning showed physical damage to parts of the plane.
A post-landing inspection revealed accumulations of powdery volcanic dust in the aircraft’s air intakes, according to a Ministry of Defense statement.
Imagery obtained indicated that even a short-duration flight inside an ash cloud may cause substantial damage to aircraft engines.
We want to know what you think.
Would you be confident enough to fly through an ash cloud? Are you still too scared to fly?

Bomb strikes IPL cricket match in Bangalore

A bomb has exploded outside a cricket stadium in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, police say.

Five people - four policemen and a security officer - were injured.

The blast happened shortly before the start of an Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket match. Police say the device was hidden in the perimeter wall.

The match was scheduled to begin at 1600 (1030 GMT) with about 40,000 people in the stadium. It has now got under way.

The Chinnaswamy Stadium is staging a match between the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the Mumbai Indians.


The team's captains were walking out on to the pitch to toss the coin to decide who would bat first when the explosion happened.

Police commissioner Shankar Bidari told a news conference that the bomb was a "low-intensity" explosive.
"It appears some sort of explosive material was hidden in the wall, some distance away from the stands.


"Four policemen have suffered minor injuries and a security guard has been seriously injured," he said.
Mr Bidari said that a section of the perimeter wall had also been damaged and that forensic experts had been called in to investigate.

The game started after security staff carried out an inspection of the grounds.
Police commissioner Shankar Bidari told a news conference that the bomb was a "low-intensity" explosive.
"It appears some sort of explosive material was hidden in the wall, some distance away from the stands.

"Four policemen have suffered minor injuries and a security guard has been seriously injured," he said.
Mr Bidari said that a section of the perimeter wall had also been damaged and that forensic experts had been called in to investigate.

The game started after security staff carried out an inspection of the grounds.

Dozens killed in attack on Pakistan camp

At least 32 people were killed and more than 50 were injured in suicide attacks Saturday at a camp for displaced people in northwest Pakistan, officials said.


The attacks occurred about noon in Kohat town in the North West Frontier Province, said Khalid Khan Umarzai, a local commissioner.

There were two blasts from two separate suicide attackers at the camp, which is for people who have fled the military offensive in the area, officials said. Police said both suicide bombers were wearing burqas.
When people came to help those injured in the first blast, a second one went off, wounding and killing more people.

Pakistan military has stepped up its offensive against the Taliban in recent weeks, causing a flood of displaced people to pour into camps.

South Korea: External explosion sank ship

A South Korean investigator said Friday that an "external explosion" was the most likely cause of the mysterious sinking of a naval ship in which 46 South Korean sailors were lost in tense waters off the North Korean coast.

"There is a higher possibility of an external rather than an internal explosion," Yoon Duk-yong, the co-head of a government-appointed team to investigate the March 26 sinking of the corvette Cheonan, said Friday in a televised press conference.

The Cheonan's stern section, where the missing sailors were believed to have been trapped, was raised from the Yellow Sea bottom Thursday after a salvage operation that was made both risky and difficult by low underwater visibility and strong currents. The bow section is expected to be salvaged next week.
Of the Cheonan's 104-man crew, 58 men were rescued from the sea on the night of the explosion. Thirty-eight bodies have so far been recovered; eight remain missing.

Yoon's comment was based on a preliminary investigation of the stern wreckage. He added, however, that it was necessary "to make a detailed analysis, leaving all possibilities open."

President Lee Myung-bak has demanded a transparent probe into the sinking, which Defense Minister Kim Tae-young on Friday called "a grave national security incident."

While Seoul has avoided blaming North Korea, Kim has said that a sea mine or torpedo appear the most likely causes. The media has been rife with speculation -- theories aired range from an internal boiler explosion to a North Korean naval special forces attack.

On Thursday, Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based radio station that maintains covert contacts north of the border, announced that Northern authorities are calling the Cheonan sinking "self-inflicted."
North Korea's state-run media have been silent on the issue, and both South Korean and U.S. forces in South Korea say they have not detected any unusual moves by the armed forces of the hard-line state.
However, the Cheonan went down close to the disputed inter-Korean sea border, off which fatal naval skirmishes took place in 1999 and 2002.

If forensic evidence does point to North Korean involvement, it is unclear what moves South Korea could take against a country that has artillery ranged in on Seoul, and which is believed to possess at least six nuclear devices..

The United States declined to strike militarily against North Korea when the spyship USS Pueblo was seized in international waters off North Korea in 1968.

Nor did South Korea retaliate in 2002, when three Southern sailors were killed and their patrol boat sunk in a North Korean attack on the same day that South Korea was playing its last match of the World Cup.

Frustration as grounded passengers seek alternatives to air

Volcanic ash from Iceland severely disrupted air traffic across Europe for a second day on Friday, causing the cancellation of some 17,000 flights, according to the intergovernmental body that manages European air travel.

Eurocontrol said it expected around 11,000 flights to take place Friday, in contrast to the normal 28,000. The impact will last at least another 24 hours, Euro control said Friday morning.

The ash has spread to large parts of northern Europe and has forced the closure of some of Europe's busiest airports, causing more disruption to worldwide air travel than 9/11.

Airspace over much of the United Kingdom was closed to all flights except emergencies at least until 1 a.m. Saturday (8 p.m. ET Friday), Britain's air traffic authority, NATS, said. Select flights were being allowed in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and some North Atlantic traffic may be allowed to those areas, it said.

NATS called the situation "dynamic and subject to change."
Airspace was also closed over Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Netherlands, and airspace was partially closed in France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Ireland, Eurocontrol and local authorities said.

Norway's airspace closure included cancellation of helicopter flights to off-shore oil installations.

The French closure included all Paris airports, though landings were being allowed at those airports during a four-hour window Friday afternoon, the DGAC civil aviation authority said.

Germany's closure included airports in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Duesseldorf, Euro control said. Warsaw airport in Poland was closed, which may affect plans for world leaders to attend the scheduled Sunday funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski; a spokeswoman said Krakow airport remained open but had an extremely limited schedule.

Air transport and weather authorities all over Europe are working together and with the airlines to discuss the continued impact of the ash cloud, British Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis said.

 He said he would discuss contingency plans with key transport officials Friday just in case the situation continues.

The U.S. Air Force said Thursday two bases in England, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, will be shut down for at least two days. That meant dozens of U.S. Air Force F-15s and other fighter jets and tankers are not flying, and flights to Iraq and Afghanistan flying through that airspace are being diverted to other routes.

English Channel ferry operators and Eurostar, which runs high-speed trains between London, Paris, and Brussels, said they were experiencing an extremely high demand as passengers seek other ways of getting to their destinations. Adonis said Eurostar had added services to cope with demand.

Passengers who spoked at Heathrow's Terminal 1 seemed resigned to having missed their flights.
"I don't want the plane going down. This is really dangerous," said one man. "But I've been in some different situations over the years, and this is a new one."

One woman said she had missed a wedding because of the problems.
"Not sure if we're still going to go or not," she said. "I don't know that there's any point any more, 'cause we've missed everything the trip was ultimately for."

Those passengers stranded at Frankfurt Airport were being given food and supplies. Spokesman Robert Payne said authorities distributed 1,000 cots along with cold drinks, hot soup, bread, baby food, diapers, and toiletries.

Delta Air Lines canceled 65 international flights from its U.S. hubs scheduled over Thursday night and Friday morning in response to the ash cloud. The decision affected flights to Amsterdam; London; Shannon, Ireland; and Brussels in Europe and to Mumbai in India. Whether the airline resumes flights to such destinations will be determined later Friday, Delta said.

Air China announced the cancellation of most of its Friday flights to Europe.
Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific also canceled or delayed flights from Hong Kong to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Volcanic ash can cause jet engines to shut down.
It's hard to predict how long it will be before air travel can resume, said Matthew Watson, a geophysicist, at England's Bristol University.

"You really need two things to happen: You need the volcano to stop emplacing ash to the altitude that commercial aircraft fly at, 30-35,000 feet, and you then need the upper level winds to blow the ash and disperse it out of the airspace," he told.

How long that will take "depends very much on the volcano. If this is it and it's stopped right now and it doesn't do anything else... I imagine you are looking at 24 to 48 hours to clear U.K. airspace," he said.

The closures came after an eruption under an Icelandic glacier early Wednesday. The eruption under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier -- the latest in a series that began on March 20 -- blew a hole in the mass of ice and created a cloud of smoke and ash that went high into the air.

The volcano was still erupting Friday and producing a lot of volcanic ash, a spokesman for Iceland's Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management told.

"The volcanic ash particles are very fine and have been compared to flour and sugar in size," the department said Friday. "The flourine content of the ash is high and presents a health risk to livestock in areas where the ash layer is more than 1 centimeter thick."

Dust and odors were detected Thursday in the Northern Isles in Scotland, the British weather service, the Met Office, said Friday. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency is now analyzing the dust.
The Met Office said the volcano is spewing ash in "pulses," not a steady plume.

An emergency evacuation affecting 800 people was conducted near the volcano due to flash flooding from glacier waters, according to Rognvaldur Olafsson of Iceland's civil protection agency. The same people had fled the area the night before and allowed to return to the area early Thursday.

The ash wasn't necessarily visible in the air, but Manchester Airport spokesman Russell Craig said it can still pose a threat to aircraft.

"If you think about the way an aircraft engine works, it sucks in air, it compresses it, forces it out on the other side. That creates thrust," Craig told.

"If that air were mixed with ash, it can cause engine failure and electrical difficulties with an aircraft. It's happened before, and the aircraft didn't come out the other end in one piece."

Myanmar calls fatal blasts a terror attack

The government of Myanmar said three bombs caused the deadly blasts that ripped through Yangon on Thursday, an action it calls a terrorist attack.


At least 20 people have died and more than 70 others were wounded, a staff member at Yangon Hospital said. But the government says only eight have died and more than 90 others were wounded.

The blasts occurred at 3 p.m. local time during a water festival, part of the New Year's celebration taking place in Myanmar and other southeastern Asian countries. People toss water on each other as part of a cleansing ritual during the celebration.

Myanmar, formerly called Burma, is under strict military rule and such blasts are rare. Yangon, Myanmar's former capital and the country's commercial hub, is generally a crime-free and calm city.

Shots fired near Kyrgyzstan ex-leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev

Shots have been fired at a rally in southern Kyrgyzstan where the deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was addressing supporters.

Gunfire was heard shortly after Mr Bakiyev began speaking in Osh. An opposition rally was going on nearby.
A brother of the ex-president told that his guards fired into the air after supporters of the new government tried to disrupt Mr Bakiyev's rally.

Mr Bakiyev was ousted last week after protests that left dozens dead.


He has since been living in his home region of Jalalabad in the south of the country, where he has been trying to rally support.


Reporters at the scene said Mr Bakiyev had been speaking to a crowd of at least 1,000 when the gunfire broke out.

A rival rally of interim government supporters was being held a few hundred metres away.
Mr Bakiyev's brother told that the former leader had appeared on stage and was immediately attacked by opposition supporters, causing his bodyguards to shoot into the air.


The ex-president was quickly bundled into his car and driven the two hours back to his home village.
Kurmanbek Bakiyev fled the capital Bishkek on 7 April after protests erupted into violence, killing more than 80 people.


Interim leader Roza Otunbayeva has said Mr Bakiyev should stand trial over the recent deadly political unrest.

The ousted president has said he is ready to negotiate and prepared to stand down if his safety can be guaranteed.

DR Congo gang rape crisis 'spreading', new study says

More than half of the victims of rape in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo were gang raped by armed men, a report says.

For years rape has been used against women in the region but the report reveals the scale of the problem.
More than 4,000 rape victims were interviewed over a four-year period.


The authors of the report, commissioned by Oxfam, say there is also evidence suggesting a dramatic rise in the number of rapes by civilians.

It comes at a time when there is debate over how long the United Nations peacekeeping force should remain in DR Congo.

The extensive research, carried out by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, in the eastern South Kivu province produced shocking findings.

It shows that 60% of the rape victims were gang raped by armed men and more than half of the assaults took place in the victims' homes.


There was also evidence of a large increase in the number of rapes carried out by civilians.
Back in 2004, 1% of rapes were committed by civilians, the report says.


Four years later they were responsible for more than a third of these attacks.
The researchers say this proves that the scale of rape during years of war in DR Congo has made this crime seem more acceptable.

Oxfam says given the insecurity in DR Congo, it is imperative the UN peacekeepers stay.


The UN troops have been backing efforts to defeat rebels linked to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.


However research shows that when these UN-backed offensives are carried out, women become even more vulnerable.

The rebels and the government troops use rape as a weapon of war to punish civilians.

The victims face terrible stigma and this new study reveals that more than half of the women waited at least a year before seeking treatment.

War-torn South Kivu is home to five million people but there is just one hospital which can offer suitable help to victims of rape.

Oxfam wants the world's richer countries to help increase the medical services available for survivors of sexual violence in Congo.

Last year alone the UN says more than 5,000 people were raped in South Kivu.

Dust from volcano closes Scottish airports

All flights to and from Scotland's airports have been grounded as a plume of volcanic ash drifts across much of northern Europe.

Dust from the eruption in Iceland presents a serious risk to aircraft.

All Scottish airports have been closed and five EasyJet flights due to depart from Stansted Airport were canceled.

Search and rescue helicopters are still able to fly as long as they do not need to rely on instruments. Passengers should not travel to the airports.


All arriving and departing flights are currently suspended.

A BAA spokeswoman said: "Following advice from the Met Office, the National Air Traffic Service (Nats) has introduced restrictions to UK airspace this morning as a result of volcanic ash drifting across the United Kingdom from Iceland.

"These measures currently affect Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow airports which are closed but may also affect other parts of the UK later today.

"Passengers intending to fly today are asked to contact their airline for further information and should expect disruption in the coming hours."

Airlines also issued warnings of potential disruption.


An EasyJet spokeswoman said: "Following the eruption of a volcano in Iceland yesterday, an ash plume has entered UK and Scandinavian airspace overnight.

"As a result Nats have closed parts of UK airspace and this is causing significant disruption to all airlines due to operate flights to and from the UK today.

"EasyJet passengers are advised to check the website before they leave for the airport for any disruption information."

The eruption under a glacier in the Eyjafjallajoekull area of Iceland is the second in Iceland in less than a month.


Forecasters believe the ash could take a number of days to disperse.
Philip Avery from the Met Office said: "It is showing up on imagery at the moment, extending down as far as the Faroes but it looks as though the wind will drag it a good deal further south.

"Nats has good cause to be very cautious about this because in about 1982 a British Airways jumbo had the unnerving experience of having all four engines shut down as it flew through a plume of volcanic ash."

One passenger at Glasgow Airport told : "We were here at 5am and were told to go back home. We went home and phoned Thomsons who advised us to come back in because the flight was scheduled to go.

"So we've come back in and now we've been told to go back home again."
Another passenger said: "I'm meant to be going to Lanzarote. We've travelled from Oban, leaving at 3am. Now we've decided we might as well just go home and do a bit of gardening."

Aviation expert Jim Ferguson said: "Volcanic ash and airplanes do not mix.
"There was at least one British Airways 747 that turned itself into the world's biggest glider when it picked up a lot of ash over Indonesia and Indonesia had not notified anyone of the problem.

"The crew were able to eventually land the aircraft safely but there was an awful lot of people in the aviation industry thought they were headed for the water."

A Nats spokesman said: "The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre has issued a forecast that the ash cloud from the volcanic eruption in Iceland will track over Europe tonight.

"Nats is working with Eurocontrol and our colleagues in Europe's other air navigation service providers to take the appropriate action to ensure safety in accordance with international aviation policy."

At least 80 killed in India-Bangladesh storm

At least 80 people have died in a powerful storm that hit a district on the border of the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh, officials say.

The state's civil defence minister Srikumar Mukherji has left for the Uttar Dinajpur district, where the devastation was huge.


Mr Mukherji is personally overseeing relief operations.
He told that bodies were being found in the rubble of

50,000 houses that collapsed or were damaged.

Hundreds of people have been admitted to hospital with severe injuries as wind speeds rose to 160km/h.


"Most of the victims were buried under the collapsed walls of their homes," Mr Mukherji said.

The worst damage was reported from Raiganj, Islampur, Karandighi, Kaliaganj and Hemtabad areas of West Bengal.

Our correspondent says that the storm was followed by heavy rains that further added to the woes of villagers whose housetops had earlier been blown away.


Most of Uttar Dinajpur district is without power because electricity poles collapsed after trees uprooted by the storm fell on them.

Telecommunication links have been severely hit, railway lines damaged and roads closed in West Bengal and the neighboring state of Bihar, where thousands of homes were also destroyed.


Indian authorities say that medical teams and food supplies have been rushed to the area and temporary shelters have been set up for those who had lost their homes.

Officials say that the storm - which also killed two people in the Rangpur area of Bangladesh - was an extreme form of what is locally known as a "nor'wester" - a weather pattern that develops over the Bay of Bengal during the hot months of the year.


"The storm has damaged more than 11,000 mud, tin and concrete homes in Rangpur district alone - many of the houses were completely demolished. It was a huge storm and we are still assessing the damage," Rangpur district administrator BM Enamul Haq told the news agency.

In May last year more than 155 people were killed by Cyclone Aila, which hit West Bengal and Bangladesh.
The latest storm comes as nine of India's 29 states endure a heat wave which has taken temperatures above 40C in many northern areas.


The Press Trust of India reported that the number of heat-related deaths rose to 42 in the eastern state of Orissa since the beginning of the month, with another five people dying on Tuesday.

China earthquake kills hundreds in Qinghai

Some 400 people have died and thousands are feared injured after a magnitude-6.9 quake hit western China's Qinghai province, officials say.

The powerful tremor struck remote Yushu county, 800km (500 miles) south-west of the provincial capital Xining, at 0749 (2349 GMT), at a shallow depth of 10km.

Most of the buildings in the worst-hit town of Jiegu were wrecked, and landslides have cut off roads.
Police said hundreds of survivors had already been pulled from the rubble.


And at least one aid flight had been able to land at the local airport, according to officials.
Senior Yushu official Huang Liming announced the latest death toll of 400, as the extent of the damage became clearer.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that at least 10,000 people are injured.

A local official in Jiegu told that almost all of the buildings in the town had been destroyed.
"The death toll will definitely go up," he said.

About 5,000 specialist quake rescuers have been dispatched from neighbouring provinces plus tents, clothing and blankets.

Many people have fled to the surrounding mountains, amid fears that a nearby dam could burst in the aftershocks hitting the area.

State media reported that officials were trying to drain a reservoir after a crack appeared in the dam.
Most of the damage has been to houses built of wood and mud, but some larger concrete buildings have been badly damaged as well.

A spokesman for the local government, Zhuo Huaxia, told China's state news agency Xinhua: "The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic - injured people, with many bleeding in the head.


"Many students are buried under the debris due to building collapse at a vocational school.
"I can see injured people everywhere. The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers."

Another local official told CCTV that contact had been made with 40-50 people buried alive under the rubble of a government building.

Karsum Nyima, the deputy head of news for Yushu TV, told CCTV that houses had gone down "in a flash".
He said: "It was a terrible earthquake. In a small park, there is a Buddhist tower and the top of the tower fell off."

"Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members."
One man living in a town near Jiegu told that the damage was extensive.

"As far as I can see, not many buildings have been left standing... Because the houses are flattened, it is very difficult to dig out survivors or the dead."

Survivors are struggling to stay warm in the mountainous region of about 4,000m (13,000 feet) elevation where temperatures drop below 0C (32F) overnight.

Power and water have been cut off, and the road to the local airport is reported to have been blocked by landslides.

In 2008, a huge quake struck in neighboring Sichuan province, about 800km from Yushu, which left 87,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless.

The dead included many schoolchildren, prompting a storm of controversy over alleged shoddy construction of school buildings.

After the Sichuan quake, the disaster response was widely praised, but the source in Beijing says the remoteness of Yushu means this rescue effort will pose very different challenges.


Although the high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes, officials from the US Geological Survey said this was the strongest tremor within 100km of the area since 1976.

The Yushu region, home to 250,000 mostly ethnic Tibetans, is dotted with coal, tin, lead and copper mines.
The region is roughly half-way between Xining and Lhasa, about 400km from the Qinghai-Tibet railway line.

Tears in Poland as first lady’s body returns

The physique of Poland's first lady was greeted disguise tears and tulips after being flown family from Russia on Tuesday, also Parliament in charge a special observance in memory of the president also lawmakers who killed direction the plane crash.

Maria Kaczynska's body, rule a wooden casket draped disguise Poland's white-and-red flag, arrived in a military CASA plane shortly coterminous 10:30 a.m. at Warsaw's Okecie airport. incarnate was met by Kaczynska's uncommon child, Marta, and by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, her brother-in-law who was also the double of the tardy president.

Her daughter knelt by the casket and wept as a Polish honor ice stood silently by.

Kaczynska's habitus was therefore ferried to the Presidential Palace in the bring of a Mercedes-Benz hearse, apropos be entertained her husband's was Sunday. Even though Tuesday was a rush day, thousands of Warsaw residents lined the route, gently lobbing bouquets of tulips and roses on top of the black hearse.

"I'm here over it's consistent a tragedy for Poland," said Maja Jelenicka, 63. "I'm in despair. I feel since if I've lost a close relative. Maria Kaczynska was a wonderful woman, kind, hush up a heart of pesos besides a real crowing lady."

The populace of the paramount couple are to lie in state connections closed coffins access the Columned entry of the Presidential Palace, position the harbinger appointed and dismissed governments.

Poland's lead and first lady commit be buried Sunday in a state funeral consequence Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, the historic resting place of the country's kings and former leaders, officials vocal.

The body of Ryszard Kaczorowski, the live on eminence of Poland's government-in-exile in London, will be brought back on Wednesday and his coffin will probably again be domiciliate on public display, Borusewicz said.

Kaczorowski's family has asked that his coffin typify placed in the smaller presidential palace of Belweder, some 2 miles from the main palace.

Investigators have suggested that human error may have been to blame clout Saturday's appulse that killed the Polish president again 95 others, saying Monday there were no specialist problems shelter the Soviet-made plane.

The Tu-154 went down while trying to land influence dense vapour at Smolensk importance western Russia. organic aboard were killed, including President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of Polish political, military and religious leaders.

They had been caravan domination the Polish government-owned plane to attend a dolmen in the nearby Katyn forest for thousands of Polish military officers executed 70 years ago by Josef Stalin's secret police.

So far, 87 humankind deem been recovered and 40 of them identified, Polish Prosecutor general Andrzej Seremet said.

Girl found after 5 days in swamp

11-year-old is clever and well, but hungry and mosquito-bitten

An 11-year-old girl missing for five days in an alligator-infested Florida swamp has been introduce alive, police said.

Nadia Bloom, who is twist to have a beer form of autism, was said to represent moment belonging shape,but was tired, hungry and cloaked esteem mosquito bites.

The Metro sanctuary verbal Tuesday that one of its members break ground the child and a spokesperson for her family besides confirmed that jail bait had been go ahead alive again well.

Concern as the girl was growing after police exhausted every attainable end during an all-out search that began last Friday when Nadia mislaid from her Winter Springs neighborhood.

The piece would emblematize taken to South Seminole Hospital for a checkup.

Winter Springs officials had not been soliciting help from volunteers supremacy the search,but the Metro temple member, James King, and others from the church decided to carry out their own search.

"Obviously, we are ecstatic. Unbelievable good news," Church pastor Dan Holland said.

Holland told the station that a scout team of about 35 to 40 men worked through the night Monday. He said the searchers prayed, asking the Lord to lead them to Nadia, wherefore walked authentic into the marshland again found her.

"The hand of God ...," Holland told the news station. "However someone is mount alive, I don't excess baggage. We are just ecstatic."

Kyrgyz President Bakiyev 'will resign if safe'

Kyrgyzstan's ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has said he will resign if the interim government guarantees the safety of him and his family.

Mr Bakiyev has been in the south of the country since he was overthrown in violent protests last week.
The interim leaders earlier lifted his presidential immunity and said that they would arrest him if he refused to surrender.

Mr Bakiyev had previously insisted he remained the legitimate Kyrgyz leader.
But at a news conference in his home village of Teyit in Jalalabad, he laid out the conditions under which he would stand down.

Mr Bakiyev said he wanted "a guarantee that the roaming of these armed people ends in Kyrgyzstan, that this redistribution of property and this armed free-for-all stops".
He continued: "Secondly, if my personal security and that of my family and my relatives is guaranteed."

Mr Bakiyev said the interim government had to "start preparing a snap presidential election to be held within two or three months".


He said he would be prepared to hold talks with Roza Otunbayeva, the leader of the self-declared government, if she travelled to the south to see him.

It was unsafe for him to go to the capital for talks as the administration could not guarantee his security, he said.

Some 5,000 of Mr Bakiyev's supporters, many of them waving banners, had gathered in the town in Jalalabad, to hear him speak.

The ousted leader also repeated his call for an international investigation to be held into the violent clashes last Wednesday.

The interim government indicated later that it would accept Mr Bakiyev's offer of talks.
"Our representatives are there with Bakiyev," said Azimbek Beknazarov, a minister in charge of security.
He said Mr Bakiyev should say when and in what format the talks should take place.


Another security chief, Keneshbek Duishebayev, told reporters in Bishkek: "We are ready to guarantee his and his family's security."

But the Associated Press news agency said Mr Duishebayev would not comment specifically on the security of Mr Bakiyev's brother and son.

The ousted leader's critics had accused him of nepotism for installing the two men, among other relatives, in key government positions.


Mr Beknazarov earlier said a criminal investigation had been opened against Mr Bakiyev, and that he had until the afternoon to hand himself in to the authorities.

"We can see that the president does not want to step down voluntarily and instead is issuing calls for actions against the people," he said.

The interim government also announced on Tuesday that it had dissolved the country's constitutional court.
Mr Bakiyev's refusal to stand down had raised fears of further violence in the Central Asian nation.

More than 80 people were killed last week in the violent anti-government protests in Bishkek and other towns that ousted him.

The violence was the culmination of weeks of discontent over rising prices and allegations of corruption in Kyrgyzstan.

The interim government has pledged to hold elections in six months' time and says the security forces are under its command.

Buying beauty in Baghdad

Beauty salons are popping up on the scarred streets of Iraq's capital and as the violence recedes, more people are looking for cosmetic surgery to give them a lift.
Noor Aziz, 26, never much cared for her nose. "When I'm quiet I don't have a problem with my face," she says, "but when I smile, I feel like my face isn't pretty - so that's how I decided."
At 15, she got her first nose job -- one she believes was botched. So she's going under the knife again. To her, it's nothing out of the ordinary even for an Iraqi.

"The internet, video clips, television - we see that those who get surgeries done, they look prettier," insists Noor, "and that encourages us and gives us an incentive to get cosmetic surgery."
An increasing number of Iraqis are electing to undergo cosmetic surgery for one simple reason -- because they can.

And at a time when so much talk is about the changing face of Iraq, it's becoming clear that some here are taking that phrase literally.

Dr. Zakaria Mahmood used to work primarily on the war wounded. As a surgeon, he became accustomed to performing one reconstructive surgery after another -- a testament to the seemingly unending chain of wars Iraq participated in.

He said: "For the last 20 years, and maybe a bit more, everybody knows that Iraq was involved in many wars, and ... there's a big load of reconstructive surgery. We have to treat patients, injured patients, due to war injuries, blasts and everything, whether it was on the frontlines or inside cities."

Now, overall violence is down, but Zakaria has never been busier. Each month he gets more patients seeking cosmetic surgery. He believes he knows why.

"I think because they are watching TV too much. Now the international satellites have brought a culture, a new culture to our society," he said.

But it's not just television programs. In Baghdad, a city still pockmarked by years of war, more and more billboards have appeared promising beautification procedures for normal Iraqis. The signs are inspiring to some, disturbing to others.

Women's rights activist Yanar Mohammed says that while these types of procedures are still too expensive for most citizens, it's a worrying trend, especially for Iraqi women.

"In a society where you are bombarded by images from the media that you need to look like a model, your nose needs to be small and your eyebrows do not look good, you need to replace them by synthetic eyebrows and your lips are not big enough - you cannot live in peace with yourself as a woman," explained Mohammed.

Still, beauty salons are more popular than ever. At Ahmad Adham Beauty Center in Baghdad, the owner says business has never been better. And his clients, mostly women, are happy to spend their hard earned money to make themselves look pretty.

Nada comes in regularly to get her hair done.
"You know, the Iraqi woman has to take care of herself," she said. "She's known throughout the Arab world and throughout the rest of the world for her style, for her look, for her design."

And Nada, like Noor, doesn't have to go far for inspiration.

"We search the internet and watch the satellite channels," says Nada, "always looking for something special."

Scene of air crash stuns onlookers

When I go ahead the first-class piece of fuselage, I was shocked. It was flimsy, the bony metal easily twisted tote on itself.

Gray on one side, some deceitful on the other, it sat in a paltry puddle of mud a few feet from the road. I was half a mile from the runway, the tall silver birch trees nearby broken rejoice in accordingly plentiful matchsticks.

Somehow I brain wave planes were supposed to typify stronger than this, but what I was confronted shelter was an object lesson on the precarious appearance of flying. The evidence of what had happened was rainless. The aspect struck the trees, at number one germane grazing their senior branches again then their slender boughs and trunks. It was enough to rip the plane apart.

What feels midpoint invincible since sincere powers through takeoff and thrusts upward through the skies at hundreds of miles an opening had been reduced to shreds of metal, little further than a discarded tin can.

These are the thoughts that flashed through my theory in those first moments of discovery.

And that's when the horror of it sinks in. The reach regrettable moments for all aboard; it's goofy to imagine the awfulness of those booked seconds. I am swept by another emotion, malaise being the families, and I feel captured by an undefined grief. I knew no one aboard, but to see how their lives ended is to know a tiny fraction of the excitation their loved ones must bear.

But I have come forth to work, to interpret the story of what happened, to piece together the small bits of tidings we'll get, to make some sense of our corner of this bulky tragedy. So that is what my team and I do.

Tommy Evans, my producer, and Luis Grahame-Yool, our cameraman, get to business further set evolution the perfect valid shot. It's freezing in Smolensk -- professional are soothing piles of snow here also expert. None of us believe had powerfully sleep. Luis arrived 12 hours ahead of us, Tommy and I flew in from Macedonia. un docked of us took the 400km onslaught from Moscow to get here. Each of us tenacious on our job, each of us grappling with the enormity of the day.

No tide is ever normal , but this defies even that thesis. A president, his wife, divers of the country's top military, political and abbot leaders killed pull a country that's not their own. The implications could be huge.

As the generation wore on further more details emerged, unaffected seemed fine Russia wanted to make it confidential material was not at fault. Evidence pointed toward the pilots rather than a mechanical error.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is leading Russia's investigation, was on trek to lay blame at Poland's door. He has a reputation thanks to a bad autocrat, and incarnate seemed to me that's what we are seeing here.

But we got to see greater face of Putin, too: The stony-faced solemn friend of Poland. There seemed little invidious his affliction and preponderance as he stood at the foot of the Polish president's casket during the enthusiasm sombre repatriation ceremony we witnessed that afternoon.

Having stood among the wreckage besides broken trees as he has, it is not hard to perform that this iron man of Russian politics was on edge by what he saw. now who among us, however conventional hush up tragedy, could cold-shoulder to be touched by the regularity and nature of Poland's loss.

Obama to 'ratchet up' Iran pressure over nuclear plans

US President Barack Obama has vowed to "ratchet up the pressure" on Iran over its controversial nuclear programme.

Mr Obama told CBS television Iran was becoming increasingly isolated and the US wanted to enlist the help of "a unified international community".

Amid talk of new sanctions, he earlier telephoned Chinese President Hu Jintao to seek China's co-operation.
Their talks came as Iran's top nuclear official, Saeed Jalili, said in China that sanctions were "not effective".
"In our talks with China it was agreed that tools such as sanctions have lost their effectiveness," he told reporters in Beijing.


In an hour-long phone call with Mr Hu, Mr Obama had stressed "the importance of working together to ensure that Iran lives up to its international obligations", the White House said.

International sanctions would not prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear activities, he said.
Chinese officials have not commented after the talks.

China's foreign minister has said he still hopes the nuclear issue can be resolved through negotiations.
Western powers claim Iran seeks nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.


Speaking in an interview broadcast on Friday, Mr Obama said if Iran obtained the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, that would both destabilize the Middle East and trigger a regional arms race.

"We're going to ratchet up the pressure and examine how they respond but we're going to do so with a unified international community," he said.

During the phone call, Mr Hu had called for "healthy and stable" relations with the US, US officials said.
The two leaders also discussed Taiwan and the importance of implementing G20 agreements to boost economic growth.

The exchange signaled an easing of tensions between the two big powers, who have recently had high-profile disagreements over Tibet, trade and Taiwan.


But in the brewing confrontation between the West and Iran over its nuclear programme, China is now key to what happens next.

Earlier this week, Mr Obama said he wanted to see new UN sanctions on Iran "within weeks".

China, a veto-wielding UN Security Council member with strong ties to Iran, has in the past expressed reluctance to see new sanctions imposed.

However, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said on Thursday China had indicated it was ready to hold "serious" talks with Western powers on a new UN resolution.

In February, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a report that Iran's refusal to co-operate and answer questions about its nuclear programme raised concerns about the possible existence of "past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile".

It also confirmed that Iran had produced 20% enriched uranium.
Tehran says it needs the more highly-enriched uranium for a research reactor producing medical isotopes, but Western powers fear it is heading towards enriching uranium to the 90% required for a weapon.


The US and China have disagreed recently over Tibet and Taiwan.

Mr Hu had warned Mr Obama not to antagonize Beijing on the issues, China's foreign ministry said.

"Hu stressed the Taiwan and Tibet issues concern China's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and China's core interests, and properly dealing with these issues is key to ensuring the healthy and stable development of Sino-US relations," said a ministry statement. 

China was upset when Mr Obama met Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in February. It was also angered by Taiwan securing a weapons deal from the US.


The US has also supported the internet search company Google in its concerns over censorship in China, and other trade rows persist.

However, Beijing did allow the visit of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz to Hong Kong in February.


One issue where China and the US are in agreement is the need to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table over plans to end its nuclear programmes.

US enhances air security checks

The US has announced that it will begin profiling US-bound passengers to determine who should get extra screening.

The measures will replace mandatory enhanced screening of all travellers from 14 nations, brought in after the failed attack on a flight in December.

Travelers will be picked out according to how closely they match intelligence on potential terrorist threats.
The new screening strategy results from a review ordered by President Obama.


Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the new measures would use "real-time, threat-based intelligence along with multiple, random layers of security, both seen and unseen, to more effectively mitigate evolving terrorist threats."

An administration official told the New York Times the new strategy would more surgically target those individuals they were concerned about and had intelligence for.

"This is not a system that can be called profiling in the traditional sense. It is intelligence-based," said the official.


Passengers were told to expect increased use of explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, sniffer dogs and pat downs.


The measures will apply to US citizens, as well as foreigners travelling to America.


The US government currently has a 6,000-name "no fly" list of suspected terrorists, who are banned from flights to or within US territory.

This will be supplemented by cross-referenced information that may see passengers subject to further screening even if their names are not flagged, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The screening will take into account characteristics like nationality, age, recently visited countries, and partial names, the newspaper said.

While the US does not have the authority to screen passengers in foreign airports, it can sanction air carriers if they do not agree to follow US guidelines for international aviation security.


A 23-year-old Nigerian man - Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - has been charged with attempting to destroy a plane after he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb on a passenger jet arriving in the US on 25 December 2009.
Abdulmutallab was overpowered by passengers and crew shortly before the Northwest Airlines plane landed in Detroit from Amsterdam.

In the wake of that incident new rules were instated requiring extra screening for passengers from, or traveling through Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

U.S. Economy Added 162,000 Jobs in March, Most in 3 Years

The U.S. economy gained more jobs in March than any other month in the last three years, according to a government report released Friday.

The Labor Department said the economy gained 162,000 jobs in the month, compared to a revised reading of a 14,000 job loss in February. That makes March only the third month of gains since the recession began.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a gain of 184,000 jobs. But despite missing forecasts, the March number was generally not seen as a disappointment by economists, because revisions in January and February readings added a combined 62,000 additional jobs.


The unemployment rate remained stubbornly high, holding steady at 9.7%, matching economist expectations.
"The third increase in jobs in the past five months indicates that the labor market has begun to stabilize," said Sung Won Sohn, professor at California State University Channel Islands. "However, a sustained gain in employment is some time away."

While the news was positive, there were a number of short-term factors that inflated the reading, including an addition of 48,000 by the Census Bureau as it geared up for the once-in-a-decade headcount of the U.S. population. Some economists had feared that even more of March's gain would be due solely to Census hiring, so the modest gain was viewed favorably.

March's job gain was also bolstered by weather factors -- February's numbers had been depressed by temporary job losses related to severe winter storms last month.

Still, the report was good news overall for an economy that has suffered a net loss of 8.2 million jobs since the start of 2008, a month after the official start of the recession.

"Employers aren't looking at this and saying, great it's over, I can go hire," said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, a unit of the world's largest employment staffing firm. "But it's moving in the right direction."

Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the first quarter had an average monthly job gain of 54,000, compared to an average monthly job loss of 753,000 in the first quarter of 2009 when the Obama administration first came to office. But she said more needed to be done.

"It is obvious that the American labor market remains severely distressed," she said in a statement. "It will take sustained, robust employment growth to bring the unemployment rate down. Further targeted actions to spur private sector job creation are critically needed to ensure a more rapid, widespread recovery."

A rising tide.

 

Perhaps the most encouraging sign in the report was that the gains were spread across various sectors of the economy -- 60% of industries added jobs -- the most widespread gains seen across the economy in four years.

That rising tide of hiring brought relief to some long-suffering sectors of the economy. Construction added 15,000 jobs, the first increase of any kind in the sector since June 2007. Manufacturing also added 17,000, with 2,500 of that gain coming at auto plants and their parts suppliers.

Retailers added nearly 15,000 jobs and leisure and hospitality accounted for 22,000 more jobs.
"In a word, it's a resilient recovery," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute. "All these areas are stabilizing and moving forward. That's the hallmark of a recovery."

 

While the report was good news for job seekers, it also contained sobering readings for the depth of labor market pain that has built up over the last two years.

There are 15 million people counted as unemployed, down 607,000 since the record high hit in October, but still the fifth highest total on record. The average time those unemployed have been out of a job now stands at just under eight months, a record-long duration.

"For those laid off, unemployment is stretching longer and longer and putting severe distress on families," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, a New York-based advocacy group for the unemployed. "The long slog of looking for work and surviving on jobless benefits is going to continue for millions of Americans."

0:00 /2:30Jobs return to Harrisburg, Pa.

Almost 1 million more have become so discouraged that they've stopped looking for work altogether and are no longer counted in the unemployment rate.

But the number of discouraged job seekers fell by just over 200,000 since February, an indication that job seekers are also sensing an improving market and are again looking for work.
"Right now is the time when you're not wasting effort to hit the pavement," said Achuthan. "Employers do want to hire."

The average hourly work week crept up 0.1 hours in March, an indication that employers are restoring the hours of employees who had their shifts and pay cut during the recession. But there are still 9.1 million people working part-time jobs who want to be working full-time, up more than 250,000 since February.

The average hourly wage slipped 2 cents to $22.47. But the longer average work week lifted the average weekly paycheck by $1.57 to $763.98.

Taken as a whole across the economy, that will put more money into consumers' pockets and help spur more spending, which in turn should produce more hiring into the future.

Teenage widow 'likely Moscow metro bomber' - police

The 17-year-old widow of a North Caucasus militant is suspected of being one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Moscow metro on Monday.

Police in southern Russia confirmed that they had given Moscow colleagues information about Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, from Dagestan.


The morning rush-hour bombings killed 39 people and injured more than 70, most of whom are still in hospital.

Dagestan, like nearby Chechnya, is struggling to quell militant violence.


A police spokesman said Abdurakhmanova had been married to a leading Islamist militant, Umalat Magomedov, who was killed by Russian security forces at the end of last year.

He would not confirm that she was definitely one of the metro bombers.

But a photograph of her published in a leading Russian newspaper, Kommersant, does bear a strong resemblance to a picture of the remains of one of the suicide bombers.


Abdurakhmanova is believed to be the bomber who attacked the Lubyanka metro station on Monday, killing 20 people, Kommersant reported.

The second suspected bomber has not yet been identified.

Abdurakhmanova came from Dagestan's Khasavyurt district, on the border with Chechnya, police say. She is believed to have travelled to Moscow by bus with the other female suicide bomber, from Kizlyar, a town that is also near the Chechen border.


On Wednesday 12 people, nine of them police officers, were killed in two suicide bombings in Kizlyar.
In Moscow, the news that the attacks were carried out by women fuelled speculation that they were so-called "black widows" - women married or related to militants killed by Russian forces in areas such as Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya.


Black widows have been involved in several major attacks in the North Caucasus and in Moscow.


Unnamed Federal Security Service (FSB) officials say Magomedov was an associate of Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader who said he ordered Monday's metro attacks.


In a video message posted on a rebel website, Mr Umarov warned Russians to prepare for more attacks.
On Thursday Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew to Dagestan's capital Makhachkala to hold emergency talks with the leaders of Russia's troubled North Caucasus republics.

"We must deal sharp dagger blows to the terrorists; destroy them and their lairs," Mr Medvedev said.
"The list of measures to fight terrorism must be widened. They must not only be effective but tough, severe and preventative. We need to punish."

The attacks came almost a year after Mr Medvedev declared an end to Russia's "counter-terrorism operations" in Chechnya, in a bid to "further normalise the situation" after 15 years of conflict that claimed more than 100,000 lives and left it in ruins.


Despite this, the mainly Muslim republic continues to be plagued by violence, and over the past two years Islamist militants have stepped up attacks in neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Mr Umarov said the attacks were an act of revenge for the killings of Chechen and Ingush civilians by the Russian security forces near the town of Arshty on 11 February.

The rebel, who styles himself as the Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, said attacks on Russian soil would continue.

Sharing vs. your privacy on Facebook

Facebook is, by its nature, a social experience.


But as the undisputed king of social networking expands ways for its users to interact, it's raising more questions about how much of their information is made available to people they don't know.

In some cases, users may not even realize it's happening.
One example is the hundreds of thousands of developers approved by Facebook to create games, quizzes and other applications. Some of those developers are able to access basic information about users after a Facebook friend has started using their application.

Facebook provides pages of instructions on how people can tighten up their privacy settings to hide their personal information from other users and outside applications.


But some observers say that too many of the site's estimated 400 million users don't know how to do so.
Microsoft researcher and social-media analyst Danah Boyd, speaking at last month's South by Southwest Interactive festival, said none of the "non-techy" users she talked to about their privacy settings knew how they were configured.

"I ask them what they think their settings are and then ask them to look at their settings with me. I have yet to find someone whose belief matched up with their reality," said Boyd, a keynote speaker at the Austin, Texas festival. "That is not good news."

In January, Facebook announced that 35 percent of its users had tweaked their privacy settings after a December change that made more information public.

To be sure, that represents millions of users. But Boyd said that can't possibly be all the people who want at least some of the privacy features that Facebook's new default settings changed.

"Are there Facebook users who want their content to be publicly accessible? Of course," she said. "But 65 percent of all Facebook users? No way."

For Facebook, it's a balancing act. The site wants to give users the privacy they've come to expect, but at the same time make information available to create experiences that will compete with other emerging applications such as Foursquare and Twitter.

Twitter, as well as photo sharing sites such as Picasa, default to open access, making them more accessible by outside applications and search engines. Facebook's material that is public can also be searched -- for example, by Google's new social search feature -- while private material cannot.

"The experience that we're trying to provide through the Facebook platform is fundamentally a social one," said Simon Axten, a manager on Facebook's public policy team. "There are some really interesting and useful applications that have come out of that development that really allow people to have a social experience that involves the people that they are friends with."
Axten said the rules of the road for developers are pretty strict. Basically, developers are instructed to collect only the data they need for their application. Anything else could land them in trouble, he said.

For example, an application that lets users send friends an electronic greeting card might need to know their birthday or anniversary. Games that require players to work together must know which other friends play the game so it can send them alerts when they need to act.

Axten said Facebook can take "a spectrum of actions" when it discovers inappropriate use of people's information -- from warning developers who may not realize they're misusing the data to disabling a developer's access to the site.

No application can access a user's most sensitive data, such as contact information, according to Facebook. And the site announced late last year that they're working on a new approval process that will require an application to more specifically state what information it wants to access.

Mike Rasmussen is president of Republic of Fun, a game company with a crowdsourcing app on Facebook that lets users give feedback and advice on current games and, in the near future, to suggest new ones. He said Facebook's list of rules for developers is a strict one.

"Developers, if they were creative, could certainly abuse it," he said. "But with Facebook, it's almost not worth it. They make it so easy to get what you really need, unless you're being malicious."

Rasmussen said his application stores a single identifier for users and does not even keep their names. He said he's only heard "second- or third-hand" about developers getting into trouble for pushing the boundaries.
Evan Brown, a Chicago technology and intellectual-property attorney, said he's not familiar with any legal cases involving private information gathered by a Facebook developer.

He said Facebook's rules governing outside developers are designed so the site may legally expel a developer easily.

"They have the sole discretion to determine what the crime is, and they have the sole discretion to determine the punishment," said Brown, who blogs about Internet legal issues.

Facebook's Axten said a team monitors complaints, which users can file simply by clicking a link that's on every Facebook application. The team also regularly monitors popular and fast-growing applications and conducts random checks, he said.

And of course there are personal settings. A user can click the "Account" tab at the top right of their Facebook home page, then scroll down to "Application Settings" and "Privacy Settings" to make changes.
Increasing awareness about that ability is what Facebook and other social-networking sites need to work harder on, Boyd said.

"While you want your services to go viral, help users walk through the value proposition first," she said. "Not through a video, but through an experience."

No sex for teens

The health care reform legislation that President Obama signed recently isn't only about insurance coverage -- there's also a renewal of $50 million per year for five years for abstinence-focused education.


Programs that receive this funding must "teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems,"

according to the Department of Health and Human Services. To qualify, they must also teach that sex before marriage is "likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects." These are part of the "A-H definition," requirements for programs to receive abstinence funding under Title V of the Social Security Act.

"Title V is trying to make sure that kids are being given a message that saving sex and childbearing for marriage is the safest, healthiest, best choice," said Scott Phelps, executive director of Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership. Public schools hire educators from this organization to teach abstinence, and may use Title V funding for it, he said.

In Phelps' experience -- he started his abstinence education work in Chicago, Illinois, 10 years ago -- the abstinence message is embraced by kids, even some who have already become sexually active. "They didn't realize they could stop," he said.

Organizations promoting evidence-based sex education say it's troubling that this $250 million will go to state programs that have not been shown to work.

"Just the fact that we continue to pour money into programs that have no evidence of effectiveness at all just doesn't seem to us to be good evidence-based health policy," said Heather Boonstra, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive and sexual health research firm.

There have been numerous studies suggesting that it's not so easy for people to practice abstinence consistently. A congressionally mandated study in 2007 found that none of four abstinence programs showed a significant positive effect on sexual behavior among youth. A January 2009 study in Pediatrics found that religious teens who take virginity pledges are less likely to use condoms or birth control when they become sexually active, and just as likely to have sex before marriage as their peers who didn't take pledges.

Medical professional organizations also criticize abstinence education on ethical grounds, for leaving out potentially lifesaving information. Abstinence-only programs "are inherently coercive by withholding information needed to make informed choices," the American Public Health Association said in a statement.
Phelps' program doesn't teach that sex before marriage is wrong, but that waiting will enable teens to eliminate the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Students are taught that contraception, a "limited part of our conversation," reduces risk, but does not avoid it altogether, he said.

The law sets up a separate funding stream of $75 million for "personal responsibility education," which includes teaching about both abstinence and contraception. It sets aside an additional $25 million for untested but innovative programs.

Having separate funding for abstinence-focused and comprehensive programs "is a method that provides real choice for states and for communities, and we would like to see that model used across the board," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association.


But Huber's group is not happy that abstinence-focused programs get less funding per year than the other approaches. "We would like to see equitable funding," she said.

Abstinence programs have received federal funding through a program that grew out of welfare reform during the Clinton administration. The $50 million per year began in 1998 and expired in 2009, with restoration in the recent health care legislation from this year until 2014.

States have the option of tapping into the $50 million or not, but those who want it have to contribute also, Boonstra noted. For every $4 of federal money, states have to put up $3 of their own money, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

As of June 2009, 22 states, plus Washington D.C., had declined to apply for funds under the program, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

A study published in February in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that an abstinence-based program was more effective than other initiatives at keeping sixth- and seventh-graders from having sex within a two-year period.

Rather than asking students to delay intercourse until marriage, however, the program told students to wait until they were ready. It also did not portray sex in a negative light.

For these reasons, it is unclear whether that program would qualify for funding from the $50 million allocated in the health care bill, because it does not fit the A-H definition, said Bill Albert of the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Boonstra agreed that it would likely not fit this category, as it differs from the programs that have received funding in the past. Huber said she thought it would qualify, although she has not seen the curriculum.

It's better to invest taxpayer dollars into what works, Albert said. Public opinion surveys reveal that Americans view abstinence and contraceptive education as complementary, not contradictory.

"There is great and very wide support among parents and among teens themselves that young people should be encouraged to delay sexual activity," Albert said. "But it is also clear that the American public wants young people to receive information about contraception."

Anti-abortion activist to be sentenced in doctor's slaying

An anti-abortion activist convicted of killing a Kansas doctor faces 25 years to life in prison when he is sentenced today.
Scott Roeder, 51, was convicted of murdering Dr. George Tiller in January after jurors deliberated only 37 minutes.
Tiller was shot to death in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, as Sunday services began. He operated a clinic in Wichita where late-term abortions were performed.

The hearing is expected to include victim statements from Tiller's relatives, as well as character witnesses for Roeder, who also may also offer his own statement to the judge.

During his trial, Roeder testified he believed he had to kill Tiller to save lives, and said he had no regrets.

"There was nothing being done, and the legal process had been exhausted, and these babies were dying every day," he said. "I felt that if someone did not do something, he was going to continue."

In closing arguments, prosecutor Ann Swengel called Roeder's testimony "chillingly horrific" and said he carried out a "planned assassination."

Tiller's family said in January that the jury reached a just verdict.

"At this time we hope that George can be remembered for his legacy of service to women, the help he provided for those who needed it and the love and happiness he provided us as a husband, father and grandfather," the family said in a written statement.

Prosecutors initially fought to keep abortion out of the trial, saying that Tiller's death was a straightforward case of premeditated murder.

Eventually, the abortion issue took center stage as prosecutors portrayed Tiller as a target of Roeder's anti-abortion agenda, and defense lawyers attempted to mitigate his culpability under the theory that he believed Tiller's death was justified to save the lives of others.

Defense attorney Steve Osburn said after the verdict that Roeder "feels remorse toward the family, but not for what he did."

The trial drew activists from both sides of the abortion debate to the courtroom, and a van plastered with slogans and photographs of fetuses was parked in a prominent spot in front of the courthouse.

Among the attendees were the Rev. Michael Bray, whose history in the anti-abortion movement includes 1985 conspiracy convictions in connection with a string of clinic bombings, and Katherine Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Congregants from Reformation Lutheran testified that they had seen Roeder at church several times before the day he killed Tiller by shooting him at point-blank range in the head.

Roeder's defense team did not dispute much of the factual evidence. Roeder testified that he chose to target Tiller at church because it presented the best "window of opportunity" to attack Tiller, who traveled in an armored vehicle and whose clinic was a "fortress."

He admitted bringing the pistol with him to the church on May 24 with the intention of shooting Tiller, but the physician did not attend services that day. So, Roeder testified, he returned the next week.

Jurors heard emotional testimony from churchgoers who rushed to Tiller's side and attempted to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as he lay in a pool of blood. Others, meanwhile, followed Roeder into the church parking lot, where he threatened to shoot them.

Roeder also was convicted of aggravated assault in connection with threats he made to two ushers, Gary Hoepner and Keith Martin.