Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.

A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

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Conn. Victim's Father Remembers 'Loving' Daughter

(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)

Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman’s bullets not claimed her life, her father said.

“My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that’s the kind of kid she is,” her father, Robbie Parker said as he fought back tears, telling the world about his “bright, creative and loving” daughter who was one of the 20 young victims in the Newtown, Conn., shooting.

“She always had something kind to say about anybody,” her father said.  ”We find comfort reflecting on the incredible person Emilie was and how many lives she was able to touch.”

Emilie, 6, was helping teach her younger sisters to read and make things, and she was the little girls would go to for comfort, he said.

“They looked up to her,” Parker said.

READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims

Parker moved his wife and three daughters to Newtown eight months ago after accepting a job as  a physician’s assistant at Danbury Hospital. He said Emilie, his oldest daughter, seemed to have adjusted well to her new school, and he was very happy with the school, too.

“I love the people at the school. I love Emilie’s teacher and the classmates we were able to get to know,” he said.

      (Image Credit: Alex von Kleydorff/AP Photo)

The family dealt with another tragic loss in October when Emilie lost her grandfather in an accident.

“[This] has been a topic that has been discussed in our family in the past couple of  months,” Parker said. “[My daughters ages 3 and 4] seem to get the idea that there’s somebody who they will miss very much.”

Emilie, a budding artist who carried her markers and pencils everywhere, paid tribute to her grandfather by slipping a special card she had drawn into his casket, Parker said.  It was something she frequently did to lift the spirits of others.

“I can’t count the number of times Emilie would find someone feeling sad or frustrated and would make people a card,” Parker said. “She was an exceptional artist.”

The girl who was remembered as “always willing to try new things, other than food” was learning Portuguese from her father, who speaks the language.

(Image Credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)

On Friday morning, Emilie woke up before her father left for his job and exchanged a few sentences with him in the language.

“She told me good morning and asked how I was doing,” Parker said. “She said she loved me, I gave her a kiss and I was out the door.”

Parker found out about the shooting while on lockdown in Danbury Hospital and found a television for the latest news.

“I didn’t think it was that big of deal at first,” he said. “With the first reports coming in, it didn’t sound like it was going to be as tragic as it was. That’s kind of what it was like for us.”

CLICK HERE for full coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Parker said he knows that God can’t take away free will and would have been unable to stop the Sandy Hook shooting. While gunman Adam Lanza used his free agency to take innocent lives, Parker said he plans to use his in a positive way.

“I’m not mad because I have my  [free] agency to use this event to do whatever I can to make sure my family and my wife and my daughters are taken care [of],” he said. “And if there’s anything I can do to help to anyone at any time at anywhere, I’m free to do that.”

(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)

Friday night, hours after he learned of his daughter’s death, Parker said he spoke at his church.

“I don’t know how to get through something like this. My wife and I don’t understand how to process all of this,” he said today. “We find strength in our religion and in our faith and in our family. ”

“It’s a horrific tragedy and I want everyone to know our hearts and prayers go out to them. This includes the family of the shooter. I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you and I want you to know our family … love and support goes out to you as well.”

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A normally stoic president sheds tears over mass shooting of ‘our children’

President Obama, so often cool and unemotional, struggled to maintain his composure Friday as he addressed a nation reeling from a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

“The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said partway into a four-minute statement.

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'Our Singapore Conversation' reaches out to nearly 10,000 S'poreans so far

SINGAPORE: The 'Our Singapore Conversation' initiative has reached out to nearly 10,000 Singaporeans so far.

Speaking to the media, Chairman of the 'Our Singapore Conversation' and Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said this is quite a significant number over a three-month period and this has been done through multiple platforms.

These include face-to-face interactions, online media and also with Singaporeans in the US, Britain and China.

The New Year will see the launch of the Conversation's next phase of engagement of the citizenry.

Mr Heng said the team plans to act on some of the ideas that have already emerged especially which can be done immediately. One example is the discussion on extending MediShield coverage to include congenital and neonatal conditions.

Mr Heng said this topic has been raised in the 'Our Singapore Conversation' sessions, which he said he strongly supports including them in the MediShield coverage.

In the meantime, he said that three broad themes have emerged under the categories of hope, heart and home.

In the area of "hope", there has been interest in ways to keep Singapore vibrant, create opportunities for individuals to fulfil their career aspirations and non-career aspirations.

The second area relates to "heart" where discussions have been focused on how Singaporeans can care for each other and those who are vulnerable, those with special needs and the elderly. There has also been discussions on the need for the right policies and programmes to reach out to this group.

Mr Heng said the third area is the topic of Singapore as "Home" where the need to create the sense of community and bonding and the kampong spirit has been discussed by the participants. There has also been a lot of discussion about the Singapore identity, the values and culture. "There is an interesting theme of Singapore as 'Home' that appeals to us and at the same time maintaining our important social fabric of a multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious society."

For the new year, the 'Our Singapore Conversation' will continue with discussions in the open-ended format in January with a few more sessions.

The team plans to take a break and resume at the end of February to delve into the specific under the broad themes.

"For example in the area of education, we can talk about not just education specifically but how education provides opportunities, how do we provide hope and opportunities and I think to have a rich conversation about that we need to bring in not just parents and students but also members of the public, employers to see how the entire education system can help us create opportunities and hope," he explained.

Mr Heng added that the ideas coming out from 'Our Singapore Conversation' initiative provide inputs for the public service to examine some of the existing policies.

Information from the different sessions are collated and fed back to the different ministries so that they can look at the ideas, concerns and aspirations.

He is confident that if the 'Our Singapore Conversation' initiative is done well, the result would be better policies and programmes for Singapore. Mr Heng however added that it was not possible for every idea to be implemented.

- CNA/ck

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Section 66A of IT Act undemocratic: RS MPs

NEW DELHI: In a passionate debate on section 66A of the IT Act in the Upper House on Friday, several MPs strongly supported the amendment of the section. Most called it " anti-democratic"; one MP from Karnataka even called it an instance of " legislative terrorism". The resolution for amendment of section 66A was moved by CPM MP from Kerala, P Rajeeve. The Union minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal is expected to respond when the House reconvenes next week.

MPs such as Gyan Prakash Pilania of the BJP, D. Bandyopadhyay of the AITC and Baishnab Parida of the BJD, Narendra Kumar Kashyap of the BSP and Basavaraj Patil of the BJP supported the resolution. INC MP from Odisha Rama Chandra Khuntia partially supported the motion, differing on the point of reducing the scope to one-to-one communication. Goa MP Shantaram Naik of INC opposed the resolution, saying misuse of a law isn't strong enough reason to scrap or amend it.

P Rajeeve questioned the distinction between print, visual and new media (internet) when it came to freedom of speech. "Most print and visual media have published cartoons, stories or editorials that are more critical than online content. But they are not booked. Why is this not allowed to new media?"

As for Sibal's position of putting in place guidelines when enforcing 66A, Rajeeve said that the guidelines were in contravention of the parent Act. According to Sibal's proposed guidelines, a complaint can be registered only after authorization of the Inspector General of Police or the Director General of Police. Sections 78 and 80 of the IT Act allow any police officer "not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police" to investigate and make arrests. "These guidelines do not have the force of law," said Rajeeve.

Rajeeve also pointed out how the bill was passed without discussion. "The bill was passed in seven minutes on 23 December 2008 -- the last day of the winter session -- without any discussion," he said. He further noted how the jail terms for the same offences, such as defamation, causing nuisance etc, were longer under the IT Act than under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

During question hour, Sibal had defended the current shape of the law by citing the US and the UK laws that deal with internet governance. Responding to that, Rajeeve called the drafting of the Indian Act a "poor cut and paste exercise". He quoted parts of the Indian Act that were verbatim taken from the UK ones before pointing out one difference. "It is important to note that it (the UK law) deals with information sent from one person to another," said Rajeeve, adding that hence, it was not applicable in social media where the act has been invoked in India so far.

Independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar recommended that "reducing the scope of Section 66A to direct communications would make it less prone to misuse."

Both ministers also quoted from the archaic Indian Post Office Act which prohibits sending by post materials of "grossly offensive character," a phrase that has come in for scrutiny for vagueness within the IT Act as well. "The big difference between Section 20 (b) of the IPO Act and Section 66A of the IT Act is that the former is clearly restricted to one-to-one communication, as is the case of almost all the international precedents being referred to by the Hon'ble Minister," said Chandrasekhar.

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Space Pictures This Week: Frosty Mars, Mini Nile, More

Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.

A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.

After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)

Published December 14, 2012

Read More..

Conn. Shooter Adam Lanza: 'Obviously Not Well'

Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut was a child of the suburbs and a child of divorce who at age 20 still lived with his mother.

This morning he appears to have started his day by shooting his mother Nancy in the face, and then drove her car to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with two handguns and a semi-automatic rifle.

There, before turning his gun on himself, he shot and killed 20 children, who President Obama later described as "beautiful little kids" between five and 10 years of age. Six adults were also killed at the school. Nancy Lanza was found dead in her home.

A relative told ABC News that Adam was "obviously not well."

Family friends in Newtown also described the young man as troubled and described Nancy as rigid. "[Adam] was not connected with the other kids," said Barbara Frey, who also said he was "a little bit different ... Kind of repressed."

State and federal authorities believe his mother may have once worked at the elementary school where Adam went on his deadly rampage, although she was not a teacher, according to relatives, perhaps a volunteer.

Nancy and her husband Peter, Adam's father, divorced in 2009. When they first filed for divorce in 2008, a judge ordered that they participate in a "parenting education program."

Peter Lanza, who drove to northern New Jersey to talk to police and the FBI, is a vice president at GE Capital and had been a partner at global accounting giant Ernst & Young.

Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24, has worked at Ernst & Young for four years, apparently following in his father's footsteps and carving out a solid niche in the tax practice. He too was interviewed by the FBI. Neither he nor his father is under any suspicion.

Newtown, Connecticut Shooting: 27 Killed, Gunman Dead Watch Video

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"[Ryan] is a tax guy and he is clean as a whistle," a source familiar with his work said.

Police had initially identified Ryan as the killer. Ryan sent out a series of Facebook posts saying it wasn't him and that he was at work all day. Video records as well as card swipes at Ernst & Young verified his statement that he had been at the office.

Two federal sources told ABC News that identification belonging to Ryan Lanza was found at the scene of the mass shooting. They say that identification may have led to the confusion by authorities during the first hours after the shooting. Neither Adam nor Ryan has any known criminal history.

A Sig Sauer handgun and a Glock handgun were used in the slaying and .223 shell casings – a round used in a semi-automatic military-style rifle -- were also found at the scene. Nancy Lanza had numerous weapons registered to her, including a Glock and a Sig Sauer. She also owned a Bushmaster rifle -- a semi-automatic carbine chambered for a .223 caliber round. However, federal authorities cannot confirm that the handguns or the rifle were the weapons recovered at the school.

Numerous relatives of the Lanzas in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, as well as multiple friends, are being interviewed by the FBI in an effort to put together a better picture of the gunman and any explanation for today's tragedy.

"I think the most important thing to point out with this kind of individual is that he did not snap this morning and decide to act out violently," said former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole. "These acts involve planning and thoughtfulness and strategizing in order to put the plan together so what may appear to be snap behavior is not that at all."

With reporting by Pierre Thomas, Jim Avila, Santina Leuci, Aaron Katersky, Matthew Mosk, Jason Ryan and Jay Shaylor

MORE: 27 Dead, Mostly Children, at Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

LIVE UPDATES: Newton, Conn. School Shooting

Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.

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Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s 2012 Christmas card: Fiscal cliff, Gretzky in heaven

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!

(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.

(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)

That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”

Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12

Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11

Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11

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Thai "Red Shirt" protest leaders go on trial

BANGKOK: A trial against Thai leaders of the 2010 "Red Shirt" protests began on Friday, a day after the nation's former premier was charged over his role in the deadly unrest.

The 24 accused, who include five current lawmakers, could in theory face the death penalty in the case, which was delayed again on Thursday because of the absence of key witnesses.

All but one defendant was present at Bangkok Criminal Court on Friday, according to an AFP reporter at the court.

About 90 people were killed and nearly 1,900 were wounded in a series of street clashes between demonstrators and security forces, which culminated in a bloody military crackdown in May 2010. Two foreign journalists were among those killed.

The Red Shirt leaders, most of whom surrendered to police after the government sent in armoured vehicles and troops firing live rounds, have vowed to prove their innocence.

Key Red Shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan on Thursday told reporters at the court that the group would "fight the case to the end".

"But people of every political group should be granted an amnesty," he said.

Former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was Thai prime minister during the anti-government rallies, and his then-deputy Suthep Thaugsuban were charged with murder on Thursday over the death of a taxi driver shot by soldiers during the violence.

They are the first officials to face court over the violence in Thailand. The pair have denied the allegation.

The Red Shirts -- mostly supporters of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra -- were demanding immediate elections in their 2010 protest.

They accused Abhisit's government of being undemocratic because it took office in 2008 through a parliamentary vote after a court stripped Thaksin's allies of power.

Polls in 2011 brought Thaksin's Red Shirt-backed Puea Thai party to power with his sister Yingluck as premier, sweeping Abhisit into opposition.

The accused Red Shirt leaders pleaded not guilty in August 2010. Their trial is expected to last months or even years because hearings can only be held when parliament is not in session as sitting lawmakers have immunity.

- AFP/xq

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Granite scam: Durai Dayanidhi surrenders before Madurai court

MADURAI: Union Minister MK Alagiri's son Durai Dayanidhi on Friday surrendered at a Madurai court three days after being granted anticipatory bail in connection with the multi-crore granite scam by the Madras High Court.

Durai has been on the run since August this year after his involvement in the illegal granite scam came to light.

On Monday, Justice C.T. Selvam of the Madurai bench of the court directed Dayanidhi to surrender his passport and also to appear daily at the Melur police station in Madurai district, where the case is registered against him, until further orders.

On August 7, cases were registered against 10 persons, including Durai Dayanidhi, charging companies owned by them with mining sand and granite without permission.

The action came close on the heels of a detailed survey of 175 granite quarrying sites by the district administration on a report by former District Collector U Sagayam, estimating loss to the state exchequer by illegal quarrying at Rs16,338 crore.

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