Keylong in Himachal Pradesh freezes at minus 10.4 degrees celsius

SHIMLA: Bone-chilling cold conditions swept across Himachal Pradesh on Sunday with Keylong freezing at a minus 10.4 degrees celsius, a meteorological official said.

While state capital Shimla shivered at 0.9 degree celsius, the minimum temperature at tourist resort Manali was 3 degrees below the freezing point.

Kalpa, around 250 km from here, recorded a low of minus 5 degrees Celsius, whereas Dharamsala was still warm at a minimum of 4.4 degrees. It was minus 0.6 degree in Sundernagar.

The official said the night temperature in Keylong in Lahaul and Spiti district fell further by 3.3 degrees from Saturday's minus 7.1 degrees.

But day temperatures across the state were up by an average of two to five degrees due to the dry weather.

The maximum temperature was 11.5 degrees in Shimla on Saturday, while it was 17.8 degrees in Dharamsala and 17.8 degrees in Solan.

Frost on the roads, making them slippery, has been hampering movement of vehicles, officials said.

The Met office has forecast dry weather in the next few days.

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Gun Show Near Newtown Goes on Despite Anger













A little more than 40 miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where last month 20 first graders and six staff members were massacred, gun dealers and collectors alike ignored calls to cancel a gun show, and gathered for business in Stamford, Conn.


Four other gun shows with an hour of Newtown, Conn., recently cancelled their events in the wake of the shootings, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza broke in to the elementary school with a semi-automatic assault rifle and three other guns.


The organizers in Stamford emphasized their show only displayed antique and collectible guns, not military style assault weapons like the one used by Lanza in Sandy Hook.


Still, Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia had called for the show to close its doors, calling it "insensitive" to hold so close to the murders.


Gun show participant Sandy Batchelor said he wasn't sure about whether going ahead with the show was "insensitive," but said the shooter should be blamed, not the weapons he used.


"I don't have a solid opinion on [whether it is insensitive]," Batchelor said. "I'm not for or against it. I would defend it by saying it wasnt the gun."


In nearby Waterbury, the community cancelled a show scheduled for this weekend.


"I felt that the timing of the gun show so close to that tragic event would be in bad taste," Waterbury Police Chief Chief Michael J. Gugliotti said.












National Rifle Association News Conference Interrupted by Protesters Watch Video





Gugliotti has halted permits for gun shows, saying he was concerned about firearms changing hands that might one day be used in a mass shooting.


Across the state line in White Plains, N.Y, Executive Rob Astorino also canceled a show, three years after ending a had that had been in place since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. He said he felt the show would be inappropriate now.


But across the country, farther away from Connecticut, attendance at gun shows is spiking, and some stores report they can hardly keep weapons on their shelves with some buyers fearful of that the federal government will soon increase restrictions on gun sales and possibly ban assault weapons altogether.


"We sold 50-some rifles in days," said Jonathan O'Connor, store manager of Gun Envy in Minnesota.


President Obama said after the Sandy Hook shooting that addressing gun violence would be one of his priorities and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would introduce an assault weapons ban this month.


But it is not just traditional advocates of gun control that have said their need to be changes in gun laws since the horrific school shooting.


Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat but a long-time opponent of gun control who like Hutchison has received an A rating from the NRA, have both come out in support of strengthening gun laws.


In Stamford, gun dealer Stuart English said participants at the gun show there are doing nothing wrong.


"I have to make a living. Life goes on," gun dealer Stuart English said.


ABC News asked English, what he thought about the mayor of Stamford calling the show "insensitive."


"He's wrong," English said. "This is a private thing he shouldn't be expressing his opinion on."


If you have a comment on this story or have a story idea, you can tweet this correspondent @greenblattmark.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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Al Gore stands to gain about $70 million after selling Current TV to al-Jazeera



Al-Jazeera will pay about $500 million for Current TV, including the stake held by Gore, 64, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The network is one of dozens of investments made by the former vice president since he lost the 2000 presidential race by a slim margin.


“It’s reeking with irony,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, who studies corporate governance. “It seems to be at least a paradox in terms of his positions on sustainability and geopolitics.”

The deal highlights Gore’s makeover from career politician to successful businessman. His take from the Current TV sale is many times the maximum net worth of $1.7 million he reported while running for president in 1999. Besides investing in start-ups, Gore is on the board of Apple, an adviser to Google and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, according to his Web site biography.

“The green of money knows no political boundaries,” said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “When you are running investments, your priority needs to be maximizing return.”

Gore’s holdings also include investments in Amazon.com, eBay and Procter & Gamble through his Generation Investment Management.

Gore holds a 20 percent stake in Current TV, according to those with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the sale terms are not public. His proceeds are difficult to pin down because the company had $41.4 million in debt, as well as preferred stock entitled to $99.5 million in the event of a sale or liquidation, according to a 2008 regulatory filing.

The Current TV price represents a sevenfold increase from the $71 million that Gore and his partners paid for the predecessor company in 2004, according to the filing. Gore, chairman, and Joel Hyatt, a co-founder and chief executive officer, announced the sale on Wednesday, without providing financial terms.

Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore, didn’t respond to a phone call or e-mail request for comment.

The network’s investors included funds controlled by Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle and San Francisco money manager Richard Blum, according to the 2008 filing, when the company unsuccessfully sought to sell stock to the public. Blum is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The Raine Group advised Current TV on the sale. The owners introduced Current TV in 2005 after purchasing the network from Vivendi.

Al-Jazeera is closely held and receives some funding from the government of Qatar, a small country on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula that gets almost half of its gross domestic product from oil and gas, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

“Under Qatari law, Al Jazeera Media Network is incorporated as a private, non-profit company,” Charlotte Fouch, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “Al Jazeera receives funding from the State of Qatar, much like other publicly funded broadcast networks.”

Last February, Gore said investors in oil and gas companies that ignore the cost of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are making a mistake similar to those who invested in subprime mortgages.

Most of Gore’s investments are made through Generation Investment Management, which he co-founded with former Goldman Sachs Group executive David Blood. The most recent regulatory filing lists about $3.6 billion under management in 29 publicly traded companies.

In addition, Generation Investment Management also has stakes in private ventures such as Nest Labs, a company formed by Apple alumni to create a thermostat that adapts to user behavior and saves money. The fund also backed Elon Musk’s SolarCity, a developer of rooftop solar power systems that went public last month.

In April, Gore’s fund was part of $110 million in venture capital invested in Harvest Power, a closely held company that produces renewable energy from waste such as food scraps.

He is also the author of the climate-change-focused best-sellers “Earth in the Balance,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “The Assault on Reason” and “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.” Gore was the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change,” according to his official biography.

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AHTC unable to verify accuracy of reasons for software sale






SINGAPORE: Chairman of Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC) Sylvia Lim has responded to the recent statement by Dr Teo Ho Pin - on the sale of the software formerly owned by the town councils managed by the People's Action Party (PAP) to Action Information Management Pte Ltd (AIM) in 2011, prior to the General Election.

She said AHTC is not able to verify the accuracy of the reasons for the sale cited in the statement on January 2 by Dr Teo, who is the coordinating chairman of PAP town councils.

Ms Lim said the documents AHTC has on hand, including the tender documents, do not disclose many of the details mentioned.

She also said the reasons given underscore three fundamental facts.

First, the PAP-managed town councils sold off the computer and financial systems developed with public monies to a vehicle of the PAP, just prior to the General Election.

Second, according to the most recent statement of AIM Chairman, Mr S Chandra Das, AIM "as a PAP company" wanted to "be helpful to the PAP Town Councils".

Third, the PAP sees no issue with an arrangement allowing them to terminate the software agreements with any town council with one month's notice, if there's a material change in the town council's membership.

Ms Lim also questioned the one-month termination clause in the AIM contract, which Dr Teo considered "reasonable".

She said he himself indicated that it would take "maybe 18 to 24 months, or even longer" to assess new software and develop a replacement system.

Ms Lim said the question of how the PAP-managed town councils acted in the public and residents' interest in relinquishing their ownership of the systems to AIM has still not been answered.

"We leave it to the public to make their own judgement," she said.

In his 26-paragraph statement on January 2, Dr Teo explained why and how the PAP-run town councils came to have a sale and lease back deal with the PAP-owned AIM.

He said it would be better for the 14 PAP-run town councils to consolidate their software rights in a single party, which would then manage them on behalf of all the town councils, as well as source vendors to improve the system and address the deficiencies.

He added there's no basis to suggest that the transaction for AIM to provide computer services to the PAP-run town councils was improper or disadvantageous to the town councils.

- CNA/fa



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In US, juveniles now entitled to life imprisonment with parole for homicidal cases

MUMBAI: In the US, a minor arrested in a rape and murder case would have been tried in a regular criminal court and got sentenced to life in prison if convicted. Till about six months ago such a person would not even have been entitled to parole in over 20 states and be imprisoned till death. Many states provided for mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole even for juvenile offenders. Last June, the US Supreme Court set aside these laws as unconstitutional by a slim 5-4 majority.

The majority decision, written by Justice Elena Kagan, said that the policy violates the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling relied on earlier case laws to hold that children under 18 lack the maturity to make sound decisions, and that mandatory sentencing leaves no room for discretion and towards a chance to reform. The SC held, "Imposition of a State's most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children."

The US SC had earlier in 2005 in another precedent setting judgment in Roper Versus Simmons eliminated the juvenile death penalty which was being awarded for the last three decades. Five years later in 2010, in Graham Versus Florida state, the SC ruled that in non-homicidal crimes, life sentence without parole was unconstitutional. That decision affected over a 100 prisoners convicted of committing, before they turned 18, crimes like rape, armed robbery and kidnapping. In its latest decision on juvenile offenders, the US SC went a step further and insisted that judges and juries must even in killings by minors, "consider the characteristics of a defendant and the details of his offense before sentencing." The characteristics would include his life circumstances, violence in his life among other parameters. Parole is early conditional realease of a convict under supervision.

The cases before the court concerned two men who were involved in killings when they were 14 in 1999 when they tried to rob an Arkansas video store. Kuntrell Jackson then 14 was with two older youth when the three attempted the robbery but things went wrong and one of the older youths shot and killed a store clerk.

The US with around 25 of its States is one of the few countries that allows juveniles to be prosecuted as adults and sentenced to life without parole. There are more than 2,500 people currently in jail nationwide who fall under this category; and 79 of them were sentenced when they were 14 or younger. In September 2011, a report by the US Justice Department stated that a majority of the 50 states offered discretionary judicial waiver to transfer juvenile cases to adult criminal courts and 15 states had mandatory waiver for certain serious crimes. In the 1980s and 1990s, legislatures in nearly every state expanded transfer laws that allowed or required the prosecution of juveniles in adult criminal courts.

US is now studying the effects of such transfers on the crime statistics, but Mumbai advocate Swapnil Kothari, "Following the US example Indian legislature cannot afford to catnap even for a minute and amend the law to treat not only juvenile offenders as adults in some cases under the Indian Penal Code, but also, to treat the rapes of minors and small infants as rarest of rare." Juveniles' crimes are termed 'delinquencies' even if the offence in as serious as murder in criminal justice jurisdictions globally and every in North Americas and Europe have established special youth courts to deal with such under-age offenders for petty crimes to serious felonies. Although the Juvenile laws are made to ensure that youth in conflict with law are reformed as they are still young and amenable to correction, in US, states like Missisippi has laws that send a young offender to 30 years' in prison for sexual felonies for the first offence and to 40 years for the second. A felony is a serious crime and includes burglary, kidnapping, or murder.

In England, however, along with 'youth courts' the law allows juveniles to be tried along with adult co-defendents or by them selves in a regular criminal court and attract sentences that can extend over 14 years too or be of an "indeterminate nature''.

The law in England looks at a "vicious will'' to hold him accountable for a crime.

In England, the famous Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, drew the line between "infant" and "adult" at the point where one could understood one's actions way back in 1760. But UK which now has the minimum age for criminal responsibility at 10 and is facing a debate, is justifying it as an age where children understand between right and wrong. In France, the special youth courts handle trials of juvenile offenders even for serious crimes like rape and killings and have set up enclosed educational centres for remand under judicial supervision.

Asserted Kothari, "In line with India's ancestral English laws, the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 and the Indian Penal Code, 1860 with its concomitant procedural acts should be revamped to ensure speedy justice. The Delhi gang-rape case must be treated as rarest of rare, to ensure that the five accused are sent to the gallows with the sixth juvenile who must meet his maximum three years with severity

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Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life













It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.


Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.


Then she lost her hands and feet.


Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC


When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.


"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.


The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.








Quadruple Amputee Undergoes Hand Transplant Surgery Watch Video









After Hand Transplant, Relearning How to Hold Watch Video







"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.


After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.


"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."


PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands


Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.


"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."


Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.


"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"


Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.


"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."


For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.






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Federal agencies bracing for cuts after ‘fiscal cliff’ deal



The eleventh-hour agreement to avoid a “fiscal cliff” of higher taxes put off the major cuts known as a sequester until March 1, when another showdown is expected over the federal debt limit and how much to reduce the size of government.


Congress and the White House agreed to find $24 billion to pay for the delay, divided between spending cuts and a tax change that allows Americans holding traditional retirement plans to convert more of them to Roth IRAs, a process that requires tax payments up front.

The remaining $12 billion in cuts to domestic and defense agencies will not take effect until at least March 27, when the stopgap budget funding the government expires. The first $4 billion in cuts must come by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, and the remaining $8 billion in fiscal 2014, which will start Oct. 1.

The cuts will be rolled into budget deliberations on Capitol Hill, and no one knows what agencies and programs they will affect. Out of a discretionary spending budget of $1.04 trillion, $12 billion is relatively small. But it’s not a rounding error.

“There will be a few select cuts that will be painful,” said Patrick Lester, fiscal policy director at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (formerly OMB Watch). “We won’t know for months what those cuts are, which makes them easy to do.”

William R. Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said $12 billion “spread across the government doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but it depends on how it’s spread out.”

Even if each agency took a hit, some “will still be looking at furloughs and even [reductions in force] as a possible solution,” he said. Those are some of the near-certain actions many agencies have said they would take if they had to make the across-the-board cuts Congress imposed in 2011 to force itself to reckon with the federal deficit.

On Wednesday, government and union leaders said that threat, just two months away, is making them nervous.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Congress has “prevented the worst possible outcome by delaying sequestration for two months.”

But he warned that the “the specter of sequestration” threatens national security.

“We need to have stability in our future budgets,” Panetta said in a statement. “We need to have the resources to effectively execute our strategy, defend the nation, and meet our commitments to troops and their families after more than a decade of war.”

Several officials said they are still sorting out what the two-month delay means.

“We are working hard with [the Office of Management and Budget] to understand the impact, but we’re just not there yet,” said Army Lt. Col. Elizabeth Robbins, a Defense Department spokeswoman.

Defense consultant Jim McAleese said the deal to raise taxes on families with income above $450,000 and individuals earning more than $400,000 will bring in so much less revenue than the $250,000 threshold President Obama proposed that steep defense cuts are inevitable.

Instead of the $10 billion in cuts a year over 10 years that the Defense Department could have expected to see under Obama’s most recent deficit reduction plan, McAleese said the reductions could be more in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion a year over 10 years.

“People were talking before about defense cuts of $10 billion per year, but the sheer size of the disagreement is going to bring about an immediate, aggressive reaction that will impact the final outcome of the spending cuts,” he said.

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said of the $12 billion in cuts, “I would hope agencies could find these savings without impacts on front-line employees and without impacts on services to the public. We have more questions than answers right now.”

Steve Vogel contributed to this report.

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CES show to see changing of guard in tech sector






WASHINGTON: The inexorable push for mobility in gadgets has reshaped the electronics industry, a shift that reflects a changing of the guard at the world's biggest consumer technology show.

Gone from the 2013 International CES, to be held January 8-11 in Las Vegas, are giants such as Microsoft, and longtime tech stalwarts such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard are taking a back seat to firms focused on more portable, or even wearable, devices.

There will of course be big, dazzling displays of televisions that are smarter and bolder. However, a key focus is likely to be on devices that are mobile but can remain connected via the Internet cloud, from tablets to wrist watches, to Wi-Fi ski goggles.

"There is a changing of the guard," said Danielle Levitas, a consumer tech analyst at the research firm IDC.

"The shift we've seen over the past years has been on the mobile aspects of technology versus home entertainment. This continues to accelerate."

Emblematic of the shift is the choice of the main keynote speaker -- Qualcomm chief executive Paul Jacobs.

"Most people have never heard of Qualcomm. People might know they have a stadium with that name somewhere," said Roger Kay, a technology analyst and consultant with Endpoint Technologies.

Semiconductor firm Qualcomm quietly overtook Intel in market value in 2012, a sign of the growing importance of mobile chips that reduce battery drag and are popular on smartphones and tablets, mostly using ARM technology licensed by British-based ARM Holdings.

"Qualcomm is the opposite of Intel," said Kay, who points out Qualcomm's reluctance to follow its rival's strategy of branding devices with "Intel Inside."

"It has been shy of the limelight and wants its partners to get all that credit. They are a reluctant hero. So important, and yet so unknown."

With mobile devices gaining ground, "folks are interested in the services that are attached to consumer electronics at the show," said Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital Partners, among the venture capital firms attending.

Spain said delivery of video over mobile devices is just starting, opening up possibilities for new ventures.

"Everything that is cloud is obviously white-hot in the venture community," Spain said.

"People are interested in sharing content across a variety of devices and the cloud plays an integral role in that. Consumers expect to have a variety of content be available on demand: video, music, anytime, anywhere."

Another focus at CES will be improving batteries and charging for all those mobile devices, according to Stu Lipoff, fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

"One of the major limitations of portable devices is they are getting smaller and asked to do more, so people are finding innovative and creative ways of charging," he said.

CES will feature a range of power pads on which a device can be placed for charging, Lipoff said, but other firms are eyeing technologies "where you can put a transmitter in the room and it will charge the device" from several feet away.

James McQuivey at Forrester Research said CES has evolved from a show in which manufacturers would sell their wares to a branding event.

"It is shifting to a more abstract or long-term vision of technology," he said.

"It's about branding, demonstrating you are innovating for the future."

McQuivey said old guard firms like Hewlett-Packard and Dell, which have been struggling amid a move to mobile devices must demonstrate they are still part of the future.

"It's a challenge to get back in the innovation game," he said.

McQuivey said CES is different than in the past because the industry now revolves around a handful of big companies whose platforms are a key.

"Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are creating platforms on which everyone is innovating," he said. "CES is living in the shadow of these large platforms."

The 2013 CES features a record 1.87 million square feet (170,000 square meters) of exhibit space, with some 3,000 exhibitors displaying gadgets for digital health, connected cars, smart home devices and a broad array of communications and entertainment gear. Attendance is expected to be in line with last year's record 156,000.

Eight automakers will exhibit at the 2013 CES, the largest number ever, showing off "infotainment" technology, crash avoidance and other "smart" vehicle technologies.

Tech giant Apple is not a participant but 440 exhibitors will showcase accessories for Apple devices in the "iLounge."

"With the largest show floor in history, more innovative technologies and services will launch at the 2013 CES than anywhere else in the world," said Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts the show.

The CES will also showcase areas such as sustainable technologies, the $90 billion "Mommy Tech" market for functional products from house cleaning to wearable fashions, fitness and health, mobile wallets, advances in using the Internet "cloud," gaming hardware and software, high-tech toys and devices for education.

-AFP/ac



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