national news today

vogdyili

By Eric M. Johnson

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) - Attorneys for a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in two rampages from his Army post last year must advise military prosecutors next month if they plan to pursue a mental health defense, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Robert Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan accused of gunning down villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds in Kandahar province in March 2012.

Defense attorneys have said Bales was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury even before his deployment to Afghanistan.

Army prosecutors have said Bales acted alone and with "chilling premeditation" when, armed with a pistol, a rifle and a grenade launcher, he left his base twice in the night, returning in the middle of his rampage to tell a fellow soldier: "I just shot up some people."

The shootings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further eroded strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.

At a hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, presiding judge Army Colonel Jeffery Nance ruled that the defense team must advise the government on May 29 if it will pursue a defense based on a lack of mental responsibility.

"Bottom line is, on the 29th of May the defense has to advise the government if they are going to defend on lack of mental responsibility," Nance said, adding the deadline is flexible depending on production of witnesses and other reasons.

On May 29, the defense must also provide notice of experts they would call to testify on the issue of diminished capacity or mental issues. The defense team must also provide results of a medical review by doctors, called a sanity board hearing, to determine Bales's state of mind at the time of the killings and his ability to stand trial.

Even if Bales' attorneys do not wish to pursue a defense along those lines, they still have to provide the results of the medical review, due to be completed on May 1.

Attorneys also wrangled over which witnesses would be allowed to testify should the trial move to a sentencing phase, and Nance pared down an initial defense list to a handful of relatives, school officials, and friends who could testify to Bales' character during his formative years.

"This is a capital case. This is extraordinary," said Major Gregory Malson, one of Bales' defense attorneys. He argued that the defense should be able to present more witnesses, including the defendant's mother, because a bigger group would include witnesses who "vary in time and place and perception."

The defense also asked for the handwritten notes of the Afghan investigators who first examined the crime scene, despite having received a translated report on the findings. Nance said the government should officially ask the Afghan defense ministry for those notes.

Defense also sought to add a consultant versed in jury selection for capital trials and a new psychiatrist to their team, though Nance did not rule on those motions.

Major John Riesenberg, a military prosecutor, complained that the defense appeared to be "witness shopping."

Bales' lead civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said in January that government documents showed Bales had been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury before his deployment in Afghanistan in 2011.

Military justice experts have said a defense based on Bales' PTSD or deeper mental health could raise serious issues over premeditation, which would make a death sentence less likely.

Bales was bound over for court martial in December and faces 16 murder charges and other charges including attempted murder, assault and drug and alcohol counts. His court martial is set to begin in September.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, David Gregorio, Toni Reinhold)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-soldier-accused-afghan-killings-faces-deadline-mental-210743386.html

dan marino godaddy did the groundhog see his shadow Ray Lewis Murder UFC 156 my bloody valentine Super Bowl Winners

vogdyili

Snoop will talk with MTV News' Sway Calloway about his decades-long career on Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET on MTV Jams and RapFix.MTV.com.
By Rob Markman

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706151/snoop-lion-big-krit-rapfix-live.jhtml

joan crawford joan crawford john goodman kendall marshall whitney houston news sylvia plath whitney houston autopsy results

vogdyili

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Obama administration official said on Tuesday that an immigration bill starting to move through Congress would fix some border control weaknesses that may have contributed to last week's Boston Marathon bombings.

The immigration to the United States of two ethnic Chechen brothers who are suspects in the bombings has become a point of controversy in the early debate over the legislation, with some conservatives saying that Congress should now go slower.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano repeatedly was asked at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the Boston violence that killed three and injured more than 250, as the panel was wrapping up its hearings on a comprehensive immigration bill.

Napolitano told the panel that the legislation will "strengthen security at our borders."

But in three hearings held by the committee since the Boston bombings, some Republicans have raised new concerns about the legislation.

"If these two individuals used our immigration system to assist their attacks, it's important to our ongoing discussion," said Senator Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the panel.

One of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed last week after a gunfight with police, traveled from the U.S. to Russia in 2012, returning six months later. He and his brother both came to the United States legally a decade ago.

Officials have said that a misspelling of Tsarnaev's name on flight records when departing the United States last year may have contributed to some law enforcement agencies not being alerted to his movements.

CALMING NEW ANXIETIES

"The bill will help with this because it requires that passports be electronically readable as opposed to having manual input," Napolitano testified, adding the legislation "really does a good job of getting human error out of the process."

The bill's supporters also have tried to calm new anxieties over the legislation, arguing that by moving approximately 11 million illegal residents onto a path to citizenship - if they meet certain requirements - law enforcement will be able to learn more about those undocumented people.

"The bipartisan immigration reform proposal introduced last week would enable us to identify and perform criminal background and national security checks on immigrants who are here unlawfully," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul, who earlier this year expressed support for comprehensive immigration legislation, said on Monday that Congress "should not proceed" until more is known about failures in the immigration system related to the Boston bombing.

The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to spend the month of May debating and voting on panel members' amendments to the immigration bill introduced last week by four Democratic and four Republican senators.

Reid hopes to have the legislation, a top priority of President Barack Obama, ready for a long debate by the full Senate in June.

During Tuesday's Senate hearing, Napolitano heard criticisms from both Democrats and Republicans about specific aspects of the immigration bill that will take center stage in coming weeks.

"I question whether spending billions more on a fence between the United States and Mexico is really the best use of taxpayer dollars as we're furloughing air traffic controllers," said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas questioned whether the bill's emphasis on tightening border security at major "hot spots" in Arizona and Texas would merely encourage drug cartels and other criminals to shift their activities to border crossings that are monitored less.

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/immigration-bill-could-fix-boston-security-issues-official-183531738.html

alicia sacramone Don Grady ann curry euro 2012 Colorado Springs Nora Ephron mario balotelli

vogdyili

Amanda Seyfried is sure to turn heads when she walks down the aisle in her new film, The Big Wedding. Judging by the trailer, her gown is gorgeous -- but she won't be the first onscreen bride to take our breath away! Take a look at our top 15 favorite movie wedding dresses.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/best-movie-wedding-dresses/1-a-534088?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Abest-movie-wedding-dresses-534088

World Ending 2012 gossip girl Ink Master Jenni Rivera Funeral aspergers Richard Engel Daniel Inouye

vogdyili

An international study used tree rings and pollen to build the first?record of global climate change, continent by continent, over 2,000 years.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / April 23, 2013

Emperor penguins walk across sea ice near Ross Island, Antarctica, in this 2012, photo released by Thomas Beer. The continent's pristine habitat provides a laboratory for scientists studying the effects of climate change.

Courtesy Thomas Beer/AP/File

Enlarge

A reconstruction of 2,000 years of global temperatures shows that a long-term decline in Earth's temperatures ended abruptly about 1900, replaced by a warming trend that has continued despite the persistence into the 20th century of the factors driving the cooling, according to a new study.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Indeed, for several continents, the increase in global average temperatures from the 19th century to the 20th was the highest century-to-century increase during the 2,000-year span, the study indicates. It's the first study to attempt building a millennial-scale climate history, continent by continent.

The research wasn't designed to identify the cause of the warming trend, which climate researchers say has been triggered by a buildup of greenhouse gases ? mainly carbon dioxide ? as humans burned increasing amounts of fossil fuel and altered the landscape in ways that released CO2.

Still, it's hard to explain 20th-century warming without including the influence of rising CO2 levels, because the factors driving the cooling were still present, notes Darrell Kaufman, a researcher at Northern Arizona University and one of the lead authors on the paper formally reporting the results in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The study, five years in the making, drew on the work of 87 scientists in 24 countries as part of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. One goal of the 27-year-old program is to gain a deeper understanding of Earth's climate history and the factors that contribute to climate variability.

The study used nature's proxies for thermometers ? tree rings, pollen, and other natural temperature indicators ? to build continent by continent a coordinated record of temperature changes during the past two millenniums.

Scientists use this proxy approach to reach farther into the climate's temperature history than the relatively short thermometer record allows. Such efforts aim to put today's climate into a deeper historical context as well as to identify the duration and possible triggers for natural swings that the climate undergoes over a variety of time scales.

Last March, for instance, a team led by Shaun Marcott at Oregon State University used climate proxies to build a global temperature record reaching back 1,200 years ? one that also noted the pre-1900 cooling trend.

Until now, however, the proxy approach has been used to reconstruct changes in global-average and hemisphere-wide temperatures, Dr. Kaufman explains.

"There was very little information about past climate variability at the regional scale," he says. Yet the team notes that no one lives in a global-average world. People live in specific regions where geography plays a vital role in shaping the climate patterns they experience.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/s_CQlowEYIE/Earth-s-cooling-came-to-sudden-halt-in-1900-study-shows

madden 13 cover dalai lama tamera mowry slow jam the news madden cover obama slow jams the news metta world peace

vogdyili

WASHINGTON (AP) ? American teenagers aren't doing as poorly on international science tests as adults think. Despite the misconception, people don't think the subject should get greater emphasis in schools, a survey released Monday found.

More Americans than not wrongly think that U.S. 15-year-olds rank near the bottom on international science tests, according to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll. U.S. students actually rank in the middle among developed countries.

Even so, Americans are more likely to pick math or language skills over science when they are asked which subject they think deserves greater attention.

Among adults, there is wide variety in what they know about science and technology, the survey also found. For instance, two-thirds of those surveyed correctly said rust is an example of a chemical reaction and 77 percent correctly said the continents have been moving for millions of years and will continue to shift.

Yet only 47 percent correctly said electrons are smaller than atoms. Protons, neutrons and electrons are parts of atoms.

Education advocates have long warned that U.S. students need more science education if they are to keep pace with international peers. That perhaps has yielded the impression that the nation's students don't stack up to other nations on international tests.

About 35 percent of those surveyed by Pew correctly said U.S. 15-year-olds are about in the middle and 7 percent incorrectly said Americans ranked among the top nations. Yet the plurality ? 44 percent ? wrongly said American teens were ranked at the bottom of other developed nations.

International tests find U.S. scores aren't measurably different from the average of all other nations. Among the 33 countries measured in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, 12 had higher scores and nine had lower scores. Another 12 had scores that weren't that much different than Americans' scores.

The survey also asked participants an open-ended question about which single subject they thought deserved greater emphasis in elementary and secondary schools. Some 30 percent suggested math and arithmetic. Another 19 percent said English, grammar, writing and reading.

Science was the top choice for just 11 percent of participants. Among those who picked science, though, there was a partisan divide. Some 17 percent of Democrats said science should receive more attention, while 7 percent of Republicans agreed.

Republicans, however, were more likely to favor math and arithmetic than Democrats. Some 35 percent of Republicans picked math skills as the subject they thought deserved more attention while 24 percent of Democrats agreed.

Americans with college degrees were more likely than others to underestimate the students' international rankings. Those college graduates were also more likely to answer their own questions about science and technology correctly.

For instance, 76 percent of college graduates correctly identified carbon dioxide as the gas that most scientists blame for climate change. Just 55 percent of those with some college courses got the answer right, and that number reached 49 percent among adults who did not attend college.

Pew's poll was conducted March 7-10 and used landline and cellular telephone interviews with 1,006 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. It is larger for subgroups.

The survey was conducted with Smithsonian Magazine for an upcoming edition focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-04-22-US-Science-Skills/id-f04c0ab54d1a42729245bf00d8ff4b6a

Bracketology Erin Go Bragh St Patrick lisa vanderpump Dancing With the Stars 2013 NIT Bracket March Madness 2013 bracket

vogdyili

We've seen a possible case, what could be the front portion of Apple's next iPad and this time around, Tactus has got its hands on the other half, the rear casing. Unfortunately, it's the not-so-interesting view, but we can still make out the space for the hole for the camera lens, sharper corners and the same dark blue finish we saw on both the fifth iteration of the iPhone and the iPad Mini. Tactus reckons it'll hold onto the original iPad's 9.7-inch display, but surround it with a thinner bezel. As for the rest of the specs that will eventually reside inside the redesigned shell, well, we'll have to wait for the official reveal from Apple for the full story.

Filed under: Tablets, Apple

Comments

Via: Apple Insider

Source: Tactus

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/uH6M8U9P630/

super bowl score madonna super bowl performance madonna half time m.i.a super bowl coin toss best superbowl commercials madonna super bowl halftime