President Obama began his first term with a dramatic change of course for the CIA, issuing orders on his second day in office to close the agency’s secret prisons and ban harsh interrogation techniques.
As Obama approaches a second term with an unexpected opening for CIA director, agency officials are watching to see whether the president’s pick signals even a modest adjustment in the main counterterrorism program he kept: the use of armed drones to kill suspected extremists.
MADRID: Spain's armed Basque separatist group ETA said Saturday it was ready to discuss disbanding and to negotiate with France and Spain if certain conditions are met, in a statement published on a Basque news site.
The group, which last year said it had abandoned violence after a four-decade campaign for an independent homeland that claimed more than 800 lives, said one outstanding issue was the transfer of Basque prisoners to jails closer to home.
ETA wanted to discuss "formulas and timetables" to bring home prisoners and Basque political exiles; disarmament and the break-up of its armed structures; and the demobilisation of ETA members.
The statement ran on Naiz.info, the website of the Basque newspaper Gara.
Until Saturday's statement, the group had refused to announce its dissolution and disarmament, as demanded by Spain and France.
But weakened by a series of arrests in France and Spain in recent years, ETA said Saturday it was ready to "listen to and analyse" proposals from Madrid and Paris.
The two governments would have a "precise knowledge" of its positions, it added.
Gara said it would publish the full statement in its Sunday edition.
ETA has been placed on a list of terrorist organisations by the United States and the European Union and has been blamed for the deaths of 829 people. Its last attack on Spanish soil was in August 2009.
It has persistently called for around 700 Basque prisoners incarcerated in jails across Spain to be transferred back to prisons in the Basque region so they can be closer to their families.
-AFP/ac
Although unveiled in the modest setting of a press conference, the AAP aims high, promising empowerment of the common man, decentralization of power, law-making through referendum, devolution of decision-making powers to gram sabha and an accessible judicial system.
Pitching the party as the platform for aam aadmi, Kejriwal said that there will be men and women representatives from the village or college level up to the national level.
The constitution that was adopted on Saturday betrayed a conscious effort to address the concern of Anna Hazare and others that the transformation of the anti-graft movement into a political party would lead the activists to make compromises for survival's sake. Thus, as part of a lengthy list of do's and don'ts, the party has decided to have an internal Lokpal, provision for right to recall and for denial of posts and tickets to more than one in a family. The party will also make its donor and expense list public.
The AAP, which plans to make its maiden electoral foray in next year's Delhi polls, is moving with urgency. On Monday, the activists are launching a membership drive inviting all "aam aadmis" to join the new party as "founding members''. An event has been planned at Jantar Mantar, the landmark that has been an integral part of the anti-graft stirs, for what will be the first instance of a political platform soliciting membership in public.
It was in the fitness of things that launch of the party of the activists who have been a gadfly for the political establishment should spark a controversy right at the outset. Congress accused them of Intellectual Property Rights theft, saying that the AAP was a rip off on their "aam aadmi" platform.
This was just before Kejriwal and Bhushan have mocked their "aam credentials" by parodying Congress's "aam aadmi ka haath Congress ke saath (common man is for Congress)" claim. "Congress ka aadmi Robert Vadra ke saath", snickered Sanjay Singh of AAP, in a reminder that the just-launched party will keep targeting political parties for corruption.
On the criticism from Congress, Kejriwal said, ``They are just rattled....Congress could never hijack the aam aadmi despite using the term ``aam aadmi''. Now they have lost the word too.''
The launch of the party came after a day-long meeting of over 300 people during which its constitution was adopted and a 23-member national executive elected. The party's first electoral battle will be Delhi but it appeared to be woefully short of representations from the south and eastern India as of now. The executive has so far only two women members. Admitting to the gender imbalance Kejriwal said that they hoped to bring in more people to make the national executive more representative of women, youth, minorities and diverse sections.
Incidentally, names of former Army chief V K Singh and other eminent people who had urged Team Anna to take a political plunge were missing from the list of supporters. When asked about their absence Bhushan said, ``It is true that there were several eminent people who felt that participating in electoral politics was the only way forward. However, one does not have to be a member of the party to support it.''
Both Kejriwal and Bhushan underlined the fact that winning an election was not their focus but establishing an alternative political system and challenging the way politics was being practiced. As usual political parties were at their receiving end.
AAP's formation came after a bitter split with Hazare over the issue of the anti-corruption movement taking a political plunge as desired by Kejriwal. Both Hazare and Kejriwal announced parting of ways on September 19 following differences over forming a party with the former sticking to his position that the movement should remain apolitical.
On October 2, Kejriwal had announced the formation of the party saying its official launch will be on November 26 to coincide with day the country's Constitution was adopted in 1949.
A court in Argentina has convicted an Oxford educated University of North Carolina professor of attempting to smuggle four pounds of cocaine into the United States.
Paul Frampton, a 68-year-old esteemed professor of physics and astronomy, says he thought he was flying to South America to meet with a bikini model but ended up getting caught in what they call a "honey trap."
Frampton flew to Bolivia from North Carolina earlier this year after communicating with someone who claimed to be Denise Milani, winner of Miss Bikini World 2007. She never showed up.
Instead, Frampton says he was met by a man who gave him a suitcase, identifying himself as an intermediary for Milani, and instructing him to take it to her in Argentina.
PHOTOS: Sex, Spies and Scandal
Once there, he says he could not find her and decided to board a plane home, with that suitcase in hand. Police opened it up at the airport and found more than four pounds of cocaine inside.
"He has a high IQ, is well-known and very distinguished in the field of physics and other scientific areas, but when it comes to common sense he scored a zero," said former DC homicide investigator Rod Wheeler.
The Argentinean court sentenced Frampton to serve four years and eight months in custody after prosecutors there presented evidence of text messages they say Frampton sent to the person he thought was the model, saying, "I'm worried about the sniffer dogs," and "I'm looking after your special little suitcase."
READ: UNC Professor Held in Argentina on Drug Charges Wants Raise From University
The University of North Carolina has cut off Frampton's salary in a move that prompted dozens of his colleagues at the university to sign a letter of protest to administrators.
"As more information about his case becomes available ... it becomes more and more obvious that Paul was the innocent, although very gullible, victim of a scam," the joint letter said.
Many wrote separate letters of reference on a website they created to support the embattled professor, who is hoping to serve his time under house arrest in Argentina at a friend's apartment.
From prison Frampton has said, "It does seem unfair that an innocent scam victim is treated as a professional drug smuggler."
Frampton's Argentinean lawyer told ABC News she would have no comment until having a chance to review the judge's complete ruling, which she expects to be released early next week.
However, it appears this is not the first time Frampton has been in hot water over a woman.
The Telegraph, a London based paper that serves Great Britain , reported that friends say he once met another woman online and flew to China to marry her. This time, the woman was real, but after seeing Frampton, she reportedly canceled the wedding.
If you have a story you would like told you can email correspondent Mark Greenblatt at mark.p.greenblatt@abc.com.
NEW YORK: Frenzied shoppers across the United States joined the Black Friday rush for bargains, the kick-off to the crucial holiday shopping season being closely watched amid a lackluster economy.
Television images showed berserk buyers charging through doors as stores opened up for Black Friday sales on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.
Some stores opened at midnight, while others such as big-box retailers Walmart and Target jumped the gun, opening on Thanksgiving night and carving into the family-centered holiday.
At 11:00 pm Thursday, scores of people were lined up outside a Best Buy store electronics store waiting for its midnight opening.
Phyllis Loges, 52, and her daughter had already waited four hours. "I want to buy a home cinema with TV and sound system," she said, adding that the doorbuster sale price was $1,500, instead of normal prices around $3,500.
In New York City, the well-known Macy's flagship department store was a destination for many. Macy's chief executive Terry Lundgren was on the scene as it opened at midnight.
"I swear I was standing there for 18 to 20 minutes, and the lines of incoming traffic never stopped," he told NBC. "People are definitely shopping and kicking off the shopping on Black Friday."
Black Friday was a boon for tourists, too.
At 7:00 am Friday, Abdul Albudikhi, a 22-year-old from Saudi Arabia, left a Hollister clothing store on Fifth Avenue, his arms laden with shopping bags after shopping since midnight.
"I bought jeans, shoes, a present for my girlfriend, one for my father," he said.
Walmart, the world's biggest retailer, said it had its "best-ever" Black Friday, with larger crowds than last year.
Meanwhile, disgruntled Walmart workers mounted strikes and protests across the country seeking better pay and benefits.
"There is going to be an impact," employee William Fletcher told MSNBC. "The point isn't so much to hurt Walmart as much as it is to get them to listen to us and appreciate the work we do."
Some competitive shoppers lost their cool as they tussled over items or staked out their spots in line.
According to the San Antonio Express News website, one man pulled a gun on another who punched him in the face while the two were waiting in line outside a Sears store late Thursday.
Black Friday starts the year-end holiday shopping season that often tips retailers out of the red and into the black for the year.
But the day's impact on balance sheets is starting to wane, as more and more stores try to reel in customers on Thursday, even if it means that their employees have to forego the traditional Thanksgiving feast.
A decade ago, it would have been impossible to find a single store open on Thanksgiving along New York's big shopping arteries such as Broadway.
But on Thursday, as for the past several years, nearly all the stores were open where Broadway traverses the SoHo neighborhood of lower Manhattan.
Despite a still-struggling economy, Macy's Lundgren seemed upbeat about prospects for the rest of the year, although he acknowledged that November would likely be "a little bit softer" than retailers might like.
The growth of 24/7 online sales is another challenge to brick-and-mortar shopping.
While the National Retail Federation is expecting a 4.1 percent rise in holiday sales this year compared with 2011, data tracker comScore is projecting a jump of 15-18 percent in online purchases.
The NRF projects fewer shoppers in stores and online on Black Friday and the weekend: 147 million, down 3 percent from a year ago.
"Black Friday's on a crash course with irrelevance. Before long, all we're going to be talking about is Cyber Monday," said Louis Banese at Wall Street Daily.
Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, said that Black Friday remains important for retail sales, a big part of the consumer spending that powers about 70 percent of US economic growth.
But he warned that Americans remain cautious amid a fragile recovery.
"If the weekend numbers are not good, the holiday season won't be good."
-AFP/ac
Elated with the "bang-on accurate" test, the seventh time the BMD system has been tested successfully over the last six years, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) promptly declared a missile shield could be deployed for New Delhi by 2014.
"We are now ready to convert the BMD system from an experimental to an operational one that can be deployed on demand. I am confident we can deploy the Phase-I of the BMD system by 2014," said DRDO chief V K Saraswat, speaking to TOI from the Wheeler Island test range off Odisha coast.
But the reality check is that even American missile defence systems like Patriot Advanced Capability-3, Aegis BMD-3 and THAAD (terminal high-altitude area defence), as also Russian and Israeli ones, are not fully foolproof as of now.
In Friday's test, only one of the incoming missiles was real: a modified Prithvi missile mimicking M-9/M-11 class of Chinese Dong Feng short-range ballistic missiles. The other was an electronically simulated missile of a longer range of 1,500km.
Both "enemy" missile launches were, however, conducted "in the same window" to test the BMD system's capability to handle "multiple threats" simultaneously. "This has been done only by the two superpowers (US and Russia) till now. The real missile was destroyed at an altitude of 14.7-km by the interceptor missile with a direct hit," said Saraswat.
The electronic missile was intercepted at an altitude of 120km. Both the missiles were picked up and tracked by long-range and multi-function radars, which in turn passed the data to guidance and launch computers of the interceptors to "kill" them. "The entire test was done practically in deployment configuration," he said.
While it remains to be seen whether DRDO can indeed deploy an effective missile shield by 2014, it has also begun work on adding a third tier to the BMD system. The existing two-tier system is designed to track and destroy ballistic missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth's atmosphere.
The third layer is planned to tackle low-flying cruise missiles, artillery projectiles and rockets in the line with the overall aim to achieve "near 100% kill or interception probability".
"Look what is happening in the Middle-East (Hamas firing rockets at Israeli cities before the recent ceasefire)...hence, protection against low-cost, very close range threats is also needed. We have begun some initial work on the third-tier. We will try to integrate it with the BMD system once it fructifies," said Saraswat.
At present, Phase-I of the BMD system, with interceptors flying at 4.5 Mach high-supersonic speeds to intercept enemy missiles, is meant to tackle hostile missiles with a 2,000-km strike range.
As per DRDO's plans, Phase-II will be geared for taking on 5,000-km range missiles, virtually in the class of ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), with interceptors at hypersonic speeds of 6-7 Mach.
Two people were shot outside a Walmart in Florida today, one of a rash of fights, robberies and other incidents that have cropped up on one of the most ballyhooed shopping days of the year.
The shooting took place at Walmart in Tallahasse about 12:30 p.m., said Dave Northway, public information officer for the Tallahassee Police Department.
He said a scuffle outside the store escalated into gunplay leaving two people shot. The two victims, whose names and genders have not been released, suffered non-life threatening injuries.
Police do not have a suspect at this time.
At Walmart parking lot on Thanksgiving night in Covington, Wash., two people were run down by a driver police suspected of being intoxicated.
The 71-year-old driver was arrested on a vehicular assault charge after the incident, spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West of the Kings County Sheriff's Office said.
The female victim, whose identity has yet to be released, was pinned beneath the driver's Mercury SUV until being rescued by the fire department. She was flown to Harborview Medical Center, where she was listed in serious condition, West said.
The male victim was also taken to Harborview Medical Center, where, West said, he was listed in good condition.
Shoppers Descend on Black Friday Deals
Tensions were high at the entrances as people lined up outside stores, waiting for the doors to open.
At a San Antonio, Texas, Sears, one man argued with customers and even punched one in order to get to the front of the line, prompting a man with a concealed carry permit to pull a gun, said Matthew Porter, public information officer of the San Antonio Police Department.
"It was a little chaotic. People were exiting the store," Porter said. "Fortunately for us, officers responded quickly and were able to ease the commotion."
The man who allegedly caused the altercation fled the scene and remains at large, Porter said. The shopper who pulled the gun will not face charges, he said, because of his concealed carry permit.
One man was treated at the scene for injuries sustained when people rushed out of the store, Porter said.
PHOTOS: Black Friday Shoppers Hit Stores
The crush of shoppers in the middle of the night were prey once again this year for thieves, who hid out in parking lots.
In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a woman said a man pulled a gun on her just as she exited her car to go inside a Best Buy store. The thief made off with $200, according to a police report.
In Maryland, 14-year-old boy told police he was robbed of his Thanksgiving night purchases by five men in the parking lot of a Bed Bath and Beyond store early this morning, the Baltimore Sun reported.
And in Massachusetts, Kmart employees tried to locate a shopper over the intercom after a 2-year-old was reported to be alone in a car, ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV reported.
Police arrived to break into the car and remove the child. The boy's caretaker, his mother's boyfriend, denied the incident took place, according to the station, and was not arrested.
Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.
Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")
Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.
Staring at a Star
An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)
"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.
It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.
Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.
"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.
If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.
Coming Into Focus
The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.
"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.
"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.
Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.
Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.
The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.
Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)
And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.
The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.
Ernie Maas could not help choking up as he took his first look around his new home Wednesday afternoon, a simple one-bedroom, federally subsidized apartment on North Glebe Road in Arlington County.
Maas, 61, who served in the Navy for seven years during and after the Vietnam War, has been homeless for about two years, living much of that time under a bridge on Four Mile Run in Arlington.
TOKYO: Japanese police said Friday they had stormed a bank and arrested a man who took five people hostage, with local media reporting he had demanded Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's cabinet resign.
In a televised news conference, a police spokesman said the hostage-taker, identified as Koji Nagakubo, was arrested on suspicion of taking the five captive.
The hostages, including one released earlier, were all in protective custody safely, the spokesman said, while local media said one of them was slightly injured.
The 32-year-old man began the siege Thursday afternoon at the Zoshi branch of the Toyokawa Shinkin Bank in central Aichi prefecture.
Wielding a survival knife, he took four employees and a female customer captive and was demanding the Noda cabinet step down, as well as asking to speak to journalists, local media said.
-AFP/ac
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