Adults in Washington state will be able to smoke marijuana legally when it is officially decriminalized Thursday, even though the Justice Department has offered no guidance on the conflict with federal drug laws.
Prosecutors throughout the state have begun dismissing hundreds of misdemeanor marijuana cases, according to authorities there, and state and local police are being retrained to arrest drivers who are high and allow adults to light up in their homes.
MADRID: Lionel Messi scored twice as Barcelona beat Athletic Bilbao 5-1 to set a new record start to a La Liga season and open a 14-point gap on bitter rivals Real Madrid who later face a crunch derby with in-form Atletico.
Gerard Pique put the Catalan side ahead after 22 minutes followed quickly by Messi's first, which came off defender Fernando Amorebieta on the line, before Adriano Correia hit the third on the point of half-time.
Cesc Fabregas then added to the deluge of goals and Ibai Gomez got a consolation before Messi struck again.
Barca have now put together 13 wins and a draw from their first 14 matches to beat the previous best start in the Spanish top flight by Real Madrid in the 1991-92 season.
Messi also is now just one goal off Gerd Mueller's record of 85 goals in a calendar year for Bayern Munich and Germany in 1972.
Barcelona's injury problems at the back have eased so that coach Tito Vilanova was able to rest Carles Puyol with Javier Mascherano playing alongside Pique, but Dani Alves was missing and so Adriano came in at right back.
The home side began at a high tempo but while they pushed Athletic back the visitors kept faith with the coach Marcelo Bielsa's attacking philosophy as they looked to bring the ball out from defence.
Barca had their first sight of goal with a low drive from Andres Iniesta after 12 minutes which keeper Gorka Iraizoz saved comfortably.
They got their breakthrough after a spell of pressure.
Athletic failed to clear their lines from a corner and although Iraizoz repelled Fabregas' shot, Pique pounced on the rebound to knock it home.
Minutes later and Barca doubled their lead due in part to slack defending which has plagued Athletic's season and one of the reasons why they appear far short of the team which reached last season's Europa League and King's Cup finals.
Fernando Amorebieta failed to keep tight to Messi who through on goal slipped the ball past the keeper and a despairing dive from the defender only served to help the ball over the line.
The Barca players were queuing up to score the third before the break with Fabregas having a shot saved and Messi hitting the post before Adriano burst in from the right and fired a Fabregas pass into the roof of the net.
There was no let up after the restart and Iraizoz did well to block Messi but could do nothing to stop Fabregas who fired home an Iniesta pass inside the area.
Barca were guilty of easing off as Gomez pulled a goal back but Messi had the final say with his second.
Meanwhile, Mauricio Pellegrino was sacked as manager of Valencia following his side's 5-2 defeat at home to Real Sociedad.
The game swung on the first half dismissal of Jonas Goncalves with Valencia ahead through Roberto Soldado.
Alberto De la Bella equalised before the break and further goals came from Mikel Gonzalez, Diego Ifran, Imanol Agirretxe and Carlos Vela from the penalty spot while Soldado also got a second.
Earlier, an Alberto Lopo header saw fourth-placed Malaga lose 1-0 away to Getafe.
- AFP/fa
BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Saturday that voting inside the parliament would decide as to who is in favour of national interest and who is working for international interests.
"The government feels that their responsibility is to safeguard the interest of international market mafias instead of national interest and for saving the interest of international market mafias, the government is ready to compromise with national interests. Now, the parliament will decide as to who is in support of international market mafias and who are supporting national interests," said Naqvi.
The government's decision to allow foreign supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart had triggered protest not only from opposition parties but also from some of its allies.
BJP had sought debate on the issue of allowing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector, under the rule that entails voting after discussions.
Meanwhile, Minister in the Prime Minister Office (PMO), V Narayanaswamy said the government would answer all the queries raised by the opposition parties in the parliament and will explain the benefits of allowing FDI in retail sector.
The lower house of parliament has set December 04 and 05 as the date to vote and debate on FDI. The dates for the upper house are yet to be decided.
Narayanaswamy said the government is confident of becoming victorious in the debate.
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
A spectacular natural phenomenon was on display early this week as lava from a vent in Hawaii's Kilauea volcano flowed into the ocean, sending up plumes of steam as it made contact with the waves.
Though lava can still be viewed from Kalapana near the Big Island's Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, ocean entry is no longer occurring, according to the National Park Service.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
The lava traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) from Kilauea’s Pu'u O'o vent to the ocean. When lava reaches the water, it cools and hardens, forming a lava delta that can be dangerous to nearby onlookers, according to Reuters.
The news service reported that no communities on the Big Island were threatened by the lava flow.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
A burst of volcanic activity erupts from Kilauea’s crater in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on November 27.
The volcano has been erupting continuously for nearly 30 years. No major damage has been suffered by a town since 1986, according to Reuters.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Hugh Gentry, Reuters
“Ocean entries are beautiful but dangerous,” said Janet Babb, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in a statement reported by Reuters. She warned that the steam could be more hazardous than it appears.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Matt Northam, My Shot
A plume of smoke billows where lava from Kilauea meets the sea in this aerial photo taken November 27.
Published November 30, 2012
Photograph by Peter Vancoillie, Your Shot
Published November 30, 2012
NEW YORK: Oil prices turned higher in late trade Friday to end with modest gains ahead of the weekend despite growing worries over deficit negotiations in Washington.
In New York, West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery added 84 cents to $88.91 a barrel.
On the London market, the Brent North Sea contract for January gained 47 cents to $111.23 a barrel.
Traders said there was little news to explain the higher price; the rising euro, which topped $1.30, was one likely contributor to buying.
But the US fiscal cliff talks, which could see the world's largest economy forced into recession next year if Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on a deficit-cutting plan, continued to overshadow trade.
Politicians on both sides signalled Friday that things were not going very well in the talks, one month before the deadline.
"Crude oil prices consolidated within the recent range... due to the mixed signals from the US about the fiscal cliff program and the ongoing uncertainty about the eurozone's economic conditions," said Sucden Financial Research analyst Myrto Sokou.
In Europe, official data published Friday showed unemployment in the eurozone hit a record high in October, another drag on growth in the region.
In Lagos, ExxonMobil's Nigeria chief warned that Nigerian oil production will fall by 40 percent by 2020 if the country goes ahead with proposed increases in taxes and royalties.
The proposals are part of a planned sweeping overhaul of Nigeria's oil industry that has been delayed for years. It would also include a restructuring of state oil firm NNPC.
Mark Ward said the current legislation included fiscal terms that were too harsh and would block investment.
"It would be good to have a good (law) passed so there is clarity and there is certainty on the investment climate, the fiscal terms as well as the restructuring," Ward told a gathering of industry figures.
"However, if what we see today is passed without significant changes, it will cause just the opposite: investment will dry up."
-AFP/ac
The national flag will fly half mast on all buildings and there will be no official entertainment during the seven days of state mourning, starting Friday and will be on till December 6.
Gujral will be given state funeral. His body will be cremated near Smriti Sthal here on Saturday at 3pm.
All Central government offices and Delhi government offices here will close at 1:30pm on Saturday to enable people to attend the funeral ceremony.
There will be condolence references made to him in both the Houses of Parliament on Monday.
The Cabinet, which held special meeting to mourn the demise of the former PM, also passed a resolution placing on record "its deep sense of grief" and extended its "sincere condolences on behalf of the entire nation to the bereaved family".
The resolution says, "The Cabinet expresses profound sorrow at the sad demise of Inder Kumar Gujral, the former Prime Minister of India, on November 30. In his death, India has lost a great patriot, a visionary leader and a freedom fighter.
"Gujral actively participated in the freedom struggle and was imprisoned during the Quit India Movement. As a distinguished diplomat, he served as Ambassador of India to the erstwhile U S S R. and Special Envoy of India to a number of countries. Gujral was an esteemed Member of Parliament in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.
"Before assuming the office of the Prime Minister of India on April 21, 1997, Gujral held various ministerial positions as Minister of External Affairs; Minister of Water Resources; Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs & Communications and Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting and Communications.
Born on December 4, 1919, at Jhelum in undivided Punjab into a family of freedom fighters, Gujral was an erudite scholar, an eminent intellectual and a well respected commentator on national and international affairs".
Photograph courtesy Héctor Montaño, INAH
Sporting an elaborate headdress and shield, the Palenque king named Kan Bahlam, or Snake Jaguar, is depicted on one of the tomb walls.
Eight other figures are depicted as well, "each probably a different royal ancestor of the tomb occupant," said Stuart.
"The imagery of nine ancestors seems to have been a theme repeated in other Palenque royal tombs, such as Pakal's own huge one in the Temple of the Inscriptions."
The region's most famous king, Pakal, came to power in A.D. 615 at age 12 and ruled until he was in his 80s. He turned Palenque into a thriving, world-class city. Because Pakal built over much of what existed before him, little is known about the time prior to his ascension to power.
If this tomb predates the famous king, as INAH and Stuart suspect, its contents could offer clues about life in pre-Pakal times.
It's unclear yet what might be found inside, but it's "cool enough," said Stuart, that there's now "firm archaeological evidence of a Palenque ruler from the years before Pakal's reign."
(Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine.)
Published November 30, 2012
DAMASCUS: Syrian troops mounted an assault on rebels near Damascus on Thursday, closing off the road to the airport before later securing it, authorities said, amid a widespread telecommunications outage.
Meanwhile, as UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi hinted President Bashar al-Assad would have to step down to allow for a new Syria, a monitoring group said a government air raid on the northern city of Aleppo killed at least 15 civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army attacked rebel bastions in a string of towns along the highway and near the international airport, with state media saying the road was eventually "secured."
The fighting around the capital, which came after Internet links went down across Syria, prompted EgyptAir and Emirates to announce the cancellation of flights to Damascus.
Official media said several members of an "armed terrorist group, Al-Nusra Front," had been killed in the town of Aqraba.
Two Austrian soldiers with a UN force on the Golan were injured after their convoy was shot at on the road to the airport, the foreign ministry in Vienna said.
A ministry spokesman said one soldier was shot in the arm, and the other in the shoulder, but both were quickly treated.
Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger instructed his country's embassy in Damascus to file a protest with the government and the Syrian ambassador in Vienna was to be summoned to the foreign ministry.
"Syria is responsible for the safety of our UNDOF soldiers and must ensure that they can fulfil their international mandate," Spindelegger said.
In Syria, state television, quoting a foreign ministry source, blamed the shootings on rebels.
"At around 12 noon (1000 GMT), and while a terrorist armed group was firing towards an army post in the area of Aqraba, the shots hit a vehicle of UNDOF, leading to the injury of two members of those forces," it said.
As activists warned that sudden communication cuts are often a signal of imminent military offensives, US technology companies Akamai and Renesys, which monitor web traffic, said the country was cut off from the Internet.
In Damascus, users said both Internet and mobile telephone communications were cut and land lines barely functioning, with the country's Internet provider citing technical problems.
The United States accused the beleaguered Syrian regime of deliberately severing telecommunications links in what it branded a sign of desperation.
"We condemn this latest assault on the Syrian people's ability to express themselves and communicate with each other and it just, again, speaks to the kind of desperation of the regime," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
She added, however, that some 2,000 communications sets supplied to opposition rebels over recent months as part of a US non-lethal assistance programme were not affected by the blackout.
Amnesty International warned that the cut in telecommunications "may herald the intention of the Syrian authorities to shield the truth of what is happening in the country from the outside world."
In northern Syria, five children and two women were among at least 15 people killed when a government warplane dropped two bombs on the rebel-held Ansari district of Aleppo, the Britain-based Observatory said.
The strike hit two buildings in Aleppo, the commercial capital, and videos posted online by activists showed the facades of several apartments blown away.
Rebels, who control vast swathes of territory in northern Syria, have made significant gains in past days, including shooting down regime attack aircraft with surface-to-air missiles for the first time.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Syrian rebels have obtained up to 40 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, some from Qatar, citing Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials.
Analysts say the delivery marked a potential turning point in the prolonged war with Assad's forces, in which the Observatory says more than 40,000 people have perished since March 2011.
On Thursday, it said at least 59 people died nationwide -- 34 civilians, 19 soldiers and six rebels.
On the diplomatic front, international envoy Brahimi briefed the UN Security Council, which remains divided between Western nations and Assad allies Russia and China on the 20-month conflict.
"I think it's very, very, very clear that the people of Syria want change, and real change, not cosmetic changes," he later told reporters in New York. "The new Syria will not look like the Syria of today."
Brahimi also said that Syria "very, very urgently" needed a ceasefire and a large peacekeeping force. "A ceasefire will not hold unless it is very, very strongly observed. That, I believe, will require a peacekeeping mission."
-AFP/ac
Addressing a news conference on Thursday night, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan said the two-volume report, which was not discussed in the cabinet meeting — with observers saying it was part of a Congress strategy — will be uploaded on the state government's website by Friday. The first volume addresses issues pertaining to land brought under irrigation, while the second sheds light on big and medium projects executed by five state irrigation corporations.
NCP leader Ajit Pawar, who resigned as deputy chief minister last September following a series of exposes in TOI, is believed to be desperate to make a comeback in the government based on the findings of the white paper, which many in official circles described as a "whitewash". Pawar was the state's water resources minister between 1999 and 2010, when most of the dubious contracts were awarded to select contractors. Political sources said infighting between rival groups in the NCP may scuttle Pawar's re-entry plans.
According to an estimate, as much as Rs 35,000 crore may have been siphoned off by the politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus in dud irrigation projects in the past ten years.
Government sources said only a criminal investigation will unravel the extent of the scam, described as the largest in Maharashtra's history.
"If there is an independent judicial inquiry, the Democratic Front government will collapse, considering the involvement of powerful politicians and officials," they said.
As reported by TOI on Thursday, the white paper has justified irrigation project cost escalations, blaming them on delays in relief and rehabilitation, land acquisition and environmental clearances. It says the escalations were commensurate with hikes approved for similar projects in other states.
Debunking the claim that Rs 70,000 crore was spent on irrigation projects in the past ten years, the document puts the figure at just Rs 42,000 crore. The paper, prepared by the state water resources department, claims that of this amount, Rs 30,000 crore was spent towards relief and rehabilitation; Rs 5,000 crore is shown under administrative expenses. The paper adds that over 30% of the relief and rehabilitation cost went towards projects that are yet to be completed. It is pertinent to note that departments controlled by the Congress are responsible for relief and rehabilitation and land acquisition.
The paper says 69 ongoing mega projects and 189 medium projects were taken up under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP) and bore approvals of the Central Water Commission and the Planning Commission. It says the central agencies ratified the cost escalations.
The paper says the scheduled rates for materials used by the department while awarding contracts (department scheduled rates) were lower than those used for similar projects in other states and also less than rates used by other agencies in Maharashtra like the public works department and the MMRDA.
The paper claims that the scope of project work was often increased on account of demand from local politicians. The document gives status reports for mega projects, including details like original cost, escalations and their reasons.
Of the state's 226 lakh hectares of cultivable land, the white paper says irrigated land stood at 48.5 lakh hectares in 2010, which it says is a 28% increase from 2001 when the area was 37 lakh hectares. The paper says the cropped irrigated area (the ratio of irrigation potential generation to land under irrigation) grew by 5.17% during the ten-year period.
According to the economic status report (ESR), the cropped irrigated area only rose by 0.1% during this period (from 17.8% in 2001 to 17.9% in 2010). The chief minister had cited ESR data while asking the department to prepare the white paper in May this year.
The paper also refuted allegations that the department had created liabilities worth Rs 70,000 crore. It said that while projects worth Rs 80,000 crore were in the pipeline, liabilities had been booked only for Rs 35,000 crore.
President Obama and Mitt Romney met face to face today for the first time since the election, breaking bread at the White House as talks over the looming "fiscal cliff" appeared to be faltering on Capitol Hill.
"I bet it was and is quite tasty," Obama spokesman Jay Carney said of the lunch as it was underway, "because [the chefs] know how to prepare very fine meals."
The menu included white turkey chili and Southwestern grilled chicken salad, the White House said in a written statement following the meal. The discussion was said to center on "America's leadership in the world and the importance of maintaining that leadership position in the future."
The former rivals concluded their 70-minute encounter with a visit to the Oval Office, the symbolic center of American power to which Romney has long tried to accede, shaking hands before the iconic "Resolute" presidential desk.
"Governor Romney congratulated the President for the success of his campaign and wished him well over the coming four years," the White House said. "They pledged to stay in touch, particularly if opportunities to work together on shared interests arise in the future."
The lunch took place in an elegant private dining room in the West Wing overlooking the manicured gardens of the White House South Lawn. Romney was seen coming and going from a side entrance in a black SUV. The former GOP nominee arrived without fanfare or entourage, opening his own car door both times.
President Obama said during a news conference earlier this month that he was interested in speaking with Romney about his ideas on jobs and economic growth, noting that his rival had "presented some ideas during the course of the campaign that I actually agree with."
Administration officials said there was no formal agenda for today's lunch or a "specific ask" or assignment for the governor.
Romney, who has kept a relatively low profile since losing the election on Nov. 6, has not publicly addressed Obama's post-election overtures or the prospect of working together. Both men have little personal history and had a chilly relationship during the campaign.
Senior Romney campaign strategist Eric Fehrnstrom called Obama's lunch invitation "gracious" and said that Romney was "glad to accept." The governor also met earlier Thursday in Washington with former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
The Obama-Romney detente came as talks between the White House and congressional Republicans to prevent the economy from going over the "fiscal cliff" of mandatory spending cuts and tax increases set for Jan. 1 appeared to hit a snag.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the lead White House negotiator in the talks, and White House legislative chief Rob Nabors held a flurry of meetings today with congressional leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.
But following sessions, top Republicans poured cold water on what had been budding optimism of progress toward a deal.
"No substantive progress has been made over the last two weeks," said House Speaker John Boehner at a press conference.
"We know what the menu is. What we don't know is what the White House is willing to do to get serious about solving our debt crisis," he said, accusing the administration of failing to detail plans for significant spending cuts to correspond with desired tax revenue increases.
Obama and Boehner spoke by phone Wednesday night, sources told ABC News, their second conversation in four days. Boehner described it as "direct and straightforward," but suggested "disappointment" with Obama's reticence to waver on hiking tax rates on the wealthy.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in advance of his meeting with Geithner, said everything the White House has put down on the table so far has been "counterproductive," and he hopes that the Treasury Secretary brings "a specific plan from the president" with him today.
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