History of gun control is cautionary tale for those seeking regulations after Conn. shooting

At 3 a.m. on July 2, 1993, Steve Sposato sat down in his darkened living room to write, by hand, a letter to the president of the United States. His life had just been shattered.

Hours earlier, in the afternoon, a deranged man armed with semi-automatic weapons went on a rampage, slaughtering eight people at an office building in downtown San Francisco. The gunman’s motive would remain forever a mystery. Among the slain: Steve’s wife, 30-year-old Jody Jones Sposato, the mother of his 10-month-old daughter, Meghan.

His anguished letter to the president asked how it was possible for someone to possess rapid-fire weapons with 30-round magazines, seemingly designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. “Now I’m left to raise my 10-month-old daughter on my own,” he told the president. “How do I find the strength to carry on?”

That letter reached President Bill Clinton. The next year, Sposato stood by Clinton’s side in the Rose Garden as the president demanded that Congress pass a ban on assault weapons, such as the TEC-9s used to kill Sposato’s wife. Sposato testified on the Hill wearing little Meghan on his back in a baby carrier.

With a handful of moderate Republicans joining the Democratic majority, both houses of Congress passed a 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons and large ammunition magazines. An attempt to extend the ban in 2004 died in Congress amid opposition from the gun lobby.

Now gun control has roared back into the national conversation as the country reels from the horror in Newtown, Conn. President Obama and his fellow Democrats are vowing to pass a new assault weapons ban, along with other new laws to strengthen background checks on gun purchasers and limit the size of ammunition magazines.

But although Newtown has supercharged the conversation on how to stop another massacre, the history of gun control is a cautionary tale for those who push for more regulations. If past is prologue, the legislative fights ahead will be protracted and brutal — and any resulting legislation may well be riddled with loopholes.

There is no uncontested ground here. Few issues in the country are as polarized as gun control.

The ideological chasm was on full display in Washington on Friday when the National Rifle Association’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, held a take-no-prisoners news conference in which he called for a federal program to put armed guards in every school in the country, saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

He said laws making schools gun-free zones have backfired: “They tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.” LaPierre’s remarks were twice interrupted by protesters; one held a sign saying, “NRA Killing Our Kids.”

The news conference provided a reminder that gun policy is a central feature of what is loosely known as the culture wars. The gun-rights and gun-control camps don’t even speak the same language, with one side arguing that the Second Amendment can’t possibly mean the right to own an assault weapon, while the other side says “assault weapon” is a pejorative invented by an urban elite that wouldn’t know an AR-15 from an AK-47.

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Iran fighting 'smart economic war': Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN: Iran is engaged in a "smart economic war" with Western powers whose sanctions against its nuclear programme are hurting some Iranians, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday.

"Targeted sanctions, which the enemies say are supposed to be crippling, have led to a drop in our oil" sales, Ahmadinejad said in a live interview on state television, referring to an oil embargo imposed by the European Union.

"They do not even let us transfer the oil money," he said. "They thought Iran's economy would break down, but it did not."

"Iran is engaged in a smart economic war with the enemy," he said.

The EU measure, which came into effect in July, ended European purchases of Iranian crude, and has since decreased Tehran's oil exports to its Asian customers from between 10 to 30 per cent.

According to the International Energy Agency, Iranian exports in November were estimated at 1.3 million barrels per day, down from nearly 2.3 million last year.

Ahmadinejad said his government had "so far managed to control" the effects of sanctions on the economy but admitted that "heavy pressure had been exerted on some Iranians because of sanctions."

He did not elaborate on how Iran was fighting off sanctions for fear the methods would be found by Western powers trying to goad Iran back to the negotiating table over its nuclear ambitions.

"I cannot say what heavy pressure the enemy has imposed, and how we are dealing with them."

"We have so far managed to control this blow, and it hasn't turned out the way they predicted," he said.

Ahmadinejad has faced increasingly scrutiny at home for economic woes, including the collapse of the national currency, which lost more than two-thirds of its value in a 20-day span starting in late September.

Iran's economy is struggling to cope with the gradual tightening of sanctions by the United States and the European Union over the past two years.

The sanctions have also targeted Iran's access to the global banking system, slowing its economy, accelerating inflation and boosting the ranks of the jobless.

Ahmadinejad was speaking to report on his government's implementation two years ago of a controversial plan to cut subsidies on food and energy and redistribute it in form of social assistance.

The plan to generate tens of billions of dollars in additional revenues for his government has been criticised by his opponents, who blame it partially for Iran's runaway inflation.

Ahmadinejad said his government had devised schemes to diffuse the effects of Western sanctions in the "long-term."

"We have prepared long-term plans to decrease dependency on the oil-generated money. We will not allow them to use economic measures as a tool for putting pressure on us anymore," he said.

He said without elaborating that Iran was to "increase its non-oil exports."

His remarks came as Western powers engaging Iran to resolve a years-long dispute over its nuclear programme are pressuring Tehran to return to the negotiating table.

Iran has yet to respond to offers of renewed negotiations with the so-called P5+1 group, consisting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

Iran insists its programme of uranium enrichment is for purely peaceful purposes, and denies Western and Israeli allegations that it wants to manufacture nuclear weapons.

In addition to US and EU measures, Iran is also under four rounds of Security Council sanctions.

- AFP/jc

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Village in Veerappan country says no to caste in marriages

COIMBATORE: The only access to Kalithimbam, a village inside the Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary in western Tamil Nadu, from the nearby Thalavadi town in Erode district is a dirt track that runs through a green patch frequented by elephants and tigers. Few people other than members of the Oorali tribe, who lives here, would risk the walk until a decade ago, since sandalwood smuggler Veerappan lorded over the forest. The trek remains the same though the brigand was shot in 2004. But the social landscape of the village has changed in a radical way since. It's no more Veerappan, but Cupid who lords over the village.

Many households in Kalithimbam, which doesn't have electricity or other modern facilities, have daughter-in-laws from other communities other than the Oorali tribe. Many young men from nearly 300 families in the village travel to cities like Coimbatore and Erode for work and fall in love and marry girls who they meet there. The marriages take place at the local temple with the consent of family and village elders.

Suicides shock villagers into acceptance

Since January this year, nine love marriages have been solemnized in Kalithimbam. The village also has no opposition to their girls marrying outside the tribe though there has been no such alliance yet. At a time when the rest of Tamil Nadu is witnessing a ganging up of non-dalit groups against inter-caste marriages, Kalithimbam takes pride that it has over 40 daughter-in-laws, born in dalit as well as backward communities.

This wasn't so always. The change in mindset came about two years ago after a series of suicides by young men, whose families had opposed their romance with girls outside their tribe. "The suicides shocked our village. Why should we allow our children to die just because they find life partners outside the community? Now the village is conducting each and every marriage with celebration without considering whether the bride is from the tribe,'' says B Geetha, a woman political activist in the village.

All the villagers then took an oath not to oppose "love marriages". If the bride's family opposes the romance, village elders take the responsibility to persuade the girl's family and solemnize the marriage in front of the Perumal temple in the village.

R Ruseeswaran, vice-president, Thalamalai Panchayat which includes Kalithimbam, puts the transformation in perspective. "We have to understand the realities around. After completing education, children move out of the village for jobs and the chances of falling in love with those from other communities are very high. In an age in which mobile phones rule the roost, it would be foolish to oppose love marriages,'' he says.

Mahalakshmi and Maheswari, two women who came to the village as brides, vouch for the change in the village. Mahalakshmi, from Ghermalam, a village in another part of Dhimbam-Thalavadi hills, had met Marimuthu, a truck driver, at a temple festival. Hailing from different communities, they married last year. "My family had opposed the alliance but elders from Kalithimbam convinced them. Now, everyone is happy,'' she says. Maheswari romanced Govindasamy for eight years before getting married. "We promote love and there is no space for hate. Me and my husband are working under the rural employment guarantee scheme and we always help those who are in love and want to get married settle comfortably,'' says Maheswari.

P L Sundaram, a CPI MLA who represents Bhavanisagar constituency which includes Kalithimbam, describes the village as one that "recognises pure love". "The village elders tell the boy and girl to wait if any of them is minor. If the love affair involves a student, the elders put the marriage on hold till he or she completes the course," he says.

Sundaram adds the villagers don't accept dowry. That's quite an achievement for a village, where most of the elders work as farm hands and the youth in cities as drivers and factory workers.

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Urban Advocates Say New Gun Control Talk Overdue

For years, voices have cried in the urban wilderness: We need to talk about gun control.

Yet the guns blazed on.

It took a small-town slaughter for gun control to become a political priority. Now, decades' worth of big-city arguments against easy access to guns are finally being heard, because an unstable young man invaded an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., with a military-style assault rifle and 30-bullet magazines. Twenty young children and six adults were slain.

President Barack Obama called the tragedy a "wake-up call." Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Obama's cabinet and law-enforcement officers from around the country to launch a task force on reducing gun violence. Lawmakers who have long resisted gun control are saying something must be done.

Such action is energizing those who have sought to reduce urban gun violence. Donations are up in some places; other leaders have been working overtime due to this unprecedented moment.

The moment also is causing some to reflect on the sudden change of heart. Why now? Why weren't we moved to act by the killing of so many other children, albeit one by one, in urban areas?

Certainly, Newtown is a special case, 6- and 7-year-olds riddled with bullets inside the sanctuary of a classroom. Even in a nation rife with violence, where there have been three other mass slayings since July and millions enjoy virtual killing via video games, the nature of this tragedy is shocking.

Critics Slam NRA for Proposing Armed School Guards Watch Video

Gun Violence Victims, Survivors Share Thoughts After Newtown Massacre Watch Video

But still: "There's a lot of talk now about we have to protect our children. We have to protect all of our children, not just the ones living in the suburbs," said Tammerlin Drummond, a columnist for the Oakland Tribune.

In her column Monday, Drummond wrote about 7-year-old Heaven Sutton of Chicago, who was standing next to her mother selling candy when she was killed in the crossfire of a gang shootout. Also in Chicago, which has been plagued by a recent spike in gun violence: 6-year-old Aaliyah Shell was caught in a drive-by while standing on her front porch; and 13-year-old Tyquan Tyler was killed when a someone in a car shot into a group of youths outside a party.

Wrote Drummond: "It has taken the murders of 20 babies and six adults in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Connecticut to achieve what thousands of gun fatalities in urban communities all over this country could not."

So again: What took so long? The answers are complicated by many factors: resignation to urban violence, even among some of those who live there; the assumption that cities are dangerous and small towns safe; the idea that some urban victims place themselves in harm's way.

In March, the Children's Defense Fund issued a report titled "Protect Children, Not Guns 2012." It analyzed the latest federal data and counted 299 children under age 10 killed by guns in 2008 and 2009. That figure included 173 preschool-age children.

Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, even though they were only 15 percent of the child/teen population.

"Every child's life is sacred and it is long past time that we protect it," said CDF president Marian Wright Edelman in the report.

It got almost no press coverage — until nine months later, when Newtown happened.

Tim Stevens, founder and chairman of the Black Political Empowerment Project in Pittsburgh, has been focusing on urban gun violence since 2007, when he said Pennsylvania was declared the worst state for black-on-black violence.

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Deadly winter storm snarls US holiday travel

CHICAGO: A deadly winter storm blanketed a huge swath of the United States Friday, grounding flights, turning highways into ice rinks and knocking out power to tens of thousands preparing for the Christmas holiday.

At least eight people in five states were killed by the dangerous road conditions since the storm formed near the Rocky Mountains and moved slowly eastward.

The powerful system dumped as much as 60 centimetres of snow in some areas and knocked down trees and power lines with winds gusting as high as 100 kilometres per hour.

Emergency shelters were opened to help those who lost power stay warm as utility crews struggled to reach downed lines on icy and snow-covered roads. Schools and government offices were closed, as were scores of businesses.

After pounding Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri on Thursday, the storm was centred over the Great Lakes and Appalachians on Friday morning and was expected to reach New England on Saturday.

"Strong winds will cause blowing and drifting, causing near blizzard conditions and very dangerous driving conditions," the National Weather service warned.

"Only travel in an emergency."

Smaller systems also snarled travel in California, Nevada and Oregon while high winds grounded and delayed flights in New York.

Thankfully, on Friday, the busiest travel day of the year, skies were clear in Chicago -- where an estimated 266,000 people will pass through the major aviation hub.

More than 600 flights were cancelled Thursday at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports as the storm dumped freezing rain and a dusting of snow on runways and whipped up dangerously strong winds.

Hundreds more were cancelled at smaller airports like Detroit, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, according to tracking service FlightAware.

Nearly 500 flights had been cancelled by early afternoon Friday, primarily due to high winds in New York and San Francisco.

"This storm is not as large as some winter storms we've seen in the past that can result in thousands of cancelations in a day, but the impact is significant due to the number of holiday travellers," FlightAware chief Daniel Baker said.

More than 30,000 people remained without power in Wisconsin, where the governor declared a state of emergency and called up the National Guard to help rescue people stranded on snow-covered roads.

Two people were killed when their car slid into the path of a semi-trailer on a highway in Wisconsin's rural Rock County on Thursday, Channel 3000 news reported.

And an ambulance transporting a woman in labour got stuck on a Wisconsin highway at about 12:30 am local time Friday, the state's emergency management centre said. A second ambulance sent to help also got stuck, so a snowplough was sent to drive in front of a third ambulance and get her safely to hospital.

In Iowa, two more people were killed and seven injured in a 25-vehicle pileup after conditions got so bad on a major highway Thursday that people couldn't see the cars and big trucks that had slowed down or stopped ahead of them, the State Patrol there said.

Dozens of people were also trapped in their cars, many for hours. One pileup was so bad emergency crews brought food and water to the stranded motorists while they waited for snow blowers and tow trucks to arrive.

Further west in Utah, one woman died of exposure after her car got stuck on an isolated road on Tuesday and she tried to walk out for help, KSL news reported. A man who was with her in the car was able to walk farther and reach shelter, but by the time rescue crews on snowmobiles found the woman she was dead.

And in Nebraska, two people were killed in separate crashes, KETV news reported. One man died after his car was struck by a big rig when blizzard conditions smothered a Kansas highway, the Dodge City Daily Globe reported.

- AFP/jc

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DGCA violates own rule on pilots

NEW DELHI: In a gross violation of its own rules, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has senior management pilots from airlines working for it as seconded flight operations inspectors (FOIs).

This makes a mockery of a civil aviation requirement of the DGCA (Section 8, Series A, Part III, 6.1) which states that an FOI "shall have no management responsibilities in his airline nor in any way be associated with pilot associations/unions, etc. during his tenure, to avoid clash of interests".

These FOIs are mainly examiners in airlines, having at least 5,000 hours of flying. They're selected by a DGCA panel to help it with inspections of planes, route checks of pilots, etc.

Shockingly, out of the list of 19 seconded FOIs on DGCA's website, many hold managerial positions in airlines, as vice-presidents, general managers or chief pilots, making it a clear case of conflict of interest.

While these FOIs are supposed to inspect planes other than their own airlines, it isn't unusual for them to favour each other and their airlines and turn a Nelson's eye to snags, incidents and flight-time and duty-time limitation violations.

Arun Mishra, the DG of DGCA, claims that when his organization took some of these FOIs, they were non-management examiners but were promoted by the airline later. So why didn't the DGCA remove them then and infuse fresh blood? After all, their deputation is meant for two years. "We will relook this FOI issue," promised Mishra.

The post of seconded FOIs was formed in 2009. The DGCA has five FOIs of its own who are selected from AI and they check both scheduled and non-scheduled flights. But as this number was then grossly inadequate to inspect some 1,600 planes in India, the DGCA asked airlines to pitch in with their personnel. These pilots are paid by the airline and fly for it too. But airlines in a smart move have sent management pilots and can, therefore, do their bidding.

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The Healing Power of Dogs

One boy confided in the gentle-faced golden retriever about exactly what happened in his classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day—which his parents said was more than he'd been able to share with them. A little girl who hadn't spoken since the shootings finally started talking to her mother again after petting one of the "comfort dogs." Groups of teenagers began to open up and discuss their fear and grief with each other as they sat on the floor together, all stroking the same animal.

The dogs are therapy dogs—professional comforters that were brought to Newtown, Connecticut, almost immediately after the horrific shootings on December 14 that left 20 young children and 6 staff members dead.

Tim Hetzner, leader of the Lutheran Church Charities (LCC) K9 Comfort Dogs team, traveled to Newtown with nine specially trained golden retrievers and their volunteer handlers from the Addison, Illinois-based group.

Using a local Lutheran church as their base, the K9 teams have spent the past few days visiting schools, churches, activity centers, and private homes in the community. They only go where they're invited and are careful to let people approach the dogs instead of vice versa, in case anyone is afraid of or allergic to the animals.

Counselors With Fur

The response to the dogs has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Hetzner.

"A lot of times, kids talk directly to the dog," he said. "They're kind of like counselors with fur. They have excellent listening skills, and they demonstrate unconditional love. They don't judge you or talk back."

The dogs are also used to reassure victims of natural disasters—most recently, Superstorm Sandy—and to brighten the days of nursing home patients. Hetzner said he got the idea after seeing how well students responded to therapy dogs in the wake of a 2008 school shooting at Northern Illinois University. Now, in addition to the core of 15 that make up LCC's K9 Comfort Dogs team, the group has deployed about 20 other dogs to be based in schools and churches that apply for them.

The human volunteers' main job is to make sure the dogs don't get burned out, which means taking a break to play ball or nap after about two hours of work. Although some handlers have a background in counseling or pastoral care, "the biggest part of their training is just learning to be quiet," Hetzner said.

"I think that's a common mistake people make in crisis situations—feeling obligated to give some sort of answer or advice, when really, those who are hurting just need to express themselves."

The Human-Canine Bond

Why does petting a dog make us feel better? It's not just because they're cute, says Brian Hare, director of Duke University's Canine Cognition Center.

The human-canine bond goes back thousands of years. Dogs descend from wolves and have been attracted to humans ever since we began living in settlements—a source of tasty garbage. That created an advantage for wolves to live near humans, and since it tended to be the less aggressive wolves that could do this more effectively, they essentially self-domesticated over time, according to Hare.

(Read more about the evolutionary history of dogs in the February 2012 National Geographic magazine cover story, "How To Build a Dog.")

Part of what makes dogs special is that they are one of the only species that does not generally exhibit xenophobia, meaning fear of strangers, says Hare.

"We've done research on this, and what we've found is that not only are most dogs totally not xenophobic, they're actually xenophilic—they love strangers!" Hare said. "That's one way in which you could say dogs are 'better' than people. We're not always that welcoming."

People also benefit from interacting with canines. Simply petting a dog can decrease levels of stress hormones, regulate breathing, and lower blood pressure. Research also has shown that petting releases oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding and affection, in both the dog and the human.

Do Dogs Have Empathy?

In situations like the Newtown shootings, it makes a lot of sense that dogs would be an effective form of comfort, says psychologist Debbie Custance of Goldsmiths College, University of London.

"Dogs are social creatures that respond to us quite sensitively, and they seem to respond to our emotions," she said.

Custance recently led a study to see whether dogs demonstrated empathy. She asked volunteers to either pretend to cry, or just "hum in a weird way." Would the dogs notice the difference?

"The response was extraordinary," she said. Nearly all of the dogs came over to nuzzle or lick the crying person, whether it was the owner or a stranger, while they paid little attention when people were merely humming.

"We're not saying this is definitive evidence that dogs have empathy—but I can certainly understand why people would think they do, at least," Custance said.

Other animals can also be useful in what's known as "animal-assisted therapy." The national organization Pet Partners has 11,000 registered teams of volunteer handlers and animals that visit nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and victims of tragedy and disaster. Although most of the teams use dogs, some involve horses, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, birds, and even barnyard animals like pigs and chickens.

The presence of an animal can help facilitate a discussion with human counselors or simply provide wordless emotional release, said Rachel Wright, director of Pet Partners' therapy animal program. The group plans to deploy several teams of therapy dogs to Newtown in the near future, working closely with agencies that are already present in the community, she said.

To some, the idea of sending a dog to a grieving person might seem too simplistic. But Custance says that very simplicity is part of what makes the connection between humans and canines so powerful.

"When humans show us affection, it's quite a complicated thing that involves expectations and judgments," she said. "But with a dog, it's a very uncomplicated, nonchallenging interaction with no consequences. And if you've been through a hard time, it's lovely to have that."

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Former River Valley High principal linked to woman

SINGAPORE: Former River Valley High School Principal Mr Steven Koh Yong Chiah, 58, who is assisting investigations by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB), has been linked to a woman in the educational services industry.

According to Lianhe Wanbao, the woman is said to be running several businesses, most of them providing education-related services to schools, such as organising educational trips overseas for schools.

Mr Koh had served as Principal of Chinese High School from 1999 to 2002, before it merged with Hwa Chong Junior College in 2005 to become HCI.

Former staff of Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) were grilled by CPIB for more than 10 hours on the relationship between Mr Koh and the mystery woman, reported Lianhe Wanbao. The woman is believed to be married to a foreigner.

On December 19, the Ministry of Education (MOE) had announced that Mr Koh was assisting the CPIB in its investigations, and that it was redeploying him from River Valley High to the MOE Headquarters as Principal (Special Projects).

Shin Min Daily quoted Mr Koh saying that he has "nothing to be worried about", though he was initially taken aback when the CPIB contacted him.

"I thought, why are they looking for me? But I have nothing to be worried about," he told the newspaper's reporter on December 19.

When asked what the investigation was about, Mr Koh said it was not appropriate for him to reveal details as it was ongoing.

- TODAY

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Nitish will have a keen eye on Modi’s rise

NEW DELHI: With "Modi-for-PM" chants growing, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar must be closely watching BJP leadership's response to the pressure from within to anoint the resurgent Gujarat chief minister as the party's prime ministerial choice.

Nitish has made it clear that he will walk out of the NDA if the BJP declares Modi to be its choice for the coveted job and, according to sources, is pretty determined to carry out the threat.

The Bihar chief minister, who conveyed his reservations to the BJP leadership, has been assured by BJP chief Nitin Gadkari that his party has not yet decided to project a prime minister. Gadkari also told Nitish that BJP would take the call after sounding out its allies.

Although the assurance does not rule out the possibility of Modi being cast as the party's candidate for PMO at a future date, it provides Nitish adequate political cover to persist with his alliance with the BJP in the face of taunts of "secular" rivals like Ramvilas Paswan for being hand in glove with "communalists".

Aspirations of other BJP leaders to be the chosen one may cause the party to persist with strategic ambiguity on the leadership question. However, the posture of vagueness may become difficult to persist if the "bring Modi" glamour gathers steam, potentially causing complications for ties with Nitish who may wish to ask for a decision well before polls are called.

Nitish's "secular" vow reflects the hard-nosed estimate that acquiescence into Modi's choice will conflict with his project to win over Muslims and hurt his acceptability among "secular" players — and he will like clarity soon enough.

The equation may get tense if a section of the BJP leadership, which holds that Modi's projection can motivate the cadre, draws in those questing for the helmsman and for the China-like growth rates gathers strength. This section holds that Modi will be no hindrance in enlisting new allies like Jayalalitha and Raj Thackeray and holding on to existing ones like Akalis.

As for Nitish's veto, the school contends that the party should not be intimidated by it because there is no guarantee that the JD(U) leader will remain hitched to the BJP irrespective of who the latter may wish to style as its prime ministerial candidate.

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Manhunt Heats Up for Two Escaped Bank Robbers

The manhunt for two bank robbers who escaped from a downtown Chicago prison this week intensified overnight, with police chasing multiple leads as new footage shows the men getting into a taxi minutes after their brazen escape.

Investigators say surveillance cameras captured Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, and Kenneth Conley, 38,
getting into a taxi minutes after their early Tuesday escape. They entered the taxi at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, just blocks away from the jail.

The FBI considers them "armed and dangerous."

The men then showed up five hours later at the home of Sandy Conley, Kenneth Conley's mother, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, Ill.

"He was in the house for two minutes," Sandy Conley said. "I can't tell you if he was armed. I made him get out."

Thomas Trautmann of the Chicago FBI said the clock is ticking on finding the men.

"[As] each hour goes by, our chances get longer and longer," he said. "However, we do have several viable leads that we are running down."

He did not specify the information.

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Prison Break: Convicts Escape from Jail on Bed Sheets Watch Video

Banks and Conley were last seen Monday at 10 p.m. during a prison head count at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago's Loop district. The two borrowed a move from the film "Escape From Alcatraz" by stuffing their beds with clothes in the shape of bodies.

They men then broke the window of their cell at the federal prison, shimmying out a hole only inches wide, and scaled down the side of the building 17 stories, all the while holding onto a rope of sheets and towels taken from the prison. The rope was strong enough to support the two, one weighing 165 pounds the other 185 pounds.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, as employees arrived at work, they noticed the sheets left dangling from the building and at jailers discovered that Conley and Banks were missing.

While the men have had plenty of time to leave the area, there's no indication that they have, ABC 7 TV's public-safety expert Jody Weis said.

"There's a likelihood that they're going to stay here," Weis, a former Chicago police superintendent, said. "They'll have people they can trust. They can have people they can work with. There are going to be people that might be able to hide them out."

Banks, nicknamed "the second-hand bandit" because of the used clothing disguises he wore in several robberies, was convicted of armed robbery last week. His parting words to his judge, Rebecca Pallmeyer, were, "I'll be seeking retribution as well as damages ... you'll hear from me."

Conley had been in jail for several years.

Pallmeyer and others who presided over the men's cases have reportedly been offered protection.

"If they're willing to go down a sheet 17 floors, they're willing to take a chance," Weis said. "And I think you can draw your own conclusion as to what that might mean."

The FBI and U.S. Marshals are offering a combined reward of $60,000 to find the inmates and bring them back into custody.

Escape Has Similarities to 1985 Prison Break

Banks and Conley's disappearance has some striking similarities to the daring escape made by two convicted murders who also broke out of the downtown jail 27 years ago.

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