President Obama, so often cool and unemotional, struggled to maintain his composure Friday as he addressed a nation reeling from a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.
“The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” Obama said partway into a four-minute statement.
SINGAPORE: National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) have signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) on collaboration in nuclear and radiation safety, emergency preparedness and response.
NEA's partnership with DEMA is meant to enhance Singapore's capabilities in radiological operational readiness and incident response.
The partnership will provide a platform for NEA and DEMA to share and exchange knowledge and technical expertise in several areas -- environmental radiation monitoring, risk assessment of surface contamination, and public protection policies and measures.
Staff exchange visits and attachment programmes are also included in the partnership.
Director of NEA's Centre for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Science Mr Ang Kok Kiat and chief advisor of DEMA's Nuclear Division Mr Steen Cordt Hoe signed the LOI at the sidelines of the Fukushima Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety held in Koriyama City of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.
The collaboration with DEMA was first mooted following a multi-agency delegation visit to Denmark led by NEA's chief executive officer, Mr Andrew Tan, in October 2011.
DEMA, a government agency under the Danish Ministry of Defence, is tasked with leading the Danish response to nuclear emergencies abroad for protection of the population and environment.
DEMA's nuclear emergency management capabilities include a nation-wide automatic monitoring system and forecasting of possible radioactive fallout on the basis of current weather data.
- CNA/lp
Explaining comments he made after landing in New Delhi Friday evening, which were widely reported by the Indian media, Malik told NDTV news channel that he "had never compared" terror attacks with the Dec 6, 1992 mosque demolition.
"I am here with a message of love and peace, and both countries are working on a roadmap of peace and love, there is no option," the Pakistani interior minister told the news channel.
"When I spoke of Babri, I never compared it with terror acts," he said, adding: "What I said is that we do not want ugly incidents... Never made such a comparison," Malik said.
Malik had said Friday: "Terrorism brings grief, we do not want a 9/11, Bombay blast, Samjhauta Express blast, Babri Mosque demolition."
On his remarks on Kalia, Malik said: "My full sympathies are with the family... Since the matter concerns the ministry of defence, I will take the information and have it investigated... The cause of death is not yet determined. If he was tortured, how could you expect that we would give such a body (back), knowing the reaction it would elicit."
He also said that India had "never raised with Pakistan in any way" the issue of Kalia's death and it was not part of his agenda in India this time.
He accused the media of creating the agenda for the India-Pakistan talks, terming it "not fair".
Clarifying his remarks Friday on Kalia that were interpreted as dismissive, Malik said he had been "totally misquoted" and that he did not know "too much of the incident". "I am not a master computer," Malik said.
Capt Saurabh Kalia's mutilated and tortured body had been handed over to India after the 1999 Kargil conflict. Kalia's father has taken his son's torture-killing to the Supreme Court, saying Pakistan should be told to apologise. He has also approached the UN Human Rights Commission asking it to probe his son's death as a war crime.
Asked about it, Malik had said Friday: "When a fight is going on at the border, we really don't know whether he was killed with a Pakistani bullet or he died because of the weather."
Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.
A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.
After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)
Published December 14, 2012
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)
That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”
Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12
Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11
Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11
Also in The Reliable Source:
Jenna Bush Hager announces pregnancy on ‘Today’
Hey, isn’t that. . .?: Steve Harvey; Max Baucus and Tim Geithner
Quoted: Marco Rubio on his hair loss
D.C. power players appear in new video portrait — but is it art?
Elizabeth Kucinich becomes a real-estate agent; will keep public-affairs job, too
Albert Small buys George Washington letter for $290,000 — but don’t tell his wife
SINGAPORE: Singapore Red Cross and the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) said injured Navy serviceman Jason Chee is well supported by the National Blood Programme.
In a joint statement, they assured well wishers that there is sufficient blood for his surgeries.
The statement revealed that the Singapore Red Cross has already been recalling donors who are due for donation and blood donors of O+ type to ensure sufficient stock.
SRC and HSA thanked donors who have been prompted by Mr Chee's incident to come forward to donate blood.
They clarified that directed and replacement donations -- where families and friends are obliged to donate blood for the patient or to replace blood used by the patient -- are not practised in Singapore.
The statement said blood collected at the blood banks is available to all patients who need it.
It added that voluntary and non-remunerated blood donation is key to the safety and quality of Singapore's blood supply.
It noted that because of the regular contribution of donors, there was sufficient blood for Mr Chee and others when they needed transfusions.
Mr Chee, a regular serviceman, was injured on Monday after he got caught between a motorised winch and a rope on Landing Ship Tank RSS Endeavour.
His elderly father has been shaken by the news, and has been taken care of by relatives.
Mr Chee is the family's only child and sole breadwinner.
He recently lost his mother, who was a kidney dialysis patient.
Mr Chee had been working on board the ship in the Gulf of Aden on anti-piracy patrol when he received news of his mother's worsening condition.
The Navy had flown him home to be with his mother. He was in Singapore when she died.
- CNA/xq
Interestingly, a significant majority of 75 per cent would rather go through a full body scanner than have a full pat down by a security officer, said the survey by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
It further added that a similar number - 73 per cent of air travellers, respondents were willing to share personal background information with governments in order to speed up security screening.
The 2012 survey, released by IATA here on Thursday evening, contains responses from nearly 3,000 travelers from 114 countries who had travelled by air in the past 12 months. More than half the respondents had booked their flights themselves, mostly through an airline website.
Keeping these and other important findings in mind, the IATA has come up with several recommendations for airlines, airports and governments to follow to make air travel smoother and hassle-free, said Kenneth Dunlap, IATA's director (Security & Facilitation).
Among the respondents of the survey, 77 per cent were comfortable to use biometric identification for more convenient airport transit and 71 per cent would prefer to use a self-boarding device at the gate, such as a mobile phone.
An even greater majority (86 per cent) were prepared to provide the airline their passport details in advance to allow a smoother journey. While only a quarter of the respondents have ever used an automated immigration border gate on arrival at an airport using their ePassport or ID card, as high as 91 per cent said they would be interested in such a service to allow a faster arrival process.
Among the IATA recommendations, IATA is developing a 'Known Traveller Programme', which is to be implemented by 2017, asking governments to develop capabilities for data-driven risk assessment through identity authentication and verification, Dunlap said, emphatically adding that he was completely against racial profiling or intrusion in privacy.
If the world's entire population went in for a collective checkup, would the doctor's prognosis be good or bad? Both, according to new studies published in The Lancet medical journal.
The vast collaborative effort, called the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010, includes papers by nearly 500 authors in 50 countries. Spanning four decades of data, it represents the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of health problems around the world.
It reveals that, globally, we're living longer but coping with more illness as adults. In 1990, "childhood underweight"—a condition associated with malnutrition, measles, malaria, and other infectious diseases—was the world's biggest health problem. Now the top causes of global disease are adult ailments: high blood pressure (associated with 9.4 million deaths in 2010), tobacco smoking (6.2 million), and alcohol use (4.9 million).
First, the good news:
We're living longer. Average life expectancy has risen globally since 1970 and has increased in all but eight of the world's countries within the past decade.
Both men and women are gaining years. From 1970 to 2010, the average lifespan rose from 56.4 years to 67.5 years for men, and from 61.2 years to 73.3 years for women.
Efforts to combat childhood diseases and malnutrition have been very successful. Deaths in children under five years old declined almost 60 percent in the past four decades.
Developing countries have made huge strides in public health. In the Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, and Peru, life expectancy has increased by more than 20 years since 1970. Within the past two decades, gains of 12 to 15 years have occurred in Angola, Ethiopia, Niger, and Rwanda, an indication of successful strategies for curbing HIV, malaria, and nutritional deficiencies.
We're beating many communicable diseases. Thanks to improvements in sanitation and vaccination, the death rate for diarrheal diseases, lower respiratory infections, meningitis, and other common infectious diseases has dropped by 42 percent since 1990.
And the bad:
Non-infectious diseases are on the rise, accounting for two of every three deaths globally in 2010. Heart disease and stroke are the primary culprits.
Young adults aren't doing as well as others. Deaths in the 15 to 49 age bracket have increased globally in the past 20 years. The reasons vary by region, but diabetes, smoking, alcohol, HIV/AIDS, and malaria all play a role.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic is taking a toll in sub-Saharan Africa. Life expectancy has declined overall by one to seven years in Zimbabwe and Lesotho, and young adult deaths have surged by more than 500 percent since 1970 in South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
We drink too much. Alcohol overconsumption is a growing problem in the developed world, especially in Eastern Europe, where it accounts for almost a quarter of the total disease burden. Worldwide, it has become the top risk factor for people ages 15 to 49.
We eat too much, and not the right things. Deaths attributable to obesity are on the rise, with 3.4 million in 2010 compared to 2 million in 1990. Similarly, deaths attributable to dietary risk factors and physical inactivity have increased by 50 percent (4 million) in the past 20 years. Overall, we're consuming too much sodium, trans fat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and not enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, fiber, calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids.
Smoking is a lingering problem. Tobacco smoking, including second-hand smoke, is still the top risk factor for disease in North America and Western Europe, just as it was in 1990. Globally, it's risen in rank from the third to second leading cause of disease.
To find out more and see related charts and graphics, see the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which led the collaboration.
This week Michigan became the 24th state in the country to adopt a right-to-work law. The passage of the bill by the state legislature, and eventual signing by Rick Snyder, the state's Republican governor, brought a huge wave of protests in a state with deep union roots.
Right-to-work laws have garnered a lot of national attention in recent years as more states have implemented this legislation that prohibits unions from requiring workers to pay dues as a condition of their employment. The laws are meant to regulate agreements between employers and labor unions that would prohibit the employer from hiring non-union workers.
The laws are particularly divisive--proponents argue that businesses will be more likely to set up shop in the state, while opponents argue that weakening union power will lead to lower wages. Because each state has a variety of factors that must be considered individually when assessing its overall economic standing, it's difficult to fully assess the validity of each side's argument, since you can't isolate the direct effect of these laws on the state's economy.
However, a study conducted in 2007 by Lonnie Stevans of Hofstra University suggested that both sides of the argument are, to some degree, accurate.
"Findings are that the number of businesses and self-employed are greater on average in right-to-work states, but employment, wages, and per-capita personal income are all lower on average in right-to-work states," Stevans wrote.
But he noted that there was little "trickle down" from the business owners to the workers--the laws benefitted the business owners who did not have to contend with union contracts, but business employees didn't get those same positive effects--as evidenced by the lower salaries on average.
An analysis by ABC News of the most recent seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in states with right-to-work laws vs. those without such laws found that on average, the unemployment rate in states with right to work laws was slightly lower than those without. The average unemployment rate in the 24 states with right-to-work laws was 7 percent, while the average rate in the 26 states plus D.C. that do not have right-to-work laws was just under 7.6 percent--a difference of just under .6 percent.
The state with the lowest unemployment rate in the country--Nebraska at just 3.8 percent unemployment--has such a law in place, as does the state with the highest unemployment rate, Nevada at 11.5 percent.
Support for the laws has often tended to fall along party lines, with Democrats opposing and Republicans supporting. The vast majority of states with right-to-work laws are Republican led, the majority of states without are led by Democrats.
Below is the list of the 24 states with right-to-work laws.
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
Nebraska
Nevada
North Carolina
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Wyoming
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen — your Rep. Loretta Sanchez Christmas card for 2012!
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
Over the past decade, the California Democrat’s wacky holiday greetings have drawn a cult following. “I’ve seen them being sold on eBay,” the congresswoman told us.
Nice topical theme this year! “The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a very serious situation, so we didn’t want to make light of it,” she said. “But sometimes a chuckle makes things a lot easier.” (Last year’s card tipped a hat to Occupy Wall Street and all that 99 percent talk: “May the joy of the holidays occupy 100 percent of your heart.”)
(Courtesy of the Office of Rep. Loretta Sanchez)
That’s husband Jack Einwechter dancing with her. Sanchez’s late beloved cat Gretzky, the star of so many cards over the years, is represented inside the card, a halo over his furry head. “Of course — Angel Gretzky,” she said. “We keep Gretzky every year because he has so many followers.”
Earlier:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ parody, with summer interns, 7/2/12
Last year:
Rep. Loretta Sanchez carries on holiday card tradition, without beloved cat Gretzky, 12/9/11
Loretta Sanchez’s 2011 Christmas card, 12/16/11
Also in The Reliable Source:
Jenna Bush Hager announces pregnancy on ‘Today’
Hey, isn’t that. . .?: Steve Harvey; Max Baucus and Tim Geithner
Quoted: Marco Rubio on his hair loss
D.C. power players appear in new video portrait — but is it art?
Elizabeth Kucinich becomes a real-estate agent; will keep public-affairs job, too
Albert Small buys George Washington letter for $290,000 — but don’t tell his wife
SINGAPORE: Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew has said fare increases are needed to improve service to commuters while keeping public transport operations commercially viable.
In a Facebook post, Mr Lui said fare increases are not to boost the short-term profits of Public Transport Operators (PTOs) or improve the salaries of bus drivers.
He said that's why the government must work with the PTOs to ensure that when granted any fare increase, they would re-invest part of this revenue to improve the public transport system to benefit commuters.
This can be in hardware, like more buses and trains and upgrading the signalling systems.
It can also be in software, like better terms and salaries for staff. This includes bus drivers and train operators, as well as the maintenance and service personnel.
Mr Lui said as fares increase, the government will have to play a larger role to keep the public transport system affordable.
He said there must be a concerted and sustained effort to upgrade the bus driving profession.
Employment terms and conditions must also be improved further to recruit new drivers and retain existing ones in order to ramp up bus capacity over the next few years.
On who pays for the increased costs, Mr Lui said there must be a proper balance among commuters in fares, or taxpayers in government subsidies, or the PTOs.
He said the government is fully committed to an affordable public transport system for the middle-income groups, the lower-income groups, the disabled community, and other vulnerable groups.
He said the bottom line is this. It is a matter of all the stakeholders - the PTOs, the government, and commuters - coming together to ensure everyone enjoys a reliable, high-quality and affordable public transport system.
- CNA/de
"Exchange of firing has been reported between security forces and militants in Chaerhaar village in Sopore area. Further details of the incident are awaited," a police spokesman said.
Official sources said the security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the village following information about presence of militants in the area.
As soon as contact was established with the militants, the entire area was cordoned off to prevent the ultras from escaping, the sources said.
The Hubble space telescope has discovered seven primitive galaxies formed in the earliest days of the cosmos, including one believed to be the oldest ever detected.
The discovery, announced Wednesday, is part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field campaign to determine how and when galaxies first assembled following the Big Bang.
"This 'cosmic dawn' was not a single, dramatic event," said astrophysicist Richard Ellis with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Rather, galaxies appear to have been formed over hundreds of millions of years.
Ellis led a team that used Hubble to look at one small section of the sky for a hundred hours. The grainy images of faint galaxies include one researchers determined to be from a period 380 million years after the onset of the universe—the closest in time to the Big Bang ever observed.
The cosmos is about 13.7 billion years old, so the newly discovered galaxy was present when the universe was 4 percent of its current age. The other six galaxies were sending out light from between 380 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang. (See pictures of "Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries.")
Baby Pictures
The images are "like the first ultrasounds of [an] infant," said Abraham Loeb, a specialist in the early cosmos at Harvard University. "These are the building blocks of the galaxies we now have."
These early galaxies were a thousand times denser than galaxies are now and were much closer together as well, Ellis said. But they were also less luminous than later galaxies.
The team used a set of four filters to analyze the near infrared wavelengths captured by Hubble Wide Field Camera 3, and estimated the galaxies' distances from Earth by studying their colors. At a NASA teleconference, team members said they had pushed Hubble's detection capabilities about as far as they could go and would most likely not be able to identify galaxies from further back in time until the James Webb Space Telescope launches toward the end of the decade. (Learn about the Hubble telescope.)
"Although we may have reached back as far as Hubble will see, Hubble has set the stage for Webb," said team member Anton Koekemoer of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our work indicates there is a rich field of even earlier galaxies that Webb will be able to study."
SINGAPORE: The Workers' Party (WP), which contested the 2011 general election in the Punggol East Single Member Constituency (SMC), said it is ready to offer voters a choice again in a by-election.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the WP said it has noted the announcement that the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Michael Palmer, has resigned from the People's Action Party and, by virtue of Article 46 of the Constitution, Mr Palmer's Parliamentary seat for Punggol East SMC has become vacant.
It added, that for the residents of Punggol East to be properly represented, the Workers' Party urges the Prime Minister to call a by-election in the constituency as soon as possible.
The WP statement came shortly after Mr Michael Palmer, the Speaker of Singapore Parliament and MP for Punggol East SMC, resigned over a "grave mistake" of having an improper relationship with a staff member of the People's Association.
- CNA/ck/sf
BSP members had approached the Speaker Meira Kumar's podium to raise the issue during question hour earlier, in what appears to be a pressure tactic on the government to get the bill on reservations in job promotions for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes passed in the Rajya Sabha.
The Speaker had then adjourned the House till noon. The trouble continued when the House met and Congress MP Francisco Sardinha, who was in the chair, adjourned the house till 2pm.
The Congress has said it is committed to the bill, which is being staunchly opposed by the Samajwadi Party.
Photograph courtesy Tunç Tezel, APOY/Royal Observatory
This image of the Milky Way's vast star fields hanging over a valley of human-made light was recognized in the 2012 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the U.K.’s Royal Observatory Greenwich.
To get the shot, photographer Tunç Tezel trekked to Uludag National Park near his hometown of Bursa, Turkey. He intended to watch the moon and evening planets, then take in the Perseids meteor shower.
"We live in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, so when we gaze through the thickness of our galaxy, we see it as a band of dense star fields encircling the sky," said Marek Kukula, the Royal Observatory's public astronomer and a contest judge.
Full story>>
Why We Love It
"I like the way this view of the Milky Way also shows us a compelling foreground landscape. It also hints at the astronomy problems caused by light pollution."—Chris Combs, news photo editor
Published December 11, 2012
A masked gunman who opened fire in the crowded Clackamas Town Center mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two individuals before killing himself, has been "tentatively" identified by police, though they have not yet released his name.
The shooter, wearing a white hockey mask, black clothing, and a bullet proof vest, tore through the mall around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, entering through a Macy's store and proceeding to the food court and public areas spraying bullets, according to witness reports.
Police have not released the names of the deceased. Clackamas County Sheriff's Department Lt. James Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families.
The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital, according to Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts.
PHOTOS: Oregon Mall Shooting
Nadia Telguz, who said she was a friend of the injured victim, told ABC News affiliate KATU-TV in Portland that the woman was expected to recover.
"My friend's sister got shot," Teleguz told KATU. "She's on her way to (Oregon Health and Science University hospital). They're saying she got shot in her side and so it's not life-threatening, so she'll be OK."
Christopher Onstott/Pamplen Media Group/Portland Tribune
Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man who appeared to be a teenager ran through the upper level of Macy's to the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after the other, with what is believed to be a black, semi-automatic rifle.
More than 10,000 shoppers were at the mall during the day, police said. Roberts said that officers responded to the scene of the shooting within minutes, and four SWAT teams swept the 1.4 million-square-foot building searching for the shooter. He was eventually found dead, an apparent suicide.
"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Rhodes said. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."
Roberts said more than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.
READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look
Roberts also said that shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot. Other shoppers helped escort individuals out of the mall and out of harm's way, he said.
"There were a huge amount of people running in different directions, and it was chaos for a lot of citizens, but true heroes were stepping up in this time of high stress," Roberts said. "E.R. nurses on the scene were providing medical care to those injured, a physician on the scene was helping provide care to the wounded."
Mall shopper Daniel Martinez told KATU that he had just sat down at a Jamba Juice inside the mall when he heard rapid gunfire. He turned and saw the masked gunman, dressed in all black, about 10 feet away from him.
"I just saw him (the gunman) and thought, 'I need to go somewhere,'" Martinez said. "It was so fast, and at that time, everyone was moving around."
Martinez said he ran to the nearest clothing store. As he ran, he motioned for another woman to follow; several others ran to the store as well, hiding in a fitting room. They stayed there for an hour and a half until SWAT teams told them it was safe to leave the mall.
TOKYO: Clothes that could literally light up your life were unveiled Tuesday by Japanese researchers who said their solar-cell fabric would eventually let wearers harvest energy on the go.
The new fabric is made of wafer-thin solar cells woven together that could see people powering up their mobile phones and other electronics with their sweater or trousers.
But its creators conceded there was work to do before taking the fabric to market.
"We still have things to solve before commercialisation, such as coating for the conductive wires and improving the fabric's durability," said an official at the Industrial Technology Center in central Japan's Fukui Prefecture.
"But we've already been contacted by electronics makers, blind makers and others who showed interested in our invention."
The centre developed the fabric with a Kyoto-based solar cell maker and other private firms, the official said.
Solar power generation is attracting renewed attention in Japan as the country looks to alternative energy sources in the aftermath of last year's tsunami-sparked atomic crisis, the worst nuclear accident in a generation.
-AFP/fl
The local weather office forecast moderate to heavy snowfall in the Valley between December 13 and 15.
"Moderate to rather heavy snowfall is likely to occur in the Valley and the hills of the Jammu region on 13th, 14th and 15th of this month," AR Zargar, deputy director of the local weather office, said.
He also advised caution while travelling on the Srinagar-Jammu highway and other places connected through high altitude passes.
Leh town recorded its lowest temperature of the season with the temperature dipping to minus 12.4 degrees. People remained indoors in the town to avoid frostbite. All hydroelectric power generating units in Ladakh region have been shut because water in all reservoirs of these power projects has frozen.
Diesel generating sets have been pressed into service to provide electricity to the residents in Leh town and other places of the region.
The minimum temperature today was minus 1.7 in Srinagar, minus 2.2 in Pahalgam, minus 7.5 in Gulmarg and minus 7.8 in Kargil town of Ladakh region.
Thomas K. Grose in London
The starting gun has sounded for the United Kingdom's "dash for gas," as the media here have dubbed it.
As early as this week, a moratorium on shale gas production is expected to be lifted. And plans to streamline and speed the regulatory process through a new Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil were unveiled last week in the annual autumn budget statement by the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne.
In the U.K., where all underground mineral rights concerning fossil fuels belong to the crown, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, could unlock a new stream of government revenue as well as fuel. But it also means that there is no natural constituency of fracking supporters as there is in the United States, birthplace of the technology. In the U.S., concerns over land and water impact have held back fracking in some places, like New York, but production has advanced rapidly in shale basins from Texas to Pennsylvania, with support of private landowners who earn royalties from leasing to gas companies. (Related: "Natural Gas Stirs Hope and Fear in Pennsylvania")
A taste of the fight ahead in the U.K. came ahead of Osborne's speech last weekend, when several hundred protesters gathered outside of Parliament with a mock 23-foot (7-meter) drilling rig. In a letter they delivered to Prime Minister David Cameron, they called fracking "an unpredictable, unregulatable process" that was potentially toxic to the environment.
Giving shale gas a green light "would be a costly mistake," said Andy Atkins, executive director of the U.K.'s Friends of the Earth, in a statement. "People up and down the U.K. will be rightly alarmed about being guinea pigs in Osborne's fracking experiment. It's unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe."
The government has countered that natural gas-fired power plants would produce half the carbon dioxide emissions of the coal plants that still provide about 30 percent of the U.K.'s electricity. London Mayor Boris Johnson, viewed as a potential future prime minister, weighed in Monday with a blistering cry for Britain to "get fracking" to boost cleaner, cheaper energy and jobs. "In their mad denunciations of fracking, the Greens and the eco-warriors betray the mindset of people who cannot bear a piece of unadulterated good news," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. (Related Quiz: "What You Don't Know About Natural Gas")
Energy Secretary Edward Davey, who is expected this week to lift the U.K.'s year-and-a-half-old moratorium on shale gas exploration, said gas "will ensure we can keep the lights on as increasing amounts of wind and nuclear come online through the 2020s."
A Big Role for Gas
If the fracking plan advances, it will not be the first "dash for gas" in the U.K. In the 1980s, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher battled with mining unions, she undercut their clout by moving the nation toward generating a greater share of its electricity from natural gas and less from coal. So natural gas already is the largest electricity fuel in Britain, providing 40 percent of electricity. (Related Interactive: "World Electricity Mix")
The United Kingdom gets about 10 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and has plans to expand its role. But Davey has stressed the usefulness of gas-fired plants long-term as a flexible backup source to the intermittent electricity generated from wind and solar power. Johnson, on the other hand, offered an acerbic critique of renewables, including the "satanic white mills" he said were popping up on Britain's landscape. "Wave power, solar power, biomass—their collective oomph wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," he wrote.
As recently as 2000, Great Britain was self-sufficient in natural gas because of conventional gas production in the North Sea. But that source is quickly drying up. North Sea production peaked in 2000 at 1,260 terawatt-hours (TWH); last year it totaled just 526 TWh.
Because of the North Sea, the U.K. is still one of the world's top 20 producers of gas, accounting for 1.5 percent of total global production. But Britain has been a net importer of gas since 2004. Last year, gas imports—mainly from Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands—accounted for more than 40 percent of domestic demand.
The government hopes to revive domestic natural gas production with the technology that has transformed the energy picture in the United States—horizontal drilling into deep underground shale, and high-pressure injection of water, sand, and chemicals to create fissures in the rock to release the gas. (Related Interactive: "Breaking Fuel From the Rock")
A Tougher Road
But for a number of reasons, the political landscape is far different in the United Kingdom. Britain made a foray into shale gas early last year, with a will drilled near Blackpool in northwest England. The operator, Cuadrilla, said that that area alone could contain 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is more than the known reserves of Iraq. But the project was halted after drilling, by the company's own admission, caused two small earthquakes. (Related: "Tracing Links Between Fracking and Earthquakes" and "Report Links Energy Activities To Higher Quake Risk") The April 2011 incident triggered the moratorium that government now appears to be ready to lift. Cuadrilla has argued that modifications to its procedures would mitigate the seismic risk, including lower injection rates and lesser fluid and sand volumes. The company said it will abandon the U.K. unless the moratorium is soon lifted.
A few days ahead of Osborne's speech, the Independent newspaper reported that maps created for Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed that 32,000 square miles, or 64 percent of the U.K. countryside, could hold shale gas reserves and thus be open for exploration. But a DECC spokeswoman said "things are not quite what it [the Independent story] suggests." Theoretically, she said, those gas deposits do exist, but "it is too soon to predict the scale of exploration here." She said many other issues, ranging from local planning permission to environmental impact, would mean that some tracts would be off limits, no matter how much reserve they held. DECC has commissioned the British Geological Survey to map the extent of Britain's reserves.
Professor Paul Stevens, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said the U.K. is clearly interested in trying to replicate America's shale gas revolution. "That's an important part of the story," he said, but trying to use the American playbook won't be easy. "It's a totally different ballgame." In addition to the fact that mineral rights belong to the crown, large expanses of private land that are commonplace in America don't exist in England. Just as important, there is no oil- and gas-service industry in place in Britain to quickly begin shale gas operations here. "We don't have the infrastructure set up," said Richard Davies, director of the Durham Energy Institute at Durham University, adding that it would take years to build it.
Shale gas production would also likely ignite bigger and louder protests in the U.K. and Europe. "It's much more of a big deal in Europe," Stevens said. "There are more green [nongovernmental organizations] opposed to it, and a lot more local opposition."
In any case, the U.K. government plans to move ahead. Osborne said he'll soon begin consultations on possible tax breaks for the shale gas industry. He also announced that Britain would build up to 30 new natural gas-fired power plants with 26 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The new gas plants would largely replace decommissioned coal and nuclear power plants, though they would ultimately add 5GW of additional power to the U.K. grid. The coalition government's plan, however, leaves open the possibility of increasing the amount of gas-generated electricity to 37GW, or around half of total U.K. demand.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Europe may have as much as 600 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that could be recovered. But Stevens said no European country is ready to emulate the United States in producing massive amounts of unconventional gas. They all lack the necessary service industry, he said, and geological differences will require different technologies. And governments aren't funding the research and development needed to develop them.
Globally, the track record for efforts to produce shale gas is mixed:
This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
The Pentagon has identified Petty Officer 1st Class Nicolas Checque as the Navy SEAL who died of injuries sustained in the successful rescue of an American doctor from the Taliban over the weekend.
Checque, who hailed from Monroeville, Pa., died of "combat related injuries," according to a Pentagon release. Though the release only said Checque was assigned to "an East Coast-based Naval Special Warfare unit," ABC News previously reported the fallen servicemember was a part of the Navy's elite SEAL Team 6, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden.
Checque, 28, sustained his mortal injuries while on a nighttime mission Saturday to free Dr. Dilip Joseph, an American doctor who worked for an non-governmental organization based in Kabul. Joseph was kidnapped by the Taliban earlier this month and American officials believed he was in imminent danger.
Joseph's family released a statement thanking the U.S. government and military for the operation and offering their condolences to Checque's family.
"We could not be more grateful for that soldier's heroism and for the bravery of all involved in the mission to bring Dilip home," the statement said.
Before Checque was identified publicly, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday he was "deeply saddened" to learn one of the servicemen had died.
"The special operators who conducted this raid knew they were putting their lives on the line to free a fellow American from the enemy's grip. They put the safety of another American ahead of their own, as so many of our brave warriors do every day and every night. In this fallen hero, and all of our special operators, Americans see the highest ideals of citizenship, sacrifice and service upheld. The torch of freedom burns brighter because of them," Panetta said.
President Obama also praised the Special Operations force for their bravery.
"Yesterday, our special operators in Afghanistan rescued an American citizen in a mission that was characteristic of the extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism that our troops show every day," he said Sunday.
Forget the “fiscal cliff”: When it comes to the nation’s most pressing concerns, other matters trump financial calamity.
Several thousand Americans, for example, are calling on President Obama to nationalize the troubled Twinkies industry to prevent the loss of the snack cake’s “sweet creamy center.”
HONG KONG: Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan revealed in a recent interview with a Hong Kong newspaper that he will leave his entire fortune, estimated to be worth about HK$2.2 billion (S$347 million), to his charity and his wife, Joan Lin, reported Hong Kong media.
Chan said he decided to do so after Lin stood by him, even when he strayed and had a daughter, Etta, with Hong Kong actress Elaine Ng in 1999.
The action star added that he does not intend to acknowledge Etta as it "is pointless even if I acknowledge her now", and would not include her in his will.
When asked for her response to Chan's comments, Ng said that it "did not concern" her, and stressed that she can care for her daughter alone.
Ng also clarified that she did not get a big 'breakup-fee' from Chan, after they parted ways many years ago, and said she no longer wished to talk about it as "it is all in the past".
Chan's son with Lin, Hong Kong actor Jaycee Chan, won't inherit anything either.
Jackie Chan, who is currently on the road to promote his new film "Chinese Zodiac", had previously expressed that he expected his son to make his own money.
"If he is capable, he can make his own money," said Chan, at a Beijing awards ceremony last year.
"If he is not, then he will just be wasting my money."
-CNA/ha
Forcing two adjournments in the Rajya Sabha before lunch, members from BJP, CPM, CPI, SP, JD-U, Trinamool Congress, AGP and AIADMK said the measure should be withdrawn as "corruption" has come to fore now because lobbying is illegal in India.
Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Ravishankar Prasad (BJP) said apprehensions were raised earlier also about Wal-Mart spending huge money to lobby for entering the Indian market, which has now been proved true.
"Wal-Mart has in its lobbying disclosure report to the US Senate said it has spent Rs 125 crore on lobbying and $ 3 million have been spent in 2012 itself for entering the Indian market.
"Lobbying is illegal in India. Lobbying is a kind of bribe. If Wal-Mart has said that hundreds of crores of rupees were spent in India, then it is a kind of bribe. Government should tell who was given this bribe. This raises a question mark on the implementation of FDI in retail," Prasad said.
He was supported by members from other opposition parties with TMC leader D Bandopadhyay waving a newspaper report and CPM member P Rajeeve asking for an "independent inquiry" into the whole episode alleging that there are some reports saying Wal-Mart invested money even before FEMA was amended.
"This is bribery," he said as the opposition members shouted slogans in favour of withdrawing FDI.
The opposition was reacting to media report that global retail giant Wal-Mart — waiting for years to open its supermarkets in India — had been lobbying with the US lawmakers since 2008 to facilitate its entry into the highly lucrative Indian market.
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."
Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks ago, said he likes what he's hearing.
"Any time you have two guys in there tangoing, you have a chance to get it done," Bowles said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
The White House afternoon talks, conducted without cameras or any announcement until they were over, came as some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president's demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff -- a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.
Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo; Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo
"Let's face it. He does have the upper hand on taxes. You have to pass something to keep it from happening," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on "FOX News Sunday."
This comes after the White House moderated one of its demands about tax rate increases for the wealthy.
The administration was demanding the rate return to its former level of 39.6 percent on income above $250,000. The so-called Bush tax cut set that rate at 35 percent. But Friday, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that rate could be negotiable, somewhere between the two.
"So will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems? Yes," said Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn on ABC's "This Week."
The problems the senator was referring to are the country's entitlement programs. And there was some progress on that front, too.
A leading Democrat said means testing for Medicare recipients could be a way to cut costs to the government health insurance program. Those who make more money would be required to pay more for Medicare.
"I do believe there should be means testing, and those of us with higher income and retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
But Durbin said he would not favor raising the eligibility age from 65 years old to 67 years old, as many Republicans have suggested.
The White House and the speaker's office released the exact same statement about the negotiating session. Some will see that as a sign of progress, that neither side is talking about what was said behind closed doors.
DHAKA: At least two people were killed and dozens hurt across Bangladesh on Sunday when police and ruling party activists clashed with protesters blocking roads to demand early polls under a caretaker government.
Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to break up rallies in a dozen places in the capital Dhaka. Demonstrators threw scores of small hand-made bombs, burned tyres and torched cars and buses.
Police said said one person died in a knife attack as protesters from the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and supporters of the ruling party clashed in the old part of Dhaka.
They said a second man was killed in the northwestern town of Enayetpur.
The BNP staged the rallies to demand early elections under a neutral caretaker government.
The caretaker system was laid down in a constitutional clause that has been scrapped by the incumbent administration led by the Awami League party.
"A young tailor was chopped by unidentified attackers during the clashes (in Dhaka) between BNP protesters and Chhatra League activists," said local police chief Nazrul Islam, referring to the ruling party's student wing.
BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed told AFP the person was one of his party activists. He said three other opposition workers were also killed in attacks by police and ruling party supporters.
Police in the capital arrested about 50 people for using violence, said Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman, adding 11 buses or cars were torched in the city.
Some 10,000 police were deployed to try to keep highways open in the country but officials said traffic on many roads ground to a halt.
"We allowed peaceful protests. But once they started attacking cars and buses and throwing cocktail bombs, we used non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them," deputy police commissioner Imtiaz Ahmed told AFP in Dhaka.
At Enayetpur, clashes between hundreds of ruling party and opposition supporters left a 65-year-old man dead, local police chief Humayun Kabir told AFP.
A senior BNP official who is also a former lawmaker was hit by live ammunition during clashes in Dhaka and was undergoing an operation, a hospital official said.
Police also clashed with protesters in the cities of Khulna, Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet. In the northern town of Palashbari security forces fired non-lethal shots at hundreds of protesters blocking a road, officials said.
The past four general elections in Bangladesh were held under the caretaker government system. This took over for three months at the end of an elected government's tenure, and oversaw the next round of national polls.
The BNP and its 17 smaller allies including Islamic parties have said they will not take part in any future elections unless the system is restored.
- AFP/xq
MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.
With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.
This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.
"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.
Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.
READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage
A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.
The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.
In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Check Out Same-Sex Marriage Status in the U.S. State By State
It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.
While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."
Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."
Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.
"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."
Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.
Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.
Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com
Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?
"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"
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