Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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Arias' Lawyer Shows Ex-Boyfriend's Lewd Photos













Accused murderer Jodi Arias was kept away from the Mormon friends of her lover Travis Alexander and their torrid sex affair was kept secret by Alexander, even as he sent lewd photos of himself to her online, according to court testimony today.


The testimony in Arias' trial for killing Alexander in 2008 was intended to bolster the defense's argument that she killed him in self defense, that Alexander was a sexual deviant who treated Arias as his "dirty little secret."


Arias' attorneys introduced as evidence photos that Alexander took of his penis and sent to Arias, part of a string of graphic messages and sexual phone calls the two engaged in while Alexander, an elder in the Mormon church, was supposed to be chaste.


Today's witness was the latest in a string called by the defense, including Alexander's former girlfriend Lisa Daidone, who told the court that Alexander had professed to be a virgin.


Daniel Freeman continued his testimony today, describing how he was a friend of both Arias and Alexander but that Alexander kept Arias distanced from his Mormon pals.


"Travis had made more friends at (the Mormon) ward, and had (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fight nights at his house many times, and Jodi was in town, but she wasn't there," Freeman said.


"There was that group of friends, them and Jodi, two different groups, and so Lisa [Daidone] and friends from church were there, but Jodi wasn't there," Freeman said.










Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Former Boyfriend Takes Stand Watch Video









Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Defense's First Day of Witnesses Watch Video





Alexander's behavior, the defense hopes to prove, shows that he mistreated Arias.


Arias, 32, is on trial for murdering Alexander, whom she dated for a year and continued to have a sexual relationship for a year after that. Her attorneys claim that Alexander was abusive and controlling toward Arias, and that she was forced to kill him.


Freeman described how he took a trip with his sister, Alexander, and Arias, and how Alexander had asked him to come along so that he and Arias "would not get physical."


"I don't know that I can say he didn't want to be alone with her, but he liked that when I was there, and my sister was there. They weren't as physical," Freeman said.


Freeman admitted that he had no idea Alexander and Arias had been having a sexual relationship the entire time they were together. He said Alexander never mentioned that to his friends.


In fact, Freeman noted that Alexander was considered to be a church elder when he baptized Arias into the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Both a church elder and a convert were expected to abide by the church's strict law of chastity, which banned any sexual relations outside of marriage.


"One thing people give up in this baptism process was sex," prosecutor Juan Martinez said. "Did you know she was having oral sex with Mr. Alexander at the time of her baptism? Would that be an insincere baptism?"


"She would not be ready to be baptized in that case," Freeman said.


"You were asked about Miss Arias, whether she was worthy of baptism if she was performing oral sex, but what about the elder receiving oral sex?" defense attorney Kirk Nurmi said.


"They would not be worthy of performing that ordinance at that time until they had gone through repentance," Freeman said. "They would go to a discipline council and could face excommunication or a probation period or have their priesthood removed."


Freeman said that Alexander never confessed to having a sexual relationship with Arias.


Freeman's testimony came on the third day of the defense's attempt to paint Alexander as a controlling, sex-obsessed liar who was cruel to Arias. Other witnesses have said that Alexander cheated on other women he dated with Arias, and lied to his friends and family about their relationship.


The defense also had Freeman point out that Alexander was strong and fit. They are expected to conclude that Alexander was physically threatening Arias when she killed him.



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Four arrested for suspected thefts from the elderly






SINGAPORE: Police have arrested four men suspected of stealing from the elderly.

On January 10, police received reports of theft in some housing estates by men who approached the victims and offered to pray in their residences.

The suspects targeted elderly victims who were alone at home during the day.

The four suspects, aged between 21 and 55 years, were arrested along Syed Alwi Road on Thursday.

Four men will be charged in court on Friday.

- CNA/de



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1996 Suryanelli rape case: SC sets aside Kerala HC verdict acquitting 35 accused

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside Kerala high court verdict acquitting 35 accused in the 1996 Suryanelli gang rape case.

The Supreme Court has sent back the case to Kerala HC asking it to take a fresh look at it.

The Suryanelli rape case involves gang rape of a 16-year-old girl continuously for 40 days by 42 men in 1996.

The girl from Suryanelli in Idukki district of Kerala was abducted in January 1996 and was transported from place to place across Kerala.

On September 6, 2000, the special court had sentenced 35 persons to rigorous imprisonment for varying terms.

The Kerala HC acquitted all 35 convicts earlier and found only one of them person guilty of crimes related to the sex trade and sentenced him to five years jail term and a fine of Rs 50,000.

Later her family and the state moved the Supreme Court in 2005 against the high court's verdict.

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee


Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.

But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on random headings rather than fly straight home, said Jon Hagstrum, a geophysicist who authored a study that may help researchers understand how homing pigeons navigate.

Hagstrum's paper, published online Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, proposes an intriguing theory for homing pigeon disorientation—that the birds are following ultralow frequency sounds back towards their lofts and that disruptions in their ability to "hear" home is what screws them up.

Called infrasound, these sound waves propagate at frequencies well below the range audible to people, but pigeons can pick them up, said Hagstrum, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

"They're using sound to image the terrain [surrounding] their loft," he said. "It's like us visually recognizing our house using our eyes."

Homeward Bound?

For years, scientists have struggled to explain carrier pigeons' directional challenges in certain areas, known as release-site biases.

This "map" issue, or a pigeon's ability to tell where it is in relation to where it wants to go, is different from the bird's compass system, which tells it which direction it's headed in. (Learn about how other animals navigate.)

"We know a lot about pigeon compass systems, but what has been controversial, even to this day, has been their map [system]," said Cordula Mora, an animal behavior researcher at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who was not involved in the study.

Until now, the two main theories say that pigeons rely either on their sense of smell to find their way home or that they follow the Earth's magnetic field lines, she said.

If something screwed up their sense of smell or their ability to follow those fields, the thinking has been, that could explain why pigeons got lost in certain areas.

But neither explanation made sense to Hagstrum, a geologist who grew interested in pigeons after attending an undergraduate lecture by Cornell biologist William Keeton. Keeton, who studied homing pigeons' navigation abilities, described some release-site biases in his pigeons and Hagstrum was hooked.

"I was just stunned and amazed and fascinated," said Hagstrum. "I understand we don't get dark matter or quantum mechanics, but bird [navigation]?"

So Hagstrum decided to look at Keeton's pigeon release data from three sites in upstate New York. At Castor Hill and Jersey Hill, the birds would repeatedly fly in the wrong direction or head off randomly when trying to return to their loft at Cornell University, even though they had no problems at other locations. At a third site near the town of Weedsport, young pigeons would head off in a different direction from older birds.

There were also certain days when the Cornell pigeons could find their way back home from these areas without any problems.

At the same time, homing pigeons from other lofts released at Castor Hill, Jersey Hill, and near Weedsport, would fly home just fine.

Sound Shadows

Hagstrum knew that homing pigeons could hear sounds as low as 0.05 hertz, low enough to pick up infrasounds that were down around 0.1 or 0.2 hertz. So he decided to map out what these low-frequency sound waves would have looked like on an average day, and on the days when the pigeons could home correctly from Jersey Hill.

He found that due to atmospheric conditions and local terrain, Jersey Hill normally sits in a sound shadow in relation to the Cornell loft. Little to none of the infrasounds from the area around the loft reached Jersey Hill except on one day when changing wind patterns and temperature inversions permitted.

That happened to match a day when the Cornell pigeons had no problem returning home.

"I could see how the topography was affecting the sound and how the weather was affecting the sound [transmission]," Hagstrum said. "It started to explain all these mysteries."

The terrain between the loft and Jersey Hill, combined with normal atmospheric conditions, bounced infrasounds up and over these areas.

Some infrasound would still reach Castor Hill, but due to nearby hills and valleys, the sound waves approached from the west and southwest, even though the Cornell loft is situated south-southwest of Castor Hill.

Records show that younger, inexperienced pigeons released at Castor Hill would sometimes fly west while older birds headed southwest, presumably following infrasounds from their loft.

Hagstrum's model found that infrasound normally arrived at the Weedsport site from the south. But one day of abnormal weather conditions, combined with a local river valley, resulted in infrasound that arrived at Weedsport from the Cornell loft from the southeast.

Multiple Maps

"What [Hagstrum] has found for those areas are a possible explanation for the [pigeon] behavior at these sites," said Bowling Green State's Mora. But she cautions against extrapolating these results to all homing pigeons.

Some of Mora's work supports the theory that homing pigeons use magnetic field lines to find their way home.

What homing pigeons are using as their map probably depends on where they're raised, she said. "In some places it may be infrasound, and in other places [a sense of smell] may be the way to go."

Hagstrum's next steps are to figure out how large an area the pigeons are listening to. He's also talking to the Navy and Air Force, who are interested in his work. "Right now we use GPS to navigate," he said. But if those satellites were compromised, "we'd be out of luck." Pigeons navigate from point to point without any problems, he said.


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No Device Eliminates Concussion Risk, Experts Say













As the long-term consequences of concussions become clearer, a cottage industry has popped up to sell athletes and worried parents products designed to mitigate risks of concussions that even helmets cannot prevent.


Despite the bold claims of some companies, however, many experts say the Holy Grail in contact sports -- a device that prevents concussions -- simply does not exist. Indeed, experts say, there is no proof that any current device significantly reduces the risk of concussions beyond the protections already provided by helmets.


"Nightline" found several products for sale online that aim to reduce the risk of concussions or even alert parents and coaches when a kid has supposedly taken a concussion-level hit. The claims the manufacturers make are often breathtakingly reassuring.


Concern about the risk of concussion is mounting at every level of the gridiron from the NFL to colleges and even high schools. Concussions are the most common injury among high school football players.


Jennifer Branin, whose son Tyler Branin is one of the stars of the Woodbridge Warriors high school football team in Irvine, Calif., said "it was scary" the first time he had a concussion.


"He had lost his balance on the field," she said. "He got up and tried to continue, but couldn't keep his balance."










Junior Seau Had Brain Disease, Researchers Say Watch Video







She said the effects of the concussion lingered, causing Tyler to miss a week of school and football practice. Even months later, he complained of difficulty concentrating in class.


Parents such as Jennifer Branin, who is president of the team's booster club, and her husband, Andy Branin, a former college football player himself, were looking for a way to support their son's desire to play football while also keeping him safe.


"He wants to play and, as a mom, you may want to put bubble-wrap around them and protect them forever, but that's not going to happen," she said.


So Jennifer Branin decided to do something. She raised money to buy the team helmet inserts by Unequal Technologies for added protection.


Unequal Technologies, one of the highest profile players in this new market, described its product explicitly on the box as "Concussion Reduction Technology," or "CRT." It is a strip of composite material including bullet-proof Kevlar that is designed to stick inside the helmet as a liner to the existing helmet pads.


Unequal Technologies uses its material in products ranging from padded sleeves to shin guards. The company counts NFL players and X-Games athletes among its fans.


On board as paid spokesmen are Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick and James Harrison, a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Harrison is one of the hardest-hitting guys in the NFL and said he uses Unequal Technology's liners in his helmet.


"I don't know what it's made of but it works," Harrison says in one of Unequal's promotional videos. "I really don't feel like I'm taking a risk."


Vick wasn't wearing the CRT product when he suffered a season-ending concussion in November, but he has since promised that he will be wearing it when he returns to the field next season.


Rob Vito, founder and CEO of the Kennett Square, Pa.-based company, said he worked with scientists to create a military-grade composite material that can help protect athletes from all kinds of injuries from head to toe.






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Union says Congress can save money by lowering amount paid for contractor salaries



Labor leaders, including those with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), have long pushed Congress to lower payments for contractor salaries. The cap on Defense Department contractor pay now stands at $763,000, which is much more than President Obama makes.




AFGE said billions of dollars could be saved each year if the cap were set at $200,000, as the Obama administration has proposed. A cap would not prevent contractors from paying their employees more, but it would limit the amount the government provides for contractor salaries.

“Think about it,” said AFGE President J. David Cox. Billions of dollars could be cut “from federal spending over the next decade with no impact on government services, simply by subsidizing these almost unimaginably wealthy contractor employees at a slightly less generous level.”

Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, which represents contractors, said the cap was put in place for two reasons: to “ensure companies can attract top executive talent but also ensure the government is not subsidizing egregious executive salaries.”

Lowering the cap, he added, could “deny both the contractor and the government access to the talent it needs.”

The Obama administration also has pushed Congress to lower the amount paid to contractors. A year ago, a blog post from Leslie Field, acting administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s office of federal procurement policy, said Obama wants “Congress to scrap an outdated law that requires taxpayers to foot the bill for excessive payments to CEOs and other senior executives of companies that contract with the Government.”

Because of that law, Field said taxpayers “have their hard-earned resources spent reimbursing contractor executives far in excess of what can be justified.”

In December, Congress considered, but did not approve a proposal to lower the cap. Instead, Congress told the Government Accountability Office to study the effect of reducing contractor compensation.

“Congress has had no problem freezing wages for one group of federal workers, yet many lawmakers have turned a blind eye to the outrageous salaries earned by another group,” Cox said. “Both workforces are paid for by American taxpayers. What’s the difference?”


Poll: Workers’ opinions

With the federal government going through an extended period of shrinking budgets, government managers will have to become better stewards of the workforce.

That’s the message from a Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) report issued Tuesday.

The report is based on a survey of more than 42,000 federal workers. Although done in 2010, the survey has lessons that are relevant today as supervisors increasingly try to figure out how to get the job done with fewer resources.

Having few resources, namely staffers, is the reason the report was issued so long after the survey was done, according to MSBP.

“If agencies find they can no longer ‘do more with less,’ they may need to make hard decisions about what they can do with the resources they have,” says the report on “Managing Public Employees in the Public Interest.”

Dealing with workers who are not getting the job done can be a difficult task for managers. Federal managers are not very good at that, according to the surveyed employees. The managers also don’t fare well, in the eyes of employees, when it comes to making hard decisions about using their diminished resources.

Less than a quarter of federal employees said their agencies deal with poor performers effectively. Only 29 percent said their organizations eliminate unnecessary functions and positions.

On the positive side, agencies rate better, although not great, on standards of conduct, training and guarding the public interest. Sixty-four percent of employees said their agencies hold employees to high standards of conduct. Sixty percent said they get the necessary training and their agencies put the public interest first.

“Employees are being asked to make personal and professional sacrifices and they need to feel confident that leaders are using limited resources wisely,” MSPB Chairwoman Susan Tsui Grundmann said in a news release. “That requires agency leaders to make tough choices about the programs, functions or positions that they can support.”

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

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Greater community support helps ex-offenders






SINGAPORE: Greater community support for ex-offenders has paid off -- with overall fewer ex-inmates imprisoned for re-offending -- according to the Singapore Prison Service's annual report card.

However, drug offenders who were released from Drug Rehabilitation Centres recorded a higher percentage of re-offending.

For some inmates who have no family support, they might not have a job or a home to return to after they are released.

Chavez Ong, a specialist in correctional rehabilitation with the Singapore Prison Service, said: "We actually work together with our partners, like the HDB -- we've been liasing with them to look into the (housing) issue.

"We also look into halfway houses for placement. And we also try to reach out to their families again, because for us, family involvement during the rehabilitation process is one of the very crucial factors."

The greater community support for ex-prisoners has paid off. The Singapore Prison Service said that the overall recidivism rate -- which is the rate at which prisoners re-offend and return to jail within two years of release -- fell to 23.6 per cent for those released in 2010, down from 26.7 per cent for those who were released in 2009.

On average, about 9,000 local inmates are released from prison each year. In 1998, the recidivism rate was 44.4 per cent, but in recent years it has hovered around 26 to 27 per cent.

About 20 per cent more employers have joined the effort to hire ex-offenders, which means more inmates found jobs before they were released.

The number of employers who are part of the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises now stands at 3,457, compared with 2,872 in 2011, and 2,459 in 2010. Most of the jobs are in manufacturing, logistics, and food & beverage.

For a third year running, more inmates found jobs before they were released.

More volunteers have also joined the community outreach programme to support the families of these inmates. The programme now has 390 registered and trained volunteers -- an increase of 69 per cent from 2011.

But for drug offenders, a higher number re-offended. The recidivism rate for those released from the drug rehabilitation centres in 2010 was 27.5 per cent -- slightly higher than the 27.1 per cent of 2009.

To tackle this, repeat drug offenders at higher risk of re-offending must now go through a more robust mandatory supervision programme upon their release.

Besides urine tests and electronic monitoring, there will also be compulsory case work and counselling.

Rubiana Shamsul, a reintegration officer with the Singapore Prison Service, said: "So basically these offenders will actually face challenges when they go back to their old neighbourhood and they would be facing their old circle of friends and that's where the temptation would come in. So from there, we're trying to curb this by having our regular counselling sessions.

"Another challenge they would be facing is finding gainful employment -- we'd like to motivate them to have pro-social activities in their leisure time, so they don't have the temptation to go back to doing what they were doing before."

About 1,000 drug offenders are expected to be supervised this way in 2013 and 2014.

-CNA/ac



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Partymen should exercise restraint in their speech, Rajnath Singh says

NEW DELHI: New BJP president Rajnath Singh today asked partymen to exercise restraint in their speech and conduct and fight for people's issues to gain the confidence of the masses.

Addressing party leaders and workers at the BJP headquarters here, Singh also asked them to maintain patience.

He exhorted BJP workers to work for strengthening the party and said there is a need to fight for the problems of the common man and gain their confidence as the ruling party at the Centre had failed on this front.

"Leaders should maintain good speech and conduct...They should have patience," Singh told partymen.

The BJP chief was at a party headquarters for about two hours. This is the second time after assuming charge that he met leaders and workers of the party here.

Singh later met party leader Sushma Swaraj over lunch at her residence where the two leaders discussed key party matters, including formation of a new team.

The party is likely to hold National Executive and National Council meetings in mid-February, after which Singh will announce his new team.

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Timbuktu’s vulnerable manuscripts are city’s "gold"


French and Malian troops surrounded Timbuktu on Monday and began combing the labyrinthine city for Islamist fighters. Witnesses, however, said the Islamists, who claim an affiliation to al Qaeda and had imposed a Taliban-style rule in the northern Malian city over the last ten months, slipped into the desert a few days earlier.

But before fleeing, the militants reportedly set fire to several buildings and many rare manuscripts. There are conflicting reports as to how many manuscripts were actually destroyed. (Video: Roots of the Mali Crisis.)

On Monday, Sky News posted an interview with a man identifying himself as an employee of the Ahmed Baba Institute, a government-run repository for rare books and manuscripts, the oldest of which date back to the city's founding in the 12th century. The man said some 3,000 of the institute's 20,000 manuscripts had been destroyed or looted by the Islamists.

Video showed what appeared to be a large pile of charred manuscripts and the special boxes made to preserve them in front of one of the institute's buildings.

However, a member of the University of Cape Town Timbuktu Manuscript Project told eNews Channel Africa on Tuesday that he had spoken with the director of the Ahmed Baba Institute, Mahmoud Zouber, who said that nearly all of its manuscripts had been removed from the buildings and taken to secure locations months earlier. (Read "The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu" in National Geographic magazine.)

A Written Legacy

The written word is deeply rooted in Timbuktu's rich history. The city emerged as a wealthy center of trade, Islam, and learning during the 13th century, attracting a number of Sufi religious scholars. They in turn took on students, forming schools affiliated with's Timbuktu's three main mosques.

The scholars imported parchment and vellum manuscripts via the caravan system that connected northern Africa with the Mediterranean and Arabia. Wealthy families had the documents copied and illuminated by local scribes, building extensive libraries containing works of religion, art, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, history, geography, and culture.

"The manuscripts are the city's real gold," said Mohammed Aghali, a tour guide from Timbuktu. "The manuscripts, our mosques, and our history—these are our treasures. Without them, what is Timbuktu?"

This isn't the first time that an occupying army has threatened Timbuktu's cultural heritage. The Moroccan army invaded the city in 1591 to take control of the gold trade. In the process of securing the city, they killed or deported most of Timbuktu's scholars, including the city's most famous teacher, Ahmed Baba al Massufi, who was held in exile in Marrakesh for many years and forced to teach in a pasha's court. He finally returned to Timbuktu in 1611, and it is for him that the Ahmed Baba Institute was named.

Hiding the Texts

In addition to the Ahmed Baba Institute, Timbuktu is home to more than 60 private libraries, some with collections containing several thousand manuscripts and others with only a precious handful. (Read about the fall of Timbuktu.)

Sidi Ahmed, a reporter based in Timbuktu who recently fled to the Malian capital Bamako, said Monday that nearly all the libraries, including the world-renowned Mamma Haidara and the Fondo Kati libraries, had secreted their collections before the Islamist forces had taken the city.

"The people here have long memories," he said. "They are used to hiding their manuscripts. They go into the desert and bury them until it is safe."

Though it appears most of the manuscripts are safe, the Islamists' occupation took a heavy toll on Timbuktu.

Women were flogged for not covering their hair or wearing bright colors. Girls were forbidden from attending school, and boys were recruited into the fighters' ranks.

Music was banned. Local imams who dared speak out against the occupiers were barred from speaking in their mosques. In a move reminiscent of the Taliban's destruction of Afghanistan's famous Bamiyan Buddha sculptures, Islamist fighters bulldozed 14 ancient mud-brick mausoleums and cemeteries that held the remains of revered Sufi saints.

A spokesman for the Islamists said it was "un-Islamic" for locals to "worship idols."


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