Las Vegas Strip Shooting Suspect ID'd












Las Vegas police identified a suspect today in a shooting on the strip that caused a Maserati to hit a taxi and burst into flames, killing three people.


Ammar Harris, 26, has been named a suspect in the Thursday skirmish that killed three people, including rapper Kenny Clutch.


The altercation between Harris and Clutch, 27, whose legal name was Kenneth Cherry Jr., is believed to have originated in the valet area of a Las Vegas hotel, police said.


Police said Harris fired several rounds into a Maserati that was being driven by Cherry as both vehicles continued northbound on glitzy Las Vegas Boulevard.


The rapper's expensive sports car careened out of control after he was shot, slamming into several cars, including a taxi. The impact caused the cab to burst into flames, killing the driver, Michael Boldon and a female passenger. Witnesses said it looked like the car exploded.


"He was a number one guy," Carolyn Jean Trimble, Boldon's sister, told ABC News.








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"I looked out my window and I could see one vehicle down here on the corner of the intersection totally engulfed in flames," witness John Lamb told ABC News.


Boldon, 62, and his passenger, who has not yet been identified, were both killed, as was Clutch.


Timble said her brother loved driving his taxi around Vegas.


"He came to live with me in Las Vegas last year to help take care of our mother, and the first day he got here he said, 'I have to get a job.' The second day, I came home from work, and he said he got a job," she recalled.


"He says, 'You'll never guess what it is,' and I said, 'what,' and he said, 'taxi cab driver,' and we both fell out laughing," Trimble said. "He loved that job. He never complained. He'd come home and tell me stories about what happened, who he picked up."


Boldon was a single father who raised a 36-year-old son and was a new grandfather. His grandson was named after him, Trimble said.


"Of all the people to take from this earth," she said. "But I guess the Lord needed him."


A passenger in the Maserati was hit and sustained only a minor injury to his arm. Clutch died at University Medical Center.


His father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., expressed his grief for the loss of his son while speaking with ABC News.


"This is something you never really, really ever want to experience as a parent, to lose a child before you go," he said.


Harris is described as 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Las Vegas Metro Police Department's homicide division.



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White House warns of flight delays if sequester is not averted





Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood vowed that airline security would not be compromised, but he emphasized that the Federal Aviation Administration would have no alternative but to furlough thousands of employees as it seeks to slash $600 million.


LaHood’s surprise appearance in the White House briefing room aimed to put a spotlight on the real-world consequences of the political standoff over the across-the-board spending cuts, known as the sequester that will take effect next Friday.

Even as LaHood painted a dire picture, a Pew Research Center/USA Today poll released Thursday shows that most Americans have heard little to nothing about the potential cuts. Only 27 percent said they had heard “a lot” about them.

The White House has sought to change that this week with a public relations campaign that included President Obama’s appearance Tuesday with emergency medical workers and an announcement by the Pentagon that it would furlough up to 800,000 civilian employees one day a week.

But it was the specter of widespread travel delays — up to 90 minutes during peak flight periods — that the White House hoped would rally public opinion and put pressure on Republican lawmakers.

“Your phones are going to start ringing off the hook when these people are delayed at airports,” said LaHood, a former GOP congressman from Illinois. “Nobody likes a delay. Nobody likes waiting in line.”

The sequester was put into motion by the August 2011 debt-ceiling deal, and there have been few signs of progress in negotiations to avert them. Obama has proposed a mix of budget cuts and new revenue through closing corporate loopholes, but Republicans have said they will not raise taxes and instead have pushed to cut federal health spending.

During a photo op in the Oval Office after a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the president said Friday that the impact of the budget cuts would slow growth in an already soft economy.

“It also means that we are not going to be driving down unemployment as quickly as we should,” Obama said. He added that his fellow world leaders understand that drastic budget cuts are the “wrong prescription” for the U.S. economy.

“I don’t need to persuade world leaders of that,” Obama said. “I’ve got to persuade member of Congress, and that can be harder sometimes.”

House Republicans continued to blame Obama for the sequester, which the White House proposed in 2011 and Congress approved.

Several Republicans who serve as leaders on transportation policy released a statement Friday accusing the administration of exaggerating the impact of the scheduled cuts on air travel.

“We are disappointed by the Administration creating alarm about sequestration’s impact on aviation,” said the statement from Sen. John Thune (S.D.) and Reps. Bill Shuster (Pa.) and Frank A. LoBiondo (N.J.). “Before jumping to the conclusion that furloughs must be implemented, the Administration and the agency need to sharpen their pencils and consider all the options. Prematurely outlining the potential impacts before identifying other savings is not helpful.”

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Hollande wants proper labels on meat meals






PARIS: France's president said Saturday he wanted to see proper labelling of meat in ready-made meals to avert a repeat of the scandal over horsemeat being passed off as beef.

"I want there to eventually be mandatory labels on the meat contained in prepared meals," Francois Hollande said while visiting an agricultural show in Paris.

"Until then, I will support... all initiatives for voluntary labelling" so that "consumers know the origin of the products they are consuming, especially meat."

A vast food scandal erupted in Europe in January after horsemeat was initially found in so-called beef ready-made meals and burgers in Britain and Ireland. It has since spread as far as Hong Kong.

French firm Spanghero has been at the heart of the scandal after it allegedly passed off 750 tonnes of horsemeat as beef, with the product eventually finding its way into 4.5 million "beef" products sold across Europe.

-AFP/fl



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Hyderabad blasts: CCTV image may provide breakthrough

HYDERABAD: The probe into Thursday's twin blasts, which killed 16 people and injured over 100, gathered momentum with the police scanning the image of a suspect captured on CCTV camera.

The investigators are scanning the images recorded on a Closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera mounted on a traffic signal near the blast site in Dilsukhnagar, police sources said.

A man believed to be in his early thirties was seen reaching the place on a bicycle with a bag hung to its carrier a few minutes before the blasts.

He was seen reaching the area at 6.38pm, 10 minutes before the blast at Anand Tiffin Centre in front of Konark theatre. The second blast took place at 7.01pm a few meters away. The bombs at both the places were planted on old bicycles.

The surveillance camera installed in front of Dilsukhnagar bus station captured the image of the suspect. However, as his face is not clearly visible, the police are taking the help of experts.

Though the CCTV camera is focused on the vehicles moving on the main road and not towards the corner where the blast occurred, the image of the suspect on bicycle could prove a vital clue in the investigations, sources said.

The police Friday announced a suitable reward for anyone providing information about the suspect. Cyberabad police commissioner D. Tirumala Rao said the identity of the person would be kept a secret. He said the reward could be anywhere between Rs.5 lakh to Rs.20 lakh depending on the investigations.

Meanwhile, the condition of eight of the injured remained critical. The injured are undergoing treatment at seven hospitals including state-run Osmania Hospital.

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Cyberattacks Bring Attention to Security Reform











Recent accusations of a large-scale cyber crime effort by the Chinese government left many wondering what immediate steps the president and Congress are taking to prevent these attacks from happening again.


On Wednesday, the White House released the administration's Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets as a follow-up to the president's executive order. The strategy did not outwardly mention China, but it implied U.S. government awareness of the problem.


"We are taking a whole of government approach to stop the theft of trade secrets by foreign competitors or foreign governments by any means -- cyber or otherwise," U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel said in a White House statement.


As of now, the administration's strategy is the first direct step in addressing cybersecurity, but in order for change to happen Congress needs to be involved. So far, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is the most notable Congressional legislation addressing the problem, despite its past controversy.


Last April, CISPA was introduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md. The act would allow private companies with consumer information to voluntarily share those details with the NSA and the DOD in order to combat cyber attacks.






Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images







The companies would be protected from any liabilities if the information was somehow mishandled. This portion of the act sounded alarm bells for CISPA's opponents, like the ACLU, which worried that this provision would incentivize companies to share individuals' information with disregard.


CISPA passed in the House of Representatives, despite a veto threat from the White House stemming from similar privacy concerns. The bill then died in the Senate.


This year, CISPA was reintroduced the day after the State of the Union address during which the president declared an executive order targeting similar security concerns from a government standpoint.


In contrast to CISPA, the executive order would be initiated on the end of the government, and federal agencies would share relevant information regarding threats with private industries, rather than asking businesses to supply data details. All information shared by the government would be unclassified.


At the core of both the executive order and CISPA, U.S. businesses and the government would be encouraged to work together to combat cyber threats. However, each option would clearly take a different route to collaboration. The difference seems minimal, but has been the subject of legislative debates between the president and Congress for almost a year, until now.


"My response to the president's executive order is very positive," Ruppersberger told ABC News. "[The president] brought up how important information sharing is [and] by addressing critical infrastructure, he took care of another hurdle that we do not have to deal with."


Addressing privacy roadblocks, CISPA backers said the sharing of private customer information with the government, as long as personal details are stripped, is not unprecedented.


"Think of what we do with HIPAA in the medical professions; [doctors do not need to know] the individual person, just the symptoms to diagnose a disease," Michigan Gov. John Engler testified at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in an attempt to put the problem into context.






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Group releases list of 90 medical ‘don’ts’



Those are among the 90 medical “don’ts” on a list being released Thursday by a coalition of doctor and consumer groups. They are trying to discourage the use of tests and treatments that have become common practice but may cause harm to patients or unnecessarily drive up the cost of health care.


It is the second set of recommendations from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s “Choosing Wisely” campaign, which launched last year amid nationwide efforts to improve medical care in the United States while making it more affordable.

The recommendations run the gamut, from geriatrics to opthalmology to maternal health. Together, they are meant to convey the message that in medicine, “sometimes less is better,” said Daniel Wolfson, executive vice president of the foundation, which funded the effort.

“Sometimes, it’s easier [for a physician] to just order the test rather than to explain to the patient why the test is not necessary,” Wolfson said. But “this is a new era. People are looking at quality and safety and real outcomes in different ways.”

The guidelines were penned by more than a dozen medical professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and ­Gynecologists.

The groups discourage the use of antibiotics in a number of instances in which they are commonly prescribed, such as for sinus infections and pink eye. They caution against using certain sedatives in the elderly and cold medicines in the very young.

In some cases, studies show that the test or treatment is costly but does not improve the quality of care for the patient, according to the groups.

But in many cases, the groups contend, the intervention could cause pain, discomfort or even death. For example, feeding tubes are often used to provide sustenance to dementia patients who cannot feed themselves, even though oral feeding is more effective and humane. And CT scans that are commonly used when children suffer minor head trauma may expose them to cancer-causing radiation.

While the recommendations are aimed in large part at physicians, they are also designed to arm patients with more information in the exam room.

“If you’re a healthy person and you’re having a straightforward surgery, and you get a list of multiple tests you need to have, we want you to sit down and talk with your doctor about whether you need to do these things,” said John Santa, director of the health ratings center at Consumer Reports, which is part of the coalition that created the guidelines.

Health-care spending in the United States has reached 17.9 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product and continues to rise, despite efforts to contain costs. U.S. health-care spending grew 3.9 percent in 2011, reaching $2.7 trillion, according to the journal Health Affairs.

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"Argo" vs "Lincoln" in knife-edge Oscars race






HOLLYWOOD: Ben Affleck's Iran hostage drama "Argo" goes into Oscars weekend a whisker ahead of Steven Spielberg's presidential "Lincoln", but the race is one of the most unpredictable in recent memory.

Veteran director Spielberg, bidding for his first best picture Oscar since "Schindler's List" in 1994, tops the nominations with 12 nods -- but "Argo" has cleaned up in Hollywood's awards season so far, despite having only seven.

Although he started the season two months ago in front, Spielberg may have to settle Sunday for the best director award -- one that Affleck cannot beat him to, having not been nominated in the category, in a perceived snub.

But again here there could be an upset, with rivals including Taiwan-born Ang Lee for "Life of Pi", David O. Russell for "Silver Linings Playbook", or even Austrian dark horse director Michael Haneke for Cannes-topping "Amour",

One near-certainty Sunday is that "Lincoln" star Daniel Day-Lewis will be named best actor, a record third for the British-Irish actor after wins in 1990 for "My Left Foot" and in 2008 for "There Will Be Blood".

The diffident Day-Lewis, known for his meticulous preparation -- he spent weeks in a wheelchair before playing Christy Brown in "My Left Foot" -- has been modest despite repeatedly taking the stage for acceptance speeches.

"Members of the Academy love surprises, so about the worst thing that can happen to you is if you've built up an expectation," he said, after winning the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) best actor award last month.

"I think they'd probably be delighted if it was anybody else," he added.

For best actress, the early favourite was Jessica Chastain, playing a CIA agent hunting Osama bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty", but the clever money is now on Jennifer Lawrence for her turn in "Silver Linings Playbook".

Lawrence, star of the "Hunger Games" blockbuster franchise, has won praise for moving out of her comfort zone as mixed-up widow Tiffany to Bradley Cooper's recovering bipolar Pat, in the romantic comedy with an edge.

The best supporting actress race is more open, although Anne Hathaway is probably still the frontrunner for her heart-wrenching turn in musical adaptation "Les Miserables", which is also nominated for best picture.

The most unpredictable race of all is perhaps for supporting actor, with Hollywood legend Robert De Niro tipped by some for playing Cooper's father in "Silver Linings Playbook".

But strong rivals in the category include Austrian Christoph Waltz as a white bounty hunter who frees Jamie Foxx's black slave in Quentin Tarantino's blood-spattered "Django Unchained", as well as Tommy Lee Jones in "Lincoln".

On the foreign front, the clear frontrunner is "Amour", which won the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival for its heart-wrenching portrayal of an elderly couple coping with encroaching physical and mental illness.

Its French female lead, Emmanuelle Riva, could even cause an upset in the best actress category, some critics believe. If she did, she would be only the sixth performer to win an Oscar in a language other than English.

Riva, who will be 86 on Sunday, is coincidentally also the oldest ever best actress nominee, and up against a shortlist including the youngest ever nominee, nine-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis for "Beasts of the Southern Wild".

"Amour" is also among the nine films nominated for best picture, although it is not seen as a favourite there.

On a more colourful note, the best animated feature contest is widely seen as a battle between Scottish-themed princess adventure "Brave" and "Wreck-It Ralph", about a video game villain fed up with being the bad guy.

The fast and fun movie pays subtle homage to generations of computer games, in a feel-good story appealing to both mainstream cinema-goers and hard-core animation filmmakers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

-AFP/fl



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Govt has casual approach on terror: BJP

NEW DELHI: Accusing the government of having a casual approach on the issue of terror, the BJP said that it has "failed" to take effective steps to prevent blasts in Hyderabad.

"The government's response is not adequate to the burning issue of terrorism. Government is taking it in a casual and usual manner," BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu told reporters outside Parliament on Friday.

"This is a very serious issue. Series of bomb blasts are happening and especially in Hyderabad and the government is unable to take any effective step. Information in received that National Investigation Agency had mentioned Hyderabad, Bangalore, Maharashtra and other areas where there is possibility of such blasts," he said.

The BJP leader said NIA had given this information two days ago which was confirmed by Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde himself.

"It is a serious issue and the government is not prepared to discuss the issue. We want MPs to express their views and then home minister should give his statement."

Criticising Shinde for going to Hyderabad on Friday, Naidu said, "The home minister should have gone to Hyderabad yesterday itself after the incident and should have come back in the morning today. Government is ignoring Parliament."

The BJP leader charged, "The home minister is changing his stand very often. First he said there were intelligence reports on possible terror attack and later said there were no specific inputs."

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Oldest Known Wild Bird Hatches Chick at 62



Wisdom, the oldest known wild bird, has yet another feather in her cap—a new chick.


The Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis)—62 years old at least—recently hatched a healthy baby in the U.S. Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, her sixth in a row and possibly the 35th of her lifetime, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) North American Bird Banding Program. (Related: "51-Year-Old Albatross Breaks N. American Age Record [2003].")


But Wisdom's longevity would be unknown if it weren't for a longtime bird-banding project founded by USGS research wildlife biologist Chandler Robbins.


Now 94, Robbins was the first scientist to band Wisdom in 1956, who at the time was "just another nesting bird," he said. Over the next ten years, Robbins banded tens of thousands of black-footed albatrosses (Phoebastria nigripes) and Laysan albatrosses as part of a project to study the behavior of the large seabirds, which at the time were colliding with U.S. Navy aircraft.


Robbins didn't return to the tiny Pacific island—now part of the U.S. Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument—until 2002, when he "recaptured as many birds as I could in hopes that some of them would be the old-timers."


Indeed, Robbins did recapture Wisdom—but he didn't know it until he got back to his office at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland, and checked her band number in the database.


"That was real exciting, because we didn't think the chances of finding one that old would be that good," Robbins said Wednesday in an interview from his office at the Patuxent center, where he still works.



Chandler Robbins counts birds.

Chandler Robbins counts birds in Maryland's Patuxent Research Refuge.


Photograph by David H. Wells, Corbis




Albatrosses No Bird Brains


Bigger birds such as the albatross generally live longer than smaller ones: The oldest bird in the Guinness Book of Animal Records, a Siberian white crane (Leucogeranus leucogeranus), lived an unconfirmed 82 years. Captive parrots are known to live into their 80s. (See National Geographic's bird pictures.)



The Laysan albatross spends most of the year at sea, nesting on the Midway Atoll (map) in the colder months. Birds start nesting around five years of age, which is how scientists knew that Wisdom was at least five years old in 1956.



Because albatrosses defend their nests, banding them doesn't require a net or a trap as in the case of other bird species, Robbins said—but they're far from tame.


"They've got a long, sharp bill and long, sharp claws—they could do a job on you if you're not careful how to handle them," said Robbins, who estimates he's banded a hundred thousand birds.


For instance, "when you're not looking, the black-footed albatross will sneak up from behind and bite you in the seat of the pants."


But Robbins has a fondness for albatrosses, and Wisdom in particular, especially considering the new dangers that these birds face.


Navy planes are no longer a problem—albatross nesting dunes were moved farther from the runway—but the birds can ingest floating bits of plastic that now inundate parts of the Pacific, get hooked in longlines meant for fish, and be poisoned by lead paint that's still on some of Midway Atoll's buildings. (Also see "Birds in 'Big Trouble' Due to Drugs, Fishing, More.")


That Wisdom survived so many years avoiding all those hazards and is still raising young is quite extraordinary, Robbins said.


"Those birds have a tremendous amount of knowledge in their little skulls."


"Simply Incredible"


Wisdom's accomplishments have caught the attention of other scientists, in particular Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer in Residence, who said by email that Wisdom is a "symbol of hope for the ocean." (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)


Earle visited Wisdom at her nest in January 2012, where she "appeared serenely indifferent to our presence," Earle wrote in the fall 2012 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.


"I marveled at the perils she had survived during six decades, including the first ten or so years before she found a lifetime mate. She learned to fly and navigate over thousands of miles to secure enough small fish and squid to sustain herself, and every other year or so, find her way back to the tiny island and small patch of grass where a voraciously hungry chick waited for special delivery meals."


Indeed, Wisdom has logged an estimated two to three million miles since 1956—or four to six trips from Earth to the moon and back, according to the USGS. (Related: "Albatross's Effortless Flight Decoded—May Influence Future Planes.")


Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the North American Bird Banding Program, called Wisdom's story "simply incredible."


"If she were human, she would be eligible for Medicare in a couple years—yet she is still regularly raising young and annually circumnavigating the Pacific Ocean," he said in a statement.


Bird's-Eye View


As for Robbins, he said he'd "love to get out to Midway again." But in the meantime, he's busy going through thousands of bird records in an effort to trace their life histories.


There's much more to learn: For instance, no one has ever succeeded in putting a radio transmitter on an albatross to follow it throughout its entire life-span, Robbins noted.


"It would be [an] exciting project for someone to undertake, but I'm 94 years old," he said, chuckling. "It wouldn't do much for me to start a project at my age."


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