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Hear suspect's gunfight with cops
Labels: LifestyleiPhone, iPad and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.Afghan youth orchestra hopes to bring peace through music
Labels: Health(CBS News) WASHINGTON -- New York's Carnegie Hall has hosted some of the greatest musicians in history. The group performing Tuesday night is perhaps the most unlikely ever to take the main stage. CBS News caught up with them when they performed in Washington.
Milad Yousufi
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CBS News
Milad Yousufi grew up in war-torn Afghanistan, and though he didn't have a piano, he did have an imagination.
"I was drawing piano on the paper, and then I was playing it," Milad says.
There was no access to a piano, because the Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan for five years, banned all non-religious music, saying it was "un-Islamic."
"If they knew that you were listening to the music, probably they would kill you, because they did not like music," Milad says.
Today, the Taliban is out of power, and 18-year-old Milad is making up for lost time. He's joined Afghanistan's first youth orchestra, which, thanks to American funding, is on tour in the U.S.
CBS News met the performers as they practiced with the Maryland Youth Orchestra.
Milad says playing with American students is "wonderful."
"I learn from everyone, so I have 100 teachers, perhaps, per day," he says.
Afghan woman challenges convention through rap
Once scarred by Taliban, Afghan province makes strides
U.S. military charity reaches out to Afghans in need
The orchestra is the brain child of Ahmed Sarmast, who fled Afghanistan during Taliban rule. He returned in 2008 with a mission of reviving the arts by opening up a music school.
Ahmed Sarmast
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CBS News
"It's impossible to keep culture alive where you do not have access to music," Sarmast says. "The power of music is so important for the healing of the people."
His students are between the ages of 10 and 21. Half are orphans or street kids. And in a country where women typically have few opportunities, they make up one-third of the music school.
"We can play your music and you can play our music, and we can speak in a common language of humanity -- and that is the language of music," Sarmast says.
On this night, that language resonated throughout Washington's famed Kennedy Center -- 48 musicians playing Vivaldi and longing for their own season of change, an Afghanistan without war.
State of the Union: Obama Pushes Job Creation
Labels: Business
Pursuing an aggressive and diverse early second-term agenda, President Obama turned his focus Tuesday night squarely to the economy, using his State of the Union address to unveil new government initiatives aimed at creating jobs.
The defining duty of the new Congress and new administration is to "reignite the true engine of America's economic growth -- a rising, thriving middle class," Obama said Tuesday night from the House chamber.
"That must be the North Star that guides our efforts," he said.
Obama's proposals had a familiar ring, including re-packaged economic ideas but also offering several bold new measures aimed at boosting the middle class.
None of the proposals would add to the deficit "by a single dime," Obama pledged, with costs offset by savings carved out in the budget and from money saved from ending two wars.
"It's not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth," Obama said.
For the first time as president, Obama called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour by 2015. He proposed to ensure future increases by indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
He proposed a national goal of universal pre-school education, an effort to help states provide tens of thousands of low- to middle-income four-year-old children access to quality public education from an earlier age.
Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo
Obama: A Rising Middle Class Should Be 'North Star' Watch Video
Obama Wants Minimum Wage: 'A Wage You Can Live On' Watch Video
Obama Announces Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal Watch Video
And, to heal the nation's crumbling roads and bridges, Obama offered a $50 billion "fix it first" infrastructure program that would prioritize repair of existing structures before building new ones.
"Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation," Obama said. "How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"
Answers to those questions, the president suggested, include redoubling investments in clean energy technologies -- a step which he said would both benefit the environment and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
"For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change," he said.
He called for doubling the amount of renewable electricity generation in the U.S. by 2020, and announced an energy version of his "Race to the Top" education program that would give states grants for the best energy efficiency programs.
Related: 7 Things Obama Says at Every State of the Union
In tandem with his economic focus, Obama announced the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by this time next year, cutting in half the current force and marking a quickened pace for the final exit of U.S. combat forces by a 2014 deadline.
There are currently 66,000 U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan. Obama has vowed to bring nearly all of them home by the end of next year, though a small contingent will likely remain to train Afghan forces and assist counterterrorism operations, officials have said.
Obama touched briefly on his recently-unveiled proposals to overhaul the nation's immigration system, expand rights for gay and lesbian Americans and curb an epidemic of gun violence.
With dozens of victims of gun violence looking on from the House gallery, including former Rep. Gabby Giffords, and families of victims from shootings at Newtown, Conn., Oak Creek, Wisc., and Aurora, Colo., Obama made an emotional plea for an up-or-down vote on his gun control plan.
"Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress," he said of proposed restrictions on assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines, and enhanced background checks, among other measures.
"If you want to vote no, that's your choice," he said. "But these proposals deserve a vote. Because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun."
Read More: President Obama's Past State of the Union Promises
Arctic sunshine cranks up threat from greenhouse gases
Labels: WorldIT'S a solar double whammy. Not only does sunlight melt Arctic ice, but it also speeds up the conversion of frozen organic matter into carbon dioxide.
The amount of carbon in dead vegetation preserved in the far northern permafrost is estimated to be twice what the atmosphere holds as CO2. Global warming could allow this plant matter to decompose, releasing either CO2 or methane – both greenhouse gases. The extent of the risk remains uncertain because the release mechanisms are not clear.
Rose Cory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues analysed water from ponds forming on melting permafrost at 27 sites across the Arctic. They found that the amount of CO2 released was 40 per cent higher when the water was exposed to ultraviolet light than when kept dark. This is because UV light, a component of sunlight, raises the respiration rate of soil bacteria and fungi, amplifying the amount of organic matter they break down and the amount of CO2 released.
The thawing Arctic is emerging as a potentially major source of positive feedback that could accelerate global warming beyond existing projections. "Our task now is to quantify how fast this previously frozen carbon may be converted to CO2, so that models can include the process," Cory says.
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1214104110.
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Benedict's resignation renews calls for an African pope
Labels: Technology
LAGOS: Pope Benedict XVI's resignation has sparked calls for his successor to come from Africa, home to the world's fastest-growing population and the front line of key issues facing the Roman Catholic Church.
Around 15 per cent of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics live in Africa and the percentage has expanded significantly in recent years in comparison to other parts of the world.
Much of the Catholic Church's recent growth has come in the developing world, with the most rapid expansions in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Names such as Ghana's Peter Turkson and Nigerian John Onaiyekan have been mentioned as potential papal material, as has Francis Arinze, also from Nigeria and considered a possibility when Benedict was elected, but who is now 80.
Some analysts see the issue as one of justice since Africa has contributed to the Catholic Church to such a large degree, as well as a reflection of a changing world.
"I think that, with the black community's representation in the larger Catholic community, it is legitimate that we have a black pope," said Rene Legre Hokou, head of the Ivory Coast League of Human Rights.
"An African pope could give more vitality to the Catholic Church in the black world. It would demonstrate the universal character of the religion."
A number of African Catholic Church members had a mixed view however, saying they would like to see a fellow African elected pope, but wanted the most qualified person, no matter where he is from.
Pat Utomi, a prominent Catholic in Nigeria who is an economist and former presidential candidate, said he would take pride in seeing an African elected, "but we must take that away."
"I think what matters is the right person with the vision for the moment," Utomi said.
At the same time, he said Africa in several ways was representative of major challenges facing the Church, particularly its relationship with an evangelical movement with explosive growth on the continent as well as with Islam.
"I think in some ways a John Paul II was a response to the Soviet Union," Utomi said. "In some ways the challenge of the Church must be to reach an accommodation ... an understanding with Islam and the Pentecostal movement."
Africans have flocked to evangelical religions, with many seeing them as more relevant to their daily lives, posing a challenge to the Catholic Church.
Also in countries like Nigeria, roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south, religious and ethnic tensions have led to violence.
Onaiyekan, nominated as a cardinal in October and also the archbishop of the Nigerian capital Abuja, has made efforts to foster unity between Christians and Muslims in his country.
"It would take a skilled leader of the church -- in the kind of way that a John Paul II reached out to the Eastern church, to the Orthodox churches of the east," Utomi said.
Vatican watchers say the college of cardinals may seize the moment to elect a Latin-American, African or Asian pope.
Others say 85-year-old Benedict -- who is resigning for age reasons -- may call on the cardinals to elect someone younger, who is less likely to suffer failing health early in his mandate.
Benedict visited Africa twice, most recently the West African nation of Benin in 2011, while before that Angola and Cameroon in 2009. His Benin visit came 150 years after what is considered the evangelisation of the country by missionaries.
Archbishop of Lagos Alfred Adewale Martins said Benedict should be lauded for his efforts in Africa.
"I believe he is one man that we should be grateful to God for the attitude to the church in general and also the solicitude that he has demonstrated in very many ways to the church in Africa in particular," said Martins.
But Benedict's outreach on the continent notwithstanding, there were still doubts over whether an African would be put at the head of the Vatican.
At Saint Antonio da Polana Church in the Mozambique capital Maputo after Benedict's announcement, parishioner Zeb Renardo said he did not think the time had come.
"I will say categorically that I doubt we will have an African pope," he said. "I think the moment hasn't come for us to see an African pope."
But the rector at Ivory Coast's Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, a semi-replica of St. Peter's in Rome and the largest Christian shrine in Africa, said "why not a non-Western pope?"
"The world is now multi-colour," Polish priest Stanislaw Skuza said.
- AFP/ck
Seismic activity reported near North Korea nuclear test sites
Labels: LifestyleBy Jethro Mullen, CNN
updated 11:58 PM EST, Mon February 11, 2013
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: "We believe North Korea conducted its third nuclear test," a South Korean official says
- A magnitude 4.9 disturbance takes place in area of previous underground nuclear tests
- There is little or no history of natural seismic activity in the area
- North Korea said last month it would carry out a third nuclear test
Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea appeared to have conducted its third underground nuclear bomb test Tuesday, officials and experts said, as U.S. seismologists reported activity centered near the site of the secretive regime's two previous nuclear tests.
Although North Korea had warned the world of its plans to carry out a new test in a bellicose statement last month, the move is still likely to rattle the security situation in Northeast Asia as analysts try to determine the power and complexity of the device the North is thought to have detonated.
It also gave a provocative reminder of a seemingly intractable foreign policy challenge for President Barack Obama ahead of his State of the Union address later Tuesday.
The area around the reported epicenter of the magnitude 4.9 disturbance in northeastern North Korea has little or no history of earthquakes or natural seismic hazards, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps. The disturbance Tuesday took place at a depth of about 1 kilometer, the USGS said.
Government officials and security analysts had little doubt about the cause of the quake.
"We believe North Korea conducted its third nuclear test," said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry. He added that the magnitude of the "artificial tremor" suggested the blast was more powerful than the North's two prior nuclear tests.
"If we come to a final conclusion that it is nuclear test," he said, "then we will consult with international community and respond strongly."
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that based on past cases, "We believe there is a possibility that North Korea conducted a nuclear test."
There were no initial reports concerning the activity on the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday.
"It's a nuclear test," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "That magnitude and that location -- it's awfully unlikely it's anything else."
In Washington, a senior administration official said the United States was working to confirm a nuclear test.
The China Earthquake Network Center said on its website that the seismic disturbance in North Korea was a "suspected explosion."
The suspected test took place at a time when several East Asian countries, including China, North Korea's major ally, are observing public holidays for the Lunar New Year.
It also comes ahead of the birthday of Kim Jong Il, the former North Korean leader who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Un.
North Korea's reclusive, Stalinist regime announced last month that it was planning a new nuclear test and more long-range rocket launches, all of which it said were part of a new phase of confrontation with the United States.
U.S. analysts say North Korea's first bomb test, in October 2006, produced an explosive yield at less than 1 kiloton (1,000 tons) of TNT. A second test in May 2009 is believed to have been about two kilotons, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate committee in 2012.
By comparison, the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was a 15-kiloton device.
In May 2012, North Korea said it had amended its constitution to formally proclaim itself a "nuclear state."
CNN's Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's K.J. Kwon in Seoul, South Korea; Yoko Wakatsuki in Tokyo; Dana Ford and Matt Smith in Atlanta, Georgia; and Elise Labott in Washington contributed to this report. Journalist Connie Young in Beijing also contributed reporting.
State of the Union guests reflect nation's hot-button issues
Labels: HealthSeveral lawmakers are bringing special guests to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night in order to make a statement.
Several lawmakers are bringing guests to help underscore the importance of gun control. More than 20 House Democrats are bringing guests who have been personally affected by gun violence. A bipartisan pair of Arizona lawmakers, meanwhile, will host former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband Mark Kelly.
Other lawmakers are bringing guests tied to issues like immigration and voting rights.
Below is a partial list of officials and the guests they are bringing. CBS News will update the list as more guests are confirmed:
- Lt. Brian Murphy, who was wounded while responding to the Sikh Temple shooting last August in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. He was struck by 15 bullets.
- Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel Pendleton Sr., parents of 15-year-old Hadiya who was killed in a Chicago park.
- Desiline Victor, a 103-year-old Florida woman who waited in line for several hours to vote.
- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.
- Mother and daughter from Newtown, Conn. The 4th grader sent Pelosi a letter asking for her support to strengthen gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
- Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband Mark Kelly
- Musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent
- First Selectwoman Pat Llodra, a Republican and the Chief Executive Officer of Newtown
- Newtown Detectives Jason Frank and Dan McAnaspie, two of several first responders who rushed to Sandy Hook Elementary School on the day of the tragedy
- Undocumented immigrant Gabino Sanchez. The South Carolina husband and father of two U.S. citizen children is fighting deportation. Sanchez entered the country when he was 15 years old and has been working and living peacefully in the U.S. ever since.
- Josh Stepakoff, who in 1999 was shot at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, Calif. Stepakoff, now 20, is a student at California State University Northridge.
- Matt Gross, a New Jersey native who was shot in the head in 1997, at the age of 27. Gross was one of several victims wounded during a shooting attack on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
First Lady Michelle Obama:
House Minority Leader Pelosi:
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz.:
Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas:
Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.:
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.:
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.:
More House Democrats bringing guests affected by gun violence:
Rep. Jim Langevin, R.I.
Rep. Keith Ellison, Minn.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, N.Y.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Conn.
Rep. David Cicilline, R.I.
Rep. Diana DeGette, Colo.
Rep. Tammy Duckworth, Ill.
Rep. Elizabeth Esty, Conn.
Rep. Lois Frankel, Fla.
Rep. Lujan Grisham, N.M.
Rep. Janice Hahn, Calif.
Rep. Jim Himes, Conn.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal, Calif.
Rep. Gloria Negrete-McLeod, Calif.
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Colo.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Ill.
Rep. Brad Schneider, Ill.
Rep. Bobby Scott, Va.
Rep. Mike Thompson, Calif.
Rep. Krysten Sinema, Ariz.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Md.
North Korean Tremor Raises Fear of Nuke Test
Labels: Business
A large tremor measured at magnitude 4.9 was detected in North Korea and governments in the region scrambled to determine whether it was a nuclear test that the North Korean regime has vowed to carry out despite international protests.
Japan's prime minister has called an urgent security meeting, according to chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga, and South Korea raised its military alert level, the AP reported.
Suspicions were aroused when the U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a magnitude 4.9 earthquake Tuesday in North Korea.
The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization told ABC News, "We confirm that a suspicious seismic event has taken place in North Korea." The agency said it was trying to confirm the nature of the tremor.
North Korea Threatens More Nuclear Tests, Warns U.S. Watch Video
"The event shows clear explosion-like characteristics and its location is roughly congruent with the 2006 and 2009 DPRK (North Korea) nuclear tests," said Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the organization.
"If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act would constitute a clear threat to international peace and security, and challenges efforts made to strengthen global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation," Toth said in a statement on the organization's web site.
Kim Min-seok, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters that North Korea informed United States and China that it intended to carry out another nuclear test, according to the AP. But U.S. officials did not respond to calls from ABC News Monday night.
North Korea threatened in January to carry out a "higher-level" test following the successful Dec. 12 launch of a long range rocket. At the time, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un said his country's weapons tests were specifically targeting the United States.
The suspicious tremor comes just hours before President Obama is to give the State of the Union address, and it marks the first diplomatic test in the region for new Secretary of State John Kerry.
China, North Korea's main ally in the region, has warned North Korea it would cut back severely needed food assistance if it carried out a test. Each year China donates approximately half of the food North Korea lacks to feed its people and half of all oil the country consumes.
Liver cancer survival time tripled by virus
Labels: WorldThe virus used in the vaccine that helped eradicate smallpox is now working its magic on liver cancer. A genetically engineered version of the vaccinia virus has trebled the average survival time of people with a severe form of liver cancer, with only mild, flu-like side effects.
Thirty people with hepatocellular carcinoma received three doses of the modified virus – code-named JX-594 – directly into their liver tumour over one month. Half the volunteers received a low dose of the virus, the other half a high dose. Members of the low and high-dose groups subsequently survived for, on average, 6.7 and 14.1 months respectively. By contrast, trials several years ago showed that sorafenib, the best existing medication for this cancer, prolonged life by only three months.
Two of the patients on the highest viral dose were still alive more than two years after the treatment. "It's a very substantial survival benefit," says Laurent Fischer, president of Jennerex, the company in San Francisco developing the treatment under the trade name Pexa-Vec.
Besides shrinking the primary tumour, the virus was able to spread to and shrink any secondary tumours outside the liver. "Some tumours disappeared completely, and most showed partial destruction on MRI scans," says David Kirn, head of the study at Jennerex. Moreover, the destruction was equally dramatic in the primary and secondary tumours.
"This clinical trial is an exciting step forward to help find a new way of treating cancers," says Alan Melcher of the University of Leeds, UK, who was not involved in the study. "It helps demonstrate the cancer-fighting potential of viruses, which have relatively few side effects compared with traditional chemo or radiotherapy," he says. "If it proves effective in larger trials, it could be available to patients within five years."
The fact that the virus appears able to spread to secondary tumours suggests that simply injecting the virus into the bloodstream may be effective. A trial to compare this treatment with injecting the virus directly into a tumour is under way.
Targeted at cancer
The virus has had a gene coding for an enzyme called thymidine kinase snipped out. The enzyme enables the virus to recognise and infect dividing cells. By removing the gene, the virus's developers have reduced the likelihood of healthy dividing cells being infected.
Instead, the virus exclusively attacks cancerous tissue, by targeting two genes that have increased activity in tumour cells. One genes is associated with an epidermal growth factor receptor, which stimulates the cancer to grow. The other is associated with a vascular endothelial growth factor, which enables the cancer to recruit its own blood supply. The virus reduces the activity of both genes, causing the infected cancer cell to wither and die.
What's more, the virus carries extra genes to prod the body's own immune system into action against the cancer. One produces granulocyte colony stimulating factor, a protein that encourages production of extra white blood cells at sites of infection. The other produces a protein not naturally found in humans, called Lac-Z, that earmarks infected cells for destruction.
Fischer says that to date, more than 200 people have received the virus, which has also shown promise against other types of cancer, including those of the kidney and skin. But he warns that not everyone sees a benefit. "We know why patients respond, but not why they don't," he says.
Journal reference: Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm.3089
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
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First Singaporean nominated for Grammy falls short
Labels: Technology
LOS ANGELES - The first Singaporean to be nominated for a Grammy came up short on Sunday, with guitarist Arun Shenoy losing out to top veteran trumpeter Chris Botti for best pop instrumental album.
Shenoy, who was born in the southern Indian state of Karnataka before moving to Singapore, received a Grammy nomination for his debut album "Rumbadoodle," which he recorded during live performances around the world.
Shenoy has described his guitar work as a new perspective on gypsy rumba flamenco, merging the genre with other global influences.
The Grammy ultimately went to "Impressions" by Botti, whose pop-influenced jazz works had won him four previous nominations.
The other contenders in the category -- saxophonist Dave Koz, for a live album recorded in Tokyo, and guitarist Larry Carlton -- also had previous Grammy nominations.
- AFP/ir
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