Stymied by a GOP House, Obama looks ahead to 2014 to cement his legacy

President Obama, now facing the consequences of automatic spending cuts and the complications they raise for his broader domestic agenda, is taking the most specific steps of his administration in an attempt to ensure the election of a Democratic-controlled Congress in two years.

“What I can’t do is force Congress to do the right thing,” Obama told reporters at the White House on Friday after a fruitless meeting with Republican leaders to avert the country’s latest fiscal crisis, known as the sequester. “The American people may have the capacity to do that.”

Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president. He is doing so by trying to articulate for the American electorate his own feelings — an exasperation with an opposition party that blocks even the most politically popular elements of his agenda.

Obama has committed to raising money for fellow Democrats, agreed to help recruit viable candidates, and launched a political nonprofit group dedicated to furthering his agenda and that of his congressional allies. The goal is to flip the Republican-held House back to Democratic control, allowing Obama to push forward with a progressive agenda on gun control, immigration, climate change and the economy during his final two years in office, according to congressional Democrats, strategists and others familiar with Obama’s thinking.

“The president understands that to get anything done, he needs a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “To have a legacy in 2016, he will need a House majority in 2014, and that work has to start now.”

An evolution in strategy

This approach marks a significant shift in the way Obama has worked with a divided Congress. He has compromised and badgered, but rarely — and never so early — campaigned to change its composition.

Democrats would have to gain 17 House seats to win back the majority they lost in 2010, and their challenge involves developing a persuasive argument for why the party deserves another chance controlling both Congress and the presidency. In the last election, American voters reaffirmed the political status quo in Washington, choosing to retain a divided government.

Of all the presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt, only Bill Clinton picked up House seats for his party in the midterm election of his second term
. His approval rating on the eve of the 1998 contest was 65 percent, 14 points above Obama’s current public standing.

The specific steps Obama is taking to win back the House for his party mark an evolution for a president long consumed by the independence of his political brand.

Obama has committed to eight fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year, compared with just two events in 2009. The Democrats lost the House the following year, and Obama’s legislative agenda has largely stalled since then.

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Romney says 2012 race was 'roller coaster'

WASHINGTON: In his first interview since losing his 2012 White House bid, Mitt Romney likened his experience as a presidential candidate to an unpredictable and bumpy roller coaster ride.

"We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends," Romney said, according to advance excerpts of the interview set to air on "Fox News Sunday."

"And then you get off. And it's not like, 'Oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life?' It's like, no, the ride's over."

Romney appeared with his wife Ann for the interview, the first either has given since the November 6 election that granted President Barack Obama his second term.

Ann Romney acknowledged that the transition from being surrounded by huge crowds and Secret Service agents around the clock to a far lower profile has been an "adjustment."

"We came and stepped forward to serve," she added.

"It was really quite a lot of energy and a lot of passion and a lot of people around us and all of a sudden, it was nothing.

"But the good news is, fortunately we like each other."

Romney, who has not had any major public appearances since his election loss, is set to speak in two weeks at a key conservative gathering, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The former Massachusetts governor has been laying low since his defeat, popping up occasionally in photographs on social media sites that apparently depict him shopping or filling up his tank at the gas station.

When Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts left Congress to become secretary of state earlier this year, it opened up a race in his home state to fill his seat. Speculation swirled that Romney's oldest son Tagg might throw his hat in the ring, but he quickly ruled it out.

Romney aides have also rebuffed suggestions that his wife might consider running for the post.

- AFP/jc

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'Maharashtra sisters were sexually assaulted’

MUMBAI/NAGPUR/LAKHNI: A fortnight after the suspicious deaths of three sisters in Bhandara, Maharashtra DGP Sanjeev Dayal on Saturday said that, going by preliminary reports, it appeared that the girls had been sexually assaulted and their bodies bore injury marks.

Meanwhile, a senior bureaucrat said it was "shocking" that the post-mortem report was still with health officials and had not been forwarded to the police.

The bureaucrat added that while sexual assault was certain, it was not known if rape occurred. He also said no conclusion has been drawn as yet on the cause of death and if it was murder.

Reportedly, the post-mortem report doesn't specifically say whether the girls were sexually assaulted or murdered. It says the youngest girl had a huge injury in her anus and scratch marks on her inner thighs; the hymens of all three were ruptured; the eldest girl had injuries below her elbows and the clothes of all three girls were intact. The report also says semen was not found on the girls' clothes or in chemical and swab analyses. There was also no bleeding in the vaginal areas of all three.

"We have accepted the preliminary findings of the five-member team of doctors set up by the Bhandara civil surgeon. From the reports, it appears that there had been a sexual assault on the sisters and there were signs of injuries. Our investigation is based on the findings of the medical team. However, no written report has been submitted to us," Dayal told TOI.

The bureaucrat said, "The preliminary findings show there is no disputing the fact that the sisters were sexually assaulted, but there is no confirmation on whether it amounted to rape. The hymens of all three were ruptured. Even the cause of death is not known. Efforts are on to ascertain whether they were murdered or drowned in the well."

He added, "It's shocking that 15 days after the incident, the civil surgeon has not submitted the post-mortem report." He said it was a goof-up of the highest order. "In fact, the public health department woke up only after there was a protest in the region," he said. In the wake of the deaths, the Bhandara civil surgeon had set up a fivemember team of doctors to conduct the post-mortem. "Despite the serious nature of the case, it has been left to the junior-most officers," the bureaucrat said.

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We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.")

But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make sense. For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas. The fossil record doesn't reveal whether these large carnivores starved to death because modern humans took most of the meat or whether humans picked them off on purpose. Either way, most of the Ice Age bestiary went extinct.

The hunting hypothesis, that humans used wolves to hunt, doesn't hold up either. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, more successful than every other large carnivore. Wolves eat a lot of meat, as much as one deer per ten wolves every day-a lot for humans to feed or compete against. And anyone who has seen wolves in a feeding frenzy knows that wolves don't like to share.

Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them. Over the last few centuries, almost every culture has hunted wolves to extinction. The first written record of the wolf's persecution was in the sixth century B.C. when Solon of Athens offered a bounty for every wolf killed. The last wolf was killed in England in the 16th century under the order of Henry VII. In Scotland, the forested landscape made wolves more difficult to kill. In response, the Scots burned the forests. North American wolves were not much better off. By 1930, there was not a wolf left in the 48 contiguous states of America.  (See "Wolf Wars.")

If this is a snapshot of our behavior toward wolves over the centuries, it presents one of the most perplexing problems: How was this misunderstood creature tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog?

The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.

Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.

Friendliness caused strange things to happen in the wolves. They started to look different. Domestication gave them splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. In only several generations, these friendly wolves would have become very distinctive from their more aggressive relatives. But the changes did not just affect their looks. Changes also happened to their psychology. These protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives-chimpanzees and bonobos-can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs.

Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have defended their humans from predators.

And finally, though this is not a pleasant thought, when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply. Thousands of years before refrigeration and with no crops to store, hunter-gatherers had no food reserves until the domestication of dogs. In tough times, dogs that were the least efficient hunters might have been sacrificed to save the group or the best hunting dogs. Once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as an emergency food supply, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.

Dr. Brian Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke University. This essay is adapted from their new book, The Genius of Dogs, published by Dutton. To play science-based games to find the genius in your dog, visit www.dognition.com.

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US Seeks to Confirm Report of Terror Leader's Death

American military and intelligence officials said today they are attempting to confirm a report from the Chadian military of the death of al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the alleged mastermind of the deadly attack on an Algerian natural gas facility in January.

If the new report is confirmed, Belmokhtar's death would be a significant victory against a growing al Qaeda threat in northern Africa.

Belmokhtar's killing was announced on Chadian national television by armed forces spokesperson Gen. Zacharia Gobongue, who said Chadian troops "operating in northern Mali completely destroyed a terrorist base."

"The [death] toll included several dead terrorists, including their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar," he said.

However, an unidentified elected official in Mali told The Associated Press he doubted Belmokhtar had actually been killed and said he suspected the Chadian government of pushing the story to ease the loss of dozens of Chadian troops in operations in northern Africa.

SITE Intel Group/AP Photo

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Belmokhtar is known as Mr. Marlboro because of the millions he made smuggling cigarettes across the Sahara, but in the last few months the one-eyed terrorist leader has become one of the most sought after terrorists in the world. The attack on the plant near In Amenas in eastern Algeria left dozens of Westerns and at least three Americans dead.

Belmokhtar had formed his own al Qaeda splinter group and announced he would use his wealth to finance more attacks against American and Western interests in the region and beyond.

The U.S. has badly wanted Belmokhtar stopped and actively helped in the search by French and African military units to find him, as well as another top al Qaeda leader who was reported killed yesterday.

After the Chadian announcement, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said Belmokhtar's death, if confirmed, "would be a hard blow to the collection of jihadists operating across the region that are targeting American diplomats and energy workers."

Steve Wysocki, a plant worker who survived the attack in In Amenas thanked "military forces from around the world," especially the Chadian military, for bringing "this terrorist to an expedient justice."

"My family and I continue to mourn for our friends and colleagues who didn't make it home and pray for their families," Wysocki told ABC News.

The CIA has been after Belmokhtar since the early 1990s, Royce's statement said.

ABC News' Clayton Sandell contributed to this report.

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Obama, congressional leaders fail to reach deal on sequester

President Obama acknowledged Friday that deep federal budget cuts are here with no end in sight, an outcome that he warned would harm the economy but said he lacked the power to stop.

A final attempt to find common ground with congressional leaders at a White House meeting proved fruitless. The president continued to press for higher taxes as part of a deal, and Republicans continued to refuse — clearing the way for $85 billion in cuts this fiscal year and $1.2 trillion over the next decade.

The reductions, which Obama formally ordered late Friday, are likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. There had been speculation that they might be adjusted later this month, when lawmakers must agree on a new deal to fund the government or risk a shutdown. But Obama made clear Friday that he would seek to avoid a shutdown even if that means allowing the across-the-board cuts, known as the sequester, to continue.

The failure to reach a deal to turn off the sequester after years of clashes over spending and taxes will usher in an era of deeper austerity in the United States. To date, the country has resisted the sharp pullback in federal spending that has occurred in much of Europe.

The onset of the sequester also will introduce a new level of uncertainty for Americans who rely on the government for employment or services, with an outsize impact in the Washington region.

For Obama, the failure to reach a deal is a setback. He has spent years arguing that efforts to tame the nation’s debt should involve a balance of spending cuts and tax revenues. As things stand now, the onset of the sequester means that balance tilts heavily toward cuts.

Polls shows Obama has broad support among Americans for his approach to taxes and spending. Over coming weeks, senior administration officials said, he will highlight people and localities hurt by the sequester, with the intention of creating pressure to force Republicans to concede. But the president said that could take months.

“It’s happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made,” Obama said in the White House briefing room after the meeting with congressional leaders broke up. “They’ve allowed these cuts to happen because they refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit.”

The GOP is able to say it defied the president, avoiding his demand for new tax revenue. The standoff comes after deep intraparty divisions nearly tore House Republicans apart late last year in battles about whether to support tax increases.

Republicans can say they have forced greater restraint in government spending — although it is far from the arrangement most GOP leaders wanted. Republican leaders have warned that the sequester could damage national defense and expressed frustration that it does not apply to social programs such as Medicaid and Social Security.

Nonetheless, they say the cuts are preferable to tax increases.

“Let’s make it clear that the president got his tax hikes on January 1st,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said outside the White House, referring to new taxes on the wealthy approved in January. “This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It’s about taking on the spending problem here in Washington.”

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Obama orders US$85b in budget cuts

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama ordered $85 billion in budget cuts Friday that could slow the US economy and slash jobs, after blaming Republicans for refusing to stop the "dumb" spending cuts.

Obama complied with his legal obligations and initiated the automatic, across-the-board cuts in domestic and defence spending, following the failure of efforts to clinch a deal with Republicans on cutting the deficit.

- AFP/fa

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Sarabjit Singh's lawyer receives death threat from Pakistani Taliban

LAHORE: The lawyer of Sarabjit Singh, who is on death row in a Pakistani prison, on Friday said he had received a death threat from the Taliban for pursuing the case of the Indian national.

Awais Shiekh said a letter written by an anonymous activist of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan had warned his wife to stop her husband from pursuing the case of Sarabjit.

He said the letter read: "I belong to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and I am a resident of Faisalabad district (150km from Lahore). I want to tell you that your husband is representing the case of Sarabjit Singh, who is responsible of killing my whole family in a bomb blast.

"Your husband is addressing a press conference about Sarabjit Singh. If this is held, it would be the last day of your husband and every single member of your family will be killed. You will find dead bodies of your children by tomorrow morning.

"I know your children. I will kidnap them and will send their dead bodies to you. If you want your children to live, refrain from doing this."

Shiekh claimed he was barred from holding a planned news conference at the Lahore Press Club to launch his book on Sarabjit. "My son also received a threatening call from an anonymous person. I will lodge a complaint with police and seek security," Sheikh told PTI.

He said that when he reached the Press Club, he was informed by its administration that the news conference could not be held as there was a "security threat".

Hamid Khan, former president of the Supreme Court bar association, IA Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and other persons were present for the news conference. They condemned the press club's decision to block the news conference.

"The reality of Sarabjit's case will be known to the people through this book. A gross mischarge of justice has been done in Sarabjit's case," Sheikh said.

Sarabjit was convicted for alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks that killed 14 people in 1990. His family has said that he was a victim of mistaken identity.

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Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics.

"The most exciting part of this finding is the ability to test the theory of general relativity in such an extreme regime, where the gravitational field is huge, and the properties of space-time around it are completely different from the standard Newtonian case," said lead author Guido Risaliti, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and INAF-Arcetri Observatory in Italy. (Related: "Speedy Star Found Near Black Hole May Test Einstein Theory.")

Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, supermassive black holes live at the center of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. (See black hole pictures.)

They can pack the gravitational punch of many million or even billions of suns—distorting space-time in the region around them, not even letting light to escape their clutches.

Galactic Monster

The predatory monster that lurks at the core of the relatively nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is estimated to weigh in at about two million times the mass of the sun, and stretches some 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) across-more than eight times the distance between Earth and the moon, Risaliti said. (Also see "Black Hole Blast Biggest Ever Recorded.")

Risaliti and colleagues' unprecedented discovery was made possible thanks to the combined observations from NASA's high-energy x-ray detectors on its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) probe and the European Space Agency's low-energy, x-ray-detecting XMM-Newton space observatory.

Astronomers detected x-ray particle remnants of stars circling in a pancake-shaped accretion disk surrounding the black hole, and used this data to help determine its rate of spin.

By getting a fix on this spin speed, astronomers now hope to better understand what happens inside giant black holes as they gravitationally warp space-time around themselves.

Even more intriguing to the research team is that this discovery will shed clues to black hole's past, and the evolution of its surrounding galaxy.

Tracking the Universe's Evolution

Supermassive black holes have a large impact in the evolution of their host galaxy, where a self-regulating process occurs between the two structures.

"When more stars are formed, they throw gas into the black hole, increasing its mass, but the radiation produced by this accretion warms up the gas in the galaxy, preventing more star formation," said Risaliti.

"So the two events—black hole accretion and formation of new stars—interact with each other."

Knowing how fast black holes spin may also help shed light how the entire universe evolved. (Learn more about the origin of the universe.)

"With a knowledge of the average spin of galaxies at different ages of the universe," Risaliti said, "we could track their evolution much more precisely than we can do today."

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Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.

He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

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Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Why can’t all agencies avoid sequestration furloughs?

Some federal agencies appear to be better-positioned than others to avoid furloughs, which are likely to happen unless Congress and the president reach a deal to avert the automatic budget cuts set to kick in Friday.

The Government Accountability Office, the Small Business Administration, the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Agency for International Development have all said they expect to meet their cost-saving targets without resorting to unpaid leave.

So how have those agencies managed to avoid the likelihood of furloughs while others have not?

Some union leaders and lawmakers, especially Republicans, say planners just have to put their minds to it. But many experts who study federal budgets have said other factors come into play.

“Agencies have enormous discretion in this regard, but some are so predominantly personnel-driven that they have little choice but to furlough,” said Patrick Lester, director of fiscal policy for the Center for Effective Government.

Indeed, the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security and Federal Aviation Administration have said in recent weeks that they expect furloughs to be necessary under sequestration — as the budget cuts are called — and all dedicate a relatively high percentage of their budgets toward pay and benefits.

Lester said agencies that rely heavily on grants and contracting are less likely to depend on unpaid leave to meet their reduction targets. “They have the ability to push the cuts into their contracts — they can delay them,” he said.

Most agencies don’t fall neatly into the contract- and personnel-heavy categories, leaving virtually every government entity that says it might resort to furloughs susceptible to criticism.

Conservatives have challenged agencies to identify and trim more waste, while union leaders have repeatedly urged them to reduce spending on private contractors — even pressing Congress to pass legislation to that effect.

John J. O’Grady, president of a Chicago-region chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees, said agency leaders “really haven’t done their homework. They were under the illusion that [the sequester] wasn’t really going to happen.”

O’Grady said that most agencies haven’t yet maximized reductions in contractor spending, and he noted that some have provided five-figure bonuses to managers during the past fiscal year despite the looming cuts.

The White House budget office contends that rigid sequester rules have left little room for agencies to avoid furloughs.

“Sequestration was never designed to be flexible,” said a White House official not authorized to talk about the matter on the record. “It was designed to force a compromise.”

As for the GAO, which has just 2,900 workers, Comptroller Gene L. Dodaro sent a memo to employees last week saying the agency could probably meet its sequester target by halting new hires, trimming travel expenditures and reducing IT investments.

“We project that we would no longer require furloughs at GAO to absorb the potential reduction associated with sequestration,” Dodaro said.

Similarly, the SBA has said that it reduced staffing levels enough through early retirements to avoid furloughs and that the agency expects to meet demand for its small business loans moving forward, according to the Associated Press.

“We are not slowing down giving loans to anyone,” SBA Administrator Karen Mills told reporters last week, noting that the agency anticipates a sharp decline in demand for the 504 loans that spiked last year because of a now-expired provision that allowed the funds to be used for refinancing mortgages.

Smithsonian Institution spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said on Wednesday that the museum operator anticipated the sequester would happen and budgeted “very, very conservatively” since the start of the fiscal year.

Like other agencies, the Smithsonian Institution has delayed maintenance and repairs, adjusted contracts, and reduced staff travel and training to help achieve its target savings, St. Thomas said.

Two-thirds of the organization’s roughly 6,000 workers are federal employees; the rest work for the independent Smithsonian trust fund. But St. Thomas said the institution does not expect to use furloughs for any of its personnel if the sequester takes effect.

USAID said in an agency notice to employees last week that it does not intend to furlough workers this year and instead anticipates meeting its reduction targets by halting new hires, modifying contracts and cutting planned IT investments.

Congressional leaders are set to meet with President Obama at the White House on Friday to discuss replacing the sequester.

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White House backs gay marriage in Supreme Court brief

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama's administration threw its weight behind gay marriage on Thursday, urging the Supreme Court to strike down California's ban on same-sex unions.

The court is set to examine the issue on March 26, when it will study the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, a measure approved by a 2008 referendum that outlawed gay marriage in the most populous US state.

In a separate brief to the court concerning another case, the administration has asked justices to declare the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman -- unconstitutional.

The Justice Department filed the latest brief in support of moves to have the California measure overturned, arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees citizens equal rights.

"The government seeks to vindicate the defining constitutional ideal of equal treatment under the law," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

"Throughout history, we have seen the unjust consequences of decisions and policies rooted in discrimination," he warned.

"The issues before the Supreme Court in this case... are not just important to the tens of thousands of Americans who are being denied equal benefits and rights under our laws, but to our nation as a whole."

The filing by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli is more narrowly focused on the California ban, and does not seek a ruling that would apply nationwide.

The administration's brief noted that seven other states -- Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island -- have measures that grant same-sex couples rights similar to those of married couples, while restricting marriage to heterosexual unions.

Those states would be affected by the California ruling.

The California law "provides to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners all the legal incidents of marriage, but it nonetheless denies them the designation of marriage, Verrilli wrote.

Therefore, "the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage does not substantially further any important governmental interest," he added.

Gay marriage opponents have seized upon the same similarities to claim there is no discrimination, saying California provides essentially the same rights and obligations of marriage to same-sex domestic partners.

Nine states and the US capital Washington currently allow gay marriage. The states include Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington.

The federal government is not a party in the case, but its friend-of-the-court brief marked a victory for gay rights groups challenging the California law.

The White House's support had been expected since Obama shifted his stance on the same-sex marriage question before his re-election last year.

"President Obama and the solicitor general have taken another historic step forward consistent with the great civil rights battles of our nation's history," said Chad Griffin, head of Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

"The president has turned the inspirational words of his second inaugural address into concrete action by urging our nation's highest court to put an end to discrimination against loving, committed gay and lesbian couples."

Obama last month made the first-ever direct reference to gay rights in an inaugural address, saying: "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.

"For if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."

- AFP/ck

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Sariska villagers block tourists’ entry

ALWAR: About 2,500 villagers on Thursday blocked the main entrance of the Sariska Tiger Reserve, protesting their relocation from areas near the sanctuary.

Sariska field director RS Shekhawat said the villagers had locked the entrance and didn't allow tourists to enter the park. "We are trying to sort out the problem on a priority basis," Shekhawat said.

The villagers, who are on an indefinite sit-in, said they would not clear the blockade unless their demands were met. This is the third such protest in the past eight months against the relocation plan.

Tension began in Sariska when about 2,500 people from 50 villages gathered for a mahapanchayat against the alleged "cheating" by the district administration. "We had called off the agitation in May last year when the district administration agreed on some of our demands including lifting ban on the registry of land, construction of a concrete road and earmarking a grazing area. But now they have backtracked on the promise citing the Supreme Court orders," said Jaikishan Gujjar, a villager.

Since 2008, the farmers in the periphery of the reserve have been protesting the state government and wildlife authorities' decision to relocate them. On February 20, villagers thrashed a few senior sanctuary officials when 70 cattle were seized while grazing in the sanctuary area.

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Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack

A scar on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound, scientists say.

The finding, detailed in the current issue of the journal Cretaceous Research, also reveals that the healing properties of dinosaur skin were likely very similar to that of modern reptiles.

The lucky dinosaur was an adult Edmontosaurus annectens, a species of duckbill dinosaur that lived in what is today the Hell Creek region of South Dakota about 65 to 67 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5 by 5 inches (12 by 14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature's bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye, includes an oval-shaped section that is incongruous with the surrounding skin. (Related: "'Dinosaur Mummy' Found; Have Intact Skin, Tissue.")

Bruce Rothschild, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas and Northeast Ohio Medical University, said the first time he laid eyes on it, it was "quite clear" to him that he was looking at an old wound.

"That was unequivocal," said Rothschild, who is a co-author of the new study.

A Terrible Attacker

The skull of the scarred Edmontosaurus also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the bone, Rothschild and fellow co-author Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida, speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex.

It's likely, though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, the scientists say. The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth," Rothschild said.

Rothschild and DePalma also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.

It isn't surprising that the wounds would be similar, said paleontologist David Burnham of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, since dinosaurs and lizards are distant cousins.

"That's kind of what we would expect," said Burnham, who was not involved in the study. "It's what makes evolution work—that we can depend on this."

Dog-Eat-Dog

Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada who also was not involved in the research, called the Edmontosaurus fossil "a really nicely preserved animal with a very obvious scar."

He's not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack. The size of the scar is relatively small, Bell said, and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.

"But certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones," he added.

Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound. But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead.

It's very likely that this particular Edmontosaurus wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents, Bell added.

"I would imagine just about every dinosaur walking around had similar scars," he said. (Read about "Extreme Dinosaurs" in National Geographic magazine.)

"Tigers and lions have scarred noses, and great white sharks have got dings on their noses and nips taken out of their fins. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and [Edmontosaurus was] unfortunately in the line of fire from some pretty big and nasty predators ... This one was just lucky to get away."

Mysterious Escape

Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear. "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen," Burnham said.

Duckbill dinosaurs, also known as Hadrosaurs, were not without defenses. Edmontosaurus, for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.

Furthermore, they were fast. "Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight," Bell said.

Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors. Or perhaps the T. rex that attacked it was young. "There's something surrounding this case that we don't know yet," Burnham said.

Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting, he added. "We construct past lives. We can go back into a day in the life of this animal and talk about an attack and [about] it getting away. That's pretty cool."

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Arias Recounts Each Moment of Stabbing, Slashing

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.

During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.

"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.

"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.

"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"

Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."

Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.

Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.

Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.

"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.

"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.

Jodi Arias Under Attack in Third Day of Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video

"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."

Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.

Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.

According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.

It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.

At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.

After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"

"I don't remember," Arias moaned.

"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"

"I don't remember, I don't know."

Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"

"Yes."

"So then take a look at it," he barked.

Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."

Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.

Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.

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A fluent secretary of state

This just in from our colleague Anne Gearan, who’s playing the role of foreign correspondent as she covers Secretary of State John Kerry’s first official overseas jaunt:

During his failed 2004 presidential run, Kerry may have been ridiculed as a French-speaking, windsurfing East Coast aristocrat, but he was in his element in Paris on Wednesday. He spoke in effortless French, with a good accent to boot, to open a news conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Gearan reports.

“We just finished one of those wonderful French lunches that have been drawing Americans to Paris for centuries,” Kerry said en français. He praised France as America’s oldest ally, among other niceties. Then, with a wry smile, he said it was time to switch to English, “because otherwise I would not be allowed to return back home.”

A day earlier, Kerry tried out his German in Berlin. Pretty good was the verdict of an unscientific sampling of German reporters. On Thursday, Kerry gets a chance to show off his Italian in Rome.

Of course, when he arrives in the Eternal City, he can always rely on his old Yale roommate, U.S. Ambassador David Thorne, if he needs any translation help.

Weather, or not

Way back in 2001, a bipartisan group of House members formed the Climate Change Caucus, with a goal that at the time didn’t sound so radical: tackling the threat of global warming.

Flash forward nearly 12 years and the politics are very different. In a sign of just how things have changed, this month, another group formed. Its name is the rather euphemistic “Safe Climate Caucus,” and its membership doesn’t include a single Republican.

Members of the new group, spearheaded by Rep. Henry Waxman

(D-Calif.), have promised to take the bold step of . . . talking about climate change every day on the House floor.

The name seems a bit of clever branding. After all, it’s practically mainstream to deny “climate change,” but who doesn’t want a “safe climate”? We hear Waxman picked the moniker to focus on the “heart of the issue.”

The now-defunct Climate Change Caucus was led by former Reps. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) and John Olver (D-Mass.), and the enterprise petered out after Gilchrest was defeated in 2008.

Gilchrest, now director of Maryland’s Sassafras Environmental Education Center, wasn’t surprised to hear that the Climate Change Caucus had disbanded, or that no Republicans had joined the new group. But he’s unimpressed with any rebranding efforts. “It’s a little silly to call it anything but what it is,” he said.

Guess it will take more than that for the GOP to warm to the effort.

Nice while it lasted

House Speaker John Boehner, citing the impending sequester cuts to the federal budget, Wednesday canceled all House codel (congressional delegation) travel on military jets, our colleague Paul Kane
reported, citing GOP sources in the room.

Members may still be able to fly commercially, however.

Of course, as we noted the other day, that spectacular perk — full-service, business-class-only travel — was apt to be a sequester casualty anyway, for both the House and the Senate.

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Japan says three Chinese ships in disputed waters

TOKYO: Japan's coastguard said three Chinese surveillance ships were in the territorial waters of disputed islands in the East China Sea on Thursday.

The three marine surveillance ships entered the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone off Uotsuri, one of the islands, shortly after 7:00 am (2200 GMT Wednesday), the Japan Coast Guard said in a statement.

Beijing claims the Japanese-controlled islands, called the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyus in China.

The move was the latest in a series by Chinese government ships since Tokyo nationalised three islands in the chain in September, in what it said was merely an administrative change of ownership. The action sparked fierce protests in China.

- AFP/ck

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Breast cancer on the rise in younger women

NEW DELHI: A study has found that the incidence of advanced breast cancer among American women between 25-39 has steadily increased since the mid-1970s. The findings, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, are devastating because breast cancer patients under 40 years are more likely to have an aggressive form of the disease and face lower survival rates. However, doctors here say developing countries like India have more to worry in comparison.

Additional professor in the department of surgical oncology, AIIMS, Dr S V S Deo says, "Breast cancer cases in India have increased by 10-15% in the last decade. These numbers are likely to rise further - 60-70% of the cases would be in developing countries like India in the future." The number of younger patients in the US has increased at just 2% a year in the last three decades, comprising 1.8% of the total breast cancer cases. In comparison, different studies peg the number of young patients in India between 10-16%.

In recent years, breast cancer has emerged as the most common form of cancer among urban Indian women. Dr Geeta K, senior consultant in surgical oncology at Max Cancer Centre, Delhi, adds, "Of the 25-30 new breast cancer cases that we get in a month, five-six are in the under-35 age group. Some are in their 20s."

Just 10% of these cases are said to be of genetic causes - lifestyle is said to be the major culprit in the rest. Dr Anil Dhar, director, medical oncology, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon, says, "There is no data but personally I feel that exposure to chemicals (in food and the environment) is an important factor in causing breast cancer."

However, doctors say there's no need to panic as survival rates are improving with timely treatment. "Breast cancer is 90% curable in stage 1, and 80% in stage 2. What's required is greater awareness and early treatment. The problem is a majority of the patients here come to us in stage 2 or 3. Even educated women tend to delay treatment for one-two years after detecting a lump," says Dr Deo.

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Why African Rhinos Are Facing a Crisis

The body count for African rhinos killed for their horns is approaching crisis proportions, according to the latest figures released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

To National Geographic reporter Peter Gwin, the dire numbers—a rhinoceros slain every 11 minutes since the beginning of 2013—don't come as a surprise. "The killing will continue as long as criminal gangs know they can expect high profits for selling horns to Asian buyers," said Gwin, who wrote about the violent and illegal trade in rhino horn in the March 2012 issue of the magazine.

The recent surge in poaching has been fueled by a thriving market in Vietnam and China for rhino horn, used as a traditional medicine believed to cure everything from hangovers to cancer. Since 2011, at least 1,700 rhinos, or 7 percent of the total population, have been killed and their horns hacked off, according to the IUCN. More than two-thirds of the casualties occurred in South Africa, home to 73 percent of the world's wild rhinos. In Africa there are currently 5,055 black rhinos, listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, and 20,405 white rhinos. (From our blog: "South African Rhino Poaching Hits New High.")

Trying to snuff out poaching by itself won't work, said Gwin. The South African government is fighting a losing battle on the ground to gangs using helicopters, dart guns, high-powered weapons—and lots of money. (National Geographic pictures: The bloody poaching battle over rhino horn [contains graphic images].)

"Every year they get tougher on poaching, but rhino killings continue to rise astronomically," said Gwin. "Somehow they have to address the demand side in a meaningful way. This means either shutting down the Asian markets for rhino horn, or controversially, finding a way to sustainably harvest rhino horns, control their legal sale, and meet what appears to be a huge demand. Either will be a formidable endeavor."

Hope and Hurdles

The signing in December of a memorandum of understanding between South Africa and Vietnam to deal with rhino poaching and other conservation issues raises hope for some concrete action. Observers say the next step is for the two governments to follow through with tangible crime-stopping efforts such as intelligence sharing and other collaboration. The highest hurdle to stopping criminal trade, though, is cultural, Gwin believes. "In Vietnam and China, a lot of people simply believe that as a traditional cure, rhino horn works." (Related: "Blood Ivory.")

The recent climb in rhino deaths threatens what had been a conservation success story. Since 1995, due to better law enforcement, monitoring, and other actions, the overall rhino numbers have steadily risen. The poaching epidemic, the IUCN warns, could dramatically slow and possibly reverse population gains.

The population growth is also being stymied by South Africa's private game farmers, who breed rhinos for sport hunting and tourism and for many years have helped rebuild rhino numbers. Many of them are getting out of the business due to the high costs of security and other risks associated with the poaching invasions.

Those who still have rhinos on their farms will often pay a veterinarian to cut the horns off—under government supervision—to dissuade poachers, but the process costs more than $2,000 and has to be repeated when the horns grow back every two years. Even then the farmers are stuck with horns that are illegal to sell—and which criminals seek to obtain.

Room for Debate

Rhino killings and the trade in their horns will be a major topic at a high-profile conference, the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which opens in Bangkok March 3. What won't surprise Gwin is if the issue of sustainably harvesting rhino horns from live animals comes up for discussion.

"It's an idea that seems to be gaining traction among some South African politicians and law enforcement circles," he said, noting that the international conservation community strongly opposes any talk of legalizing the trade of rhino horn, sustainably harvested or not. The bottom line for all parties in the discussion is clear, said Gwin: "The slaughter has to stop if rhinos are to survive."

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Arias Prosecutor Too Combative, Experts Say

He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.

And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.

"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."

"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.

"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.

Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.

Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.

Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.

Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video

Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video

Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.

"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.

"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.

Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"

"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"

During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.

"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."

Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.

Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.

"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."

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