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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
"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.
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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