As states in the mid-Atlantic region lined up for the jobs and tax revenue that would come with drilling deep into the shale to release gas, Maryland held back.
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and other state officials said no thanks, wary that poisonous chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing could contaminate ground water in rural areas where it matters most.
HONG KONG: The world's top racehorse Cirrus des Aigles has withdrawn injured from Sunday's Hong Kong International Races in a major blow to the competition, one of the richest meetings on the global calendar.
The French gelding was set to headline a stellar line-up for the 2,000-metre Hong Kong Cup and was seeking to make it fourth time lucky at the meet, where he has failed to scoop a prize in his last three appearances.
But it seems that he was unable to shake off his Hong Kong curse after sustaining what Jockey Club vets described as a "soft tissue injury" in his left front tendon, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
He has now been scratched from Sunday's race card so that his injury can be treated.
"It is a relatively mild injury but it would be very unwise to run him in a race," said Dr Chris Riggs, the head of veterinary clinical services at the club, according to the newspaper.
However, executive director of racing Bill Nader remained optimistic that Sunday would still be a great race day.
"Obviously, it's disappointing to lose the world's top-rated horse," he said in the SCMP.
"I think the depth of talent remaining right across our four international races gives us some top-quality compensation," he added.
Cirrus des Aigles became the top-ranked racehorse in training after British champ Frankel retired in October to go to stud.
His withdrawal leaves last year's surprise victor Hong Kong-based California Memory the front-runner for the title, having raced to a late win at the Jockey Club Cup in November on the same Sha Tin course as Sunday's meet.
Other favourites include two more French raiders -- Giofra, who won the Falmouth Stakes against the odds in July, and Saonois who had a surprise win at the Prix du Jockey Club French Derby in June.
This year for the first time one of Queen Elizabeth II's horses will also join the field -- Carlton House came in second to So You Think at the Prince of Wales Stakes at Ascot in June and competes for the Cup in the British monarch's Jubilee year.
The Hong Kong Cup has a prize purse of US$2.8 million and is the world's richest turf race over 2,000m.
It is one of four Group One contests that will take place at Sunday's Longines Hong Kong International Races and offers the largest pot of money. Total prize money at the meeting is US$9.2 million.
The 2,400-metre Hong Kong Vase will see last year's winner Dunaden defending his title after failing to do so at the Melbourne Cup in November.
Britain's Sea Moon looks set to be the French horse's biggest challenger in the US$1.9 million race, having beaten him into second at the Hardwicke Stakes at Ascot.
Also featuring at the meet are the 1,200-metre Hong Kong Sprint and the 1,600-metre Hong Kong Mile, both usually dominated by the home team but with strong international challengers this year.
As well as providing top-flight racing, organisers hope to up the glamour stakes with Oscar-winning British actress Kate Winslet making an appearance in her role as ambassador for Longines, the Swiss watch brand, which is sponsoring the race for the first time.
- AFP/ir
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Joshua Price-Brent was arrested on an intoxication manslaughter charge today after a single vehicle roll-over killed his passenger, Jerry Brown Jr., who had been a linebacker on the team's practice squad and his former teammate at the University of Illinois.
Price-Brent, 24, was allegedly speeding "well above" the posted 45 mph speed limit at about 2:21 a.m. when he hit a curb, causing his vehicle to flip at least one time before landing in the middle of a service road, Irving Police Department spokesman John Argumaniz said.
Authorities were alerted to the accident by several 911 callers, Argumaniz said. When police arrived, they found Price-Brent pulling Brown from his 2007 Mercedes, which had caught fire.
Brown, 25, was unresponsive and was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Argumaniz said.
It was not known where the men were coming from or where they were going, but Argumaniz said officers suspected alcohol may have been a factor in the crash and asked Price-Brent to perform field sobriety tests.
"Based on the results of the tests, along with the officer's observations and conversations with Price-Brent, he was arrested for driving while intoxicated," Argumaniz said.
This is the second week in a row an NFL player has been accused of being involved in another person's death. Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs killed his girlfriend early Dec. 1, then committed suicide while talking to team officials in the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium.
Jovan Belcher: Police Release Dash-Cam Videos of NFL Star's Final Hours
Price-Brent was taken to a hospital for a mandatory blood draw where he was treated for minor scrapes, Argumaniz said. He was then booked on an intoxication manslaughter charge after it was learned Brown had died of injuries suffered in the crash.
It is expected that results from the blood draw could take several weeks, the police spokesman said.
Price-Brent is scheduled to be arraigned Sunday at 10 a.m., when bond will be set, police said.
The second-degree felony intoxication manslaughter charge carries a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. It was not yet known whether Price-Brent had retained an attorney.
The 6-foot-2, 320-pound nose tackle left the University of Illinois as a junior for a career in the NFL. He was picked up by the Cowboys during the 2010 NFL supplemental draft and has played three seasons with the team.
The Cowboys are set to take on the Cincinnati Bengals in Ohio on Sunday.
President Obama’s inaugural committee will accept corporate donations this time around, reversing a policy from four years ago banning such contributions, a spokeswoman said Friday.
The 2013 Presidential Inaugural Committee will accept unlimited money from corporate and individual sources but will not accept contributions from political action committees or lobbyists, according to spokeswoman Addie Whisenant. The committee also will not allow sponsorship agreements, she said.
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court has decided to take up the sensitive issue of gay marriage, hearing challenges to a federal law denying benefits to same-sex couples and California's ban on such unions.
The highest US court will likely hear arguments in the cases in March 2013, with rulings to come in June. Same-sex marriage is currently legal in nine states and the federal capital Washington but barred in 30 other states.
Campaigners on both sides of the debate over marriage equality hailed the court's decision to take up the issue -- although they obviously backed differing views as to what constitutes marriage and family.
As analysts predicted, the court took up one challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman and denies federal benefits to married same-sex couples.
Benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples but denied to gays include inheritance rights, tax breaks, filing of joint income tax returns, and health insurance coverage.
President Barack Obama's government does not support this view of marriage and would like the law to be overturned, but conservative campaigners are urging the Supreme Court to rule that the act is constitutional.
The specific case to be heard involves Edith Windsor, a lesbian legally married in Canada who has been told to pay tax on inheriting the estate of her deceased partner.
"While Thea is no longer alive, I know how proud she would have been to see this day. The truth is, I never expected any less from my country," Windsor said in a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The Supreme Court will rule whether DOMA violates the guarantee of equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the fifth amendment of the US constitution.
It will also decide if the Obama administration's position that DOMA is unconstitutional deprives the Supreme Court of jurisdiction, and whether a complaint by some US lawmakers has legal standing.
Justice Elena Kagan, as Obama's former solicitor general has recused herself on some of the cases in which she had played a role, but this is one on which she can participate.
Kagan's participation avoids the potential for a 4-4 split on the nine-member bench.
The other case taken up was brought by supporters of "Prop 8," a referendum that passed in California in 2008 that defined marriage as being between a "man and a woman" -- but which was overturned by a court of appeal.
If the Supreme Court throws out their appeal, California -- the country's most populous state -- will in effect become the 10th state to permit gay marriage.
In Hollingsworth v Perry, the court will decide whether the 14th amendment of the US constitution, which requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all people, prohibits California from banning gay marriage.
The Supreme Court will also decide whether the petitioners have legal standing in the case.
"Today is a milestone day for equal justice under the law and for millions of loving couples who want to make a lifelong commitment through marriage," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization.
"As the court has ruled 14 times in the past, marriage is a fundamental right and I believe they will side with liberty, freedom and equality, moving us toward a more perfect union as they have done in the past."
The conservative Family Research Council was also pleased, with president Tony Perkins saying in a statement: "Virtually nothing is more important to the future of our country than marriage and the family."
"The argument that the authors of our Constitution created or even implied a 'right' to redefine 'marriage' lies outside our constitutional law," Perkins added.
Justices did not say what they planned to do with eight other gay marriage petitions they debated behind closed doors on Friday.
It is likely that these, along with a last-minute case on the gay marriage ban in Nevada, will not be heard. But the Supreme Court could also rule that whatever decision it reaches in June should prevail over all the pending cases -- not just the ones heard.
As a country, the United States appears to be slowly moving towards tolerating same-sex unions.
An opinion poll by USA Today/Gallup released this week ahead of the court's decision showed that 53 percent of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal, up from 40 percent just three years ago.
Within the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) community, the poll showed that 91 percent felt residents in their communities had become more accepting of homosexuals in recent years.
Among those whose position has evolved over this period is Obama himself, who always backed strong protections for gay and lesbian couples, but only came out openly in favor of homosexual marriage earlier this year.
"I've just concluded, for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Obama said in a May interview with ABC News.
The president said however that a decision on whether to legalize gay marriage should be left to individual states.
- AFP/ck
"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.
But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.
Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."
But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."
When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.
Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")
Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.
"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)
The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.
Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.
Root Growth
Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.
"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.
Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.
"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.
The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.
"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")
The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.
Elizabeth Johnson -- who at one point admitted to killing her son, the missing infant Gabriel Johnson, before saying she gave him away -- told a judge she "deserved the maximum" sentence, before receiving a prison term of 5.25 years, half of the max.
In October, Johnson, 26, was found guilty of custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment stemming from the disappearance of her 8-month-old son, last seen on Dec. 24, 2009. The baby's whereabouts remain unknown.
"I am brokenhearted over my son still being missing," said Johnson, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit. "I'm at a loss because I do deserve the max. What I have done is unconscionable. I would convict myself.
"I do deserve the maximum, I do," she said through tears. "[But it] wasn't how [the prosecution] made it out to be. It wasn't like that. That's all I have to say."
Judge Paul McMurdie said he wished he could design a sentence that would compel Johnson to disclose Gabriel's whereabouts, but could only "sentence her for the offenses [for which] she's been convicted."
Johnson, 26, will serve 5.25 years in an Arizona state prison, followed by four years of probation.
At today's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Angela Andrews called Johnson' actions "despicable," but said the state would drop its request to see Johnson serve out a maximum sentence if she would tell authorities where her son could be found.
Johnson, who has been in jail for the past three years, faced a maximum of 9.5 years in prison on the two convictions. In October, the jury did not reach a verdict on a third charge of kidnapping.
Before Gabriel's disappearance, Johnson had been embroiled in a custody battle with the baby's biological father, Logan McQueary. The couple differed on putting their infant son up for adoption. Johnson had wanted to, McQueary did not.
"I think Elizabeth should be held accountable for her actions, for making my son disappear," Johnson told the court. "She should stay in jail until Gabriel is found or be given the maximum sentence as possible."
While she was fighting with McQueary over custody of their son, Johnson left Tempe, Ariz., with Gabriel and traveled to San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2009. Johnson failed to bring Gabriel back to visit with McQueary two days later, violating a court custody order.
Gabriel was last seen with his mother on Dec. 26, 2009. The following day, Johnson sent text messages to McQueary saying she had killed him. Johnson was recorded telling McQueary that she suffocated their son with a towel until he turned blue. She said she then put his body in a diaper bag and put the bag in the trash.
Later, Johnson told authorities she gave Gabriel to a couple she met in a park in San Antonio, though she has never named who she gave the child to.
ABC News' Alexis Shaw contributed to this report.
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