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Solar storm: Delta Air Lines and United Airlines diverted flights over the poles to prevent loss of communications. This is the biggest solar storm in six years, says NASA.
Delta Air Lines was diverting some flights on polar routes between Detroit and Asia to avoid disruptions to aircraft communications by a strong solar radiation storm, the airline said on Tuesday.
Skip to next paragraphThe storm, considered the strongest since 2005, has caused minor disruptions for U.S. airlines, and Delta said it altered routes for "a handful" of flights, and that the changes were adding about 15 minutes to travel times.
"We are undergoing a series of solar bursts in the sky that are impacting the northern side of the world," Delta spokesman Anthony Black said.
IN PICTURES: Northern lights from solar flares
"It can impact your ability to communicate," he said. "So, basically, the polar routes are being flown further south than normal."
United Airlines spokesman Mike Trevino said the carrier diverted one flight on Monday because of the storm, but none on Tuesday.
American Airlines reported no operational impact due to solar flares but that it is monitoring the atmosphere, spokesman Ed Martelle said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a press release on Monday that it had issued a watch on Sunday for "a geomagnetic storm associated with a bright flare on the sun."
NOAA said it was the strongest solar radiation storm in more than six years? - and it was forecast to hit Earth's magnetic field on Tuesday, and it could affect airline routes, power grids and satellites, the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center said. A coronal mass ejection - a big chunk of the Sun's atmosphere - was hurled toward Earth on Sunday, driving energized solar particles at about 5 million miles an hour (2,000 km per second), about five times faster than solar part
( Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Eric Walsh)
IN PICTURES: Northern lights from solar flares
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AVENTURA, Florida (Reuters) ? Newt Gingrich describes the Palestinians as an invented people and seeks covert action against Iran, while Mitt Romney accuses President Barack Obama of throwing Israel under a bus.
But the Republican presidential candidates' tough talk on the Middle East in Florida before Tuesday's primary is doing little to sway the state's large Jewish population from its longstanding support for the Democrats.
If anything, it's Republican arguments on the U.S. economy - not Israel - that might win more favor with Jewish voters here come the general election in November.
"There has been, particularly among younger voters, a small shift toward the Republican Party in general," said Terri Susan Fine, a political scientist at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
She said there was some concern about Israel, but the larger reason was because some Jews see the Republican Party as more friendly to business.
"Economic conservativism is what is shifting their focus toward the Republican Party," she said. "Younger Jewish voters are very secure in Israel's stability."
Rabbi David Kaye of Congregation Ohev Shalom, a conservative temple north of Orlando, said members of his congregation were more concerned with economic issues in a state hard-hit by the housing crisis and one of the nation's highest unemployment rates.
"We still see that there's a lot of folks hurting," he said.
Jewish voters are also generally more liberal on social issues than the Republican candidates.
President Barack Obama received almost eight out of every 10 votes cast by Jewish voters in 2008. That overwhelming support among Florida's 640,000-member Jewish community, half of whom are over 65, was a key component in his narrow 3 percentage point victory in the swing state.
Jewish voters historically have been concerned with social justice and older voters especially have deep ties to the Democratic Party and labor movement going back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency during the 1930s and earlier.
"It's part of our being - we are our brother's keeper," said Sydelle Sher, 79, of Delray Beach, a retired schoolteacher.
IRAN TENSIONS
But Sher, who attended a Gingrich rally last week, described herself as a fiscal conservative worried about the direction the country is going in under Obama.
"I fear the European-style socialism trend," she said, although she added that Israel policy is very important in her decision.
With tensions in the Middle East rising over Iran's nuclear ambitions, some Jewish Republicans wonder if the United States will stick by Israel.
Gloria Winton, 75, had harsh words for Obama on Israel as she headed into Mo's Bagels and Deli, near her home in Aventura, Florida. "I never thought before that Israel couldn't trust the United States. Now, I don't think that they can trust us," she said.
But she said she was leaning toward Romney, not Gingrich, because of Romney's more moderate tone. "I think (Gingrich is) very smart but I don't know if the independent voter would accept him," she said.
As they fight for their party's nomination, Romney and Gingrich have often seemed to compete over who can take the strongest pro-Israel line.
Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, drew 700 people to a rally on Friday sponsored by a Jewish Republican group, and both he and Romney count pro-Israel businessmen among their financial supporters.
Gingrich dismisses the Palestinians as an "invented people," and promises he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv as soon as he takes office.
Despite years of U.S.-led negotiations toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Romney insists the Palestinians are not interested in living in their own nation alongside Israel, saying they want to destroy the Jewish state.
The former Massachusetts governor says Obama "threw Israel under the bus" for suggesting negotiations start with borders as they were before the 1967 Middle East war.
Democrats insist that Obama is not hostile to Israel, and call the Republicans' campaign a misleading and desperate attempt to make headway with an overwhelmingly Democratic voter bloc.
"Our ironclad commitment - and I meant ironclad - to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history," Obama said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Jewish voters typically account for 6-8 percent of turnout in Florida elections, and a lower percentage in Republican-only contests like Tuesday's primary, but they can make a difference if the vote is close.
Ira Sheskin, who runs the University of Miami's Jewish Demography Project, said statements like Gingrich's denial of the Palestinians' national identity could alienate the many Jewish voters whose main goal is Middle East peace.
"It was really not good for Gingrich to say that," Sheskin said. "Because if he becomes president, you want him to act as an honest broker in the Middle East. You don't do that if you've told one of the sides that they are an invented people."
"You won't advance the cause of peace."
(Additional reporting by Ros Krasny in Delray Beach; Editing by Alistair Bell and Doina Chiacu)
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(Reuters) ? Japan's stricken nuclear power plant has leaked more than 600 liters of water, forcing it to briefly suspend cooling operations at a spent-fuel pond at the weekend, but none is thought to have escaped into the ocean, the plant's operator and domestic media said.
The Fukushima plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.
The operator of the complex, the Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), reported two main leakages on its Web site on Sunday, one from a pump near the plant's office building and another from a back-up cooling system at reactor No.4.
"The cooling water is from a filtrate tank for fire extinction and doesn't contain radioactive materials," Tepco said of the incident at reactor No. 4. It added that some water from the other leakage had flowed into a drain and "we are examining whether this water has flowed into the ocean or not."
The Nikkei newspaper Monday quoted Tepco as saying around 40 liters had leaked from the pool-cooling system of the No. 4 reactor Sunday morning, with probably 600 liters of purified water leaking from another point. Water had also leaked at other facilities within the complex, the Nikkei added.
However, the Nikkei newspaper quoted Tepco Monday as saying that it believed no water had escaped into the sea.
"The leakage is believed to have been caused by freezing due to cold weather, and the leaked water included radioactively contaminated water that has been purified," the Nikkei said in its online edition, quoting Tepco.
"The contamination level is low."
(Reporting by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Kavita Chandran)
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FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Democratic candidate Suzanne Bonamici speaks during a debate with her Republican opponent Rob Cornilles in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Democratic candidate Suzanne Bonamici speaks during a debate with her Republican opponent Rob Cornilles in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2012, file photo, Oregon 1st Congressional District Republican candidate Rob Cornilles, right, speaks during a debate with his Democratic rival Suzanne Bonamici in Portland, Ore. Voters have until Tuesday to cast a ballot in the all-mail election to replace former Rep. David Wu.(AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? Determined not to lose another friendly district because of a sex scandal, Democrats and their allies have pumped more than $1 million into an Oregon special election race that has turned into a vicious exchange of attacks over the airwaves.
Voters are deciding who should replace former Rep. David Wu, a seven-term Democrat who resigned last year following a string of bizarre news stories that began with photos of the congressman wearing a tiger costume and ended with a young woman's accusation that he made an unwanted sexual advance.
Voters have until 8 p.m. Tuesday to return their ballots in the all-mail election.
Republican Rob Cornilles, a sports business consultant, has tried hard to extend the scandal that brought down Wu to the Democrat who wants to take his place, former state Sen. Suzanne Bonamici. She says the race is about the future, not about Wu.
Bonamici and independent groups that support her have gone after Cornilles for missing tax payments for his business and for inconsistent statements about the number of jobs his company has created.
Oregon's 1st Congressional District is the state's economic engine, encompassing downtown Portland and the fast-growing western suburbs that are home to the Silicon Forest high-tech hub and the global headquarters for athletic-wear giants Nike Inc. and Columbia Sportswear Company. It stretches across agricultural communities to the Pacific coast. Democrats have represented the district since 1975, and its voters overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama.
But Democrats do not want to see a repeat of what happened last year in a heavily Democratic New York district, when a Republican won a special election after Rep. Anthony Weiner acknowledged sending provocative text messages and resigned.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent $1.3 million to boost Bonamici. Political committees for a union, abortion-rights groups and a super PAC allied with Democrats have also chipped in with their own mail or television ads.
Democrats insist they're not scared. They've likened their investment to an insurance policy to avoid any doubts about the party's strength that would inevitably follow a loss in a liberal state like Oregon. The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent just $85,000 on the race.
Cornilles, 47, is making his second bid for the seat after losing to Wu in 2010. He's centered his pitch on his experience running a sports-marketing firm, hoping to swing an upset with a relentless focus on jobs and a run toward the center. Unemployment in the Portland area dropped to 7.8 percent in November 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bonamici, 57, is mixing traditional Democratic themes of protecting Social Security and Medicare with a pledge to tackle the national debt by getting Washington's priorities in order.
Without reliable public polling it's anyone's guess how close the race will be.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The federal government's plan to expand computer security protections into critical parts of private industry is raising concerns that the move will threaten Americans' civil liberties.
In a report for release Friday, The Constitution Project warns that as the Obama administration partners more with the energy, financial, communications and health care industries to monitor and protect networks, sensitive personal information of people who work for or communicate with those companies could be improperly or inadvertently disclosed.
While the government may have good intentions, it "runs the risk of establishing a program akin to wiretapping all network users' communications," the nonpartisan legal think tank says. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report in advance.
Cybersecurity has become a rapidly expanding priority for the government as federal agencies, private companies and everyday people come under persistent and increasingly sophisticated computer attacks. The threat is diverse, ranging from computer hackers going after banking and financial accounts to terrorists or other nations breaching government networks to steal sensitive data or sabotage critical systems such as the electrical grid, nuclear plants or Wall Street.
Privacy has been a hotly debated issue, particularly as the Pentagon broadens its pilot program to help defense contractors protect their networks and systems. Several companies, including critical jet fighter and drone programs, have been attacked, although the Pentagon has said that no classified information was lost.
And there are plans for the Homeland Security Department to use the defense program as a model to prevent hackers and hostile nations from breaching critical infrastructure. Officials have suggested that Congress needs to craft legislation that would protect companies from certain privacy and other laws in order to share information with the government for cybersecurity purposes.
DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said the legislative proposals reflect the administration's commitment to privacy protections and contain standards to minimize contact with personal information while dealing with cybersecurity threats. "DHS builds strong privacy protections into the core of all cybersecurity programs and initiatives," Chandler said, adding that the agency realizes that providing assistance to private companies is a sensitive task that requires "trust and strict confidentiality."
The Constitution Project report recommends that officials limit the amount and nature of personal information shared between the public and private sectors. And it calls for strict oversight of the cyber programs by Congress and independent audits, to ensure that privacy rights have not been violated.
"The government should not be permitted to conduct an end-run around Fourth Amendment safeguards by relying upon private companies to monitor networks," it said.
In addition, the report raised concerns about the ongoing development of the Einstein 3 program, a government network monitoring system that would both detect and take action against cyberattacks on federal systems. DHS officials have said that extensive privacy protections are in place.
But the report expressed concerns that as DHS and the secretive National Security Agency share information about potential computer-based threats, the NSA could review communications from U.S. individuals without setting up privacy safeguards.
"With more and more people needing to share sensitive personal and financial data over the Internet, it is absolutely vital that, while we are looking to protect our networks against cyberattack, we also preserve our constitutionally guaranteed rights to privacy," said Constitution Project committee member Asa Hutchinson, a former DHS undersecretary who also served as a GOP congressman from Arkansas.
Lawmakers who have been wrestling with these issues over the past several years have several bills in the works, and most include some privacy provisions.
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>>> we learned today the u.s. economy continuing to grow now, though it's a slower pace than expected. gross domestic product bumped up 2.8% in the final three months of 2011 . that's disappointing some economis economists who have been looking for 3% growth. when companies have large inventories, they produce less in the feature, which could mean slower growth and fewer american jobs .
>>> the city of pontiac , michigan , used to stand for american manufacturing. so much so, it gave its name to a great line of automobiles. well, they don't make pontiacs any more, and tonight we'll show you what has become of pontiac , michigan , where the gm plants there are gone and the city is taking extreme measures to stay afloat, selling everything down to and including the walls. we get our report from nbc's kevin tibbles.
>> reporter: in a struggling city synonymous with the american car , a fire sale .
>> this building is for sale, the parking lot .
>> reporter: today in pontiac , michigan , you can buy the police station , library, golf course , cemetery, even city hall .
>> so far, nothing's sold.
>> nothing's sold so far.
>> this is the great one.
>> reporter: in its heyday, the city and the car that bore its name swaggered with the brawn and muscle of the post war boom in america.
>> built for you by pontiac , of course.
>> reporter: now, the fabled brand is gone and the city barely hanging on is forced to slash and down size. they don't make things here any more. even the silver dome, home of the 198 super bowl was unloaded. since vacant say for the occasional tractor pull.
>> we used to be a boom down.
>> reporter: what are you now?
>> getting close to be a ghost town .
>> reporter: former auto workers gather at the avon donuts as the last of the plant falls to the wreckers. what happened to your city?
>> gone. my city's gone.
>> it's like tearing part of me down, too.
>> reporter: in his garage near ann arbor , former gm vice chairman bob lutz shows part of his prized collection, including a solstace coup, one of the last made.
>> it's a tragic thing to see. i'm hoping that that trend is reverse i reversing.
>> reporter: but will any turnaround come in time for places like pontiac ?
>> i know we have a of good assets here and a lot of good people this. place will come back.
>> reporter: the mayor will entertain any offer. back at avon donuts, the owner works seven days a week. he wants the american dream for 3-year-old daughter annabelle.
>> what everybody hopes for, college, good job. education.
>> reporter: will you find it hooer in pontiac ?
>> probably not.
>> reporter: for the people in this company town , not many options, hoping anything or anyone can turn things around. kevin tibbles, nbc news, pontiac , michigan .
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46169922/
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Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!
This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Wasted Youth?. Anything posted here will also show up there.Topic Tags:
Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.You may edit this first post as you see fit.
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Can I have a female Wasted member?
Since females are already being mentioned, I wouldn't mind playing the male member who falls for the female cop.
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MOSCOW ? Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was officially registered as a presidential candidate Wednesday, the only political newcomer allowed to challenge Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for the Kremlin job.
The three others on the ballot for the March vote are veteran party leaders who pose little challenge to Putin, who is seen as all but certain to win the election and return to the post he held from 2000 to 2008.
Putin, however, is under heavy pressure to show that he can win a fair election. Evidence that vote rigging boosted the results of his party in the Dec. 4 parliamentary election led to mass protests in Moscow. Another demonstration to demand free elections is planned for Feb. 4.
Prokhorov, who owns the New Jersey Nets basketball team, is a 46-year-old businessman with an estimated fortune of $18 billion. His candidacy has been viewed as a Kremlin-supported effort to add a veneer of legitimacy to the election and channel the discontent among Russia's urban middle class, the core of the anti-Putin protest movement.
Prokhorov insists he is acting independently of the Kremlin, but he has refrained from criticizing Putin directly and has said he would consider serving as Putin's prime minister.
On Wednesday, Prokhorov once again denied that his candidacy was a "Kremlin project."
"I've always been my parents' project. And I've always made decisions on my own," Prokhorov said. "To disprove any opinion or any rumors, there is such a thing as life. You should look at who's proposing what and who's made what with their own hands. That's the best proof of what you are."
The Central Election Commission's decision Wednesday to register Prokhorov came a day after it blocked the candidacy of prominent opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky.
Politicians who want to run for president but whose parties are not in parliament must submit 2 million signatures in support of their candidacy. The commission ruled that too many of the signatures submitted in support of Yavlinsky were invalid, while those for Prokhorov met the requirements.
Yavlinsky's liberal party, Yabloko, had fielded thousands of observers in the December election and they were among the most aggressive in documenting evidence of fraud in favor of Putin's United Russia party. Yavlinsky's exclusion from the presidential race denied his party the right to have observers at the March 4 vote.
The green light given to Prokhorov was seen as further evidence that his candidacy has Kremlin approval. His message of evolutionary rather than revolutionary change seems designed to appeal to those who see no alternative to Putin but would like to see democratic reforms.
A poll conducted last month by the independent Levada Center showed voter support for both Yavlinsky and Prokhorov in the low single digits.
Putin's strongest rival is Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, a veteran of three previous presidential elections whose party has reached an accommodation with Putin over the years. The other two candidates are only nominal rivals.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Will you have a heart attack or a stroke in your lifetime? Your odds may be worse than you think.
Men and women may have a false sense of security about their chances of having a heart attack or stroke based on the current practice of calculating a patient's risk 10 years into the future. New Northwestern Medicine research shows a young or middle-aged adult who is at low risk in the short term may be at very high risk in the long term -- if he or she has just one or two risk factors such as higher than optimal cholesterol or blood pressure levels.
This is the first study to examine the lifetime risk of heart disease in white and black men and women. Previous studies have been in whites and predominantly males. It's also the first study to look at the entire adult age spectrum. The research also looked at the risk across multiple birth cohorts and found the effect of the risk factors remained consistent regardless of the decade in which a person was born.
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Part of the Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project, the research tracks more than 250,000 participants from 18 different groups of people living in the community over a period of more than 50 years. The patients' risk factors for cardiovascular disease -- blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status and diabetes status -- were measured at ages 45, 55, 65 and 75 years for each participant.
"We are giving incomplete and misleading risk information if we only focus on the next 10 years of someone's life," said principal investigator Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, chair and associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "With even just one risk factor, the likelihood is very large that someone will develop a major cardiovascular event that will kill them or substantially diminish their quality of life or health."
The risk-factor profile was considered optimal when a participant had a total cholesterol level of less than 180 milligrams per deciliter and untreated blood pressure of less than 120 over less than 80, was a nonsmoker and did not have diabetes.
The new research on long-term risk may be important in estimating the future burden of cardiovascular disease in the general population, Lloyd-Jones noted.
Some key findings of the study:
"Just even one small increase in risk, from all optimal risk factors to one that isn't optimal, like slightly elevated cholesterol or blood pressure, significantly bumps up a person's lifetime risk," Lloyd-Jones said. (Non-optimal means a person doesn't have diabetes and doesn't smoke but either cholesterol is 180 to 199 or blood pressure is 120 to 130 on top or 80 to 89 on the bottom. These numbers aren't at levels that need to be treated with medication, but they are still higher than desired.)
"This study underscores the importance of lifestyle -- particularly diet, exercise and smoking cessation -- all the lifestyle patterns that are important in reducing the development of the risk factors in the first place," said Jarett Berry, MD, who worked on the study when he was at Northwestern's Feinberg School and is now assistant professor of medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
"We need to do a much better job of making sure these risk factors don't develop in the first place, getting kids and young adults off to better starts so they don't gain weight and are following healthier lifestyles throughout their lives," Lloyd-Jones said.
Lloyd-Jones pointed out that maintaining the full package of optimal risk factors through middle age had a dramatic effect on the remainder of a person's life. "It appears that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts," he said.
The research was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120125172310.htm
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WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama has resorted to "extremism" with stifling, anti-growth policies and sought to divide Americans, not unite them, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Tuesday in the formal Republican response to the president's State of the Union address.
Eight months after deciding against a bid for his party's presidential nomination, Daniels used his nationally televised speech to lash out at Obama and cast the GOP as compassionate and eager to unchain the country's economic potential.
He took particular aim at Obama's efforts to raise taxes on the rich and castigate them for not contributing their fair share to the nation's burdens. Joined by Republicans on Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign trails, the GOP goal was to both blunt and shift the focus away from Obama's theme on Tuesday of fairness, which included protecting the middle class and making sure the rich pay an equitable share of taxes.
"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant effort to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," Daniels said, speaking from Indianapolis. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."
"This election is going to be a referendum on the president's economic policies," which have worsened the economy, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "The politics of envy, the politics of dividing our country is not what America is all about."
Also drawing frequent GOP attacks were Obama's proposed tax increases, which included making sure millionaire earners pay at least a 30 percent tax rate.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said Obama's proposals to boost taxes on the wealthy and give tax breaks for domestic U.S. manufacturers and others were "nothing more than the usual Washington game that has led to a tax code already littered with lobbyist loopholes."
Daniels is a rarity in the GOP these days ? a uniting and widely respected figure, contrasting with the divisiveness emanating from the contest for the presidential nomination being waged among former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others.
President George W. Bush's first budget chief and a two-term Indiana governor, Daniels often rails against wasteful spending big budget deficits, though critics note he served during the abrupt shift from fleeting federal surpluses to massive deficits early in Bush's term.
"When President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true," Daniels said. He added that while Obama did not cause the country's economic and budget problems, "He was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse."
The night's rhetoric come at the dawn of a presidential and congressional election year in which the defining issues are the faltering economy and weak job market and the parties' clashing prescriptions for restoring both. Obama and congressional Democrats have focused on the more populist pathway of financing federal initiatives by taxing millionaires, while Republicans preach the virtues of less regulation and smaller government.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Obama's address "a campaign speech designed to please his liberal base," and warned that he should keep legislation advancing his priorities "free from poison pills like tax hikes on job creators."
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who heads large group of House conservatives, said Obama's speech was riddled with "the ridiculous idea that America isn't fair because successful people get to keep too much of the money they earn."
Republicans fired back at Obama's vision of "an economy built to last," saying it was their party that understood the best way to trigger economic growth was to get the government out of the way.
"The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly sane pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy," Daniels said.
Obama has halted, for now, work on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas' Gulf Coast. Republicans say the project would create thousands of jobs, a claim opponents say is overstated. The administration has also pursued policies aimed at reducing pollution and global warming.
To underscore Obama's decision on Keystone, Boehner invited three officials from companies he said would be hurt by the pipeline's rejection to watch the speech in the House chamber, along with a pro-pipeline legislator from Nebraska, through which the project would pass.
Obama was delivering his address during a rowdy battle for the GOP presidential nomination that has ended up providing ammunition for Obama's theme of fairness.
That fight has called attention to the wealth of one of the top contenders, Romney, and the low ? but legal ? effective federal income tax rate of around 15 percent that the multimillionaire has paid in the past two years. Romney, in Florida campaigning for that state's Jan. 31 primary, released his tax documents for the two-year period on Tuesday.
"The president's agenda sounds less like `built to last' and more like doomed to fail," Romney said in Tampa, Fla. "What he's proposing is more of the same: more taxes, more spending, and more regulation."
Romney's chief rival at this point, Gingrich, said in a written statement that the top question about Obama's speech was whether he "will show a willingness to put aside the extremist ideology of the far left and call for a new set of policies that could lead to dramatic private sector job creation and economic growth."
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TEHRAN, Iran ? Tehran has shrugged off a new European Union ban on the purchase of Iranian oil, with officials declaring that the country can find new markets for its oil.
Some commentators are declaring that Iran should cut the flow of crude even before the new measures go into effect in July, to punish Europe, while others say the embargo is a "gift" which will allow the country to diversity its economy.
The EU imposed an oil embargo against Iran Monday, part of sanctions to pressure Tehran into resuming talks on the country's controversial nuclear program.
Tehran's initial response was to treat the embargo as an act of aggression, with the foreign ministry declaring the measures "propaganda and psychological war," and two lawmakers repeating long-standing threats that the country would close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in retaliation.
But other officials took a slightly different tack, arguing that the sanctions simply would not work.
"The world economy is not such that a decision can deprive a country of its existence," the country's intelligence chief Heidar Moslehi was quoted Tuesday by the state IRNA news agency as saying.
"Ineffective Western sanctions are not a threat to us, but an opportunity that has brought a lot of benefits," Moslehi said at a gathering in the central city of Isfahan late Monday.
The "benefits," he said, were that Iran was becoming self-sufficient, instead of relying on the outside world to meet all its needs.
The measures, approved in Brussels by the EU's 27 foreign ministers, include an immediate embargo on new contracts for crude oil and petroleum products. Existing contracts with Iran will be allowed to run until July.
Iran's Oil Ministry said the country can find new markets.
"Iran can easily find new customers for its oil," Mohsen Qamsari, a senior ministry official, was quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency as saying. "The National Iranian Oil Company has adopted the necessary measures to replace its oil exports in 2012."
Some 80 percent of Iran's foreign revenue comes from oil exports, and analysts say that any sanctions affecting its ability to export oil would hit its economy hard. With about 4 million barrels per day, Iran is the second largest producer in OPEC. It exports about 2 million barrels a day and consumes the rest domestically.
The EU has been importing about 450,000 barrels of oil per day from Iran, making up 18 percent of Iran's oil exports.
Some in Iran said the country should stop selling oil to Europe now, instead of July, to punish the bloc before it can find suppliers to replace Iranian crude oil in the midst of winter.
"The Iranian people now expect that the flow of black gold to Europe be cut before it can find a replacement for Iranian oil," state radio said in a commentary Tuesday.
The conservative news website, mashreghnews.ir, called the embargo a "gift."
"Iran's economy has been dependent on oil revenues for a century. Now, it is facing a serious test of how to reduce reliance on oil revenues," it said. "The oil embargo is a gift. If the West knew its benefits for Iran, it would never enter such a game."
The U.S. has also enacted new sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad over Tehran's nuclear program. The U.S. has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months, worried about sending the price of oil higher at a time when the global economy is struggling.
The U.S. and other Western nations argue that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing weapons technology. Tehran says the program serves peaceful purposes like energy generation, cancer treatment and research.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Euro zone finance ministers and officials met in Brussels to discuss terms of a Greek debt restructuring as part of a second bailout package for Athens and rejected an offer made by private bondholders to help restructure those debts, officials said, sending negotiators back to the drawing board.
Following are comments after their talks:
EUROGROUP PRESIDENT JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER
ON COUPON ON NEW GREEK BONDS:
"Ministers were asking their Greek colleagues to pursue negotiations to bring the interest rates on the new bonds to below 4 percent for the total period, which implies that the interest comes down to well below 3.5 percent before 2020."
ON COMBINED CAPACITY OF TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT BAILOUT
FUNDS:
"We will reassess the adequacy of the overall lending ceiling of the EFSF and the ESM of 500 billion (euros) ($644 billion) in March of this year."
ON AGREEING A FISCAL COMPACT:
"We have had an extremely constructive meeting on the fiscal compact and this text is a good basis for the discussions for the heads of government at the end of the month. Our aim is that the treaty is signed by the beginning of March."
"This treaty will help us to ensure fiscal sustainability in the euro area. Member states will implement a balanced budget rule in a binding manner in their national legislation."
ON BONDHOLDER LOSSES ON GREEK DEBT:
"We reviewed the process of the consultations on the PSI (private sector involvement) operation between the Greek government and the IIF-led creditor group as well as the discussions in Athens between the troika and the Greek government on the new adjustment program.
"We welcome the increased convergence and ask the Greek government to reach in the next few days a common understanding on the main terms and conditions of the PSI offer, while respecting the main parameters and objectives set by the euro summit on the October 26."
"PSI should secure the decline of the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio with an objective of reaching 120 percent by 2020. This should take place by a voluntary bond exchange with a nominal discount of 50 pct on notional Greek debt held by private investors.
"In parallel we call on the Greek government and the (EU-IMF) troika to agree on the key parameters of an ambitious new adjustment program as soon as possible.
"Let me make it crystal clear -- there are absolutely no divergences of view on this matter around the table: for everyone of us the future of Greece is clearly within the euro area."
ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER AND ECONOMY MINISTER MARIO MONTI
ON THE ESM PERMANENT BAILOUT FUND -- ASKED IF THE TREATY WAS
READY:
"The treaty is still to be finalized."
ON THE SITUATION IN ITALY AND THE DEREGULATION PACKAGE:
"What we have done and are doing was really appreciated. On Italy everything went really well."
EUROPEAN FINANCIAL STABILITY FACILITY (EFSF) CEO KLAUS
REGLING
ON S&P DOWNGRADE OF EFSF RATING:
"The market reaction to the downgrade by S&P has been limited... The fact that the downgrade to AA+ happened by only one rating agency means it will not reduce the EFSF lending capacity of overall 440 billion euros, and that means the EFSF has sufficient means to fulfill its commitments on the current and future potential adjustment programs, until the ESM becomes operation in July this year.
"Consequently there was no need today to take any decisions in the Eurogroup."
ON EFSF LEVERAGE:
"The S&P rating action on EFSF will also not affect the EFSF's capacity to leverage its resources. Leverage of three or more (times) is possible and is confirmed in our talks with investors. On this leveraging, I can tell you that we have made substantial progress in our work.
"You remember that there are two potential options that we want to use to leverage the resources. Option one - the partial risk protection. This will be available by the end of the month. This has been incorporated in the form of an SPV in early January.
"The option two is the co-investment fund (CIF). Here also the structure was incorporated last week, on January 19. The CIF will be available soon. At least the two-tranche structure of this CIF, this two-tier structure means there will be a first-loss tranche from the ESM and the second tranche from an investor, this structure will be ready soon.
"And we have been discussing with a number of investors to operate the two-tranche structure. In that context we have received a good positive feedback on this option from investors outside Europe and a first wave of commitments amounting to about 60 billion euros, we have obtained that. Therefore I am confident that the scheme when needed can be launched and will attract substantial funds."
(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt, Francesca Landini, Jan Strupczewski and Robin Emmott)
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FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) ? British adventurer Felicity Aston became the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica on Monday, hauling two sledges around crevasses and over mountains into endless headwinds, pushing onward and onward for 59 days in near-total solitude.
She made it to her destination ahead of schedule, using nothing but her own strength to cover 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from her starting point on the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25 to Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf.
The most surprising thing about her journey, she said, was how emotional it proved to be, from the moment she was dropped off alone, through every victory and defeat along the way.
"I'm not a particularly weepy person, and yet anyone who has been following my tweets can see me bursting into tears," she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday while waiting for a plane to pick her up.
"When I saw the coastal mountains that marked my end point for the first time, I literally just stopped in my tracks and bawled my eyes out," she added. "All these days I thought there was no chance I was going to make it in time to make that last flight off Antarctica, and yet here I am with three days to spare."
Aston also set another record: the first human to ski solo, across Antarctica, using only her own muscles. A male-female team earlier skied across Antarctica without kites or machines, but Aston is the first to do this alone.
Aston, 34, grew up in Kent, England, and studied physics and meteorology. A veteran of expeditions in subzero environments, she worked for the British weather service at a base in Antarctica and has led teams on ski trips in the Antarctic, the Arctic and Greenland.
But this was the first time she traveled so far, so alone, and she said the solitude posed her biggest challenge. In such an extreme environment, the smallest mistakes can prove treacherous. Alone with one's thoughts, the mind can play tricks. Polar adventurers usually take care to watch their teammates for signs of hypothermia, which is easier to diagnose in others than yourself, she said.
She thought she was done for when her two butane lighters failed high in the Transantarctic Mountains, where it got "really very cold."
"Suddenly I realized that without a lighter working, I can't light my stove, I can't melt snow to make water, and I won't have any water to drink, and that becomes a very serious problem," she said. "It's quite stressful. It was just a matter of every single day, looking at my kit, and thinking what could go wrong here and what can I do to prevent it?"
She did have a small box of safety matches, and counted and re-counted every one until the lighters started working again at lower altitude, she said.
This Antarctic summer has seen the centennial of Roald Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole, where Britons still lament that R.F. Scott's team arrived for England days later, demoralized to see Norway's flag. Scott and his entire team then died on their way out, and some of their bodies weren't found for eight months.
Aston had modern technology in her favor: She kept family and supporters updated and received their responses via Twitter and Facebook, and broadcast daily phone reports online. She carried two satellite phones to communicate with a support team, and a GPS device that reported her location throughout. She also had two supply drops ? one at the pole and one partway to her finish line ? so that she could travel with a lighter load. Otherwise, her feat was unassisted.
While others have traveled farther using kites, sails, machinery or dogs (now banned for fear of infecting wildlife with canine diseases), she did it on her own strength.
She had to fight near-constant headwinds across the vast central plateau to the South Pole. Then she turned toward Hercules Inlet, pushing through thick, fresh snow, until she reached her goal, a spot within a small plane's reach of a base camp on Union Glacier where the Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions company provides logistical support to each summer's expeditions.
With skies clearing Monday, Aston tweeted that she's been promised red wine and a hot shower after she gets picked up. "A very long, very hot shower," she emphasized. "It's something I haven't had in quite a long time now!"
From there, she'll join dozens of other Antarctic adventurers on the last flight out, a huge Russian cargo plane that will take her to Chile. Then she will fly home next week to Kent, in southeast England.
There, after two months of little but freeze-dried food, she can look forward to chicken pie, her mother said.
"I think there will be lots of cuddles, lots of hugs, it will be quite emotional," said Jackie Aston, 61.
Felicity Aston, pondering her last hours of solitude Monday, told the AP she felt both joy and overwhelming sadness at finishing.
"I'm still reeling from the shock of it that I've made it this far. I honestly didn't think I'd be getting here," she said.
What remains, she hopes, will be a message about perseverance.
"If you can just find a way to keep going, either metaphorically or literally, whether you're running a marathon or facing financial problems or have bad news to deliver or it's tough at work or whatever, if you can just find a way to keep going, then you will discover that you have potential within yourself that you never never realized," she said.
"Keeping going is the important thing, persevering, no matter how messy that gets. I mean, for me, sometimes I'll be sitting in my tent in the morning bawling my eyes out, having tantrums. It's not been pretty. But I've kept going, and that is the important thing because at some point in the future you'll look back and just be amazed at how far you've come."
___
Associated Press writers Ed Donahue in Washington, D.C., and Meera Selva in London contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Aston's expedition site: www.kasperskyonetransantarcticexpedition.com
Aston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/felicity(underscore)aston
Aston on ipadio: http://www.ipadio.com/broadcasts/TransantarcticExpedition/2012/1/22/Transantarctic-Expedition--63rd-phonecast
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JERUSALEM (Reuters) ? Israeli police Monday arrested two senior Hamas members at an International Committee of the Red Cross building in East Jerusalem where they had taken shelter for some 18 months, Red Cross and Israeli officials said.
Palestinian lawmaker Mohammed Totah and Khaled Abu Arafah, a former cabinet minister, face possible expulsion from the city when they appear before an Israeli judge this week, Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman said.
The ICRC confirmed the arrests and said that as East Jerusalem was an occupied territory under international law, Israel was not allowed to forcibly transfer Palestinians.
Israel had revoked Totah and Arafah's Jerusalem residency permits in July 2010, a step it has also taken against other Hamas members.
"Two Hamas activists were arrested at the Red Cross building. They were hiding in the building for a year and a half after their ID cards had been revoked on suspicions of being active in terrorist activity," Rosenfeld said.
Israel, along with the United States and the European Union, considers the Islamist Hamas movement a terrorist group. Hamas condemned the arrests as kidnapping by "the Zionist enemy."
Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967 and annexed it as part of its capital in a move never recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as capital of a state they seek to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In response to Monday's arrests, a crowd of Palestinians smashed the gate of the Red Cross compound in Jerusalem, angry at what they charged was the organization's failure to protect Totah and Abu Arafah.
Hamas said both men deserved immunity from arrest because they were public officials.
In Geneva, ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said: "It will not be in accordance with international humanitarian law" to deport the men as East Jerusalem is considered occupied land and its Palestinian residents protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits forcible transfers of people.
Palestinian officials said at least 26 Palestinian lawmakers were in Israeli detention.
Last week, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Aziz Dweik, also of Hamas, was detained on suspicion of what the Israeli military termed "involvement with terrorist groups."
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Labib Nasir and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, writing by Sami Aboudi)
(This update adds the dropped word "arrested" in the lead)
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COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich loves to use indignation to get out of answering sticky questions, and the last installment of the debate season without end held no exception. According to Yahoo! News, Newt raged at moderator John King for asking about Marianne Gingrich's assertion (ex-wife No. 2, for anyone keeping score) that Newt wanted an open marriage.
Newt said of the question: "The destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office."
I'll give you a moment to digest that statement. You might need a glass of irony to help it go down.
When you're a celebrity, your life's details aren't relevant to fulfilling the requirements of your job. You can do or say things away from your work that aren't so great, yet still be such a great entertainer (Alec Baldwin, I'm looking at you) that we'll turn on the TV anyway. Celebrities' lives do not impact ours.
A politician isn't a celebrity. A politician is a representative of the people, both in Washington and to the rest of the world. A politician has actual power to shape lives, destroy lives, make things easier for people and make things so much harder.
If Newt Gingrich's platform supported inclusion of non-traditional relationships, then focusing on his alleged desire for an open marriage would venture into salacious. Why? Because then we would know that his view is that people's relationships are their relationships and people's bedrooms are their business.
That is not his platform. Instead, he is a vocal proponent of protecting "traditional marriage." While that term has become code for marriage between a man and a woman, traditional marriage is monogamous. Whether Newt asked for an open marriage or not -- and he says it's not true -- we know he was not monogamous.
Journalists ask these questions and discuss the answers because we, the people, have a right to know the true political agendas of the individuals in whom we place the trust of our nation. Without journalists, politicians could say absolutely anything and do absolutely anything and we would never know. That is what it seems Newt means when he says that journalists make it "harder" to govern the country: it would be far easier for politicians to get elected if no one questioned their true agendas, and then for them to do whatever they wanted, in secrecy, once they got there.
That sentiment alone should terrify anyone in this country with even a passing fondness for the Constitution.
Trust is a delicate thing, and yet we must support all of the weight of our governance on something so fragile. We are entitled to have as much information as possible to find the people least likely to crumble under our trust.
We do agree on one point, though, Newt. It does seem harder and harder to find a decent person running for public office.
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