Even without Congress, Obama could act to restrict guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Unburdened by re-election worries and empowered by law to act without Congress, U.S. President Barack Obama could take action to improve background checks on gun buyers, ban certain gun imports and bolster oversight of dealers.

Prospects for gun control legislation intensified in the wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, as more pro-gun rights lawmakers said on Monday they were open to the possibility while Obama and three cabinet members met at the White House to discuss the subject.

Having just won a second four-year term, Obama does not need to fear alienating voters who favor gun rights and he could press ahead without lawmakers on fronts where federal law enables executive action.

Speaking in Newtown, where a gunman on Friday killed 20 children and six adults in an elementary school, Obama vowed late on Sunday to "use whatever power this office holds" to try to prevent such massacres.

"Because what choice do we have? We can't accept events like this as routine," Obama said at Newtown High School.

His administration has the power to issue executive orders or new rules, options that Obama is likely to consider in combination with possible new laws.

The National Rifle Association, the largest U.S. gun rights group with 4 million supporters, relies largely on its ability to influence lawmakers in order to block legislation.

Obama's appointees at the U.S. Justice Department have been studying ideas since the January 8, 2011, shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and 18 others at a public meeting. Giffords survived but six people died.

Christopher Schroeder, who ran the Justice Department's review, said it looked at possible legislation to send to Congress as well as action the administration could take itself.

"You always look at both, because if you can do it administratively it's certainly a less involved process," said Schroeder, who has since returned to a professorship at Duke Law School.

Many of the ideas have to do with the background checks that licensed gun dealers run on potential buyers.

CRITICS CITE HOLES

Critics say the system has holes because it does not include all the data it should on those ineligible to buy guns. The FBI, which runs the system, could incorporate more data from within the federal government - using evidence of mental incompetence, for example.

There are privacy concerns, however, and the Justice Department is still studying which types of data it can legally use, Schroeder said.

"That kind of system works effectively only if all of the potentially disqualifying information that has been gathered by any federal, state or local authority is accessible to the database, and that's not the case today," he said.

It is not clear what changes to the background checks would have prevented the mass shooting in Newtown, because the killer appeared to have used weapons his mother bought legally.

Other proposals for executive action by Obama include sharing information with state and local law enforcement about possibly illegal purchases; maintaining data on gun sales for longer periods to help with investigations; and restricting the importation of certain military-style weapons, as President George H.W. Bush did in 1989.

A pro-gun control mayors' group co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed the Obama administration since 2009 to adopt 40 recommendations it said were allowed under existing law.

One of the 40 has been put into effect, said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and even that recommendation - requiring gun dealers to report sales of multiple semiautomatic weapons - drew heated resistance.

In 2011, when the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) adopted a version of the recommendation aimed at dealers in states near the U.S.-Mexico border, gun makers sued and congressional Republicans tried to eliminate funding for the rule.

A judge upheld it, allowing it to go into effect. The case is now on appeal.

LOBBYING BLITZ

Bloomberg's group is still pushing the other recommendations as it makes plans for a lobbying blitz over new laws, such as a ban on high-capacity magazines. "While they are important, they're not the big-ticket items. And we're in a big-ticket world," Glaze said.

The administration also has leeway to act in how it defines certain categories of people prohibited from buying a gun.

Federal law bars anyone "who has been adjudicated as a mental defective," but it does not specify whether that means only a court can disqualify someone, said Michael Volkov, a former Republican Justice Department official now at the law firm LeClairRyan.

Another option could be changing how long a firearms dealer must keep records of a sale - a period that is now three days but could be extended, Volkov said.

Since the Justice Department began reviewing ideas to prevent mass shootings in early 2011, it has implemented a handful of changes.

In May, the department unveiled an automated system to feed records of federal indictments into the background checks database, replacing a system in which prosecutors uploaded information manually.

Schroeder said the department's review of firearms-related ideas is ongoing. He described the process as informal, and not one that has produced a formal report.

(Editing by Howard Goller and Paul Simao)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/even-without-congress-obama-could-act-restrict-guns-020117544.html

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Zuma win shows his dominance in South Africa's ANC

JOHANNESBURG -- Under the bright lights, the corruption allegations and the ethical concerns trailing South African President Jacob Zuma faded away and the master politician basked in his re-election as head of the governing African National Congress party, singing on stage, smiling and waving to cheering delegates.

Whether he can translate his party victory into reassuring the anxious in South Africa, those worried about the nation's flagging economy, violent criminality and the continued poverty striking those his party once aimed to liberate, however, remains the question.

ANC members voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to keep Zuma as the head of the top political party in South Africa, more than likely guaranteeing the 70-year-old leader another five-year term as the nation's president in the coming 2014 general elections. Opposition parties don't receive the same support as the ANC, the party of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela that many in this nation of 50 million people vote for out of that history.

Zuma trounced Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, his only challenger who ran a largely muted and reluctant campaign, getting 2,983 votes to Motlanthe's 991. A smiling Zuma came to the stage immediately after the announcement, waving to the cheering crowd with both hands.

"We can boast that we're a leader of our society, that therefore we have something to contribute to the democratic life of this country, to this democratic Republic of South Africa," Zuma said in brief remarks televised live after his victory. "We are certain that at this course in our democracy we are correct, that what we do at all material times, it is in the interest, not just of our organization, but of our country and its people."

Motlanthe, 63, a former unionist, declined to accept any other post with the ANC at Tuesday's meeting. He embraced Zuma for several seconds after the election results announcement and spoke together on stage in view of delegates.

The ANC must "continue to sharpen its ability to hear the cries of our people," he later told those gathered at the Mangaung conference, held in the city also called Bloemfontein.

In Motlanthe's place, the ANC delegates voted to install wealthy businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy president of the party. Ramaphosa is a former union leader who was the ANC's general secretary during the constitutional negotiations that ended apartheid in 1994. He went on to found an investment empire with interests that include a power plant, McDonald's franchises, a Coca-Cola bottler and mines. In November, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth to be about $675 million.

Ramaphosa has been a leading figure behind the scenes in the ANC, though he shuns interviews and publicly offered no comments on policy or political matters ahead of the vote.

Across the board, all six candidates associated with Zuma swept the voting early Tuesday morning by some 4,000 delegates. That ease served as a stark contrast to the run-up to the conference, which saw disrupted provincial meetings, threats and shootings of local ANC officials.

Police have a tight security presence at the conference, which began Sunday and continues through Friday. Authorities earlier arrested four white men who were charged Tuesday with treason and terrorism offenses over an alleged plot to attack the conference and kill Zuma and other leaders, though it is unclear how far along their planning was.

Zuma was the favorite heading into the conference after winning the nominations in most provincial ANC polls. He has wide support among Zulus, South Africa's largest ethnic group, as well as from a loyal cadre of government and party officials.

But many in the public have grown disenchanted with Zuma, who former President Thabo Mbeki fired as deputy president in 2005 after he was implicated in the corruption conviction of close friend and financial adviser Schabir Shaik over a 1999 arms deal. Newspapers have written numerous articles recently about the millions of dollars of government-paid improvements made to Zuma's private homestead. Zuma has also faced accusations, by the media, of being unable to manage his personal finances and relying on friends and colleagues to bail him out, including, allegedly, Mandela himself.

Zuma has also faced criticism over his sexual activity, having been put on trial on charges of raping a family friend, and acquitted, in 2006. He also once claimed that taking a shower after having sex with an HIV-positive woman would protect him from AIDS, a comment that drew widespread criticism.

He and the ANC also have been criticized for strikes that overtook the nation, particularly in the mining sector, and the handling of violence at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana in August where police shot dead 34 strikers. The Lonmin strike sparked labor unrest at other mines. Ramaphosa is a non-executive director at Lonmin, raising questions about how his wide business interests will affect the government.

After the lights fade from Mangaung, however, Zuma will find himself back in the same position he was before. South Africa's economy remains anemic and the continent's top economy has seen credit downgrades. Meanwhile, the same black citizens the ANC promised to liberate find themselves crushed by the same poverty.

Source: http://www.modbee.com/2012/12/18/2500309/zuma-re-elected-leader-of-south.html

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Galina Vishnevskaya: Soprano whose voice entranced Britten and who fled the Soviet Union

Galina Vishnevskaya was famous both as a singer and as the wife of the cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. As a singer she was famous, in Britain at least, for being forbidden to take the soprano solos at the first performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem in 1962 in the newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral; and then for throwing a spectacular tantrum during the recording sessions of the same work in London the following year.

Her absence from the Coventry premiere was a strange business, when one remembers that she was actually in London at the time, singing Aida in her debut at Covent Garden. But the Soviet authorities regarded the War Requiem as "political" and, despite the pleading of Britten himself ? he had written the part specially for her, remarking "how extremely difficult it would be to replace Madame Vishnevskaya" ? permission was refused, and it was Heather Harper who stood in at the premiere, superbly.

When it came to recording the War Requiem the following year, Vishnevskaya at first failed to appreciate that the work is conceived on different planes, and saw her position with the choir in the Kingsway Hall balcony "as a kind of discrimination", the male soloists, Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, being at the front, near the conductor, with their own dedicated chamber ensemble.

She insisted that she should be with them. Attempts to explain the nature of the work failed and, as the producer John Culshaw recalled, "she then lost her head, and lay on the floor of the vestry ... and shrieked at the top of her voice. You would really have been excused for thinking that an extremely painful process of torture was in progress." Miraculously, she reappeared the following day, totally transformed, and this iconic recording was able to be completed as planned.

Galina Pavlovna Ivanova's start in life was unpromising: born in Leningrad, raised by her grandmother and surviving the siege of the city, all vividly described in her book Galina: a Russian Story, published in 1984. But she always had a voice, and undoubtedly inherited her temperament, and striking dark looks, from her mother, who had gypsy blood.

At 18, Galina was singing with the Leningrad Light Opera Company: "The troupe became for me a genuine school ? my only one," she wrote. "It was from those performers that I learned to serve art selflessly: to respect the stage ? the performing artist's sanctuary." She married the company's director, Mark Rubin and there was a baby son, who died.

She toyed with the idea of becoming a music hall singer, inspired by Klavdiya Shulzhenko, but it was meeting with the voice teacher Vera Garina that changed her life: "Without her ... I'm certain I would never have become an opera singer."

By 1952 she had joined the Bolshoi company and soon was making concert appearances in Europe and the US. In February 1959 she first appeared in London to sing one item only ? Tatyana's "Letter Scene" from Yevgeny Onegin ? a matter of regret to the critics: "She would have been welcome in a recital of songs by Tchaikovsky, or indeed any composer," said one.

She first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1961 and at Covent Garden the following year, and sang the role of Tatyana from 1953 at the Bolshoi until her farewell performance at the Paris Op?ra in 1982. Other stage roles included Leonore, Butterfly, Aida, Marguerite in Faust, Violetta in La Traviata, Tosca and Li? in Turandot. But it was in the Russian repertoire that her vibrant and exciting dark tones and passionate stage presence fully emerged: Tatyana, Liza in Queen of Spades, Natasha in War and Peace, Katarina Ismaylova, and others. She appeared in films as both a singer and actress and later turned to directing operas.

In 1955 she met Rostropovich, who pursued her relentlessly and within four days had married her. He was also an excellent pianist and they combined to give recitals together at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Edinburgh and elsewhere. There was an instant rapport when Britten first met Rostropovich, for whom a cello sonata was soon written.

This was performed at the 1961 Aldeburgh Festival, when Britten heard Vishnevskaya for the first time and told her he wanted to write a part for her in his War Requiem. In his biography of the composer, Humphrey Carpenter suggests that Britten may not originally have intended to have a soprano soloist at all, but that Vishnevskaya's singing inspired him. The Poet's Echo, settings of Pushkin, followed in 1965, with Vishnevskaya in mind. She was delighted: "He had succeeded in penetrating the very heart of the verse." He also succeeded in demonstrating the singer's versatility and musicianship, switching, in Graham Johnson's words, "with volatile energy from inconsolable loneliness to expansive glee."

In 1974 the Rostropovichs left Russia on a so-called "creative sabbatical", having fallen out of favour for dissident views and particularly for secretly sheltering the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They hoped to return but were not allowed to do so by the Soviet authorities, who stripped them of their citizenship in March 1978. With a change of regime, this was restored by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 and they were allowed to return. In 2002 Vishnevskaya opened her own theatre in Moscow, the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre; the Washington-based Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Found-ation, founded in 1991, continues to support programmes to improve the health of children worldwide.

Galina Pavlovna Ivanova (Galina Vishnevskaya), singer: born Leningrad 25 October 1926; married 1944 Georgy Vishnevsky, 1945 Mark Rubin (one son, deceased), 1955 Mstislav Rostropovich (died 2007; two daughters); died Moscow 11 December 2012.

Source: http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/266/f/3531/s/26b2cc3d/l/0L0Sindependent0O0Cnews0Cobituaries0Cgalina0Evishnevskaya0Esoprano0Ewhose0Evoice0Eentranced0Ebritten0Eand0Ewho0Efled0Ethe0Esoviet0Eunion0E84228880Bhtml/story01.htm

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Crippled NKorean probe could orbit for years

TOKYO (AP) ? A North Korean satellite launched into space last week appears to be malfunctioning but could remain in orbit for several years, a leading expert in the United States said Tuesday.

North Korea says the satellite is working. U.S. officials have said it is tumbling in orbit, but even so, its successful launch into space marks a milestone in the impoverished country's technological advances, especially given accusations that the rocket launch was actually a test of systems that could be used to launch long-range missiles targeting the U.S.

Data from trackers in South Africa and Britain suggest the brightness of the satellite has been fluctuating, which indicates it is tumbling as it orbits. That likely means a malfunction in the probe's stabilizers because it was designed to constantly point toward the Earth.

Even so, the probe is continuing to complete orbits and could do so for several years, said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell said that since the cause of the malfunction remains unclear, it is conceivable that North Korea could determine how to fix it and regain control.

"The best guess at this point is that it is probably broken,'" he said by telephone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is certainly continuing to complete orbits. It is up there and it will be up there for years. But the thing is sort of twirling around. It seems to me the satellite is not working."

North Korea has hailed the launch as a gift to the nation's late leader, Kim Jong Il, and proof that his young son, Kim Jong Un, has the strength and vision to lead the country.

State news agency KCNA said Wednesday that the satellite is transmitting signals of revolutionary hymns such as 'Song of General Kim Il Sung," referring to the founder of North Korea, who is the grandfather of the current leader.

The United States, Japan, Britain and others see the launch as a provocation and violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning North Korea from developing its nuclear and missile programs. The Security Council has said it would urgently consider "an appropriate response."

"This launch is about a weapons program, not peaceful use of space," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Even the North's most important ally, China, expressed regret.

Though missile and satellite launch technologies overlap significantly, and Pyongyang is clearly hoping to use the rocket launches to develop a deployable nuclear-tipped missile capable of threatening the United States, McDowell said its apparent success in getting the satellite into orbit may cloud efforts to further punish the North.

"For North Korea, it lets them say to their people that they are an advanced 21st century country, although they can't feed their people," he added. "They can say that this was not a missile, it was a satellite launch. That gives them potentially more credibility on the international stage that they are being unfairly treated."

A similar attempt in April failed about two minutes after takeoff.

North Korean officials say a 2009 launch put a satellite into orbit, but the U.S. and other outside observers say they have seen no evidence that it did so.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/crippled-nkorean-probe-could-orbit-years-040243143.html

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'Private Practice' to end with Addison's wedding

Carol Kaelson / ABC

Kate Walsh's Addison and Benjamin Bratt's Jake will tie the knot in the "Private Practice" series finale.

By Lesley Goldberg, The Hollywood Reporter

Wedding bells will be ringing on the "Private Practice"?series finale.

The ABC medical drama from "Grey's Anatomy"?creator?Shonda Rhimes?will wrap its six seasons on Jan. 22 with Addison Montgomery's (Kate Walsh) dream wedding to Jake Reilly (Benjamin Bratt),?The Hollywood Reporter?has learned.

More from THR: 'Private Practice' Cast Plays 'Death, Wedding or Baby'

"Shonda had hinted and indicated that?that's probably where it would go and I knew that she'd deliver and make it an amazing episode," star Walsh told?The Hollywood Reporter. "It was clear she wanted to give Addison her happy ending. After all Addison has suffered and struggled with throughout the series -- all the heartache and hardship -- Shonda really wanted to have her find a meaningful relationship and she got to have her child and find a guy that was her match."

After opening the season with a decision to pick Jake over Sam (Taye Diggs), Addison -- who adopted son Henry in season five -- moved closer to having the fairy tale life she's dreamed of for more than eight and a half years, dating back to the character's origin on "Grey's Anatomy.:

More from THR: 'Private Practice' to End After 13-Episode Sixth Season

"The show is about Addison Montgomery's life and it's kind of a fairy tale so it's certainly an appropriate ending that she gets the baby and the marriage -- she gets the guy and she gets the happiness," co-star Bratt told?THR.?"Audiences have not only been rooting for that but they'll be gratified to see that's finally what she does receive."

Showrunner Rhimes?told?THR?in August ahead of what would become the final season of "Private"?that the character deserved "some semblance of a happy ending."

"We're not going to end the show and the 13 episodes with Addison dead; that's not going to happen," she said ahead of the season six premiere. "That character has been on such a journey and started out so hated by audiences and became so beloved by audiences that I feel like she's been on an emotional journey to change who she is from being this woman who cheated on her husband to a different person. You're just going to see what happens. I don't think it's going to be a dark ending."

More from THR: 'Private Practice': Intervention and 'What Happened to Charlotte King' Among Cast, Creator's Favorites

Meanwhile, Walsh -- who's working hard on the?NBC comedy?she's developing with boyfriend?Chris Case?-- says the series finale won't be entirely about Addison and Jake.?

"It can't just be viewed as Addison getting married off and getting the fairy tale," she said, noting there are some "juciy" surprises coming. "It's a holistic thing; it's a wrap up of the entire series. That's certainly part of it but it's very profound and meaningful the way Shonda wraps up all the characters and story lines and that's certainly a part of it. It will be very emotional for fans and very satisfying."?

The series finale, fittingly titled "In Which We Say Goodbye," airs Jan. 22 at 10 p.m. on ABC.

What else would you like to see happen in the series finale? Tell us on our Facebook page!

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Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2012/12/17/15977781-private-practice-to-end-with-addison-and-jakes-wedding?lite

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Liberal icon Frank eyes high-profile retirement (The Arizona Republic)

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Even the smallest stroke can damage brain tissue and impair cognitive function

Dec. 16, 2012 ? Blocking a single tiny blood vessel in the brain can harm neural tissue and even alter behavior, a new study from the University of California, San Diego has shown. But these consequences can be mitigated by a drug already in use, suggesting treatment that could slow the progress of dementia associated with cumulative damage to miniscule blood vessels that feed brain cells.

The team reports their results in the Dec. 16 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

"The brain is incredibly dense with vasculature. It was surprising that blocking one small vessel could have a discernable impact on the behavior of a rat," said Andy Y. Shih, lead author of the paper who completed this work as a postdoctoral fellow in physics at UC San Diego. Shih is now an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Working with rats, Shih and colleagues used laser light to clot blood at precise points within small blood vessels that dive from the surface of the brain to penetrate neural tissue. When they looked at the brains up to a week later, they saw tiny holes reminiscent of the widespread damage often seen when the brains of patients with dementia are examined as a part of an autopsy.

These micro-lesions are too small to be detected with conventional MRI scans, which have a resolution of about a millimeter. Nearly two dozen of these small vessels enter the brain from a square millimeter area of the surface of the brain.

"It's controversial whether that sort of damage has consequences, although the tide of evidence has been growing as human diagnostics improve," said David Kleinfeld, professor of physics and neurobiology, who leads the research group.

To see whether such minute damage could change behavior, the scientists trained thirsty rats to leap from one platform to another in the dark to get water.

The rats readily jump if they can reach the second platform with a paw or their snout, or stretch farther to touch it with their whiskers. Many rats can be trained to rely on a single whisker if the others are clipped, but if they can't feel the far platform, they won't budge.

"The whiskers line up in rows and each one is linked to a specific spot in the brain," Shih said. "By training them to use just one whisker, we were able to distill a behavior down to a very small part of the brain."

When Shih blocked single microvessels feeding a column of brain cells that respond to signals from the remaining whisker, the rats still crossed to the far platform when the gap was small. But when it widened beyond the reach of their snouts, they quit.

The FDA-approved drug memantine, prescribed to slow one aspect of memory decline associated with Alzheimer's disease, ameliorated these effects. Rats that received the drug jumped whisker-wide gaps, and their brains showed fewer signs of damage.

"This data shows us, for the first time, that even a tiny stroke can lead to disability," said Patrick D. Lyden, a co-author of the study and chair of the department of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "I am afraid that tiny strokes in our patients contribute -- over the long term -- to illness such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease," he said, adding that "better tools will be required to tell whether human patients suffer memory effects from the smallest strokes."

"We used powerful tools from biological physics, many developed in Kleinfeld's laboratory at UC San Diego, to link stroke to dementia on the unprecedented small scale of single vessels and cells," Shih said. "At my new position at MUSC, I plan to work on ways to improve the detection of micro-lesions in human patients with MRI. This way clinicians may be able to diagnose and treat dementia earlier."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - San Diego, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. The original article was written by Susan Brown.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Andy Y Shih, Pablo Blinder, Philbert S Tsai, Beth Friedman, Geoffrey Stanley, Patrick D Lyden & David Kleinfeld. The smallest stroke: occlusion of one penetrating vessel leads to infarction and a cognitive deficit. Nature Neuroscience, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3278

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/8oyNHAcTxtE/121216132503.htm

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