Motor Racing: Ferrari's Alonso predicts tighter 2013 F1 race






MILAN, Italy: Fernando Alonso said on Friday the battle for Formula One supremacy could be a lot tighter this year ahead of his bid to improve on two runner-up places behind Sebastian Vettel with a maiden title for Ferrari.

Last season's world championship was remarkable for the fact there were seven race-winners in the first seven races before Alonso went toe-to-toe with Red Bull ace Vettel in a decisive, thrilling finale at Interlagos.

Vettel, the sport's youngest-ever three-time world champion (2010, 2011, 2012), finished sixth at the legendary Brazilian circuit, where Alonso was second, to beat his Spanish rival to the title by only three points.

Alonso, speaking at the launch of Ferrari's new F138 car for the upcoming season, indicated that their anticipated duel in 2013 could leave rivals trailing in their wake from the season-opening Australian GP in March.

"I think the likelihood of seeing seven different race winners in the first seven races, like last year, will be impossible," he said.

"There will be a maximum of two or three teams" battling for the title, he added, "and one of those will definitely be Ferrari."

Alonso, a two-time world champion with Renault in 2005 and 2006, joined Ferrari for the 2010 season and finished runner-up to Vettel.

He finished a disappointing fourth in 2011 but in 2012 won three times and secured a total of 13 podium places before being pipped by Vettel at the finish.

Afterwards, he said: "Next year, we will try and improve the car, trying to start further up the grid, thus avoiding accidents. Let's hope we also have a bit more luck."

The F138 - whose name represents the current year and the car's V8 engine, which will be used for the last time this season - was unveiled at Ferrari's Maranello headquarters in northern Italy on Friday.

Ferrari described it as "an evolution of last year's race-winning car, although every single part has been revised in order to maximise performance while maintaining the characteristics which were the basis of the F2012's superb reliability".

"The rear of the car is much narrower and more tapered than before," said Ferrari, although "significant modifications will be made to the car's aero package" before the Australian Grand Prix on March 17.

One major change Ferrari has made, one year ahead of schedule, is in the electronics domain with the early introduction of the single control unit that will be used in 2014.

Alonso is set to get his first taste of the F138 at a pre-season testing session in Barcelona from February 19. It means Brazilian Felipe Massa will be at the wheel for the first pre-season test at Jerez in Spain next week.

Massa, who finished seventh overall last season, believes the car is equipped sufficiently to allow Ferrari to aim for both the drivers' and constructors' titles.

"I hope it will bring the two titles to Ferrari. It's the only thing we want," he said.

Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo said last year he wants to see three-times champion Vettel race for the Italian team in the future.

But on Friday Di Montezemolo ruled out the possibility of seeing Alonso and Vettel in the same team. "Absolutely not," replied Di Montezemolo.

- AFP/de



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Cabinet clears ordinance, makes anti-rape laws stricter

NEW DELHI: Rape that leads to death of the victim or leaving her in a vegetative state can now attract death penalty under an ordinance cleared by the Union Cabinet on Friday noght in a bid to fast-track stringent amendments to the criminal laws to check crime against women.

The ordinance, based on the recommendations of the Justice J S Verma Committee and going beyond, proposes to replace the word 'rape' with 'sexual assault' to expand the definition of all types sexual crimes against women.

It also proposes enhanced punishment for other crimes against women like stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks, indecent gestures like words and inappropriate touch and brings into its ambit 'marital rape'.

The Union Cabinet, at a specially-convened meeting just three weeks ahead of the Budget Session of Parliament, went beyond the Verma Committee's recommendation by providing for capital punishment in the cases where rape leads to death of the victim or leaves her in "persistent vegetative state".

In such cases, the minimum punishment will be 20 years in jail which can be extended to the natural life of the convict or death, sources said, adding discretion will be with the court.

Being brought against the backdrop of the gang rape and brutal assault of a 23-year-old girl in Delhi in December, the ordinance entails changes in the criminal law by amending Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the Evidence Act.

The government will now recommend to President Pranab Mukherjee to promulgate the ordinance with immediate effect.

"We believe that this is a progressive piece of legislation and is consistent with felt sensitivities of the nation in the aftermath of outrageous gangrape in Delhi," law minister Ashwani Kumar said.

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Will Deep-sea Mining Yield an Underwater Gold Rush?


A mile beneath the ocean's waves waits a buried cache beyond any treasure hunter's wildest dreams: gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals.

Scientists have known about the bounty for decades, but only recently has rising demand for such commodities sparked interest in actually surfacing it. The treasure doesn't lie in the holds of sunken ships, but in natural mineral deposits that a handful of companies are poised to begin mining sometime in the next one to five years.

The deposits aren't too hard to find—they're in seams spread along the sea floor, where natural hydrothermal vents eject rich concentrations of metals and minerals.

These underwater geysers spit out fluids with temperatures exceeding 600ÂșC. And when those fluids hit the icy seawater, minerals precipitate out, falling to the ocean floor.

The deposits can yield as much as ten times the desirable minerals as a seam that's mined on land.

While different vent systems contain varying concentrations of precious minerals, the deep sea contains enough mineable gold that there's nine pounds (four kilograms) of it for every person on Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Ocean Service.

At today's gold prices, that's a volume worth more than $150 trillion dollars.

Can an Industry Be Born?

But a fledgling deep-sea mining industry faces a host of challenges before it can claim the precious minerals, from the need for new mining technology and serious capital to the concerns of conservationists, fishers, and coastal residents.

The roadblocks are coming into view in the coastal waters of Papua New Guinea, where the seafloor contains copper, zinc, and gold deposits worth hundreds of millions of dollars and where one company, Nautilus Minerals, hopes to launch the world's first deep-sea mining operation.

Last year, the Papua New Guinean government granted the Canadian firm a 20-year license to mine a site 19 miles (30 kilometers) off their coast, in the Bismarck Sea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The company plans to mine the site, known as Solwara 1, by marrying existing technologies from the offshore oil and gas industry with new underwater robotic technologies to extract an estimated 1.3 million tons of minerals per year.

Samantha Smith, Nautilus's vice president for corporate social responsibility, says that ocean floor mining is safer, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly than its terrestrial counterpart.

"There are no mountains that need to be removed to get to the ore body," she says. "There's a potential to have a lot less waste ... No people need to be displaced. Shouldn't we as a society consider such an option?"

But mining a mile below the sea's surface, where pressure is 160 times greater than on land and where temperatures swing from below freezing to hundreds of degrees above boiling, is trickier and more expensive than mining on terra firma.

Nautilus says it will employ three remote-controlled construction tools that resemble giant underwater lawn mowers to cut the hard mineral ore from the seafloor and pump it a mile up to a surface vessel.

That vessel would be equipped with machinery that removes excess water and rock and returns it to the mining site via pipeline, an effort aimed at avoiding contaminating surface waters with residual mineral particles. The company would then ship the rock to a concentrator facility to remove the mineral from the ore.

An Unknown Impact

At least that's the plan.

But the ocean floor is still a mysterious place, seldom visited by humans, compounding the known difficulties of working at sea.

Scientists weren't even able to prove the existence of underwater hydrothermal vents until 1977.

That year, an expedition of geologists, geochemists, and geophysicists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Oregon State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the U.S. Geological Survey proved their existence in the Galapagos rift with cameras and a manned dive in the submersible Alvin.

The animal-rich landscape and huge temperature shifts came as a surprise.

"When the first people went down there, and saw these things, they had no idea," says Mike Coffin, a geophysicist and executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia. "The submersible had windows that could melt at temperatures lower than what was coming out of the vent."

And, in contrast to the desert-like landscape that the scientists expected, it turns out that hydrothermal vents are home to lots of life: snails the size of tennis balls, seven-foot-long (two-meter-long) tubeworms, purple octopi, and all-white crabs and skates.

It turns out that, far from the sun's life-giving light, the same minerals now eyed by the mining industry support lively communities.

Now some researchers fear that deep-sea mining could jeopardize those communities by altering their habitats before the systems have been fully explored and explained.

"We're still just grappling with this reality of commercialization of the deep sea," says Cindy Van Dover, director of Duke University's Marine Lab. "And scrambling to figure out what we need to know."

Van Dover was aboard the first manned biological exploration of the hydrothermal vents in 1982 and was the only woman to pilot the submersible Alvin. Despite the strides that have been made in understanding the deep sea, she says, it's still a young science.

When it comes to the impacts of mining on any deep-sea life, "there's a particular type of research that needs to be done," she says. "We haven't yet studied the ecosystem services and functions of the deep sea to understand what we'd lose.

"We don't yet know what we need to know," Van Dover says.

Conservationists also say they want to know more about the vent ecosystems and how they will be mined.

"The whole world is new to the concept of deep-sea mining," says Helen Rosenbaum, coordinator of the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, a small activist group in Australia that campaigns against mining the Solwara 1 site.

"This is going to be the world's first exploitation of these kinds of deep resources. The impacts are not known, and we need to apply precautionary principles," she says. "If we knew what the impacts were going to be, we could engage in a broad-based debate."

Rosenbaum says some communities in Papua New Guinea are raising concerns about the sustainability of local livelihoods in the face of mining and say they aren't receiving the information they need.

The Deep Sea Mining Campaign is especially concerned about the impacts of toxic heavy metals from the mining activities on local communities and fish. The group claims that the Environmental Impact Statement for the Solwara 1 mine hasn't effectively modeled the chemistry of the metals that would be stirred up by the mining process or the ocean currents that could transport them closer to land.

"The Solwara 1 project is scheduled to be a three-year project," Rosenbaum says. "The mining company thinks they'll be out of there before there are problems with heavy metal uptake. We might not see the effects for several years."

A report released in November 2012 by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign ties exploratory pre-mining activities and equipment testing by Nautilus to "cloudy water, dead tuna, and a lack of response of sharks to the age-old tradition of shark calling."

Shark calling is a religious ritual in which Papau New Guineans lure sharks from the deep and catch them by hand.

Another concern for Deep Sea Mining Campaign: Papua New Guinea's government has a 30 percent equity share in the minerals as part of a seabed lease agreement with Nautilus.

The company and government are currently involved in a lawsuit over these finances, but the Deep Sea Mining Campaign says government investment could compromise its regulatory efforts.

Mining for Dollars

Nautilus' Smith insists that the company has taken a careful and transparent approach. "The biggest challenge the company faces," she says, "is funding."

Fluctuations in commodity pricing, the high cost of working underwater, and financial disagreements with the Papua New Guinean government have been setbacks for Nautilus.

Last November, the company announced that it had suspended construction of its mining equipment in order to preserve its financial position. Smith says that Nautilus is still committed to finding a solution for its work in Papua New Guinea, and that the company could still extract minerals as early as 2014.

Other companies around the world are also exploring the possibility of mining throughout the South Pacific.

The International Seabed Authority, which regulates use of the seafloor in international waters in accordance with the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea, has granted 12 exploratory permits to various governments—including India, France, Japan, Russia, China, Korea, and Germany—in roughly the last decade.

And as long as the promise of riches await, more firms and governments will be looking to join the fray.

"It's economics that drive things," says the University of Tasmania's Coffin. "Tech boundaries are being pushed, and science just comes along behind it and tries to understand what the consequences are. Ideally, it should be the other way around."


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Ala. Hostage Suspect Had Court Date Scheduled













The retired Alabama trucker who shot a school bus driver and is now holding a kindergarten student in an underground bunker was scheduled to be in court Wednesday to answer for allegedly shooting at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump.


Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65, has been holed up in a 6 by 8 foot bunker 4 feet underground with a 5-year-old autistic boy named Ethan since Tuesday, when he boarded a school bus and asked for two 6 to 8 year old boys. School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was shot several times by Dykes, and died trying to protect the children.


Police said that they do not think that Dykes had any connection to Ethan, and that SWAT teams and police are negotiating with Dykes.


"I could tell you that negotiators continue to communicate with the suspect and that there's no reason to believe the child has been harmed," Sheriff Wally Olson said late Thursday.


Dykes' neighbor Claudia Davis told The Associated Press that he had yelled at her and fired his gun at her, her son James Davis, Jr. and her baby grandson after he claimed their truck caused damage to a speed bump in the dirt road near his property. No one was hurt, but Davis, Jr. told the AP that he believes the shooting and kidnapping are connected to the scheduled court hearing.


"I believe he thought I was going to be in court and he was going to get more charges than the menacing, which he deserved, and he had a bunch of stuff to hide and that's why he did it," he said.








Alabama Hostage Standoff: Boy, 5, Held Captive in Bunker Watch Video









Alabama 5-year-old Hostage: Negotiations Continue Watch Video









Alabama Child Hostage Situation: School Bus Driver Killed Watch Video





This was not Dykes' only run-in with people in the neighborhood, where he had come to be known as a menacing figure. Neighbor Ronda Wilbur told the AP that Dykes beat her 120-pound dog with a lead pipe when it entered the side of the dirt rode his trailer sits on. Wilbur said her dog died a week later.


Early last year, two pit bulls belonging to neighbors Mike and Patricia Smith escaped and got into his yard. Patricia Smith said that Dykes threatened to shoot her children when they went to retrieve them.


Neighbor Ronda Wilbur said that Dykes would be seen on his property at all hours of the day.


"It could be 2 o'clock in the morning, it could be midnight. He was out there either digging or moving dirt," she said.


As the underground standoff moved into its fourth day, tensions grow in this small community near Midland City, Ala., which is now enveloped by SWAT teams and police.


"That's an innocent kid. Let him go back to his parents, he's crying for his parents and his grandparents and he does not know what's going on," Midland City Mayor Virgil Skipper told ABC News. "Let this kid go."


Neighbor Jimmy Davis said that he has seen the bunker where Dykes has been known to hunker down for up to eight days.


"He's got steps made out of cinder blocks going down to it, Davis said. "It's lined with those red bricks all in it."


Police say he may have enough supplies to last him weeks.


Former FBI profiler and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett said there's a distinct reason why authorities are keeping details about Dykes under wraps.


"One of reasons they are keeping negations closed and not releasing his picture, is to try to insulate the situation, so they don't have a situation where they don't have to deal with his anger and rage," he said.


Meanwhile, children are trying to understand why this happened to their friend


"He always comes up to my house to play," 10-year-old Trisha Beaty told ABC News. "I miss him. I miss him a lot."



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Scoot airlines to increase fleet, expand routes






SINGAPORE: Scoot, the low cost long haul subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, has flown about 600,000 passengers after seven months of operation.

This means carrying about 85,000 travellers per month.

The carrier also has a passenger load factor of about 81 per cent and currently flies to eight destinations, including Tianjin, Shenyang and the Gold Coast.

Speaking at the "world's low cost airlines" conference on Thursday, CEO of Scoot Airlines Campbell Wilson was asked if the airline will be increasing its fleet and expanding its routes to cope with the ever growing demand for low cost travel in Southeast Asia.

Mr Wilson said: "We're taking a fifth aircraft this year end of May, early June, and we'll use that to add two or three more routes to the network. In terms of partnership, currently we work most closely with Tiger Airways, they have affiliates in other countries that we would look to expand our routes to. And furthermore there are airlines outside of Singapore and indeed outside of Southeast Asia that are quite interested to work with us. But its too premature to reveal who."

Scoot has introduced ScooTV, streaming inflight entertainment for passengers, and was the first to introduce iPads for rent.

Mr Wilson said it does not add to their costs at all.

"We only introduce these where there is a business benefit to us. We target to get over 20 per cent of our revenue from ancillary products of which entertainment is one. But as well as earning us money, it also helps the passenger. It's a win-win all round," he said.

Mr Wilson also commented on Boeing's Dreamliner despite the latest safety hiccups.

"The next aircraft we take this year is a 777-200 and the ones after that are 787s. Boeing is keeping us fully informed of what's happening with the 787 investigations and rectification and we are confident in their ability to resolve the issue under the purview of the regulators, and we look forward to taking the aircraft on schedule in November 2014. We have commitment for 20 Dreamliners," he said.

Several Scoot flights were recently hit by a series of passenger complaints stemming from flight delays and alleged technical faults.

Mr Wilson said: "The challenges are real. When you have a small fleet flying high utilisation. Anything whether its a weather delay, whether its a typhoon, fog in Tianjin today or storms in Gold Coast on Monday, they do affect aircraft schedules and sometimes have consequential effects. There's no avoiding that with a small fleet, but the high utilisation of aircraft is what allows us to offer low fares, so it's a bit of a quid pro quo.

"We're very clear to people what it is that we offer, we also make no secret what it is that we give in terms of compensation. The compensation is not just S$50, it can be more ranging to a full refund depending on the circumstances.

"Clearly, unit costs is unavoidable for operating an airline, unit revenue and engagement. You can't operate a business if you don't have low cost, you can't cover those cost if you don't have decent revenue and you don't have revenue if people don't like you."

- CNA/de



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Pervez Musharraf remains adamant, claims Kargil was a big success militarily for Pak

ISLAMABAD: Claiming that his 1999 Kargil operation was a "big success militarily", former President Pervez Musharraf has said that if the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had not visited the US, the Pakistani army would have "conquered" 300 square miles of India.

He defended his action to launch the operation in Kargil in the wake of fresh allegations that he masterminded the intrusions.

Referring to Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz's allegations that he had kept other military commanders in the dark about the operation, Musharraf said, "Telling everyone about it was not necessary at all".

He claimed Aziz had an "imbalanced personality" and had resorted to character assassination by making these accusations.

"We lost the Kargil war, which was a big success militarily, because of (then premier) Nawaz Sharif...If he had not visited the US, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India," Musharraf said in an interview with Express News channel.

Though Pakistan had initially claimed mujahideen were responsible for occupying strategic heights along the Line of Control in early 1999, Musharraf later revealed in his autobiography 'In The Line Of Fire' that regular army troops had participated in the operation.

Aziz, who headed the analysis wing of the ISI during the Kargil conflict, recently revealed that the operation was masterminded by a group of four generals led by Musharraf.

He has said details of the operation were hidden from other military commanders and the exact number of Pakistani casualties was still not known.

But Musharraf claimed the action in Kargil was a "localised" operation and not a major operation.

"Kargil was just one of many sectors under a Major General stationed in Gilgit, (who was) in charge of the area. Exchange of fire was routine there," he claimed.

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee


Homing pigeons (Columba livia) have been prized for their navigational abilities for thousands of years. They've served as messengers during war, as a means of long-distance communication, and as prized athletes in international races.

But there are places around the world that seem to confuse these birds—areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or scatter on random headings rather than fly straight home, said Jon Hagstrum, a geophysicist who authored a study that may help researchers understand how homing pigeons navigate.

Hagstrum's paper, published online Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology, proposes an intriguing theory for homing pigeon disorientation—that the birds are following ultralow frequency sounds back towards their lofts and that disruptions in their ability to "hear" home is what screws them up.

Called infrasound, these sound waves propagate at frequencies well below the range audible to people, but pigeons can pick them up, said Hagstrum, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.

"They're using sound to image the terrain [surrounding] their loft," he said. "It's like us visually recognizing our house using our eyes."

Homeward Bound?

For years, scientists have struggled to explain carrier pigeons' directional challenges in certain areas, known as release-site biases.

This "map" issue, or a pigeon's ability to tell where it is in relation to where it wants to go, is different from the bird's compass system, which tells it which direction it's headed in. (Learn about how other animals navigate.)

"We know a lot about pigeon compass systems, but what has been controversial, even to this day, has been their map [system]," said Cordula Mora, an animal behavior researcher at Bowling Green State University in Ohio who was not involved in the study.

Until now, the two main theories say that pigeons rely either on their sense of smell to find their way home or that they follow the Earth's magnetic field lines, she said.

If something screwed up their sense of smell or their ability to follow those fields, the thinking has been, that could explain why pigeons got lost in certain areas.

But neither explanation made sense to Hagstrum, a geologist who grew interested in pigeons after attending an undergraduate lecture by Cornell biologist William Keeton. Keeton, who studied homing pigeons' navigation abilities, described some release-site biases in his pigeons and Hagstrum was hooked.

"I was just stunned and amazed and fascinated," said Hagstrum. "I understand we don't get dark matter or quantum mechanics, but bird [navigation]?"

So Hagstrum decided to look at Keeton's pigeon release data from three sites in upstate New York. At Castor Hill and Jersey Hill, the birds would repeatedly fly in the wrong direction or head off randomly when trying to return to their loft at Cornell University, even though they had no problems at other locations. At a third site near the town of Weedsport, young pigeons would head off in a different direction from older birds.

There were also certain days when the Cornell pigeons could find their way back home from these areas without any problems.

At the same time, homing pigeons from other lofts released at Castor Hill, Jersey Hill, and near Weedsport, would fly home just fine.

Sound Shadows

Hagstrum knew that homing pigeons could hear sounds as low as 0.05 hertz, low enough to pick up infrasounds that were down around 0.1 or 0.2 hertz. So he decided to map out what these low-frequency sound waves would have looked like on an average day, and on the days when the pigeons could home correctly from Jersey Hill.

He found that due to atmospheric conditions and local terrain, Jersey Hill normally sits in a sound shadow in relation to the Cornell loft. Little to none of the infrasounds from the area around the loft reached Jersey Hill except on one day when changing wind patterns and temperature inversions permitted.

That happened to match a day when the Cornell pigeons had no problem returning home.

"I could see how the topography was affecting the sound and how the weather was affecting the sound [transmission]," Hagstrum said. "It started to explain all these mysteries."

The terrain between the loft and Jersey Hill, combined with normal atmospheric conditions, bounced infrasounds up and over these areas.

Some infrasound would still reach Castor Hill, but due to nearby hills and valleys, the sound waves approached from the west and southwest, even though the Cornell loft is situated south-southwest of Castor Hill.

Records show that younger, inexperienced pigeons released at Castor Hill would sometimes fly west while older birds headed southwest, presumably following infrasounds from their loft.

Hagstrum's model found that infrasound normally arrived at the Weedsport site from the south. But one day of abnormal weather conditions, combined with a local river valley, resulted in infrasound that arrived at Weedsport from the Cornell loft from the southeast.

Multiple Maps

"What [Hagstrum] has found for those areas are a possible explanation for the [pigeon] behavior at these sites," said Bowling Green State's Mora. But she cautions against extrapolating these results to all homing pigeons.

Some of Mora's work supports the theory that homing pigeons use magnetic field lines to find their way home.

What homing pigeons are using as their map probably depends on where they're raised, she said. "In some places it may be infrasound, and in other places [a sense of smell] may be the way to go."

Hagstrum's next steps are to figure out how large an area the pigeons are listening to. He's also talking to the Navy and Air Force, who are interested in his work. "Right now we use GPS to navigate," he said. But if those satellites were compromised, "we'd be out of luck." Pigeons navigate from point to point without any problems, he said.


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Negotiations Drag Out for 5-Year-Old Hostage













An Alabama community is on edge today, praying for a 5-year-old boy being held hostage by a retired man who police say abducted him at gunpoint Tuesday afternoon.


Nearly 40 hours have slowly passed since school bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, heroically tried to prevent the kidnapping, but was shot to death by suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes, a former truck driver, police said.


Dykes boarded the bus Tuesday and said he wanted two boys, 6 to 8 years old. As the children piled to the back of the bus, Dykes, 65, allegedly shot Poland four times, then grabbed the child at random and fled, The Associated Press reported.


The primary concern in the community near Midland City, Ala., is now for the boy's safety. Dale County police have not identified the child.


"I believe in prayer, so I just pray that we can resolve this peacefully," Dale County sheriff Wally Olson said.






Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser/AP











Alabama Child Hostage Situation: School Bus Driver Killed Watch Video









American Hostages Escape From Algeria Terrorists Watch Video









Algeria Hostage Situation: Military Operation Mounted Watch Video





The boy is being held in a bunker about 8 feet below ground, where police say Dykes likely has enough food and supplies to remain underground for weeks. Dykes has been communicating with police through a pipe extending from the bunker to the surface.


It is unclear whether he has made any demands from the bunker-style shelter on his property.


The young hostage is a child with autism. Dykes has allowed the boy to watch television, and have some medication, police said


Multiple agencies have responded to the hostage situation, Dale County Sheriff Wally Olson said. The FBI has assumed the lead in the investigation, and SWAT teams were surrounding the bunker.


"A lot of law enforcement agencies here doing everything they possibly can to get this job done," Olson said.


Former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss said that authorities must proceed with caution.


"You make contact as quickly as you can, but also as gently as you can," he said. "You don't try to be assertive; you don't try to be aggressive."


Voss said patience is important in delicate situations such as this.


"The more patient approach they take, the less likely they are to make mistakes," he said.


"They need to move slowly to get it right, to communicate properly and slowly and gently unravel this."



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Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence on Jan. 30, 2013 (Transcript)



SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: We have more than 200 people here today and hundreds more watching on our committee web cast. I expect everybody in this room to be respectful of the senators and the witnesses speaking about this very serious subject.


That means I do not want applause for or against any position I might take or anybody else takes. The Capitol Police have been notified to remove any audience member who interferes with the orderly conduct of this important hearing.

This incidentally, is a warning I give at many hearings.

We’re going to hear a lot of different perspectives on gun violence.

And both Senator Grassley and I will give opening statements . But we have a former member of Congress here, Gabby Giffords, who’s going to give a brief message and -- and leave.

And Captain Kelly, thank you for your help in bringing your wife here.

Ms. Giffords?

GIFFORDS: OK . Thank you for inviting me here today. This is an important conversation for our children, for our communities, for Democrats and Republicans.

Speaking is difficult. But I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something.

It will be hard, but the time is now. You must act. Be bold, be courageous, Americans are counting on you.

Thank you.

LEAHY: Captain Kelly, do you want to help Ms. Giffords out? And we’ll give you a few moments and then...

(RECESS)

LEAHY: We return to the hearing.

LEAHY: And I -- I thank former Congressman (sic) Giffords and -- and her husband. We will be calling up the witnesses shortly. And Senator Grassley and I will give our opening statements.

You know, on December 14th, America’s heart was broken when 20 young children and six dedicated educators were murdered. This is the first Judiciary Committee hearing of the 113th Congress. And I want everybody here to join the discussion as part of a collective effort to find solutions, to help ensure that no family, no school, no community ever has to endure such a grievous tragedy again.

We have to come together today as Americans seeking common cause. I hope we can forego sloganeering and demagoguery and partisan recrimination. It’s too important for that. We should all be here as Americans. Every American abhors the recent tragedies. In just the last two years, an elementary school in Connecticut; a movie theater in Colorado; in a sacred place of worship in Wisconsin; in front of a shopping mall in Arizona. And Americans are looking to us for solutions and for action. This committee is a focal point for that process.

I’ve introduced a measure to provide law enforcement agencies with stronger tools against illegal gun trafficking. Others have proposed restrictions on military-style weapons and the size of ammunition clips. Others have proposed modifications to the background check system to keep guns out of the wrong hands while not unnecessarily burdening law-abiding citizens.

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BlackBerry 10 unveiled, with company name change






NEW YORK: BlackBerry launched its comeback effort Wednesday with a revamped platform and a pair of sleek new handsets, along with a company name change as part of a move to reinvent the smartphone maker.

Canadian-based Research in Motion said it had changed its name to BlackBerry as it launched the BlackBerry 10, the new platform aimed at helping the firm regain traction in a market now dominated by rivals.

"From this point forward RIM becomes BlackBerry," chief executive Thorsten Heins told a glitzy unveiling in New York, one of six global events for the product launch. "It is one brand, it is one promise."

The company unveiled two new devices for its new platform, one with a physical keyboard called the Q10, and a touchscreen handset dubbed Z10.

The new BlackBerry "will transform mobile communications into true mobile computing," Heins said.

"Today is a brand new day in the history of BlackBerry."

The launch is seen as critical to BlackBerry, which had been the dominant smartphone maker before Apple launched its iPhone and others began using the Google Android operating system.

RIM says the all-new system will break new ground by allowing customers to flip between applications seamlessly and without first passing through a home page, to boost efficiency and multitasking.

Another key asset of BlackBerry 10 is what RIM dubbed the "BlackBerry balance," a system that allows users to separate professional communications and applications from music, photographs and other personal items.

Such an option means that if a user changes job, his or her former company can disable the device's corporate side without affecting personal data.

RIM's recent performance on Wall Street suggests the market is open to the BlackBerry 10. Shares have risen more than 30 per cent since the start of the year, although they dropped back over the last two sessions.

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Gartner who specialises in consumer devices, said the aim of the launch "is to reinstill faith in the BlackBerry brand and capture both consumer and enterprises at the same time."

Milanesi said a successful launch will at least give them a shot to get into the game" but that BlackBerry has little room for error, after a launch delayed several months.

"They will not be forgiven for any mistakes," she said.

BlackBerry shares fell 4.4 per cent after the launch to US$14.98.

According to research firm IDC, BlackBerry's share of the global smartphone market slipped to 4.7 per cent in 2012, to 68 per cent for Android and 18.8 per cent for Apple's iOS.

- AFP/jc



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