Bloody Cricket Bat Surfaces in Pistorius Case

Police in South Africa investigating the shooting death of model Reeva Steenkamp, allegedly by boyfriend and Paralympics champion Oscar Pistorius, consider a bloody cricket bat to be a central piece of evidence, according to South Africa's City Press newspaper.

Pistorius, 26, was arrested Thursday and charged with killing Steenkamp, 29, at his home in the South African capitol of Pretoria. His family says the shooting was an accident. He is in jail awaiting a bail hearing Tuesday.

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

The City Press reported Sunday that police are investigating different scenarios involving the bat. Among them is the possibility that the flat-fronted bat was used in a violent argument before the shooting.

The paper also reported that Pistorius might have first shot Steenkamp in the bedroom, and that she possibly fled to the bathroom where she was shot three more times through the door.

When Pistorius' family arrived at the scene before paramedics, they saw him carrying Steenkamp down the stairs and performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her, City Press reported.

Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images; Mike Holmes/The Herald/Gallo Images/Getty Images

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Pistorius, who is nicknamed the "blade runner" because of the carbon-fiber blades on which he runs, has canceled all his upcoming racing appearances, his agent said Sunday night.

The decision was made to "allow Oscar to concentrate on the upcoming legal proceedings and to help and support all those involved as they try to come to terms with this very difficult and distressing situation," Peet Van Zyl of In Site Athlete Management said in a statement.

Pistorius' father was quoted overnight in the South African paper The Sunday Times saying his countrymen are destroying a national icon.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with our society," Henke Pistorius said. "We build people up into heroes, who overcome immense challenges, only to take great glee in breaking them down."

Family and friends rallied to Pistorius' defense, saying they believe the Paralympic gold medalist shot the South African model by accident after he mistook her for an intruder.

"We have no doubt here that there's no substance for the allegations," uncle Arnold Pistorius said.

Pistorius' best friend, Justin Divaris, told reporters that he received a call from a distraught Pistorius just before 4 a.m. Feb. 14 in which he said there had been a terrible accident, and that he shot Steenkamp.

If convicted, Pistorius could face at least 25 years in jail.
A memorial service for Steenkamp will be held in Port Elizabeth Tuesday evening. Her body has been flown back for the service before being cremated, her family told local media.

Speaking with the media for the first time since her daughter's death in a phone interview with The Sunday Times from her home in Seaview, Port Elizabeth, June Steenkamp said,
"Why? Why my little girl? Why did this happen? Why did he do this? What for?"

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Football: City swamp Leeds in FA Cup romp

MANCHESTER, United Kingdom: A Sergio Aguero brace was the highlight of Manchester City's comfortable 4-0 FA Cup fifth round victory over Leeds on Sunday, a win that will lift, at least temporarily, speculation about the future of manager Roberto Mancini.

With City 12 points behind Premier League leaders Manchester United, the FA Cup remains Mancini's most realistic hope of winning silverware this season and Aguero's efforts, together with goals from Yaya Toure and Carlos Tevez, carried his team through to the last eight with the minimum of fuss.

"I think it was really important to win this game. If you score two goals within the first 20 minutes it is easier," said Mancini.

"Our strikers need to continue to score like they did today. If they do that, we can have other chances."

City wasted no time in taking out recent league frustrations on their Championship visitors and, even before their fifth minute opening goal, Leeds 'keeper Jamie Ashdown had been forced to race from his area to beat Aguero to an under-hit back-pass.

Neil Warnock's players were still struggling to come to terms with the task in hand when Yaya Toure left them with a mountain to climb.

The Ivory Coast international exchanged the ball with both David Silva and Tevez in a flurry of passes before advancing into the area and comfortably beating Ashdown and an attempt by Lee Peltier to clear off his line.

It was the start of a half of almost unrelenting City dominance with Tom Lees' timely tackle stopping Aguero, Silva flashing a shot wide and Tevez shooting into the side netting from an Aguero pull-back, all in quick succession.

Finally, after 14 minutes, Leeds succumbed to the inevitable after Lees was harshly judged to have pulled back Aguero on one of his trademark snaking runs into the area.

The Argentinian international took the spot kick himself, calmly converting past Ashdown.

Leeds finally launched a meaningful attack of their own as El Hadji Diouf headed just over from Sam Byram's 15th minute cross.

But, apart from City goalkeeper Costel Pantilimon being forced to punch away a 45th minute free-kick from Ross McCormack, the remainder of the tie quickly degenerated into a question of how many City would score.

It took until the sixth minute of the second half for City to finally find the third goal that rendered any prospect of a Leeds fightback out of the question.

Aguero played a one-two with Silva before continuing a sprint towards the left-hand by-line from where his cross was met on the goal line by Tevez, who forced the ball into the open net.

As City pressed on Yaya Toure might also have extended the lead when he met Silva's cross with a powerful shot which Ashdown parried directly to substitute Jack Rodwell who could only head against the cross-bar with an open goal at his mercy.

As Leeds supporters expressed their growing unrest with manager Warnock, the afternoon might have turned even uglier for the mid-table Championship side had Aguero made decent connection with an eight-yard shot which dribbled through to the goalkeeper.

Aguero finally added the fourth goal that City's superiority merited after 73 minutes, following Silva's well-timed pass picking out the Argentinian's run beyond the Leeds defence.

Aguero did the rest with a confident finish past the advancing Ashdown.

-AFP/ac

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Lokpal, right to reject can eliminate graft: Anna Hazare

HYDERABAD: Declaring that he would mobilize six crore people over next one and a half years for his anti-graft campaign, Anna Hazare on Sunday said Jan Lokpal alone cannot root out corruption and called for comprehensive electoral reforms and empowering of village-level bodies.

Addressing a public meeting, he said his fight was for changing the entire system and called upon youths to join hands with him. The 75-year-old said Jan Lokpal can control 50 to 55 per cent corruption.

"What about the remaining corruption? That is why we are demanding right to reject a candidate (in the elections)," he said.

"If all five contesting candidates in an election are goondas, whom the people will choose? We are saying that you provide an option to the voters to reject them. If maximum number of voters reject the candidates, the election should be cancelled and these five should not be allowed to contest again," Anna Hazare said.

He felt this reform is a must to check corruption in elections and pointed out that a candidate is spending Rs 5 crore to Rs 6 crore in each election to bribe voters.

"They get power by using money, and money by using power. There is need to put an end to this vicious circle," he said.

He vowed to continue fight for Jan Lokpal and alleged that the government is not sincere in bringing the anti-graft legislation.

Hazare explained that the government initially turned down the demand to involve people's representatives in bringing the legislation. He also referred to the government's reluctance to bring middle and lower-level bureaucrats under Lokpal.

"For the next one-and-half years, I will visit all states to create awareness. I don't know if I will be able to awaken all 120 crore people but if I go around, I can mobilize six crore people who can force the government to change the system," he said.

Hazare claimed that the nation-wide campaign launched by Janatantra Morcha from Patna last month evoked good public response. He told the gathering that Morcha would be built from village level and that every person involved in it would be a leader.

He also clarified that nobody in the Morcha would be allowed to collect money.

Stating that he had been carrying on the fight for the last 30 years, the social activist said he had no fear of death. "I will feel honoured if I die while serving the society and the country," he added.

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Pictures: What the Presidents Brought Home

Photograph by Bill Ray, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

When paleontologist Paul Olsen (pictured left, in 1970 at 17 years old) first started looking for dinosaurs in 1967, he never dreamed that he'd end up the subject of White House memos between President Richard Nixon and his senior advisers.

Or that one of the dinosaur footprints he discovered would find its way into a presidential collection.

But that's exactly what happened when Olsen and his friend Tony Lessa (right) successfully lobbied for the creation of a park in 1970 near Livingston, New Jersey (map).

The future park, located in a quarry owned by Walter Kidde Precision Instruments, was a budding paleontologist's dream.

The area was covered in dinosaur footprints, such as ones made by Eubrontes gigantis (pictured), and some of them were more than 200 million years old.

"The footprints are very well preserved in that particular spot," said Olsen, now at Columbia University in New York. And the arrangement of some of them—many small footprints associated with one larger set—indicated behaviors that included parental care, he said.

It took Olsen and Lessa two and a half years to get the area designated as a park, but once they did, an Olsen family friend started writing letters to the White House to see if the boys could meet the President.

"[Presidential speechwriter] William Safire said he didn't want President Nixon to be associated with the concept of a dinosaur," said Olsen. The White House staff discussed this while dealing with the Vietnam War, going so far as to write memos on the situation, he said.

Olsen and Lessa never got their meeting with the President. But Nixon ended up sending the teenagers presidential commendations.

Olsen sent the President a cast of the E. gigantis footprint as a thank you. The cast now resides at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.

The actual footprint fossils, stored in a shed at the park, have walked off. "No one knows what happened to them," Olsen said.

February 17, 2013

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WH Chief of Staff on Leaked Immigration Plan: Let's Make Sure It Doesn't Have to Be Proposed

Feb 17, 2013 9:06am

Responding to sharp criticism from Sen. Marco Rubio over the leaked White House immigration proposal, President Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough pushed back this morning on “This Week,” in an interview with ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, saying it was up to those in Congress to ensure the president’s proposal would not be sent to Congress.

“He [Marco Rubio] says its ‘dead on arrival’ if it’s proposed. Well let’s make sure that it doesn’t have to be proposed,” McDonough said. “Let’s make sure that that group up there, the gang of eight, makes the good progress on these efforts as much as they say they want to.”

After the White House proposal was leaked, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is currently part of a bipartisan group at work on legislation to overhaul the immigration system of the United States, issued a statement saying “President Obama’s leaked immigration proposal is disappointing to those of us working on a serious solution. The President’s bill repeats the failures of past legislation.” He went on to say that if it was actually proposed, it would be “dead on arrival” in Congress.

Karl asked McDonough for a response, but said he was not interested in engaging in a political “scrum” with Rubio.

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Tennis: Del Potro reaches second Rotterdam tennis final

ROTTERDAM: Juan Martin del Potro dispatched Bulgarian youngster Grigor Dimitrov 6-4, 6-4 on Saturday to move into his second straight Rotterdam Open final.

The Argentine winner, seeded second and now the top-ranked player left after Friday's shock elimination of Roger Federer by Julien Benneteau, will play either the Swiss star's conqueror or fifth seed Gilles Simon.

Del Potro, who lost the final to Federer here a year ago, lifted a pair of indoor titles last autumn in Vienna and Basel.

The Argentine fired six aces in his 75-minute win, breaking once per set in his tidy victory in a first meeting with the 21-year-old Dimitrov.

"I'm glad I was able to beat him, he's a newcomer with a lot of potential," said the winner, bidding for his 14th career title as he plays Rotterdam for the second time.

"I used my serve well today."

Del Potro will be playing in his 19th final at the ATP level.

He reached the final hurdle after holding serve in 40 games without a loss.

"I improved my game since the quarter-finals, but if I want to win the title I have to get that little bit better. I need to play at 100 per cent."

Dimitrov had been looking for his second career ATP final after losing in Brisbane last month to Andy Murray.

The Argentine improved to 6-1 this season while Dimitrov dropped to 9-5.

- AFP/fa

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Irish hospital's doctors failed to treat Savita Halappanavar, leaked death probe report says

LONDON: Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar died as a result of a litany of failures by hospital staff, a leaked draft of a probe report said, proving her family's claim that her death was avoidable.

The report by Ireland's health ministry revealed that doctors caring for the 31-year-old dentist seriously failed to investigate, recognize and treat the infection which led to her death.

Savita died at Galway University Hospital last October 28 after she was admitted to the hospital on October 21 with severe backpain. She was 17-weeks pregnant and was found to be miscarrying.

An autopsy found she had died of septicaemia. The leaked health service executive (HSE) report published by Independent newspaper "proves" her family's claim that her death was avoidable as she had asked for an abortion several times before she died.

Doctors had said their "hands were tied" due to Ireland's strict anti-abortion laws as they could still detect a foetal heartbeat.

According to the leaked document, extracts of which were reported by the Irish media, the infection which led to Savita's death was not diagnosed for three days and that staff should have considered performing an abortion even before the patient asked for it.

Other failures included tests showing possible blood infection not being followed up by staff and general lack of clarity as her condition grew progressively worse.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanvar said he was in no "condition to make any statement. The family is shocked about the report being leaked".

His solicitor, Gerard O'Donnell said it is essential that he is given an opportunity to ensure there were no inaccuracies in the report on his wife's death at Galway University Hospital last year and demanded a copy of the HSE report before it is finalized.

"Here he is listening to the report into his wife's death being bandied about on the public airwaves and he hadn't even had a chance to look at it ... It is very insensitive that this happened to say the least ... However, from what has been reported as being taken from extracts from the draft report, it looks like what Praveen has said will be borne out. If what have been published really are extracts, then they appear to be accurate," he said.

Irish minister for health, James Reilly, has offered to provide Praveen with the final report before it is published but O'Donnell said that would be too late.

The HSE inquiry into the Indian national's death was established in November 2012 under the chairmanship of Prof Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George's Hospital, University of London, who is expected to present its official findings by the end of this month.

The inquiry team at first included three staff members from the hospital in Galway but they were later removed and replaced following objections by Praveen.

The latest leaked draft report is dated December 27 and is the second major leak since a revelation last month that medical records confirmed Savita had requested a termination.

The full inquest into Savita's death is expected to begin on April 8 at Galway Courthouse but it may be delayed as requests for key documents from the HSE on behalf of Savita's husband have allegedly been ignored.

The case has re-ignited the debate around the Republic of Ireland's stringent anti-abortion laws and the country's Fine Gael-Labour coalition has said it would bring in legislation and regulation on the issue by the middle of this year.

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Picture Archive: Making Mount Rushmore, 1935-1941

Photograph from Rapid City Chamber of Commerce/National Geographic

There's no such thing as Presidents' Day.

According to United States federal government code, the holiday is named Washington's Birthday, and has been since it went nationwide in 1885.

But common practice is more inclusive. The holiday expanded to add in other U.S. presidents in the 1960s, and the moniker Presidents' Day became popular in the 1980s and stuck. It may be that George Washington (b. February 22, 1732) andAbraham Lincoln (b. February 12, 1809) still get the lion's share of attention—and appear in all the retail sale ads—on the third Monday in February, but the popular idea is that all 44 presidents get feted.

Mount Rushmore is a lot like that one day a year writ large—and in granite. It's carved 60 feet (18 meters) tall and 185 feet (56 meters) wide, from Washington's right ear to Lincoln's left.

The monument's sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, grew up in Idaho, a first-generation American born to Danish parents. He studied art in France and became good friends with Auguste Rodin. Borglum mostly worked in bronze, but in the early 1910s he was hired to carve the likenesses of Confederate leaders into Stone Mountain in Georgia.

He was about to be fired from that job for creative differences about the same time that a South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson had an idea. Robinson wanted to have a monument carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, maybe Western historical figures like Chief Red Cloud and Lewis and Clark, each on their own granite spire. (Plan a road trip in the Black Hills.)

Robinson hired Borglum and gave him carte blanche. Borglum was looking for something with national appeal, so he chose to depict four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Borglum wanted to represent the first 150 years of the nation's history, choosing four presidents as symbols of their respective time periods. He took a tour of western South Dakota, searching for an ideal canvas.

The sculptor was looking for three things: a surface strong enough to sculpt, a mountain big enough to hold several figures, and a mountain face that received morning sunlight. Mount Rushmore fit the bill and was already part of a national forest, so it was easy to set aside as a national memorial.

Work started in 1927. Calvin Coolidge attended the dedication ceremony. It took 14 years to finish the carving, conducted mostly in summertime because of the area's harsh winters.

There were approximately 30 workers on the mountain at any give time. In total about 400 had worked on it by the time the monument was finished. Though the project involved thousands of pounds of dynamite and perilous climbs, not a single person died during the work.

Borglum himself died of natural causes in 1941, though, just six months before the project was declared "closed as is" by Congress that Halloween. His son Lincoln—named for his father's favorite president—took over.

In the photo above, a worker refines the details of Washington's left nostril.

About 90 percent of the mountain was carved using dynamite, which could get within 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of the final facial features. For those last few inches, workers used what was known as the honeycomb method: Jackhammer workers pounded a series of three-inch-deep holes followed up by chiselers who knocked off the honeycomb pieces to get the final shape. Then carvers smoothed the "skin's" surface.

—Johnna Rizzo

February 16, 2013

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Vatican Raises Possibility of Early March Conclave

The Vatican raised the possibility Saturday that the conclave to elect the next pope might start sooner than March 15, the earliest date possible under current rules that require a 15-20 day waiting period after the papacy becomes vacant.

Vatican spokesman The Rev. Federico Lombardi said that the Vatican rules on papal succession are open to interpretation and that "this is a question that people are discussing."

"It is possible that church authorities can prepare a proposal to be taken up by the cardinals on the first day after the papal vacancy" to move up the start of conclave, Lombardi said.

He explained that the 15-20 day rule is in place to allow time for the arrival of "all those (cardinals) who are absent" to take part in the conclave in the usual circumstances of convening after a pope dies. But in this case, the cardinals already know that this pontificate will end on Feb. 28 with the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and therefore can get to Rome in plenty of time to take part in the conclave, Lombardi said.

L'Osservatore Romano Vatican Pool/Getty Images

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The date of the conclave's start is important because Holy Week begins March 24, with Palm Sunday Mass followed by Easter Sunday on March 31. In order to have a new pope in place in time for the most solemn liturgical period on the church calendar, he would need to be installed as pope by Sunday, March 17. Given the tight time-frame, speculation has mounted that some sort of arrangement would be made to start the conclave earlier than a strict reading of the law would allow.

Questions about the start of the conclave have swirled ever since Benedict announced on Feb. 11 that he would retire, the first pontiff in 600 years to abdicate rather than stay in office until death. As a result, his decision has created a host of questions about how the Vatican will proceed, given that its procedures for the so-called "sede vacante" — or vacant seat — period between papacies won't begin with a pope's death.

Lombardi also gave more details about Benedict's final audiences and plans for retirement, saying already 35,000 people have requested tickets for his final general audience to be held in St. Peter's Square on Feb. 27. He said Benedict would spend about two months in the papal summer retreat at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome immediately after his abdication, to allow enough time for renovations to be completed on his retirement home — a converted monastery inside the Vatican walls.

That means Benedict would be expected to return to the Vatican, no longer as pope, around the end of April or beginning of May, Lombardi said.

He was asked if and when the pope would meet with his successor and whether he would participate in his installation Mass; like many open questions about the end of Benedict's papacy, both issues simply haven't yet been resolved, Lombardi said.

———

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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US Q4 industrial output stronger than thought: Fed

WASHINGTON: US industrial production fell in January but the final quarter of last year was much stronger than originally thought, the Federal Reserve reported on Friday.

January's production contracted 0.1 per cent, and manufacturing output fell 0.4 per cent.

But industrial production as a whole expanded at a 2.6 per cent annual pace in the October-December 2012 quarter, compared to the previous estimate of just 1.0 per cent, and manufacturing expanded 1.9 per cent, compared to the previous estimate of 0.2 per cent.

That suggested that the initial government estimate of an 0.1 per cent contraction in the economy last quarter could be revised upward.

Manufacturing output in December was revised up to 1.1 per cent and November 1.7 per cent.

January's production was hit mainly by a 3.9 per cent contraction in automotive products, while energy production surged 3.1 per cent.

- AFP/xq

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