In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...
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Lashkar Gah Journal: A Pristine Afghan Prison Faces a Murky Future
Label: World
Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Inmates at the Helmand Central Prison in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, in an outdoor area.
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The first thing one notices about the new prison here is the smell, or rather the absence of it. Helmand Central Prison does not reek of sewage or sweat or old clothes or rancid cooking oil, the typical odors of an Afghan lockup. The air smells, dare one say, fresh.
Also noteworthy are the bathroom floors, which are sparkling, and the outer walls, which are made of concrete, not mud, like so much of this country’s prison infrastructure.
Built in the insurgency’s southern heartland with $6.5 million from the British government, there is no doubt that Helmand Central Prison is impressive. The only question is how long it will stay that way once Western forces leave and Western money dwindles.
That prospect is not something that Col. Hajji Raz Mohammed, the deputy warden, even wanted to contemplate as he proudly walked visitors through every corner of the prison, the bathrooms included.
Asked what will happen when the British Provincial Reconstruction Team that is a few miles away packs up in the coming year or so, he squinted in the bright winter sunlight of the prison yard. “It’s very early to comment on this,” he said.
He went on to detail all that the British are supplying to the prison — air-conditioners, refrigerators and even computers that allow the inmates, many of them former Taliban affiliates, to learn PowerPoint and Excel. There is also the clinic that treats those with tuberculosis, depression and a variety of other illnesses. The British team even provided two minivans to act as ambulances for prisoners who need transport to the hospital.
As for the Afghan government, which has been managing the prison since mid-2011, it pays for the salaries of prison employees and food. Colonel Mohammed expressed grave doubts about whether the prison could keep up its standards solely with Afghan government backing.
“No, our government will not be able to afford this,” he said. “Our government is poor.”
If a prison is, in some measure, a mirror of the larger society, then the Helmand Central Prison offers a glimpse of southern Afghanistan just as the surge in Western troops is ending. It not only shows the largess and aspirations of the Western militaries, but also the fragility of their efforts against the Taliban, whose presence in the prison reflects its prevalence in the province.
In 2009, the British razed the run-down structure that used to house prisoners here, with its poor plumbing and its dirt yard that turned to mud in the rainy winter. The new prison is just the first piece of an ambitious complex that will include a modern juvenile detention center, a women’s prison and, with the aid of the Danish government, a rehabilitation center.
A walk through the prison with Colonel Mohammed reveals conditions far removed from the dungeonlike atmosphere that still exists in some places in the rest of the country. The prisoners, who wear traditional Afghan dress, live in groups of 8 to 10 in bunk rooms with the television tuned to local channels. Afghan news and music seemed to be favorites.
The hallways are swept clean, and the floors washed. The prison yard accommodates several hundred prisoners who sit in large groups, some reading the Koran, others taking literacy classes and still others standing in a line to use a communal cellphone — monitored by the intelligence service.
Colonel Mohammed said the prison had 37 surveillance cameras, which helped employees keep track of what was going on. When one breaks, “the P.R.T. pays to repair them,” he said. What will happen when the Provincial Reconstruction Team is no longer there? “We will do it,” Colonel Mohammed said, though he looked less than certain.
Gen. Bismullah Hamid, who runs Helmand Central and is described by the Westerners who work with him as a “visionary” in the Afghan prison system, recalled that when he was assigned to the prison, it was a squalid, crowded place filled with gangs and drugs. (Helmand Province leads Afghanistan in opium production.)
“Drug addicts were easily manipulated by subversive inmates, and they would start protests and rebellions,” he said.
Merry Christmas, America-Haters?
Label: TechnologyWhen TNT was preparing its annual special “Christmas in Washington” with the president of the United States, you’d think the last star musician they would consider to join the official caroling would be Psy, the South Korean rapper. What on Earth is Christmasy about this man’s invisible-horse-riding dance to his dorky disco-rap hit “Gangnam Style”? It’s not exactly the natural flip-side to “O Holy Night.” But TNT couldn’t resist this year’s YouTube sensation.
This inane publicity stunt backfired when the website Mediaite reported on Dec. 7 that Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang) had participated in a 2002 protest in which he crushed a model of an American tank with a microphone stand. But that’s nothing compared to the footage of a 2004 performance after a Korean missionary was slaughtered by Islamists in Iraq. These lyrics cannot be misunderstood.
“Kill those f—-ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives … Kill those f—-ing Yankees who ordered them to torture … Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers … Kill them all slowly and painfully.”
This isn’t just anti-American. It’s anti-human.
Guess where this story first surfaced in the American media? CNN, from the same corporate family tree as TNT. It was posted back on Oct. 6 on CNN’s iReport, an open-source online news feature that allows users to submit stories for CNN consideration.
The Korean one-hit wonder put out the usual abject careerist apology, but he weirdly said, “I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted.” Those darn lyrics and those darn people who misinterpret lyrics about killing Yankees’ mothers. It is like Barack Obama expressing regret for the awful things said about Susan Rice, ignoring the awful things said by Susan Rice.
Psy is now a millionaire. As Jim Treacher wrote at the Daily Caller: “So far he’s made over $ 8 million from the song, about $ 3 million of it from the people he once wanted to kill.” Brad Schaeffer at Big Hollywood noted his own father fought for South Korea’s independence in the Korean War: “Had it not been for ‘f——-g Yankees’ like my Dad, this now-wealthy South Korean wouldn’t be ‘Oppan Gangnam Style’ so much as ‘Starving Pyongyang Style.’” (Gangnam is a posh district in the South Korean capital of Seoul.)
Despite the controversy, neither the Obama White House nor the TNT brass felt it was necessary to send Psy packing before the Dec. 9 taping. On Saturday, ABC reporter Muhammad Lila merely repeated, “the White House says the concert will go on and that President Obama will attend, saying that they have no control over who performs at that concert.”
What moral cowardice. On Monday morning, another pliant publicist, NBC correspondent Peter Alexander, calmly relayed that the White House did take control on the Psy front — on its own “We The People” website, where the people may post petitions to the president for their fellow citizens to sign. A petition asking Obama to dump Psy from the Christmas concert was itself dumped. Alexander explained: “But that petition was removed because the rules say the petitions only apply to federal actions. And, of course, the President had no say over who the private charity chose to invite.”
This is double baloney. The White House hasn’t removed silly “federal action” petitions like the one asking to “Nationalize the Twinkie Industry,” or one to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” They removed one that they didn’t want people to sign.
As for Obama having “no say over” who appeared on the TNT show, the president could easily declare he wasn’t going to share a stage with this America-hater. Or he could have obviously placed one phone call to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (an Obama donor), and expressed the dismay of the President of the United States.
Instead, the Obamas came and honored Psy. Yes, the president honored a man who despised America enough to want its citizens slaughtered.
John Eggerton of Broadcasting and Cable magazine observed, “At the end of the taping, when the First Family customarily shakes hands and talks briefly with the performers, the First Lady gave Psy a hug, followed by a handshake from the President, who engaged Psy in a short, animated discussion — at one point Psy appeared to rock back with laughter — and patted the singer on the shoulder.”
I never thought I’d ever view a Christmas special featuring a hideous hater of America celebrated by the President of the United States.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
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Channing and Jenna Dewan-Tatum Expecting a Baby
Label: Lifestyle
Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog
12/17/2012 at 12:10 PM ET
Bauer Griffin
Channing Tatum is set to earn another title: Sexiest Dad Alive.
The actor and his wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum ”are pleased to announce that they are expecting the birth of their first child next year,” reps for the couple confirm to PEOPLE exclusively.
Crowned PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive in November, the Magic Mike star admitted he and the American Horror Story: Asylum actress, both 32, had babies on the brain, adding a family wasn’t too far off in their future.
“I’m ready; I think she’s ready,” Tatum told PEOPLE recently. “The first number that pops into my head is three, but I just want one to be healthy and then we’ll see where we go after that.”
Left up to Tatum, the couple — who wed in Malibu in 2009 — would be going the distance … all the way into the double digits. “It’s really easy for us guys to say, ‘I want like 15 kids,’” he noted. “Jenna will be like, ‘Well you better get another wife!’”
– Anya Leon with reporting by Julie Jordan and Antoinette Coulton
Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence
Label: HealthNEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.
Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.
"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.
High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.
Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.
"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.
"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.
Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.
Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.
She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.
"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."
After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.
__
AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5
Nasdaq up 1 percent on "cliff" talks hope
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 rose more than 1 percent on Monday as stocks added to gains after President Barack Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner met for talks on averting the "fiscal cliff".
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 82.30 points, or 0.63 percent, at 13,217.31. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 13.60 points, or 0.96 percent, at 1,427.18, after briefly rising more than 1 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 30.66 points, or 1.03 percent, at 3,002.00.
(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
North Korean Satellite Most Likely Dead, Astronomers Say
Label: World
The North Korean satellite launched into space last week is out of control and most likely dead, astronomers reported Monday. The apparent failure will not cause the spacecraft to fall quickly back to earth but represents a major setback in Pyongyang’s bid to portray the launching as a patriotic and technological success.
“It’s tumbling and we haven’t picked up any transmissions,” said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks global rocket launchings and space activity. “Those two things are most consistent with the satellite being entirely inactive at this point.”
North Korea’s state-run press, which was preoccupied on Monday with reporting on the somber one-year anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, the longtime leader, said nothing about the satellite’s dysfunction. It has been describing the satellite launch as a triumphal achievement of Mr. Kim’s successor, his son Kim Jong-un, done in the face of worldwide criticism and United Nations sanctions on the North’s ballistic missile program.
The satellite, said to be about the size of a washing machine, reportedly carries an onboard camera to observe the earth. That mission requires the spacecraft’s orbit to be rock-steady.
Dr. McDowell said the tumbling implies that onboard systems meant to control and stabilize the craft had failed.
He added that radio astronomers had picked up no signals from the satellite and that optical astronomers had observed it brightening and dimming as it slowly tumbled end over end.
“It’s clear that the rocket part of this mission worked very well for the North Koreans,” Dr. McDowell said in an interview. “They ended up in the right orbit. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the satellite failed either during the ascent or shortly afterwards.”
RIM begins BlackBerry 10 tests with business, government clients
Label: TechnologyTORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd said on Monday that it had begun a “beta testing” program that allows 120 companies and government departments to try out its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones before their global launch on January 30.
The Canadian company, which is trying to reverse a sharp decline in market share for the BlackBerry, said the program would enable so-called enterprise customers in business and government to size up the BB10.
Features of the BB10 include the ability to separate personal and business information so that the user can store both without compromising security.
RIM has struggled in recent years to hold on to its base of enterprise customers, which typically pay a higher subscription fee than consumers, as their employees push to use devices such as Apple Inc’s iPhone for business as well as personal communications.
“This is a crucial step for us in getting our large enterprise customers ready to support BlackBerry 10 at the point of launch date, as opposed to post-launch date,” Bryan Lee, senior director for enterprise accounts, said in a phone interview.
RIM is providing the software and handsets at no charge, and the companies do not have to buy anything once the trial is finished.
The company plans to release its quarterly results on Thursday, and analysts expect it to report its third straight loss as it struggles to sell its older devices.
RIM made its name selling mobile email devices to bankers, lawyers and other professionals before expanding to sell phones to consumers.
The company said the BB10 testers were from financial, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, media, and distribution industries and include 64 Fortune 500 companies, as well as government departments.
Lee would not identify any of the entities, beyond Integris Health and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which have both said they are testing the new devices.
The customers have installed test versions of RIM’s new server software, which manages iPhones and devices using Google Inc’s Android software as well as BlackBerrys, and will each receive two preproduction BlackBerry 10 handsets later this week.
RIM shares were down 2.1 percent at C$ 13.59 in morning Toronto Stock Exchange trading.
The stock has rallied from September’s multiyear lows around C$ 6.50 on a wave of optimism over the new devices, but the share price is still far below mid-2008 highs of around C$ 150.
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
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Kelly Clarkson Shows Off Her Canary Diamond Engagement Ring
Label: Lifestyle
Stylewatch
Style News Now
12/16/2012 at 11:25 AM ET
Kelly Clarkson on WhoSay
Looks like the ginormous carat club has a new member.
Kelly Clarkson showed off her engagement ring on WhoSay on Saturday, hours after announcing her engagement to Brandon Blackstock.
“Everyone has been asking about my engagement ring, so here it is,” she wrote. “It’s a yellow canary diamond with diamonds around it and Brandon designed it with Johnathon Arndt! They did an amazing job!”
Clarkson and Blackstock, a talent manager, began dating late last year. But by November, Clarkson was already eager for some bling. She told Ellen DeGeneres, “I mean, he’s got to put a ring on [it] at some point.”
Now that she has her rock, she’s already thinking wedding bands, too. As she wrote on Twitter, “I can’t wait to make Brandon’s ring with Johnathon as well!” Tell us: What do you think of Clarkson’s ring?
PHOTOS: SEE THE BIGGEST STAR ENGAGEMENT RINGS OF 2012!
Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence
Label: HealthNEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.
Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.
"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.
High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.
Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.
"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.
"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.
Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.
Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.
She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.
"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."
After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.
__
AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.
___
Online:
Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5
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