Chavez makes surprise return to Venezuela

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a surprise return from Cuba on Monday more than two months after surgery for cancer that has jeopardized his 14-year rule of the South American OPEC member.

The 58-year-old socialist leader's homecoming will fuel supporters' hopes he could return to active rule but there was no new information on his medical state and Chavez might be simply hoping to smooth a transition.

After a six-hour operation in Cuba on December 11, Chavez had not been seen or heard in public until photos were published of him on Friday.

"We have arrived back in the Venezuelan fatherland. Thanks, my God! Thanks, my beloved people! Here we will continue the treatment," Chavez said via Twitter after flying in.

There had been speculation Chavez was not well enough to travel despite wanting to return for continued treatment for the disease he was first diagnosed with in mid-2011.

But Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Chavez flew in at about 2:30 a.m. local time (2 a.m. ET) from Havana and was in a military hospital in Caracas, where a crowd was gathering.

"I remain attached to Christ and trusting in my nurses and doctors," Chavez also tweeted. "Onwards to victory forever! We will live and we will conquer!"

He added his thanks to Cuban leaders Raul and Fidel Castro for his treatment there.

FIREWORKS MARK RETURN

Chavez's arrival thrilled supporters in the nation of 29 million people, where his common touch and welfare policies have made him an idol to the poor.

"It's fabulous news, the best thing possible," Chavez's cousin, Guillermo Frias, told Reuters from the president's rural birthplace in Barinas state. "Venezuela was waiting for him, everyone wants to see him. Welcome home! Thank God he's back!"

Fireworks could be heard going off in some Caracas neighborhoods as news spread and celebrations began among "Chavistas."

Government ministers were jubilant with one singing "He's back, he's back!" live on state TV. They asked Chavez's euphoric supporters to respect the peace of patients at the military hospital.

Chavez's arrival implied some improvement in his condition, at least enough to handle a flight of several hours.

But aides have emphasized in recent days his state remains delicate. "It's a complex, difficult situation, but Chavez is battling and fighting for his life," Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said during the weekend as he described a recent visit to Chavez.

The December operation in Havana was his fourth for the cancer first detected in his pelvic area in June 2011.

USING TUBE

On Friday, the government published photos showing Chavez lying in a hospital. Officials said he was breathing through a tracheal tube and struggling to speak.

Chavez's pre-dawn return was a typical surprise move for the former soldier whose rule has combined constant political theatrics with thundering anti-U.S. rhetoric, tough treatment of opponents and lavish spending of oil revenues on the poor.

Opponents have been decrying government secrecy over Chavez's condition, and some have called for a formal declaration that he is unfit to rule. That would trigger a new presidential election within 30 days, probably between Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver, is Chavez's preferred successor and would be favorite to win a close vote in such a scenario.

"Uncertainty over a possible presidential election remains intact, despite the president's return," Venezuelan political analyst Luis Vicente Leon said.

After winning re-election in October last year, and wrongly declaring himself cured, Chavez was unable to attend his own swearing-in ceremony in January. To the fury of his foes, Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that he remained president and could be sworn in later.

That could now happen at the military hospital.

"Now the president is back, there can be no doubt about the democratic institutions working in Venezuela," Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said.

"There were some who dream of unseating Chavez and the revolution, but here we always said Chavez is the president elected and re-elected by will of the Venezuelan people."

Chavez's return will eclipse national debate over a recent devaluation of the local currency. It has proved highly popular among Venezuelans but opposition parties see it as evidence of economic incompetence by the government.

Unlike previous returns to Venezuela after treatment, state media showed no images of Chavez this time.

His lengthy absence in Cuba had fuelled a long-held opposition accusation that Venezuela's government was being manipulated and directed from Havana. Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is a political mentor and father figure to Chavez and Castro visited him regularly in the hospital.

Some 20 Venezuelan students have spent the past four days chained up close to the Cuban Embassy in Caracas in protest of what they see as interference from Havana in internal affairs.

Capriles welcomed Chavez back but pointedly said he hoped it would mean a return to order in government and attention to Venezuelans' daily problems.

(Additional reporting by Mario Naranjo; Editing by Angus MacSwan, James Dalgleish and Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuelas-chavez-makes-surprise-return-home-cuba-ministers-094812839.html

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Judge blocks NYC from Ken Burns film footage

NEW YORK (AP) ? A federal judge on Tuesday blocked New York City from getting footage gathered by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns in research for his movie about the five men exonerated in the Central Park jogger rape case.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis said the city had failed to show him a concern so compelling to trump the "precious rights of freedom of speech and the press" when it last fall requested outtakes and other materials from the film "The Central Park Five."

The request was connected to a $250 million federal lawsuit filed by the men against the city nine years ago after their sentences were vacated. The attack on a 28-year-old investment banker occurred in April 1989, when she was found in the park after being beaten and raped while jogging. She was in a coma for 12 days and was left with permanent damage. The men were exonerated after a man already jailed for other crimes confessed, and DNA evidence supported his claim.

Ellis rejected arguments by the city that Florentine Films and filmmakers Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns were not independent journalists entitled to reporter's privilege.

He said Florentine had "established its independence in the making of the film" and may claim the privilege.

He also said the city had failed to adequately address the requirements of relevance and significance of the materials it sought and had failed to demonstrate they are not available from another source.

City attorney Celeste Koeleveld said city lawyers were "disappointed and reviewing our options."

"While journalistic privilege under the law is very important, we firmly believe it did not apply here. This film is a one-sided advocacy piece that depicts the plaintiffs' version of events as undisputed fact. It is our view that we should be able to view the complete interviews, not just those portions that the filmmakers chose to include," the lawyer said in a statement.

Burns said that he and his co-filmmakers are "grateful for this important decision."

"This adds a layer of important protection to journalists and filmmakers everywhere," he said.

His lawyer, John Siegal, called it a "marvelous decision for the media industry generally and documentary filmmakers in particular."

In a declaration submitted to the court in November, Burns called the city's position "deeply disturbing for documentarians and reporters ? and the public at large" and "a troubling attempt to expand the power and role of city government and to reduce the legal protection afforded reporters."

He said the filmmakers made statements after the documentary was made urging the city to settle with the plaintiffs and "close this painful chapter in their lives and the life of the city."

But he said the opinion resulted from the reporting for the film.

"By stating this view, we have not forfeited our journalistic integrity any more than any author or columnist or filmmaker who espouses a point-of-view about a story he or she is reporting," he wrote.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-02-19-Central%20Park%20Jogger/id-bf642de819e641c9800c2949bd1d32c7

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Forging a new periodic table using nanostructures: Artificial atoms and bonds provide a new set of building blocks for future materials

Feb. 17, 2013 ? Northwestern University's Chad A. Mirkin, a leader in nanotechnology research and its application, has developed a completely new set of building blocks that is based on nanoparticles and DNA. Using these tools, scientists will be able to build -- from the bottom up, just as nature does -- new and useful structures.

Mirkin will discuss his research in a session titled "Nucleic Acid-Modified Nanostructures as Programmable Atom Equivalents: Forging a New Periodic Table" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston.

"We have a new set of building blocks," Mirkin said. "Instead of taking what nature gives you, we can control every property of the new material we make. We've always had this vision of building matter and controlling architecture from the bottom up, and now we've shown it can be done."

Using nanoparticles and DNA, Mirkin has built more than 200 different crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. Some of the lattice types can be found in nature, but he also has built new structures that have no naturally occurring mineral counterpart.

Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering. He is director of Northwestern's International Institute for Nanotechnology.

Mirkin can make new materials and arrangements of particles by controlling the size, shape, type and location of nanoparticles within a given particle lattice. He has developed a set of design rules that allow him to control almost every property of a material.

New materials developed using his method could help improve the efficiency of optics, electronics and energy storage technologies. "These same nanoparticle building blocks have already found wide-spread commercial utility in biology and medicine as diagnostic probes for markers of disease," Mirkin added.

With this present advance, Mirkin uses nanoparticles as "atoms" and DNA as "bonds." He starts with a nanoparticle, which could be gold, silver, platinum or a quantum dot, for example. The core material is selected depending on what physical properties the final structure should have.

He then attaches hundreds of strands of DNA (oligonucleotides) to the particle. The oligonucleotide's DNA sequence and length determine how bonds form between nanoparticles and guide the formation of specific crystal lattices.

"This constitutes a completely new class of building blocks in materials science that gives you a type of programmability that is extraordinarily versatile and powerful," Mirkin said. "It provides nanotechnologists for the first time the ability to tailor properties of materials in a highly programmable way from the bottom up."

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/biochemistry/~3/LC2rBqkSRgU/130217134250.htm

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Thomas Mulcair joins Weibo, world?s largest Chinese social network

Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is reaching out to Canada?s Chinese-speaking residents by going to where they (or at least some of them) are: Sina Weibo.

The Chinese-language social network is used by nearly 400 million users worldwide, and while Canada-specific numbers aren?t available, a share of that is likely to come from the one-million-plus speakers of Chinese languages identified in the 2011 census.

More Related to this Story

?Weibo reaches out to the vast and growing number of Chinese-Canadians on the Internet,? Mr. Mulcair said in a statement. ?It?s a way to connect with them directly and hear the issues they face. I?m excited to join this large online community and I look forward to engaging with them.?

Mr. Mulcair is the first prominent federal politician to join the Twitter-like site, though he follows in the footsteps of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertston and celebrities such as figure skater Patrick Chan.

Both Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Robertson rely on staffers to translate their updates.

Canada?s embassy in Beijing joined Weibo in June of 2011. And the Xinhua news service reported last year on Waterloo, Ont., Mayor Brenda Halloran joining the site.

Weibo has had its share of controversies. It has been more willing than other social networks to censor its users, allowing it to survive in a country where the government seeks to control online conversations.

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Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/thomas-mulcair-joins-weibo-worlds-largest-chinese-social-network/article8791564/?cmpid=rss1

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Huge asteroid won't strike Earth on Friday. But what about the next time?

There's no chance that the 150-foot-wide?asteroid 2012 DA14 will strike our planet, but it's only a matter of time before a large space rock does, say scientists.?

By Mike Wall,?SPACE.com / February 15, 2013

A simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system on Friday. The 150-foot object will pass within 17,000 miles of the Earth.

JPL-Caltech/NASA/AP

Enlarge

Today's super-close asteroid flyby should be a wakeup call, spurring humanity to keep better track of the millions of space rocks whizzing through Earth's neighborhood, some scientists say.

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There's no chance the 150-foot-wide (45 meters)?asteroid 2012 DA14?will hit Earth on its closest approach today (Feb. 15) at 2:24 p.m. EST (1924 GMT). But it will cruise within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of our planet, marking the closest encounter with such a large space rock that researchers have ever known about in advance.

Some scientists hope the flyby serves as a warning shot, reminding folks that Earth sits in a cosmic shooting gallery and that it's just a matter of time before we suffer a major impact ? unless we take action.

"This close approach could just as easily have been an impact," Dan Durda, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.,?wrote in a blog post?Wednesday (Feb. 13).

"With many tens of thousands of undiscovered objects this size roaming our neighborhood, it?s only a matter of time before one of them booms through our atmosphere rather than skating through our planet-circling constellation of satellites," added Durda, who also serves on the board of directors of the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to predicting and preventing devastating asteroid strikes. [Asteroid 2012 DA14's Flyby: Complete Coverage]

Durda's point was rammed home early Friday morning when a?brilliant fireball exploded?in the skies over Russia's Chelyabinsk region, which is about 930 miles (1,500 km) east of Moscow. The blast damaged hundreds of buildings and wounded perhaps 1,000 people, according to media reports.

Scientists think the Russian fireball was caused by an object weighing about 10 tons. For comparison, 2012 DA14 tips the scales at about 140,000 tons. The two space rocks are completely unrelated, NASA researchers said.

Millions of space rocks

Earth has been pummeled by asteroids throughout its 4.5-billion-year history. Perhaps the most famous impact came 65 million years ago, when a 6-mile-wide (10 km) behemoth smashed into our planet and?wiped out the dinosaurs.

The good news is that another such catastrophic impact does not appear to be in the offing anytime soon. NASA researchers have mapped out the paths of more than 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 km) across, which could threaten human civilization if they hit us. Not one is on a collision course with our planet in the foreseeable future.

But the numbers get worse from there. Observations by NASA's WISE space telescope suggest that about 4,700asteroidsat least 330 feet (100 m) wide come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits.

So far, astronomers have spotted less than 30 percent of these large space rocks, which could destroy an area the size of a state if they slammed into Earth. And they've identified just 1 percent of the objects that are about the size of 2012 DA14 or bigger, B612 officials have said.

Such asteroids are capable of inflicting serious damage on a local scale, as the "Tunguska Event" illustrates. In 1908, a 130-foot-wide (40 m) asteroid exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, flattening about 825 square miles (2,137 square km) of forest.

Astronomers think, all together 1 million or more near-Earth asteroids are out there, cruising silently through the dark depths of space. About 9,600 have been discovered to date.

"It is actually difficult to look for these things," said Paul Dimotakis of Caltech in Pasadena, who is part of a team studying the feasibility of capturing and retrieving a near-Earth asteroid for future study and potential use.

Dimotakis notes that it's tough to spot asteroids between Earth and the sun, because the star's glare drowns out the relatively tiny objects from our perspective here on Earth. So researchers often point their instruments in the other direction, spotting more-distant space rocks that generally pose less of a threat. The ones that likely hold more potential risk are left in the dark of sorts.

"It's like the man who lost the keys and is looking where there is light, not where the keys were lost," Dimotakis told SPACE.com. [The 7 Strangest Asteroids in the Solar System]

New space telescope needed

Dimotakis says humanity should place an asteroid-hunting telescope near the orbit of Venus, where it could look outward and scan Earth's neighborhood without having to fight the sun's overwhelming glare.

The B612 Foundation agrees and is working to make it happen. The organization is developing a?space telescope called Sentinel, which is slated to launch in 2017 or 2018 and eventually settle into a Venus-like orbit around the sun.

In 5 1/2 years of operation, Sentinel should find about 500,000 near-Earth asteroids, including all of the remaining mountain-size space rocks that could potentially end civilization and roughly 90 percent of the asteroids big enough to wipe out an entire state, B612 officials have said.

The main goal is to spot the really dangerous asteroids decades before they may hit us, giving humanity plenty of time to mount a?deflection mission? for example, to launch a gravity-tractor probe that would fly alongside the asteroid for years, nudging it off course via a tiny gravitational tug.

"Rather than playing the odds of time, wouldn?t it be far better to be able to know, with some reasonable certainty, that we?ve cataloged the entire population of potentially hazardous asteroids?" Durda wrote. "With such a catalog in hand, we'd either know we're safe from disastrous impacts for the foreseeable future or at least be able to plan ahead for any known to be on our near-term cosmic planning calendar."

Editor's note:?If you snap a photo of asteroid 2012 DA14, or any other amazing night sky object, and you'd like to share it for a possible story or image gallery, please send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at?spacephotos@space.com.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?or SPACE.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook?and?Google+.?

Copyright 2013?SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/7cUaa6UojgM/Huge-asteroid-won-t-strike-Earth-on-Friday.-But-what-about-the-next-time

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Syria: Hundreds taken in tit-for-tat kidnappings

This citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows anti-Syrian regime protesters holding a caricature placard during a demonstration, at Kafr Nabil town, in Idlib province, northern Syria, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. Heavy fighting for control of the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and a major military air base nearby has killed some 150 rebels and government soldiers over the past two days, activists said Friday. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN)

This citizen journalism image provided by Edlib News Network, ENN, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows anti-Syrian regime protesters holding a caricature placard during a demonstration, at Kafr Nabil town, in Idlib province, northern Syria, Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. Heavy fighting for control of the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and a major military air base nearby has killed some 150 rebels and government soldiers over the past two days, activists said Friday. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN)

BEIRUT (AP) ? Pro-government gunmen have kidnapped more than 300 people in northwestern Syria in retaliation for the abduction of 42 Shiite Muslims this week, a move that could fuel more sectarian violence in the country, an activist group said Saturday.

The tit-for-tat kidnappings point to the dark sectarian overtones of Syria's civil war, which pits a predominantly Sunni Muslim rebellion against a regime dominated by President Bashar Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country is also home to Christian, Kurdish, Armenian and Shiite communities, all of whom have been swept up in the conflict.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the spate of kidnappings this week took place in the northern province of Idlib, which borders Turkey.

While many of the details remain murky, the abductions appeared to have a sectarian bent. Kidnapping for ransom has been widespread across Syria since the crisis began in March 2011, but sectarian and political abductions have been rare.

The Observatory said the 42 Shiites, mainly women and children, were snatched Thursday from a bus that was traveling from the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya to the capital Damascus. Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman, said it was not clear who took them, adding that Shiites have refused to give the names of those kidnapped or details about the bus.

Idlib-based activist Fadi al-Yassin Al-Yassin said Foua and Kfarya are being used by the regime to bombard nearby villages and towns, saying the regime has turned them into "castles of shabiha," referring to pro-government gunmen.

In retaliation for the bus kidnappings, members of the pro-government Popular Committees set up a checkpoint around the two Shiite villages and on Thursday and Friday were taking people from cars they stopped, the Observatory said. It added that most of the people abducted were from the Sunni villages of Saraqeb, Binnish, Sarmin, Qimnas, Maaret al-Numan and Maaret Musreen.

Al-Yassin confirmed the kidnappings on both sides but added that the 300 figure is high. He said few dozens of people have been abducted in the area.

Abdul-Rahman and al-Yassin said such acts could incite sectarian clashes between Shiites, who have largely sided with the regime, and majority Sunnis in Idlib, where the sects have coexisted for decades.

The high number of women and children allegedly taken prompted the U.N. Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, to issue a statement calling for their release.

"Allegations of abduction and rape of women and girls by armed groups have been received," she said. "I am deeply concerned about the well-being of these women and children and would like to remind the armed group responsible for this abduction that acts of sexual violence will not be tolerated."

In the nearby province of Aleppo, rebels and troops fought fierce battles around the military air base of Kweiras, which opposition forces have been trying to capture for weeks, the Observatory said.

In the city of Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center and commercial capital, rebels and troops battled around the international airport and the nearby air base of Nairab, said the Observatory and the Aleppo Media Center.

Fighting also raged in parts of Damascus, where troops bombarded rebel-held southern neighborhoods, according to the Observatory. It said at least one person was killed in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk by sniper fire.

In the southern region of Quneitra rebels briefly controlled a military checkpoint in the town of Khan Arnaba and captured five officers before they withdrew, the Observatory said. It added that the rebels captured a tank then blew it up.

Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-16-Syria/id-763ff090b4e948059ddc33367e047913

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