Bangladesh deploys troops as protest toll mounts

DHAKA: Bangladesh deployed troops in the north of the country on Sunday as six more people were killed in fresh clashes over the conviction of Islamist leaders for war crimes in the Muslim-majority nation.

The army was deployed in violence-wracked Shahjahanpur town after more than 5,000 stick-wielding protesters attacked two police stations, forcing police to open fire, they said.

"At least four people were killed in clashes after Jamaat-e-Islami supporters attacked us. The toll could rise," Shahjahanpur district's deputy police chief Moqbul Ahmed told AFP, adding that troops had been deployed to boost security.

Two other people were also killed on Saturday night, including a ruling party student activist who was allegedly hacked to death by suspected Jamaat supporters, police said.

An inter-city train was torched late Saturday in the northwest but there were no casualties, police said.

The death toll in the clashes over the war crimes verdicts has risen to 62 since January 21, including 46 killed in the past four days after Jamaat's vice president was sentenced to death, police said.

Delwar Hossain Sayedee was on Thursday found guilty of murder, religious persecution and rape during the 1971 independence war, triggering violent clashes between rampaging Jamaat supporters and police across the country.

The 73-year-old firebrand preacher was the third person to be convicted by the war crimes tribunal, whose verdicts have been met with outrage from Islamists.

Jamaat says the process is more about settling scores than delivering justice. The party has enforced a nationwide strike on Sunday to protest the verdict and killing of its activists in police "brutalities".

The war crimes trials of a dozen Jamaat and main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leaders have opened old wounds and divided the nation, with the opposition parties accusing the government of staging a witch-hunt.

The government, which says the war claimed three million lives, rejects the claims and accuses Jamaat leaders of being part of pro-Pakistani militias blamed for much of the carnage during the 1971 independence war.

Independent estimates put the death toll from the war in which Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan at a much lower figure of 300,000 to 500,000.

- AFP/ir

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Dantewada Maoist attack case: CRPF to appeal against acquittal

NEW DELHI: The CRPF has decided to contest the acquittal of 10 arrested accused in the 2010 Tadmetla Maoist attack case in which 76 security personnel were killed in Chhattisgarh'sDantewada district.

Three years after the central paramilitary lost 75 of its men, the force has written to the Chhattisgarh government with a request to appeal against the January 7 verdict of a local court. A Chhattisgarh policeman was also killed in the attack.

"We have written to the state government. We certainly want the verdict to be challenged and see that the perpetrators are brought to justice," CRPF chief Pranay Sahay told PTI here.

Senior officials in Raipur said the CRPF has also approached local police, probing the case, and offered them help in gathering evidence and bringing on record witnesses for the incident that occurred in the wee hours of April 6.

Ten accused were recently acquitted by the court of additional district judge Anita Dahariya at Dantewada citing lack of evidence against these people.

The CRPF, the mainstay for anti-Naxal operations in the country with more than 80,000 personnel deployed for the task, suffered a huge setback in the deadly Maoist ambush.

The court acquitted the suspects, arrested from nearby areas of Chintalnar in Dantewada within a month of the Naxal attack, as there was no evidence against them.

The force has decided to fight the case and help police in preparing a better and water-tight case, a senior official in Raipur said.

During the case hearing, 43 witnesses of the Chhattisgarh government turned hostile and no witness was presented by the defence side.

Some CRPF jawans, who had sustained bullet injuries in the ambush, were not of much help to the prosecution as they could not re-count much about the incident.

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We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In the story of how the dog came in from the cold and onto our sofas, we tend to give ourselves a little too much credit. The most common assumption is that some hunter-gatherer with a soft spot for cuteness found some wolf puppies and adopted them. Over time, these tamed wolves would have shown their prowess at hunting, so humans kept them around the campfire until they evolved into dogs. (See "How to Build a Dog.")

But when we look back at our relationship with wolves throughout history, this doesn't really make sense. For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas. The fossil record doesn't reveal whether these large carnivores starved to death because modern humans took most of the meat or whether humans picked them off on purpose. Either way, most of the Ice Age bestiary went extinct.

The hunting hypothesis, that humans used wolves to hunt, doesn't hold up either. Humans were already successful hunters without wolves, more successful than every other large carnivore. Wolves eat a lot of meat, as much as one deer per ten wolves every day-a lot for humans to feed or compete against. And anyone who has seen wolves in a feeding frenzy knows that wolves don't like to share.

Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them. Over the last few centuries, almost every culture has hunted wolves to extinction. The first written record of the wolf's persecution was in the sixth century B.C. when Solon of Athens offered a bounty for every wolf killed. The last wolf was killed in England in the 16th century under the order of Henry VII. In Scotland, the forested landscape made wolves more difficult to kill. In response, the Scots burned the forests. North American wolves were not much better off. By 1930, there was not a wolf left in the 48 contiguous states of America.  (See "Wolf Wars.")

If this is a snapshot of our behavior toward wolves over the centuries, it presents one of the most perplexing problems: How was this misunderstood creature tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog?

The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.

Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated.

Friendliness caused strange things to happen in the wolves. They started to look different. Domestication gave them splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. In only several generations, these friendly wolves would have become very distinctive from their more aggressive relatives. But the changes did not just affect their looks. Changes also happened to their psychology. These protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives-chimpanzees and bonobos-can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs.

Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have defended their humans from predators.

And finally, though this is not a pleasant thought, when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply. Thousands of years before refrigeration and with no crops to store, hunter-gatherers had no food reserves until the domestication of dogs. In tough times, dogs that were the least efficient hunters might have been sacrificed to save the group or the best hunting dogs. Once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as an emergency food supply, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.

Dr. Brian Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at Duke University. This essay is adapted from their new book, The Genius of Dogs, published by Dutton. To play science-based games to find the genius in your dog, visit www.dognition.com.

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Man's Body Recovery Effort Ends; Sinkhole 'Unstable'

Authorities have discontinued the rescue effort for a Florida man who was swallowed by a sinkhole when his home's foundation collapsed and said it is unlikely his body will ever be recovered.

"We feel we have done everything we can," Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrell said at a news conference this afternoon. "At this point, it's not possible to recover the body."

Merell said officials would bring in heavy equipment to begin demolishing the home on Sunday.

"We're dealing with a very unusual sinkhole," he said. "It's very deep. It's very wide. It's very unstable."

Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday.

Two homes next door to Bush's residence were evacuated today after authorities said they had been compromised by the growing sinkhole.

With the assistance of rescuers, the homeowners will be allowed to enter their home for only 30 minutes to gather valuables, authorities said.

Rescuers returned to the site in Seffner, Fla., early this morning to conduct further testing, but decided it was too dangerous for the family initially affected by the sinkhole to enter their home, which was declared condemned.

Florida Sinkhole Opens Up Beneath Man's Home Watch Video

Florida Man Believed Dead After Falling into Sinkhole Watch Video

Florida Sinkhole Swallows House, Man Trapped Inside Watch Video

While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials now estimate it measures 30 feet across and is up to 100 feet deep.

The Hillsborough County Fire Rescue has set up a relief fund for all families affected by the growing sink hole.

MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop

Rescue operations were halted Friday night after it became too dangerous to approach the home.

Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team said the house "should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't."

RELATED: Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach

Using ground penetrating radar, rescuers have found a large amount of water beneath the house, making conditions even more dangerous for them to continue the search for Bush.

Hillsborough County lies in what is known as Florida's "Sinkhole Alley." More than 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.

Meanwhile, Bush's brother, Jeremy Bush, is still reeling from Thursday night.

Jeremy Bush had to be rescued by a first responder after jumping into the hole in an attempt to rescue his brother when the home's concrete floor collapsed, but said he couldn't find him.

"I just started digging and started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and told me the floor's still falling in," he said.

"These are everyday working people, they're good people," said Deputy Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office. "And this was so unexpected, and they're still, you know, probably facing the reality that this is happening."

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Obama to refocus attention on immigration, gun control

President Obama signaled Friday a desire to refocus his attention on second-term priorities, such as immigration and gun control, after weeks of fruitless wrangling with Republicans over his fiscal agenda.

“What I want to try to do is make sure that we’re constantly focused . . . on how are we helping American families succeed,” Obama said at a news conference after failing to strike a deal with congressional leaders to avert $85 billion in mandatory budget cuts.

“Deficit reduction is part of that agenda, and an important part, but it’s not the only part,” he said. “And I don’t want us to be paralyzed on everything just because we disagree on this one thing.”

For a president who has bemoaned Washington’s penchant for lurching between self-manufactured political crises over the past two years, the inability to compromise with Republicans appeared to leave him simultaneously exasperated and emboldened.

Though he had run out of ideas on how to get Congress to support his plan on taxes and spending — “What more do you think I should do?” he asked a reporter — Obama sounded an upbeat note on other initiatives, including raising the minimum wage, expanding preschool programs and changing voting laws.

“There are other areas where we can make progress,” he said. “This is the agenda that the American people voted for. These are America’s priorities. They’re too important to go unaddressed.”

The president’s tone came as a relief to advocates who have fretted that the ongoing fight over the deficit would drain attention and critical momentum from Obama’s promise to champion reforms to gun control and immigration laws.

Though Obama touched on both during his State of the Union address Feb. 12, the last event he dedicated solely to gun control was a Feb. 4 appearance at a Minneapolis police station, and on immigration it was a Jan. 29 speech at a Las Vegas high school.

In the meantime, the administration has tried to remain engaged via less high-profile means. Vice President Biden made policy speeches and met with advocates on gun control, and Obama used phone calls to Capitol Hill and a private Oval Office meeting with two Republican senators to push quietly on immigration.

“There are plenty of issues Congress needs to be getting to,” said David Leopold, an executive committee member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Manufactured crises like the ‘fiscal cliff’ or sequester do not advance anyone’s agenda, least of all the American people’s agenda.”

Advocates acknowledged that the White House’s decision to focus on the economy made sense in light of polls showing Americans overwhelmingly believe that jobs and growth should be Obama’s top priority. But they have learned from experience that momentum for their causes can disappear quickly.

Obama promised comprehensive immigration reform in his first term but pursued a major health-care overhaul that ate up his political capital and the administration’s attention. He gave a much-heralded speech about gun violence after the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011 that wounded former representative Gabby Giffords (D), but no changes to gun laws followed.

Obama has “got to be an effective spokesperson on [gun violence] to do a good job, but the minute he changes focus from the economy, everybody goes bananas,” said Matt Bennett, a senior vice president at Third Way, a think tank that supports stricter gun control. “That puts him in a bit of a bind.”

On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan coalition of senators is working on legislation that would require mandatory background checks for all private gun sales, closing a long-standing loophole. The bill hit a snag after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) opposed adding language to the bill that would require gun owners to keep transactional records of private firearms sales.

Another bipartisan Senate group is drafting a comprehensive immigration bill that would likely include a path to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. Senators said they hope to produce a draft in March, but the bill could be delayed until after the Easter recess, which runs through April 5, several sources said.

In a pointed reminder of the difficulty of engaging on more than one issue at a time, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) were late to a meeting with the bipartisan immigration group last week because they were on the Senate floor blasting Democrats over the mandatory budget cuts. Only after their floor speeches ended did the pair join their colleagues for more cordial discussions.

On Friday, even as he bemoaned the lack of GOP cooperation on the spending cuts, Obama made a point to praise the Republican-led House for approving a renewed Violence Against Women Act this week.

“What I’m going to keep on trying to do is to make sure that we push on those things that are important to families,” Obama said. “We won’t get everything done all at once, but we can get a lot done.”

Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.

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Thai tourist industry 'driving' elephant smuggling

BANGKOK: Smuggling the world's largest land animal across an international border sounds like a mammoth undertaking, but activists say that does not stop traffickers supplying Asian elephants to Thai tourist attractions.

Unlike their heavily-poached African cousins -- whose plight is set to dominate Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) talks in Bangkok next week -- Asian elephants do not often make the headlines.

But the species is also under threat, as networks operate a rapacious trade in wild elephants to meet the demands of Thailand's tourist industry.

Camps and zoos featuring elephants tightrope walking, playing football or performing in painting contests employ almost 4,000 domesticated elephants for the amusement of tourists.

Conservation activists accuse the industry of using illicitly-acquired animals to supplement its legal supply, with wild elephants caught in Myanmar and sold across the border into one of around 150 camps.

"Even the so-called rescue charities are trying to buy elephants," said John Roberts of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation.

Domestic elephants in Thailand -- where the pachyderm is a national symbol -- have been employed en masse in the tourist trade since they found themselves unemployed in 1989 when logging was banned.

Just 2,000 of the animals remain in the wild.

Prices have exploded with elephants now commanding between 500,000 and two million baht ($17,000 to $67,000) per baby, estimates suggest.

The number of baby elephants "coming into the system" is far higher than would be possible "from actual breeding", said Roberts, whose group decided to stop buying elephants seven years ago and now has 26 residents.

"I cannot see a way to buy an elephant which doesn't cause another elephant to be smuggled," he added.

Between 50 and 100 wild baby or young female elephants are sold from Myanmar each year, according to estimates by British charity Elephant Family.

The group's head of conservation, Dan Bucknell, told AFP that while some trafficked elephants may be taken elsewhere, the majority enter the Thai market.

"Thailand is certainly a hub," he said.

Smuggling such a large mammal should in theory require elaborate planning to avoid the police but in reality traffickers just "do it over a normal road", said wildlife trade researcher Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes university.

"Elephants can be in a truck or even walk" across the Thai border in front of complicit customs officers and border guards, he said.

Demand is not only threatening the 4,000 to 5,000 wild elephants in Myanmar, but is also hitting populations in Thailand's other neighbour Laos.

Young domestic elephants are exported across the border, furthering the decline of a population of around 480 animals, said Gilles Maurer of the group ElephantAsia.

Laos, known as the "land of a million elephants", only has between 300 and 500 wild pachyderms left and Maurer said that as the domestic population shrinks, "there is a strong risk" that poachers will turn to them.

Last year Thai authorities conducted several raids on elephant camps and seized some 25 animals -- 19 remain under their protection.

"It is likely the 19 seized elephants were smuggled wild animals as their paperwork did not match up," said forest ranger Pradung Jitraon, of Thailand's National Parks department, who participated in the operation.

Activists have welcomed the initiative but are also calling for broader reforms. "The system now is so weak," said Petch Manopawitr of the World Wildlife Fund in Thailand.

Thailand needs "more control, more transparent monitoring of the population, of what they do in terms of new born elephants", he said, calling for a proper database of elephants, using DNA testing or microchips.

Such a system, he added, would allow foreigners to visit elephant camps safe in the knowledge they are not "harming or threatening the wild population".

- AFP/ck

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Lawyer accuses Pak of 'blocking' book on Sarabjit

MUMBAI: Pakistani lawyer-activist Awais Sheikh has accused the authorities of stalling the release of his book on Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh.

Sheikh wrote an email to say, "At 3pm on Friday my guests and I arrived at Lahore Press Club for the launch ceremony and were shocked to see the doors locked. The administration informed us that they were unable to allow the function owing to a security threat."

Invitees including Hamid Khan, former president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association and I A Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and other guests were reportedly displeased with the authorities for "blocking" the function.

Sheikh alleged that those who "feared that the facts of Sarabjit Singh's matter would be revealed through the book were responsible for this unlawful and unfair act".

He claimed his writings would make the people of Pakistan "aware of the gross injustice done to Sarabjit".

He also claimed that an anonymous letter addressed to his wife was delivered at his residence Friday morning by an "unknown person". The writer allegedly threatened to harm his family if he went ahead with the press conference on Sarabjit. Sheikh is yet to approach the police in this matter.

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Black Hole Spins at Nearly the Speed of Light

A superfast black hole nearly 60 million light-years away appears to be pushing the ultimate speed limit of the universe, a new study says.

For the first time, astronomers have managed to measure the rate of spin of a supermassive black hole—and it's been clocked at 84 percent of the speed of light, or the maximum allowed by the law of physics.

"The most exciting part of this finding is the ability to test the theory of general relativity in such an extreme regime, where the gravitational field is huge, and the properties of space-time around it are completely different from the standard Newtonian case," said lead author Guido Risaliti, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and INAF-Arcetri Observatory in Italy. (Related: "Speedy Star Found Near Black Hole May Test Einstein Theory.")

Notorious for ripping apart and swallowing stars, supermassive black holes live at the center of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. (See black hole pictures.)

They can pack the gravitational punch of many million or even billions of suns—distorting space-time in the region around them, not even letting light to escape their clutches.

Galactic Monster

The predatory monster that lurks at the core of the relatively nearby spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is estimated to weigh in at about two million times the mass of the sun, and stretches some 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) across-more than eight times the distance between Earth and the moon, Risaliti said. (Also see "Black Hole Blast Biggest Ever Recorded.")

Risaliti and colleagues' unprecedented discovery was made possible thanks to the combined observations from NASA's high-energy x-ray detectors on its Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) probe and the European Space Agency's low-energy, x-ray-detecting XMM-Newton space observatory.

Astronomers detected x-ray particle remnants of stars circling in a pancake-shaped accretion disk surrounding the black hole, and used this data to help determine its rate of spin.

By getting a fix on this spin speed, astronomers now hope to better understand what happens inside giant black holes as they gravitationally warp space-time around themselves.

Even more intriguing to the research team is that this discovery will shed clues to black hole's past, and the evolution of its surrounding galaxy.

Tracking the Universe's Evolution

Supermassive black holes have a large impact in the evolution of their host galaxy, where a self-regulating process occurs between the two structures.

"When more stars are formed, they throw gas into the black hole, increasing its mass, but the radiation produced by this accretion warms up the gas in the galaxy, preventing more star formation," said Risaliti.

"So the two events—black hole accretion and formation of new stars—interact with each other."

Knowing how fast black holes spin may also help shed light how the entire universe evolved. (Learn more about the origin of the universe.)

"With a knowledge of the average spin of galaxies at different ages of the universe," Risaliti said, "we could track their evolution much more precisely than we can do today."

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Obama Signs Order to Begin Sequester Cuts

President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.

President Obama officially initiated the cuts with an order to agencies Friday evening.

He had met for just over an hour at the White House Friday morning with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.

But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold at midnight.

"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."

READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester

Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.

Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video

Sequester Countdown: The Reality of Budget Cuts Watch Video

Federal agencies, including Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day off per week through the end of the year.

The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.

"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."

The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.

The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.

"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."

Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester

Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.

Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like."

But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.

"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."

Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?

The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.

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Sequester hits federal agencies. Now what for federal employees?

Now what?

Congress has failed the country — again.

Unable to avoid $85 billion in across-the-board budget cuts, known as the sequester, the process of slicing agency spending starts Friday.

What does that mean for federal employees? What options do they have?

Agencies will begin informing staff members of furloughs that could last up to 22 days through September, when the fiscal year ends. In a few cases, agencies might be able to shave enough off of their budgets to avoid making employees take unpaid leave days.

But more than a million federal employees won’t be so fortunate. Many likely will get furlough notices sometime in March, 30 days before the first furlough.

That lag means there is still hope that Congress will do its job and reach an agreement that will allow federal workers to do theirs without anyone losing pay and without Americans losing services and any more faith in their leaders.

Unionized federal employees hope labor leaders can limit the pain of sequestration as much as possible through talks with agency managers before furloughs begin. Those talks are required for workers in bargaining units. Employees not covered by a collective-bargaining agreement don’t have that protection.

Just so there’s no mistake, the Office of Management and Budget reminded agencies this week of the need to include unions in the planning process.

Agencies “must allow employees’ exclusive representatives to have pre-decisional involvement in these matters,” Danny Werfel, OMB’s controller, said in a memo Wednesday to agency heads.

Managers “have a duty to notify their exclusive representatives and, upon request, bargain over any negotiable impact and implementation proposals the union may submit, unless the matter of furloughs is already covered by a collective bargaining agreement,” he added.

Already, there is one charge by a union official that these talks are not going as envisioned.

Gabrielle Martin, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 216, which represents Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staffers, said the agency has refused to engage in talks about furlough plans that the EEOC intends to issue next week.

No so, according to Claudia Withers, EEOC’s chief operating officer. She said agency officials briefed the union Monday “and consider this to be just the beginning of an important conversation about what the agency will do to respond to sequestration.”

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said her organization has had off-the-record talks with agencies and expects formal bargaining to start in a week or two, once agencies issue furlough notices.

At the top of her list are negotiations to determine when employees can take days off.

“We want employees to have choices in that,” she said.

Kelley mentioned a mother who pays for child care by the week. If she is forced to take off one day a week, she would have to pay for a day of child care she doesn’t use. The mother’s preference would be to take five days consecutively, which would allow her to save a week’s worth of child-care payments.

Such savings would be particularly important because a one-day-a-week furlough for the rest of the fiscal year amounts to a 10 percent pay cut.

Although agencies must allow unions to bargain over the implementation of furloughs, management does not have to follow labor’s recommendations. And employees not in a union will have no one to even plead their case.

“They don’t have that kind of involvement that’s spelled out for the unions,” said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association (SEA).

Like their unionized colleagues, however, employees not in a bargaining unit can appeal furloughs to the Merit Systems Protection Board. But Bill Bransford, SEA’s general counsel, said “it would be unusual” for an appeal of uniform furloughs to be successful.

Werfel also told agency managers that they should give “heightened scrutiny” to the hiring of employees, monetary awards to staffers and spending on training, travel and conferences. OMB didn’t prohibit these activities, but Werfel’s directive said they should be “conducted only to the extent they are the most cost-effective way to maintain critical agency mission operations under sequestration.”

Union negotiations can lessen the pain of a furlough, but employees should not expect it to go away. “What is not on the table,” said David Borer, AFGE
’s general counsel, “is negotiating the furlough away.”

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

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Shark fin-hungry China drives "chaotic" fishing in Indonesia

BENOA, Indonesia: Dozens of weary Indonesian fishermen sail into a busy port on the resort island of Bali celebrating their lucrative and controversial haul that is destined to end up at Chinese banquets.

The fishermen show off about 100 shark fins, already sliced off the carcasses, that are ready to be sold to middle-men and then most likely onwards to mainland China or cities around the world with big Chinese populations.

"We don't only look for sharks -- we mainly catch tuna and marlin -- but finding sharks is a good bonus. Their fins are worth a lot and the meat is easy to sell locally," said 33-year-old Warsito, who goes by one name.

Fishermen around Bali sell shark fins fresh off the boat for between US$15 and US$50, helping to satiate an ancient but fast-growing Chinese appetite for soup in which it is the main ingredient.

Shark fin soup was once a delicacy for China's elite, but shark populations have been decimated around the world as the country's 1.3 billion people have grown wealthier and incorporated it into their festivities.

While the Chinese government has banned shark fin soup from state banquets, and some five-star restaurants in Hong Kong and Singapore have dropped it from their menus, a burgeoning middle class in China continues to stoke demand.

Humans kill about 100 million sharks each year, mostly for their fins, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and conservationists are warning that dozens of species are under threat.

Ninety percent of the world's sharks have disappeared over the past 100 years, mostly because of overfishing in countries such as Indonesia, the FAO said.

Conservationists also point out that "finning" -- slicing the valuable fins from live sharks -- is simply inhumane, as the rest of the animal is typically dumped back into the ocean where it bleeds slowly to death.

How to save the shark will be a top concern at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that begins in Bangkok, Thailand, on Sunday.

World authorities will look at restricting trade of certain shark species.

Restrictions would apply to manta rays and five shark species -- the porbeagle, scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead, smooth hammerhead and oceanic whitetip -- and must be approved by two-thirds of member states.

However, experts say laws to restrict trade will mean little unless there are total bans on fishing, with greater efforts needed to control unregulated fisheries.

Indonesia is particularly important because it is the world's biggest fisher and exporter of sharks, with thousands of small-time fishermen such as those in Bali able to operate with impunity.

Management of the Indonesian industry has been "total chaos", Conservation International Indonesia marine programme director Tiene Gunawan said, with no national restrictions on the trade.

In 2010, the Indonesian government designed a national plan of action to better manage the shark fishing industry, but it has so far issued no regulations.

Rampant shark fishing has already affected ecosystems in Indonesian waters, Gunawan said, including the world-famous diving spot Raja Amapat in the region of Papua.

However recent efforts by the provincial authorities there -- emanating from a recognition that there is greater economic benefit in maintaining shark populations -- could be a model for the future.

After authorities in Raja Ampat noticed a surge in boats carrying hundreds of shark fins but no carcasses, the local government banned shark fishing in 2010.

Last week the ban was made into law, creating the country's only shark and manta ray sanctuary. It is also the first in the Coral Triangle, a massive region in Southeast Asia known as the "Amazon of the ocean".

"What they realised, and our studies support this, is that the value of a dead shark is much lower than if we keep it alive for tourism," Gunawan said.

-AFP/fl

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630 cases of child sexual abuse reported in Mizoram during 2003 to 2009

NEW DELHI: There is an alarming increase in the number of child abuse as well as juvenile delinquency in Mizoram, with as many a 630 cases of child sexual abuse reported during 2003 and 2009. Yet, there seem to be no urgency or sincerity on the part of the state government to implement the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000.

Children are not safe anywhere in the state as most cases of child sexual abuse were committed by relatives, friends and teachers of the victims. Sexual abuse of children remains high. A study commissioned by the Social Welfare Department of Mizoram government and released in October 2012 recorded 630 cases of child sexual abuse during the period of 2003 to 2009.

Juvenile delinquency remains equally high. During the last decade from 2002 to 2011, the National Crime Records Bureau under the Ministry of Home Affairs recorded a total of 1,699 cases of "juvenile delinquency" in Mizoram. These include 1,258 cases registered under the Indian Penal Code and 441 cases under the Special and Local Laws.

Despite the situation, the state government went slow on implementing JJ Act. In fact while the JJ Act was enacted in 2000, the statutory support services namely the Juvenile Justice Boards and the Child Welfare Committees in Mizoram have been set up in all the eight districts only during 2010-11.

"Mizoram has failed miserably in providing institutional care. The lack of separate Special Home and the poor facilities in the existing Observation Home-cum-Special Homes at Aizawl and Lunglei, overcrowding, lack of segregation of the juveniles on the basis of the nature of their crimes severely undermine the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act," said Suhas Chakma, director of Asian Centre for Human Rights.

According to an ACHR report, the Observation Home-cum-Special Home at Lunglei is overcrowded and facilities are poor. The Home has a capacity to house only 10 inmates (boys only). The Officer-in-Charge took the initiative of adding four extra beds for the inmates as sometimes number of inmate increases beyond the capacity. However, many a times the inmates exceeded 14 and in such situations the inmates had to sleep on the floor.

Also the Mizoram government has failed to utilise the grants under Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) provided by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. On July 6, 2012, Mizoram informed the Project Approval Board under ICPS that Rs 75.25 lakhs was lying unspent from the grants of 2011-12. Further, the state government informed that it had received construction grant for two Government Homes in 2011 but this grant has remained unutilised.

According to ACHR report, there are 28 recognised Children Homes in Mizoram and almost all of them are either privately owned or run by faith based organisations. As majority of the Children Homes are run through charity and children are admitted without the consent of the Child Welfare Committees, the lack of supervision by the state government is responsible for poor conditions of the Children Homes.

The First Step Children Home, Aizawl is inhospitable for small children and the Home's authorities have decided to close it down but the state government is yet to take a decision about it. Children are subjected to abuse and torture in many of the Homes. On July 13, 2009, a 13-year-old child was beaten to death by the officials at the Herald for Christ's Children Home, a government recognised Children Home at Lungleng, about 15 kms north of Aizawl.

"The NHRC has awarded compensation of Rs 3,00,000 to the mother based on the complaint filed by ACHR. But the particular murder shows the violence against children who require the outmost care," said Chakma.

ACHR recommended to the Mizoram government to establish the new Special and Observation Homes sanctioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in the districts not having such homes; separate the Observation Homes and Special Homes at Aizawl and Lunglei; ensure judicial utilisation of funds within the financial year; implement the recommendations made by the PAB under ICPS to establish more Observation Homes, Special Homes, Children Homes, and Shelter Homes and improve facilities at the Homes; ensure segregation of juveniles and children as per age and nature of offences; provide educational and vocational training facilities both within and outside the Homes and tie up with vocational training institutes; appoint adequate number of staff, including the Warden at the Observation Home-Cum-Special Home at Aizawl, and staff at three Shelter Homes at Aizawl, Mamit and Champhai; improve the functioning of the JJBs and CWCs through proper selection of the members and imparting adequate training; reduce the number of pendency cases both at JJBs and CWCs by increasing the number of sittings; and ensure regular inspections including surprise visits to all the juvenile justice and care institutions, whether run by government or private entities.

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Scarred Duckbill Dinosaur Escaped T. Rex Attack

A scar on the face of a duckbill dinosaur received after a close encounter with a Tyrannosaurus rex is the first clear case of a healed dinosaur wound, scientists say.

The finding, detailed in the current issue of the journal Cretaceous Research, also reveals that the healing properties of dinosaur skin were likely very similar to that of modern reptiles.

The lucky dinosaur was an adult Edmontosaurus annectens, a species of duckbill dinosaur that lived in what is today the Hell Creek region of South Dakota about 65 to 67 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)

A teardrop-shaped patch of fossilized skin about 5 by 5 inches (12 by 14 centimeters) that was discovered with the creature's bones and is thought to have come from above its right eye, includes an oval-shaped section that is incongruous with the surrounding skin. (Related: "'Dinosaur Mummy' Found; Have Intact Skin, Tissue.")

Bruce Rothschild, a professor of medicine at the University of Kansas and Northeast Ohio Medical University, said the first time he laid eyes on it, it was "quite clear" to him that he was looking at an old wound.

"That was unequivocal," said Rothschild, who is a co-author of the new study.

A Terrible Attacker

The skull of the scarred Edmontosaurus also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the bone, Rothschild and fellow co-author Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida, speculate the creature was attacked by a T. rex.

It's likely, though still unproven, that both the skin wound and the skull injury were sustained during the same attack, the scientists say. The wound "was large enough to have been a claw or a tooth," Rothschild said.

Rothschild and DePalma also compared the dinosaur wound to healed wounds on modern reptiles, including iguanas, and found the scar patterns to be nearly identical.

It isn't surprising that the wounds would be similar, said paleontologist David Burnham of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, since dinosaurs and lizards are distant cousins.

"That's kind of what we would expect," said Burnham, who was not involved in the study. "It's what makes evolution work—that we can depend on this."

Dog-Eat-Dog

Phil Bell, a paleontologist with the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative in Canada who also was not involved in the research, called the Edmontosaurus fossil "a really nicely preserved animal with a very obvious scar."

He's not convinced, however, that it was caused by a predator attack. The size of the scar is relatively small, Bell said, and would also be consistent with the skin being pierced in some other accident such as a fall.

"But certainly the marks that you see on the skull, those are [more consistent] with Tyrannosaur-bitten bones," he added.

Prior to the discovery, scientists knew of one other case of a dinosaur wound. But in that instance, it was an unhealed wound that scientists think was inflicted by scavengers after the creature was already dead.

It's very likely that this particular Edmontosaurus wasn't the only dinosaur to sport scars, whether from battle wounds or accidents, Bell added.

"I would imagine just about every dinosaur walking around had similar scars," he said. (Read about "Extreme Dinosaurs" in National Geographic magazine.)

"Tigers and lions have scarred noses, and great white sharks have got dings on their noses and nips taken out of their fins. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and [Edmontosaurus was] unfortunately in the line of fire from some pretty big and nasty predators ... This one was just lucky to get away."

Mysterious Escape

Just how Edmontosaurus survived a T. rex attack is still unclear. "Escape from a T. rex is something that we wouldn't think would happen," Burnham said.

Duckbill dinosaurs, also known as Hadrosaurs, were not without defenses. Edmontosaurus, for example, grew up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length, and could swipe its hefty tail or kick its legs to fell predators.

Furthermore, they were fast. "Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus had very powerful [running] muscles, which would have made them difficult to catch once they'd taken flight," Bell said.

Duckbills were also herd animals, so maybe this one escaped with help from neighbors. Or perhaps the T. rex that attacked it was young. "There's something surrounding this case that we don't know yet," Burnham said.

Figuring out the details of the story is part of what makes paleontology exciting, he added. "We construct past lives. We can go back into a day in the life of this animal and talk about an attack and [about] it getting away. That's pretty cool."

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Arias Recounts Each Moment of Stabbing, Slashing

Accused murderer Jodi Arias was forced to recount today each detail of how she killed her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, including re-enacting how he allegedly tackled her when she shot him, leaving her crying in her hands on the witness stand.

During hours of dramatic cross-examination by prosecutor Juan Martinez, Arias bawled as he asked her about stabbing, slashing and shooting Alexander on June 4, 2008.

"You would acknowledge that Mr. Alexander was stabbed, and that the stabbing was with the knife, and it was after the shooting according to you, right?" Martinez said in rapid succession.

"Yes, I don't remember," Arias said, covering her face with her hands.

"Do you acknowledge the stab wounds, and we can count them together, were to the back of the head and the torso?" Martinez said, flashing a photo of Alexander's bloodied body onto the courtroom projector. " Do you want to take a look at the photo?"

Arias, burying her face in her hands and shutting her eyes on the stand, mumbled, "No."

Alexander's sisters, seated in the front row of the gallery, also looked away, crying.

Arias, 32, is accused of killing Alexander on June 4, 2008 out of jealousy. He was stabbed 27 times, his throat was slashed and he was shot in the head twice.

Arias claims she killed in self-defense after Alexander had become increasingly violent with her. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

Martinez also forced Arias to demonstrate in court today how she claims Alexander lunged at her "like a linebacker," causing her to fire the gun at him. The pair argued over how exactly Alexander was positioned, and Martinez pushed her to explain what she meant.

"He lunges at me like a linebacker," Arias said.

"Like a linebacker, what does that mean?" Martinez asked.

Jodi Arias Under Attack in Third Day of Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video

"He was low. It was almost like he dove," she said, and trying to explain it further, added, "He was like a linebacker is the only way I can describe it unless I get up to act it out which I'd rather not do."

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

"Go ahead and do it," Martinez said. "Just stand. Go ahead."

Judge Sherry Stephens initially cleared the court as Arias demonstrated and then Martinez had her do it again after the jury and spectators were allowed back into the courtroom.

Standing and moving away from the witness box, Arias bent at the waist and spread out her arms and meekly made a slight lunging motion.

According to her testimony, Arias fired the gun as Alexander rushed at her, tackling her to the ground. She said she does not remember how she stabbed or slashed him.

It was a day of dramatics and anger as the prosecution pressed Arias on the details of the killing, with Martinez ending the afternoon of questioning by accusing Arias of lying throughout her direct testimony.

At one point Arias dissolved into tears, unable to answer pointed questions when shown a photo of Alexander's body lying crumpled in the bottom of the stall shower.

After a short pause, Martinez asked dryly, "Were you crying when you were shooting him?"

"I don't remember," Arias moaned.

"Were you crying when you stabbed him?" he said. "How about when you slashed his throat?"

"I don't remember, I don't know."

Martinez pressed on, "You're the one that did this right? And lied about all this right?"

"Yes."

"So then take a look at it," he barked.

Arias did not answer Martinez's question, crying into her hands instead. The judge, after a moment, called for the lunch recess to take a break from the testimony. Arias' attorney walked over and consoled her, telling her to "take a moment."

Until that moment, Arias had given vague answers to Martinez as he asked about the hours leading up to the murder. Arias, 32, has testified that she drove to Alexander's house on June 4, 2008, for a sexual liaison, that she had sex with Alexander and the pair took nude photos before an explosive confrontation ended with her killing him. She claims she doesn't remember stabbing Alexander, but insists it was in self-defense.

Martinez questioned her claims, asking exactly what they argued about and who encouraged whom to take the nude photos. He pointed out that Arias told Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa police department that she had to convince Alexander to take the nude photos in the shower, but that she testified on the stand that Alexander had wanted them.

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House to vote on Violence Against Women Act measures

Seeking to avoid a protracted and politically damaging fight over reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, Republican leaders are prepared to allow the House to vote Thursday on a version of the bill favored by Democrats, an unusual move that acknowledges GOP divisions on the touchy issue.

The House will vote first on a Republican version of the bill, which authorizes funding for programs to aid prosecution of domestic violence and sexual assault cases and assist victims.

But with Democrats unified in opposition and Republicans divided, the GOP’s alternative appears likely to fail.

The House would then move to a vote on a version adopted by the Senate this month on a broadly bipartisan 78 to 22 vote. It broadens the bill’s protections to gays and lesbians and expands the authority of tribal courts to prosecute non-native Americans accused in domestic violence cases on Indian reservations. It is supported by the White House and domestic violence advocates.

That bill is expected to pass on the strength of votes from Democrats and some Republicans — and over objections from a bloc of conservatives, an increasingly common pathway for successful legislation in a House roiled by divisions inside the GOP majority.

The outcome would send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature, reauthorizing the landmark measure which has been credited with raising awareness of the problems of violence against women since it was first enacted in 1994.

“The majority of the country feels strongly this is something we ought to do,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a Native American. He prefers the Senate bill because of how it would deal with crimes committed on Indian reservations. “It’s better to resolve this and move on, rather than be hung up on the issue.”

VAWA has been reauthorized on noncontroversial and bipartisan votes twice.

But a third reauthorization stumbled on a partisan dispute last year after the House adopted a Republican bill in response to opposition expansions in VAWA’s protections that had been adopted by the Senate.

The two chambers could not work out differences in their bill before it expired with the end of the last Congress.

But after a campaign season marred by GOP missteps on the sensitive issue of rape and an election won by Democrats in part because of women’s support, Republican leaders are now eager to find a resolution on the issue.

When the Senate took up a bill similar to one that passed last year with 15 Republican Senate votes, its GOP support grew to 23 senators. A bloc of House Republicans then began urging their leaders to allow the bipartisan version to receive a vote.

“Elections have consequences,” said Terri O’Neal, president of the National Organization for Women, which is part of a broad coalition pushing the Senate version, explaining the shift.

“House Republicans look increasingly out of touch with the American public if they’re the place where these bipartisan bills come to die. I think wiser heads among their leadership recognize that,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

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Yvonne Lim: Making time for love

SINGAPORE: Her eyes glistened with tears when Singapore actress Yvonne Lim spoke about her character Liu Xixi in the upcoming drama "Marry Me", during a recent media event.

In the show, Liu, a successful gynecologist, winds up getting dumped by her boyfriend of 20 years, after she spent too much time on her career and neglected their relationship.

Lim revealed that she became emotional as her character's painful experiences in "Marry Me" reminded her of own.

"I have all these experiences before."

"I spend so much of my time on my work that I end up spending very little time dealing with matters of the heart," said Lim, explaining that she once broke up with a guy over the same issue.

"I remember I was very emotional when I read the script."

"I know how this character feels, why she struggles with her feelings, and why she is in pain, but keeps it bottled up inside."

Lim expressed that Liu is a character many women can identify with, because what happens to her in the show is something that also occurs in real life.

"She is so dedicated to her work that she forgot about her love life and kind of took it for granted.

"I've seen that happen to my girl friends. I have seen that happen to other people. I've heard stories like that before."

"When things drag on for too long, it (the relationship) gets stagnant. That's when things happen," said Lim earnestly.

Still, Lim said she prefers to take her time to slowly get to know someone instead of rushing things, and said she believes in "letting nature take its course".

"You have to find the right partner who is willing to be with you.

"If it happens, it happens. If not, that's the way it is," said Lim with a smile.

"I don't think about it much, though there is still this part of me that hopes for a fairytale ending."

"Marry Me", which also stars Koh Ya Hui and Jesseca Liu, airs every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 8pm on Channel U.

-CNA/ha

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Assembly polls: Ruling formations ahead in Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland

AGARTALA: In a virtual status quo, the ruling formations were ahead and appeared to be romping back to power in the assembly elections in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya where counting of votes was taken up on Thursday.

MEGHALAYA

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	24	0
UDP	6	0
NCP	1	0
National People's Party	1	0
Hill state People's Democratic party	4	0
Others	9	0

NAGALAND

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	7	0
Janata Dal(United)	1	0
NPF	20	1
NCP	3	0
Rashtriya Janata Dal	1	0
Others	2	0

TRIPURA

PARTY	LEADS	WINS
CONGRESS	7	0
CPM	45	1
CPI	0	0
Revolutionary Socialist Party	1	0
Others	1	0

The Left Front government is set to come back to power for the fifth consecutive term in Tripura with leader of the coalition CPM leading in 32 of the 60 seats while its ally CPI was ahead in one.

Congress was a poor second leading only in four seats and others in one in the trends available so far.

In Meghalaya, the ruling Congress-UDP coalition is ahead in 14 of the 60 seats. Congress was ahead in 9 and its alliance partner UDP in 5.

Nagaland also continued with the same trend of favouring the ruling combination.

The Naga Peoples Front (NPF) was ahead in 15 seats while the Congress was ahead in 4, JD(U) 1 and others 2 in the 60-member assembly.

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Why African Rhinos Are Facing a Crisis

The body count for African rhinos killed for their horns is approaching crisis proportions, according to the latest figures released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

To National Geographic reporter Peter Gwin, the dire numbers—a rhinoceros slain every 11 minutes since the beginning of 2013—don't come as a surprise. "The killing will continue as long as criminal gangs know they can expect high profits for selling horns to Asian buyers," said Gwin, who wrote about the violent and illegal trade in rhino horn in the March 2012 issue of the magazine.

The recent surge in poaching has been fueled by a thriving market in Vietnam and China for rhino horn, used as a traditional medicine believed to cure everything from hangovers to cancer. Since 2011, at least 1,700 rhinos, or 7 percent of the total population, have been killed and their horns hacked off, according to the IUCN. More than two-thirds of the casualties occurred in South Africa, home to 73 percent of the world's wild rhinos. In Africa there are currently 5,055 black rhinos, listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, and 20,405 white rhinos. (From our blog: "South African Rhino Poaching Hits New High.")

Trying to snuff out poaching by itself won't work, said Gwin. The South African government is fighting a losing battle on the ground to gangs using helicopters, dart guns, high-powered weapons—and lots of money. (National Geographic pictures: The bloody poaching battle over rhino horn [contains graphic images].)

"Every year they get tougher on poaching, but rhino killings continue to rise astronomically," said Gwin. "Somehow they have to address the demand side in a meaningful way. This means either shutting down the Asian markets for rhino horn, or controversially, finding a way to sustainably harvest rhino horns, control their legal sale, and meet what appears to be a huge demand. Either will be a formidable endeavor."

Hope and Hurdles

The signing in December of a memorandum of understanding between South Africa and Vietnam to deal with rhino poaching and other conservation issues raises hope for some concrete action. Observers say the next step is for the two governments to follow through with tangible crime-stopping efforts such as intelligence sharing and other collaboration. The highest hurdle to stopping criminal trade, though, is cultural, Gwin believes. "In Vietnam and China, a lot of people simply believe that as a traditional cure, rhino horn works." (Related: "Blood Ivory.")

The recent climb in rhino deaths threatens what had been a conservation success story. Since 1995, due to better law enforcement, monitoring, and other actions, the overall rhino numbers have steadily risen. The poaching epidemic, the IUCN warns, could dramatically slow and possibly reverse population gains.

The population growth is also being stymied by South Africa's private game farmers, who breed rhinos for sport hunting and tourism and for many years have helped rebuild rhino numbers. Many of them are getting out of the business due to the high costs of security and other risks associated with the poaching invasions.

Those who still have rhinos on their farms will often pay a veterinarian to cut the horns off—under government supervision—to dissuade poachers, but the process costs more than $2,000 and has to be repeated when the horns grow back every two years. Even then the farmers are stuck with horns that are illegal to sell—and which criminals seek to obtain.

Room for Debate

Rhino killings and the trade in their horns will be a major topic at a high-profile conference, the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which opens in Bangkok March 3. What won't surprise Gwin is if the issue of sustainably harvesting rhino horns from live animals comes up for discussion.

"It's an idea that seems to be gaining traction among some South African politicians and law enforcement circles," he said, noting that the international conservation community strongly opposes any talk of legalizing the trade of rhino horn, sustainably harvested or not. The bottom line for all parties in the discussion is clear, said Gwin: "The slaughter has to stop if rhinos are to survive."

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Arias Prosecutor Too Combative, Experts Say

He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.

And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.

"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."

"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.

"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.

Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.

Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.

Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.

Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video

Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video

Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.

"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.

"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.

Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"

"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"

During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.

"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."

Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.

Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.

"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."

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McCain, Graham say Obama understands border security’s link to immigration reform

President Obama understands Republican concerns about the need to link improved border security to changes in immigration law, two key Republicans involved in the effort said Tuesday after a White House meeting with Obama.

Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said they covered a variety of topics in the unusual meeting with Obama, including a robust discussion of how to reshape the nation’s immigration laws.

The GOP duo — members of a bipartisan group of eight senators working to write an immigration bill for introduction in March — emerged with strong praise for Obama’s leadership and optimism for the fate of the effort.

“It was one of the best meetings I’ve ever had with the president,” Graham said. “I think the president’s very sincere in wanting a bill and wanted to know what he could do to help.”

According to a joint statement of principles issued by the Senate group last month, illegal immigrants would be able to quickly seek temporary legal status after passage of possible legislation. But they would not be able to seek permanent residency until the border is more secure.

Republicans have said the linkage is key to a bipartisan agreement, although it worries immigrant advocates. Obama has presided over a record number of deportations during his time in office.

McCain and Graham said after Tuesday’s meeting that they believe Obama understands GOP concerns about the border.

“He understands that we need border security that we can afford,” Graham said. “Sen. McCain made a strong point about the border. The president understands the working components of it.”

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The meeting represented an unusual outreach from Obama to rank-and-file Republicans. It grew out of phone calls Obama placed to the two senators last week, along with a call to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Some Republicans had said they doubted the president’s commitment to a bipartisan process after the draft of a separate White House bill was leaked to the press. Obama has said the bill is merely a fallback in case the Senate talks falter.

The White House meeting could be an attempt to quiet criticism from the Hill, where lawmakers in both parties have long griped that they rarely hear from the president.

McCain and Graham have also been warning publicly about the impact on national defense of allowing $85 billion in spending cuts to take effect Friday. Neither would say Tuesday whether they discussed the looming sequester with Obama.

David Nakamura contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.

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