Pictures We Love: Best of January

Photograph by Dieu Nalio Chery, AP

The magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port au Prince, Haiti, in January 2010 so devastated the country that recovery efforts are still ongoing.

Professional dancer Georges Exantus, one of the many casualties of that day, was trapped in his flattened apartment for three days, according to news reports. After friends dug him out, doctors amputated his right leg below the knee. With the help of a prosthetic leg, Exantus is able to dance again. (Read about his comeback.)

Why We Love It

"This is an intimate photo, taken in the subject's most personal space as he lies asleep and vulnerable, perhaps unaware of the photographer. The dancer's prosthetic leg lies in the foreground as an unavoidable reminder of the hardships he faced in the 2010 earthquake. This image makes me want to hear more of Georges' story."—Ben Fitch, associate photo editor

"This image uses aesthetics and the beauty of suggestion to tell a story. We are not given all the details in the image, but it is enough to make us question and wonder."—Janna Dotschkal, associate photo editor

Published February 1, 2013

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Ala. Standoff: Students Say Suspect Threatened to Kill













A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board.


"I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like, 'I'll kill all y'all, I'll kill y'all, I just want two kids.'"


Singletary and her brother, Tristian, 12, said Jimmy Lee Dykes boarded the bus on Tuesday and offered the driver what appeared to be broccoli and a note, before demanding two children.


"The bus driver kept saying, 'Just please get off the bus,' and [Dykes] said, 'Ah alright, I'll get off the bus," said Terrica Singletary, "He just tried to back up and reverse and [Dykes] pulled out the gun and he just shot him, and he just took Ethan."


PHOTOS: Worst Hostage Situations


School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was fatally shot several times by Dykes.








Alabama Hostage Standoff: Who Is Jimmy Lee Dykes? Watch Video









Alabama Boy Held Hostage in Underground Bunker Watch Video









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





The siblings and the rest of the students on board were able to get away unharmed, but were shocked by what had transpired just five days ago.


"I never thought I would have to go through a shootout," Singletary said.


They said they had seen Dykes, 65, working on his fence, and described him as a menacing figure.


"He was very protective of his stuff," Tristian Singletary said. "Whenever he stares at you, he looks kinda crazy."


Dykes has been holed up in his underground bunker with his 5-year-old hostage named Ethan near Midland City, Ala. for five days now. Neighbors told ABCNews.com that Dykes has been known to retreat underground for up to eight days.


READ: Alabama Hostage Suspect Jimmy Dykes 'Has No Regard for Human Life'


While Dykes, who was described as having "no regard for human life," has allowed negotiators to send Ethan's medicine, as well as coloring books, into the bunker for the boy through a ventilation pipe that leads into the 6 by 8 foot subterranean hideout 4 feet underground, authorities are staying quiet about their conversations with Dykes.


While negotiations continue and it was reported that Ethan is physically unharmed, an official told the Associated Press that the boy has been crying for his parents.


Meanwhile, his peers are steadfast that he will return home soon.


"Ethan will make it out there, Ethan will make it out there," said Tristian Singletary.


ABC News' Kevin Dolak and Gio Benitez contributed to this report.



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VA study finds more veterans committing suicide



The VA study indicates that more than two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are 50 or older, suggesting that the increase in veterans’ suicides is not primarily driven by those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


“There is a perception that we have a veterans’ suicide epidemic on our hands. I don’t think that is true,” said Robert Bossarte, an epidemiologist with the VA who did the study. “The rate is going up in the country, and veterans are a part of it.” The number of suicides overall in the United States increased by nearly 11 percent between 2007 and 2010, the study says.

As a result, the percentage of veterans who die by suicide has decreased slightly since 1999, even though the total number of veterans who kill themselves has gone up, the study says.

VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said his agency would continue to strengthen suicide prevention efforts. “The mental health and well-being of our courageous men and women who have served the nation is the highest priority for VA, and even one suicide is one too many,” he said in a statement.

The study follows long-standing criticism that the agency has moved far too slowly even to figure out how many veterans kill themselves. “If the VA wants to get its arms around this problem, why does it have such a small number of people working on it?” asked retired Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, a former Army psychiatrist. “This is a start, but it is a faint start. It is not enough.”

Bossarte said much work remains to be done to understand the data, especially concerning the suicide risk among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. They constitute a minority of an overall veteran population that skews older, but recent studies have suggested that those who served in recent conflicts are 30 percent to 200 percent more likely to commit suicide than their ­non-veteran peers.

An earlier VA estimate of 18 veterans’ suicides a day, which was disclosed during a 2008 lawsuit, has long been cited by lawmakers and the department’s critics as evidence of the agency’s failings. A federal appeals court pointed to it as evidence of the VA’s “unchecked incompetence.” The VA countered that the number, based on old and incomplete data, was not reliable.

To calculate the veterans’ suicide rate, Bossarte and his sole assistant spent more than two years, starting in October 2010, cajoling state governments to turn over death certificates for the more than 400,000 Americans who have killed themselves since 1999. Forty-two states have provided data or agreed to do so; the study is based on information from 21 that has been assembled into a database.

Bossarte said that men in their 50s — a group that includes a large percentage of the veteran population— have been especially hard-hit by the national increase in suicide. The veterans’ suicide rate is about three times the overall national rate, but about the same percentage of male veterans in their 50s kill themselves as do non-veteran men of that age, according to the VA data.

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Motor Racing: New car but only one driver for Force India






LONDON: Force India unveiled their new car for the forthcoming Formula One season at Silverstone on Friday, but they are still to confirm the identity of British driver Paul di Resta's teammate.

The vacancy next to Di Resta is one of only three across the grid for the 2013 season, which begins with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 17.

French driver Jules Bianchi, the team's third driver in 2012, was expected to be announced as Di Resta's teammate.

However, he was present at the launch of Ferrari's new F1 car on Friday as he is a member of the Italian team's academy.

Former driver Adrian Sutil and ex-Sauber man Kamui Kobayashi have also been linked with the role.

Force India team principal Robert Fearnley refused to be drawn on the identity of the new driver at the launch, telling reporters: "We do not want to confuse the two stories."

The VJM06 is the third of four cars unveiled so far for the 2013 season that have jettisoned the stepped nose design that featured widely in last year's world championship.

The Indian team finished seventh in last season's constructor championship, but saw German driver Nico Hulkenburg leave to join rivals Sauber at the end of the year.

- AFP/de



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One more Yeddyurappa loyalist resign

BANGALORE: One more BJP MLA DN Suresh resigned his assembly on Friday to join rebel camp Karnataka Janata Party ( KJP) headed by former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa. Suresh, representing Tarikere assembly segment, joins the list of 12 MLAs who resigned on Tuesday to join Yeddyurappa camp.

On finding that Speaker KG Bopaiah was not in Bangalore, Suresh reached out to the Speaker in Kodagu, 250km from the City, and put in his papers.
While state BJP KS Eshwarappa said no more MLAs would resign, former minister CM Udasi, one of the chief campaigner for Yeddyurappa, on Friday said there were more than 70 MLAs waiting to resign their assembly membership and quit also BJP.

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Sinkhole Swallows Buildings in China

Photograph from AFP/Getty Images

The sinkhole that formed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (pictured) is, unfortunately, not a new occurrence for the country.

Many areas of the world are susceptible to these sudden formations, including the U.S. Florida is especially prone, but Guatemala, Mexico, and the area surrounding the Dead Sea in the Middle East are also known for their impressive sinkholes. (See pictures of a sinkhole in Beijing that swallowed a truck.)

Published January 31, 2013

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'Terrorist Blast' at US Embassy in Turkey













At least one person was killed in what the State Department called a "terrorist blast" outside the U.S. Embassy in Turkey today.


The explosion, which occurred at a checkpoint to the embassy in Ankara in the early afternoon local time, claimed the life of an embassy guard and wounded a Turkish citizen, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardione told reporters.










April 18, 1983: U.S. Embassy Bombed in Beirut Watch Video







A Turkish provincial governor said the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, according to a report by the BBC.


Television footage from the scene showed damage to a part of an outer gatehouse, which is adjacent to the main building.


U.S. officials said that Turkish police are investigating the incident.


The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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US consumer spending flat in December






WASHINGTON: US consumers held tight to their wallets in December, the key holiday shopping season, despite a rise in incomes, according to Commerce Department data released on Thursday.

Household spending edged up 0.2 percent from November, only half the growth of the prior month and slightly below the consensus estimate of 0.3 percent.

Consumer spending, the main driver of the US economy, slowed in late 2012 amid the government's looming fiscal cliff of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set for January 1, which was partly avoided in a last-minute political deal.

Meanwhile, personal incomes rose for the eighth straight month in December, rising a much stronger-than-expected 2.6 percent from the prior month.

The income increase was boosted by accelerated payments of bonuses and other forms of "irregular" pay in anticipation of changes in individual income tax rates, as well as lump-sum payments of social security benefits, the department said.

In the partial fiscal cliff deal, political leaders allowed Bush-era payroll tax cuts on social security benefits to expire and lifted taxes in other areas.

With inflation weak in a tepid economy, the December price index for consumer spending was essentially flat, while so-called real disposable income - excluding price changes - rose 2.8 percent.

- AFP/de



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Omar Abdullah meets PM, seeks security, fund for sarpanches

NEW DELHI: Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and sought assistance in providing security and honorarium to newly-elected Panches and sarpanches so that panchayati raj institutions are further strengthened.

The 42-year-old chief minister also met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and the Union home minister discussing issues related to NC-Congress coalition government in the state.

During an hour-long meeting with the PM, the chief minister discussed issues relating to strengthening of panchayat institutions, special assistance for a mono-rail or metro project for Srinagar and Jammu and assistance in power sector so that relief could be given to consumers.

The chief minister sought liberal central funding for devolution of resources to panchayats including payment of honorarium to nearly 33,000 panches and sarpanches.

"The historic panchayat elections have raised expectations of the common man in the development share of the state," Omar was quoted in an official release as saying.

On the part of the state government, transfer of functions, functionaries and funds to panchayat raj institutions is a commitment and a beginning has been made by transferring the functions of 14 departments and ensuring flow of funds, Omar told the Prime Minister.

According to the state government release, the Prime Minister assured the chief minister of active consideration of the proposals made to various Union ministries and said the Centre would continue to support the Jammu and Kashmir government in its efforts to march on the road to peace and prosperity.

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New Theory on How Homing Pigeons Find Home

Jane J. Lee


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

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

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

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

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

Homeward Bound?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound Shadows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multiple Maps

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

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

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

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


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