Best Moments From the Academy Awards

Host Seth MacFarlane took the stage at the 2013 Oscars with an opening monologue revealing he was ready to poke fun at the star-studded audience.

"The quest to make Tommy Lee Jones laugh begins now," he said.

But it wasn't too long before MacFarlane was interrupted. William Shatner, dressed as his iconic character Captain Kirk from "Star Trek," descended on the stage to warn MacFarlane that he was about to ruin the Oscars and be branded the worst host ever.

"The show is a disaster. I've come back in time … to stop you from ruining the Academy Awards," Shatner said.

Seth MacFarlane's Boobs Tribute

Shatner tried to steer MacFarlane away from singing an "incredibly offensive song that upsets a lot of women in the audience."

Cue MacFarlane's medley "We Saw Your Boobs," a laundry list set to music of acclaimed actresses in Hollywood who all bared their breasts in film.

MacFarlane was joined by the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles to call out Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Naomi Watts, Jodie Foster, Hilary Swank and countless others who we've seen nude in film.

Not every joke funnyman Seth MacFarlane made landed with the A-list crowd at the 85th annual Academy Awards.

The host elicited gasps from the crowd when he introduced "Django Unchained" as "the story of a man fighting to get back his woman, who's been subjected to unthinkable violence. Or, as Chris Brown and Rihanna call it, a date movie."

Another joke that somehow earned a too-soon nod? A throw to President Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

"I'd argue that the actor who really got inside Lincoln's head was John Wilkes Booth," MacFarlane said.

MacFarlane's jab at Mel Gibson didn't land too smoothly either. MacFarlane said the N-word laden "Django Unchained" screenplay was "loosely based on Mel Gibson's voicemails."

Oscars' Movie Musical Tribute

The theme of the 85 annual Academy Awards was celebrating music in film, and the tributes to movie musicals didn't disappoint.

Featured performers included Catherine Zeta-Jones belting "All That Jazz" from 2002's Best Picture winner "Chicago," Jennifer Hudson's show-stopping "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from 2006's "Dreamgirls," and the cast of this year's Best Picture nominee "Les Miserables" reuniting on stage for "One Day More."

Introducing the Von Trapp Family

To introduce Christopher Plummer to the stage to present the award for Best Supporting Actress, MacFarlane couldn't help but make a joke out of the actor's infamous role as Captain Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."

MacFarlane came out to announce the Von Trapp family singers, but no one came out. Instead, a man dressed in a Nazi uniform ran in to tell him that they were gone.

Kristen Stewart Hobbles on Stage to Present

When Daniel Radcliffe took the stage to present the award for Achievement in Production Design, he was joined by his hobbling co-presenter Kristen Stewart, who was seen crutching along the red carpet during the pre-show.

The "Twilight" star's makeup artist told People magazine that the actress "cut the ball of her foot, quite severely, on glass two days ago."

The Associated Press reported that backstage, Best Supporting Actress winner Anne Hathaway told Stewart to "break a leg."

Jennifer Lawrence's Unstable Victory

Jennifer Lawrence was so shocked to take home the Oscar for Best Actress that she lost her footing on her way up to the stage to accept her award.

"You guys are just standing up because I fell and that's really embarrassing," she said to the audience.

Lawrence regained her composure to give her acceptance speech, extending a special thank you to "the women this year," who she called "so magnificent and so inspiring."

Daniel Day-Lewis a Three-Peat Best Actor Winner

It was a highly anticipated win for Daniel Day-Lewis, who took home the award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Abe Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln."

Lewis cracked a joke in his acceptance speech, saying he was supposed to be cast as Margaret Thatcher and presenter Meryl Streep was the first choice for Lincoln.

"Meryl Streep was Steven's first choice to play Lincoln… I'd like to see that version," Lewis said.

Michelle Obama Announces Best Picture Winner

In one of the biggest surprises of the night, the Academy brought out First Lady Michelle Obama to help Jack Nicholson introduce the nominees for Best Picture.

Rocking her new bangs and a silver gown, the first lady, live from the White House, announced "Argo" as this year's Best Picture.

"It was a thrill to announce the #Oscars2013 best picture winner from the @WhiteHouse! Congratulations Argo!" FLOTUS tweeted afterwards.

Ben Affleck Triumphs at Oscars

Ben Affleck was flabbergasted by his win for Best Picture for "Argo." His frenzied, heartfelt acceptance speech resonated as he thanked his wife, Jennifer Garner, and ended on an inspirational high note.

"I want to thank my wife, who I don't normally associate with Iran. I want to thank you for working on our marriage. It is work, but it is the best kind of work," he said.

"I was here 15 years ago or something and you know I had no idea what I was doing. I stood out here in front of you all, really just a kid. I went out and I never thought I'd be back here and I am because of so many of you who are here tonight …. I want to thank them for what they taught me, which is that you have to work harder than you think you possibly can, you can't hold grudges. It's hard, but you can't hold grudges. And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life because that's going to happen. All that matters is that you got to get up."

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Egypt protesters block doors to Cairo administrative hub

CAIRO: Protesters on Sunday blocked the doors to Cairo's main administrative building as part of a growing campaign of civil disobedience around the country against Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

A group of protesters closed the doors of the Mugamma, a massive labyrinth of bureaucratic offices on the edge of Tahrir Square, leaving only a side exit for employees to leave, employees told AFP.

"This is a call for civil disobedience... We want the implementation of the goals of the revolution such as social justice as well as a delay of parliamentary elections," which is set for April 22, one of the protesters told AFP, declining to give his name.

"We must break the monopoly of the state by Brotherhood," he said of the Islamist movement from which Morsi hails.

Since a November decree that pushed through an Islamist-drafted constitution, Egypt has been deeply divided between Morsi's Islamist supporters and a wide-ranging opposition that accuses the president of betraying the uprising that brought him to office and consolidating power in the hands of his Muslim Brotherhood.

Outside the Mugamma, the protesters threatened to extend their protest, adding that the next step could be to close down the television building which also houses the information ministry.

In the northern city of Kafr el-Sheikh, hundreds of quarry workers stormed the governorate headquarters to protest against working conditions and forced employees out of the building, chanting against governor Saad al-Husseini, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

A crippling economic crisis has also fuelled the anger.

Bakeries across Egypt have threatened to go on strike on Thursday due to rising wheat prices, a potentially devastating move in a country where many rely on subsidised bread as the main food staple.

Thousands are employed at the Mugamma, which houses passport offices, tax offices and various other government agencies.

"A small group of young people closed the main doors of the building and they are not letting anyone in," one employee told AFP from inside the building.

The protesters "did not enter the building," the employee said.

"They have left a door open and said employees who finish their shift must leave and that they won't let anyone in," a witness said.

The Mugamma has been closed before, most recently during protests marking two years since the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising.

A general strike in the canal city of Port Said, meanwhile, entered its second week on Sunday, with most shops and factories closed down.

- AFP/fa

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Congress president or VP natural choice for PM's post: Tharoor

BHOPAL: Union minister Shashi Tharoor on Sunday suggested if the party is voted to power, its president or the vice-president will be the natural choice for the post.

"Everybody knows who is the president and vice president of our party and if people vote for our party, then naturally one among them would become Prime Minister of the country," he said without specifying any name.

He was suggesting that that Congress does not need to name its prime ministerial candidate before the elections.

When asked whether the Lok Sabha polls will be a contest between Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi for Prime Minister's post, he dismissed the query.

"In India, we don't have a system like the US where it was a direct contest between President Barack Obama and Republican Party leader Mitt Romney. Here people vote for the party and the elected members then elect their leader," Tharoor told reporters here without taking names of Rahul Gandhi and Modi.

He was here to address a seminar on women empowerment, organised by a private educational institution.

When asked whether Modi has prime ministerial qualities, Tharoor did not to comment.

The Centre is providing lot of funds to the states for the implementation of Right to Education, Sarva Shiksha Ahbiyan and other programmes and it is the duty of the governments under federal system to utilize the money properly, the minister of state for human resource development said.

Without naming any state, Tharoor said he was aware that in some states money was not being utilised properly.

The government should also provide the facility of toilets to girls, which is a major problem, and also ramps in the schools, he said.

When asked about cases of rapes in Madhya Pradesh, he said he was not aware of the exact situation and added that it was a nationwide problem.

There is a need to change the mindset towards women to address the issue in a proper manner, he said.

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Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival

Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."

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Crash at Daytona Exposes Risks to Fans

The risks of racing extend beyond the drivers.

Fans can wind up in the danger zone, too.

A horrifying crash on the last lap of a race at Daytona International Speedway injured at least 30 fans Saturday and provided another stark reminder of what can happen when a car going nearly 200 mph is suddenly launched toward the spectator areas.

The victims were sprayed with large chunks of debris — including a tire — after rookie Kyle Larson's machine careened into the fencing that is designed to protect the massive grandstands lining NASCAR's most famous track.

"I love the sport," said Shannan Devine, who witnessed the carnage from her 19th-row seat, about 250 feet away. "But no one wants to get hurt over it."

The fencing served its primary purpose, catapulting what was left of Larson's car back onto the track. But it didn't keep potentially lethal shards from flying into the stands.

"There was absolute shock," Devine said. "People were saying, 'I can't believe it, I can't believe it. I've never seen this happen, I've never seen this happen. Did the car through the fence?' It was just shock and awe. Grown men were reaching out and grabbing someone, saying, 'Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!' It was just disbelief, absolute disbelief."

From Daytona to Le Mans to a rural road in Ireland, auto racing spectators have long been too close to the action when parts start flying. The crash in the second-tier Nationwide race follows a long list of accidents that have left fans dead or injured.

The most tragic incident occurred during the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans, when two cars collided near the main stands. The wreck sent debris hurtling into the crowd, while one of the cars flipped upside down and exploded in a giant fireball.

Eighty-three spectators and driver Pierre Levegh were killed, and 120 fans were injured.

The Daytona crash began as the field approached the checkered flag and leader Regan Smith attempted to block Brad Keselowski. That triggered a chain reaction, and rookie Kyle Larson hit the cars in front of him and went airborne into the fence.

The entire front end was sheared off Larson's car, and his burning engine wedged through a gaping hole in the fence. Chunks of debris from the car were thrown into the stands, including a tire that cleared the top of the fence and landed midway up the spectator section closest to the track.

"I thought the car went through the fence," Devine said. "I didn't know if there was a car on top of people. I didn't know what to think. I'm an emotional person. I immediately started to cry. It was very scary, absolutely scary. I love the speed of the sport. But it's so dangerous."

The fencing used to protect seating areas and prevent cars from hurtling out of tracks has long been part of the debate over how to improve safety.

Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti lost close friend Dan Wheldon at Las Vegas in the 2011 IndyCar season finale, when Wheldon's car catapulted into the fencing and his head struck a support post. Since his death, IndyCar drivers have called for studies on how to improve the safety barriers.

Franchitti renewed the pleas on Twitter after the Daytona crash, writing "it's time (at)Indycar (at)nascar other sanctioning bodies & promoters work on an alternative to catch fencing. There has to be a better solution."

Another fan who witnessed the crash said he's long worried that sizable gaps in the fencing increase the chances of debris getting through to the stands.

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Britain clings to austerity despite AAA loss

LONDON: British finance minister George Osborne insisted Saturday that he would not abandon his deficit-cutting drive after Moody's stripped the country of its coveted triple-A debt rating.

The opposition lashed Osborne, saying his plan for the economy was shot through, while analysts said that although it was an embarrassment for him, the downgrade would have a limited impact in the markets.

In an expected rebuff to London's hopes that sharp spending cuts would both gradually eliminate the deficit and revive growth, Moody's rating agency cut Britain's grade by one notch to Aa1 on Friday.

Osborne said it was a "loud and clear message that Britain cannot let up in dealing with its debts, dealing with its problems, cannot let up in making sure that Britain can pay its way in the world.

"What is the message from the ratings agency? Britain's got a debt problem. I agree with that. I've been telling the country for years that we've got a debt problem, we've got to deal with it.

"What do they also say? That if we abandon our commitment to deal with that debt problem, then our situation would get very much worse and I'm absolutely clear that we must not do that."

Asked if he had broken his commitment to protecting Britain's credit rating, he said the true test of credibility was whether Britain could borrow money.

"At the moment, we can do that very cheaply with very low interest rates precisely because people have confidence that we have got a plan," he said.

Moody's said government debt was still mounting and that growth was too weak to reverse the trend before 2016.

It described the British economy as constrained both by turgid global growth and the drag from businesses and the government rapidly slashing their debt burdens.

Calling it a "humiliating blow", Labour opposition finance spokesman Ed Balls said Osborne had failed in his chief stated mission of retaining Britain's AAA status.

"The reality is an economy which is not growing, a deficit which is getting bigger, families in real stress and a government which is ploughing on regardless with a plan which is not working," he told BBC television.

"Saying 'the medicine is not working, let's increase the dose of the medicine' -- that is completely crazy economics."

However, Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight research group, said that the market had been anticipating the downgrade for some time, though Britain's pound sterling currency may be vulnerable.

"It does focus attention on the UK economy's extended and ongoing serious problems," he said.

"The loss of the AAA rating certainly puts pressure on Mr Osborne to come up with more initiatives in the (March 20) budget to try and boost growth.

"While an embarrassment for the government and a cause for piqued pride, we suspect that the loss of the AAA rating will have only a limited negative impact for the UK economy."

Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs free-market think-tank, said: "The damaging impact of ballooning national debt, public spending raging out of control and tax rises should not be underestimated.

"Taking immediate action to tackle the deficit must now be the priority. George Osborne should focus on making sufficient savings in public spending to implement a substantial programme of tax reductions."

Meanwhile Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at stockbrokers BGC Partners, said the downgrade was not a reason for an economic policy change.

"Any amount of manipulation by attempted false stimulation of the economy in an attempt to create 'artificial' growth would in my view make an already bad deficit problem even worse," he said.

"We have all lived beyond our means for far too long.

"If the UK deficit is to be brought down and the task of reducing the debt mountain begun, Mr Osborne has no option but to stick to his guns.

"We are light years away from returning to growth."

- AFP/fa

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Assembly elections 2013: Meghalaya registers 88% voting, Nagaland 83%

NEW DELHI: Meghalaya recorded 88 per cent polling and Nagaland 83.27 per cent in the assembly elections held on Saturday, which passed off peacefully barring a few minor incidents in Nagaland.

The counting would be held on February 28. Meghalaya recorded a high turnout defying a bandh call by militants in some districts and came close to its last time turnout of 89.04 per cent.

Defying a bandh called by militants in seven districts, 88 per cent of the 15.03 lakh electorate cast their votes to elect 60 members from among 345 candidates in the election to the ninth Meghalaya assembly on Saturday.

State's chief election officer P Naik said voting was more intense in the Khasi Jaintia Hills region despite a 36-hour bandh called from 6pm on Friday by the banned Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council in seven districts.

Nagaland had recorded 86.19 per cent voting in the last assembly polls.

Brisk polling was recorded in Nagaland for 59 out of 60 seats of the state assembly amidst unprecendented security. Polling has been adjourned in Tuensang sadar seat following the sudden death of Congress candidate P Chuba Chang on Friday.

Enthusiasm was noticed among the electorate following calls by Nagaland Baptist Church Council and Election Commission for "one person one vote".

The sources said polling was peaceful across the state barring some skirmishes between party workers and candidates' supporters.

In the bye-elections to six assembly constituencies which were also peaceful, Chalfilh in Mizoram recorded 78 per cent voting, Bhatpar in Uttar Pradesh 50 per cent and Moga in Punjab recorded 70.33 per cent polling, deputy election commissioner Alok Shukla told reporters here.

In the bypolls to three assembly constituencies in West Bengal, Nalhati Birbhum recorded 65 per cent polling, English Bazar in Malda district 75 per cent and Rejinagar in Murshidabad district recorded 72 per cent polling.

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Elderly Abandoned at World's Largest Religious Festival

Every 12 years, the northern Indian city of Allahabad plays host to a vast gathering of Hindu pilgrims called the Maha Kumbh Mela. This year, Allahabad is expected to host an estimated 80 million pilgrims between January and March. (See Kumbh Mela: Pictures From the Hindu Holy Festival)

People come to Allahabad to wash away their sins in the sacred River Ganges. For many it's the realization of their life's goal, and they emerge feeling joyful and rejuvenated. But there is also a darker side to the world's largest religious gathering, as some take advantage of the swirling crowds to abandon elderly relatives.

"They wait for this Maha Kumbh because many people are there so nobody will know," said one human rights activist who has helped people in this predicament and who wished to remain anonymous. "Old people have become useless, they don't want to look after them, so they leave them and go."

Anshu Malviya, an Allahabad-based social worker, confirmed that both men and women have been abandoned during the religious event, though it has happened more often to elderly widows. Numbers are hard to come by, since many people genuinely become separated from their groups in the crowd, and those who have been abandoned may not admit it. But Malviya estimates that dozens of people are deliberately abandoned during a Maha Kumbh Mela, at a very rough guess.

To a foreigner, it seems puzzling that these people are not capable of finding their own way home. Malviya smiles. "If you were Indian," he said, "you wouldn't be puzzled. Often they have never left their homes. They are not educated, they don't work. A lot of the time they don't even know which district their village is in."

Once the crowd disperses and the volunteer-run lost-and-found camps that provide temporary respite have packed away their tents, the abandoned elderly may have the option of entering a government-run shelter. Conditions are notoriously bad in these homes, however, and many prefer to remain on the streets, begging. Some gravitate to other holy cities such as Varanasi or Vrindavan where, if they're lucky, they are taken in by temples or charity-funded shelters.

In these cities, they join a much larger population, predominantly women, whose families no longer wish to support them, and who have been brought there because, in the Hindu religion, to die in these holy cities is to achieve moksha or Nirvana. Mohini Giri, a Delhi-based campaigner for women's rights and former chair of India's National Commission for Women, estimates that there are 10,000 such women in Varanasi and 16,000 in Vrindavan.

But even these women are just the tip of the iceberg, says economist Jean Drèze of the University of Allahabad, who has campaigned on social issues in India since 1979. "For one woman who has been explicitly parked in Vrindavan or Varanasi, there are a thousand or ten thousand who are living next door to their sons and are as good as abandoned, literally kept on a starvation diet," he said.

According to the Hindu ideal, a woman should be looked after until the end of her life by her male relatives—with responsibility for her shifting from her father to her husband to her son. But Martha Chen, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University who published a study of widows in India in 2001, found that the reality was often very different.

Chen's survey of 562 widows of different ages revealed that about half of them were supporting themselves in households that did not include an adult male—either living alone, or with young children or other single women. Many of those who did live with their families reported harassment or even violence.

According to Drèze, the situation hasn't changed since Chen's study, despite the economic growth that has taken place in India, because widows remain vulnerable due to their lack of education and employment. In 2010, the World Bank reported that only 29 percent of the Indian workforce was female. Moreover, despite changes in the law designed to protect women's rights to property, in practice sons predominantly inherit from their parents—leaving women eternally dependent on men. In a country where 37 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, elderly dependent relatives fall low on many people's lists of priorities.

This bleak picture is all too familiar to Devshran Singh, who oversees the Durga Kund old people's home in Varanasi. People don't pay toward the upkeep of their relatives, he said, and they rarely visit. In one case, a doctor brought an old woman to Durga Kund claiming she had been abandoned. After he had gone, the woman revealed that the doctor was her son. "In modern life," said Singh, "people don't have time for their elderly."

Drèze is currently campaigning for pensions for the elderly, including widows. Giri is working to make more women aware of their rights. And most experts agree that education, which is increasingly accessible to girls in India, will help improve women's plight. "Education is a big force of social change," said Drèze. "There's no doubt about that."

Read More..

6 Leaking Tanks Are Wash. Nuke Site's Latest Woe

Federal and state officials say six underground tanks holding a brew of radioactive and toxic waste are leaking at the country's most contaminated nuclear site in south-central Washington, raising concerns about delays for emptying the aging tanks.

The leaking materials at Hanford Nuclear Reservation pose no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take perhaps years for the chemicals to reach groundwater, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

But the news has renewed discussion over delays for emptying the tanks, which were installed decades ago and are long past their intended 20-year life span.

"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," said Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."

Just last week, state officials announced that one of Hanford's 177 tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.

Inslee then traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the problem with federal officials, learning in meetings Friday that six tanks are leaking.

AP Photo/Shannon Dininny, File

The declining waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time, Inslee said.

"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."

Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and that federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.

Regardless, Sen. Ron Wyden, the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program, said his spokesman, Tom Towslee.

The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.

Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.

Several years ago, workers at Hanford completed two of three projects deemed urgent risks to the public and the environment, removing all weapons-grade plutonium from the site and emptying leaky pools that held spent nuclear fuel just 400 yards from the river.

But successes at the site often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges. Nowhere have those challenges been more apparent than in Hanford's central plateau, home to the site's third most urgent project: emptying the tanks.

Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid has already leaked there.

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Some Native Americans defy U.S. law on eagle feathers

Angelica Chavis, a third-year law student in North Carolina, received her prized eagle feather from a tribal elder at age 7, when she was crowned Little Miss Lumbee.

And she’s planning to keep it, even if it’s against federal law.

“It’s something I’ve earned, and it was given to me as an honor,” said Chavis, 23.

She and other members of the Lumbee Tribe, the largest in North Carolina, say they’re feeling like second-class citizens these days because of a new Obama administration policy.

The Justice Department said in October that it would allow Native Americans to possess or use eagle feathers for religious or cultural purposes. But there was a catch: The new rule applies only to members of federally recognized tribes, and the Lumbee Tribe is not among them.

Consequently, the Lumbees and members of other non-federally recognized tribes who own feathers are violating the Bald Eagle Protection Act, which makes it a crime to possess a feather without a federal permit. It’s another example of the growing disparities among the nation’s tribes.

The Lumbees want the feather policy changed to include all Indians.

In the meantime, they’re trying to decide what to do with their feathers.

Rob Jacobs, who served two years as a nuclear weapons specialist with the Air Force and is a gambling company executive in Philadelphia, has no plans to stop wearing his feathers in public. He owned 150 feathers but gave most of them away, keeping one for his car and two that he puts on his head when he attends powwows.

“They can arrest me all they want,” said Jacobs, 37, a former youth coordinator for the tribe. “I don’t mind standing up for what’s right.”

He said that while federal authorities could make arrests at Lumbee powwows, he doubts it will happen.

“The publicity and the sacrilege that it would portray would be more bad press than they would like and put other Indians on notice,” he said. “I would compare it to the killing of ghost dancers in the middle of prayer.”

April Locklear, 38, said she gave away many eagle feathers during her reign as Miss Indian World in 1998. She gave one to her husband when they married, and her family still has 15 feathers. She’s less certain about wearing them in public now, saying she’d just as soon avoid having federal officers knock on her door with a search warrant.

“If it gets that bad, then I just won’t wear them,” Locklear said, but she added that it makes little sense to have federal officials worry “about feathers sitting quietly in my closet” with school shootings and other big issues to address.

“With respect, this law kind of reminds me of cutting tags off of mattresses,” she said. “I mean, really? It doesn’t harm anybody, I don’t think. . . . I’m not out shooting eagles or hawks.”

The federal government’s division of Indians into two camps has long been a source of frustration for the Lumbees, who have lobbied Congress hard to join the ranks of the federally recognized.

So far, it has been a losing battle. The local congressman, Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre of Lumberton, N.C., has promoted bills in recent years to recognize the Lumbee Tribe, getting nowhere.

Critics have complained that the system of granting federal recognition has been corrupted by money.

Many smaller unrecognized tribes, such as the Duwamish in Washington state, say they’ve been denied recognition because they can’t match campaign contributions from neighboring tribes that want to limit gambling competition. Under the federal government’s rules, only federally recognized tribes can open casinos.

“They’re worried about their money being taken — I’ll call it like it is,” Locklear said.

Cheryl Schmit, founder and director of Stand Up For California, a statewide organization that has been leading the fight against more casinos in the Golden State, said it would be wrong to allow members of non-recognized tribes to own feathers because it would open the door for them to receive other federal benefits.

“Today, it’s eagle feathers. What will it be tomorrow, a request for racial preference for a casino?” she asked.

Federally recognized tribes are allowed to have feathers only because they have special status as sovereign governments, she said. Allowing “unacknowledged tribal groups” to have the same rights would violate both state and federal discrimination laws dealing with race, religion and ethnicity, she said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. took note of the distinction when he announced the new policy nearly four months ago, saying the Justice Department wanted to respect the cultural and religious practices “of federally recognized Indian tribes with whom the United States shares a unique government-to-government relationship.”

The Justice Department said the new policy, the first formal statement on the issue, sought to clarify and expand the long-standing practice of not prosecuting tribal members who possess or use eagle feathers. But the department said it would continue to prosecute tribal members and non-members alike if they violate federal laws by killing eagles or buying or selling feathers.

— McClatchy

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