Ex-LA Cop Sought in Shootings of 3 Cops, 2 Slayings

Police in Southern California say they suspect that a fired cop is connected to the shootings -- one fatal -- of three police officers this morning, as well as the weekend slayings of an assistant women's college basketball coach and her fiancé in what cops believe are acts of revenge against the LAPD, as suggested in the suspect's online manifesto.

Former police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who's a U.S. Navy reservist, has been publically named as a suspect in the killings of Monica Quan, 28, and her 27-year-old fiancé, Keith Lawrence, Irvine police Chief David L. Maggard said at a news conference Wednesday night.

"We are considering him armed and dangerous," Lt. Julia Engen of the Irvine Police Department said.

Police say Dorner shot at four officers in two incidents overnight, hitting three of them: one in Corona, Calif., and two in Riverside, Calif.

Sgt. Rudy Lopez of the LAPD said two LAPD officers were in Corona and headed out on special detail to check on one of the individuals named in Dorner's manifesto. Dorner allegedly grazed one of them but missed the other.

The Riverside Police Department said two of its officers were shot before one of them died, KABC-TV reported. The extent of the other's injuries is unclear.
Police suspected a connection to Dorner.

"They were on routine patrol stopped at a stop light when they were ambushed," Lt. Guy Toussant of the Riverside police department said.

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A badge and identification belonging to Dorner have been found in San Diego, according to San Diego police Sgt. Ray Battrick. Dorner's LAPD badge and ID were found by someone near the city's airport, and turned in to police overnight, The Associated Press reported.

Police around Southern California are wearing tactical gear, including helmets and guns across their chests. The light-up signs along California highways show the license plate number of Dorner's car, and say to call 911 if it is seen. The problem, police say, is that they believe Dorner is switching license plates on his car, a 2005 charcoal-gray Nissan Titan pickup truck.

Lawrence was found slumped behind the wheel of his white Kia in the parking lot of their upscale apartment complex in Irvine Sunday and Quan was in the passenger seat.

"A particular interest at this point in the investigation is a multi-page manifesto in which the suspect has implicated himself in the slayings," Maggard said.

Police said Dorner's manifesto included threats against members of the LAPD. Police say they are taking extra measures to ensure the safety of officers and their families.

The document, allegedly posted on an Internet message board this week, apparently blames Quan's father, retired LAPD Capt. Randy Quan, for his firing from the department.

"Your lack of ethics and conspiring to wrong a just individual are over," he allegedly wrote.

One passage from the manifesto reads, "I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty."

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own," it reads. "I'm terminating yours."

Dorner was with the department from 2005 until 2008, when he was fired for making false statements.

Randy Quan, who became a lawyer in retirement, represented Dorner in front of the Board of Rights, a tribunal that ruled against Dorner at the time of his dismissal, LAPD Capt. William Hayes told The Associated Press Wednesday night.

According to documents from a court of appeals hearing in October 2011, Dorner was fired from the LAPD after he made a complaint against his field-training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, saying in the course of an arrest she had kicked a suspect who was a schizophrenic with severe dementia.

After an investigation, Dorner was fired for making false statements.

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Obama to nominate CEO of outdoor gear retailer REI to become interior secretary

President Obama on Wednesday will nominate Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) chief executive Sally Jewell to head the Interior Department, according to a White House official who asked not to be identified because the public announcement has not yet been made.

The choice of Jewell, who began her career as an engineer for Mobil Oil and worked as a commercial banker before heading a nearly $2 billion outdoors equipment company, represents an unconventional choice for a post usually reserved for career politicians from the West.

But while she boasts less public policy experience than other candidates who had been under consideration, Jewell, who will have to be confirmed by the Senate, has earned national recognition for her management skills and support for outdoor recreation and habitat conservation.

In 2011 Jewell introduced Obama at the White House conference on “America’s Great Outdoor Initiative,” noting that the $289 billion outdoor-recreation industry supports 6.5 million jobs.

Jewell, who is being nominated to succeed Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, would take over at a time when many conservationists are pressing Obama to take bolder action on land conservation. Salazar devoted much of his tenure to both promoting renewable energy on public land and managing the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

On Tuesday former interior secretary Bruce Babbitt gave a speech
at the National Press Club calling on the president to set aside one acre permanently for conservation for every acre he leases for oil and gas development.

“It’s that simple: one to one,” Babbitt said. “So far, under President Obama, industry has been winning the race as it obtains more and more land for oil and gas. Over the past four years, the industry has leased more than 6 million acres, compared with only 2.6 million acres permanently protected. In the Obama era, land conservation is again falling behind.”

Facing congressional opposition and budget constraints during Obama’s first term, Salazar emphasized the importance of enlisting private sector, state and local support to protect major landscapes through America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. Jewell emerged as a strong advocate of the policy, and is likely to continue such efforts.

While public lands protection has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support, this issue has become increasingly polarized, and the 112th Congress was the first one since 1966 to fail to designate a single piece of wilderness. Environmentalists such as Babbitt have urged Obama to use the Antiquities Act, which gives presidents the executive authority to set aside land as national monuments, to protect ecologically valuable areas in the West.

Jewell has pushed for land conservation in Washington state, where she lives, as well as nationally. She is a founding board member of the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, which focuses on a stretch of land from Puget Sound across the Cascades, and helped lay out a plan for the National Park Service as a commissioner on the “National Parks Second Century Commission.”

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Euro not currently overvalued, Germany says

BERLIN : The euro is not currently overvalued and exchange rates should not be used to try and boost competitiveness, the German government said Wednesday, rejecting French calls for ways to cap the single currency's recent rise.

"The German government is of the conviction that the euro, historically speaking, is currently not overvalued," government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news briefing.

"What we're currently seeing is a rise in the value of the euro which is a counter-reaction to the massive depreciation in the wake of the eurozone crisis," Seibert said.

Earlier in Paris, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici had said an overvalued euro hurts economic growth and the issue should be discussed among eurozone finance ministers and the group of 20 leading economies.

But Berlin sees no cause for alarm.

The latest rise in the euro "shows that financial markets' confidence in the euro is returning. That's not a bad thing," government spokesman Seibert continued.

Germany believes that a currency's exchange rate should reflect its economic fundamentals "and flexible exchange rates are the best to way to achieve this," he said.

"I can only point out that both the G8 and the G20 separately agreed that it made sense for the markets to set exchange rates," the spokesman noted.

French minister Moscovici said that while the euro's recent rise was partly explained by the abatement of the eurozone crisis, the monetary policy of other countries was also to blame.

Moscovici said it is "legitimate" to discuss with European finance ministers what could be the fair value of the euro and the right way to get there.

But while Seibert acknowledged that the topic would likely be discussed, "from our point of view, exchange rate policy is not an appropriate tool to boost competitiveness.

"The effects of things like targeted devaluation tend to be rather short-term. You can't use it to achieve a lasting boost in competitiveness," Seibert said.

A day earlier, French President Francois Hollande had said the euro's value cannot not be left to the whims of the market.

Speaking to European Parliament in Strasbourg said "a single currency zone must have a foreign exchange policy otherwise it will see an exchange rate imposed on it (by the markets) which is out of line with its real competitive position."

The euro has strengthened sharply in the past few months as the eurozone appeared to have finally got the better of a debt crisis which at one stage looked likely to sink the whole project.

On Friday, the single currency hit US$1.3711, a level last seen in mid-November 2011, stoking concerns that it could begin to hurt exports, a key growth driver at a time when the overall eurozone economy is struggling badly.

For several months some emerging countries have objected that monetary policy by leading central banks, in injecting liquidity into their own economies, tends to depress their currencies and amounts to a policy of competitive devaluation.

Analysts say that the policy of the European Central Bank is showing signs of being somewhat less relaxed and this is one factor tending to push up the euro.

- AFP/ch

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India repatriates two Pak teenage boys

AMRITSAR: In yet another good will gesture Border Security Force (BSF) handed over two Pak teenage boys to Pakistan Rangers after they had entered India on Wednesday.

They were sent back after being satisfied of their innocence. Earlier on January 17th, BSF had handed over a Pak national Sayeed Naseem Hussain Shah to Pak Rangers who had also unintentionally entered India. Giving details of the incident a BSF officials informed that two Pak teenage boys Mohammad Tariq, 14 and Naved, 15, both residents of Shikhupura , Pakistan had entered India from near Border Out Post Rattan Khurd at around 5.30pm on Wednesday.

Both of them were apprehended by a BSF's patrolling party. The investigations revealed that both Pak boys had come to visit their relatives in Harbasanpura village near Lahore and had come to pay obeisance at the mazar of Peer Baba situated near Indo Pak international border in the area of Border Out Post Rattan Khurd in Amritsar sector. "Both the boys had inadvertently crossed the international border and were not aware of the alignment of the international boundary" said BSF official. They were handed over to Pak Rangers from Attari international border on Wednesday evening.

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The Real Richard III

It's a question that actors from Laurence Olivier to Kevin Spacey have grappled with: What did Richard III, the villainous protagonist of Shakespeare's famous historical drama, really look and sound like?

In the wake of this week's announcement by the University of Leicester that archaeologists have discovered the 15th-century British king's lost skeleton beneath a parking lot, news continues to unfold that helps flesh out the real Richard III.

The Richard III Society unveiled a 3D reconstruction today of the late king's head and shoulders, based on computer analysis of his skull combined with an artist's interpretation of details from historical portraits. (Related: "Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency.")

"We received the skull data before DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard III, and we treated it like a forensic case," said Caroline Wilkinson, the University of Dundee facial anthropologist who led the reconstruction project. "We were very pleasantly surprised by the results."

Though Shakespeare describes the king as an "elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog," the reconstructed Richard has a pleasant, almost feminine face, with youthful skin and thoughtful eyes. His right shoulder is slightly higher than the left, a consequence of scoliosis, but the difference is barely visible, said Wilkinson.

"I think the whole Shakespearean view of him as being sort of monster-like was based more on his personality than his physical features," she reflected.

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People are naturally fascinated by faces, especially of historical figures, said Wilkinson, who has also worked on reconstructions of J.S. Bach, the real Saint Nicholas, the poet Robert Burns, and Cleopatra's sister.

"We make judgments about people all the time from looking at their appearance," she said. "In Richard's case, up to now his image has been quite negative. This offers a new context for considering him from the point of view of his anatomical structure rather than his actions. He had quite an interesting face."

A Voice From the Past

Most people's impression of Richard's personality comes from Shakespeare's play, in which the maligned ruler utters such memorable lines as "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York," and "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

But how would the real Richard III have expressed himself? Did he have an accent? Was there any sense of personality or passion in his choice of words?

To find out more about the mysterious monarch, Philip Shaw, a historical linguist at University of Leicester's School of English, analyzed the only two known examples of Richard III's own writing. Both are postscripts on letters otherwise composed by secretaries—one in 1469, before Richard became king, and one from 1483, the first year of his brief reign.

Shaw identified a quirk of spelling that suggests that Richard may have spent time in the West Midlands, or perhaps had a tutor who hailed from there.

"I was looking to compare the way he spells things with the way his secretaries spell things, working on the assumption that he would have been schooled to a fairly high level," Shaw explained.

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In the 1469 letter, Richard spells the word "will" as "wule," a variation associated with the West Midlands. But Shaw also notes that by 1483, when Richard wrote the second letter's postscript, he had changed his spelling to the more standard "wyll" (the letters 'i' and 'y' were largely interchangeable during that period of Middle English).

"That could suggest something about him brushing up over the years, or moving toward what would have been the educated standard," Shaw said, noting that the handwriting in the second example also appears a bit more polished. "One wonders what sort of practice and teaching he'd had in the interim."

Although it's hard to infer tone of voice from written letters, there is certainly emotion in the words penned by Richard III.

In the 1469 letter, the 17-year-old seeks a loan of 100 pounds from the king's undertreasurer. Although the request is clearly stated in the body of the letter, Richard adds an urgent P.S.: "I pray you that you fail me not now at this time in my great need, as you will that I show you my good lordship in that matter that you labour to me for."

That could either be a veiled threat (If you don't lend me the money, I won't do that thing you asked me to do) or friendly cajoling (Come on, I'm helping you out with something, so help me out with this loan).

"His decision to take the pen himself shows you how important that personal touch must have been in getting people to do something," Shaw said.

The second letter, written to King Richard's chancellor in 1483, also conveys a sense of urgency. He had just learned that the Duke of Buckingham—once a close ally—was leading a rebellion against him.

"He's asking for his Great Seal to be sent to him so that he can use it to give out orders to suppress the rebellion," Shaw said. "He calls the Duke 'the most untrue creature living. You get a sense of how personally let down and betrayed he feels."

Shaw said he hopes his analysis—in combination with the new facial reconstruction—will help humanize Richard III.

"He probably wasn't quite the villain that Shakespeare portrays, though I suspect he was quite ruthless," he said. "But you probably couldn't afford to be a very nice man if you wanted to survive as a king in those days."

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Hostage Taker Waged Firefight With SWAT Agents

Jimmy Lee Dykes, the man who held a 5-year-old boy hostage for nearly a week in an underground bunker in Alabama, had two homemade explosive devices on his property and engaged in a firefight with SWAT agents before they stormed the bunker and killed him, according to the FBI.

One explosive device was found inside the bunker and another was located in the PVC pipe negotiators used to communicate with Dykes, the FBI said Tuesday night. Both devices were "disrupted," according to the FBI.
The search for hazards is expected to continue through today.

Preliminary investigation reports indicate that Dykes engaged in a firefight with the SWAT agents who made entry, according to the FBI.

Officials were able to insert a high-tech camera into the 6-by-8-foot bunker to monitor Dykes' movements, and they became increasingly concerned that he might act out, a law enforcement source with direct knowledge of the case told ABC News Monday.

FBI special agents were positioned near the entrance of the bunker and negotiators were able to convince Dykes to approach the bunker door. FBI agents used two explosions to gain entry into the bunker. It also appears that Dykes reinforced the bunker against any attempted entry by law enforcement, according to the FBI.

ABC News has learned that Dykes first opened fired on the agents during the bunker raid. Moments later, the agents returned fire, killing Dykes.

The shooting review team continues to gather facts regarding the incident, the FBI said.

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The boy, only identified as Ethan, was rescued from the scene by a waiting ambulance. The bunker raid came six days after Dykes boarded a school bus, fatally shot the driver and abducted the boy, who suffered no physical injuries.

Click here for a look at what's next for Ethan.

"It's all about timing that is why you practice. You practice blowing the door in split seconds, flash bang, shoot before Mr. Dykes would even have an opportunity to react," Brad Garrett, former FBI agent and ABC News consultant, said.

Meanwhile, Ethan is set to celebrate his 6th birthday today, happily reunited with his family.

Ethan's thrilled relatives told "Good Morning America" Tuesday that he seemed "normal as a child could be" after what he went through and has been happily playing with his toy dinosaur.

"He's happy to be home," Ethan's great uncle Berlin Enfinger told "GMA." "He's very excited and he looks good."

"For the first time in almost a week, I woke up this morning to the most beautiful sight...my sweet boy. I can't describe how incredible it is to hold him again," Ethan's' mother wrote in a statement released by the FBI Tuesday.

Ethan is "running around the hospital room, putting sticky notes on everyone that was in there, eating a turkey sandwich and watching SpongeBob," Dale County Schools Superintendent Donny Bynum said at a news conference Tuesday.

When asked about a birthday party for Ethan, Bynum said, "We are still in the planning stages. Our time frame is that we are waiting for Ethan, waiting on that process, but we are going to have it at a school facility, most likely the football stadium at Dale County High School."

He said many "tears of celebration" were shed Monday night when Ethan was reunited with his family.

"If I could, I would do cartwheels all the way down the road," Ethan's aunt Debra Cook told "GMA." "I was ecstatic. Everything just seemed like it was so much clearer. You know, we had all been walking around in a fog and everyone was just excited. There's no words to put how we felt and how relieved we were."

Cook said that Ethan has not yet told them anything about what happened in the bunker and they know very little about Dykes.

What the family does know is that they are overjoyed to have their "little buddy" back.

"He's a special child, 90 miles per hour all the time," Cook said. "[He's] a very, very loving child. When he walks in the room, he just lights it up."

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Strengthening security at the nation’s airports

Most people think of airport security as their walk through the metal detector and the eyeballing by transportation security officers (TSOs). Dan Liddell, whose job it is to protect the flying public at seven airports in central New York, instead sees 17 zones of worker responsibility and hundreds of different tasks.

In pursuit of safeguarding the public, Liddell, a federal security director based in Syracuse, has written a book that is now used to train TSOs. It’s called the “National Standardization Guide to Improving Security Effectiveness.” Tasks at each duty area have been inventoried and cataloged, and the “knowledge, values and skills” associated with the airport security jobs have been identified under what Liddell describes as a systems approach to training.

As important as it is to use X-ray machines and explosive trace-detection equipment and to have the correct rules and procedures in place, Liddell said transportation security relies on the skills of the people responsible for it.

“People performance is the cornerstone,” he said. “When I set out to improve things, I look at the people. I look at their proficiency, their skill in doing something and how well they’re doing that job.”

Even when people have the skills to do their jobs, they don’t necessarily do them well each time, especially when conditions can vary with each day and every passenger. To keep performance high, TSOs are tested covertly at unexpected times. A banned item will be sent through a checkpoint and the reaction and activities that take place are monitored.

Whether or not TSOs spot contraband, everyone at that checkpoint during the test participates in an “after-action” review. “It’s the learning experience that’s relevant,” Liddell said. “We’re doing a review of actual performance and you can always improve.”

Liddell is sensitive to the pressure that airport security personnel face. TSOs have the tough of performing multiple tasks under constant camera surveillance and public scrutiny, often interacting with tired or irritated travelers. The testing and training helps them continually up their game.

Thirty airports around the country that helped test the training system and now use a version of it. Paul Armes, federal security director at Nashville International Airport, was interested in creating such a system with a colleague when they both worked in Arizona, but it “never got traction.”

When he learned about what Liddell was doing, he was eager to participate. “Typical of Dan, he built it himself and practiced it so he had hard metric results, and then he started reaching out to some of us, working with his counterparts around the country to get a good representative sample,” Armes said. “He sees things others don’t see sometimes and he has the capability to drill down into the details.”

Liddell began the “pretty long process” of analyzing how people were performing at checkpoints in 2009. He sat down with subject-matter experts to produce the task inventory he now uses. In 2010, he improved the review and reporting process that occurs after covert tests events and instituted the security practices he refined at the other New York airports he oversees, including Greater Binghamton, Ithaca and four others. “I love breaking it down,” he said. “I’ve got a quest for improvement.”

In a less sneaky version of the television show, “Undercover Boss,” Liddell went through the new-hire training program for his employees to understand as much as he could about the jobs and the training provided for them, he said.

If pursuing knowledge is in Liddell’s genes, it may be because his parents were both in education. His father was a high school principal and his mother was a fifth-grade teacher. His teaching manifested itself instead in the training realm, where he strives to educate security employees as effectively as possible, inside the classroom and out.

“It’s always a challenge to meet that right balance of really great effectiveness and really great efficiency,” he said. “There are always challenges. It’s what gets me up in the morning, trying to improve.”

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.

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China women look for financial security in marriage

SHANGHAI: Financial security in marriage ranks high among women in China.

That's according to the latest Chinese marriage report which shows that nearly 80 per cent of Chinese women look for partners who earn twice what they do.

And more than half of them want full access to their future husbands' salary.

Xizhiyuan match-making company has been in business for 13 years.

They have noticed that how much a man earns has become more important to women in recent years.

Now more than half of their female customers ask for dates with men who make at least 50 per cent more than them.

Jiang Weilan, Manager of Xizhiyuan Match-Making, said, "Young people, particularly women, tend to compete with each other. In the past, they were happy with dates who earn slightly more than they do, but now it's no longer the case. For example, she is paid 10,000 yuan a month, she require her date to earn 15,000 or 20,000 a month. 50 per cent to 60 per cent more in salary is a very common requirement now. At least that's what we found from our clients. Even if they ask for doubled salaries, it's still quite normal."

According to the 2012 Annual Chinese Marriage Report, 77 per cent of urban Chinese women want a husband whose income is at least double theirs.

Sociologists say this is a reflection of the income disparity that still exists in China.

Lu Xiaowen, Vice Director of Institute of Sociology at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said, "We still face the unfairness that women are paid less than men in a lot of cases. Practically, women will naturally look for men who have higher income. This is a fact of our society. Besides, our income has increased significantly over the past few years, and the expectation of a further increase is high. Therefore, women now have a high standard when it comes to their future husbands' income."

The report also shows women now favour men with a stable income more than those who own an apartment.

The report found 89 per cent of women chose stable income as a must for marriage, whereas 68 per cent think a property decides who is qualified to be a husband.

Experts believe this shows a growing healthy trend, dubbed "naked marriage".

Lu Xiaowen added, "Naked marriage means when young people get married, they don't require an apartment or big saving. Instead, they work hard together to build their own home. A key factor in this equation is they both need a stable career and income so that they can mutually work towards their goal together."

Another interesting fact in the report - more than half of Chinese women want to control their husband's salaries after marriage.

Although men are not in favour of this idea, experts believe letting the wife act as family CFO could bring stability and harmony to a home.

Most women do, in fact, run the household and may be more equipped to deal with family expenditures.

- CNA/de

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India pledges $100m for Mali reconstruction

NEW DELHI: India gathered with European and African nations in Brussels on Tuesday to commit itself to stabilizing Mali which is reeling under al-Qaida attacks. It's the first time India will be involving itself in the political process as well as reconstruction of a country so far from its immediate sphere of influence. The move displays a growing confidence within the Indian foreign policy system.

India had promised to be part of the Support and Follow-Up Group (SFG) for Mali at last week's conference in Addis Ababa, headquarters for the African Union (AU). India has committed to giving $1 million for the upgrade of the Malian army with a pledge to ramp up contributions for reconstruction to $100 million after the situation stabilizes. The Malian army, which will remain in the frontlines after the French intervention is over, is poorly equipped and trained, and markedly different from the fighters of al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

India's involvement in Mali is interesting given New Delhi's aversion to external intervention in foreign conflicts, like Syria or Libya, where it abstained on a crucial UN Security Council resolution authorizing the "no-fly" zone. The conflict in Mali evokes a very different reaction from India.

There appear to be three broad reasons. First, India's commitment to a continued fight against extremist terrorism would ring hollow if New Delhi shied away from taking responsibility in emerging conflicts. In Mali, the al-Qaida fighters teamed up with the Tuaregs to carve out a territory that could be under the control of Islamist extremists. From the Indian point of view this would be profoundly dangerous.

Second, the lead role in the Mali intervention has been played by France. Indian officials said they have been "kept in the loop" by Paris from the beginning. In December 2012, during its last month at the UN Security Council, India co-sponsored a French resolution UNSCR 2085 that supported an African Union-ECOWAS military force in Mali. The French military intervention in Mali has not prompted the expected negative reaction from New Delhi. And, the target this time around is al Qaeda and its affiliated groups in that region, where India, like others, is developing economic interests. India's reaction to the France-led operation in Libya in 2011 was much more negative. In fact, many in the Indian government believe that the Mali crisis was a natural blowback of the Libya conflict.

Indian support to the French operation in Mali is predicated on it being a primarily counter-terror operation. Syed Akbaruddin, MEA's spokesperson, said, "We unequivocally condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Wherever and by whosoever committed, regardless of their motivation, we consider it criminal and unjustifiable. We also believe that the fight against the scourge of terrorism must be unrelenting."

Third, India's impetus to rush to the aid of Mali was also influenced by reports from the UN that some of the al Qaeda fighters may be from the Af-Pak region. In the Algerian hostage crisis at In Amenas recently a number of fighters were found to be from different countries, including Canada.

Off the record, Indian officials express fears that al Qaeda-fuelled unrest could spread in those difficult regions, because of what they believe is a deadly cocktail of Islamist extremist ideology, widespread poverty, lack of governance and vast amounts of arms and weapons. Most of these weapons were taken out of Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. The Libyan operation gave humanitarian intervention, or R2P in UN parlance, a bad name in the Indian mind.

On Monday, French president Francois Hollande paid a surprise visit to Timbuktu, Mali, while the French operation is concentrating its energies on targeting the Al Qaeda fighters who have melted into the desert, mountains and caves outside the cities. The situation in northern Mali is yet to stabilize with several Tuareg fighters still holed up there. The French forces are trying to keep control of the cities and clear them of the Islamists and Tuaregs, but with the fighters at large, there is always the possibility of the repeat of Afghanistan, and resurgence after the foreign forces have left.

This reinforces the support group's importance. India is expected to support a political process in Mali with elections in July, a goal already adopted by its national assembly, but questions have to be answered whether the country would be ready for elections by that time.

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Space Pictures This Week: A Space Monkey, Printing a Moon Base

Illustration courtesy Foster and Partners/ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced January 31 that it is looking into building a moon base (pictured in an artist's conception) using a technique called 3-D printing.

It probably won't be as easy as whipping out a printer, hooking it to a computer, and pressing "print," but using lunar soils as the basis for actual building blocks could be a possibility.

"Terrestrial 3-D printing technology has produced entire structures," said Laurent Pambaguian, head of the project for ESA, in a statement.

On Earth, 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, produces a three-dimensional object from a digital file. The computer takes cross-sectional slices of the structure to be printed and sends it to the 3-D printer. The printer bonds liquid or powder materials in the shape of each slice, gradually building up the structure. (Watch how future astronauts could print tools in space.)

The ESA and its industrial partners have already manufactured a 1.7 ton (1.5 tonne) honeycombed building block to demonstrate what future construction materials would look like.

—Jane J. Lee

Published February 4, 2013

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