We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Abandoned Baby's Tooth Used in Search for Parents

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Authorities are using the bottom tooth of the week-old infant abandoned in a plastic bag outside an apartment complex in Cypress, Texas, as a clue in the search for her parents.


The newborn's early tooth, seen in just one of 2,000 births, is a unique genetic trait that may prove to be a link to her family history, according to investigators.


The baby, named Chloe by rescuers, weighed just four pounds when she was found by a woman walking her dogs near the apartment complex.


"More than likely her mother didn't have any type of prenatal care," Estella Olguin, spokeswoman for Texas Child Protective Services, told ABC's "Good Morning America."


To aid in their investigation, police commissioned Texas sketch artist Lori Gibson to create a rendering of what her parents might look like by studying the newborn's features.








Texas Cops Rely on Sketches in Abandoned Baby Case Watch Video









RELATED: Cops Rely on Sketch to Find Abandoned Baby's Parents


"The people would recognize that smile," Gibson told "Good Morning America," "It's a ready smile, and then all I had to do was put teeth."


Authorities said they are hoping Chloe's mother or other relatives come forward to claim the baby, or officially allow another family to take custody of the newborn. They plan to charge the parents if they can find them, police said.


Texas has an infant safe haven law, which allows mothers to anonymously give up their babies to designated locations where they can receive care until they are placed in a permanent home.


Texas was the first state to enact an infant safe haven law, which was passed in 1999. The laws, now adopted by many other states and known as "Baby Moses laws," are meant to provide mothers with an incentive not to abandon unwanted children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.


Meanwhile, Harris County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Christina Garza said once custody issues are resolved, "[Chloe] will be placed in a loving home."


"There is no shortage of people who want her," she said.



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UN in Syria talks offer, warns against war crimes

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DAMASCUS: The UN chief and his Syria envoy said Saturday they are prepared to broker peace talks between the regime and opposition, as Damascus ally Iran said Bashar al-Assad would stand again for president in 2014.

A joint statement by Ban Ki-moon and Lakhdar Brahimi said the UN would "be prepared to facilitate a dialogue between a strong and representative delegation from the opposition and a credible and empowered delegation from the Syrian government."

They met after both sides in Syria had indicated a "willingness to engage in dialogue," the UN said.

"Both expressed deep frustration at the failure of the international community to act with unity to end the conflict which has left over 70,000 dead and resulted in a massive human displacement within and outside of the Syrian borders," the statement said.

They also warned that both the regime and opposition fighters "have become increasingly reckless with human life" and said perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity must be brought to justice.

In Tehran on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Assad will take part in next year's presidential election and that it is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leader.

He spoke during a visit by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for talks on the nearly two-year conflict.

At a joint news conference, Salehi said "in the next election, President Assad, like others, will take part, and the Syrian people will elect whomever they want."

The "official position of Iran is that... Assad will remain legitimate president until the next... election" in 2014.

Assad, who took over as president in 2000 following the death of his father Hafez, has repeatedly rejected opposition, Western and Arab calls to step down.

A new constitution adopted in February 2012 stipulates that he can run for the presidency twice from 2014, which means he could stay at the helm until 2028 if re-elected.

Salehi also backed a call by Damascus for talks with the armed opposition, calling the initiative a "positive step," but reiterated that Assad's regime has "no choice" but to keep fighting rebels.

"We believe that the crisis has no military solution and only a Syrian political one," he said.

Muallem condemned the announcement by US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday that Washington would provide US$60 million in "non-lethal" assistance to support Syria's political opposition.

"When the US (says it has) allocated US$60 million to the opposition and this opposition is killing people, I don't understand this initiative... Are there any weapons that do not kill people? Who are you kidding?" Muallem asked.

He repeated calls for pressure to be exerted on Turkey and Qatar, among the main supporters of the rebels alongside Western countries.

Damascus has repeatedly blamed foreign-backed "terrorists" for the violence, using the term to refer both to rebels and peaceful opponents ever since the outbreak of a popular revolt against Assad in March 2011.

On the ground, the army said on Saturday it seized control of a key road linking the central province of Hama to Aleppo international airport, the scene of fierce battles since mid-February.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said this was significant because it will allow new troop deployments and supplies to reach the area surrounding the airport and nearby Nayrab military airbase.

Fierce clashes also raged in the northern city of Raqa between rebels and troops, killing at least 26 fighters -- 16 rebels and 10 soldiers, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The Britain-based Observatory and activists said military helicopters strafed rebels in some parts of Raqa, which Abdel Rahman said was home to about 800,000 people displaced by violence elsewhere in Syria.

At least 133 people were killed nationwide on Saturday, the Observatory said.

They included two Palestinians hanged by rebels from trees at Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus on suspicion of aiding the regime, the Observatory said. The two were suspected of pinpointing rebel targets for regime forces.

The Israeli military said mortar rounds believed to have been fired from Syria hit the southern Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday without causing damage or casualties.

The Observatory said there had been clashes in the Quneitra area, with two rebels and an unknown number of soldiers killed.

- AFP/jc



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Stinkbug Threat Has Farmers Worried

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Part of our weekly "In Focus" series—stepping back, looking closer.

Maryland farmer Nathan Milburn recalls his first encounter.

It was before dawn one morning in summer 2010, and he was at a gas station near his farm, fueling up for the day. Glancing at the light above the pump, something caught his eye.

"Thousands of something," Milburn remembers.

Though he'd never actually seen a brown marmorated stinkbug, Milburn knew exactly what he was looking at. He'd heard the stories.

This was a swarm of them—the invasive bugs from Asia that had been devouring local crops.

"My heart sank to my stomach," Milburn says.

Nearly three years later, the Asian stinkbug, commonly called the brown marmorated stinkbug, has become a serious threat to many mid-Atlantic farmers' livelihoods.

The bugs have also become a nuisance to many Americans who simply have warm homes—favored retreats of the bugs during cold months, when they go into a dormant state known as overwintering.

The worst summer for the bugs so far in the U.S. was 2010, but 2013 could be shaping up to be another bad year. Scientists estimate that 60 percent more stinkbugs are hunkered down indoors and in the natural landscape now than they were at this time last year in the mid-Atlantic region.

Once temperatures begin to rise, they'll head outside in search of mates and food. This is what farmers are dreading, as the Asian stinkbug is notorious for gorging on more than a half dozen North American crops, from peaches to peppers.

Intruder Alert

The first stinkbugs probably arrived in the U.S. by hitching a ride with a shipment of imported products from Asia in the late 1990s. Not long after that, they were spotted in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Since then, they've been identified in 39 other states. Effective monitoring tools are being developed to help researchers detect regional patterns.

There are two main reasons to fear this invader, whose popular name comes from the pungent odor it releases when squashed. It can be distinguished from the native stinkbug by white stripes on its antennae and a mottled appearance on its abdomen. (The native stinkbug can also cause damage but its population number is too low for it to have a significant impact.)

For one thing, Asian stinkbugs have an insatiable appetite for fruits and vegetables, latching onto them with a needlelike probe before breaking down their flesh and sucking out juice until all that's left is a mangled mess.

Peaches, apples, peppers, soybeans, tomatoes, and grapes are among their favorite crops, said Tracy Leskey, a research entomologist leading a USDA-funded team dedicated to stinkbug management. She adds that in 2010, the insects caused $37 million in damage just to apple crops in the mid-Atlantic region.

Another fear factor: Although the stinkbug has some natural predators in the U.S., those predators can't keep up with the size of the stinkbug population, giving it the almost completely unchecked freedom to eat, reproduce, and flourish.

Almost completely unchecked. Leskey and her team have found that stinkbugs are attracted to blue, black, and white light, and to certain pheromones. Pheromone lures have been used with some success in stinkbug traps, but the method hasn't yet been evaluated for catching the bugs in large numbers.

So Milburn—who is on the stakeholders' advisory panel of Leskey's USDA-funded team—and other farmers have had to resort to using some chemical agents to protect against stinkbug sabotage.

It's a solution that Milburn isn't happy about. "We have to be careful—this is people's food. My family eats our apples, too," he says. "We have to engage and defeat with an environmentally safe and economically feasible solution."

Damage Control

Research Entomologist Kim Hoelmer agrees but knows that foregoing pesticides in the face of the stinkbug threat is easier said than done.

Hoelmer works on the USDA stinkbug management team's biological control program. For the past eight years, he's been monitoring the spread of the brown marmorated stinkbug with an eye toward containing it.

"We first looked to see if native natural enemies were going to provide sufficient levels of control," he says. "Once we decided that wasn't going to happen, we began to evaluate Asian natural enemies to help out."

Enter Trissolcus, a tiny, parasitic wasp from Asia that thrives on destroying brown marmorated stinkbugs and in its natural habitat has kept them from becoming the extreme pests they are in the U.S.

When a female wasp happens upon a cluster of stinkbug eggs, she will lay her own eggs inside them. As the larval wasp develops, it feeds on its host—the stinkbug egg—until there's nothing left. Most insects have natural enemies that prey upon or parasitize them in this way, said Hoelmer, calling it "part of the balance of nature."

In a quarantine lab in Newark, Delaware, Hoelmer has been evaluating the pros and cons of allowing Trissolcus out into the open in the U.S. It's certainly a cost-effective approach.

"Once introduced, the wasps will spread and reproduce all by themselves without the need to continually reintroduce them," he says.

And these wasps will not hurt humans. "Entomologists already know from extensive research worldwide that Trissolcus wasps only attack and develop in stinkbug eggs," Hoelmer says. "There is no possibility of them biting or stinging animals or humans or feeding on plants or otherwise becoming a pest themselves."

But there is a potential downside: the chance the wasp could go after one or more of North America's native stinkbugs and other insects.

"We do not want to cause harm to nontarget species," Hoelmer says. "That's why the host range of the Asian Trissolcus is being studied in the Newark laboratory before a request is made to release it."

Ultimately, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service will decide whether or not to introduce the wasp. If it does, the new natural enemy could be let loose as early as next year.

Do you have stinkbugs in your area? Have they invaded your home this winter? Or your garden last summer? How do you combat them? Share your sightings and stories in the comments.


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Obama, Congress Fail to Avert Sequester Cuts

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


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


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


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


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


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


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








Sequestration Deadline: Obama Meets With Leaders Watch Video











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


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


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


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


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


Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester


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


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


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


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


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


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






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Al-Qaeda's top leader in Mali killed in fighting

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PARIS: Al-Qaeda's top commander in Mali has been killed, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno said Friday, in what would be one of the most significant blows to the rebels in the seven-week French-led intervention against Islamist insurgents.

Several newspapers in Abou Zeid's native Algeria had reported his death and Washington had described the reports as "very credible".

Deby said Abou Zeid, the Mali-based operative in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was killed in deadly fighting between Chadian troops and Islamist fighters on February 22.

"On February 22, we lost several soldiers in the Ifogha mountains after destroying the jihadists' base. This was the first time there was a direct confrontation with the jihadists," he said.

"Our soldiers killed two jihadist chiefs including Abou Zeid," said Deby, whose elite forces are among the best desert troops on the continent and have played a key role in the offensive to liberate northern Mali.

Algeria's independent Ennahar TV reported earlier this week that Abou Zeid was killed in northern Mali along with 40 other Islamist militants.

In Washington, a US official speaking on condition of anonymity said reports of his death seemed "very credible" and that if Abou Zeid was indeed slain "it would be a significant blow to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb."

French officials have so far reacted with caution, with President Francois Hollande saying Friday: "Reports are circulating, it is not up to me to confirm them."

The killing of Abou Zeid, a ruthless militant linked with kidnappings and executions of Westerners, would be a major success for French forces, who intervened in Mali in mid-January to help oust Islamist rebels then in control of the north.

Algeria's El Khabar newspaper reported Friday that authorities there had carried out DNA tests to try to confirm Abou Zeid's death.

"The security services are comparing DNA taken from two close relatives of Abou Zeid with samples taken from the remains of a body supplied by French forces", it said.

French and west African troops have been hunting down rebels they dislodged from northern Mali's main cities following a lightning advance against the Islamists.

Abou Zeid, 46, whose real name is Mohamed Ghedir, was often seen in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao after the Islamists took control of northern Mali last year and sparked fears the region could become a haven for extremists.

An Algerian born near the border with Libya, Abou Zeid was a former smuggler who embraced radical Islam in the 1990s and became one of AQIM's key leaders.

He was suspected of being behind a series of brutal kidnappings in several countries, including of British national Edwin Dyer, who was abducted in Niger and executed in 2009, and of 78-year-old French aid worker Michel Germaneau, who was executed in 2010.

Abou Zeid was believed to be holding a number of Western hostages, including four French citizens kidnapped in Niger in 2010.

He was thought to have about 200 seasoned fighters under his command, mainly Algerians, Mauritanians and Malians, who were well-equipped and highly mobile.

An Algiers court last year sentenced Abou Zeid in absentia to life in prison for having formed an international armed group involved in the kidnapping of foreigners. Five other members of his family were jailed for 10 years each.

He was seen as a true religious fanatic and more uncompromising than some other leaders of north African armed Islamist groups, such as Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mastermind of January's attack on an Algerian natural-gas facility that left 37 foreign hostages dead.

On the ground in Mali Friday, Malian troops arrested about 50 people near Gao on an island in the Niger river that was used as a hideout by armed Islamists, military sources told AFP.

-AFP/ac



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How Green Was the 'Green Pope'?

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As the world's one billion Catholics wait for white smoke to rise above the Vatican, signaling the election of a new pontiff, it's how clear the air is elsewhere that will go a long way toward shaping the legacy of retiring Pope Benedict XVI. Among the many titles Benedict has been given over his eight-year reign, the "Green Pope" is certainly one of the most unexpected. But to Vatican observers, Green Pope is entirely appropriate, as the pontiff has made environmental awareness a key tenant of his tenure.

Benedict wasn't the first environmentally conscious pope. In 1990, Pope John Paul II went on record during a speech on the World Day of Peace urging Catholics to regard the natural world as one of God's creations worth protecting. By the time Benedict first put on his papal robes in 2005, caring for the environment had become an important part of the church's doctrine. Benedict gave the issue an even higher profile. He delivered homilies and speeches asking world leaders to take seriously the harm being inflicted on the planet. "If we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us," Benedict said on the 2010 World Day of Peace. Not long after, the influential Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a scientific arm of the Vatican, released a report on climate change recommending that world leaders cut carbon dioxide emissions, reduce existing pollution, and prepare for the inevitable impacts of a changing climate.

Benedict also made moves on his home turf. He approved a plan to cover the Vatican's Paul VI hall with solar panels, enough to power the lighting, heating, and cooling of a portion of the entire country (which covers, of course, a mere one-fifth of a square mile). He authorized the Vatican's bank to purchase carbon credits by funding a Hungarian forest that would make the Catholic city-state the only country fully carbon neutral. And several years later, he unveiled a new hybrid Popemobile that would be partially electric.

At a time when the church was dealing with more pressing structural issues within its ranks, some of Benedict's moves could be seen as simply good PR-inexpensive changes to build good will. Yet certain Vatican watchers see Benedict's efforts as genuine. "I think it's remarkable how much attention he gave to the environment; this for him was a big theme," said Walter Grazer, an adviser to the National Religious Partnership for the Environment and former spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In this regard, Benedict's advocacy, says Grazer, is likely to set the tone for a successor tasked with making the church's pastoral teachings more aligned with issues of modern life.

As world leaders gathered in half a dozen cities during Benedict's papacy to discuss global emissions treaties, Benedict did not participate, lacking an element of diplomatic gravitas as a head of state of a physically small country. Where Benedict did exert influence, however, was injecting morality into the environmental debate. Changing light bulbs or saving a wild animal by protecting habitat wasn't about saving money, Benedict implied, but was a religious obligation. "It's clear the church is now on the side of protecting the environment, seeing it as God's creation and something that should be respected," said Tom Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center. "I think that the leaders of the environmental movement are now realizing the church is an ally."

The impetus for the church's environmental advocacy isn't all spiritual. There is obvious concern for how climate change will affect material quality of life, especially for the disadvantaged. Last year, the USCC, the Vatican's U.S. arm, issued a statement saying that the human response to environmental challenges "will affect poor and vulnerable people at home and around the world."

Benedict has echoed the same sentiment, at times stating publicly that the countries emitting the most greenhouse gas emissions aren't the ones feeling the most damaging impacts of rising oceans, extreme storms, and scarcity of water. "He has a great concern for what was going to happen to the poorest people as a result of environmental destruction," said Grazer.

As Benedict begins his retirement today, the better way to judge Benedict's influence might not be in how many solar panels he had installed at the Vatican or how many gallons of gasoline he saved with the Popemobile, but in how he harnessed the influence of his global church to act on the sort of change he advocated. Many national dioceses around the world now include "environmental stewardship" on their list of advocacy topics. In the U.S., bishops have created curricula for discussing sustainability in school and pushed local officials on issues like clean air. "I think many people have found inspirational Benedict's constant reference to the need to be responsible for the environment," said William Skylstad, bishop emeritus of the diocese of Spokane, Washington. Skylstad hopes the next pontiff will also be willing to carry the same green torch.


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Benedict XVI's Tenure as Pope Ends

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VATICAN CITY -- Benedict XVI's eight-year tenure as pope ended today, after he bade farewell to the faithful and departed the Vatican as the first pope to resign in six centuries.


"Thank you for your love and support," the pope tweeted from his Pontifex account. "May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."


With church bells ringing across Rome, the pope was driven to the helipad on the Vatican grounds for the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence where he assumed the title "pope emeritus" after 8 p.m. local time.


When Benedict arrived at the residence just south of Rome, he was greeted by a crowd of supporters waving flags and banners.


READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address


"I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this earth," he told them.






Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images











Pope Benedict XVI's Helicopter Ride to Castel Gandolfo Watch Video









Pope Benedict XVI Says Goodbye to Cardinals Watch Video







In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor. At a morning meeting at the Vatican, Benedict urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.


Benedict, 85, spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.


His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace.


Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.


When Benedict's resignation took effect once and for all at 8 p.m. local time, the Swiss Guards left his side for the last time, their time protecting the pontiff completed.


For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure was bittersweet.


Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.


"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."


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State Department official Mike Posner to NYU

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Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner at a meeting in Cambodia.
(MAK REMISSA - EPA)
The exodus at the State Department continues, as attorney and human-rights advocate Mike Posner heads for the hills. Actually, his destination is a little more civil than that: he’s joining the faculty of New York University’s Stern School of Business.


Posner, who has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor since early on in the Obama administration, will begin teaching in the fall semester and will help establish a center for business and human rights at NYU Stern, the school announced.


Posner’s principle deputy, Uzra Zeya, will fill in until a successor is named, a State Department spokesman said.



Other recent high-profile departures from State have included deputy Secretary of State 
Tom Nides 
and Jake Sullivan, deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.




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Benedict XVI steps down as pope

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VATICAN CITY: Benedict XVI became the first pope to resign in over 700 years on Thursday, waving a last goodbye to a tearful crowd of faithful and telling them he would be "a simple pilgrim" on life's last journey.

Swiss Guards wielding halberds shut the giant wooden doors of his new temporary residence, the Castel Gandolfo near Rome, and left their posts after completing their mission to protect the pope.

The Vatican flag at the palace was lowered in a poignant end to a turbulent eight-year pontificate.

"Long live the pope!" a crowd outside sang out as a clock chimed 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) -- the hour that Benedict said he would officially resign in an announcement earlier this month that stunned the world.

"I will no longer be pope but a simple pilgrim who is starting out on the last part of his pilgrimage," the pope told thousands of supporters after arriving at the Castel Gandolfo palace where he will live for the next few weeks.

"I am happy to be with you surrounded by the beauty of creation. Thank you for your friendship and affection," said the frail but smiling 85-year-old, dressed in his white papal cassock.

In an emotional final day as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, Benedict left the Vatican in a helicopter emblazoned with the papal insignia as priests and nuns cheered and applauded.

The bells of St Peter's Basilica rang out as Benedict's helicopter flew over his diocese of Rome for the last time in his pontificate, with city residents watching from their windows.

On his hand was the "Fisherman's Ring" -- a personalised gold signet ring bearing the image of the first pope, St Peter, a fisherman by trade.

The ring will be disposed of by the Vatican -- a tradition to prevent the official seal being used to issue false documents in a pope's name.

Workers put seals on the doors of the Vatican papal apartments and the lift leading up to them, to be broken only by the Church's next pope.

Church bells tolled to announce the arrival of the soon-to-be former pope in the lakeside mediaeval town of Castel Gandolfo, which has a special bond with the papacy going back to the 16th century.

"It means a huge amount to us that Benedict has chosen to say his final goodbyes here," said local gift shop saleswoman Patrizia Gasperini, 40.

In a last tweet sent from his @pontifex Twitter account just as he left the Vatican, the pope said: "Thank you for your love and support."

"May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."

The Twitter account will now be suspended until the election of a new pope in a conclave next month.

Benedict is only the second pope to resign in the Church's 2,000-year history, and in his final hours as pontiff he took the unprecedented step of pledging allegiance to his successor.

"Among you there is also the future pope to whom I promise my unconditional obedience and reverence," the pope said earlier on Thursday in final remarks to cardinals in an ornate Vatican hall.

"Let the Lord reveal the one he has chosen," said the pope, as the 144 cardinals doffed their berettas and lined up to kiss the papal ring.

"We've grown to love him"

"We have experienced, with faith, beautiful moments of radiant light together, as well as times with a few clouds in the sky," the pope told the cardinals -- who will have to elect the next pope in a conclave in the Sistine Chapel.

"Let us remain united, dear brothers," he said, after a pontificate often overshadowed by infighting at the Vatican and divisions between reformers and traditionalists in the Church.

The Vatican has said the former pope will live in Castel Gandolfo for the next two months before taking up permanent residence in an ex-convent on a hilltop in the Vatican grounds overlooking Rome.

The German pope his decision to step down on February 11, saying he no longer had the "strength of mind and body" required by a fast-changing world.

The news has captured massive media attention, with the Vatican saying that 3,641 journalists from 61 countries will cover the upcoming conclave -- on top of the regular Vatican press corps.

The ex-pontiff will now formally carry the new title of "Roman Pontiff Emeritus" or "pope emeritus" for short, although he will still be addressed as "Your Holiness Benedict XVI".

The only other pope who resigned by choice was Celestine V, a humble hermit who stepped down in 1294 after just a few months in office out of disgust with Vatican corruption and intrigue.

Once Benedict takes up residence inside the Vatican, the Church will be in the unprecedented situation of having a pope and his predecessor living within a stone's throw of each other.

Commenting on the new arrangement, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said that Benedict "has no intention of interfering in the positions, decisions or activities of his successor".

Benedict has said he will live "hidden from the world" but the Vatican indicated he could provide "spiritual guidance" to the next pope.

Vatican analysts have suggested his sudden exit could set a precedent for ageing popes in the future, and many ordinary Catholics say a more youthful, pastoral figure could breathe new life into a Church struggling on many levels.

From Catholic reformers calling for women clergy and for an end to priestly celibacy, to growing secularism in the West and ongoing scandals over sexual abuses by paedophile priests going back decades, the next pope will have a tough agenda.

"It's a very emotional day," said Gasperini, the saleswoman in Castel Gandolfo, who named her eight-year-old daughter Benedetta in the pope's honour.

"We've been privileged to see a different, more humane side to him over the years, and grown to love him," she said.

- AFP/ac



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Megadam Project Galvanizes Native Opposition in Malaysia

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Most villages along the Baram River in Malaysia cannot count on round-the-clock electricity. Diesel generators hum at night near longhouses in the northwestern corner of the island of Borneo. Mobile and Internet coverage are almost nonexistent.

A plan to dam the Baram River would generate power far in excess of current demand in the rainforest state: At 1,000 megawatts, the hydropower project would be large enough to power 750,000 homes in the United States.

Yet the promise of power rings hollow for many who live here.

Natives from the tribes of Penan, Kenyah, and Kayan have taken to their traditional longboats, traveling downstream to the town of Long Lama to voice opposition to the plan. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Water and Energy.")

Baram is one of seven big hydropower projects that Malaysia's largest state, Sarawak, is building in a bid to lure aluminum smelters, steelmakers, and other energy-intensive heavy industry with the promise of cheap power. Together, the dams mapped out in the state government's sprawling $105 billion Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) plan would harness nearly as much river power as the largest generating station in the world, the massive Three Gorges Dam in China. (See related photos: "A River People Awaits an Amazon Dam.")

The Sarawak project is changing landscape and lives. The dam across the sinuous Baram River will submerge 159 square miles (412 square kilometers) of rain forest, displacing some 20,000 indigenous people.

Open acts of defiance are rare in Sarawak after three decades of authoritarian rule under the state's Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who has long battled charges that he has amassed personal wealth by selling off swaths of the rain forest in corrupt deals with timber industry. But protests have become increasingly bold among indigenous people opposed to the megahydro plan. Last September, native tribes set up a blockade to protest the Murum River dam project in western Sarawak. And in January, the longboat protest came to Long Lama, with shouts of "Stop Baram Dam" in indigenous languages reverberating through the normally quiet town.

"I don't care if I'm not reappointed" as the village chief by the government, said Panai Erang, 55, an ethnic Penan, one of several chiefs openly against the state-backed project. "I have to speak out for my people."

Power Transformation

Baram Dam is part of a grand eonomic-development vision for Sarawak, which along with Sabah is one of two Malaysian states on the northern coast of Borneo (map), along the South China Sea. Borneo, shared with Indonesia and Brunei, is one of the largest islands in the world, and home to one of its oldest rain forests. (See related story: "Borneo's Moment of Truth")

Endangered species such as Hose's civet, the Borneo gibbon, and six different species of hornbills rely on the habitat. The Bornean bay cat, one of the most elusive cats in the world, was sighted near the upper Baram River last November. Sarawak boasts more than 8,000 unique types of flora and 20,000 species of fauna, including one of the world's largest butterflies, the Rajah Brooke Birdwing, and one of the most extensive cave systems on Earth.

Despite its natural resources, Sarawak's economy has lagged behind the rest of Malaysia. An ever-widening economic gap, as well as a sea, separates Sarawak from the fast-growing states and bustling capital of Kuala Lumpur on the Malay peninsula. But Sarawak's SCORE plan aims to "transform Sarawak into a developed state by year 2020."

A government spokesperson close to Mahmud said Sarawak has to tap the hydro potential of its numerous rivers to power the state's industrial development.

"The people affected [by the dams] will be those who are living in small settlements scattered over remote areas," said the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, in an email. "They are still living in poverty.

"To build a dam, not just to generate reasonably priced energy, is also to involve the affected people in meaningful development," he said. "Otherwise, they will be left out."

The spokesperson added that Sarawak will also be exploiting its one to two billion tons of coal reserve for power. One of the coal plants is already operating in the developing township of Mukah. Malaysia's first aluminum smelter was opened here in 2009.

Sarawak's plan is to grow its economy by a factor of five, increase jobs, and double the population to 4.6 million by 2030.

But during the January protest at Long Lama, village chief Panai Erang said he and his people have little confidence that they will benefit from the new industrial development. Erang has visited the town of Sungai Asap, in central Sarawak, where 10,000 indigenous people already displaced by the first megadam project, Bakun Dam, were relocated. The forced exodus began in the late 1990s, and construction continued for more than a decade. With a capacity of 2,400 megawatts, Bakun, which opened in 2011, is currently Asia's largest hydroelectric dam outside China.

Erang said the settlers were given substandard houses and infertile farmland. Some have returned to Bakun and are living on floating houses at the dam site.

The community leader is fearful for the future of his villagers. Many do not possess a MyKad—the Malaysian national identification card—because of government policies making it difficult for them to prove citizenship. As a result, they cannot vote and would be unlikely to find employment if they were forced out of their ancestral homes into towns and cities.

"This is not the development that we want," said Salomon Gau, 48, an ethnic Kenyah from the village of Long Ikang, located downstream off the Baram River. "We don't need big dams. We want micro-hydro dams, [which are] more affordable and environmentally friendly."

Energy and Development

The concerns of the indigenous tribes are echoed by academics and activists from Malaysia and around the world. They worry about SCORE's potential social and environmental impact.

Benjamin Sovacool, founding manager of Vermont Law School's Energy Security and Justice Program, studied the SCORE project extensively. He and development consultant L.C. Bulan traveled the corridor and interviewed dozens of Sarawak planners and stakeholders to catalog the drivers and risks of the project. Their research, conducted at the National University of Singapore, was published last year in the journal Renewable Energy.

Government officials told the researchers that SCORE would improve prospects for those now living in villages, especially the young people: "They want gadgets, cars, nice clothes, and need to learn to survive in the modern economy," one project planner told Sovacool and Bulan. "They are not interested in picking some fruit in the forest, collecting bananas, hunting pigs."

And yet when the researchers visited the Sungai Asap resettlement community, they found people scraping for both water and food, oppressed by heat and rampant disease, with limited transportation options. "We had trouble sleeping at night due to coughing from a tuberculosis epidemic, malaria-carrying mosquitoes buzzing around our beds, and the smell of urine, since the longhouse lacked basic sanitation," they wrote.  Many community members had fled.

The squalor stands in marked contrast to the portrait of Sarawak that the SCORE project seeks to paint in its bid to attract new industry, a region of "world-class infrastructure, multimodal interconnectivity and competitive incentives," strategically located near potential fast-growing markets of India, China, and Indonesia.

Sovacool and Bulan noted that SCORE had encountered difficulties in finding investors and financiers, and flawed environmental impact assessments and questionable procurement practices would further hamper those efforts. (At least one major aluminum smelter plan was scrapped last year over a dispute over finances.) The authors concluded that SCORE might undermine Sarawak's greatest assets: "[I]t is taking what is special to Sarawak, its biodiversity and cultural heritage and destroying and converting it into electricity, a commodity available in almost every country on the planet."

And yet, Sovacool and Bulan wrote that such projects may become increasingly common globally, as governments seek to build energy systems and spur development at the same time.

Daniel Kammen, founder of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked extensively on alternative energy solutions in Malaysia, thinks Sarawak should explore other renewable energy options before implementing SCORE's power projects.

"The political and infrastructure challenges are immense, and the ecological and cultural impacts have barely been evaluated," he told National Geographic News via email.

He said careful evaluation and planning in cooperation with communities could yield better solutions; Kammen's team's work was pivotal in the 2011 decision by neighboring state Sabah to scrap plans for a 300-megawatt coal plant in an ecologically sensitive habitat, and provide energy instead with natural gas.

"What is vital to the long-term social and economic development of [Sarawak], and of Borneo, is to explore the full range of options that are available to this resource-rich state, recognizing that community, cultural, and environmental resources have tremendous value that could be lost if the SCORE project goes ahead without a full analysis of the options that exist in the region," he said.

Mounting Resistance

The natives of Sarawak, including those from Baram, have already lost thousands of hectares of customary land to logging companies and oil palm plantation companies over the past few decades. The state government often cuts land lease deals with companies without consulting natives. Consequently, there are now more than 200 land-dispute court cases pending in Sarawak.

The Penans, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe, have suffered more than the Kenyah and Kayan agricultural tribes as they are entirely dependent on the forest for their livelihoods, and are well-known for their blockades against loggers.

But the dam development has united different tribes traditionally divided by their disparate interests. Unlike previous upheavals due to logging, the hydro projects will force tribes out of their ancestral land completely. Adding to anger is the appearance of nepotism in several of the deals; for example, Hamed Abdul Sepawi, chairperson of the state utility company Sarawak Energy Bhd, which is building the Murum Dam, is the cousin of chief minister Mahmud.

The tribes struggle to have their concerns heard. The opposition party that organized the longboat protest in January at Baram, The People's Justice Party, collected more than 7,000 signatures but the government-appointed regional chief refused to see the protestors.

In some cases, the opponents have received a better reception abroad. Peter Kallang, an ethnic Kenyah and chairperson of the Save Sarawak Rivers Network, and other local indigenous activists traveled to Australia late last year to draw attention to their plight. "Development isn't just about economic growth," said Kallang. "Will these mega projects really raise the standard of living among our indigenous communities?" With support of Australian green groups, the activists pressured dam operator and consultant Hydro Tasmania to withdraw from Sarawak's hydropower projects.  Reports say Hydro Tasmania told the campaigners it plans to leave Sarawak after it fulfills its current contractual obligations, but the company has maintained it has been a small player in the SCORE program.

In any event, the indigenous activists plan to step up their campaign against the dam in the coming weeks in anticipation of upcoming national elections. Sarawak and Sabah traditionally have been viewed as a stronghold for the Barisan Nasional coalition that has ruled Malaysia for half a century.

Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim now views the rural states on Borneo as key to his bid to unseat the long-standing regime, due to the support he has garnered among increasingly organized indigenous tribes.

In uniting Sarawak's native peoples, the project to alter its rivers may, in the end, change the course of Malaysia.

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.


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Newtown Dad's Tearful Plea at Senate Gun Hearing

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A father who lost his son in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School sobbed as he testified at a Senate hearing today in favor of an assault weapons ban.


Across town Vice President Biden alluded to untold horror of the Newtown tragedy in an appeal for help from the nation's attorneys general.


Despite their emotional appeals, the push for gun reforms championed by the White House and many Democrats faces an uncertain future.


"Jesse was the love of my life," said Neil Heslin, sobbing as he described his 6-year-old son before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "He was the only family I had left. It's hard for me to be here today to talk about my deceased son. I have to. I'm his voice."


Heslin's son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 children and six teachers and school administrators murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. last December. Heslin recounted his last moments with his son when he took him to pick up his favorite, sausage egg and cheese sandwich and hot chocolate before dropping him off at school on the morning of Dec. 14.


"It was 9:04 when I dropped Jesse off. Jesse gave me a hug and a kiss and at that time said goodbye and love you. He stopped and said, I loved mom too." Heslin and his wife are separated.


"That was the last I saw of Jesse as he ducked around the corner. Prior to that when he was getting out of the truck he hugged me and held me and I could still feel that hug and pat on the back and he said everything's going to be ok dad. It's all going to be ok," Heslin said breaking down in tears a second time. "It wasn't ok. I have to go home at night to an empty house without my son."












Army Vet Awarded Medal of Honor for Afghan Firefight Watch Video





Heslin was one of eight witnesses testifying at a hearing to back a proposed assault weapons ban. Another witness was Dr. William Begg, a physician who made it to the emergency room the day of the Newtown shooting.


"People say that the overall number of assault weapon deaths is small but you know what? Please don't tell that to the people of Tucson or Aurora or Columbine or Virginia Tech, and don't tell that to the people in Newtown," Begg said as he choked up and people in the crowd clapped. "Don't tell that to the people in Newtown. This is a tipping point. This is a tipping point and this is a public health issue. Please make the right decision."


Related: Read More About Heslin's Testimony


The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to consider four gun safety measures, including the assault weapons ban, on Thursday. The three other bills aim to stop illegal gun trafficking, enhance safety in schools, and enact universal background checks.


As the hearing unfolded on Capitol Hill, Biden tapped into the stories that Newtown's first responders have shared with him as he urged attorneys general to help the administration push their gun proposals.


Related: The Tragedy at Sandy Hook


"With the press not here, I can tell you what is not public yet about how gruesome it was," Biden said of the massacre's gruesome aftermath at a Washington luncheon. "I met with the state troopers who were on the scene this last week. And the impact on them has been profound. Some of them, understandably, needing some help."


A spokeswoman for Biden could not clarify the non-public information to which he referred. The vice president suggested that what he heard in private conversations should spur lawmakers to enact some measures aimed at curbing gun violence.


Related: President Obama's Campaign Organization Turns to Gun Control






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Football: Drogba gets Euro clearance, Lazio fined

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NYON, Switzerland: Didier Drogba will be allowed to play in Galatasaray's Champions League clash against Schalke after the German club had their objections over his eligibility thrown out by UEFA on Wednesday.

Schalke, who came away from Istanbul with a 1-1 draw in the first leg of their last 16 clash, believed that the transfer of the former Chelsea striker from Shanghai Shenhua to the Turkish side was completed after the registration deadline.

But the European governing body said that the deal was completed according to the rules.

"Having examined all the documents of the case, the Control and Disciplinary Body decided to reject the protest lodged by Schalke," said a UEFA statement.

The second leg of the tie takes place in Germany on March 12.

Lazio were fined 40,000 euros and ordered to play their next two home games in Europe behind closed doors after their fans were accused of throwing fireworks and displaying racist behaviour in their Europa League against Borussia Moenchengladbach on February 21.

The Italians will play Stuttgart on March 14 behind closed doors as well as their next home tie.

Lazio were fined 140,000 euros in January after their Europa League group clashes against Tottenham and Maribor were marred by racist chanting.

Lazio were slapped with a 90,000-euro sanction after some sections of the Rome club's fans brandished a banner reading "Free Palestine" at the November 22 game against Tottenham in Rome which finished 0-0.

Others sang "Juden Tottenham" ("Tottenham Jews" in German) at the visiting fans, whose club has a historical Jewish connection.

Lazio had previously been fined 40,200 euros after monkey chants were directed at Tottenham players during the reverse fixture in London in September.

The Italians also received a suspended one-match stadium ban and a 50,000-euro fine for their supporters' racist conduct in the group stage game against Maribor in Slovenia in December.

Meanwhile, Paris Saint-Germain striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic was banned for two European matches after being sent off in the dying moments his team's Champions League 2-1 win at Valencia.

The big Swede will miss the second leg on March 6 as well as the first leg of the quarter-final should PSG qualify.

Turkish side Fenerbahce must play their next Europa League home clash against Victoria Plzen on March 14 behind closed doors after their fans were charged with setting off and throwing fireworks in the match against Bate Borisov.

"The Turkish team are also excluded from participating in the next UEFA club competition for which they would qualify -- this sanction is deferred for a probationary period of two years. Fenerbahce have also been fined 60,000 euros," said UEFA.

-AFP/ac



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Iran upbeat on nuclear talks, West still wary

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ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears about its atomic ambitions.


Rapid progress was unlikely with Iran's presidential election, due in June, raising domestic political tensions, diplomats and analysts had said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty, the first in eight months.


The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered modest sanctions relief in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive nuclear work but made clear that they expected no immediate breakthrough.


In an attempt to make their proposals more palatable to Iran, the six powers appeared to have softened previous demands somewhat, for example regarding their requirement that the Islamic state ship out its stockpile of higher-grade uranium.


Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said the powers had tried to "get closer to our viewpoint", which he said was positive.


In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry commented that the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.


Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very confident" an agreement could be reached and Jalili, the chief negotiator, said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a "turning point".


However, one diplomat said Iranian officials at the negotiations appeared to be suggesting that they were opening new avenues, but it was not clear if this was really the case.


Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "Everyone is saying Iran was more positive and portrayed the talks as a win."


"I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face internally while buying time with the West until after the elections," she said.


The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul on March 18 to discuss the powers' proposals, and return to Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western diplomats made clear they wanted to see a substantive response from Iran.


"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said.


A senior U.S. official in Almaty said, "What we care about at the end is concrete results."


ISRAELI WARNING


Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic sanctions were failing and urged the international community to threaten Iran with military action.


Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products. They gave no further details.


In exchange, a senior U.S. official said, Iran would among other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".


The official did not describe what was being asked of Iran as a "shutdown" of the plant as Western diplomats had said in previous meetings with Iran last year.


Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil.


But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a short technical step away from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it produces higher-grade uranium to fuel a research reactor.


Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.


In Vienna on Wednesday, a senior U.N. nuclear agency official told diplomats in a closed-door briefing that Iran was technically ready to sharply increase this higher-grade enrichment, two Western diplomats said.


"Iran can triple 20 percent production in the blink of an eye," one of the diplomats said.


The U.S. official in Almaty said the powers' latest proposal would "significantly restrict the accumulation of near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical reactor.


This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that Iran ship out its stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.


Iran has often indicated that 20-percent enrichment could be up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.


Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers had not made that specific demand.


The Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday, currency tracking websites reported.


(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl and Yeganeh Torbati in Almaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland)



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A History of Balloon Crashes

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A hot-air balloon exploded in Egypt yesterday as it carried 19 people over ancient ruins near Luxor. The cause is believed to be a torn gas hose. In Egypt as in many other countries, balloon rides are a popular way to sightsee.

The sport of hot-air ballooning dates to 1783, when a French balloon took to the skies with a sheep, a rooster, and a duck. Apparently, they landed safely. But throughout the history of the sport, there have been tragedies like the one in Egypt.

1785: Pioneering balloonist Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and pilot Pierre Romain died when their balloon caught fire, possibly from a stray spark, and crashed during an attempt to cross the English Channel. They were the first to die in a balloon crash.

1923: Five balloonists participating in the Gordon Bennett Cup, a multi-day race that dates to 1906, were killed when lightning struck their balloons.

1924: Meteorologist C. LeRoy Meisinger and U.S. Army balloonist James T. Neely died after a lightning strike. They had set off from Scott Field in Illinois during a storm to study air pressure. Popular Mechanics dubbed them "martyrs of science."

1995: Tragedy strikes the Gordon Bennett Cup again. Belarusian forces shot down one of three balloons that drifted into their airspace from Poland. The two Americans on board died. The other balloonists were detained and fined for entering Belarus without a visa.

1989: Two hot air balloons collided during a sightseeing trip near Alice Springs, Australia. One balloon crashed to the ground killing all 13 people on board. The pilot of the other balloon was sentenced to a two-year prison term for "committing a dangerous act." Until today, this was considered the most deadly balloon accident.

2012: A balloon hit a power line and caught fire in New Zealand, killing all 11 on board. Investigators later determined that the pilot was not licensed to fly and had not taken  proper safety measures during the crash, like triggering the balloon's parachute and deflation system.

2012: A sightseeing balloon carrying 32 people crashed and caught fire during a thunderstorm in the Ljubljana Marshes in Slovenia. Six died; many other passengers were injured.


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Tempers Flare at Jodi Arias Murder Trial

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Tempers flared between accused murderer Jodi Arias and prosecutor Juan Martinez today as Martinez tried to detail Arias' history of spying on her boyfriends, but Arias complained that his aggressive style of questioning made her "brain scramble."


Arias and Martinez, who have sparred throughout two prior days of cross-examination in Arias' murder case, spent more than 10 minutes bickering over Martinez's word choices and his apparent "anger."


The morning's testimony, and Martinez's points about Arias' alleged spying, were largely interrupted by the spats. Arias is accused of killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.


"Are you having trouble understanding me?" Martinez yelled.


"Yes because sometimes cause you go in circles," Arias answered.


Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial


"You said you were offended by Mr. Alexander's behavior, do you remember that? This just happened. How is that you are not remembering?" he asked.


"Because you are making my brain scramble,"she said.


Martinez, becoming agitated, barked back, "I'm again making your brain scramble. The problem is not you, it's the prosecutor, right?"


Martinez paced the courtroom in front of Arias asking her whether she had trouble with her memory or trouble answering truthfully.










Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video





"You don't know? You don't know what you just said? Didn't it just happen? You can't even remember what you just said?"


"I think I'm more focused on your posture, your tone, and your anger," Arias said, causing Martinez to become even angrier.


"So it's the prosecutor's fault because he is angry? You are having problems on the witness stand because of the way the prosecutor is asking the questions? So the answers depend on the style of the prosecutor? You're saying you're having trouble telling us the truth because of the way the questions are being posed," he said, gesturing with his hands.


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


Eventually, Arias's attorney Kirk Nurmi, who had been objecting sporadically to Martinez's questions, stood in the courtroom and told Judge Sherry Stephens that they should all approach the bench before Martinez continued. When they returned, Martinez briefly stood in different parts of the courtroom, asking Arias if she was more comfortable depending on where he stood, before moving on.


Arias, 32, is charged with murder for killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander at his home in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008. She claims she killed him in self defense and that he had been increasingly violent and sexually demanding in the months before the confrontation. She also claimed he was interested in young boys.


The prosecution claims she killed him in a jealous rage. She could face the death penalty if convicted of first degree murder.


Martinez finally began to make his points that Arias snooped on Alexander's phone messages and Myspace messages, and had gone through an ex-boyfriend's email messages to see if they were cheating. Arias admitted that her behavior was "dishonest."



See the Evidence in the Jodi Arias Murder Trial


Martinez also showed that after Arias went through the messages and found evidence of cheating, she acted quickly to end the relationships with Alexander and two former boyfriends, suggesting that Arias was not under as much of Alexander's influence as she had previously testified.


"So you seem to be very assertive. You were very assertive even at age 17 or 18, you didn't waste any time when you'd been cheated on," Martinez said. "You have the ability to make the decisions necessary for yourself and even from the time you were younger, it appears you were assertive."


"It depends on how comfortable I am with the person," Arias replied.






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Football: Security tight as Lippi's Guangzhou beat Reds

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GUANGZHOU, China: Marcello Lippi's Guangzhou Evergrande swept aside Japan's Urawa Red Diamonds 3-0 in an AFC Champions League opener crackling with political tensions and played under heavy security on Tuesday.

As the Asian competition got underway with goals and an outlandish "Panenka" penalty, the Chinese double-holders began their campaign in ominous style as they dispatched the 2007 winners at home.

Chinese media said 11,000 police and security were deployed to prevent any flare-up in nationalist violence. Leading website sports.163.com called it China's highest ever ratio of guards to fans, who numbered about 40,000.

But Lucas Barrios's 16th-minute opener helped calm the atmosphere and Muriqui weighed in with a second goal after half-time. At the death, Keita Suzuki put the ball into his own net to make it an emphatic start for Guangzhou.

The big-spenders, led by their World Cup-winning coach, are aiming to become China's first Asian champions in 23 years, a result which would help mend the country's image after a major corruption scandal which left top officials in jail.

Ambitious China's reputation has also suffered after high-profile imports Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka abruptly quit the country after just one season with Shanghai Shenhua.

Fellow Chinese team Jiangsu Sainty had a rude introduction to the competition when they were hammered 5-1 in their debut outing by K-League champions FC Seoul, who will have their own claims on the Asian title.

Buriram United, rocked last week by claims that their Thai FA Cup final win against Army United was targeted by match-fixers, started positively when they came back from a goal down to draw Japan's Vegalta Sendai 1-1 away.

"We may have to feel content that we haven't lost our opening match," said Sendai coach Makoto Teguramori. "We tried to gain a little flexiblity in our tactics by changing our pace from the first to the second half."

At Nonthaburi's Thunderdome Stadium, fellow Thai team Muangthong United also earned a priceless draw when they twice came from behind to draw 2-2 with Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, the 2006 winners and 2011 runners-up.

Muangthong went 1-0 down to an early Lee Dong-Gook penalty but they equalised on the stroke of half-time courtesy of Mario Djurovski's sublime "Panenka", chipped-down-the-middle spot-kick.

Belgian forward Kevin Oris looked to have stolen the points for the visitors on 77 minutes but Muangthong's South Korean import Kim Yoo-Jin had the last word when his header found the net via a Jeonbuk defender with just two minutes to go.

Two west Asian groups also got underway on Tuesday.

In Group A, Spanish coach Luis Milla took charge of Al Jazira for the first time, just days after he replaced Brazilian Paulo Bonamigo, but his new UAE side fell 3-1 at Iran's Tractorsazi Tabriz.

Saudi hosts Al Shabab beat Qatari visitors El Jaish 2-0.

In Group B, Qatari champions Lekhwiya came away 2-1 victors over play-off winners Al Shabab Al Arabi of the UAE.

And in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's Pakhtakor, the only side to qualify for all 11 editions, saw off Saudi side Al Ettifaq 1-0.

The remaining games are on Wednesday.

-AFP/ac



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Italy parties seek way out of election stalemate

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ROME (Reuters) - Italy's stunned political parties searched for a way forward on Tuesday after an inconclusive election gave none of them a parliamentary majority and threatened prolonged instability and a renewal of the European financial crisis.


The results, notably the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, left the center-left bloc with a majority in the lower house but without the numbers to control the upper chamber, the Senate.


Financial markets fell sharply at the prospect of a stalemate that reawakened memories of the crisis that pushed Italy's borrowing costs toward unsustainably high levels and brought the euro zone to the brink of collapse in 2011.


"The winner is: Ingovernability," ran the headline in Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, reflecting the deadlock the country will have to confront in the next few weeks as sworn enemies are forced to work together to form a government.


Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday that policy choices of the next Italian government would be crucial for the country's creditworthiness, underlining the need for a coalition that can agree on new reforms.


Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), has the difficult task of trying to agree a "grand coalition" with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the man he blames for ruining Italy, or striking a deal with Grillo, a completely unknown quantity in conventional politics.


The alternative is new elections either immediately or within a few months, although both Berlusconi and Bersani have indicated that they want to avoid a return to the polls if possible: "Italy cannot be ungoverned and we have to reflect," Berlusconi said in an interview on his own television station.


For his part, Grillo, whose movement won the most votes of any single party, has indicated that he believes the next government will last no more than six months.


"They won't be able to govern," he told reporters on Tuesday. "Whether I'm there or not, they won't be able govern."


He said he would work with anyone who supported his policy proposals, which range from anti-corruption measures to green-tinted energy measures but rejected suggestions of entering a formal coalition: "It's not time to talk of alliances... the system has already fallen," he said.


The election, a massive rejection of the austerity policies applied by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of international leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, caused consternation across Europe.


German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble put a brave face on it, saying "that's democracy".


Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was more pessimistic.


"This is a jump to nowhere that does not bode well either for Italy or Europe," he said.


A long recession and growing disillusionment with mainstream parties and tax-raising austerity fed a bitter public mood and contributed to the massive rejection of Monti, whose centrist coalition was relegated to the sidelines.


Projections by the Italian center for Electoral Studies showed that the center-left will have 121 seats in the Senate, against 117 for the center-right alliance of Berlusconi's PDL and the regionalist Northern League. Grillo would take 54.


That leaves no party with the majority in a chamber which a government must control to pass legislation.


"THE BELL IS RINGING"


On a visit to Germany, President Giorgio Napolitano said he would not comment until the parties had consulted with each other and Bersani called on Berlusconi and Grillo to "assume their responsibilities" to ensure Italy could have a government.


He warned that the election showed austerity policies alone were no answer to the economic crisis and said the result carried implications beyond Italy.


"The bell is ringing for Europe as well," he said in his first public comments since the election.


He said he would present a limited number of reform proposals to parliament, focusing on jobs, institutional reform and European policy.


However forming an alliance may be long and difficult and could test the sometimes fragile internal unity of the mainstream parties.


"The idea of a majority without Grillo is unthinkable. I don't know if anyone in the PD is considering it but I'm against it," said Matteo Orfini, a member of Bersani's PD secretariat.


"The idea of a PD-PDL government, even if it's backed by Monti, doesn't make any sense," he said.


For his part, Berlusconi won a boost when his Northern League ally Roberto Maroni won the election to become regional president of Lombardy, Italy's economic heartland and one of the richest and most productive areas of Europe.


For Italian business, with an illustrious history of export success, the election result brought dismay that there would be no quick change to what they see as a regulatory sclerosis that has kept the economy virtually stagnant for a decade.


"This is probably the worst possible scenario," said Francesco Divella, whose family began selling pasta under its eponymous brand in 1890 in the southern region of Puglia.


Berlusconi's campaign, mixing sweeping tax cut pledges with relentless attacks on Monti and Merkel, echoed many of the themes pushed by Grillo and underlined the increasingly angry mood of the Italian electorate.


But even if the next government turns away from the tax hikes and spending cuts brought in by Monti, it will struggle to revive an economy that has scarcely grown in two decades.


Monti was widely credited with tightening Italy's public finances and restoring its international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, who is currently on trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute.


However, Monti struggled to pass the kind of structural reforms needed to improve competitiveness and lay the foundations for a return to economic growth. A weak center-left government may not find it any easier.


The view from some voters, weary of the mainstream parties, was unrepentant: "It's good," said Roger Manica, 28, a security guard in Rome, who voted for the center-left PD.


"Next time I'll vote 5-Star. I like that they are changing things, even if it means uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't matter to me, for me what's important is a good person who gets things done," he said. "Look how well they've done."


(Additional reporting by Barry Moody, Gavin Jones, Lisa Jucca, Steven Jewkes, Steve Scherer, Catherine Hornby and Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin. Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Peter Graff)



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Lost Continent Found in Indian Ocean

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Evidence of a drowned "microcontinent" has been found in sand grains from the beaches of a small Indian Ocean island, scientists say.

A well-known tourist destination, Mauritius (map) is located about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) off the coast of Africa, east of Madagascar. Scientists think the tiny island formed some nine million years ago from cooling lava spewed by undersea volcanoes.

But recently, researchers have found sand grains on Mauritius that contain fragments of the mineral zircon that are far older than the island, between 660 million and about 2 billion years old.

In a new study, detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists concluded that the older minerals once belonged to a now vanished landmass, tiny bits of which were dragged up to the surface during the formation of Mauritius. (Also see "World's Oldest Rocks Suggest Early Earth Was Habitable.")

"When lavas moved through continental material on the way towards the surface, they picked up a few rocks containing zircon," study co-author Bjørn Jamtveit, a geologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, explained in an email.

Most of these rocks probably disintegrated and melted due to the high temperatures of the lavas, but some grains of zircons survived and were frozen into the lavas [during the eruption] and rolled down to form rocks on the Mauritian surface."

Prehistoric Atlantis

Jamtveit and his colleagues estimate that the lost microcontinent, which they have dubbed Mauritia, was about a quarter of the size of Madagascar (map).

Furthermore, based on a recalculation of how the ancient continents drifted apart, the scientists concluded that Mauritia was once a tiny part of a much larger "supercontinent" that included India and Madagascar, called Rodinia.

The three landmasses "were tucked together in one big continent prior to the formation of the Indian Ocean," Jamtveit said.

But like a prehistoric Atlantis, Mauritia was eventually drowned beneath the waves when India broke apart from Madagascar about 85 million years ago. (Also see "Slimmer Indian Continent Drifted Ten Times Faster.")

Ancient Rocks

Scientists have long suspected that volcanic islands might contain evidence of lost continents, and Jamtveit and his team decided to test this hypothesis during a layover in Mauritius as part of a longer research trip in 1999. (See volcano pictures.)

The stop in tropical Mauritius "was a very tempting thing to do for a Norwegian in the cold month of January," Jamtveit said.

Mauritius was a good test site because it was a relatively young island and, being formed from ocean lava, would not naturally contain zircon, a tough mineral that doesn't weather easily.

If zircon older than 9 million years was found on Mauritius, it would be good evidence of the presence of buried continental material, Jamtveit explained. (See lava and rock pictures.)

At first, the scientists crushed rocks from Mauritius to extract the zircon crystals, but this proved difficult because the crushing equipment contained zircon from other sites, raising the issue of contamination.

"That was a show stopper for a while," Jamtveit said.

A few years later, however, some members of the team returned to Mauritius and this time brought back sand from two different beaches for sampling.

The scientists extracted 20 zircon samples and successfully dated 8 of them by calculating the rate that the elements uranium and thorium inside of the samples slowly break down into lead.

"They all provided much older ages than the age of the Mauritius lavas," Jamtveit said. "In fact they gave ages consistent with the ages of known continental rocks in Madagascar, Seychelles, and India."

Missing Evidence?

Jérôme Dyment, a geologist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics in France, said he's unconvinced by the work because it's possible that the ancient zircons found their way to the island by other means, for example as part of ship ballast or modern construction material.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which are not given by the authors so far," said Dyment, who did not participate in the research.

"Finding zircons in sand is one thing, finding them within a rock is another one ... Finding the enclave of deep rocks that, according to the author's inference, bring them to the surface during an eruption would be much more convincing evidence."

Dyment added that if Mauritia was real, evidence for its existence should be found as part of a joint French and German experiment that installed deep-sea seismometers to investigate Earth's mantle around Réunion Island, which is situated about 120 miles (200 kilometers) from Mauritius. (Learn what's inside the Earth.)

"If a microcontinent lies under Réunion, it should be depicted by this experiment," said Dyment, who is part of the project, dubbed RHUM-RUM.

More Lost Continents to Be Found?

But Conall Mac Niocaill, a geologist at the University of Oxford in the U.K. who was also not involved in the study, said "the lines of evidence are, individually, only suggestive, but collectively they add up to a compelling story."

Based on the new findings, Mac Niocaill and others think other vanished microcontinents could be lurking beneath the Indian Ocean.

In fact, analyses of Earth's gravitational field have revealed other areas in the world's oceans where the rock appears to be thicker than normal and could be a sign of continental crusts.

"We know there are lots of microcontinents," Mac Niocaill said.

"What we don't know is whether there are many of these 'drowned' microcontinents, or whether this is a peculiarity of this particular setting."


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Secret Vatican Dossier for 'Pope's Eyes Only'

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Feb 25, 2013 9:05am


ROME – Pope Benedict XVI decided to keep secret the contents of an investigative report on the “Vatileaks” scandal, ruling that the only person who will get to see it will be the next pope.


The top secret dossier details the findings of an internal investigation the pope launched last April into the so-called Vatileaks affair, in which Benedict’s former butler leaked confidential documents stolen from the papal chambers.


Italian newspapers have claimed — without attribution — that the investigation revealed a sex and blackmail scandal inside the curia.


The Vatican spokesman today underscored that the contents of the dossier are known only to the pope and his investigators, three elderly prelates whom the Italian papers have nicknamed “the 007 cardinals.”


Pope Benedict met today with Cardinals Julian Herranz of Spain, Jozef Tomko of Slovakia, and Salvatore De Giorgi of Sicily in a private audience.


According to the Vatican, the pope thanked them for their work and expressed satisfaction with their investigation.


“Their work made it possible to detect, given the limitations and imperfections of the human factor of every institution, the generosity and dedication of those who work with uprightness and generosity in the Holy See,” read a Vatican statement.


The Vatican statement pointedly added: “The Holy Father has decided that the acts of this investigation, known only to himself, remain solely at the disposition of the new pope.”


Many here had expected the investigating cardinals, who are too old to participate in the conclave, would brief the voting cardinals about their findings.


Today Vatican officials clarified the investigating cardinals will be free to discuss their investigation with the other cardinals, as the voting members of the conclave seek to understand the challenges the next pope will face.


But the dossier itself will remain “For the Pope’s Eyes Only.”




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