Where is Phantom

What information a dog actually detects when he is scenting is not perfectly understood; although once a matter of debate, it now seems to be well established that dogs can distinguish two different types of scents: an air scent from some person or thing that has recently passed by, and a ground scent that remains detectable for a much longer period. The characteristics and behavior of these two types of scent trail would seem, after some thought, to be quite different, the air scent being intermittent but perhaps less obscured by competing scents, whereas the ground scent would be relatively permanent with respect to careful and repetitive search by the dog, but would seem to be much more contaminated with other scents.

In any event, it is established by those who train tracking dogs that it is impossible to teach the dog how to track any better than it does naturally; the object instead is to motivate it properly, and teach it to maintain focus on a single track and ignore any others that might otherwise seem of greater interest to an untrained dog. An intensive search for a scent, for instance searching a ship for contraband, can actually be very fatiguing for a dog, and the dog must be motivated to continue this hard work for a long period of time.

Dog Tags

The purpose of a diaper is to absorb moisture and contain mess so that the wearer can remain dry and comfortable after wetting or soiling themselves. When diapers become full and can no longer hold any more waste, they require changing; this process is often performed by a secondary person such as a parent or caregiver. Failure to change a diaper on a regular enough basis can result in diaper rash.

Presented to Fred Wells as project p-57 (this was the plane Wells had taught American pilots to fly during WWII), Mills stated "This one will fly." Although Pampers were conceptualized in 1959, the diapers themselves were not launched into the market until 1961.

Adult Diapers

COPENHAGEN – A historic U.N. climate conference ended Saturday with only a nonbinding "Copenhagen Accord" to show for two weeks of debate and frustration. It was a deal short on concrete steps against global warming, but signaling a new start for rich-poor cooperation on climate change.
The agreement brokered by President Barack Obama with China and others in fast-paced hours of diplomacy on Friday sets up the first significant program of climate aid to poorer nations. But although it urges deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, it does nothing to demand them. That will now be subject to continuing talks next year.
As delegates wrapped up an exhausting overnight negotiating marathon Saturday afternoon, to end the 193-nation conference, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer assessed the results for reporters.
It's "an impressive accord," he said of the three-page document. "But it's not an accord that is legally binding, not an accord that pins down industrialized countries to targets."
A legally binding international agreement — a treaty — requiring further emissions cuts by richer nations was the goal in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 when the annual U.N. conference set a two-year timetable leading to Copenhagen.
A new pact would succeed the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, whose relatively modest emissions cuts by 37 nations expire in 2012. It was hoped a new regime would encompass the U.S., which rejected Kyoto.
But the hopes for Copenhagen faded as 2009 wore on and the first U.S. legislation to cap carbon emissions worked its way only slowly through Congress. Without a U.S. commitment, others were wary of submitting to a new legally binding deal.
Big polluters, nonetheless, submitted plans for reductions ahead of the U.N. talks.
The European Union has committed to cutting emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels; Japan to 25 percent, if others take similar steps, and the U.S. provisionally to a weak 3 to 4 percent.
For the first time, China also offered to rein in its greenhouse gas output, pledging to reduce its "carbon intensity" — that is, its use of fossil fuels per unit of economic output — by 40 to 45 percent. India, Brazil and South Africa followed suit with their own voluntary targets.
But scientists say that's too small a rollback in gases from fossil-fuel burning, emissions that have increased an average of 2 to 3 percent a year in the past decade.
Some U.S. experts are predicting a big enough rise in temperatures to lead to serious damage from coastal flooding, droughts, species die-offs and other impacts of climate change.
The U.N. climate summit this past week in the snowy Danish capital brought more than 110 leaders. The Copenhagen Accord emerged principally from Obama's meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa.
The compromise document indicated richer and poorer nations are ready for closer cooperation on climate. Its key elements, with no legal obligation, were:
_Nations agreed to cooperate in reducing emissions, "with a view" to scientists' warnings to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above preindustrial levels.
_Developing nations will report every two years on their voluntary actions to reduce emissions. Those reports would be subject to "international consultations and analysis" — a concession to the U.S. by China, which had seen this as an intrusion on its sovereignty.
_Richer nations will finance a $10 billion-a-year, three-year program to fund poorer nations' projects to deal with drought and other climate-change impacts, and to develop clean energy.
_They also set a "goal" of mobilizing $100 billion-a-year by 2020 for the same adaptation and mitigation purposes.

In a U.S. concession to China and other developing nations, text was dropped from the declaration that would have set a goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Developing nations thought that would hamper efforts to raise their people from poverty.

In a news conference here Friday, Obama deflected criticism that Copenhagen had failed to achieve a strong agreement. If the world waited to reach a binding deal, "then we wouldn't make any progress," he said, warning that could produce "such frustration and cynicism that rather than taking one step forward, we ended up taking two steps back."

Environmentalists and a handful of developing countries were unconvinced.

"The deal is a triumph of spin over substance. It recognizes the need to keep warming below 2 degrees but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts," said Jeremy Hobbs of Oxfam International, a group that works with developing countries.

The full U.N. conference, in its long overnight session that finally ended Saturday, approved by consensus a compromise decision to "take note" of the accord, instead of formally approving it.

"We have a deal in Copenhagen," said a visibly relieved U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has made climate change his No. 1 priority. He said "this is just the beginning" of a process to craft a binding pact on emissions.

The next deadline for a treaty will be the 2010 U.N. climate conference in Mexico City.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Associated Press writers John Heilprin, Seth Borenstein, Michael Casey, Arthur Max and Karl Ritter contributed to this report

DETROIT (Reuters) –
The board of General Motors Co (GM.UL) will get an update on the search for a new chief executive by next month as a recruiting firm compiles a short list of candidates, a person familiar with the process said.

The automaker has also identified a candidate to hire as a new chief financial officer and could have an announcement on that key position by the end of the year, GM Chairman and acting Chief Executive Ed Whitacre said.

Taken together, the steps demonstrate how GM's board under the oversight of Whitacre has nearly completed the process of replacing or reassigning the senior leadership team that steered the automaker through bankruptcy five months ago.

Whitacre, 68, has moved to put his own stamp on GM's management and strategy since becoming chairman in July. Since taking over as GM's acting CEO last week, he has also driven home a message that the automaker must move faster to win back customers, pay back taxpayers and return to profitability.

GM has tapped search firm Spencer Stuart to find a permanent chief executive in a process that will consider candidates outside the auto industry, said the person who asked not to be named because the hiring process is private.

Spencer Stuart also handled the search for Whitacre, who became acting chief executive after the board broke with former CEO Fritz Henderson.

A spokesman for the recruiting company could not be immediately reached for comment. GM had no comment on the search firm's identity.

Whitacre did not address the CEO search or how long he will be acting chief executive during a 38-minute Web chat with reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

He said GM was close to hiring a replacement for CFO Ray Young.

"We're close and have narrowed it down and have a real good candidate," Whitacre said, adding that GM "could have some news in two or three weeks."

Young has been in discussions about moving to GM's international operations based in Shanghai, people familiar with those talks have said. GM has declined to comment.

With the replacement of Young, GM's entire top management team will have changed over this year. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, 77, who had been charged with heading GM's marketing efforts, has been made an adviser to Whitacre.

"His role has changed a bit. He is senior adviser to me and top management," Whitacre said. "We look forward to learning a lot from him."

Corporate search executives expect GM to stay within the ranks of the U.S. executive class for a new CEO, but say it will face challenges because of a government-imposed limit on executive pay and the strong presence of Whitacre.

'FOCUSED ON RESULTS'

A former AT&T chief executive, Whitacre has pushed GM's sales organization to bring down its industry-leading spending on incentives even as the automaker struggles to defend its share of the U.S. market, executives say.

"He's pretty clear that he wants results," Susan Docherty, GM's recently appointed head of U.S. sales and marketing, told reporters on Tuesday. "If he sees things that he thinks are off track, he's going to hold me and the team accountable."

When asked how long GM's new executive team, including Docherty, have to show results, Whitacre said "not long."

Henderson, 51, had taken over as GM CEO in March at the time that his predecessor, Rick Wagoner, was dismissed by the Obama administration.

GM emerged from a government-funded bankruptcy in July under the nearly 61 percent ownership of the U.S. Treasury, after accepting more than $50 billion in government aid.

Corporate talent experts said a new CEO of GM would have to be able to work beside a strong chairman in the form of Whitacre. Some also believe it is possible that Whitacre would opt to keep the CEO job.

"Ed has been acting more like a CEO than he has chairman and as a result of that, somebody coming into this role is going to have a very high opinion, high velocity, high visibility chairman who has already shown that he is the leader of the board and is making pretty quick decisions," said Brian Sullivan, CEO of executive search firm CTPartners.

"What you do need almost is more of a chief operating officer than a chief executive officer because this certainly looks to be Ed's show, but he needs someone to implement the day-to-day," Sullivan said.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, said he also expected that a new CEO would have a "muted role" at GM under Whitacre after the unexpectedly swift move by the board to break with Henderson.

"The ego issues here are very considerable," he said.

(Reporting by David Bailey and Bernie Woodall; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Matthew Lewis)

Natural Baby

In England too, dummies were seen as something the "poorer classes" would use, and associated with poor hygiene. In 1914 a London doctor complained about "the dummy teat": "If it falls on the floor it is rubbed momentarily on the mother's blouse or apron, lipped by the mother and replaced in the baby's mouth."

Pacifiers have been shown to interfere with breastfeeding, especially if introduced within the first 6 weeks of life.

TOKYO (AFP) –
Japan's central bank, under pressure from the government to help boost the gradual recovery of the world's second-largest economy, announced a surprise meeting for Tuesday.

Japan has emerged this year from its worst post-war recession sparked by the global downturn, but the recovery has been threatened by deflation and a surging yen which makes its exports less competitive.

The BoJ in a brief statement mid-morning said it would call an unscheduled monetary policy meeting at 0500 GMT "to discuss monetary control matters based on recent economic and financial developments."

The government on Monday announced plans for more than 30 billion dollars in fresh stimulus spending but has also badgered the independent Bank of Japan (BoJ) to take steps to help revive the economy.

The central bank, which has already slashed interest rates to near zero in a bid to free up credit for investment, has been urged to continue other stimulus steps to pump money into the financial sector.

Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii on Tuesday called on the central bank to continue with "quantitative easing" measures, which include buying bonds and other assets from financial institutions to boost their capital.

"We ask for the central bank's voluntary cooperation with the government's policy," Fujii told reporters. "If it takes more quantitative easing, it would be effective for the economy."

The central bank said in October it would halt some of its emergency measures at the end of the year despite pressure from the government not to withdraw its stimulus steps too soon.

Fujii said the central bank must "cooperate with the government while making its decision independently."

Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan, stressing the same point, said fiscal and monetary steps should be applied "in an integrated manner."

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is expected to meet the BoJ chief this week.

The central bank recently said that Japan is in deflation. A general fall in prices hurt an economy because they reduce corporate earnings, and because consumers tend to delay spending in hopes of further price falls.

The yen's rise to a 14-year high against the dollar has piled further pressure on the economy because it makes companies' exports less competitive and reduces their overseas earnings when converted back from dollars into yen.

Hatoyama last week said Japan must avoid a double-dip recession. His cabinet Tuesday approved plans for the new stimulus package, although no exact figure has been announced and the spending is still subject to parliamentary approval.

The government has said the spending would be more than 2.7 trillion yen (31 billion dollars.)

The Nikkei business daily said the package will likely include more than 11 billion dollars to support small and medium sized businesses and over 10 billion dollars for initiatives to tackle climate change.

A cabinet official said "cabinet members agreed on plans to draft a supplementary budget this week, to tackle reforms ... to generate demand, and to urge the Bank of Japan to support the economy with its monetary policy."

-- Dow Jones Newswires contributed to the story --

JERUSALEM (AFP) –
Israel approved the construction of hundreds of new housing units in annexed east Jerusalem on Tuesday, driving another stake into troubled US efforts to restart Middle East peace talks.

The interior ministry said it approved the construction of 900 new units in Gilo, one of a dozen of Israeli settlements in mostly Arab east Jerusalem, adding that the project still faced review.

Earlier, Israeli media reported that hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had refused a request from main ally Washington to halt construction in Gilo. It was not clear whether the request concerned the project approved on Tuesday.

The approval is likely to further hamper Washington's so-far futile efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the peace table, amid deep disagreements over the thorny issue of settlements.

The Palestinians demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction, including in east Jerusalem, before resuming the talks, while Israel has so far offered only a temporary and limited ease in building.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Tuesday that the impasse has given him no choice but to seek international recognition of a Palestinian state, even as Europe and Washington discouraged the move.

"We feel we are in a very difficult situation," he said in Cairo after talks with Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak. "What is the solution for us? To remain suspended like this, not in peace? That is why I took this step."

Palestinian officials said earlier this week they intended to ask the UN Security Council to recognise a state in a move analysts said was aimed at pressuring Israel amid the floundering US peace efforts.

The European Union, the Palestinians' biggest donor, joined the United States in discouraging the move and urged instead a return to peace talks with Israel.

"I don't think we are there yet," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, told reporters in Brussels.

"I would hope that we would be in a position to recognise a Palestinian state but there has to be one first, so I think it is somewhat premature," he said.

The United States said it opposed any unilateral moves.

"We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous ... We are convinced that has to be achieved through negotiations between two parties," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said on Monday.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who is due to meet with Abbas in Amman later on Tuesday and with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem the next day, said he will insist on a resumption of negotiations.

"We have to find ways to surmount the current obstacles," he told the Palestinian Al-Quds daily.

Netanyahu has warned that "any unilateral action will undo the framework of past accords and lead to unilateral actions from Israel."

And the Islamist movement Hamas, a bitter rival of Abbas's Fatah rival, also poured cold water on the move for international recognitiion.

"The proclamation of a Palestinian state should be the result of the resistance putting an end to the occupation ... and not a decision taken by (the Palestinian Authority) to fill the void after the political option has failed," Hamas's exiled political supremo Khaled Meshaal said in a statement.

Tuesday's construction approval will make the relaunching of talks more difficult because the issue of settlements in east Jerusalem is particularly sensitive.

Israel, which captured the eastern part of the city in 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community, sees the Holy City its "eternal, indivisible" capital and does not view Jewish construction in the east as settlements.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state and insist Israel stop building houses there.

The international community considers all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land illegal.

Voice Cards

The standard MIDI file format, together with the General MIDI instrument set, describes only what notes are played on what instruments. General MIDI is not considered chiptune as a MIDI file contains no information describing the synthesis of the instruments.

For the above reasons the classic chiptune 8-bit sound can be recognised from its synthesised square or pulse wave instruments, simple white noise percussion and heavy use of ultra-fast arpeggios to emulate chords of three or four notes on a single channel (due to hardware limitations, several notes must be placed on the same channel).

PHILADELPHIA – Alex Rodriguez waited all game long for this hit. Heck, he waited his whole life. Rodriguez delivered the biggest hit of his career, a go-ahead, two-out double in the ninth inning off Brad Lidge and the New York Yankees took advantage of Johnny Damon's daring dash to beat the Philadelphia Phillies 7-4 on Sunday night for a 3-1 lead in the World Series.
Derek Jeter came through again and Mariano Rivera finished it off as the Yankees moved within one win of that elusive 27th championship and first since 2000.
Rodriguez could really savor this victory — seething after again being hit by a pitch, he struck back with his potent black bat.
"There's no question — I've never had a bigger hit," Rodriguez said.
The Yankees will try to close out the defending champions Monday night when A.J. Burnett faces October ace Cliff Lee.
Of the 42 teams to take a 3-1 lead in the World Series, 36 went on to win the crown. The last club to overcome such a deficit was Kansas City in 1985.
Chase Utley and Pedro Feliz hit late home runs for the Phillies that tied it at 4. Then it moved to the ninth and Phils brought in Lidge — a postseason star last year, he had struggled all season before regaining his touch this October.
But November was not so kind to him.
Lidge had been the only closer in the playoffs who hadn't allowed a run until the Yankees tagged him. With two outs, Damon capped a nine-pitch at-bat with a single. The Phillies overshifted their infield to the right side for Mark Teixeira and Damon took off.
Damon beat the one-hop throw to steal second, popped up from his slide and noticed no one was covering third. That's because Feliz had handled the throw, and Damon easily beat the third baseman to the bag for a rare double-steal — fact is, who'd ever seen it?
Rattled or whatever, Lidge hit Teixeira with a pitch. So up stepped Rodriguez, 1 for 13 to that point in his first World Series and looking nothing like the feared slugger he was earlier in these playoffs.
Putting all his prominent failures behind, Rodriguez lined a solid double into the left-field corner for a 5-4 lead. The three-time AL MVP connected so solidly, the sound echoed throughout Citizens Bank Park. Maybe it wasn't such a surprise — Rodriguez had homered and doubled in three prior at-bats against Lidge.
"I get a good pitch and put a good swing on it, good things usually happen," Rodriguez said. "Facing Brad Lidge, he's a great competitor. He's had a lot of success late here. Just trying to make contact there."
Rodriguez stood at second with his 15th RBI, tying the Yankees postseason record shared by Bernie Williams and Scott Brosius. A-Rod's other hit this week came in Game 3 when his double was changed to a home run after an instant replay review.
The crowd was silent when Jorge Posada followed with a two-run single. Then it was Rivera's turn and he quickly got three outs for his 11th World Series save. Chamberlain was the winner in his second Series appearance.
Just like that, the Yankees were 27 outs from their record 27th title and the Phillies were on the brink of getting eliminated. Philadelphia faces a daunting task; New York lost three in a row only twice after the All-Star break.
"I think we take a lot of pride on being resilient and the way we bounce back," Phils manager Charlie Manuel said. "I've seen us go through it before. We've blown 22 games from the seventh inning on or something this year. That's got to tell you something about the resilience of our team."
The Yankees' late burst hushed fans who had been festive from the start. Many of them had walked across the street after watching the Philadelphia Eagles rout the New York Giants 40-17.

Feliz rocked Yankees setup man Joba Chamberlain with a two-out, solo home run in the eighth that tied it at 4.

Utley homered again off CC Sabathia, finishing the New York starter in the seventh. It was Utley's third shot off Sabathia in this Series and closed the Phillies to 4-3.

Down all evening, the Phillies kept scrapping. They eventually drew even on the home runs, a common sight at a park where the ball really flies.

Jeter put the Yankees ahead from the get-go, leading off the game with a single and scoring in a two-run first. The inning also included plate umpire Mike Everitt warning both teams after Rodriguez was hit by a pitch for the third time in two days.

Howard barreled home to tie at 2 in the fourth. The big Phillies slugger braced for a collision with Posada and got a piece of the New York catcher — replays, however, appeared to show Howard never touched the plate, yet another missed call in a shaky postseason for umpires.

Jeter and Damon hit RBI singles in the fifth off Joe Blanton and the crowd grew quiet as Sabathia, working hard on three days' rest, kept working out of trouble in the middle innings.

Then Utley rang the big Liberty Bell in center field with his home run. And after Chamberlain struck out his first two batters in the eighth, Feliz gonged him with a no-doubt drive over the left-field wall.

NOTES: Yankees CF Melky Cabrera hurt his left hamstring running out a grounder to end the sixth. Brett Gardner replaced him. ... Rodriguez and Max Carey (Pittsburgh, 1925) are the only players hit by pitches three times in a Series. ... Philly native Joe Frazier did a routine with the Phillie Phanatic on the field before the sixth inning to the sounds of "Rocky."

WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she'll include a measure removing health insurers' federal antitrust exemption in sweeping health care legislation pending in the House.
Pelosi's announcement Thursday came a day after Senate Democratic leaders said they'd take the same step with the Senate's health overhaul bill.
The drive to strip the insurance industry of its decades-old exemption from federal antitrust laws signals increasing anger over health insurers' opposition to Democrats' health overhaul agenda.
Stand-alone bills had been pending in both chambers but incorporating them in the larger health overhaul underscores Democrats' determination to punish insurers.
Insurers say there's enough regulation at the state level and accuse Democrats of targeting a problem that does not exist.

KABUL – He could bring a fresh face to the pinnacle of Afghan politics for the first time in eight years, replacing a discredited president grappling with corruption, a flourishing narcotics trade and a Taliban insurgency growing more powerful by the day.
The 49-year-old Abdullah Abdullah, a trained ophthalmologist, is a sophisticated intellectual and a skilled diplomat. But he's "less of a natural politician" than incumbent Hamid Karzai, said James Dobbins, who served as President George W. Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan.
Karzai was chosen to lead Afghanistan's first post-Taliban government in 2001 "because he was a conciliator, somebody who could get along with a wide range of factions and not antagonize them," Dobbins said.
Abdullah, on the other hand, is less colorful and lacks the charisma and "personal touch" of his opponent.
Even if Abdullah wins the presidency in a runoff, his administration would risk ending up much like his predecessor's — hobbled by warlords, ethnic alliances and corruption.
"Everybody wants responsible government, but unfortunately the next administration is likely to again be weak and dysfunctional, a coalition of warlords and bad guys, no matter who is in charge," said Haroun Mir of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, a Kabul-based think-tank. "It's inevitable."
Afghanistan's electoral commission is expected to announce as early as Saturday whether Karzai will face Abdullah in a runoff. Preliminary results of the August vote showed Karzai won with more than 54 percent. But election officials may order a second-round vote if investigators probing fraud allegations void enough of his votes to drop him below 50 percent.
Karzai's ambassador to the U.S., Said Tayeb Jawad, said Thursday a runoff was very likely.
Karzai's relations with the U.S. have become increasingly strained in recent months, a deterioration attributed in part to American frustration over government corruption and U.S. airstrikes that have inflicted civilian casualties — eating away at Karzai's popularity at home.
As president, Abdullah would likely mend ties with Washington. At the same time, relations with neighboring Pakistan, whose support is essential to combating Taliban militants on both sides of the border, may only get worse, as they did when Abdullah served as Karzai's foreign minister, said Wadeer Safi, a political science professor at Kabul University.
Pakistan supported Taliban fighters in the 1990s when they were battling the ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, of which Abdullah was a prominent member. That baggage would make Pakistan "deeply suspicious of any Abdullah presidency," Safi said.
"How Abdullah would handle it, that's the big question," he said.
Moreover, whoever wins the presidency will assume leadership of a nation in tatters. Afghanistan has lacked effective government ever since the Soviet invasion of December 1979 plunged the mountainous country into decades of war and chaos.
Mir described Abdullah as a "results-oriented" leader and said he would face high expectations to show concrete progress within six months — much more so than Karzai, whose interest is directed toward consensus-building rather than achieving results.
"Everybody has clear ideas about what needs to be done," said Ronald Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. "The question is what they're going to do when they get in there and have to make the trade-offs."
Karzai, son of a Pashtun tribal chief, moved former warlords into civilian posts to keep a balance among regions and ethnic groups, and Abdullah would likely have to do the same, Dobbins said.
Abdullah's father was also Pashtun — an ethnic group that comprises 42 percent of the population and accounts for the overwhelming majority of Taliban ranks. His mother was Tajik, an ethnic group in the north that makes up 27 percent. Other groups include Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmens.
Despite a Pashtun heritage, Abdullah is widely perceived as a northern Tajik because of his intimate association with the Northern Alliance. Abdullah's close ties to the Alliance would make it more difficult for him to reach out to the Taliban than Karzai, who was born in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar province.

"One of the most important challenges for an Abdullah presidency would be satisfying Pashto aspirations and calming fears that this represented a Tajik ascendancy," Dobbins said.

Neumann believes Abdullah would have to balance the demands of his former Northern Alliance colleagues for a major share of jobs and power against those of the Pashtuns and other groups "to achieve some kind of tribal balance."

Karzai has built a support base across the nation's myriad ethnic groups not by reaching out to individual voters, but by shrewdly cementing alliances with regional power-brokers and warlords, Safi said. In a country with over 70 percent illiteracy, many voters cast ballots for whomever is favored by their tribal leaders.

Safi doubts Afghanistan is ready for democratic elections.

"You have to have education and development, you have to have people who can think for themselves, and then you can have a real election," Safi said. "We do not have this now. There is no security, there is no free and fair. People can only hope somebody will give them a good life."

MADRID – Spain's Parliament approved a law Thursday narrowing the scope of a cross-border justice doctrine which had allowed judges to indict people like Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden.
The existing legislation allowed judges like Baltasar Garzon to prosecute egregious crimes committed in other countries even if there was no link to Spain. The practice had irked some countries targeted in probes by Spanish magistrates, particularly Israel and China, and led to accusations that Spain was behaving like a global policeman.
Under the reformed version of the law, such cases can now be undertaken only if there were Spanish victims of the crime or the alleged perpetrators are in Spain.
The bill was passed by the lower chamber, called the Congress of Deputies, in June and then went to the Senate, which made minor amendments. The lower chamber gave the bill definitive approval on Thursday. Of 327 lawmakers present in the 350-member chamber, the vote was 319 in favor, five against and three abstentions.
Spain's ruling Socialists and opposition conservatives laid the groundwork for the new law in May — a rare show of unity among two parties that are at each other's throats on just about everything else.
But the new law is not retroactive, meaning the dozen or so cases currently being investigated will proceed. These include probes into alleged Chinese abuses in Tibet, an Israeli air force bombing in Gaza that killed 14 civilians, and alleged torture at the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Garzon had Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, arrested in London in 1998 and tried to have him extradited to Madrid to face charges over torture and other abuses during his regime. Britain ultimately declined to hand him over, citing Pinochet's poor health.
Garzon indicted bin Laden in 2003 over the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

FRESNO, Calif. – Farmers in the most prolific agricultural region in the country should be planting winter romaine lettuce and calculating spring cantaloupe acreage at this time of year.
Instead the romaine packing company left this year for the searing Sonoran Desert of Arizona, where there is more reliable water. And cantaloupe? Who knows whether there will be water to irrigate it.
"How bad does it have to get for people to take action?" farmer Jeremy Freitas asked a panel of state agricultural officials Wednesday, choking back tears.
They had come to California's agricultural heartland for an update on the state's water crisis. They left hearing that — even after a year of discussing possible quick fixes to the delivery problems that have fallowed tens of thousands of acres, forced bankruptcies and contributed to record unemployment — farmers are no more certain about their water supplies.
As California prepares for its fourth year of drought, farmers are nervous in California's San Joaquin Valley. The valley's eight counties, if they were their own state, would be the top producing one in the nation. Nearly all the U.S. cantaloupes, garlic, almonds and processing tomatoes come from here. And so do nearly 400 other commodities — more than anywhere else.
The lack of water in the state's reservoirs, coupled with the environmental collapse of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where water from the state's wet north is pumped south to irrigate fields, has restricted the amount of water some of the state's most prolific farmers receive to as little as 10 percent of normal.
"It's October going to March quickly and we can't seem to get an agency to move," said farmer Dan Errotabere, who lost his romaine contract when the local packinghouse moved to Yuma. "We need action. We need agreements now. We need certainty in the Central Valley now."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants a special legislative session this fall to look at issues surrounding California's aging water infrastructure, built 50 years ago for a population one-third the size. The most ambitious, a peripheral canal to move water from the north around the Delta, is at least 15 years away.
Meanwhile, farmers have been begging for several quick fixes so they count on water in 2010, including temporary suspension of the Endangered Species Act so water can be pumped to them even if it kills threatened smelt. Congress once granted a temporary reprieve to New Mexico but so far has declined to do for California.
Also unresolved after a year of discussions: environmental issues related to transferring water from wet regions to dry ones; a clear sense of how much agriculture contributes to the environmental degradation killing smelt and salmon in the Delta compared to urban impacts; and a "two-gates" project that would block fish from the large pumps that transfer water from the Delta into delivery canals but would allow farmers water in the spring.
This year nearly 500,000 acres were left fallowed across the valley, half of that in the Westlands Water District, where farmers historically have created the state's highest yields of almonds, garlic and tomatoes with the most junior water rights. Several thousand acres of almonds and pomegranates died, though canals carrying water to Southern California passes by them.
Across the region farmworkers were idle, hardware stores suffered lost sales and tractor dealers didn't move John Deeres. Food banks turned away hungry families.
University researchers estimate $700 million in farm losses in 2009 alone, not counting taxes or the loss of value on farmland where water is no longer reliable.
"You think we had a tough year this year?" said Marvin Meyers, an almond grower on Fresno County's dry west side. "Wait 'til next year."
Farmers and the advisory board of the California Department of Agriculture said the state's $36 billion agriculture industry cannot afford another season of uncertainty. More packing houses they depend on to send their fruits, nuts and vegetables around the world will move to more reliable areas — across the border into Mexico they fear — if they cannot count on a reliable supply.
Another year of pumping salt-laden water from underground aquifers could kill their soil, they say. Board members warned that the Westlands Water District on the valley's west side is the first to be hit by the crisis, but the water problems are spreading to the state's other agricultural regions.
Some avocado growers in San Diego County are cutting trees back to stumps because the limited available water is too expensive.
"Where will the next shoe drop?" said board member Adan Ortega Jr.

PARIS (AFP) –
France's Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand appeared to have saved his job on Friday after an emotional television appearance in which he admitted paying male prostitutes but denied sex with Asian boys.

Mitterrand faced calls for his resignation this week over his autobiographical novel "The Bad Life" in which the main character describes paying for "boys" in brothels in Thailand and Indonesia.

He appeared on French television late Thursday to deny the book was a defence of paedophilia and to insist that the males he had sex with in Asia were consenting adults.

Mitterrand said President Nicolas Sarkozy had given him full support, and the two men on Friday made a public appearance together -- to launch a museum exhibition on Istanbul -- suggesting that his job was safe for now.

Justice Minister French Michele Alliot-Marie said she found her colleague's television appearance "moving" and called him "a very good minister."

But Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front said keeping him in office showed there was "one morality for the privileged" and another for ordinary people.

Political analyst Dominique Reynie said "you don't need to be a genius to understand that the response of Marine Le Pen is in harmony with what a very large majority of the French are thinking."

Le Pen on Monday ignited the controversy over Mitterrand's 2005 book when she called for his resignation over the book.

That came after the party attacked Mitterrand for his staunch defence of filmmaker Roman Polanski, who is being held in Switzerland on a US warrant for a 1978 conviction for sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Sarkozy hired Mitterrand in June, delighted to bring the nephew of late Socialist president Francois Mitterrand into his right-wing government. The minister is also a friend of Sarkozy's supermodel wife, Carla Bruni.

Mitterrand was forced to make Thursday's television appearance after left and right-wing politicians demanded he respond to allegations that "The Bad Life" endorsed sex tourism.

"I absolutely condemn sexual tourism," the 62-year-old told TF1 television. "I condemn paedophilia, in which I have never in any way participated, and all the people who accuse me of that type of thing should be ashamed."

Mitterrand has previously explained that in his book, marketed as a memoir but which he now says its not "entirely autobiographical," he had used the term "boys" to describe all males.

Asked if he regretted paying for sex with "boys" in Thailand, and if he had made a mistake by so doing, he replied that he had committed "a mistake, without doubt, a crime, no.

"Because I was each time with people who were my age and who were consenting," he said. "You recognise somebody who is 40 years old. A 40-year-old boxer really does not look like a minor."

The minister, who previously had a successful career as a writer, documentary-maker and television presenter, also warned that "one must not confuse homosexuality with paedophilia."

Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent opposition Socialist lawmaker, said Friday that Mitterrand's "tardy condemnation of sexual tourism is in contradiction with his writings which contain no condemnation of this sort.

"If he was not minister, would he have had the right to so much consideration and such understanding?" he asked.

Mitterrand's defence of "The Bad Life" back in 2005 was broadly accepted and the book was praised for its shocking honesty and literary quality.

But now, as a minister in a government that campaigns against sex tourism, his position is more difficult.

The passages in the book that have sparked controversy deal with the hero's description of the mixture of feverish excitement and guilt he feels as he visits brothels and boy bars in Thailand and Indonesia.

"All the rituals of this market of youths, this slave market, excite me enormously," the book says. "Money and sex, I am at the heart of my system."

-

WASHINGTON
— A NASA spacecraft slammed into the moon Friday, blasting out a
curtain of debris in which scientists hope to detect signs of water ice.

The $79
million LCROSS spacecraft, preceded by its Centaur rocket stage, impacted
the lunar surface at the large south pole crater Cabeus at 7:31 a.m. EDT
(1131 GMT) in what NASA Chief Scientist Jim Garvin called "the ultimate
physics experiment."

"We
keep finding evidence that there is water [on the moon]," NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden told SPACE.com here. To find more with LCROSS
"would be incredibly good news. It would be another place we can send
humans," he added. Bolden said he had been following the last steps of the
mission throughout the night.

Mission
scientists watched the crash primarily from the probe's operations center at
NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., but astronomers and amateur
skywatchers also tuned in at observatories and other sites around the world —
including here at the Newseum, where the public watched the NASA impact
broadcast on a huge 40-foot screen.

"This
is the biggest screen I've ever seen," said one of the scores of people in
the crowd of NASA employees, members of the press and public, including several
bleary-eyed children.

Among the
crowd were Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Chip Cronkite, the son of late
CBS TV news anchor Walter Cronkite, to whom the mission is dedicated.

"We
hope this is just the first of many oases we find," Cronkite said.

Ice on
the moon

Scientists
think that pockets of water ice might exist in the permanently shadowed craters
of the lunar south pole — thought to potentially be the coldest places in the
solar system. Water has already
been detected on the moon by a NASA-built instrument on board India's now
defunct Chandrayaan-1 probe and other spacecraft, though it was in very small
amounts and bound to the dirt and dust of the lunar surface.

NASA plans
to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 for extended missions on the lunar
surface. Finding usable amounts of ice on the moon would be a boon for that
effort since it could be a vital local resource to support a lunar base.

The LCROSS impact
was also watched
by several satellites that normally monitor Earth and spacecraft like the
Hubble Space Telescope, Sweden's Odin observatory and LCROSS's sister
spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which were due analyze the
debris after the impact to look for signs of water ice.

"All
eyes are on LCROSS today," Bolden said during remarks before the impact.

NASA
launched LCROSS and the LRO orbiter in June to hunt for evidence of water and
ice on the lunar surface.

The LCROSS
probe beamed live images and data of its Centaur rocket stage's impact before
making its own death plunge four minutes later. The crashes were expected to
kick up tons of moon dirt and carve a new crater within the 60-mile (98-km)
wide Cabeus. That new crater could be as large as 66 feet (20 meters) wide and
13 feet (4 meters) deep.

Some 350
tons of moon dirt was expected to be blasted nearly 6.2 miles (10 km) above the
lunar surface. Unlike past moon crashes by other probes, like Japan's recent
Kaguya mission, LCROSS slammed into the lunar surface at a steep angle to kick
material up high enough to be illuminated by the sun as seen from Earth and other
spacecraft.

Seasoned
skywatchers on Earth equipped with 10 to 12-inch telescopes had a chance to
spot the crash on their own, if they knew where to look.

"There's
not going to be these grand, spectacular images of ejecta flying, kind of what
you've seen in animations or cartoons," LCROSS principal investigator Tony
Colaprete told reporters Thursday. "It's going to be more of a muted shimmer of
light, but that muted shimmer of light contains all the information we need to
answer our questions."

Scientists
don't know yet whether or not they've detected water in the LCROSS ejecta, as
it is expected to take some several days to analyze the data.

Video
- Why Bomb the Moon?
The
Greatest Lunar Crashes Ever
POLL:
Just How Important is Water on the Moon?
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