Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/306521697?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Saturday, May 18, 2013
Afghans tell of US soldier's killing rampage
Shahara, 3, sits tucked inside the shawl of her mother, Masooma, in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Saturday, April 20, 2013 as Masooma recalls the night she says a U.S. soldier killed her husband and attacked her children in the outskirts of Kandahar. Masooma says the soldier grabbed Shahara's pony tails and shook her head violently after killing her father. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Shahara, 3, sits tucked inside the shawl of her mother, Masooma, in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Saturday, April 20, 2013 as Masooma recalls the night she says a U.S. soldier killed her husband and attacked her children in the outskirts of Kandahar. Masooma says the soldier grabbed Shahara's pony tails and shook her head violently after killing her father. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Masooma sits with her children at her brother-in-law's house on the outskirts of Kandahar, Afghanistan on Saturday, April 20, 2013. In an interview, Masooma recounted the events of pre-dawn March 11, 2012 when she says a U.S. soldier rampaged through two villages killing 16 people, including her husband. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales of Lake Tapps, Washington, is accused of the killings. Bales has not entered a plea, but his lawyers have not disputed his involvement in the killings. The Army is seeking the death penalty. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Maulvi Mohammed Baran, right, the brother-in-law of Masooma, whose husband was killed on March 11, 2012, stands at his home on the outskirts of Kandahar, Afghanistan surrounded by his children and Masooma's children. In an interview, Masooma recounted the events of pre-dawn March 11, 2012 when she says a U.S. soldier rampaged through two villages killing 16 people, including her husband. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Masooma's son, Naseebullah, plays with his sisters and cousins at their home on the outskirts of Kandahar, Afghanistan on Saturday, April 20, 2013. In an interview, his mother recounted the events of pre-dawn March 11, 2012 when she says a U.S. soldier rampaged through two villages killing 16 people, including Naseebullah's father. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
This Saturday, April 20, 2013 photo shows Masooma's son Hazratullah, center, with his two sisters at their home on the outskirts of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Masooma says a U.S. soldier rampaged through Masooma's home on March 11, 2012, killing her husband and shoving the muzzle of a pistol in the mouth of her infant son, Hazratullah. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) ? Sitting on a dirty straw mat on the parched ground of southern Afghanistan, Masooma sank deeper inside a giant black shawl. Hidden from view, her words burst forth as she told her side of what happened to her family sometime before dawn on March 11, 2012.
According to Masooma, an American soldier wearing a helmet equipped with a flashlight burst into her two-room mud home while everyone slept. He killed her husband, Dawood, punched her 7-year-old son and shoved a pistol into the mouth of his baby brother.
"We were asleep. He came in and he was shouting, saying something about Taliban, Taliban, and then he pulled my husband up. I screamed and screamed and said, 'We are not Taliban, we are not government. We are no one. Please don't hurt us,'" she said.
The soldier wasn't listening. He pointed his pistol at Masooma to quiet her and pushed her husband into the living room.
"My husband just looked back at me and said, 'I will be back.'" Seconds later she heard gunshots, she recalled, her voice cracking as she was momentarily unable to speak. Her husband was dead.
Masooma, who like many Afghans uses only one name, defied tribal traditions that prohibit women from speaking to strangers to talk to The Associated Press while ? half a world away ? the military prepares to court-martial a U.S. serviceman in the killing of her husband and 15 other Afghan civilians, mainly women and children.
The AP also interviewed other villagers about the case, all of whom are identified by the U.S. Army as witnesses or relatives of witnesses. They included a sister and brother who were wounded and two men who were away during the killings and returned to find wives and children slain. The sister and brother told AP how they tried to run away and hide from a soldier with a gun, only to be shot ? and see their neighbors and grandmother killed.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales of Lake Tapps, Washington, is accused of the killings. Prosecutors say Bales slipped away from his remote outpost to attack two nearby villages, returning in the middle of the rampage and then for a final time soaked in blood. During a hearing last fall, other soldiers testified that Bales spent the evening before the massacre watching a movie about revenge killings, sharing contraband whiskey from a plastic bottle and discussing an attack that cost one of their comrades his leg.
Bales has not entered a plea, but his lawyers have not disputed his involvement in the killings. They have said his mental health may be part of his defense; he was on his fourth combat deployment and had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as a concussive head injury while serving in Iraq. The Army is seeking the death penalty.
The killings took place in Kandahar's Panjwai district, deep in the ethnic Pashtun heartland that spawned the Taliban movement, an area where women are hidden inside all-enveloping burqas and rarely leave their homes.
Masooma's account of the night has been reported variously over the past year, differing over details such as whether there was one or more than one U.S. soldier involved. However, the four hours she recently spent with the AP was her first face-to-face interview with a news organization. She spoke as her burly brother-in-law Baraan loomed nearby.
The interview took place outside Baraan's single-story mud home in Kandahar city, because Alokzai and Najiban villages, where the killings occurred, are too hostile for foreigners to visit. Even in Kandahar, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) away, the AP journalists sought to avoid being seen by Baraan's neighbors, who he feared would react negatively to their presence.
Masooma said that the soldier returned to the family's bedroom after killing her husband. She stood in terror. Her children hid under their blankets. The soldier moved slowly and seemed angry. Gesturing to show how he hit her in the arms and shoved her to the ground, Masooma said he then moved toward her son Hikmatullah, then 7.
Her son said he remembers the sight of the attacker in full military uniform. "I was so afraid. I pretended I was asleep," he said.
Masooma said the soldier found Hikmatullah and punched him repeatedly in the head.
She said the soldier then found her 2-year-old daughter, Shahara. He grabbed her pigtails and violently shook her head back and forth.
He then went to the crying baby Hazratullah and shoved the muzzle of his black pistol into the infant's mouth, she said.
"He just held it there in his mouth. I screamed and screamed, 'He is just a baby. Don't kill him. Don't kill him.' But he just kept the gun in his mouth. He didn't say anything. He just stared at him," she recalled. As she recounted the attack, Hazratullah fussed and squirmed beneath the giant shawl that enveloped her.
After some time, she said, the soldier took the gun from the baby's mouth and walked back into the living room. Masooma dug her bare foot into the dirt to demonstrate how the soldier slipped his foot beneath her husband's head to lift it from the floor, as if to be sure he was really dead. The soldier looked down at her husband, shrugged his shoulders and returned to searching her home. After he finished rifling through their belongings, he left.
Investigators say Bales was armed with a 9 mm pistol and an M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher when he walked off his base and went on a nighttime killing spree in five homes, including Masooma's. He faces 16 counts of premeditated murder; six counts of attempted murder; seven counts of assault; and one count each of possessing steroids, using steroids, destroying a laptop, burning bodies, and using alcohol. He is being held in a military prison at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle in Washington state.
On April 23, Bales appeared in a military courtroom at Joint Base Lewis-McChord for a hearing that focused on what might happen if he is convicted, including which relatives and friends could speak on his behalf during a sentencing hearing. Such testimony could help determine whether he receives the death penalty.
The U.S. government flew Baraan and five other Afghan men ? all members of families who were attacked ? to Seattle to familiarize them with the U.S. judicial system and notify them that they would likely have to return when the court-martial begins in September. Only three of those who went to the U.S. in March said they saw the attack. Some, like Baraan, went on behalf of relatives who were slain or women prevented from traveling.
None of the Afghan witnesses was able to identify Bales as the attacker, but other evidence, including tests of the blood on his clothes, implicated him, according to testimony from a DNA expert.
The AP also spoke with several others who survived the attack or lost family members. To avoid putting the Afghans in danger should they be seen talking to foreigners, the AP arranged for those interviews to take place at a nondescript hotel in Kandahar. The Afghans drove the dusty, dangerous road from their villages to the hotel and then returned home.
Said Jan, an elderly man who was visiting Kandahar during the attack and lost his wife and three other family members, said he went to the United States expecting justice.
"I thought we were going to America to see him hanged," Said Jan said. "Instead they showed us a courtroom and kept us in rooms asking us more and more questions."
Said Jan said he wasn't interested in returning for the trial.
"None of us will go," agreed Mohammed Wazir, who also went to the U.S. in March. "Why would we care about seeing America? We will only go if he is hanged."
Wazir said he returned home from a trip the morning after the attack to find 11 members of his family dead ? his wife, his mother, two brothers, a 13-year-old nephew and his six children. Their bodies were partially burned.
He was left only with his 3-year-old son, Habib Shah, who had accompanied him on the trip to Spin Boldak, a town on the Pakistani border.
While Wazir spoke of the horror of finding his home spattered with blood, still smelling of burned flesh, Habib, now 4, played by his side, chewing on his toy police car, occasionally running it across his father's legs, loading small candies on the roof and giggling when they tumbled off.
"He misses his mother all the time," Wazir said, trying to straighten Habib's curly brown hair.
From another home that was attacked that night, 16-year-old Rafiullah remembers the American soldier smashing through the door waving his pistol. Awakened in a small room with his grandmother and his sister Zardana, he said he didn't know what to do. "We just ran and he ran after us."
Zardana, 11, said a cousin dashed over to help. He was shot and killed, she said. "We couldn't stop. We just wanted somewhere to hide. I was holding on to my grandmother and we ran to our neighbors." Their neighbor, Naim, came out of his house to see what the noise was all about and was shot and wounded. His daughter then ran to him but was killed by the American soldier, Zardana said, struggling to remember and fiddling with her green scarf decorated with tiny sequins.
Zardana, who said she saw soldiers in a nearby field as she ran from one house to the next, remembers trying to hide behind her grandmother at the neighbor's house. But the soldier found them.
Gesturing with his hand as if spraying the room with gunfire, Rafiullah said the soldier "just went bang, bang, bang."
Rafiullah was wounded in both his legs, his grandmother was killed and Zardana was shot in the head.
She removed her scarf to show where the wound had healed; the effects will last a lifetime. She suffered nerve damage on her left side and has to walk with a cane. Her hand is too weak to hold anything heavy.
Zardana spent about two months recovering at the Kandahar Air Base hospital and three more at a naval hospital in San Diego receiving rehabilitation therapy, accompanied by her father, Samiullah.
Listening as she spoke, Samiullah smiled at his lanky daughter, encouraging her to say the only English phrase she knows: "Thank you."
Zardana spoke of her treatment in San Diego and the doctors and nurses who helped her learn to walk again, gave her toys and still find ways to stay in touch.
"They showed me so much love," she said with a tiny smile. "They asked me about what happened and when I told them how my grandmother died and how afraid I was and how I was shot, they cried and cried."
The accounts of many villagers have varied over the past year, making it a challenge for investigators and journalists to find out a full narrative of the attack.
For example, Masooma gave an telephone interview to a reporter days after the attack, with Baraan, her brother-in-law, acting as a translator. According to the resulting story, she described a single attacker in her home, but said she saw many soldiers outside.
Three months later, her family allowed a female Army investigator to question her. The investigator testified at a hearing last fall that Masooma clearly stated two soldiers carried out the attack. The investigator said she had no reason to doubt Masooma's credibility.
At the same hearing, Baraan testified, insisting Masooma was mistaken when she said there were two soldiers. Lawyers for the soldier accused in the killings suggested Baraan might be influencing Masooma ? especially since the defense was not allowed to speak with her.
No physical evidence has emerged to suggest more than one soldier took part in the killings. Surveillance footage from the base showed one soldier returning to the camp; the soldiers who greeted him said he was covered in blood.
Nevertheless, many Afghans villagers, including some eyewitnesses, continue to insist multiple soldiers were present during the attack.
In the interview with the AP, Masooma did not waver in her insistence that one soldier attacked her home, and Baraan denied that she ever reported seeing many soldiers outside. Masooma did recall flares lighting the sky until "night seemed like day" ? which is consistent with testimony from the hearing, as guards said they fired a flare that illuminated the sky for 20 seconds after hearing gunshots. Masooma also said she heard helicopters overhead; there was no corroborating testimony at the hearing.
Masooma is absolutely certain of one thing: what it will take for her to find closure.
"I just want to see him killed," she said of Bales. "I want to see him dead. Then I can let go."
___
Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be reached at www.twitter.com/kathygannon. Associated Press Writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.
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Friday, May 17, 2013
Morning Links: Digital Signings, Book Discovery, Online Degrees ...
By Joanna Cabot
When the Internet stormed onto the scene, all bets were off ? this revolutionary technology with limitless potential would generate all sorts of creativity, from new article presentations, new forms of peer review, new capabilities, and an end to the status quo. Fast-forward a decade and a half, and it seems little has changed when it comes to our intellectual outputs as well as the general business environment.
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Digital Signings Help Authors Grow Careers (Digital Book World)
Book signings are an age-old tradition, but is it really necessary to extend this custom to ebooks? Today?s ebook signing services and apps not only make digital signatures are possible, they show that digital autographs can be?valuable?relationship-building tools for authors.
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Booklikes: Do We Need Another Book Discovery Site? (Good e-Reader)
There is no shortage of websites that aim to connect books with readers, and most of them offer some pretty familiar features. Find books, rate books, review books, talk about? books. Occasionally, though, a site comes along whose goal is to bring something new to the book discovery realm.
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Udacity & Georgia Tech Offer ?Massive Online? Degree (GigaOM)
Udacity and Georgia Tech are teaming up with AT&T to offer an entirely online computer science masters degree that will cost students less than $7,000.
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Kindle Daily Deals: Shaun Morey?s?Atticus Fish series (and 3 others)
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MRI scans could make baby autopsies more acceptable
By Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Bereaved parents who do not want to see their dead babies go through a conventional autopsy could in future be offered a less invasive option which uses magnetic resonance imaging and blood tests to establish the cause of death.
Scientists who investigated using a combination of full body scans and sample tests found this so-called minimally invasive autopsy (MIA) was as effective in determining the cause of death as a conventional procedure, which involves an open dissection of the baby's body to examine the organs.
Since the vast majority of parents whose babies die during or soon after birth currently refuse any autopsy, the researchers suggested the MIA could both improve rates of uptake and reduce parents' distress while offering clear answers.
"Autopsies not only help us to establish the cause of death, but they often play an important role in advancing medical research and knowledge," said Andrew Taylor, a consultant radiologist at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College Hospital who co-led the study.
"If we can find ways to continue to carry them out using less invasive methods, such as post-mortem MRI, we can boost our understanding of the many ways in which the body can go wrong."
In a study published in the journal the Lancet, Taylor and colleague Sudhin Thayyil, a consultant neonatologist, compared the accuracy of a standard autopsy with that of whole-body, post-mortem MRI with or without other minimally invasive tests.
These included blood samples taken by needle, visual examination of the body and genetic and metabolic tests.
The study involved 400 cases foetuses, babies and children under 16 years old.
For foetuses and babies younger than a year, the MIA identified the same cause of death as the full autopsy for 92 percent of the cases studied, while in children aged one to 16, the MIA techniques were less accurate, with 54 percent of the two types of autopsies agreeing on cause of death.
The researchers said the difference in accuracy was probably because MRI was good at picking up abnormalities in organ structure or function, which are more likely to be causes of death in young babies, but unable to detect infections, which are more likely to be a cause of death in older children.
Experts say that currently in Britain, some 80 percent parents whose baby dies shortly after birth refuse consent for a post mortem. This is despite evidence that autopsies find new and useful information in the majority of cases.
In the United States, Thayyil said, rates of autopsy in babies are even lower.
"In a state of shock and grief, parents are asked if they will consent, and while they desperately want answers about why their baby died, many simply cannot contemplate what a post mortem entails," said Charlotte Bevan of Sands, a charity that campaigns for more research into stillbirth and neonatal death.
"Giving parents the option to have a less invasive but equally informative investigation will not only make the decision easier ... but could lead to an increase in post mortem up-take and vastly improved research into why so many babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth."
(Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mri-scans-could-baby-autopsies-more-acceptable-231624626.html
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners and Foresight Investment (S
16 May, 2013
SHANGHAI, May 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ ? DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, LLC (?DLJ RECP?) announced the successful sale of Shennan Industrial Office and R&D Park (?Shennan?), a high-quality development project located in the Minhang District of Shanghai, China to an RMB real estate fund. ; The sale of the project, which is a joint venture between DLJ RECP and Foresight Investment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (?Foresight?), is among the first successful transfers from a foreign fund to an RMB fund. ;
?Exit options for foreign funds are rapidly growing because there is a shortage of high-quality industrial properties in China and an influx of institutional capital seeking cash-flowing assets. ; Properties like Shennan tend to offer a higher yield than commercial space, and the current low interest rates are making them especially attractive to domestic fund investors and insurance companies,? said Jim Yip, Managing Director of DTZ China Investment, the real estate services firm that advised on the sale. ; ?Moving forward, we expect growth of RMB funds and insurance companies to provide more liquidity for the entire property sector in China.?
According to estimates by DTZ, RMB denominated real estate funds raised close to the equivalent of USD 5 billion in 2012, and domestic insurance companies currently have the equivalent of approximately USD 72 billion available for direct real estate investments.
Shennan is a high quality 225,000 square foot complex featuring six industrial buildings ranging from three to eight floors. ; The development is conveniently located just two kilometers from Metro Line 5 and a 30-minute drive from People?s Square in Shanghai?s city center. ; The property achieved an occupancy rate of more than 95 percent. ; ;
DLJ RECP and Foresight have successfully completed four investments since the partnership began in 2006 ? three in Shanghai and one in Shenyang. ; The four properties, including Shennan, total over 2.4 million leasable square feet and have a portfolio lease-up rate of over 99 percent with various multinational tenants. The Shennan joint venture was established in 2007 and construction was completed in October 2008. ;
?The on-the-ground expertise of our long-term partner, Foresight, was instrumental in executing the development on schedule, within budget, and to the highest quality standards,? said John Lien, Managing Director of DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners. ; ?The quality of the project was critical to our success leasing to multinational tenants and positioned the property to be sold to a domestic RMB fund.? ;
Andy Rifkin, Managing Partner of DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, added, ?Shennan represents the successful execution of our strategy in China to cater to multinational tenants and is aligned with our firm?s global commitment to forge long-term business relationships with partners such as Foresight that result in the acquisition and development of high-quality properties in major urban markets.?
?Our long term partnership with DLJ RECP is now bearing fruit. ; DLJ RECP has worked diligently with us to create value through top-notch market research, lease and expense management, financing expertise, and exit negotiations,? said Charles Xue, Chairman of Foresight.
?The successful exit of Shennan can be attributed to DLJ RECP?s strategic planning and the effective asset management execution of the team over the last six years,? concluded Dr. Stanley Chan founder and Managing Director of Stanley & Partners Investment Management Co. Ltd., an advisor to Foresight.
ABOUT DLJ REAL ESTATE CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC
DLJ RECP is a leading global investment firm focusing on real estate and real estate-related assets. ; ;DLJ RECP was founded in 1995 and has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Tokyo. DLJ RECP manages a series of real estate private equity funds with total capital commitments in excess of $4 billion. ; The DLJ RECP funds have acquired 180 investments representing approximately $15 billion in gross transaction value throughout North America, Western Europe and Asia. ; ;DLJ RECP takes a rigorous property-by-property approach to investing. ; The firm?s strategy is to acquire well-located assets with high intrinsic value and to enhance that value through creative repositioning and intensive management strategies.
ABOUT FORESIGHT INVESTMENT (SHANGHAI) CO., LTD.
Foresight is a leading real estate investment, operation and asset management company based in Shanghai. ; Foresight is a partner of choice in China for many reputable Japanese conglomerates. ; Foresight was established in 1993 by a group of Chinese nationals with experience developing real estate in the U.S. ; To date, Foresight has developed over 18 million square feet of properties in China including residential, industrial and commercial projects.
SOURCE DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, LLC
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The Constitution and the 3D Printed Plastic Pistol
By now, you have probably heard about the Liberator, a 3D printed plastic gun designed, assembled, and test-fired by Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed. Is it legal?Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7twWPQsLC-E/
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