Mysterious bacterium found in Antarctic lak

MOSCOW (AP) — A new form of microbial life has been found in water samples taken from a giant freshwater lake hidden under kilometers of Antarctic ice, Russian scientists said Monday.

Sergei Bulat and Valery Lukin said in a statement that the "unidentified and unclassified" bacterium has no relation to any of the existing bacterial types. They acknowledged, however, that extensive research of the microbe that was sealed under the ice for millions of years will be necessary to prove the find and determine the bacterium's characteristics.

New samples of water retrieved from Lake Vostok earlier this year are expected to be delivered to St. Petersburg in May aboard a Russian ship.

The Russian team reached the surface of the subglacial lake in February 2012 after more than two decades of drilling, a major achievement hailed by scientists around the world.

They touched the lake water Sunday at a depth of 12,366 feet (3,769 meters), about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent.

Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age and could have survived in the dark depths of the lake, despite its high pressure and constant cold — conditions similar to those which also are believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus.

At 250 kilometers (160 miles) long and 50 kilometers (30 miles) wide, Lake Vostok is similar in size to Lake Ontario. It is kept from freezing into a solid block by the kilometers (miles)-thick crust of ice across it that acts like a blanket, keeping in heat generated by geothermal energy underneath.

Some have voiced concern that the more than 60 tons of lubricants and antifreeze used in the drilling may contaminate the lake, but the Russian researchers have insisted that their technology is environmentally secure. They said water from the lake rushed up the borehole once the drill touched the surface and froze, safely sealing the lubricants from the lake's pristine waters.

Bulat and Lukin said the research team has done a meticulous analysis of the samples to differentiate bacteria contained in lubricants from what they hoped could be a trace of new life forms. Initial studies only spotted bacteria associated with the lubricants, but scientists said they eventually found one bacterium that didn't fall into any of the known categories.

The researchers said that the small size of the initial sample and its heavy contamination made it difficult to conduct more extensive research. They voiced hope that the new samples of clean frozen water that are to arrive in St. Petersburg this spring will make it possible to "confirm the find and, perhaps, discover new previously unknown forms of microbial life."

A U.S. team that recently touched the surface of Lake Whillans, a shallower subglacial body of water west of the South Pole, also found microbes. The scientists are yet to determine what forms of bacteria they found.

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Canada's NW Territories to take control of its land, oil, gas

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's Northwest Territories will soon become responsible for managing the land within its boundaries and granting oil and gas rights under the terms of deal with the federal government that was announced on Monday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to the territory's capital, Yellowknife, to witness the signing of a joint declaration that lays out the terms for the devolution of land and resource management from federal government to the territory.

The agreement still needs to go through a second round of consultations with aboriginal groups and other stakeholders, but the parties are working toward an effective handover date of April 1, 2014.

"Our government believes that opportunities and challenges here would be better handled by the people who understand them best," Harper said in a speech.

Because of their sparse populations, Canada's three northern territories have had a smaller say in their own affairs than the country's 10 provinces with most government responsibilities being handled by Ottawa.

Monday's agreement goes some way to adding to the responsibilities of the government of the Northwest Territories, which has a slightly bigger population than either of the other two territories: Yukon and Nunavut.

Once the agreement is implemented, the Northwest Territories will be able to collect royalties on resource development as the provinces do, but a portion would still go to Ottawa.

The Northwest Territories' extensive resources include diamonds, metals and oil and natural gas.

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Body of dead Indian rape defendant given to family

NEW DELHI (AP) — The body of a man who died in a New Delhi jail while in the midst of a high-profile rape trial was released to his family Tuesday after a post-mortem exam aimed at determining whether he committed suicide or was killed.

Ram Singh, 33, was found dead at New Delhi's Tihar Jail early Monday, in a small cell he shared with three other prisoners. Authorities said he hanged himself, but his family and lawyer insisted foul play was involved. A magistrate is investigating.

Singh was facing the death penalty in his trial for the gang rape and fatal beating of a woman on a New Delhi bus, a crime that horrified Indians and galvanized many to protest against the treatment of women here. Four other men and a juvenile remain on trial for the attack.

Journalists outside the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Tuesday afternoon saw Singh's body loaded onto an ambulance and taken away accompanied by his family.

Vimla Mehra, the director general of the jail, declined to say how Ram Singh could have managed to kill himself without alerting the other inmates in his small cell or the guards. The results of the post-mortem exam were expected later Tuesday.

Whether suicide or homicide, Singh's death was an enormous security failure at one of India's best-known prisons.

"It's a grave incident," said Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, the nation's top law enforcement official. "It's a major lapse."
Kiran Bedi, the former director of the jail and now an activist, said prison officials had a moral and legal obligation to ensure Singh's safety. She expressed surprise that authorities had not been monitoring him with cameras.
"You are duty bound to protect the lives of the prisoners," she said.

Mamta Sharma, chair of India's National Commission for Women, said jail authorities had to explain Singh's death "despite so much protection, so much precaution, so much security."

"This means that even though he was accused of such a heinous crime, the jail administration did not keep a watchful eye on him," she said.

In 2011, 68 inmates in India killed themselves and another eight were killed by fellow inmates, according to India's National Crime Records Bureau.

Tihar Jail is badly overcrowded and its 12,000 prisoners are nearly twice as many as it was designed to hold. Bedi said that despite that, the treatment of inmates has improved over the past two decades as the jail's operations became more transparent, with volunteers constantly coming in and prisoners better educated about their rights.
Lawyers for the defendants had previously accused police of beating confessions out of the men.

Ram Singh's father, Mangelal Singh, said his son had been raped in prison by other inmates and had been repeatedly threatened by inmates and guards. He said he feared for the safety of another son who is also on trial in the rape case.

Vivek Sharma, a lawyer representing another defendant, said he planned to ask the court to provide greater protection for his client.
"In a high-security jail, an occurrence of this kind is highly condemnable. It raises the serious issue of security of the accused persons in the jail," he said.

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South Africa police denied bail in dragging case

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Nine South African police officers charged with murdering a Mozambican taxi driver who was dragged from a police vehicle have been denied bail.

South Africa's police watchdog says the police were denied bail at the close of testimony Tuesday in Benoni Magistrate's Court, east of Johannesburg.

Moses Dlamini, spokesman for the Independent Police Complaints Directorate, also says the next hearing for the police is April 12.

Taxi driver Mido Macia was dragged from a police vehicle in front of onlookers, some of them filming the incident after he allegedly blocked a road with his vehicle in Daveyton township, east of Johannesburg.

Macia was later found dead in a police cell. An autopsy showed that he suffered head lacerations and other injuries.

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Maduro leans on Chavez's charisma for popularity

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Nicolas Maduro so far has led by imitation, seeking to fill the shoes of a president whose uncanny vigor, mischievous humor and political wiles sowed a revolution and transformed a nation.

As Hugo Chavez did during his 14-year presidency, Maduro has stoked confrontation, and shed tears.

While steering Venezuela through the trauma of Chavez's death, Maduro has pinned his move to the top on his beloved predecessor.
Yet there are doubts, even among die-hard Chavistas, about his ability to lead the nation.
At his swearing-in Friday evening as acting president, Maduro pledged his "most absolute loyalty" to Chavez.
Then he launched into another fiery, lionization-of-the-masses speech punctuated by tears, Chavez-style harangues and attacks on capitalist elites and the international press.
"This sash belongs to Hugo Chavez," he said, choked up, after assembly speaker Diosdado Cabello slid the presidential band over his head. Hours earlier at Chavez's state funeral before more than 30 foreign leaders, Maduro delivered a speech similarly strident in content and tone.
Maduro, 50, hasn't stopped idolizing the outsized leader who made him Venezuela's foreign minister, then vice president and, before going to Cuba for a final cancer surgery in December, publicly selected him presidential successor.

The National Electoral Council was expected on Saturday to set a date for a special presidential election as early as April.

While Maduro has filled the leadership void since Chavez disappeared from public view after his surgery, many Venezuelans find him bland and uninspiring. Some blame his lack of education, noting the former bus driver never went to college.
Others say it goes much further. After all, Brazil's hugely popular former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, also started out as a workers and union leader with limited education.
"Nicolas Maduro does not embody Chavismo. He's not in touch with the people," said Carlos Borola, a 57-year-old member of a "colectivo," a radical pro-Chavez citizen's group.

"You can try to imitate the aggressivity of speech. You can try to imitate the conjuring of imaginary enemies. But you can't imitate Chavez's charisma," said Luis Vicente Leon, president of the respected Datanalisis polling firm.

"Chavez was a showman. Maduro is not," he said.
Many worry that Maduro may not be capable of managing the economic challenges of rising public debt, inflation above 20 percent, endemic crime responsible for the world's second-highest murder rate and nagging food shortages.
As Chavez's political heir, he had three months to establish himself as the face of Chavismo. It fell to him to announce Chavez's death, and he sweated through the hours-long walk Wednesday as the funeral cortege crawled through adoring crowds, some shouting "with Chavez and Maduro, the people are secure."
When Maduro was sworn in, boisterous lawmakers shouted "Chavez lives, Maduro carries on." The ceremony was mostly boycotted by the opposition, which called it illegitimate because Venezuela's constitution says the assembly speaker should be interim president.
For the socialist Chavista movement, Maduro's leftist credentials, at least, are unassailable.
He joined the now-defunct Socialist League at a young age, got some revolutionary schooling in Cuba and later, as Chavez's foreign minister, became close to Fidel and Raul Castro.

Chavez named him vice president after defeating opposition leader Henrique Capriles in the Oct. 7 election. Capriles won 45 percent of the vote, however, in Chavez's closest presidential re-election.

Once Chavez fell from sight as his health failed after Dec. 11 surgery, Maduro began wielding the huge state media machine built by his mentor, mindful that Chavez was unlikely to live much longer and that a snap presidential election was likely.
He began to crisscross the nation and show up on state TV presiding over the distribution of apartments and buses for university students.
As Chavez's death drew nearer, Maduro's rhetoric grew more incendiary, while criminal investigations of opposition leaders for alleged financial irregularities were opened. He launched blistering personal attacks against Capriles, accusing him of "conspiring against the homeland" with far-right U.S. putschists and fugitive bankers.
Maduro expelled two U.S. military attaches for allegedly trying to destabilize the nation, just hours before he announced Chavez's death Tuesday, surprising analysts who had thought a rapprochement between the two nations might be possible under the new leader.
"There was a sense that perhaps Maduro was a more pragmatic person, would be amenable to exchange ambassadors," said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "The statement he made Tuesday threw a huge bucket of cold water on those hopes."
Maduro had spoken the day before Thanksgiving with Washington's top diplomat for the hemisphere, Roberta Jacobson, about improving ties, especially in fighting drug trafficking. Top diplomats of the two nations met more frequently. But when it came time to honor a newly deceased Chavez, Washington's delegation consisted of two Democratic congressmen and the local embassy charge d'affaires.
Arnson speculated that Maduro might feel he needs to play to the more hard-line wing of his party.
On Friday night, Maduro's voice boomed as he said "the imperialist elites who govern the United States will need to learn to coexist with absolute respect with the insurrectionary peoples" of South America. "Nothing and no one will take away the reconquered independence with our Comandante Hugo Chavez at its front."
He did not mention how he might confront Venezuela's multiple ills, including crumbling infrastructure and diminishing production of oil, which accounts for more than 95 percent of its exports.
Capriles, meanwhile, fired back at Maduro, saying he had withheld criticism since Chavez's death out of respect but could no longer hold his tongue at what he considered a power grab by the new leader.
"I tell you clearly, Nicolas, I am not going to speak of the times you lied to the country, shamelessly," said the man the opposition is expected to choose as its presidential candidate. "The people have not voted for you, boy."
Leon, at Datanalisis, thinks Maduro will win the presidency if the election comes soon, but says his shortcomings will become more evident in a few months of grappling with a possible recession, another expected currency devaluation following a 30 percent cut in February, and public impatience with deteriorating public health care and services and rising crime.
For now, Maduro can benefit from having Chavez's embalmed body on public display and the late president's son-in-law, Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza as his running mate, reminding Venezuelans of who chose him to lead the nation.
But people like Edgar Carvajal, a 50-year-old employee of the Chinese appliance company Haier, said people could lose patience.
"We've got to trust in Maduro, but he had better take care of all these shortages we're having and the high prices," Carvajal said Friday while standing in the long line of people waiting to view Chavez's body lying in state.
"If Maduro can't handle it, the people will show him the door," Carvajal said.
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Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera, Eduardo Castillo and Jorge Rueda in Caracas and Luis Alonso in Washington contributed to this report.

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Anti-Hitler conspirator von Kleist dies at 90

BERLIN (AP) — Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, the last surviving member of the main plot to kill Adolf Hitler and who once volunteered to wear a suicide vest to assassinate the Nazi dictator, has died. He was 90.

Von Kleist's wife, Gundula von Kleist, said her husband died at his home in Munich on Friday.

Von Kleist was born July 10, 1922, on his family estate Schmenzin in Pommerania in an area of northeastern Germany that is today Poland.

The von Kleist family was a long line of Prussian landowners, who had served the state for centuries in high-ranking military and administrative positions.

Von Kleist's father, Ewald von Kleist, was an early opponent of Hitler even before he came to power, and was arrested many times after the Nazi dictator took control in 1933. The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policy of appeasement.

Despite his family's opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.

During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.

Years later von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: "Yes, you have to do this."
"Fathers love their sons and mine certainly did, and I had been quite sure he would say no," von Kleist recalled. "But, as always, I had underestimated him."
The suicide attack plan never came to fruition.
Months later, however, von Kleist was approached again by von Stauffenberg to take part in what would become known as the July 20 plot — for the day in 1944 that the assassination was attempted — which was brought to the big screen in 2008 in "Valkyrie," starring Tom Cruise as von Stauffenberg.
Von Kleist was supposed to play a key role as the person who was to carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a meeting with Hitler. In a change of plans, however, von Stauffenberg decided to plant the bomb himself.
Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers at his East Prussian headquarters. Hitler escaped the full force of the blast when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the explosive force.
Von Kleist remained in Berlin, charged with overseeing the arrest of officers and officials loyal to Hitler in the city.
But when news spread that Hitler had survived, the plot crumbled and von Stauffenberg, von Kleist's father, and scores of others were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings. Some were hanged by the neck with piano wire. Von Stauffenberg was shot by firing squad.
Von Kleist himself was arrested and questioned at length by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp, but then inexplicably let go and returned to combat duty.

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Troops shell areas on edge of Syrian capital

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops shelled rebel strongholds on the edge of Damascus from multiple rocket launchers based on hilltops Tuesday, while new clashes erupted in an intensifying battle for control over Aleppo's international airport and nearby military bases in Syria's north, activists said.

The thud of artillery and mortars reverberated across the capital from the fighting in the northeastern neighborhoods of Jobar and rebel-held areas south of Damascus. Activists said several people were wounded.

Opposition fighters trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad have stepped up mortar attacks on Damascus in recent weeks, striking deeper than ever into the heart of the city. Rebel fighters tried in the past to establish bridgeheads in Damascus but were pushed back to the suburbs by regime forces.

In northern Syria, rebels renewed a push to capture Aleppo's international airport and nearby air bases as part of their campaign to erode the regime's air supremacy in the 2-year-old conflict.

The United Nations says the civil war has claimed more than 70,000 lives and forced some 4 million Syrians from their homes.
A UNICEF report issued Tuesday warned that a whole generation of Syrian children risks being scarred for life because of the unrelenting violence, mass population displacement and damage to infrastructure and services.

"As millions of children inside Syria and across the region witness their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict, the risk of them becoming a lost generation grows every day," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

The report said that in areas where the fighting is most intense, few people have access to fresh water. Also, one in five schools have been destroyed, damaged, or is being used to shelter displaced families. In Aleppo, the center of months of fighting, only 6 per cent of children are attending school, the report said.

In a sign of worsening economic conditions, the value of the Syrian pound reached 101 pounds to the U.S. dollar Tuesday. Although late last year the pound briefly sank to 105 to the dollar, prompting central bank intervention, it had been holding at about 95 pounds to the dollar.

At the start of the conflict, the dollar stood at 47 Syrian pounds.
The economy has been suffering under the weight of sanctions from the U.S., European Union and the Arab League that include a ban on oil exports.
Besides the economic effects, the civil war has left the nation's industry, infrastructure and many cities, including ancient Aleppo, in ruins.
The rebels control large swathes of territory outside of Aleppo, but the battle for the city itself, Syria's main commercial hub, is locked in a stalemate. Rebels pushed into the city in July and captured several neighborhoods. It has been a major battleground in the civil war ever since.
The army holds large parts of Aleppo and maintains control over the airport, the country's second largest. Crucially, Syria's air space is firmly controlled by the regime in Damascus, which uses its warplanes to bomb rebel strongholds.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes erupted on Tuesday around the airport, and rebels also intensified their assault on the Nairab and Mannagh air bases near the strategic facility, which has not been handling fights for weeks because of the fighting.
Fighting also flared up along the road that links the capital, Damascus, to the country's biggest airport and raged for a second day in the central city of Homs as rebels tried to take back the impoverished neighborhood of Baba Amr, which they lost to Assad's troops a year ago.
Last year, government forces besieged Baba Amr for a month before rebel forces withdrew and the government seized control. Hundreds of people were killed in the siege. On Sunday, rebels pushed back into Baba Amr, and Syrian forces responded by firing heavy machine guns into the neighborhood, sending residents fleeing.
In Geneva, the U.N. food agency said the renewed violence in Baba Amr has forced at least 3,000 families to leave their homes.
In Kiev, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry confirmed that a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria is free after being held by rebels for more than 150 days.

Ministry spokesman Yevhen Perebiynis said the reporter, Ankhar Kochneva, was expected to contact the Ukrainian Embassy in Damascus later in the day.

Kochneva, who has written for Syrian and Russian newspapers, was kidnapped in western Syria on Oct. 9. Russian media reported she was held by members of the Free Syrian Army opposition group. Perebiynis said he had no further information.
The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted Kochneva as saying she walked away from the house where she was held, skirted a rebel guard post and then walked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) through fields until she found a villager who helped her.
The kidnappers released a video in which Kochneva said she was working as a Russian agent, but the newspaper quoted her as saying the recording was made under duress.
Russia is a staunch ally of Damascus, supplying the Assad regime with weapons and shielding his government from tougher U.N. sanctions.
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Associated Press writers Anna Melnichuk in Kiev, Jim Heintz in Moscow and John Heilprin in Geneva contributed.

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