Pope Says He Will Be ‘Hidden To The World’ In Retirement

VATICAN CITY — Saying he would soon be “hidden to the world,” Pope Benedict XVI took his leave of parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome on Thursday in a moving encounter during which he gave a personal, and incisive, recollection of the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops 50 years ago that set the Roman Catholic Church’s course for the future.

Benedict, who announced his resignation four days ago — the first pope to step down willingly in nearly 600 years — also indicated that he would not hold a public role once his resignation becomes official on Feb. 28.

“Though I am now retiring to a life of prayer, I will always be close to all of you and I am sure all of you will be close to me, even though I remain hidden to the world,” he told the assembly of hundreds of priests, who had greeted him with a long, standing ovation and some tears.

The pope will live in a convent inside Vatican City.

At a news briefing Thursday, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said Benedict’s longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who was also named prefect of the papal household two months ago, would continue to work for him.

Father Lombardi said he saw no conflict of interest if Archbishop Gänswein served the current pope and his successor.

The prefect is responsible for logistical duties, and “in this sense it is not a profound problem, I think,” Father Lombardi said.

The nuns who currently tend to the pope will also live with the pontiff once he is no longer pope.

Father Lombardi also confirmed news reports that the pope had had an accident during a trip to Mexico last March, hitting his head in the middle of the night, but he denied that the episode had influenced the pontiff’s decision to retire.

Since his surprise announcement on Monday, which stunned the Roman Catholic world, there has been much closer public scrutiny of the pope’s health.

The 85-year-old pope — who has appeared increasingly frail in recent public appearances — said he felt he did not have the strength to continue in his ministry.

On Tuesday, the Vatican confirmed for the first time that the pope had had a pacemaker since his time as a cardinal and had its batteries changed three months ago.

“It didn’t impact on the trip or on his decision,” Father Lombardi said, pointing out that the pope had kept his appointments as scheduled.

The priests from the Rome diocese who attended Benedict’s audience said they felt they had witnessed a powerful moment in church history, one that also humanized a pope who has often seemed remote. “It moved me to see the pope smile,” said Don Mario Filippa, a priest in Rome. “He has found peace within himself.”

“It was a part of history,” said Father Martin Astudillo, 37, an Argentine priest who is studying in Rome. “This is a man of God who at the end of his public role transmits his vision of the church and relationship with the church,” he added. “We saw in a few words a real synthesis of his vision of the church and what he expects from whomever takes over.”

In his remarks, which touched on some of the thorniest issues of his papacy, Benedict also spoke about how the Second Vatican Council had explored ideas of “continuity” between Old and New Testaments, and of the relationship between the Catholic and Jewish faiths.

“Even if it’s clear that the church isn’t responsible for the Shoah, it’s for the most part Christians who did this crime,” Benedict said of the Holocaust, adding that this called for a need to “deepen and renovate the Christian conscience,” even if it’s true that “real believers only fought against” Nazi barbarism.

During the 45-minute reflection — or “chat” in his words — on the council, he also recalled the “incredible” expectations of bishops going into the gathering.

“We were full of hope, enthusiasm and also of good will,” he said.

But while the council made landmark decisions that would propel the church into the future, much got lost in the media’s interpretation of what transpired, he said, which led to the “calamities” that have marred recent church history.

The media reduced the proceedings “into a political power struggle between different currents of the church,” and they chose sides that suited their individual vision of the world, the pope said.

These messages, not that of the council, entered into the public sphere and that led in the years to “so many calamities, so many problems, seminaries closed, convents that closed, the liturgy trivialized,” the pope said.

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Valentine's Day Playlist for All the Single Ladies

02/14/2013 at 11:00 AM EST

It's Valentine's Day – and you know what that means.

Your coworkers are all wearing red. (You're in black.)

Your "couple friends" are making Facebook positively nauseating today with multiple "I love you, schmoopie" posts. (You posted a link to a news article on rising divorce rates.)

Cut-outs of a certain flying, fat baby line store windows. (You think it's no coincidence that Cupid rhymes with stupid.)

If the above describes you, then we've got the soundtrack to your Valentine's Day! Whether you're sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your ex, or refusing to commit to just one man, embrace your solo status with single-and-lovin'-it anthems from Madonna, TLC and more.

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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women

NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.

The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.

The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.

In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.

White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.

"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.

One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.

The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.

At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.

Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.

The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.

The study also found:

—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.

—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.

—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.

A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.

Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.

___

Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html

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Wall Street falls on Europe data but deals support

DEAR ABBY: My daughters are attractive young women, both doing well in their professional careers. "Melanie," who is 27, is married to "Sam," an extremely attractive and successful man.My 30-year-old daughter, "Alicia," has been divorced for a year. Her marriage failed two years ago because she and her husband had an appetite for sex outside their marriage. While I was disturbed about that, I was horrified to learn that Melanie allows her sister to occasionally have sex with Sam.Melanie's argument is that Sam is less likely to cheat given this situation. ...

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At War Blog: How to Help Veterans Succeed in College

In 2004, I returned from a year in Iraq to finish my undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island. Since I took more than a year’s leave of absence to deploy, I was forced to reapply to the university. While writing another entrance essay to explain how I spent my “year off,” I wondered why my school didn’t have a peer support system for its students who are veterans.

In just a few years, the narrative for veterans on my campus and many others has changed dramatically because of the hard work of student-led veterans’ groups like the ones I met at the recent Student Veterans of America national conference in Orlando.

The conference showed me how student veterans continue to look out for the best interests of their comrades on campus, much like they did in the military. Plus, as college veterans’ groups grow in size and influence, they manage to affect positive change in their communities. In January, veterans at Clemson University commissioned a volunteer-led veterans’ resource center where veterans can receive transitional assistance, career guidance, and peer support. Meanwhile, veterans at Florida State University continue to push the state legislature to change archaic in-state tuition policies.

Over a few beers, veterans opened up about some of the challenges they faced when coming back to college, like immature classmates or closed-minded professors, but they also readily shared ways they worked to build understanding on campus through their organized veterans’ groups.

Unfortunately, the conference also reinforced a lingering concern that many of today’s student veterans must still choose their schools and navigate the complexities of college life on the fly when they arrive on campus.

As an article in the Education Life section of The New York Times details, many colleges have stepped up to offer in-depth counseling to incoming student veterans, with some going so far as to offer orientation programs and learning communities specifically for veteran undergraduates. The one flaw to this system, however, is that at this point, the veteran has already chosen an institution. What if he or she just isn’t academically or financially ready for college?

In 2010’s National Survey of Veterans, more than 40 percent of post-9/11 veterans reported that they were not aware of and did not understand their education benefits. Veterans should be armed with quality information before they start the application process. Once a veteran is on campus, it may be too late. Is this lack of up-front information perhaps driving misconceptions that veterans won’t succeed when they arrive on campus?

When I started college more than a decade ago, I missed orientation because of basic training. I then struggled to find good information on using my benefits from the G.I. Bill of Rights and had to write a personal check just to get my grades. As a 19-year-old student who lived in a dormitory with few financial obligations, I had the time and the leftover Army income to foot the bill and sort out the G.I. Bill later. Many veterans don’t have this luxury.

So who should be responsible for informing veterans about the nuances of higher education? Federal law dictates that some of the responsibility falls on the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Separating service members have access to the military transition assistance program, or TAP, and those who have left active duty are entitled to free educational counseling from the veterans department. The department offers the 1-888-GIBILL-1 hotline and the eBenefits online portal, but neither is equipped to answer in-depth questions on higher education, nor can they be used to register for counseling.

I recently participated in both the Department of Veterans Affairs counseling and T.A.P. To apply for counseling, I had to find a form online, print it and mail it to my closest veterans affairs office. Two months later, I received a letter from a department contractor, asking me to take aptitude and interest tests to determine my career goals. The bubble sheet exams confirmed that I worked in the right industry, so I was finally referred to a counselor who could meet one on one.

The counseling process helped answer my questions, but I found some of the steps unnecessary and confusing, which likely discourages other veterans from using it too. Nevertheless, it worked. Wouldn’t the department want to enroll more veterans?

The agency only has about $6 million each year to deliver G.I. Bill counseling. Last year the Congressional Budget Office analyzed a proposal to make it easier for veterans to apply for educational aid, but the cost would have been high. During the recent conference, I asked the audience if anyone knew that the department even offered educational counseling. Only a couple of veterans raised their hands.

T.A.P. is not particularly helpful for veterans looking for information about education benefits. When I attended the benefits briefing last spring, the instructor focused on other veterans programs, such as health care, home loans and disability compensation, fielding dozens of questions along the way. When education benefits finally came up, the instructor was fighting the clock and glossed over the material, apparently assuming that service members understood the nuances of the highly promoted benefit. But clearly they do not.

Some T.A.P. facilities do better than others, offering resources like guidance counselors for separating service members. But these innovations seem to be have been developed at the discretion of individual program facilitators, and service members must carve out personal time to use them.

Still, my outlook for current student veterans remains overwhelmingly positive. Not only are veterans and colleges stepping up to take care of their own, but policy makers in Washington have recognized deficiencies in programs and are finally taking steps to fix some of them.

Thanks to the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011, the Pentagon is piloting new T.A.P. curricula geared toward college-bound veterans. Because of an April executive order, the Pentagon, Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies are compiling student outcome information and developing ways to track student feedback from colleges that are eligible for GI Bill students. Finally, because of last month’s Improving Transparency of Education Opportunities for Veterans Act, Congress has required the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide more information on how veterans are faring at individual colleges, and department is looking to deliver more cost-effective counseling tools for student veterans.

With all of these changes afloat, the veterans community must keep the pressure on the Pentagon, Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress and schools to ensure that educational information is relevant and easy to access for student veterans.

The first four-year class of Post-9/11 G.I. Bill veterans will graduate this spring, and I look forward to following their successes after college. For those still serving who plan to use their benefits in the future, we have an opportunity to arm them with the best information to get the most out of their G.I. Bill.

We never send a new recruit to war without proper training and equipment. We should never send a veteran to college without reasonable guidance for what lies ahead.

Ryan Gallucci is the deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington, where he focuses on economic opportunity policy for veterans and maintains the VFW’s Capitol Hill blog. He deployed to Iraq as an Army Civil Affairs specialist in 2003 and 2004 before completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Rhode Island in 2006.

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Stephen Fishbach Blogs: Show's Worst Players Will Make Survivor: Caramoan Great

TV Watch

Survivor

By Stephen Fishbach

02/13/2013 at 10:15 AM EST

Stephen Fishbach was the runner-up on Survivor: Tocantins and has been blogging about Survivor strategy for PEOPLE.com since 2009. Follow him on Twitter @stephenfishbach.

"Survivor's not meant to be a comedy routine."
– Cochran, Survivor: South Pacific

Here's a riddle for you: What do a zombie, a flip-flopper and two train wrecks have in common?

They're all part of a new cast of "favorites" on Survivor: Caramoan (Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET on CBS), the new season that matches 10 new competitors against some of the worst players in the show's history. Game on?

Survivor may be the only competitive event on earth where being awful makes you an all-star. Brandon Hantz and Erik Reichenbach share the distinction of literally making the worst moves ever when they both sacrificed individual immunity right at the endgame, and were immediately blindsided.

John Cochran ruined his own game – as well as his entire tribe's – with a horrendous flip. Francesca Hogi was first off. Corinne Kaplan would have lost a jury vote to Phillip Sheppard. Brenda Lowe's alliance betrayed her. Andrea Boehlke shambled along as part of Boston Rob's zombie army. Even Dawn Meehan – a paragon of normalcy in the lunatic asylum of the Favorites tribe – had an early-season breakdown.

How did Malcolm Freberg slip into this casting net that only dragged for bottom-feeders? Gazing around that island on day one, he must have wondered what he did so wrong. Remember – nobody had seen Malcolm's season, himself included. Even he made a catastrophic, head-slapping move when he didn't guarantee Denise a deal at the Philippines final four.

Where's Jim Rice? Where's Marty Piombo? For the love of God, where's Jane Bright? They were big characters ... and also big players. It's like this cast was specially selected to only include the very worst. You were disqualified from coming if your Survivor IQ was above a flatline.

The producers, of course, know exactly what they're doing. Even the show's promos are set to the tune of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." The more shouting matches there are, the more emotional cataclysms, the more cultural moments the show creates, the more people Tweet. And the greater the odds that a clip winds up on The Soup.

The cast of Survivor: Caramoan

Monty Brinton / CBS

Bad Means Good

Don't get me wrong – I'm not complaining. Survivor is a TV show, not a political convention. Bring on the crazy. It's unreasonable to compare this season to some idealized memory of what the show once was: 16 strangers who stop being polite and start getting malnourished. Let's get a cast full of Phillips out there communing with their ancient ancestors and misquoting the Bhagavadi Gita. Could you ask for better television?

Furthermore, lunatics can create big challenges for a strategist. It's easy to play a game against someone who's behaving rationally. How do you manipulate a person whose only allegiances are to camera time and the voices in their head? We could see the emergence of a Survivor super-genius.

And some players really need a second chance to mature. Parvati Shallow wasn't Parvati her first time out. I could see Brenda or Corinne or Dawn doing something ferocious. I've long argued it stunts new players to be cast on a tribe with returnees. How might Cochran or Francesca fare without Ozzy or Boston Rob overshadowing them?

Oh – and the fans? Does anybody really care about the fans? They're like the gladiators thrown into the lion pit: there to be eaten. As horrible as the favorites are, there's no comparison between watching a few seasons on television and in-game experience.

Of course, it's always possible for someone to pull a Running Man (the Schwarzenegger movie, not the dance move) and beat the favorites at their own game. If it's going to be anyone, my money's on Reynold Toepfer. He has a kind of Malcolm-ish vibe – strategic, athletic, and social. It didn't hurt that he gave me a shout-out in his "Survivor memorable moment." See below.

Pre-season Fishy for Reynold! Because it's gotta go to somebody!

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Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.

The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.

Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.

The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.

"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.

A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.

"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.

Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.

The report also concluded that:

—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.

—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.

__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.

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Wall Street rises, S&P hits highest since November '07

DEAR ABBY: My daughters are attractive young women, both doing well in their professional careers. "Melanie," who is 27, is married to "Sam," an extremely attractive and successful man.My 30-year-old daughter, "Alicia," has been divorced for a year. Her marriage failed two years ago because she and her husband had an appetite for sex outside their marriage. While I was disturbed about that, I was horrified to learn that Melanie allows her sister to occasionally have sex with Sam.Melanie's argument is that Sam is less likely to cheat given this situation. ...

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India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district.

Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s hanging, which happened secretly in Delhi on Saturday and was announced afterward.

Mr. Afzal, from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002 for his role in planning an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001.

Schools, colleges and most shops in Kashmir are closed by government order, and people have been asked to stay inside their homes. Rows of shops and restaurants were shuttered.

Vehicles have been banned from the streets, cable news channels have gone dark, Internet service on cellphones has been blocked and newspapers were not being delivered. Hospitals, pharmacies and emergency services remain open.

In Srinagar, the only people in the deserted streets were security forces.

Officials in the area said they were taking preventive measures. During the past decade, many Kashmiris have opposed the death sentence for Mr. Afzal, saying he was being unfairly accused of the crime. His wife had requested a pardon from the Indian government, but her plea was denied.

Many Kashmiris were also outraged that the government letter carrying the news of execution reached Mr. Afzal’s widow in Sopore only after he died. The central government said Tuesday that Mr. Afzal’s family could visit his grave at te Tihar Jail in Delhi, but a date has yet to be decided, according to the Press Trust of India.

The ban on the movement of people and vehicles was imposed under Section 144 of India’s criminal procedure code, the same section invoked after protests over the recent Delhi gang rape, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people.

It was invoked by a district magistrate to prevent “a law and order problem,” Suresh Kumar, principal secretary in Jammu and Kashmir’s Department of Home Affairs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 

Mr. Afzal’s death was mourned across the valley through organized street protests that involved stone pelting, in defiance of the ban.

Three civilians have died and many have been injured over the last four days, officials said. Some news reports attributed all three deaths to protest-related activities, but Mr. Kumar said only one man died of injuries caused by the police. The other two drowned when their boat capsized, an incident unrelated to the violence, he said.

Obair Mushtaq, from the Baramulla district, died after he was shot, his relatives said. Farooq Ahmed, his uncle, said Obair was 13.

Mr. Ahmed said that on Sunday evening, a handful of children, including his nephew, were throwing stones at a passing military convoy. “It was not aggressive. We were laughing at them,” he said, crying over the phone. “We can’t understand why there is so much fighting. Why are our children dying?”

A Kashmir police official told India Ink that 60 people have been injured since Saturday in clashes between police and civilians. Forty of those were security officials and 20 were civilians, he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his life.

Additionally, there were about 60 incidents of stone pelting across the valley. “Most of the violence erupted in Sopore and Baramulla,” he said.

“People are not allowed to step out of their homes,” he added.Many residents described the past four days as the longest curfew since 2010, when the valley was shaken by mass pro-independence demonstrations. 

Manzoor Ahmed, who drives an auto-rickshaw, said that he hasn’t earned any money since the curfew was imposed on Saturday. “I haven’t stepped out of the house so I cannot even make the little money I do,” he said during a telephone interview. “The children cannot go to school.”

Mr. Ahmed said that his family was surviving on dal, a stew made of lentils, because there are no fresh vegetables available. “We have a backup supply of dal because we know things like this can happen,” he said.

In some areas, for a few hours in the evening, residents said they were allowed out of their homes to shop. Vegetables and milk are generally shipped into Srinagar, which is nestled in the mountains, from villages and other states during the winter months.

Mr. Mohammed, a hotel manager near the Dal Lake, who requested his first name not be used to avoid any retaliatory action, said that his hotel was running out of vegetables like peas and cauliflower, and guests were only being served beans and potatoes from storage. “The situation is quite bad,” he said.

For around two hours in the evening, a few stores selling basic groceries were open. But these shops have limited resources because the supply chain had been disrupted because of the ban on vehicles.

One businessman, who requested not be named to avoid possible retaliatory action by the police, said he hasn’t opened his crockery shop in downtown Srinagar in the past four days. “What choice do I have? They won’t let us step out,” he said. He estimated he has lost 60,000 rupees ($1,000) since Saturday.

The hanging of Mr. Afzal came as Kashmiris were planning protests to mark the death of Maqbool Bhatt, a pro-Kashmir independence leader who was hanged on Feb. 11, 1984. His death is considered the spark for two decades of unrest. Both men are buried at Tihar Jail in Delhi.

“Maqbool Bhatt inspired the insurgency while Afzal Guru was the product of it,” said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at Kashmir University. 

He warned that Mr. Afazal’s hanging and the subsequent curfew would make the Kashmiri people’s “alienation with the government more deep rooted.”

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Westminster's Most Paw-some Moments - So Far!

People Pets

02/12/2013 at 11:00 AM EST

You snooze, you lose? Not when you're as adorable as this Bichon Frise

Frank Franklin II/AP

It may be Fat Tuesday, but as any dog lover knows, the real action is at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Dogs of every shape, size and color – including two new breeds who were admitted into competition this year – have taken over several New York City locations, including Madison Square Garden, and the contest is starting to get fur-rocious.

We know you'd rather be at home watching these pooches strut their stuff, but since you're probably otherwise occupied, here's a taste of all the canine pageantry taking place:

This Afghan Hound is 'hair' to stay

Monika Graff / Landov

Don't they know I need my beauty sleep? This Dogue de Bordeux, named Azlo, is ready to retire to his room at the Hotel Pennsylvania

Carlo Allegri / Landov

A kiss for good luck! There's no ill will between Boston terriers Gaga (left) and Spitzer

Keith Bedford / Landov

Last year's winner, Malachy, returns to the limelight to turn the Empire State Building purple and gold (with a little help from a furry friend) in honor of Westminster's kickoff

Bryan Smith / ZUMA

Check back tonight to see who takes home top prize!

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