Reeva Steenkamp's Mom Wants Answers: 'Why My Little Girl?'















02/18/2013 at 10:30 AM EST







Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius


Gallo Images/REX USA


As "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius prepares to return to court on Tuesday, where he will likely seek bail, the grieving mother of his dead girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, has called for answers in the case, asking, "Why my little girl?"

June Steenkamp, in an interview with the Times newspaper of South Africa, wonders "Why did he do this? … She loved like no one else could love. Just like that, she is gone."

Pistorius's agent, Pete van Zyl, visited him in jail over the weekend and told PEOPLE it was too early to determine what the charges might mean for the star's running career. He would not comment on the case and said he was there to lend support to Pistorius and update him on sponsorship, contracts and future races.

"I can tell you that we have had overwhelming support from Oscar from a lot of fans on a global scale, really on a global scale. South African fans, international fans from literally all over the world," van Zyl told PEOPLE. "He knows it. I have given him that message."

Meanwhile, new details continue to emerge surrounding Steenkamp's death. Citing a police official close to the case, CNN reports that Steenkamp, 30, was shot through the bathroom door inside Pistorius's house.

She reportedly also was alive after the shooting, with Pistorius carrying her downstairs in a frantic effort to save her life. Local media in his hometown of Pretoria have reported that Pistorius, 26, thought Steenkamp was an intruder and shot her by accident.

Monday's Today show reported that Pistorius called friends around 4 a.m. the day of the shooting to ask for help, telling them there had been a terrible accident and that Steenkamp had been shot. (Neighbors who had reportedly heard commotion at the Olympian's home, called police.)

Reuters, citing an eyewitness account published in the Sunday Argus of a paramedic on the scene, said Steenkamp was already dead when he arrived.

The reports said she had been shot once in the head and in the arm, where the bullet broke the bone, and was lying at the bottom of the stairs wearing a black sweatshirt and long pants, but without shoes. When told she could not be revived, Pistorius began to cry, the medic said.

Through his agent, Pistorius has rejected any suggestion that Steenkamp was murdered. The couple had been dating since November. Her publicist told Today that the couple had "seemed happy."

Prosecutors said on Friday that they planned to pursue a charge of premeditated murder. If convicted on that charge, Pistorius would face life in prison.

Pistorius' father, Henke Pistorius, told the Sunday Telegraph that his family thinks the shooting was an accident based on their son's thinking Steenkamp was an intruder inside his home.

"When you are a sportsman, you act even more on instinct," said Henke Pistorius. "It's instinct – things happen and that's what you do."

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Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior


SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.


The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said.


"It's not just about turning off the television. It's about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch," said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute.


The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.


The study involved 565 Seattle parents, who periodically filled out TV-watching diaries and questionnaires measuring their child's behavior.


Half were coached for six months on getting their 3-to-5-year-old kids to watch shows like "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer" rather than more violent programs like "Power Rangers." The results were compared with kids whose parents who got advice on healthy eating instead.


At six months, children in both groups showed improved behavior, but there was a little bit more improvement in the group that was coached on their TV watching.


By one year, there was no meaningful difference between the two groups overall. Low-income boys appeared to get the most short-term benefit.


"That's important because they are at the greatest risk, both for being perpetrators of aggression in real life, but also being victims of aggression," Christakis said.


The study has some flaws. The parents weren't told the purpose of the study, but the authors concede they probably figured it out and that might have affected the results.


Before the study, the children averaged about 1½ hours of TV, video and computer game watching a day, with violent content making up about a quarter of that time. By the end of the study, that increased by up to 10 minutes. Those in the TV coaching group increased their time with positive shows; the healthy eating group watched more violent TV.


Nancy Jensen, who took part with her now 6-year-old daughter, said the study was a wake-up call.


"I didn't realize how much Elizabeth was watching and how much she was watching on her own," she said.


Jensen said her daughter's behavior improved after making changes, and she continues to control what Elizabeth and her 2-year-old brother, Joe, watch. She also decided to replace most of Elizabeth's TV time with games, art and outdoor fun.


During a recent visit to their Seattle home, the children seemed more interested in playing with blocks and running around outside than watching TV.


Another researcher who was not involved in this study but also focuses his work on kids and television commended Christakis for taking a look at the influence of positive TV programs, instead of focusing on the impact of violent TV.


"I think it's fabulous that people are looking on the positive side. Because no one's going to stop watching TV, we have to have viable alternatives for kids," said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children's Hospital Boston.


____


Online:


Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org


___


Contact AP Writer Donna Blankinship through Twitter (at)dgblankinship


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Yen resumes fall after G20, earnings worries hit stocks

LONDON (Reuters) - The yen resumed falling on Monday after Japan signaled it would push ahead with expansionist monetary policies having escaped criticism from the world's 20 biggest economies at the weekend.


European shares and industrial metals dropped on lingering worries about the economic outlook, especially for the euro zone. The risk of an inconclusive outcome in Italian elections at the weekend also added to investor concerns.


However, activity was curtailed by the closure of markets in the United States for the Presidents' Day holiday.


The yen, which has dropped 20 percent against the dollar since mid-November, fell further after financial leaders from the G20 promised not to devalue their currencies to boost exports and avoided singling out Japan for any direct criticism.


"Future yen direction will continue to be driven by domestic monetary policy from the Bank of Japan and improving international investor confidence, which are both driving the yen weaker," said Lee Hardman, currency analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.


Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe seized the opportunity to keep pressure on the central bank to loosen policy, telling the Japanese parliament that buying foreign bonds could be among options the Bank of Japan could adopt.


The result was the dollar rising 0.5 percent to 93.98 yen, near a 33-month peak of 94.47 yen set a week ago. The euro rose 0.2 percent to 125.32 yen, roughly midway between Friday's two-week low of 122.90 and a 34-month high of 127.71 yen hit earlier this month.


Strategists said that while the yen was likely to stay weak, its decline could lose momentum as investors wait for more clarity on who will be taking the helm at the Bank of Japan when the current governor steps down on March 19.


"The big unknown is who will get appointed as the new BoJ governor, so it is difficult to put on massive positions beforehand," said Saeed Amen, currency strategist at Nomura.


Abe is poised to nominate the new governor in the coming days. Sources have told Reuters that former financial bureaucrat Toshiro Muto, considered likely to be less radical than other candidates, was leading the field.


Elsewhere in the currency market, sterling hit a seven-month low against the dollar, after a key policymaker made comments about the need for further weakness and recent poor data which has kept alive worries of another British recession.


Sterling fell 0.15 percent to $1.5492 having earlier touched $1.5438, its lowest since July 13.


DATA LOOMS


A big week for data on the outlook for the world's economy weighed on other riskier asset markets following the recent dire fourth-quarter growth numbers for the euro zone and Japan, along with Friday's soft U.S. manufacturing figures.


In European markets, attention is focused on the euro area Purchasing Managers' Indexes for February and German sentiment indices due later in the week. These could affect hopes for a recovery this year.


Analysts expect Thursday's euro area flash PMI indices, which offer pointers to economic activity around six months out, to show growth stabilizing across the recession-hit region, leaving hopes for a recovery in the second half of 2013 intact.


Concerns over an inconclusive outcome in the Italian elections on Sunday and Monday have added to the weaker sentiment as a fragmented parliament could hamper a future government's efforts to reform the struggling economy.


The worries about the outlook for Italy were encouraging investors back into safe-haven German government bonds on Monday, with 10-year Bund yields easing 3.6 basis points to be around 1.63 percent.


"Political uncertainty will keep Bunds well bid this week," ING rate strategist Alessandro Giansanti said, adding that only better than expected economic data could create selling pressure on German debt in the near term.


Italian 10-year yields were 7 basis points higher on the day at 4.44 percent.


EARNINGS HIT


European equity markets were taking their lead from corporate earnings reports which have been reflecting the sluggish economic conditions across the region.


Danish brewer Carlsberg , which generates just over 60 percent of its sales in western Europe, became the latest to report a weaker-than-expected quarterly profit, sending its shares to their lowest level in almost a month.


The 6.8-percent drop for shares in the world's fourth biggest brewery helped send the FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> of top European shares down 0.3 percent at midday. Germany's DAX <.gdaxi>, France's CAC-40 <.fchi> and UK FTSE-100 <.ftse> ranged between 0.1 percent up and 0.3 percent lower.


Earlier, the effect of the G20 statement and the comments from Abe indicating a renewed drive to stimulate the Japanese economy lifted the Nikkei stock index <.n225> by 2.1 percent, near to its highest level since September 2008.


MSCI's world equity index <.miwd00000pus> was flat as markets extended a two-week period of consolidation that has followed the big run-up in January, when demand was buoyed by the efforts of central banks to stimulate the world economy.


Data from EPFR Global, a U.S.-based firm that tracks the flows and allocations of funds globally, shows investors pulled $3.62 billion from U.S. stock funds in the latest week, the most in 10 weeks after taking a neutral stance the prior week.


But demand for emerging market equities remained strong, with investors putting $1.81 billion in new cash into stock funds, the fund-tracking firm said.


CHINA RETURN


In the commodity markets, traders played catch-up after a week-long holiday last week in China, the world's second biggest consumer of many raw materials, which had kept activity subdued, with worries about the economic outlook weighing on sentiment.


Copper, for which China is the world's largest consumer, dipped to a near three-week low of $8,127.50 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) on the London futures market. Benchmark tin and nickel also touched three-week lows.


Bargain hunters helped gold rise from a six-month low to be up 0.2 percent to $1,611.87 an ounce with jewelers in China returning to the physical market after the Lunar New Year holiday.


Crude oil markets were mostly steady after some weak U.S. industrial production data on Friday [ID:nL1N0BF44A] was seen dampening demand, while tensions in the Middle East lent some support.


"We continue to see a mixed picture out of the United States. Industry output was lower than expected but that shouldn't affect the general upward direction," Olivier Jakob, analyst at Geneva-based Petromatrix, said.


Brent crude was flat at $117.66 a barrel after posting its first weekly loss since the first half of January. U.S. crude slipped 19 cents to $95.67.U.S. crude.


(Additional reporting by Marius Zaharia and Ron Bousso. Editing by Philippa Fletcher)



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IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.

The group, led by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:

We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power to restore affected habitats and prevent more dangerous debris from accumulating.

While 280 million tons of plastic were produced globally last year, less than half of that plastic has ended up in landfills or was recycled, according to the scientists’ data. Some of the unaccounted for 150 million tons of plastic is still in use, but much of it litters roadsides, cities, forests, deserts, beaches and oceans. (Just think of the great floating garbage patches at sea).

Unlike other forms of solid waste, such as uneaten food, scrap metal or last year’s clothes, plastics take an especially long time to break down. And when they finally do, they create hazardous, even toxic particles that can harm wildlife, ecosystems and humans.

For now, the group — led by Chelsea M. Rochman of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and Mark Anthony Browne at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California — is calling for the reclassification of plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle and that are most toxic when degrading: PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate.

The scientists say these types of plastics — used in construction, food containers, electronics and furniture — make up an estimated 30 percent of all plastics produced.

Join our sustainability conversation. Does it make sense to re-classify common plastics as hazardous, or are there better ways to reduce the amount of plastics we throw out?

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Biggest Loser's Mike Dorsey: I Was 'Committing Suicide' By Overeating






The Biggest Loser










02/17/2013 at 11:00 AM EST



Michael Dorsey says he turned to The Biggest Loser because he was tired of committing a slow "suicide."

"I don't understand why I was so willing to sacrifice my life when it was something I could fix," Dorsey told reporters of weighing 444 lbs. when he began the show. "I realized that my headspace wasn't right."

On the ranch, Dorsey, 34, was able to make the mental shift necessary to begin losing weight and became a frontrunner for the title of The Biggest Loser – a circumstance he feels ultimately led to being voted out by his housemates, including roommate and alliance member Jeff Nichols.

"Jeff and I are in a good place. We have talked and he has his reasons for what he did. And even without his vote I was still going home," Dorsey said. "I guess some would argue that they would have been stupid for not voting me out because I was a big threat."

But in the week before he was sent home, Dorsey spent 24-hours with his wife and baby son, "Little" Mike, on the ranch as part of a prize gifted to him by fellow contestant Dannielle Allen.

"I was blessed that my wife got to spend a day [on the ranch] because when I got home it made it much easier [because] she understood, 'Yes, you've got to get your burn. You've got to eat by a certain time.' She's really caught the vision," Dorsey said.

Now 124 lbs. lighter and back at home in Baltimore, Dorsey is continuing on his weight-loss journey but is embarking on another adventure as well – rollercoasters!

"I'm trying to ride rollercoasters all over the country," he said. "This is an exciting moment for me because it's something I haven't been able to do for several years."

And while he considers himself a contender for the $100,000 at-home prize at the season finale, Dorsey is more focused on being a happier, healthier husband and father for years to come.

"On the show you have two choices: You live for the show or you live for after the show," he said. "And you know what, I [am] living for after the show."

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


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Florida hit by "tsunami" of tax identity fraud


MIAMI (Reuters) - Bruce Parton was only a few weeks from retirement after 30 years as a mail carrier in sunny Florida.


He never lived to fulfill his retirement plan of moving back to a quiet life in the Catskill mountains of New York, not far from where he grew up on Long Island.


Instead, he was gunned down on his daily mail route in December 2010 by members of an identity theft ring who stole his master key as part of a scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds.


Using stolen names and Social Security numbers, criminals are filing phony electronic tax forms to claim refunds, exploiting a slow-moving federal bureaucracy to collect the money before victims, or the Internal Revenue Service, discover the fraud.


Parton was a victim of what officials say has ballooned into a massive, and dangerous, illegal industry that could cost the nation $21 billion over the next five years, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.


While that is a relatively small sum compared to the $1.1 trillion collected from individual tax payers in the last fiscal year, the crime has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last three years.


"We are on the top of a national trend that is causing a hemorrhage of tax dollars," said Wifredo Ferrer, United States Attorney for south Florida. "It's a tsunami of fraud."


While the IRS says it has detected cases in every state except North Dakota and West Virginia, the fraud's epicenter is Florida, and it is mostly concentrated in Miami and Tampa.


Miami has 46 times the per-capita rate of false tax refund claims than the rest of the country, and 70 times the national average in dollar terms, Ferrer told Reuters.


"For whatever reason, we always tend to lead the nation when it comes to fraud," he said, noting that his office has been battling massive Medicare fraud in recent years that has since spread to other parts of the country.


Florida's high proportion of older residents, who can be more vulnerable to fraud, may be one reason for the high levels of fraud in the state.


Nationwide, the number of cases of tax identity theft detected by authorities sky-rocketed to more than 1.2 million cases in 2012 from only 48,000 in 2008, according to the Treasury Department.


The real number of phony tax filings is likely much higher as the fraud is hard to track, according to a November General Accountability Office report.


GANG LINKS


The tax ID theft problem is particularly troubling as, unlike Medicare fraud, it is associated with violent crime and armed gangs.


Tampa police first detected it in 2010 when officers discovered wanted street criminals engaged in tax fraud. "They were holed up in hotels with laptops churning out tax claims," said congresswoman Kathy Castor, who represents the area and is pressing the IRS to get tougher on the fraud.


When agents raided a Howard Johnson in East Tampa in late 2010, they found suspects smoking marijuana and four laptop computers being used to file fraudulent tax returns on Turbo Tax, the tax preparation software, according to police records.


The suspects had lists of personal information containing more than 1,000 names and confidential personal information, multiple re-loadable debit cards, and records of numerous financial transactions. The investigation revealed that the suspects had been camped out in the hotel room for more than a week filing claims.


Tax identity fraudsters are apparently drawn by the ease of the crime, officials say.


"The scheme is very basic, it works virtually the same in almost every case," said Ferrer. "All they need is your name and the tax ID number."


Armed with that information a refund claim can be filed electronically, making up other details on the form, including addresses, employer data, income and deductions.


Criminals obtain the vital numbers using various tactics, often by bribing office workers with access to personnel files inside companies, as well as large public institutions such as hospitals and schools, according to prosecutors.


Last summer a hacker stole 3.8 million unencrypted tax records from the South Carolina Department of Revenue in what is believed to be the largest security breach of a U.S. tax agency. Authorities say they do not know the hacker's motive.


One North Miami man, Rodney Saint Fleur, was charged last year with using the LexisNexis research service account at the law firm where he worked to access names and Social Security numbers of 26,000 people as part of an identity theft scheme, according to court documents.


Victims in Florida have varied from hospital patients, to Holocaust survivors at an elderly Jewish community center, as well as active duty military serving overseas.


In December, a former U.S. Marine from North Miami was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for stealing the identities of more than 40 fellow Marines stationed at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan as part of a plot to claim $54,000 in fraudulent income-tax refunds.


In Parton's case the criminals were after his master key that gives postal workers access to mail drop-off boxes and apartment mailboxes. He was shot twice in the chest by a gunman as part of a plot to steal identities in people's mail for tax refund fraud.


The gunman, Pikerson Mentor, 31, was sentenced last month to life plus 42 years.


More than 600 people turned up for Parton's funeral, including postal workers and people who got to know him on his route. "He had been doing that mail route for 10 years and he always had a smile for everyone," said his daughter, Nina Parton.


The criminals stay under the radar using identities of the elderly or the very young, who are unlikely to be filing for earned income, as well as the deceased. They typically claim small refunds, around $3,000, but use multiple identities, with payments often made to pre-paid debit cards.


FIGHTING BACK


The IRS said last week it is intensifying a crackdown on identify theft, with 3,000 agents devoted to tackling the problem, double the number assigned in 2011.


The number of IRS criminal investigations into identity theft more than tripled in the year to September 2012, and it was on pace to double again this year, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told reporters.


The tax collection agency prevented $20 billion in attempted tax refund fraud in fiscal year 2012, up from $14 billion a year earlier, he said.


"It's one of the biggest challenges that faces the IRS today," Miller said. "We're doing much better on all fronts but we have much more to do."


Despite the increase in investigations, the agency still had a backlog of 300,000 cases of people waiting for legitimate refunds after they were victims of fraud. It takes an average of six months to resolve a case, Miller said.


"The IRS have put a lot of resources on it, but they always seem to be behind the curve," said Keith Fogg, a tax professor at Villanova University School of Law.


Electronic filing, which now accounts for 80 percent of returns and was introduced to speed up delivery of refunds, has made the system more vulnerable to fraud.


The IRS is seeking to speed up the loading of data from W-2 payroll forms issued at the beginning of the tax season, a time lapse which gives fraudsters a window of opportunity to file using false data.


The IRS is also looking for ways to authenticate the identity of tax filers at the time of filing to pre-empt fraud, as well as working with the Social Security Administration to limit access to a registry of social security data of deceased tax payers, the so-called "Death Master File", a frequent target of fraud.


"We will not be prosecuting our way out of this. That's not going to be the answer. We're going to have to make it more and more difficult for criminals to profit from this behavior," said Miller. "If they're not successful they will move onto something else."


(Editing by Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)



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IHT Rendezvous: Should Common Plastics Be Labeled Toxic?

THE HAGUE — Hoping to reduce one of the most ubiquitous forms of waste, a global group of scientists is proposing that certain types of plastic be labeled hazardous.

The group, lead by two California scientists, wrote in this week’s issue of the scientific journal Nature:

We believe that if countries classified the most harmful plastics as hazardous, their environmental agencies would have the power to restore affected habitats and prevent more dangerous debris from accumulating.

While 280 million tons of plastic were produced globally last year, less than half of that plastic has ended up in landfills or was recycled, according to the scientists’ data. Some of the unaccounted for 150 million tons of plastic is still in use, but much of it litters roadsides, cities, forests, deserts, beaches and oceans. (Just think of the great floating garbage patches at sea).

Unlike other forms of solid waste, such as uneaten food, scrap metal or last year’s clothes, plastics take an especially long time to break down. And when they finally do, they create hazardous, even toxic particles that can harm wildlife, ecosystems and humans.

For now, the group — led by Chelsea M. Rochman of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and Mark Anthony Browne at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California — is calling for the reclassification of plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle and that are most toxic when degrading: PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate.

The scientists say these types of plastics — used in construction, food containers, electronics and furniture — make up an estimated 30 percent of all plastics produced.

Join our sustainability conversation. Does it make sense to re-classify common plastics as hazardous, or are their better ways to reduce the amount of plastics we throw out?

Read More..

Fugitive Ex-Cop Christopher Dorner May Have Committed Suicide















02/16/2013 at 10:00 AM EST







Undated photo of Christopher Dorner


LAPD/AP


Ex-LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner pledged to kill a lot of cops in his revenge-fueled killing spree, but once he was surrounded on Tuesday, Dorner apparently turned one of his many weapons on himself – ending one of Southern California's largest-ever manhunts with a self-inflicted gunshot.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters Friday evening that Dorner died from "a single gunshot wound to the head."

This supports early media reports that officers in a shootout last week with Dorner (which left one deputy dead) said they stopped being fired upon after hearing a single gunshot from inside the house where Dorner sought refuge. However, McMahon stopped short of confirming Dorner committed suicide, saying the manner of death is "still under investigation."

McMahon primarily used the press appearance to explain how deputies – who searched door to door for Dorner in Big Bear Lake the previous Thursday – failed to find him when he was apparently in a condominium only a few hundred feet from where his burned truck was abandoned.

McMahon said his deputies searched the complex, but the unit where Dorner apparently hid was locked, and deputies were not authorized "to force entry into residences that did not show signs of being broken into."

Officials said that during his rampage, which left four people dead in three counties, Dorner used
"numerous canisters of CS gas and smoke; multiple assault rifles equipped with suppressors; semi-automatic hand guns; and a military-style Kevlar helmet," among other weapons and equipment.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


Read More..