More than 50 "Occupy" protesters arrested in New York (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? More than 50 anti-Wall Street protesters were arrested on Saturday after they tried to climb over a chain-link fence around a church parking lot in a bid to establish a new encampment.

The demonstrators had used a wooden ladder to scale a chain-link fence into the lot owned by Trinity Church, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman said.

Police had no immediate figure on how many people were taken into custody, but Gideon Oliver, president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, put the number at about 55, including between five and 10 members of the clergy.

The remaining demonstrators marched through Manhattan's streets toward the house of the Trinity Church rector, but were turned away by police.

Later, as they started to move toward Midtown, some of the demonstrators were hemmed in by lines of police, and police on motorcycles tried to disperse protesters who were in the middle of streets.

"We are unstoppable. Another world is possible," and "Whose street? Our street," were among the chants from the protesters, who blocked some streets as they marched.

The remainder of the group, several dozen protesters, held signs in Times Square into the evening.

Trinity Church's rector, James H. Cooper, issued a statement on the church's website saying: "We are saddened that OWS protesters chose to ignore yesterday's messages" from several Episcopal and Anglican church leaders, including South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu.

The messages discouraged trespassing on Trinity Church property and called attention to several ways in which the church was providing support to Occupy Wall Street and working for economic change.

Cooper said the vacant church lot the OWS wanted to move into "has no facilities to sustain a winter encampment. In good conscience and faith, we strongly believe" erecting a camp there "would be wrong, unsafe, unhealthy, and potentially injurious."

The Occupy movement began with protesters taking over a park in New York in September to draw attention to economic inequality and a financial system they say is unfairly skewed toward the wealthy.

In ensuing months the protests and encampments spread to cities throughout the United States as well as to some in other countries.

But Occupy camps in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and a number of other major cities were shut down in recent weeks in operations that resulted in hundreds of arrests and have raised questions about the movement's future.

Authorities have justified their moves against the camps on a variety of grounds, including that the camps were causing sanitation problems and were dangerous to public safety.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb, Editing by Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111218/us_nm/us_protests_newyork

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Judge nixes new psych exam for WH shooting suspect (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A federal judge on Friday denied a government request for a more thorough psychiatric evaluation of a man charged with firing shots at the White House in what prosecutors say was an attempt to assassinate President Barack Obama.

The mental state of Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, who prosecutors say harbored conspiracy theories and fantasies of killing the president, has been a critical issue since his arrest last month. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were out of town and traveling at the time of the shooting.

A preliminary psychiatric screening already found the suspect competent to stand trial, but prosecutors sought additional testing out of extra caution and to conclusively resolve any concerns about his mental well-being before trial. They said the initial 50-minute screening, conducted in a cellblock of the courthouse, was incomplete because it did not take into account some of Ortega's more bizarre or outlandish behavior and statements. They sought an additional in-patient examination, which would give experts more time to evaluate him.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola, in rejecting the request, said there currently was no evidence that Ortega was incompetent to stand trial. But he said prosecutors can renew their bid for another evaluation if they believe Ortega's mental health is deteriorating as the case moves forward. He stressed the difference between a defendant's overall mental health and competence for trial ? a narrower question.

"A delusional system does not in and of itself compel the conclusion of a defendant's incompetence," he said.

Ortega, who was 21 at the time of his arrest, sat silently and expressionless next to his lawyer during Friday's hearing.

Federal prosecutors say Ortega purchased a gun, scope kit and more than 1,200 rounds of ammunition and, after months of shooting practice, drove east from Idaho in mid-October with the goal of killing the president. On the night of Nov. 11, prosecutors say, Ortega pulled up along Constitution Avenue across the Ellipse from the White House and, from more than 700 yards away, fired several rounds from a semi-automatic assault rifle out of the passenger-side window of his car.

Authorities say he drove away, crashed his car and then fled on foot. He was arrested five days later at a Pennsylvania hotel.

Days after the shooting, authorities located at least five bullet impact points on the south side of the White House on or above the second story ? an area where the First Family is known to live.

One bullet that was found had hit the White House window and was stopped by ballistic glass. The Secret Service didn't disclose the location of the second bullet, saying only that it "was found on the exterior of the White House."

Obama and the first lady had traveled without daughters Malia and Sasha on Friday to San Diego en route to Hawaii for a summit, prior to flying to Australia. The White House had no comment at the time on the shooting or on who may have been home then.

Prosecutors say they want to make sure Ortega's competence isn't an issue at trial.

They've focused on a series of statements he made in a video submitted to the Oprah Winfrey Network, including calling marijuana the answer to world peace and saying the government was using fluoride and aspartame to dumb down America. His friends and acquaintances have said Ortega called himself the "modern-day Jesus Christ," considered Obama to be the antichrist, claimed to hear a voice from God, and believed that the government was planning on tracking citizens by implanting global positioning system chips inside their bodies.

But Elizabeth Teegarden, a clinical psychologist who at the court's request interviewed Ortega for 50 minutes after his arrest, said Ortega denied being delusional or having hallucinations. She said there was no indication that he intended to harm himself or others, and no evidence of phobias or "bizarre thought content." When asked about statements indicating that he wanted to harm Obama, he either denied having made them or refused to talk about them about altogether.

Ortega's public defender, David Bos, said Ortega not only is able to help with his defense but also "understands highly technical principles."

The next court hearing is Monday, when prosecutors will argue that he should be ordered held without bond before his trial. They say he has no ties to the area and has previous convictions in Idaho for theft, possession of drug paraphernalia and resisting arrest.

Ortega faces two separate bench warrants for failing to appear in court in Idaho and Utah. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the current charges, prosecutors say.

"The violation charged in the complaint ? an attempted assassination of the President of the United States ? represents one of the most serious offenses in the federal criminal code," prosecutors wrote in court papers seeking his detention. "The tragedy that would have befallen the nation if Ortega-Hernandez had been successful is unspeakable."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_shots_fired_white_house

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The Russian Winter: Putin Goes Prophylactic with the Protests (Time.com)

Earlier this month, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he was casually watching television when a strange scene came on the news. There were lots of his fellow citizens in the streets, and many of them had something long and white pinned to their chests. "It's impolite to say it, but I'll be honest," Putin recalled on Thursday, during a live call-in show with the Russian public. "I decided it was propaganda against AIDS, that these were, pardon me, dangling contraceptives." In fact, what was hanging from people's clothing was a white ribbon, the symbol of what is being called the "snowy revolution" against Putin's rule. But in his version of events, he hadn't heard about it. "I didn't really get it," Putin said. In particular, he didn't get why people had unrolled the condom before pinning it to their chests. "But on the whole, my first thought was that this is good, that people are fighting for a healthy lifestyle." Then Putin looked around at the studio audience, expecting someone to laugh.

Nobody did. "Some people were outright offended, others thought it was in very bad taste," says Nikolai Zlobin, a political analyst who was sitting in the studio with Putin. In the Russian language, the word gandon (condom) is an especially crass and juvenile insult, most often heard among boys too young to know the intricacies of contraception. But as far as anyone could tell, this was Putin's message to the people watching at home -- in particular, to the thousands of citizens who have donned white ribbons in the past week as a sign of solidarity and protest. As many of them quickly pointed out on Twitter, Putin seemed to be telling the ranks of his opponents that they are all a bunch of dangling condoms. (PHOTOS: Vladimir Putin: Action Figure)

That became more and more clear as the nearly five-hour call-in show progressed. Putin was hit with one question after another about the parliamentary elections held on Dec. 4, which his political party is accused of rigging, and about the subsequent wave of demonstrations, which have been the largest ever against Putin's rule. At one point, about an hour into the show, the moderator actually apologized for the mass of questions on this one topic. "I'm not doing it on purpose," he said, "there are just a whole lot of them." To which Putin responded, "I'm sick of your elections already, but alright."

As also became clear through the course of his performance, Putin seems to have made two basic calculations in the wake of this month's unrest. He has figured that the best way for him to get re-elected for a third term as president next year is to pick a fight with Washington, which he did with no holds barred. (Senator John McCain got the worst of it. "Mr. McCain famously fought in Vietnam," Putin said. "I think he has enough civilian blood on his hands.") This is a predictable ploy in Russian politics, where Cold War prejudices still shape the views of many voters. According to the most recent survey by the Levada Center, 73% of respondents said last year that the U.S. is "an aggressor trying to take control of all the countries of the world." That is the constituency Putin targeted on Thursday when he said, "America does not need allies, it needs vassals." (PHOTOS: Protests and Counterprotests in Russia)

His other calculation had to do with the size of the demographic now turning against him -- the young, urban middle-class voters, who have packed demonstrations this month across the country. Judging by Putin's statements during the call-in show, they are not a large enough segment of society to deserve much more than his contempt, which he served up abundantly. At one point, he claimed that one of the slogans shouted from the stage during the Dec. 10 protest in Moscow -- the biggest so far, with up to 50,000 people in attendance -- was "Sheep, forward!" Not only was this patently false, but it amounted to another insult: The word sheep in Russian is roughly equivalent to jackass.

For Russia's scattered opposition groups, all of these slights felt like a blessing in disguise. "Now all we have to do to get people out on the streets is remind them of Putin's insults," said Ilya Ponomaryov, the parliamentary deputy who has been organizing the biggest demonstrations in Moscow. As Ponomaryov also pointed out, Putin did offer the opposition a few olive branches, although one had to search for them between the lines. For one thing, Putin said he would consider gradually allowing Russians to elect their own governors. The Kremlin has appointed them since 2004. He also said he would allow more political parties to participate in elections, and most surprisingly, he would consider freeing one of his enemies, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil mogul who was imprisoned in 2004 after challenging Putin in politics. "He can't admit these are concessions, because that would be like admitting defeat," said Ponomaryov. "But there is no other way to understand them." (See "Occupy the Kremlin: Russia's Election Lets Loose Public Rage.")

As for the main demand of the opposition -- the annulment of this month's allegedly rigged parliamentary elections -- Putin showed no sign of budging. "For me, it is clear that the attacks against these elections, which have already taken place, are secondary," Putin said. "The primary goal is the next election, the election of the President of the Russian Federation." Those will take place in less than three months, on March 4, when Putin will need to extend his mandate for another six years. His only goal between now and then will be to win those elections at any price, "to win them in the first round of voting with a clear sense of legitimacy and without any ballot-box stuffing," said Zlobin, the political analyst. To that end, he proposed during the call-in show to install web cameras in all of the polling stations. "Let the country watch!" he declared. But that alone won't save his approval ratings, which dropped to a historical low of 44% last weekend, according to the state-run pollster FOM. On Dec. 24, the opposition plans to hold another wave of rallies around the country, demanding a new parliamentary vote. While Putin addressed the nation on Thursday, another 3,000 people said on Facebook that they would attend the protest in Moscow. The total now, thanks partly to Putin's condom joke, is 23,000 people.

See "Crackdown or Negotiation? Russian Protests Pose a Dilemma for Putin."

Read about Russia's billionaire rescuer, Mikhail Prokhorov.

View this article on Time.com

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Sales jump for books written by Hitchens (AP)

NEW YORK ? Fans of Christopher Hitchens are doing more than mourning his death: They're buying his books.

"Arguably," an essay collection released in September, and "God is Not Great," his 2007 best-seller, were both in the top 100 on Amazon.com as of Friday afternoon. Three of his books, including the memoir "Hitch-22," were in the top 6 on Amazon's list of "Movers and Shakers," the fastest sellers.

Hitchens died Thursday at age 62 after an 18-month battle with cancer of the esophagus. He was known for his fiery and eloquent rhetoric, for his militant atheism and defiance of political category.

Publisher Twelve Books announced Friday that a memoir about his illness he had been working on, "Mortality," would come out next year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_en_ce/us_books_hitchens

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Gov. vows to prepare Calif. for climate change (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO ? The United Nations' top climate official joined California Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday to call for renewed efforts in the state to more quickly adapt to the risks that extreme weather and a rising sea pose to agriculture and the coastline.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, joined Brown, scientists, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and billionaire Sir Richard Branson at a conference at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

Brown organized the conference, he said, to urge people to "wake up" to extreme weather patterns caused by manmade global warming that he said are already causing damage, and to start thinking about what California ought to do to prepare for worse threats.

He said the state needs to gird itself against floods caused by the faster snowmelts that are already happening, putting pressure on aging levees and threatening the state's agriculture industry.

Warming climate also means longer and more intense wildfire seasons that will threaten homes and infrastructure such as power lines, and affect air quality.

"The greatest obstacle we face is a deep sense of complacency, a sense that things were this way yesterday and were OK and will continue," Brown said.

"It's difficult to see what's not completely obvious ... the buildup of greenhouse gases and climate change, we see it, it's pretty clear," he said.

Brown lumped together global-warming skeptics, including GOP lawmakers and the Cato Institute, calling them a well-funded "cult" that disagrees with the vast majority of published, peer-reviewed climate science.

"The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is the skepticism, the denial and the cult-like behavior of the political lemmings that would take us over the cliff," Brown said.

"The Cato Institute has speakers that say environmentalism is a greater threat to capitalism than Marxism itself," he said, evoking laugher from the audience.

Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at Cato, said the institute has never denied climate change but disputes temperature projections by the UN, saying the sensitivity of temperature to changes in carbon dioxide levels have been overestimated.

"Gov. Brown clearly has not read anything that the Cato Institute has published on global warming. Rather than deny it, we believe that indeed the surface temperature of the planet is about one degree Celsius warmer than it was 120 years ago and that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has contributed to this," Michaels said in a statement to The Associated Press.

"On the other hand, it is also clear that the rate of observed warming is falling beneath the midrange projections from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Pachauri said UN studies show that 95 percent of human deaths associated with extreme weather events happen in developing countries.

Yet he said the world's large economies, such as California, can make great strides toward helping reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, especially through the simple task of retrofitting existing buildings.

"If one could retrofit buildings to make them more efficient, and if new buildings could be built to current standards, it's really a win-win situation," Pachauri said. "Overall, the building sector has the largest potential for the reduction of emissions."

In a rare public appearance since leaving office, Schwarzenegger, a Republican, attributed the success California has had in passing its landmark climate change laws to bipartisan cooperation.

While in office, the former governor frequently promoted California's landmark 2006 global warming law, called AB32, which paved the way for the state's cap-and-trade system for controlling greenhouse gas emissions by the worst polluters.

He called the debate over bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra "narrow minded" in a world moving ever faster toward renewable energy.

"At the same time (as Solyndra) there were restaurants that failed, manufacturers that failed ... all kinds of businesses that failed and no one talks about that," Schwarzenegger said during a short interview.

"They did the best that they could and they made mistakes. That's what happens in business ? if you make mistakes you fail."

Not everybody watching Thursday's conference agreed that California was on the right path.

Dorothy Rothrock of the AB32 Implementation Group said the state has isolated itself by adopting stringent regulations that come at too high a cost.

"As we discuss the risks of climate change and California's future, it is appropriate to consider whether our greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies will have an impact on climate change," Rothrock said in a statement.

"California has failed to design a cap-and-trade market that will be adopted by other states and jurisdictions in the near future and our efforts alone will not make a difference in global emissions."

___

Associated Press Writer Juliet Williams contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_us/us_california_climate_change

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Sweet Calvin & Hobbes tribute recreates Calvin's deranged snowman torture [Video]

For many of us, the Calvin and Hobbes newspaper strip was a gateway drug to comics and fantasy pop culture in general. And there was nothing greater than all of Calvin's twisted snowman torture scenes. This video Christmas card plays homage to each of Calvin's snowpocalypses. Do you remember them all? More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/NrEVcfxNLc4/sweet-calvin--hobbes-tribute-recreates-calvins-deranged-snowman-torture

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#SciAmBlogs Thursday - X-men bacteria, feedback loops and livestream of brain surgery.

By Bora Zivkovic?| December 16, 2011 |??

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Check out the new Video of the Week!

- S.E. Gould ? Bacteria that could pass as X-men: part 1

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- Hogan Sherrow ? The origins of bullying

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- Alex Wild ? Visiting the Devil?s Garden

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- Bora Zivkovic ? The New Meanings of How and Why in Biology?

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- Lucas Brouwers ? Return of the Yeti Crab

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- Sarah Fecht ? Translating Calorie Counts into Exercise Equivalents Leads to Healthier Choices

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- Krystal D?Costa ? Editor?s Selections: Snakes, Dangerous Honey, And Friendly Rats

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About the Author: Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web. Follow on Twitter @boraz.

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