Pictures: The Story Behind Sun Dogs, Penitent Ice, and More

Photograph by Art Wolfe, Getty Images

If you want the beauty of winter without having to brave the bone-chilling temperatures blasting much of the United States this week, snuggle into a soft blanket, grab a warm beverage, and curl up with some of these natural frozen wonders.

Nieve penitente, or penitent snow, are collections of spires that resemble robed monks—or penitents. They are flattened columns of snow wider at the base than at the tip and can range in height from 3 to 20 feet (1 to 6 meters). The picture above shows the phenomenon in central Chile. (See pictures of the patterns in snow and ice.)

Nieve penitente tend to form in shallow valleys where the snow is deep and the sun doesn't shine at too steep an angle, said Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who studies ice crystal formation.

As the snow melts, dirt gets mixed in with the runoff and collects in little pools here and there, he said. Since the dirt is darker in color than the surrounding snow, the dirty areas melt faster "and you end up digging these pits," explained Libbrecht.

"They tend to form at high altitude," he said. But other than that, no one really knows the exact conditions that are needed to form penitent snow.

"They're fairly strong," Libbrecht said. "People have found [the spires] difficult to hike through."

—Jane J. Lee

Published January 25, 2013

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WH, Senators to Begin Push on Immigration Reform

The White House and a bipartisan group of senators next week plan to begin their efforts to push for comprehensive immigration reform.

President Barack Obama will make an announcement on immigration during a Tuesday trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, the White House said on Friday. The Senate group is expected make their plans public around the same time, the Associated Press reported.

See Also: Where Do Labor Unions Stand on Immigration?

For Obama, immigration reform is a campaign promise that has remained unfulfilled from his first White House run in 2008. During his 2012 re-election campaign, the president vowed to renew his effort to overhaul the nation's immigration system. It has long been expected that Obama would roll out his plans shortly after his inauguration.

The president's trip to Las Vegas is designed "to redouble the administration's efforts to work with Congress to fix the broken immigration system this year," the White House said.

Ever since November's election, in which Latino voters turned out in record numbers, Republicans and Democrats have expressed a desire to work on immigration reform. Obama has long supported a bill that would make many of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants without criminal records eligible to apply for an earned pathway to citizenship, which includes paying fines and learning English.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

But the debate over a pathway to citizenship is expected to be contentious. Other flashpoints in an immigration reform push could include a guest-worker program, workplace enforcement efforts, border security, and immigration backlogs.

In a statement, the White House said that "any legislation must include a path to earned citizenship."

Ahead of his immigration push next week, Obama met today with a group of lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), including chairman Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) , Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), and CHC Immigration Task Force Chair Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), the latter's office said. CHC members are expected to play a pivotal role in the debate.

"The president is the quarterback and he will direct the team, call the play, and be pivotal if we succeed. I am very optimistic based on conversations with Republicans in the House and Senate that we will do more than just talk about the immigration issue this year," Gutierrez said in a statement following the CHC meeting with Obama. "The president putting his full weight and attention behind getting a bill signed into law is tremendously helpful. We need the president and the American people all putting pressure on the Congress to act because nothing happens in the Capitol without people pushing from the outside."

A bipartisan group of eight senators, which includes Menendez, has also begun talks on drafting an immigration bill and will play an integral part in the process of passing a bill through Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been participating in talks with others senators, has also unveiled his own outline for an immigration proposal.

The group of senators have reportedly eyed Friday as the date when they'll unveil their separate proposal, according to the Washington Post.

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Two Cambodians die from bird flu: WHO

PHNOM PENH: Two Cambodians have died from bird flu contracted while preparing infected chicken, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Tests on the victims, a 15-year-old girl and a 35-year-old man who died earlier this week, confirmed they had contracted the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, the WHO said in a joint statement with the Cambodian health ministry.

An eight-month-old boy admitted to hospital in Phnom Penh on January 9 was also infected with H5N1 but later recovered, the statement said.

There was evidence of infections among poultry in the villages of the two who died and the pair "prepared sick chicken for food prior to becoming sick", the statement said.

Cambodia has recorded 24 cases of H5N1 since 2003 with all but three of the victims dying.

The virus has killed 362 people worldwide since a major outbreak in 2003, according to WHO statistics.

It typically spreads from birds to humans through direct contact, but experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, with the potential to trigger a pandemic.

-AFP/ac

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Caste, conversion and contestation at Jaipur literature festival

JAIPUR: Coming down heavily on the caste structure in Hindu religion, author KanchaIlaiah today advocated adopting the Buddha's ideology as a way to achieve secularism in the country, generating a lively debate among the fellow panelists at the Jaipur literature festival here.

Religious conversion, caste structure within religions and position of dalits after conversion were the main talking points of the session titled "God as a Political Philospoher: Dalit Perspectives on Buddhism," where Ilaiah engaged with author Ajay Navaria and poet Nirupama Dutt.

"A dalit who converts to Christianity can become a pastor or be an equal in the mosque or can touch the Guru Granth Sahib. But he can do none of this in Hinduism. He cannot become anything," Ilaiah said.

"No dalit can become a priest in a Hindu temple," said the author of " Why I am not a Hindu" who also pointed out that Buddhism has always advocated the ideas of equality, abolition of caste structure, notion of justice and women's rights.

However, fellow author and panelist Ajay Navaria, whose collection of stories "Unclaimed Terrain" translated into English has recently been published, disagreed over the issue of the benefits accruing to dalits from conversion and the adoption of Buddhism as the main religion.

"Conversion does not solve any problem. In fact, there is a category in administration of a 'New Buddhist' where a person's original caste is mentioned in brackets even after adopting another religion," he argued, questioning then the purpose of going through conversion.

"I am not here to advocate Hinduism. But the dalits can go into any religion but their identity is that of an untouchable. They are not liberated even there," Navaria said, adding "Religion cannot solve the problem."

Furthering his argument, poet Nirupama Dutt highlighted the problem of caste structures within religions. Dutt, who hails from Punjab, drew attention to the phenomenon of Gurudwaras being based on caste.

"Today one can find separate Gurudwaras for Sikh Jats, Kabir panthis and the tanners," she said.

"While Sikhism does not recognize caste, just like in the case of Islam, the situation of the ground is very different from the one visualised in scriptures," added Dutt.

Drawing attention to the ground realities in countries where religion forms the basis of law, Navaria said the country would not become secular and discrimination-free just by adopting Buddhism. "I don't like religion based systems because they end liberty...no religion is detached from caste," he added.

Even as the panelists disagreed on various issues, they did agree on one thing - that the aim should be that of a caste-free society. "I don't agree that caste cannot be abolished or that equality cannot come to India," Ilaiah said.

And while Navaria disagreed with him on how to achieve this goal, he did outline his vision for India. "What I want is neither a Ram Rajya or a Buddha Rajya, but in fact a Lok Rajya."

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Deformed Dolphin Accepted Into New Family

In 2011, behavioral ecologists Alexander Wilson and Jens Krause of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany were surprised to discover that a group of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)—animals not usually known for forging bonds with other species—had taken in an adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

The researchers observed the group in the ocean surrounding the Azores (map)—about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal—for eight days as the dolphin traveled, foraged, and played with both the adult whales and their calves. When the dolphin rubbed its body against the whales, they would sometimes return the gesture.

Among terrestrial animals, cross-species interactions are not uncommon. These mostly temporary alliances are forged for foraging benefits and protection against predators, said Wilson.

They could also be satisfying a desire for the company of other animals, added marine biologist John Francis, vice president for research, conservation, and exploration at the National Geographic Society (the Society owns National Geographic News).

Photographs of dogs nursing tiger cubs, stories of a signing gorilla adopting a pet cat, and videos of a leopard caring for a baby baboon have long circulated the Web and caught national attention.

A Rare Alliance

And although dolphins are known for being sociable animals, Wilson called the alliance between sperm whale and bottlenose dolphin rare, as it has never, to his knowledge, been witnessed before.

This association may have started with something called bow riding, a common behavior among dolphins during which they ride the pressure waves generated by the bow of a ship or, in this case, whales, suggested Francis.

"Hanging around slower creatures to catch a ride might have been the first advantage [of such behavior]," he said, adding that this may have also started out as simply a playful encounter.

Wilson suggested that the dolphin's peculiar spinal shape made it more likely to initiate an interaction with the large and slow-moving whales. "Perhaps it could not keep up with or was picked on by other members of its dolphin group," he said in an email.

Default

But the "million-dollar question," as Wilson puts it, is why the whales accepted the lone dolphin. Among several theories presented in an upcoming paper in Aquatic Mammals describing the scientists' observations, they propose that the dolphin may have been regarded as nonthreatening and that it was accepted by default because of the way adult sperm whales "babysit" their calves.

Sperm whales alternate their dives between group members, always leaving one adult near the surface to watch the juveniles. "What is likely is that the presence of the calves—which cannot dive very deep or for very long—allowed the dolphin to maintain contact with the group," Wilson said.

Wilson doesn't believe the dolphin approached the sperm whales for help in protecting itself from predators, since there aren't many dolphin predators in the waters surrounding the Azores.

But Francis was not so quick to discount the idea. "I don't buy that there is no predator in the lifelong experience of the whales and dolphins frequenting the Azores," he said.

He suggested that it could be just as possible that the sperm whales accepted the dolphin for added protection against their own predators, like the killer whale (Orcinus orca), while traveling. "They see killer whales off the Azores, and while they may not be around regularly, it does not take a lot of encounters to make [other] whales defensive," he said.

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It's Official: Women Will Serve in Combat

Women will soon be able to serve in combat, as things officially changed with the stroke of a pen today at the Pentagon.

At a joint news conference, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Charman Gen. Martin Dempsey signed a memorandum rolling back a 1994 directive prohibiting women from doing so.

"They serve, they're wounded, and they die right next to each other," Panetta said of women and men in the military. "The time has come to recognize that reality.

"If they're willing to put their lives on the line, then we need to recognize that they deserve a chance," Panetta said, noting that he wants his own granddaughters and grandsons to have the same opportunities in their lives and careers.

The change won't be immediate, however. While Panetta announced that thousands of new positions will now be open to women, he has asked the military branches to submit plans by May on how to integrate women into combat operations. He set a January 2016 deadline for branches to implement the changes, giving military services time to seek waivers for certain jobs.

Both Panetta and Dempsey said they believe the move will strengthen the U.S. military force.

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"Ultimately, we are acting to strengthen the armed forces," Dempsey said. "We will extend opportunities to women in a way that maintains readiness, morale and unit cohesion."

Women have already served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, as ABC News' Martha Raddatz and Elizabeth Gorman reported in 2009: Prohibited from serving in roles "whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground," women in support roles, nonetheless, served in support roles on the frontlines, where they have fought, been wounded and died.

Women have also flown combat missions since 1993 and have served on submarines since 2010.

Panetta noted that 152 women have died serving in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dempsey said he realized a change was inevitable when he noticed two female turret gunners protecting a senior military officer.

"It's clear to all of us that women are contributing in unprecedented ways to the military's mission of defending the nation," Panetta said. "Women represent 15 percent of the force of over 200,000 [and] are serving in a growing number of critical roles on and off the battlefield.

"I've gone to Bethesda to visit wounded warriors, and I've gone to Arlington to bury our dead. There's no distincton."

Panetta and Dempsey said President Obama supported the move, while warning them to maintain military readiness as they considered the change.

Obama hailed the move in a written statement

"Today, by moving to open more military positions -- including ground combat units -- to women, our armed forces have taken another historic step toward harnessing the talents and skills of all our citizens," he said.

"This milestone reflects the courageous and patriotic service of women through more than two centuries of American history and the indispensable role of women in today's military," Obama said.

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OPM plans to shake up charity program raise concerns about reduced donations

The Office of Personnel Management wants to shake up the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), the charitable-giving system for federal employees, but in the process the agency could risk losing donors and reducing contributions.

One rule under review by the Obama administration would “eliminate the use of cash, check and money order contributions. Instead, all donations will be required to be made through electronic means.”

This could “streamline the operations,” as proposed rules from OPM suggest, but whether it also would “increase the effectiveness of the program to ensure its continued growth and success” is questionable.

The reason: In 2011, the last year for which OPM data are available, just 22 percent of the money pledged was donated electronically. Moreover, 88.4 percent of the donors did not make electronic contributions.

So, a move to electronic-only donations would seem to put CFC at risk of losing a majority of its donors. The proposal worries executives of some charitable organizations, even as they welcome other sections of the plan.

Federal employees contribute through the CFC to various charities. Donations exceeded $272 million in 2011. That’s a lot of money, but it represents a drop of almost $10 million from 2009, the high point.

An OPM spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on rules under review. In the 53-page document that contains the proposed regulations, however, OPM Director John Berry wrote:

“These proposed changes will introduce efficiencies and cost savings into the CFC by leveraging technology that was not widely available just a few years ago. They will make the CFC more efficient, more transparent, more accountable and more relevant to Federal, Postal and military service personnel who want to make the biggest impact with their donations.”

Scott Jackson, chief executive of Global Impact, said electronic giving can save $14 a pledge, by reducing processing costs.

“That’s very, very powerful,” he added. How the change to electronic-only contributions might effect donations presents “important issues to work through,” he said. Global Impact administers the overseas campaign of the CFC.

Those issues leave Stephen M. Delfin “highly concerned.” He is president and chief executive of America’s Charities, a group that works with CFC organizations. Delfin said he is worried that the rules, previously reported by the Federal Times, could result in lower donations.

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Technology is not a panacea.”

Marshall Strauss, chief executive of the Workplace Giving Alliance, a consortium of CFC federations, agreed. Although he thinks “electronic donations are an excellent addition to the campaign,” he said he worries that relying solely on that “may dramatically reduce the number of people giving and the overall receipts of the campaign. Many thousands of people prefer to give by check or even cash, and we would hope the government would preserve these options.”

In addition to electronic-only giving, Delfin and others have concerns about a proposal to eliminate 184 local CFC committees in favor of fewer and larger regional panels.

This would require “a reduced number of Federal personnel for oversight purposes,” according to the plan.

But it also would diminish the sense of community that charitable leaders say is crucial in motivating individuals to give.

Dumping the local committees will shrink the “person-to-person feeling of the campaign, which is very, very important,” said Kalman Stein, president and CEO of EarthShare, which was recently selected to administer the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area.

Stein said that he doesn’t think OPM understands “how critical that local component is” and that he is “very concerned the campaign will decline precipitously” if the Local Federal Coordinating Committees are eliminated.

“Our history shows that more consolidation leads to less donations,” said Stein, who, along with Strauss, was a member of the CFC-50 Commission. The commission, formed in 2011 to mark CFC’s 50th anniversary, issued a report last year. A number of its recommendations were incorporated into OPM’s proposals.

But Stein said consolidating the local committees into regional ones would go “way beyond the commission’s recommendations.”

The commission said its 24 recommendations were designed to further encourage a “history of giving” by federal employees, who have “set the standard for workplace giving to charitable organizations.”

But the recent decrease in donations “is a cause for concern,” the report said.

Now there is concern that parts of the OPM plan could make the situation worse.

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

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Eurozone PMIs for private business hit 10-month high

BRUSSELS: Private business activity across the eurozone hit a 10-month high level in January, according to a leading growth indicator released on Thursday.

The Purchasing Managers' Index published by London-based Markit researchers, a survey of thousands of eurozone companies, logged 48.2 points in compared to 47.2 points the previous month.

January marked a third rise running for the index, even though it remains below the boom-and-bust 50-point line indicating economic growth or contraction -- the 16th shrinkage in 17 months.

Manufacturing production fell for the 11th month in a row, with both the manufacturing and services sectors each registering their smallest retreat in 10 months.

The key eurozone economy of Germany powered back to growth, but No. 2 economy France is still in contraction.

"While the surveys add to the mounting evidence that eurozone economic activity turned the corner in late-2012, they indicate that it is not out of the woods yet," said London-based IHS Global Insight analyst Howard Archer, who highlighted worries about France.

- AFP/xq

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Karnataka BJP rebels to petition court to secure speaker's return

BANGALORE: Rebels in Karnataka's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said they would petition the high court to secure the speaker's presence in Bangalore.

"We will wait for two more days. If the speaker does not return to Bangalore, we plan to file a habeas corpus petition in the high court to secure his presence," rebel BJP legislator Nehru Olekar told reporters, taking the battle with the ruling party to another low.

Olekar is one of the 13 BJP rebels whose plan to quit the assembly on Wednesday did not come through as speaker KG Bopaiah was not in his office and neither his office nor any ruling party leader could say where he was.

The rebels include ministers CM Udasi and Shobha Karandlaje, who quit the Jagadish Shettar ministry on Wednesday. They asserted that they had informed Bopaiah on Tuesday that they would meet him on Wednesday to submit their resignation letters.

"The speaker is either absconding or has been kidnapped at the behest of the chief minister or deputy chief ministers," he alleged. Karnataka has two deputy chief ministers.

"We fear that he might have been kidnapped as there is no information about his whereabouts even after wide publicity in the media about his absence," Olekar claimed.

The rebels waited in vain in Bopaiah's chamber for over an hour on Wednesday with their resignation letters.

Later, they met governor HR Bhardwaj and sought his intervention to make the speaker immediately accept their resignations.

Udasi, who was public works minister, told reporters that copies of resignation letters have been emailed to the speaker.

"We have also emailed the speaker a letter signed by all 13 of us seeking appointment with him," he said.

Udasi said the fax machine at the speaker's office has been shut down. "We tried to fax a letter to the speaker but got the message that the machine has been shut down," he added.

Udasi said it was for the first time in Karnataka's history that no one seemed to know the speaker's whereabouts.

Deputy chief minister and home minister R Ashoka dismissed as "false" speculation that he had late on Tuesday "escorted" the speaker to the Bangalore airport.

"It is baseless," he told reporters.

Karandlaje, who was energy minister and quit the ministry along with Udasi on Wednesday, had claimed that "our information is that a cabinet minister had escorted the speaker to the airport".

The 13 legislators are supporters of former BJP chief minister BS Yeddyurappa who has quit the party and the assembly to head the Karnataka Janata Party. These legislators want to join the party to fight the assembly elections due in May.

On Thursday too, the speaker's whereabouts continued to be a mystery with speculation ranging from his being in Nepal to his staying near his hometown in Madikeri, the main town of Kodagu district, about 250 km from Bangalore.

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Deformed Dolphin Accepted Into New Family

In 2011, behavioral ecologists Alexander Wilson and Jens Krause of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Germany were surprised to discover that a group of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus)—animals not usually known for forging bonds with other species—had taken in an adult bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus).

The researchers observed the group in the ocean surrounding the Azores (map)—about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal—for eight days as the dolphin traveled, foraged, and played with both the adult whales and their calves. When the dolphin rubbed its body against the whales, they would sometimes return the gesture.

Among terrestrial animals, cross-species interactions are not uncommon. These mostly temporary alliances are forged for foraging benefits and protection against predators, said Wilson.

They could also be satisfying a desire for the company of other animals, added marine biologist John Francis, vice president for research, conservation, and exploration at the National Geographic Society (the Society owns National Geographic news).

Photographs of dogs nursing tiger cubs, stories of a signing gorilla adopting a pet cat, and videos of a leopard caring for a baby baboon have long circulated the web and caught national attention.

A Rare Alliance

And although dolphins are known for being sociable animals, Wilson called the alliance between sperm whale and bottlenose dolphin rare, as it has never, to his knowledge, been witnessed before.

This association may have started with something called bow riding, a common behavior among dolphins during which they ride the pressure waves generated by the bow of a ship or, in this case, whales, suggested Francis.

"Hanging around slower creatures to catch a ride might have been the first advantage [of such behavior]," he said, adding that this may have also started out as simply a playful encounter.

Wilson suggested that the dolphin's peculiar spinal shape made it more likely to initiate an interaction with the large and slow-moving whales. "Perhaps it could not keep up with or was picked on by other members of its dolphin group," he said in an email.

Default

But the "million-dollar question," as Wilson puts it, is why the whales accepted the lone dolphin. Among several theories presented in an upcoming paper in Aquatic Mammals describing the scientists' observations, they propose that the dolphin may have been regarded as nonthreatening and that it was accepted by default because of the way adult sperm whales "babysit" their calves.

Sperm whales alternate their dives between group members, always leaving one adult near the surface to watch the juveniles. "What is likely is that the presence of the calves—which cannot dive very deep or for very long—allowed the dolphin to maintain contact with the group," Wilson said.

Wilson doesn't believe the dolphin approached the sperm whales for help in protecting itself from predators, since there aren't many dolphin predators in the waters surrounding the Azores.

But Francis was not so quick to discount the idea. "I don't buy that there is no predator in the lifelong experience of the whales and dolphins frequenting the Azores," he said.

He suggested that it could be just as possible that the sperm whales accepted the dolphin for added protection against their own predators, like the killer whale (Orcinus orca), while traveling. "They see killer whales off the Azores, and while they may not be around regularly, it does not take a lot of encounters to make [other] whales defensive," he said.

Read More..