BJP leader fails to get US nod for Modi

WASHINGTON: Bureaucrat-turned-politician K J Alphons, who tried to convince US lawmakers to revoke visa restrictions on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, has failed to receive any firm commitment on the issue.

However, he exuded confidence that the US may change its stand soon.

A national executive member of the BJP, Alphons primarily came to the US to attend the Annual Prayer Breakfast with US President Barack Obama on February 7.

In addition to that he has been meeting Senators, Congressmen, officials and academicians, besides addressing speaking at the prestigious Harvard University.

"I have been telling that if they do not invite Modi now and revoke its policy of denying him a visa, it might be too late for the United States as he is headed for a much larger role in national politics," Alphons told .

He said Modi is the most business like politician he has even seen and that he saw a greater role for him in Indian politics.

Alphons said that he has not received any firm commitment from US lawmakers on the change in US policy but exuded confidence that this will happen soon.

Yesterday, US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia Robert Blake had said in New Delhi that the United States' policy on Modi remains unchanged.

"There is no question of changing or revising or softening. We may revise (visa to Modi) depending on the Indian justice system completing cases against him," he said.

US has earlier refused to give visa to Modi over the 2002 Gujarat riots.

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Florida Python Hunt Captures 68 Invasive Snakes

It's a wrap—the 2013 Python Challenge has nabbed 68 invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, organizers say. And experts are surprised so many of the elusive giants were caught.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states—most of them inexperienced hunters—registered for the chance to track down one of the animals, many of which descend from snakes that either escaped or were dumped into the wild.

Since being introduced, these Asian behemoths have flourished in Florida's swamps while also squeezing out local populations of the state's native mammals, especially in the Everglades. (See Everglades pictures.)

To highlight the python problem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its partners launched the 2013 Python Challenge, which encouraged registered participants to catch as many pythons as they could between January 12 and February 10 in state wildlife-management areas within the Everglades.

The commission gave cash prizes to those who harvested the most and longest pythons.

Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and scientific leader for the challenge, said before the hunt that he would consider a harvest of 70 animals a success—and 68 is close enough to say the event met its goals.

It's unknown just how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but catching 68 snakes is an "exceptional" number, added Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Snakes in the Grass

Finding 68 snakes is impressive, experts say, since it's so hard to find pythons. For one, it's been unusually warm lately in Florida, which means the reptiles—which normally sun themselves to regulate their body temperature—are staying in the brush, making them harder to detect, Krysko said.

On top of that, Burmese pythons are notoriously hard to locate, experts say.

The animals are so well camouflaged that people can stand right next to one and not notice it. "It's rare that you get to see them stretched out—most of the time they're blending in," said Cheryl Millett, a biologist at the Nature Conservancy, a Python Challenge partner.

What's more, the reptiles are ambush hunters, which means they spend much of their time lying in wait in dense vegetation, not moving, she said.

That's why Millett gave the hunters some tips, such as looking along the water's edge, where the snakes like to hang out, and also simply listening for "something big moving through the vegetation."

Even so, catching 68 snakes is "actually is a little more than I expected," said Millett.

No Walk in the Park

Ruben Ramirez, founder of the company Florida Python Hunters, won two prizes in the competition: First place for the most snakes captured—18—and second place for the largest python, which he said was close to 11 feet (3.4 meters) long. The biggest Burmese python caught in Florida, nabbed in 2012, measured 17.7 feet (5.4 meters).

"They're there, but they're not as easy to find as people think," said Ramirez. "You're not going to be stumbling over pythons in Miami." (Related blog post: "What It's Like to Be a Florida Python Hunter.")

All participants, some of whom had never hunted a python before, were trained to identify the difference between a Burmese python and Florida's native snakes, said Millett. No native snakes were accidentally killed, she said.

Hunters were also told to kill the snakes by either putting a bolt or a bullet through their heads, or decapitating them-all humane methods that result "in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain," according to the Python Challenge website.

Ramirez added that some of the first-time or amateur hunters had different expectations. "I think they were expecting to walk down a canal and see a 10-foot [3-meter], 15-foot [4.5-meter] Burmese python. They thought it'd be a walk in the park."

Stopping the Spread

Completely removing these snakes from the wild isn't easy, and some scientists see the Python Challenge as helping to achieve part of that goal. (Read an opposing view on the Python Challenge: "Opinion: Florida's Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt.")

"You're talking about 68 more animals removed from the population that shouldn't be there—that's 68 more mouths that aren't being fed," said the Florida museum's Krysko. (Read about giant Burmese python meals that went bust.)

"I support any kind of event or program that not only informs the general public about introduced species, but also gets the public involved in removing these nonnative animals that don't belong there."

The Nature Conservancy's Millett said the challenge had two positive outcomes: boosting knowledge for both science and the public.

People who didn't want to hunt or touch the snakes could still help, she said, by reporting sightings of exotic species to 888-IVE-GOT-1, through free IveGot1 apps, or www.ivegot1.org.

Millett runs a public-private Nature Conservancy partnership called Python Patrol that the Florida wildlife commission will take on in the fall. The program focuses not only on eradicating invasive pythons but on preventing the snake from moving to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Key West.

Necropsies on the captured snakes will reveal what pythons are eating, and location data from the hunters will help scientists figure out where the snakes are living—valuable data for researchers working to stop their spread.

"This is the most [number of] pythons that have been caught in this short of a period of time in such an extensive area," said the University of Florida's Mazzotti.

"It's an unprecedented sample, and we're going to get a lot of information out of that."

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Former Navy SEAL on Coming Out of Shadows

It used to be that Navy SEALs didn't just operate in the shadows. They trained in them too. Their whole story stayed shrouded in mystery. Their secret missions stayed secret to the rest of us.

But when they got Osama Bin Laden, snatched back an American cargo ship taken by pirates and rescued two air workers held hostage in Somalia, then suddenly, it seemed that SEALs were headline-makers.

Add to that some SEALs wrote books about SEAL adventures and even acted in a movie about the SEAL experience using live ammunition when they made "Act of Valor." They can't quite be called "the military unit that no one ever talked about" any longer.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

Rorke Denver played Lt. Commander Rorke in "Act of Valor," a film that used dozens of SEALs and went on to gross $80 million at the box office. Now, with the help of a writer, Denver is doing some pretty decent storytelling in a new book, "Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior."

He agrees that with SEALs like him telling their stories that these guys are out in the open like never before.

"We are, at this moment in our history, when the heat is on, the missions are getting press and coverage," Denver said.

Acts of Valor: Four Boyfriends Took Bullets to Save Girlfriends Watch Video

'Zero Dark Thirty' Screenwriter Responds to Film's Controversy Watch Video

When asked if it was a good thing, he said, "time will tell."

"We are in the public eye and I think that mythology is something that people are hugely, hugely interested in and they have an appetite for it," Denver said. "So for us with the movie and then also with 'Damn Few' I had an opportunity, I feel, to authentically represent and hopefully do it from an honorable point of view and accurately do so."

It's mostly his own story Denver tells in "Damn Few," how he joined the SEALs after college -- they didn't want him at first.

"I put in my first application and they said no, and I am glad it went that way. I think the community really values resiliency and toughness and focus and a 'never quit' attitude. For me, when they said no I thought, that ain't going to cut it."

Denver didn't quit. He reapplied and went on to survive the SEALs brutal Hell Week and training, joined the team and deployed all over the world, including the deadly Al Anbar province in Iraq when the war there was at its hottest. His family waited for him to return stateside.

"The families, I feel, are the ones who pay the price of our choices," Denver said. "But I didn't appreciate how much I was asking my family to bear and experience it with me. They really are every bit a part of our experience and frankly they are the ones who are back home and praying and believing that you are going to come home."

But even his family didn't quite know what Denver did at work every day.

"I never ask questions about what he does," said his wife, Tracy.

But "Act of Valor" was revealing in that way, and Denver's wife watched the film.

"For me it was incredibly eye-opening to actually see a submarine mission or running around in the jungle, jumping out of a plane, shooting his weapons," she said. "For me, it was like, oh, so this is what you are doing when you are away. I appreciated it actually."

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Rand Paul’s misleading budget cuts

(James Crisp/AP)

“Where would we cut spending? Let’s start with ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting ‘Death to America.’ In addition, the president could begin by stopping selling or giving F-16s and Abrams tanks to Islamic radicals in Egypt.”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in the tea party response to the State of the Union speech, Feb. 12, 2013

We once gave Four Pinocchios to the American people for failing to understand the basics of the federal budget. A range of surveys showed huge misimpressions about the federal budget, with a majority incorrectly believing that the federal government spends more on defense and foreign aid than it does on Medicare and Social Security.

But where do such strange notions come from? Politicians, of course. Let’s see how big a chunk of the budget Sen. Rand Paul would save with his proposal.

The Facts

Paul’s comment came just before he said that the looming automatic spending cuts known as the sequester would not reduce the budget deficit fast enough. He quoted “many pundits” as saying that “we need $4 trillion in cuts” over the next decade.

Paul’s spokeswoman did not return a query about which countries Paul had in mind when he referred to burning the flag and chanting “Death to America.”

But we searched news reports over the past year and came up with a list of five countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran. Many of those protests were in response to a video that was considered anti-Muslim, so they were not necessarily in opposition to U.S. policies.

Iran, of course, receives no foreign aid from the United States, so scratch it off the list. The demonstrations in Lebanon were organized by Hezbollah, which the United States regards as a terrorist organization. But Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government, so we will keep it on the list.

Here’s the proposed 2013 level of aid for each of the countries:

Afghanistan: $4.6 billion

Pakistan: $2.4 billion

Yemen: $76 million

Lebanon: $167 million

Total: $7.243 billion

(These numbers come from a State Department fact sheet and the nifty interactive Web site foreignassistance.gov.)

The F-16 jets and tanks for Egypt are part of $1.3 billion in annual military aid for Egypt after the Egypt-Israel peace treaty was signed 34 years ago. (Egypt receives about a quarter of all U.S. foreign military aid, while Israel gets 60 percent, according to the Congressional Research Service.)

The fighter jets cost about $14 million each, and 20 are supposed to be delivered this year. So that’s another $280 million. The 125 Abrams M1A1 tanks would be assembled at a facility in Egypt, at an estimated cost of $1.329 billion over several years, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

Of course, the big winners of such deals are often American workers. Lockheed Martin is building the F-16s. General Dynamics signed a $395 million contract to deliver necessary parts for the Egyptian tank plant. (Recipients of U.S. military assistance, with the exception of Israel, are required to use all of the money to buy U.S. weapons and technology.)

But let’s add $1.6 billion to the aid numbers — which is generous, because the tank deal is over several years. This would bring the total to nearly $9 billion. Over ten years, that adds up to $90 billion. (Traditional congressional baseline budgeting, which assumes inflation growth, would bring the 10-year figure even higher, but Paul in his speech suggested he rejects that approach.)

So Paul, in theory, has identified about 2 percent of the $4 trillion in cuts he says is necessary. But let’s note that more than 70 percent of this money goes to Afghanistan and Pakistan, two major foreign-policy priorities for the United States. So it probably is not very realistic to assume that this aid could be cut immediately without real-world consequences.

So, at best, Paul could claim to have found ½ of 1 percent of the needed savings.

There’s a simple reason why cutting foreign aid does not result in much savings, even when you take aim at some of the biggest recipients of foreign aid. That’s because foreign aid represents only about 1 percent of the total budget.

To be fair, Paul last year unveiled a budget plan that he said would balance the budget in five years, and it included many specific program reductions. In his response to the State of the Union, Paul said he would reintroduce the plan, but oddly he mentioned none of its proposals, such as eliminating four Cabinet agencies and cutting foreign aid from its current level of about $50 billion a year to just $5 billion.

The Pinocchio Test

Some readers might argue that Paul was simply making a rhetorical point. But even rhetorical points need to be rooted in reality.

Paul has an obligation to acknowledge that he was proposing at best symbolic cuts that would have virtually no impact on the budget, especially when he claimed that $4 trillions in reductions are necessary. Otherwise, in a high-profile speech, he simply perpetuated damaging myths that continue to mislead the American public.

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Asian markets fall, Japan weighed by strong yen

HONG KONG: Asian markets were mostly lower on Tuesday as Tokyo slipped following an uptick in the yen while Chinese shares fell on fears Beijing may act to rein in soaring property prices.

With US markets closed for the Presidents' Day public holiday, there were no drivers from New York.

Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.31 percent to end at 11,372.34 on profit-taking and as the yen rose after Japan's finance minister said the central bank's independence was safe for now.

Seoul added 0.20 percent to 1,985.83 and Sydney ended 18.5 points, or 0.37 percent, higher at 5,081.9.

Hong Kong lost 1.02 percent, or 238.03 points, to 23,143.91, while Shanghai shares closed down 1.60 percent, or 38.65 points, at 2,382.91 amid fears Beijing may tighten regulations in the sector to try to control home prices.

"Negative factors, including rebounding property prices and inflation pressures, are gaining momentum," Tebon Securities analyst Zhang Haidong told Dow Jones Newswires.

In Tokyo, Finance Minister Taro Aso moved to reassure on the independence of the Bank of Japan and also said the government had "no intention" of asking the central bank to buy foreign bonds as part of its monetary easing policy.

The yen rose after Aso's comments took the edge off Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's warning on Monday that he would consider changing the law to take control of the bank if it could not achieve a new two percent inflation target.

"We are not thinking about a law change at the moment," Aso said at a regular news conference on Tuesday.

Abe's remarks had added to selling pressure on the yen, which was already weakened by the Group of 20's decision not to label Tokyo a currency manipulator over its recent monetary easing policy.

In foreign exchange trade, the dollar slipped to 93.67 yen in Tokyo from 93.95 yen in London on Monday, while the euro was weaker at 125.02 yen against 125.43 yen.

The euro was also at $1.3348 against $1.3353.

"The pair (dollar against the yen) fell on Mr. Aso's remarks on foreign bond purchases," said a senior dealer at a major Japanese trust bank.

Oil prices turned lower, with New York's main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in March falling four cents to $95.53 a barrel in the afternoon.

Brent North Sea crude for delivery in April slipped 27 cents to $117.42.

Gold was at $1,612.50 at 1050 GMT, compared with $1,610.52 late Monday.

In other markets:

- Singapore closed 0.23 percent, or 7.63 points, higher at 3,295.77.

Property developer City Developments was down 0.61 percent to S$11.34 while United Overseas Bank gained 0.05 percent to S$19.35.

- Bangkok added 0.58 percent, or 8.78 points, to 1,532.07.

Airports of Thailand dropped 2.98 percent to 114.00 baht, while coal producer Banpu rose 1.88 percent to 380.00 baht.

- Kuala Lumpur lost 0.36 percent, or 5.86 points, to 1,615.07.

CIMB shed 0.3 percent to 6.98 ringgit, Kuala Lumpur Kepong eased 0.4 percent to 21.20 and Malayan Banking dipped 0.3 percent to 8.84 while YTL Corp gained 1.3 percent to 1.58 ringgit.

- Jakarta slipped 9.98 points, or 0.22 percent, to 4,602.06.

Palm oil producer Astra Agro Lestari fell 2.12 percent to 18,500 rupiah, food manufacturer Cahaya Kalbar lost 4.29 percent to 1,560 rupiah, and cigarette producer Gudang Garam rose 0.59 percent to 50,950 rupiah.

- Taipei added 0.22 percent, or 17.35 points, to 7,960.88.

HTC climbed 3.68 percent to Tw$282.0 while Hon Hai Precision was 1.57 percent higher at Tw$84.1.

- Wellington ended 0.71 percent, or 29.73 points, higher at 4,244.21.

Contact Energy rose 3.4 percent to NZ$5.25, Telecom added 1.1 percent to NZ$2.28 and Sky City was flat at NZ$4.02.

- Mumbai advanced 0.69 percent, or 134.64 points, to 19,635.72.

Tech Mahindra climbed 4.82 percent to 1,034.0 rupees while ailing Kingfisher Airlines rose 5.0 percent to 10.53 rupees on hopes of fresh funding.

- AFP/de

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India, UK to start negotiations on civil nuclear pact

NEW DELHI: Adding a new dimension to their strategic ties, India and the UK today decided to start negotiations on a civil nuclear pact to facilitate entry of British companies into emerging atomic power sector here.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the announcement after delegation-level talks with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron during which both sides reviewed entire gamut of bilateral relations.

"We have also decided to commence negotiations on a bilateral Civil Nuclear Agreement," Singh said.

India has already signed civil nuclear pacts with a number of countries including United States, France, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Mongolia and Canada.

The Prime Minister said he thanked Cameron for Britain's support for India's full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and other multilateral export control regimes.

Cameron said Britain was in favour of transferring high-technology to India.

India has planned to reach a nuclear power capacity of 63,000MW in 2032 against its current installed capacity of 4,780MW and a number of countries have been vying to get a share of India's lucrative atomic energy market.

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Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

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Russian Meteor: Close Encounter, Preventing Impacts

Feb 18, 2013 7:03pm

MOSCOW — As if Friday’s massive meteor explosion over central Russia weren’t enough, just hours later a large asteroid buzzed dangerously close to Earth.

And that evening, the California sky was lit up by a fireball, apparently entering Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s a barrage from space that has people asking: Are we ready for the big one?

Nearly 100 tons of space debris enters Earth’s atmosphere every day. Most of it burns up or falls harmlessly into the ocean, but experts still worry that eventually something big will come our way.

PHOTOS: Meteorite Crashes in Russia

Image credit: Chelyabinsk Region Branch of Russian Interior Ministry/HO/EPA

The prospect of Earth getting hit by a giant hunk of space rock is concerning enough that the United Nations is gathering top minds in Italy this week to discuss it.

Scientists say the idea of blowing up an asteroid — as Bruce Willis’ character did in the movie “Armageddon” — is pure Hollywood fantasy. Even if we could hit it, it’s unlikely to stop it.

Existing sky-watching programs run by NASA and others can only spot the biggest asteroids, not the small ones that sneak up on us.

But fear not, citizens of Earth. Scientists have a plan.

RELATED: Russian Meteor: Rushing to Cash in on the Blast

One group, the non-profit B612 Foundation, proposes sending a telescope, called Sentinel, into space to detect incoming objects decades before their orbits intersect ours. Then, unmanned spacecraft could fly to them and nudge them clear of Earth’s path.

The group is trying to raise $200 million to make it happen and hopes to launch the telescope by 2016.

Another project, proposed by the University of Hawaii, aims to give earthlings a heads-up when necessary, starting by 2015.

RELATED: Meteor Events: Rare, but Dangerous

It is called the Atlas program, and the plan is to deploy a string of telescopes that would search for even smaller objects in the sky, hoping to be able to give people at least a few day’s notice that could allow time for an evacuation.

Until then, better keep Bruce Willis on speed dial.

SHOWS: World News

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Congressional staffers often travel on tabs of foreign governments

About a dozen congressional staffers flew business class on a trip to China last summer and stayed at luxury hotels while touring the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and receiving a “briefing on ancient artifacts and dynasties” at the Shanghai Museum.

The all-expenses-paid visit came courtesy of China. The Chinese government hosted a day of meetings with officials in Beijing followed by eight days packed with outings to destinations often frequented by tourists along with a stop at a missile frigate and two others related to national security — the official theme of the trip.

More and more foreign governments are sponsoring such excursions for lawmakers and their staffs, though an overhaul of ethics rules adopted by Congress five years ago banned them from going on most other types of free trips. This overseas travel is often arranged by lobbyists for foreign governments, though lobbyists were barred from organizing other types of congressional trips out of concern that the trips could be used to buy favor.

The overseas travel is covered by an exemption Congress granted itself for trips deemed to be cultural exchanges.

A Washington Post examination of congressional disclosures revealed the extent of this congressional travel for the first time, finding that Hill staffers had reported taking 803 such trips in the six years ending in 2011. Lawmakers themselves are increasingly participating, disclosing 21 trips in 2011, more than double the figure in prior years.

The number of congressional trips could be far higher, because only lawmakers and senior congressional staff members are required to disclose the travel. A former senior aide on a congressional committee said that junior staffers were usually sent on the trips because they rarely had the chance to take official trips paid for by the U.S. government.

Some Hill employees have gone on repeated trips to the same country, and others chain them together, traveling directly from one expenses-paid visit to another.

China is by far the biggest sponsor of these trips, with senior staffers reporting more than 200 trips there over the six-year period, according to The Post’s review of 130,000 pages of disclosures collected by the Web site Legi­Storm. Taiwan accounts for an additional 100 trips.

But other regions of the world are also well represented.

On a trip to Jordan, for instance, congressional staffers stayed at the Four Seasons in Amman, where they received an audience with the king. The group also visited the Dead Sea and the famed mosaics in Madaba and spent two days at the ancient cities of Petra and Jerash, according to an itinerary for the trip.

In Switzerland, staffers took a helicopter ride through the Alps to Monte Bre, hiking up the mountain for coffee at a summit cafe overlooking a lake, according to another itinerary.

Organizers of the trips say they’re an important way for U.S. government staff members to learn about the world with no cost to taxpayers. The trips are supposed to include visits to historical and cultural sites, including those frequented by tourists, to foster international understanding.

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Sony slashes price on PlayStation Vita in Japan

TOKYO: Sony said on Monday it was slashing the price on its hand-held PlayStation Vita console in Japan by as much as one-third as the electronics giant and its rivals face stiff competition from online games.

The company said its 3G/Wi-Fi model would sell for 19,980 yen ($210) from later this month, down from the current 29,980 yen, with the price of the Wi-Fi model also reduced to 19,980 yen from the current 24,980 yen.

Sony warned earlier this month over slow sales of the Vita. On Monday it said the price cut was designed to "make the platform more accessible than ever and will appeal to wider audiences looking to buy the model best suitable for their own game play style".

Sony, which is aiming to return to profitability after four years in the red, is expected later this month to announce the successor to its popular PlayStation 3 home game console.

Xbox maker Microsoft is also expected to unveil a new versions of its console. The consoles have been evolving into home entertainment hubs for films, television, music, social networking and more.

However, the once-mighty gaming firms are struggling to retain market share as they fend off a challenge from cheap - or sometimes free - downloadable games for smartphones and tablets.

- AFP/de

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