Syrians protest against Assad after Russia U.N. move (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) ? Hundreds of thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Friday to protest against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said, a day after Syria's big power ally Russia sharpened its criticism of Damascus in a draft United Nations resolution.

Activists and residents said Syrian forces shot dead four people in a continuing crackdown that the United Nations says has killed 5,000 people in the last nine months and has provoked Western and Arab League sanctions to isolate Damascus.

Friday's killings took place, activists said, after midday prayers in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour and in Homs, hotbed of opposition to four decades of repressive Assad family rule.

In Homs 200,000 people joined a protest march, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, and footage broadcast by Al Jazeera television showed mock gallows where five effigies were hanged, including one of Assad.

It was not possible to verify the number of protesters as Syria has barred most independent journalists, but if true it would be one the biggest turnouts for several weeks.

Russia on Thursday presented a new, beefed-up draft resolution on the violence to the U.N. Security Council, offering a chance for the 15-nation panel to overcome deadlock and deliver its first statement of purpose on Assad's crackdown.

The council has been split between Western countries harshly critical of Syria on the one hand, and Russia, China and non-aligned countries on the other that have refused to pin the main blame on Assad for the violence.

Western diplomats believe a firm Security Council resolution backed by Russia, Syria's longstanding ally and arms supplier, could make a real difference to efforts to tackle the crisis.

Assad has denied that Syrian forces have been given orders to kill demonstrators, blaming armed groups for the violence. He said 1,100 soldiers and police have been killed since the uprising erupted in March, inspired by other unrest in the Arab world that has toppled three autocratic leaders this year.

An armed insurgency has begun to eclipse civilian protests, raising fears Syria could descend into civil war. On Thursday army deserters killed 27 soldiers and security personnel in the southern province of Deraa, the Observatory said.

It is the most serious challenge to the 11-year rule of Assad, 46, whose family is from the minority Alawite sect that has dominated majority Sunni Muslim Syria since 1970.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions and called on Assad to step down. Neighboring Turkey has taken similar steps and even the Arab League has declared sanctions against Syria, although it has several times extended a deadline for Syria to approve a formula for ending the crisis.

In the latest sign of the heavy economic price Syria is paying for the bloodshed, Turkey said on Friday that Damascus would lose more than $100 million a year in transport revenues as Ankara bypasses the turbulent country by opening alternative export routes to the Middle East and Gulf.

The Turkish Economy Ministry said it had finalized talks to start exporting goods to Egypt via sea in January and from there overland to Gulf countries to avoid Syria.

"ARAB LEAGUE IS KILLING US"

Arab governments called off a foreign ministers' meeting due to discuss a response on Saturday to Assad's iron fist policy towards unrest, Egypt's state news agency MENA reported.

A source at Arab League headquarters in Cairo did not give a reason for the cancellation. A lower-level meeting of its ministerial committee on Syria will go ahead in Qatar on Saturday, the source said. The committee includes the foreign ministers of Egypt, Sudan, Oman, Qatar and Algeria.

Friday's protests were held under the slogan of "The Arab League is Killing us," reflecting demonstrators' frustration at what they see as the organization's ponderous response.

At the U.N. Security Council in October, Russia and China vetoed a West European draft resolution that threatened sanctions. Russia has circulated its own draft twice but Western nations said they had made unacceptable attempts to assign blame equally to government and opposition for the violence.

The draft floated unexpectedly by Russia on Thursday expands and toughens Moscow's previous text, adding a new reference to "disproportionate use of force by Syrian authorities."

Obtained by Reuters, the draft also "urges the Syrian government to put an end to suppression of those exercising their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association."

Reports by Human Rights Watch and a U.N.-backed independent investigation have assessed that Syrian government forces were given "shoot to kill" orders when confronting demonstrators.

STRONGER TEXT

Russia's U.N. Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters that the latest draft resolution "considerably strengthens all aspects of the previous text" and that "clearly the Syrian authorities are singled out in a number of instances."

He said Russia did not believe both sides in Syria were equally responsible for violence, but acknowledged the text called on all parties to halt violence and contained no threat of sanctions, which he said Moscow continued to oppose.

Western officials welcomed the Russian move, but French Ambassador Gerard Araud said it needed "a lot of amendments."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she could not support some parts of the draft but "hopefully we can work with the Russians, who for the first time at least are recognizing that this is a matter that needs to go to the Security Council."

In London, British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said Russia might hold the key to tightening sanctions on Syria, but Britain would also look at ways of imposing new measures on Damascus through the European Union.

"We will continue to look for new ways in energy, in transport, as well as financial restrictions, to put pressure on the Syrian regime," Burt told Reuters in a telephone interview.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Ece Toksabay in Ankara and Tom Pfeiffer in Cairo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/un/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/wl_nm/us_syria

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Britney Spears & Jason Trawick's Road to "I Do"

The couple announced their engagement on Dec. 15. Look back at how their romance has blossomed

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/britney-spears-jason-trawick-engagement-photos/1-b-411712?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Abritney-spears-jason-trawick-engagement-photos-411712

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9 states win early education grant

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Nine states won a collective $500 million Friday from the federal government to help make pre-K and other early learning programs more accessible and better capable of narrowing the achievement gap between those who start kindergarten without any formal schooling and those who do.

California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and Washington state were announced as winners at the White House.

"Nothing is more important than getting our babies off to a good start," said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The money to aid the nation's youngest learners is part of the administration's cornerstone education initiative ? the "Race to the Top" grant competition. It has states competing for federal dollars to create programs intended to make schools more effective in exchange for education initiatives it favors. Last year, it handed out $4 billion in similar grants focused on K-12 education.

The goal of this competition is to get more children from birth to age 5 ready for kindergarten. Thirty-five states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico applied for the chance to win between about $50 million to $100 million apiece in prize money.

The winnings are to help build statewide systems that affect all early learning programs, including child care, Head Start centers and public or private preschools.

Billions are spent annually in America on early education programs, but the quality and availability of those programs varies greatly. Roughly half of all 3-year-olds and about a quarter of 4-year-olds do not attend preschool, said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

Kids who attend quality early education programs have been shown to do better in school, be less likely to spend time in prison later and to make more money as adults. But children from low-income families who start kindergarten without any schooling are estimated to start school 18 months behind their peers, a gap that is extremely difficult to overcome.

Sharon Lynn Kagan, co-director of the National Center for Children and Families at Columbia University, said during a conference call with reporters that the contest has helped jumpstart what she describes as one of the most exciting times in early education in 40 years.

It's like "an alarm has gone off and finally everyone is waking up to what the research is showing for a very, very long time about the importance of intervening with very high quality programs for all young children," she said.

To win, states were asked to demonstrate a commitment to making such programs more accessible, coordinated and more effective. Providing professional development for teachers and creating ways to assess the education level of kids entering kindergarten were among the areas states were asked to focus on in their applications.

The top scoring state in the competition was North Carolina, Duncan said. The state's plan included the creation of a "transformation zone" in the distressed northeastern corner of the state where specialty services would be available.

Other states took similar but different approaches in their comprehensive proposals. Massachusetts, for example, said it will use the funding to help conduct better and earlier screenings of children's learning needs. And, Rhode Island plans to connect health care and early learning providers.

Duncan was joined at the White House by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose agency helped run the competition. HHS oversees the federal Head Start program, which provides early education to nearly 1 million low-income children.

Sebelius said the goal is to provide high-profile encouragement to programs that improve teaching skills, encourage healthy eating and exercise and get parents ? especially in low-income neighborhoods ? more directly involved.

"By pushing everyone ... to raise their game, we intend to foster innovation in early education programs around the country," Sibelius said.

Last month, Obama announced new rules that require lower-performing Head Start programs to compete for funding. The Education Department also has proposed creating a new office to oversee the grants and better coordinate early learning programs.

_____

Associated Press writer Alex Dominguez in Baltimore contributed to this report.

_____

Online: Education Department: http://www.ed.gov/

Department of Health and Human Services: http://www.hhs.gov/

_____

Kimberly Hefling can be followed at http://twitter.com/khefling

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-12-16-Race%20to%20Top-Early%20Learning/id-1a29269e58eb4d348f666ad84c50f2f5

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Ruling party nominates Kremlin chief as Duma speaker (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russia's ruling United Russia party, whose majority was reduced in this month's parliamentary election, on Saturday backed Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin to become speaker of the State Duma (lower house), the party said.

Naryshkin, 57, whose nomination had been widely expected, will take over from Boris Gryzlov, who quit in a move apparently aimed at cooling public anger over an election opponents say was rigged in United Russia's favor.

The speaker's post is seen as a nominal one in the top-down "vertical of power" designed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is expected to return to the Kremlin after a presidential election next March 4.

Naryshkin, like Putin a native of St Petersburg, worked in the 1980s in the economic attache's department of the Soviet embassy in Belgium. He speaks fluent English and French.

Since 2008 he has headed the Kremlin administration, where he was viewed as a trusted Putin aide capable of "minding" the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin protege who is stepping down to switch roles and become prime minister.

Naryshkin's deputy, Vladislav Surkov, a key ideologist of Russia's political system, has taken over as the Kremlin's acting chief of staff.

United Russia won the December 4 parliamentary election, but its share of the official vote slipped to barely 50 percent from 64 percent in 2007, reducing its majority to just 13 seats.

The election results have been challenged by opposition parties that won entry to parliament and the extra-parliamentary opposition, who allege that United Russia's share of the vote was inflated by ballot stuffing and other electoral fraud.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Russian cities last week to demand a rerun of the elections - the largest political protests during Putin's 12-year-old rule.

Parliament is due to reconvene on December 21 and hold a vote to elect the speaker. Medvedev will address lawmakers and other dignitaries in an annual address the following day.

A further round of election protests is planned for next Saturday, December 24, with the authorities giving permission for 50,000 to gather in Moscow.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Editing by Douglas Busvine and Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/wl_nm/us_russia_speaker

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Rapper Slim Dunkin slain in Atlanta music studio

ATLANTA (AP) ? Atlanta police say the rapper Slim Dunkin was gunned down Friday evening in a city music studio as he was preparing to record a video.

Police Maj. Keith Meadows said the rapper, whose real name is Mario Hamilton, was fatally shot in the chest after getting into an argument with another individual.

He was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Meadows told The Associated Press late Friday that police have not been able to identify the shooter. He said investigators have been interviewing those who were inside the studio. He said as many as 20 people were inside the small office-type building at the time of the shooting, which took place around 5:30 p.m., but they were in different places.

Police have not recovered the handgun that was used. Investigators remained at the scene late Friday evening.

"Right now we're just trying to....identify who may have seen what, really just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together," Meadows said. "It seems everybody witnessed something very different. We're just trying to go back and make sense of everything."

Slim Dunkin had appeared on a number of songs with the rapper Waka Flocka Flame. The website Mtv.com reported that the Brick Squad Monopoly rapper was on a solo track and had recently released a 20-track mix tape that featured Gucci Mane, Roscoe Dash and Pastor Troy.

"It appears the victim was scheduled to do a photo shoot," Meadows said of Friday's events. "Before the video shoot took place, it appears the victim and suspect got involved in a verbal altercation. We don't know what that altercation was about."

"The suspect produced a weapon, discharged that handgun one time, striking the victim in the chest," Meadows said.

Meadows said the victim was in his early 20s and resided in the Atlanta area.

Many fans were posting messages late Friday night on a Facebook page for the rapper.

The website AllHipHop.com last February described Slim Dunkin, a Detroit native, as an up-and-coming talent with "a unique lyrical ability and style all his own."

In an interview with the website, he described himself as someone "trying to provide for his family by making something out of nothing just trying to beat the odds."

"I don't have amazing lyrical ability I just know how to speak on what I been through and where I came from," he said.

Asked what to expect from him in 2011, he responded: "Music, music, music!"

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-12-17-Rapper%20Shot-Music%20Studio/id-ce80d7c85b8c41588f61fed48a6d2bad

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Sri Lankan commission: civilians weren't targeted (AP)

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka ? A government-appointed war commission has concluded that Sri Lanka's military did not intentionally target civilians in the final stages of the country's civil war and that ethnic rebels routinely violated international humanitarian law.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission acknowledged in a report presented to Parliament on Friday that some isolated allegations of civilian abuses by security forces needed to be investigated further.

The government appointed the commission last year amid intense international pressure to investigate alleged rights abuses toward the end of the war, which ended in May 2009.

The commission gathered evidence from ethnic minority Tamils, government officials, politicians, civil and religious leaders and former rebels. International rights groups refused to testify before it, saying it was pro-government, did not have a mandate to investigate abuses, and did not meet international standards.

The report listed allegations by witnesses that the navy had killed civilians who tried to escape the war by boat and that the army had forced civilians to retrieve the body of a dead soldier amid a hail of fire and had shot to death those refused to comply.

"In these circumstances the commission stresses that there is a duty on the part of the state to ascertain more fully the circumstances under which such incidents could have occurred, and if such investigations disclose wrongful conduct, to prosecute and punish the wrong doers," it said.

The commission, however, said it found no evidence of deliberate killings of civilians in "no-fire zones" set up in the final months of the war.

"On consideration of all facts and circumstances before it, the commission concludes that the security forces had not deliberately targeted the civilians in the NFZs, although civilian casualties had in fact occurred in the course of crossfire," it said.

The report, which was earlier presented to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, said the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels disregarded international humanitarian law in their combat strategies, and urged tough legal action against rebels being held in detention.

It accused the rebels of using civilians as human shields, killing civilians trying to escape the fighting, conscripting child soldiers, laying land mines, and using civilians as forced laborers.

Human rights groups have long accused both the government and Tamil Tiger rebels of abuses. A U.N. panel reported in April that it found credible allegations against both sides of abuses that could amount to war crimes. It said tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed in the final phase of the war and called for an independent international investigation.

After insisting for more than two years that not a single civilian had been killed by military strikes during the war, the government in August admitted to civilian deaths for the first time. Last month Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the president's brother, announced that the government has started a count of its own to ascertain how many civilians were slain.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_as/as_sri_lanka_civil_war

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Daniel Klein: Prune And Perennial Plate Food Porn

The third and final episode in our NYC Trilogy is all about Food Porn. After watching chickens get slaughtered in Queens and vegetables grow in several boroughs, this Manhattan video is just a montage of our wonderful dinner at Prune Restaurant one evening in September. It was amazing to cook at such an incredible place and with such great company.

The menu for the evening was:

• Crab on toast
• Oyster and ceviche
• Egg en cocotte with grilled mushrooms and watercress
• Grilled Pig Heart with cucumber, pumpkin seed and green tomato salad
• Deep fried porgy with tomatoes and bottarga
• Poached peach with rooftop honey lassi

Enjoy the video!

For more videos and recipes visit www.theperennialplate.com

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Follow Daniel Klein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/perennialplate

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-klein/perennial-plate-food-porn_b_1144980.html

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