Tunisia: President's party quits government

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) ? Tunisia's political crisis entered a new phase Sunday with an announcement that Cabinet ministers of the president's own party are quitting the governing coalition, which could force the ruling Islamists to compromise with the opposition.

Two years ago Tunisia threw off decades of dictatorship, sparking the Arab Spring uprisings across North Africa. But it is now facing its worst political crisis since then following the assassination of a prominent opposition figure last week.

Many blamed the government's negligence, if not complicity, for the assassination, and days of rioting followed that have only just subsided. A political solution to the crisis remains elusive and the question remains whether Tunisia can avoid the kind of political chaos wracking its neighbors.

Veteran observers of Tunisia's political scene caution that the nation's well-earned reputation as a stable bastion of moderation risks being put to the test, if the ruling Ennahda party of moderate Islamists mishandles its response to Wednesday's assassination of opposition politician Chokri Belaid.

"Tunisians can live without food, but they can't live without stability and calm," said Ali Dkhil, a Tunis-based journalist and long-time political observer.

The killing of Belaid ? who carried out the shooting remains unknown ? was the culmination of months of deadlock between the opposition and the governing coalition of the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party and two secular parties.

Belaid, as well as many others in the opposition, alleged that the Islamists were relying on hired thugs to harass political figures they disagreed with, and negotiations to expand the ruling coalition had hit a deadlock.

The coalition's failure to stem the country's economic crisis and stop the often-violent rise of hardline Salafi Muslims had also drawn fierce criticism, prompting the call to broaden the governing coalition.

Following the assassination, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali offered the compromise long sought by the opposition and said he would form a government of technocrats unconnected to political parties, to see the country through the crisis and to new elections. However, his party rejected his plan, saying they had been elected by the people and should continue to rule ? highlighting the divisions not just between the government and the opposition, but within the governing party itself.

The announcement Sunday that Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki's secular party is quitting the coalition government in anger at Ennahda's handling of the country's crisis might in the end actually strengthen officials such as Jebali seeking a compromise, said North Africa analyst Riccardo Fabiani of the London-based Eurasia Group.

"Now Ennahda no longer has a government coalition to kick out Jebali," Fabiani said, adding that as the other parties quit the coalition, that leaves the technocratic option as the only alternative. "Now Jebali has the upper hand. He's even stronger."

Fabiani warned, however, that Ennahda, which he called "the most moderate Islamic party in the Arab world," might radicalize if it is pushed out of power and does poorly in upcoming elections.

"Ennahda has moderated, but if they're out of government the hardliners of the party could play a different game," he said. "This could stir up increased tension on the street and lead to more violence."

Since its election, Ennahda has worked with other secular parties and compromised with the opposition on issues such as not enshrining Islamic law in the constitution currently being written. Now, however, there are growing signs of divisions within the party and fears that the hardline elements might be backing the groups carrying out violence.

"We're at an impasse," said Moncef Nasri, a Tunis writer and journalist. "All parties have to cooperate to create a clear path out of this very serious situation." But he said he is confident that Tunisia will pull back from the brink, as it has done repeatedly in the years since its so-called Jasmine Revolution.

"It's because of our history, our cosmopolitan culture," Nasri said. "Tunisia has always welcomed people from all faiths and cultures."

After three days of street violence, the capital Tunis was relatively quiet Sunday, under the watchful eye of riot police.

The assassination of Belaid unleashed pockets of pillaging and unrest on Saturday, including an attack by 80 youths armed with stones and clubs on a police station and a second security post in Zaghouan, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Tunis, the official TAP news agency reported. To the south, in the town of Kebili, 60 people, mainly youths, attacked the governing Ennahda party offices. The extent of that damage was not immediately known.

________

Associated Press reporters Oleg Cetinic and Bouazza ben Bouazza in Tunis contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tunisia-presidents-party-quits-government-145754333.html

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'Obama is coming to tell Netanyahu not to strike Iran' - Times of Israel

Worthy News | What is a Christian | Receive our Updates | Daily Devotion | Christian Forums | Christian Chat | Christian Bookstore | Comics | Submit Prayer Request

The article below does not necessarily reflect the views of Worthy News.

Source: http://www.worthynews.com/top/timesofisrael-com-obama-is-coming-to-tell-netanyahu-not-to-strike-iran-/

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On Richard Skemp's Instrumental and Relational Understanding ...

I am sure that everyone who went through high school is familiar with the quadratic formula. Not all of us have memorized this nor how the formula was derived. For most of us, we need to use this standard formula for solving quadratic equation as if there is no other way to do it. Obviously, this formula needs to be memorized exactly if it is to be of any use. Although some of us who know the formula would be able to re-create from scratch by the process of ?completing the square?, most of us would not. As educator and teachers would probably agree that the person who could derive this formula has a deeper understanding than someone who can merely reproduce the formula from memory. What do you think? Does it mean that simply memorizing the formula is not useful? According to Richard Skemp, anyone who knows and can apply this formula accurately has the so-called instrumental understanding. This is a different kind of understanding from having the knowledge where the formula comes from and how to derive it which Richard Skemp called relational understanding. So we say that both are important depending on our personal biases. Our personal perception affects which one we emphasize in the classroom. There are differences in our perceptions of the purpose of mathematics. Our aim in mind affects what aspects of mathematics we emphasize in the classroom.

Reference: Skempt, R.R. (1977). Relational understanding and instrumental understanding.?Mathematics teaching, 77, 20-26.

Source: http://love4mathed.com/2013/02/on-richard-skemps-instrumental-and-relational-understanding/

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Snowstorm Story: Power Loss Yaphank, N.Y.

Yahoo! News is gathering brief first-person accounts, photos and video from the severe winter weather in the northeastern United States. Here's one resident's story.

FIRST PERSON | YAPHANK, N.Y. - It's Saturday on Long Island, and no business is open while city employees are busy clearing snow off the roads. Although I was surprised how quickly snow covered my car on Friday, it is unbelievable today. My car is completely covered in snow. In front of my house, there is nowhere to pass.

Worst of all, I lost power last night. The snowstorm has caused many of my neighbors to stay home. My neighbors usually wake up early in the morning. As I'm writing, it is 9:43 a.m., but I can't see anyone outside. The temperature is going down, and it is very windy.

It is very disheartening that public transportation in Yaphank has been suspended. I was hoping to jump on the bus and find an open store for breakfast.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/snowstorm-story-power-loss-yaphank-n-y-151800723.html

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A photo never tells the whole story

ORANGE, Calif. (AP) ? A photo never tells the whole story, and that's especially true for Christopher Dorner. The images on his Facebook page are essentially the same: Dorner, smiling, seemingly loving life and all it offers.

But they accompany a rambling document where he portrays himself as a real-life Rambo, an expert in weapons, explosives and military tactics who will stop at nothing to avenge his 2008 firing from the Los Angeles Police Department.

It's incongruous and it underscores the complexity of the man who now is the most wanted in America, accused of killing three people as he carries out his vendetta.

Where Dorner sees himself as a warrior, others see someone much different. The 6-foot, 270-pounder is a physical hulk who ? despite his size ? seemed to battle deep-seated insecurities, lived with his mother and cracked under the pressures of police work.

Court and police files show that Dorner once began weeping while on duty in a patrol car, awkwardly flashed his police badge on a first date and told a girlfriend he kept his emotions bottled up.

Those who study the psyches of criminals said Dorner's aggressive and self-aggrandizing rant indicates a classic case of malignant narcissist personality disorder. Some people with the disorder are extremely thin-skinned and vengeful, said Mary Ellen O'Toole, a retired FBI profiler.

They may seem insecure, she said, but in reality their rages ? and even tears ? are extreme reactions to real or imagined criticisms because they have such grandiose visions of themselves.

"He's putting in his manifesto that he's going to use all the training he received as an LAPD officer and as a military officer to basically hold Southern California hostage, and to be there when you least expect it," she said. "Is he deadly? Yes. Of course he has killed people."

"But is he capable of taking on some 1,000 officers looking for him? That's someone with a personality disorder," she said.

Dorner, 33, is accused of killing a woman last weekend whose father had represented him as he fought to keep his police job, and the woman's fiance. On Thursday, police say he ambushed two officers, killing one, and then vanished, setting off a manhunt that put police on alert across the Southwest.

The search Friday focused on the mountains around Big Bear Lake, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. Police said officers still were guarding more than 40 people mentioned as targets in the rant.

The rambling manifesto was on a Facebook page that also includes smiling pictures of Dorner and critiques or politicians, musicians, and comedians. He also offers commentary on topics from gun control ? he wants stricter laws for assault weapons ? to sexual abuse by priests to the proper room temperature.

Court papers from 2006 show that Dorner requested a restraining order against a woman he had dated for six weeks after he said she posted his LAPD badge number and trash-talked about him on a website called dontdatehimgirl.com.

Dorner attached the lengthy posting he said was by his ex-girlfriend, Ariana Williams, as well as a handwritten note she apparently placed on his belongings when she returned them after they broke up.

In the web posting, Dorner is described as "severely emotionally and mentally disturbed," ''twisted" and "super paranoid." It also said he flashed his police badge on their first date, lives with his mother and hates himself for being black ? at one point asking her to act more like a white woman.

"Just be careful because this guy is a police officer and he will probably think that he can get away with anything. ... If you value your sanity, stay away from this guy."

Dorner claimed Williams was harassing him and sent a threatening letter to his home. He asked that she also stay away from his mother and sister. In her response, Williams denied Dorner's allegations.

Records show Dorner did not show up at a hearing in November 2006 and the case was terminated. She could not be reached to comment. Her attorney, Stephen G. Rodriguez, did not return a call or email seeking comment.

In 2008, after Dorner was deployed to Bahrain with the Navy Reserves, he returned to the LAPD and began to patrol with his training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans. He had worked for just four months after his graduation from the academy before being sent overseas.

In internal police papers, Evans said Dorner repeatedly asked why he was being put back on patrol without reintegration training. On one occasion, he began weeping in the patrol car and demanded to be taken back to the police academy to be retrained, according to a summary of an interview with Evans contained in 2009 court documents.

Evans warned Dorner that she would give him an unsatisfactory rating and request that he be removed from the field unless he improved. A day after she followed up on her threat with a poor review, Dorner reported to internal affairs that Evans had kicked a severely mentally ill man in the chest and left cheek during an arrest.

A police review panel ultimately found the allegation untrue and Dorner was fired for making a false statement.

In the manifesto, Dorner said the LAPD destroyed his life, ruined his relationships with his mother and sister and harmed his military career.

Those types of statements don't surprise O'Toole, the former FBI profiler, who said narcissists feel intense shame and humiliation when outside events challenge their perception of themselves.

"He's somebody I call an injustice collector," she said. "When they respond to an injustice that they think is out there, their reaction is completely over the top."

____

Associated Press reporter Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to the story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/court-file-la-ex-cop-disturbed-self-obsessed-233440436.html

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Asteroid may be tougher mission than Mars

Though asteroids are viewed as stepping stones in NASA's manned march to Mars, sending humans to a space rock may actually be a bigger challenge than putting boots on the Red Planet.

Mars is farther away than any near-Earth asteroid that NASA would target, but this disadvantage may be outweighed by the greater knowledge scientists have gained of the Red Planet thanks to the many Mars missions that have launched over the years, experts say.

Further, mapping out an asteroid mission is nearly impossible at this point, since NASA does not yet know where it's going.

"There are still no good asteroid targets for such a mission, a necessary prerequisite for determining mission length and details such as the astronauts? exposure to radiation and the consumables required," states a December 2012 report from the U.S. National Research Council (NRC). [How NASA Will Explore Asteroids (Gallery)]

The road to Mars
Landing astronauts on Mars has been the long-term goal of NASA's human spaceflight program for decades, but the agency's vision of how to get there was shaken up recently.

NASA had viewed the moon as a stepping stone, working to get humans to Earth's natural satellite by 2020 under a program called Constellation, which was initiated during the presidency of George W. Bush. But President Barack Obama canceled Constellation in 2010, after an independent review panel found it to be significantly under-funded and behind schedule.

The Obama administration instead directed NASA to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. The agency is developing a new crewed capsule called Orion and a huge rocket called the Space Launch System to make it all happen.

The new "asteroid-next" plan has not been enthusiastically embraced by NASA or the broader space community, the NRC report concluded.

"Despite isolated pockets of support for a human asteroid mission, the committee did not detect broad support for an asteroid mission inside NASA, in the nation as a whole or from the international community," write the authors of the report, which is called "NASA's Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus."

A tough proposition
The NRC report was based on research, interviews, site visits and analysis conducted by a 12-member independent committee over the course of about five months in 2012.

One of the people the study team met with was Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations.

Gerstenmaier "talked about how NASA had discovered, in the two years that had elapsed by the time he was speaking to us, just how hard (a manned asteroid mission) was," committee member and space policy expert Marcia Smith said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group on Jan. 30.

"He said in many respects, it's easier to go to Mars, because we know a lot about Mars," Smith added. "We know where it is, and we've done all these reconnaissance missions already, so we have a knowledge base from which to work in terms of sending humans, whereas no particular asteroid has been selected yet."

While sending astronauts to an asteroid has never been done before, unmanned probes have successfully rendezvoused with the objects in deep space multiple times.

1. Space news from NBCNews.com

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For example, NASA's Dawn spacecraft orbited the protoplanet Vesta ? the second-largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter ? for more than a year before departing to head to the belt's largest denizen, Ceres, last September. And in 2005, Japan's Hayabusa probe plucked some pieces off the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa, sending them back to Earth for analysis.

NASA plans to launch its own asteroid-sampling mission, called Osiris-Rex, in 2016. And two private companies ? Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries ? intend to loft reconnaissance spacecraft over the next few years, kicking off an ambitious efforts to mine water, metals and other resources from asteroids.

Follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on ?Facebook? and? Google+.

? 2013 Space.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50722558/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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Space-age Antarctic research station is fully mobile

Devin Coldewey , NBC News ? ? ? 22 hrs.

The striking design of this new Antarctic research station isn't just for looks. The whole thing can be moved on its ski-like supports ? and may need to, in order to avoid being stranded by breaking ice.

Halley VI, named (like the comet) after British astronomer Edmond Halley, is the sixth base to be built at the site since its founding in 1956. It was originally known as Halley Bay, but name had to change after the bay disappeared in 1977 due to the ice shifting substantially. The impermanent nature of the landscape makes it easy to understand why they eventually decided to make the whole building mobile.

There was a competition in 2004 to design the new station, and Hugh Broughton Architects won ? but construction didn't begin until 2008, and only recently finished. Although the station has been occupied for testing and installation, Monday was the day it officially opened.

Up to 70 researchers and workers can stay in the ?25.8 million (around $40 million) structure, working and living in its eight modules. Like its predecessor, the station is able to stay above the rising snowfall by raising up on huge "legs," giving it the air of a huge snow caterpillar.

But unlike Halley V, the new station isn't stuck in one place. It can't move on its own ? all its modules are for research and housing; there's no engine ? but the bottom of its supports are big skis that allow it to be towed by an enormous tractor.

That's important, since the ice shelf Halley VI is on is moving westward at around 700 meters (nearly half a mile) every year. To keep from becoming an iceberg-based research station, Halley VI can be towed inland whenever necessary, although it's not a trivial process.

Halley VI's construction has been documented extensively at this British Antarctic Survey blog, complete with hundreds of pictures. The denizens of Halley Station have also kept a "diary" since 2000, which has lots of interesting information on life there.

via Dezeen

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/space-age-antarctic-research-station-fully-mobile-1B8279202

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