The second in command of al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Yemen in December, according to a news report by Arabic television network Al Arabiya, the third time the former Guantanamo detainee has been reported dead since 2010.
According to the report, Said al-Shihri died last month after sustaining severe injuries from a joint U.S.-Yemeni airstrike that targeted a convoy in which he was riding. The al Arabiya account, based on information from "family sources," said that the airstrike left al-Shihri in a coma. He allegedly died soon after and was buried in Yemen.
On Tuesday afternoon, hours after the initial report, a Yemeni government official denied having any information regarding the death of al-Shihri, according to Arabic news site al-Bawaba.
No photos of a body have yet surfaced and no mention of his death has appeared on jihadi forums. This is the third time al-Shihri, the second in command of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been reported killed since 2009. In 2010, the Yemeni government claimed it had captured him. In September 2012, Yemeni news sites reported he was killed in an American drone strike.
PHOTOS: Terrorists Who Came Back from the Grave
READ: Gitmo Detainee turned terror commander killed: Reports
Al-Shihri, a "veteran jihadist," traveled to Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks to fight coalition troops, only to be captured weeks later, according to West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. He was sent to the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he stayed for six years before being released to Saudi Arabia. There, he entered a so-called "jihadi rehab" program that attempted to turn terrorists into art students by getting them to get "negative energy out on paper," as the program's director told ABC News in 2009.
READ: Trading Bombs for Crayons: Terrorists Get 'Art Therapy'
But just months after he supposedly entered the fingerpainting camp, al-Shihri reappeared in Yemen where he was suspected to have been behind a deadly bombing at the U.S. embassy there.
At the time, critics of the "jihadi rehab" program used al-Shihri as evidence that extremists would just go through the motions in order to be freed.
SINGAPORE: Reform Party candidate Kenneth Jeyaretnam has said he plans to hold a Meet-the-People's session on Wednesday evening.
He met Punggol East residents at Rumbia LRT Station at 7.30am on Tuesday, a day after he cancelled a feedback session with residents due to flu.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia after breakfast, Mr Jeyaretnam said he will continue to walk the ground. So far, he has visited less than half of the 127 blocks in the ward.
Mr Jeyaretnam described the nine-day campaigning period as "inadequate", but believes he will be able to cover between 25 and 50 per cent of the remaining blocks.
He said residents have been generally positive thus far.
He added: "I think many people like our policies and they like our pledge to be a full-time MP, to live in the community and the fact that I am probably the best qualified candidate to raise the important national issues in Parliament."
Mr Jeyaretnam said the party has drawn up a list of residents' concerns on issues such as salary stagnation, housing affordability for young couples, and cleanliness and maintenance of the neighbourhood.
Britain's Prince Harry says he killed Taliban militants during tour in Afghanistan
Harry, known to comrades as Captain Wales, had served for four months in Helmand province
Harry: "We fire when we have to but we're more of a deterrent than anything else"
(CNN) -- Britain's Prince Harry has acknowledged that he killed Taliban insurgents on his latest tour of duty in Afghanistan as a crew member of an Apache attack helicopter.
Harry has been serving for four months as a co-pilot gunner (CPG) in southern Helmand province -- considered a Taliban heartland -- and flew on scores of missions with the trigger to rockets, missiles and a 30mm cannon at his fingertips.
No one is saying how many insurgents Harry might have killed but toward the end of his deployment, the 28-year-old, known to his comrades as Captain Wales, shared some of his feelings about combat with reporters while on duty in the massive military base known as Camp Bastion. He said it was sometimes justified to "take a life to save a life. That's what we revolve around, I suppose."
More: How 'soldier prince' tore up royal rule book
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Harry explained how the roles of Apaches and CPGs have changed since his previous deployments in 2007 and 2008. "It used to be very much: front seat, you're firing the whole time.
"Now, yes we fire when we have to but essentially we're more of a deterrent than anything else.
"Our job out here is to make sure the guys are safe on the ground and if that means shooting someone who is shooting at them, then we will do it," said the prince, third in line to the British throne.
"It's not the reason I decided to do this job. The reason to do this job was to get back out here, and carry on with a job."
Away from his helicopter, the prince mixed freely on base, eating in the canteen with everyone else and relaxing by playing video games with others in the 130-strong 662 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps (AAC). With those comrades, he was just "one of the guys."
More: Harry named world's most eligible bachelor
Now, yes we fire when we have to but essentially we're more of a deterrent than anything else Prince Harry
In contrast to his privileged upbringing in palaces and an education at Eton College, the prince lived in a shared room within shipping containers converted into an accommodation block. He said he was free to stroll around the base, to visit the gym or the laundry. "It's completely normal," Harry added.
But he said he still received unwanted attention in more public places. "For me it's not that normal because I go into the cookhouse and everyone has a good old gawp, and that's one thing that I dislike about being here," he said.
Opinion: Cheeky Harry vs. dull brother William
"Because there's plenty of guys in there that have never met me, therefore look at me as Prince Harry and not as Captain Wales, which is frustrating.
"Which is probably another reason why I'd love to be out in the PBs (patrol bases), away from it all.
"But yeah, it's completely normal. It's as normal as it's going to get. I'm one of the guys. I don't get treated any differently."
His deployment meant he could step back from the public eye, although he said his father, the heir to the British throne Prince Charles, often reminded him of his position. Harry admitted he had "let himself and his family down" when he was photographed naked at a party in a Las Vegas hotel last year.
More: No action over naked Prince Harry photos
Harry appeared happier talking about his military role: building up the Afghan National Army, the ANA, so it can eventually take over.
"It's great to see the ANA taking more of a lead in things as well. And the professionalism is definitely shining through."
That's something his superiors in the army might say of the prince himself.
President Obama is a student of history - it was no coincidence that he formally announced his run to become the first African-American president back in 2007 at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his "house divided" speech in 1858 - and his inaugural address today drew an unmistakable line between the nation's past and its prospects for the future.
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President Obama's second inaugural speech
The president opened his remarks by referencing Lincoln's words from that speech, stating that America came to realize at that point in history that "no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free." He grounded his remarks in the Declaration of Independence's claim that "all men are created equal," tying it to both the American Revolution and rules mandating that there is fair play in the free market, to the need for a great nation to "protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune."
Later, he again invoked the declaration - though this time, he referred to the notion that "all of us are created equal" - before referencing three landmark moments in the battle for civil rights: The Seneca Falls Convention for women's rights, the clashes in Selma for African-American rights and the riots at New York's Stonewall Inn for gay rights. (The speech marked the first presidential inaugural in which LGBT rights have been referenced.)
He then pivoted from the triumphs of the past to the necessity of continuing the fight, calling for equal pay for women, equal rights for gay men and women, an elimination of long lines to vote, better treatment of immigrants, and, in an indirect reference to his desire to pass gun control legislation, the necessity of children from Detroit to Appalachia to Newtown to know "that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm."
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Brinkley on inaugural address: "A great civil rights speech"
At five separate moments in his second inaugural address, delivered to an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 people at the Capitol, Mr. Obama uttered the words "We, the people" - the opening words to the preamble of the Constitution. Those words were deployed to underscore the president's argument that Americans need to recognize that we are all in it together - and that while America celebrates initiative and enterprise, "preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action."
"For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias," he said. "No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people." He went on to add that "we are made for this moment, and we will seize it - so long as we seize it together."
That idea underscored the positions Mr. Obama reiterated during the speech, which at times came closer to a policy-oriented State of the Union Address than an inaugural, which historically tends to be more about soaring rhetoric. (The president will offer his State of the Union on February 12.) In addition to arguing that economic inequality hampers the nation's success, he said that the future depends on harnessing "new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher."
"We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few," said the president. "We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other - through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security - these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."
Mr. Obama also fit a call for a renewed focus on fighting climate change - an issue largely absent from his first-term agenda - into the notion of collective action for the common good, saying that "the failure to [address it] would betray our children and future generations."
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Axelrod on Obama's vision for economy
In addition to climate change, Mr. Obama's second term agenda involves pushing passage of gun control and immigration legislation, overseeing the further implementation of the health care law, winding down the war in Afghanistan, and continuing to try to find some way to come to a major agreement with Republicans to address the nation's massive debt and deficit.
He has signaled that to accomplish these goals, he will take a more confrontational approach with Republicans than he did in his first term -- an approach illustrated by his recent refusal to negotiate on raising the debt limit. His inaugural address offered little in the way of appeals for Washington bipartisanship; instead, Mr. Obama called on Americans in and out of the nation's capitol to come together to help the nation stay on the right path, even if the results are sometimes "imperfect."
"Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time - but it does require us to act in our time," he said. "For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay."
It was an appeal grounded in the notion that America's strength comes from all its citizens, no matter their status. And it was offered by a president who knows the debt he owes to history - a president who sees himself both as a symbol of American progress and a vessel to keep it moving forward.
A presidential inauguration is a big, long event that lasts all day and into the night–and who has time to really watch it? People have jobs, ones that don’t let you off for a federal holiday.
Everyone (or, at least, some) will be talking about it, which means potential embarrassment for anyone who doesn’t know what happened. Thankfully, ABC employs news professionals stationed in Washington, D.C., to pay attention to these kinds of things and boil off some of the less noteworthy or interesting stuff, presenting you with short videos of everything that really mattered. Or at least the things a lot of people were talking about.
A full day of paying attention to President Obama’s second Inauguration leads one of those professionals to offer these 7 1/2 things:
1. Beyonce Sang the National Anthem
Boy, howdy! Did she ever? Beyonce has essentially become the Obama’s go-to female performer: She recorded a music video for Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative in 2011, and she performed at the president’s last inauguration in 2009. Her velvety, soulful “Star Spangled Banner” is getting good reviews.
2. Kelly Clarkson Also Sang
Kelly Clarkson is not as “in” with the First Couple as Beyonce seems to be, but they let her sing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” and she did a pretty good job with it. This was kind of weird, though, because at one point she said she loved Ron Paul, although she later said she would vote for Obama.
3. Obama Talked About Gay Rights
This may not seem shocking since more than half the country, including President Obama, supports gay marriage. But the president made a point of mentioning gay rights during his speech, equating the struggles of the LGBT community with those of past civil rights movements, and in doing so made history.
He name-checked Stonewall, the New York City bar that was raided by police in 1969 sparking riots to protest the anti-gay crackdown. And he actually used the word “gay”: “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” Obama said in his address.
Plenty of inaugural addresses have been chock full of rhetoric about freedom and equality, but in the last four years, the political culture surrounding gay rights has changed significantly, as more states legalized same-sex marriage and as broad swaths of the country got more comfortable with homosexuality in general. Obama’s “evolution” on gay marriage, and now his inaugural address, have helped signify that change.
4. Joe Biden Made Jokes and Shook Hands With People
Could we expect anything less?
Here’s how the Vice President toasting Sen. Chuck Schumer instead of President Obama at the big luncheon: ”I raise my glass to a man who never, never, never operates out of fear, only operates out of confidence, and a guy–I’m toasting you, Chuck.” Watch it:
And here he is, scurrying around and jovially shaking hands with people along the parade route:
5. Richard Blanco Read a Poem That Was Sort of Whitman-esque, But Not Entirely
Cuban-born Richard Blanco became America’s first openly gay, Latino Inauguration poet. He read a nine-stanza poem entitled “One Today,” which set a kind of unifying American tableau scene.
6. Obama and Michelle Walked Around Outside The Limo
President Obama walked part of the parade route, from the Capitol to the White House, with Michelle. They waved to people. It is not entirely abnormal for a president to do this at an inaugural parade. But they walked quite a ways.
7. John Boehner: ‘Godspeed’
The speaker of the House presented American flags to Obama and Biden, telling them: “To you gentlemen, I say congratulations and Godspeed.”
7 1/2. Sasha and Malia Were There.
Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia, were there. They didn’t really do much, but they did wear coats of different shades of purple that got a lot of attention on Twitter.
Reports of the daughters looking at smartphones and applying lip gloss highlighted their day. As did this .gif of Sasha yawning.
Sixty years after James Watson and Francis Crick established that DNA forms a double helix, a quadruple-stranded DNA helix has turned up.
Quadruple helices that intertwine four, rather than two, DNA strands had been made in the laboratory, but were regarded as curiosities as there was no evidence that they existed in nature. Now, they have been identified in a range of human cancer cells.
The four-stranded packages of DNA, dubbed G-quadruplexes, are formed by the interaction of four guanine bases that together form a square. They appear to be transitory structures, and were most abundant when cells were poised to divide. They appeared in the core of chromosomes and also in telomeres, the caps on the tips of chromosomes that protect them from damage.
Because cancer cells divide so rapidly, and often have defects in their telomeres, the quadruple helix might be a feature unique to cancer cells. If so, any treatments that target them will not harm healthy cells.
"I hope our discovery challenges the dogma that we really understand DNA structure because Watson and Crick solved it in 1953," says Shankar Balasubramanian of the University of Cambridge, UK.
Tagged with antibodies
Balasubramanian's team identified the four-stranded structures in cancer cells with the help of an antibody that attaches exclusively to G-quadruplexes. To stop them from unravelling into the ordinary DNA, they exposed the cells to pyridostatin, a molecule that traps quadruple helices wherever they form.
This enabled the researchers to count how many formed at each stage of cell multiplication. The G-quadruplexes were most abundant in the "S-phase" – when cells replicate their DNA just prior to dividing.
"I expect they will also exist in normal cells, but I predict that there will be differences with cancer cells," says Balasubramanian. His hunch is that the G-quadruplexes are triggered into action by chaotic genomic mutations and reorganisations typical of cancerous or precancerous cells.
"This research further highlights the potential for exploiting these unusual DNA structures to beat cancer, and the next part of this is to figure out how to target them in tumour cells," says Julie Sharp of Cancer Research UK, which funded the research.
Another important question that Balasubramanian's and other teams will try to answer is whether G-quadruplexes play a role in embryo development, and whether such a role is mistakenly reactivated in cancer cells. "We plan to find out whether the quaduplexes are a natural nuisance, or there by design," he says.
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BEIJING: China's hugely controversial "re-education" labour camps are set to be abolished this year, state media Monday quoted a senior legal official as saying.
It is another signal that the widely criticised system -- where people can be sentenced to up to four years' "re-education" by a police panel, without an open trial -- is coming to an end.
The comments come after the Communist Party's new leader Xi Jinping said the party recognised as a "pressing problem" that it was "out of touch with the people".
About 60,000 people are detained in the camps, officials say, most of whom serve from six months to a year.
Opponents say the camps are used to silence government critics and would-be petitioners who seek to bring their complaints against officials to higher authorities.
Earlier this month reports emerged briefly that the system -- known as laojiao -- would be abolished. But they were swiftly deleted and replaced with predictions of reforms, with few details and no timetable.
Chen Jiping, deputy director of the China Law Society, was quoted by the China Daily as saying that a key meeting had agreed tightly to limit use of the system until it could be scrapped by China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC).
It added in reported speech that he described laojiao as having "made its contribution at a time when the Communist Party of China was consolidating the republic and rectifying social order, but now China has well-established legal systems".
"Ending the system requires the approval of the top legislature which originally endorsed laojiao in 1957," the paper said. The annual session of the NPC is due to be held in March.
Currently, people sentenced under the laojiao system are forced to perform manual labour such as farm or factory work, but do not receive a criminal conviction.
Authorities will need to replace it with alternative punishments for those accused of petty offences, the paper added.
"Chen's remarks suggest offenders are likely instead to get a court hearing, short-term detention or a fine," the newspaper said, citing "experts".
The scheme has faced growing criticism for being open to abuse and public anger has erupted over sentences deemed too harsh.
In a case which shocked the nation, Tang Hui, a mother whose 11-year-old daughter was abducted, raped and forced into prostitution, was sentenced to 18 months of laojiao after she demanded death penalties for seven men convicted in the case.
The 40-year-old also accused two police officers in her home city of Yongzhou, in the central province of Hunan, of being complicit in the crime. She was released within a week following public outrage.
Party officials visited Tang on Friday as part of an investigation into the decision to punish her. She is claiming compensation.
Earlier this month the official microblog of the CCTV state news channel quoted Meng Jianzhu, a member of the powerful 25-strong Politburo who oversees politics and legal affairs, as saying that China would stop using the system.
The reports were quickly removed, but the following day the China Daily said the government "will push reforms".
At the time news of the changes was widely welcomed on China's hugely popular microblogging sites.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
This sentence spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been quoted countless times as expressing one of America's bedrock values, its language almost sounding like a constitutional amendment on equality.
20 Photos
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Martin Luther King III talks his father's legacy
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King, Civil Rights Act remembered
Yet today, 50 years after King shared this vision during his most famous speech, there is considerable disagreement over what it means.
The quote is used to support opposing views on politics, affirmative action and programs intended to help the disadvantaged. Just as the words of the nation's founders are parsed for modern meanings on guns and abortion, so are King's words used in debates over the proper place of race in America.
As we mark the King holiday, what might he ask of us in a time when both the president and a disproportionate number of people in poverty are black? Would King have wanted us to completely ignore race in a "color-blind" society? To consider race as one of many factors about a person? And how do we discern character?
For at least two of King's children, the future envisioned by the father has yet to arrive.
"I don't think we can ignore race," says Martin Luther King III.
"What my father is asking is to create the climate where every American can realize his or her dreams," he says. "Now what does that mean when you have 50 million people living in poverty?"
Bernice King doubts her father would seek to ignore differences.
"When he talked about the beloved community, he talked about everyone bringing their gifts, their talents, their cultural experiences," she says. "We live in a society where we may have differences, of course, but we learn to celebrate these differences."
The meaning of King's monumental quote is more complex today than in 1963 because "the unconscious signals have changed," says the historian Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed trilogy "America in the King Years."
Fifty years ago, bigotry was widely accepted. Today, Branch says, even though prejudice is widely denounced, many people unconsciously pre-judge others.
"Unfortunately race in American history has been one area in which Americans kid themselves and pretend to be fair-minded when they really are not," says Branch, whose new book is "The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement."
Branch believes that today, King would ask people of all backgrounds - not just whites - to deepen their patriotism by leaving their comfort zones, reaching across barriers and learning about different people.
"To remember that we all have to stretch ourselves to build the ties that bind a democracy, which really is the source of our strength," Branch says.
Bernice King says her father is asking us "to get to a place - we're obviously not there - but to get to a place where the first thing that we utilize as a measurement is not someone's external designation, but it really is trying to look beyond that into the substance of a person in making certain decisions, to rid ourselves of those kinds of prejudices and biases that we often bring to decisions that we make."
That takes a lot of "psychological work," she says, adding, "He's really challenging us."
For many conservatives, the modern meaning of King's quote is clear: Special consideration for one racial or ethnic group is a violation of the dream.
The quote is like the Declaration of Independence, says Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that studies race and ethnicity. In years past, he says, America may have needed to grow into the words, but today they must be obeyed to the letter.
"The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal," Clegg says. "Nobody thinks it doesn't really mean what it says because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. King gave a brilliant and moving quotation, and I think it says we should not be treating people differently on the basis of skin color."
Many others agree. King's quote has become a staple of conservative belief that "judged by the color of their skin" includes things such as unique appeals to certain voter groups, reserving government contracts for Hispanic-owned businesses, seeking more non-white corporate executives, or admitting black students to college with lower test scores.
In the latest issue of the Weekly Standard magazine, the quote appears in the lead of a book review titled "The Price Was High: Affirmative Action and the Betrayal of a Colorblind Society."
Considering race as a factor in affirmative action keeps the wounds of slavery and Jim Crow "sore and festering. It encourages beneficiaries to rely on ethnicity rather than self-improvement to get ahead," wrote the author, George Leef.
Last week, the RightWingNews.com blog included "The idea that everyone should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin" in a list of "25 People, Places and Things Liberals Love to Hate."
"Conservatives feel they have embraced that quote completely. They are the embodiment of that quote but get no credit for doing it," says the author of the article, John Hawkins. "Liberals like the idea of the quote because it's the most famous thing Martin Luther King said, but they left the principles behind the quote behind a long time ago."
President Obama used the first public remarks of his second term to address what he called the “most significant” event of this weekend: his wife’s much-talked-about new haircut.
“I love her bangs,” Obama told supporters at an inaugural reception at the National Building Museum. “She looks good. She always looks good.”
First lady Michelle Obama, wearing a black sequined cocktail dress and showcasing her new hairdo, also heaped compliments on her husband.
“Let me tell you, it has just been a true thrill to watch this handsome, charming individual grow into the man and the president that he is,” she said, as she reached out to playfully touch the president’s face, sparking laughter from the crowd.
Praising his compassion and courage, the first lady introduced the president as the “love of her life.”
Obama, who was sworn in for a second term in a small White House ceremony earlier today, kept his remarks short, noting he has another big speech to deliver Monday.
“There are a limited amount of good lines and you don’t want to use them all up tonight,” he joked.
Because the Constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration, Jan. 20, fell on a Sunday this year, the traditional, public ceremony was delayed until Monday.
Saving the best for his official inaugural address, the president instead dedicated the bulk of his remarks to thanking supporters for their hard work and dedication to getting him re-elected.
“You understood this was not just about a candidate; it was not just about Joe Biden or Barack Obama. This was about us, who we are as a nation, what values we cherish, how hard we’re willing to fight to make sure that those values live not just for today but for future generations,” he said.
“All of you here understood and were committed to the basic notion that when we put our shoulders to the wheel of history, it moves… It moves forward. And that’s part of what we celebrate when we come together for inauguration,” he said.
