Weird weather: heat, twisters, 250K tons of snow

WASHINGTON (AP) — America's weather is stuck on extreme.

Nearly 11 feet of snow has fallen on Anchorage, Alaska, this winter. That's almost a record, and it's forcing the city to haul away at least 250,000 tons of snow. Yet not much snow has dropped on the Lower 48 this year.

The first three months of 2012 have seen twice the normal number of tornadoes. And 36 states set daily high temperature records Thursday.

So far this month, the U.S. has set 1,757 daily high temperature records. That's similar to the number during last summer's heat wave, said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Six rare, but not unprecedented, March tornadoes struck Thursday in Michigan, which also set 26 heat records. Temperatures were in the 80s in some parts of the state.

Nationwide, there have been 132 tornadoes confirmed in January and February, with preliminary reports of more than 150 already in March.

Two different weather phenomena — La Nina and its northern cousin the Arctic Oscillation — shift storm and temperature patterns through the world, meteorologists say. Scientists say you cannot link a single weather event to global warming.

However, climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria says: "When you start to see the extreme events become more common, that's when you can say that it is a consequence of global warming."

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Rachel D'Oro contributed to this report from Anchorage.

Many homes damaged as tornado rips through Mich

DEXTER, Mich. (AP) — A tornado ripped through a rural southeastern Michigan community Thursday, damaging or demolishing many homes, downing trees and power lines, sparking fires and flooding neighborhood roads.

The slow-moving storm was part of a system packing large hail, heavy rain and high winds. The touchdown was reported in the Dexter and Pinckney areas northwest of Ann Arbor, said Marc Breckenridge, director of Emergency Management for the county.

Crews were assessing damage, but in one neighborhood, a home appeared to be flattened while an adjacent home lost most of its roof and second floor. Houses across the street also sustained damage to their roofs and siding. There were no reports of injuries or fatalities, Breckenridge's office said.

About two dozen homes in Sharon Carty's Huron Farms neighborhood "are pretty much unlivable," she said. "And a significant number more than that are severely damaged. One house, the whole front of the house is gone. Folks whose houses were hit are pretty stunned. We don't get too many tornados around here."

She saw no evidence of any injuries.
Carty, 38, said she and her family heard the first weather siren about 5:15 p.m. and were in their basement when the tornado struck. Their house was untouched.
Jack Davidson, 63, said he was watching TV when he heard warning sirens go off twice near his home in Dexter, sending him and his to the basement.
When they emerged, Davidson said the couple at first didn't see much damage and thought the storm had spared the area. But one look across the street revealed a different reality: a flattened self-serve carwash was among the damaged structures.
"It's bad," Davidson said. "The pizza shop's bad. But the worst damage is to the carwash."
Two blocks away, the twister never touched down.
"I guess we were just lucky we were in the right spot," Davidson said.
Destruction was a common sight in the village's business district.
A sign that declares Dexter a "Tree City USA" community was bent and affixed to a telephone pole. Nearby, trees lay on the ground, rendering surrounding roads closed or impassable.
There also were unconfirmed reports of tornados touching down in Monroe County's Ida Township and northwest Lapeer County, near Columbiaville, where trees and power lines had been downed, National Weather Service meteorologist Amos Dodson said. The storm packed wind gusts up to 70 mph in Lapeer County and 2-inch hail, he said.
"We're getting absolutely hammered," Fire Capt. Jim Hemwall of Monroe County's Frenchtown Township said Thursday night. "We have funnel clouds spotted all around us."
Hemwall said a house in the town of Exeter was struck by lightning and debris swirled around another in Monroe County's Dundee.
No injuries were immediately reported, "but it's early," Hemwall said.
All roads into the village of Dexter were closed as darkness fell, with police diverting traffic. Area police and fire agencies were going door-to-door searching for any injured, Washtenaw County sheriff's spokesman Derrick Jackson said. People needing shelter for the night were directed to a local school.
Bill Marx, head baker at Dexter Bakery, said he was closing up shop when he noticed the change in the weather and heard storm sirens.
"I stepped outside and saw the clouds turning around," Marx said. "It was coming toward us. After it went by, it really started raining and hailing."
Eastern Michigan University in nearby Ypsilanti also was buckling down for the storm.
"We put out an all-campus notice to students to take cover, and a tornado warning is in effect," school spokesman Walter Kraft said.
The notices were sent out via text messages and emails, Kraft said.
University of Michigan Health System spokeswoman Kara Gavin said patients were moved into hallways and window blinds have been closed in rooms. Some critically ill patients were moved away from the windows and would be moved farther if necessary.
Gavin said there have no reports of damage in or around the Ann Arbor hospitals.
The American Red Cross of Washtenaw and Lenawee counties expected to open a shelter at Mill Creek Middle School in Dexter and provide shelter, food, water, other basic needs and mental health services, spokeswoman Jenni Hawes said.
"I'm sure a lot of people are pretty distraught," she said. "If you know people affected, encourage them to the shelter and get assistance."
Hawes said a second shelter opened nearby in Ann Arbor, where significant flooding forced the evacuation of an apartment complex.
Hawes said anyone wanting to donate can contribute through the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund by calling (734) 971-5300 or online at www.wc-redcross.org .

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Associated Press writers Corey Williams, Jeff Karoub and David Aguilar reported from Detroit. Tom Krisher reported from Dexter.

Storms wrecks Ind. towns, kill 13 in 2 states

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Powerful storms stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes wrecked several Indiana towns and killed at least 13 people Friday as the system tore roofs off schools and homes, flattened a fire station, flipped over tractor-trailer trucks and damaged a maximum security prison. It was the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

Authorities reported eight deaths in southern Indiana, where Marysville was leveled and nearby Henryville also suffered extreme damage. Five people also died in Kentucky.

"Marysville is completely gone," said Clark County Sheriff's Department Maj. Chuck Adams.
Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed numerous wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video shot by WLKY in Louisville, Ky., also shows a mangled school bus protruding from the side of a one-story building and dozens of overturned semis strewn around the smashed remains of a truck stop.
Andy Bell was guarding a demolished garage until his friend could get to the business to retrieve some valuable tools Friday night. He looked around at the devastation, pointing to what were now empty lots between a Catholic church and a Marathon station about a block away.
"There were houses from the Catholic church on the corner all the way to the Marathon station. And now it's just a pile of rubble, all the way up," he said. "It's just a great ..."
His voice trailed off, before he finished: "Wood sticks all the way up."
An Associated Press reporter in Henryville said the high school was destroyed and the second floor had been ripped off the middle school next door. Authorities said school was in session when the tornado hit, but there were only minor injuries there.
Classroom chairs were scattered on the ground outside, trees were uprooted and cars had huge dents from baseball-sized hail. Throughout town, there were bent utility poles and piles of debris. Volunteers pushed shopping carts full of water and food up the street and handed it out to people.
Ruth Simpson of Salem came to the demolished town right after the storm hit, looking for relatives that she hadn't been able to find. "I can't find them," she said, starting to cry, and then walked away.
The town was without power, and there was no cell phone reception or service for land lines. Authorities planned to search the rubble through the night for survivors.
By nightfall, the only visible lights in town were vehicles inching through town. The rural town about 20 miles north of Louisville is the home of Indiana's oldest state forest and the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Col. Harland Sanders.
Ernie Hall, 68, weathered the tornado inside his tiny home near the high school. Hall says he saw the twister coming down the road toward his house, whipping up debris in its path.
"I knew there was some bad weather out in the Midwest that was coming this way, but you don't count on a tornado hitting here that bad," he said.
He and his wife ran into an interior room and used a mattress to block the door as the tornado struck. It destroyed his car and blew out the picture window overlooking his porch.
"There was no mistaking what it was," he said.
The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma said the massive band of storms was putting 10 million people in several states at high risk of dangerous weather.
"Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center," forecaster Corey Mead said. "This is one of those days."
Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed temporarily because of debris on the runways, but one of three runways had reopened by late afternoon. A fire station was flattened and several barns were toppled in northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from the badly damaged Indiana towns.
Terry Sebastian, a spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, says five people were killed in two counties Friday.
The outbreak was also causing problems in states to south, including Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were damaged. It comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.
At least 20 homes were ripped off their foundation and eight people were injured in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area. To the east in Cleveland, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither was hurt.
"It just hit all at once," said Blaine Lawson, 76. "Didn't have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn't know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us."
Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution, and several Kentucky universities were closed. The Huntsville, Ala., mayor said students in area schools sheltered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning.
"Most of the children were in schools so they were in the hallways so it worked out very well," said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.
Five people were taken to area hospitals, and several houses were leveled.
An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, but none of the facility's approximately 2,100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure.
"It was reported you could see the sky through the roof of one of them," Corbett said.
For residents and emergency officials across the state, tornado precautions and cleanup are part of a sadly familiar routine. A tornado outbreak last April killed about 250 people around the state, with the worst damage in Tuscaloosa to the south.
The Storm Prediction Center's Mead said a powerful storm system was interacting with humid, unstable air that was streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico.
"The environment just becomes more unstable and provides the fuel for the thunderstorms," Mead said.
Schools sent students home early or canceled classes entirely in states including Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana. In Alabama alone, more than 20 school systems dismissed classes early Friday. The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and several other colleges in the state also canceled classes.
In one subdivision in in Athens, Ala., damage was visible on 10 homes. Homeowner Bill Adams watched as two men ripped shingles off the roof of a house he rents out, and he fretted about predictions that more storms would pass through.
"Hopefully they can at least get a tarp on it before it starts again," he said.

Not far away, the damage was much worse for retired high school band director Stanley Nelson. Winds peeled off his garage door and about a third of his roof, making rafters and boxes in his attic visible from the street.

"It's like it just exploded," he said.

U.S. cites "heightened threat"; 9 killed in Afghan airport bomb

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed nine people in an attack on a military airport in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said, the latest bloodshed since copies of the Koran were burned at a NATO base last week.

There was no official indication the explosion at the gates of Jalalabad airport was linked to the deadly protests, but the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack as "revenge" for the Koran burnings.

Nineteen Afghan civilians and law enforcement officers and four NATO soldiers were wounded in the blast, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, said.

Jalalabad airport is almost exclusively used by NATO and the U.S. military.

Anti-Western fury has deepened significantly since the desecration of the Muslim holy book at the main NATO Bagram air base in Afghanistan. NATO described the incident as a tragic blunder.

The U.S. Embassy warned of a "heightened" threat to American citizens in Afghanistan and many Westerners are on "lock down", meaning they are not allowed out of their fortified compounds.
Riots have raged across Afghanistan over the past week despite widespread apologies from U.S. leaders, including President Barack Obama and military commanders.
Seven U.S. military trainers were wounded on Sunday when a grenade was thrown at their base in Afghanistan's north.
Chants of "Death to America!" have come to characterize the protests and some demonstrators have hoisted the white Taliban flag.
With few signs of the crisis abating, the U.S. ambassador said the United States should resist the urge to pull troops out of Afghanistan ahead of schedule.
"Tensions are running very high here. I think we need to let things calm down, return to a more normal atmosphere, and then get on with business," Ambassador Ryan Crocker told CNN.
"This is not the time to decide that we are done here. We have got to redouble our efforts. We've got to create a situation that al Qaeda is not coming back," he said.

Under an international agreement, foreign combat forces are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, a process which is already under way.

  WIDESPREAD ANGER
The groundswell of anger over the burning of the Koran, which Muslims revere as the literal word of God, has highlighted the challenges ahead as Western forces try to quell violence and bring about some form of reconciliation with the Taliban.
The violence has killed more than 30 people and wounded at least 200, including two U.S. troops shot dead by an Afghan soldier who joined rallies in the east. Two U.S. officers were also shot at close range inside the Interior Ministry.
In an interview from Rabat, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the violence was "out of hand and it needs to stop".
The shooting of two U.S. officers deep inside the heavily fortified Interior Ministry on Saturday has intensified the sense of unease among Westerners and deepened the divide with their Afghan counterparts.
The attack illustrates the dilemma faced by NATO forces as they move away from a combat role to an advise-and-assist mission, which will require them to place more staff in ministries.
With the 2014 timetable unfolding, pressure is growing for an earlier pullout, especially among Washington's allies in Europe, where the bloody and expensive war is deeply unpopular.
The high-level killings prompted NATO, Britain, Germany and Canada to withdraw their staff from Afghan ministries.
The Taliban also took responsibility for the Interior Ministry attack, although the Islamist group often exaggerates claims involving attacks against Western forces.
On Sunday, the ministry said one of its employees was a suspect in the shooting of the two U.S. officers. Afghan security sources also identified a 25-year-old police intelligence officer as a suspect.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly urged calm and restraint, although he also maintains that those who burned the Korans must be prosecuted.
Similar desecration of the Koran in the past have also sparked violence, although not as widespread and persistent as the riots and protests over the past week.
Last April, seven foreign U.N. staff were killed when protesters overran a base in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif after an obscure pastor from a fringe church in the United States deliberately burned a copy of the Koran.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni in KABUL, Fraidoon Elhaam in KUNDUZ, Rafiq Sherzad in Jalalabad, and Jackie Frank in WASHINGTON; Editing by Michael Georgy and Nick Macfie)

U.S. Army drops charges against last soldier in Afghan

The U.S. Army has dismissed all charges against the last of five soldiers to face a court-martial in the slaying of unarmed Afghan civilians, officials from their home base near Tacoma, Washington, said on Friday.

Army Specialist Michael Wagnon, who was released from military detention and placed under home confinement in April, had been charged with premeditated murder in the death of a villager in Afghanistan during a tour of duty in February 2010.

"As of right now, he's pretty much a free man," said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord. "He is still in the Army but a free man."

The dismissal of the case against Wagnon, 31, brought to an abrupt end the Army's prosecution of the most egregious atrocities that U.S. military personnel have been convicted of committing during a decade of war in Afghanistan.

Wagnon's initial reaction to news of the dismissal was stunned disbelief, his defense attorney Colby Vokey told Reuters late on Friday. He then became "ecstatic" and "really relieved."

Vokey, based in Dallas, called the dismissal "fantastic news." He said the "Army did the right thing. We maintained all along his innocence and the government said it was the right thing to do."

Five members of the infantry unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade were charged with killing Afghan civilians in cold blood in random attacks staged to look like legitimate combat engagements. Seven other GIs were charged with lesser offenses in a case that began as an investigation into rampant hashish abuse within the unit.

Pentagon officials have said that misconduct exposed by the case had damaged the image of the United States abroad.

Photographs entered as evidence showed the accused ringleader of the group, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons to the to the inflammatory Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004.

Gibbs was convicted by court-martial in November of murdering three unarmed civilians, drawing an automatic life prison sentence, but he will be eligible for parole in 8 1/2 years.

His chief accuser and onetime right-hand man, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced in March of last year to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same three murders. As part of his plea deal, Morlock had agreed to testify against the remaining witnesses, including Wagnon.

A third soldier charged with murder, Adam Winfield, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. A fourth, Andrew Holmes, was sentenced to seven years after pleading guilty to a single count of murder.

Wagnon was the last to face court-martial.

Dangerfield would not say why the charges were dropped, and a statement from the base said only that the move was "in the interest of justice."

The dismissal of charges comes less than two weeks after a U.S. Marine sergeant accused of leading a 2005 massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha pleaded guilty to one count of dereliction of duty. As part of his plea deal, the Marine, Frank Wuterich he was spared jail time and instead faces a maximum penalty of demotion to the rank of private.

Wuterich initially was charged with murder in connection with the Haditha killings. Six of the seven other Marines originally accused in that case previously had their charges dismissed by military judges, while another was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

Special Report: Bloomberg reloads in push for gun control

Among the slick, million-dollar ads for the likes of Pepsi and Honda during the Super Bowl this Sunday, viewers in New York and Boston will see a far more modest spot. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will be sitting on a couch touting an issue most politicians avoid like the plague: gun control.

The two mayors, whose local teams face off in the big game, are making the pitch for Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), the organization they co-founded in 2006.

Murder has been on the decline in New York and other major American cities for years, but the mayors say they still see too many dead cops and teens. On Tuesday night, Bloomberg was at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan visiting a New York police officer who had just been shot in the face in Brooklyn.

"We have someone who's dedicated his life to protecting all of us, who has had a much too close brush with death tonight because of what appears to be an illegal gun," Bloomberg told a news conference. He added that more Americans have been killed by illegal guns since 1968 than were killed in World War II.

Candidates for local and national office in the U.S. have faced sharp backlashes for advocating restraints on gun ownership, such as assault weapons or guns on campus. Such pushes draw fire from the well-funded National Rifle Association (NRA) and its allies. For many defenders of the Constitution's Second Amendment - the right to bear arms - guns are the single issue on which they vote.

"We have to face the fact that both Democrats and Republicans have for a while viewed this as the third rail of American politics," said John Feinblatt, who helps run MAIG as Bloomberg's chief advisor for policy and strategic planning. (Bloomberg is an independent; Menino is a Democrat.)

Democrats, who are more likely than Republicans to favor some restrictions on gun ownership, made a conscious decision to stay away from the gun issue in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. The aim: protect the so-called Blue Dog conservative Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, who didn't toe the party line on gun control. Most were defeated anyway.

If the Democratic Party hoped to keep the gun issue off center stage in the 2012 presidential race, MAIG's campaign makes that unlikely. So does the fact that the NRA and the gun industry's trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), have announced they will have a combined war chest of $225 million .

"We are anticipating having a voter-education effort that will be our largest effort ever," said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at the NSSF.

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre echoed the sentiment.

"I don't think this is going to be an apathetic year for American gun owners."

NO MORE CANDLES

New York's activist mayor cannot simply restrict handguns in his city - as he has done with smoking and transfats. Two Supreme Court decisions - District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago - have declared such local initiatives unconstitutional. Instead, Bloomberg launched MAIG, which now has 600 members nationwide. Although it has a handful of private donors, the bulk of MAIG's $4 million budget comes out of the mayor's own pocket.

"He's putting his money where his mouth is," said Carolyn McCarthy, a Democratic congresswoman from Long Island. She entered politics after a 1993 shooting spree on the Long Island Rail Road left her husband dead and her son severely injured.

Bloomberg, in his third and last term, is free from concerns about electability and can tap a personal fortune of $19.5 billion, according to a November estimate by Forbes. As for speculation that he might mount a presidential bid this round or next, his leadership on such a divisive issue makes that look less likely.

"There was a lot of political capital that was poured into this," one person who worked closely with MAIG said.

In the past, advocates for stricter gun controls held marches, rallies and candlelight vigils. MAIG has taken a far more activist approach, conducting undercover investigations and sting operations that are then dramatically revealed to the press.

In 2009, New York City contracted the security firm Kroll Inc. to send undercover agents to gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada to show how people who could not pass a background check easily bought guns.

MAIG also used undercover investigators to expose gun dealers who sold to "straw purchasers," buyers intending to quickly resell the guns on the black market. Another investigation identified online gun sellers who did not require background checks.

Bloomberg launched another probe after the January 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Using city money, he sent undercover investigators to Arizona to repeat the gun show sting and prove how easy it was for someone like Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, to get a gun.

That move enraged supporters of unfettered gun rights.

"The 'sting' was a waste of money that misleads Americans and did nothing to reduce crime," wrote John Lott Jr., an economist who writes about guns, in a column on FoxNews.com. "Talk about an aggressive publicity stunt."

The NSSF's Keane said there are serious problems with many MAIG actions. He cited another investigation in which MAIG used gun data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to sue dealers found to be selling guns to straw buyers.

"The New York City police department went to the ATF, traced data, turned that traced data over to private investigators, violated federal law, and interfered in 18 ongoing criminal investigations," he said. "The ATF had to pull agents out of the field because they were placed at risk."

Marc Lavorgna, a spokesman for the New York City mayor's office, said in response: "They can't argue the substance, so they continue to make a false, tired claim that has been directly refuted by the ATF. And the courts have validated that our investigations were legal."

The ATF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Opponents of the mayors' efforts have also seized on a Department of Justice program codenamed "Fast and Furious" to discredit sting operations. Beginning in 2009, the ATF, investigating a gun-trafficking network in Arizona and Mexico, supplied 2,000 illegal guns they hoped to trace through the system so they could catch the leaders. Instead, they lost track of hundreds of the guns - two of which were found near the murder scene of Brian Terry, a border patrol agent, in 2010.

Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder was called before a congressional committee for a second time to explain how the program went bad. He repeated that senior Justice Department and ATF officials had not known about the operation until it was over.

REAL CHANGE

Members of the MAIG say they are not trying to take guns away from their legal owners, just to close loopholes that allow criminals to get guns and move them around undetected.

"It's a serious safety issue," said Margaret Stock, the Democratic mayor of Butler, Pennsylvania, the town of 13,000 where Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spent part of his childhood. "If an officer gets shot with an illegal gun I'm responsible."

Butler is in a sparsely populated area of western Pennsylvania where the first day of deer hunting season is often a school holiday.

"We're a big hunting community, but this is illegal handguns, it's a totally different issue," Stock said. "I had a little bit of backlash from local members of the NRA that I was somehow anti-gun. That was not the intent of the coalition."

MAIG's efforts have spurred some change. In 2008, Wal-Mart signed the voluntary 10-point code of conduct MAIG developed for gun sellers. It includes videotaping the area of a store where guns are sold, setting up a computerized gun tracing and alert system, and performing background checks on its employees.

An Ohio gun show operator identified in MAIG's 2009 sting began offering police and federal firearms agents a free booth at his shows to strengthen background checks and help dealers recognize straw buyers, according to the Dayton Daily News.

MAIG claims on its website that "four out of the seven gun shows and venues" fingered in the 2009 investigation "have changed their practices."

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

No one thinks gun control is going to be the most important issue in 2012, but there are specific races and constituencies where it certainly will matter.

One such race is northwestern Arkansas, where a 33-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran named Ken Aden is challenging his former battalion commander for a Congressional seat. Aden is running as a progressive Democrat; his Republican opponent, Steve Womack, is a freshman incumbent, part of the Tea Party sweep of the 2010 midterm elections.

Aden, who has already met with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and other party officials in Washington, has strong views on guns. He collects them, and say he knows what damage they can do. When Aden was 16 his father was shot and killed by his stepmother, using his dad's own 357 magnum and his shotgun.

"We've got to keep guns out of the wrong hands," Aden said.

He supports the background checks mandated by the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and has pledged in his platform to "fight to make sure that dangerous assault rifles and ammunition with no practical purpose in hunting, self-protection, or sport shooting ... stay off our streets."

Womack, for his part has co-sponsored several pieces of legislation to reinforce Second Amendment rights, including a bill that would force states to honor other states' concealed carry permits.

"New, more stringent gun laws will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals," Womack told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in January 2011, after the Tucson shootings. "Rather, proper enforcement of our current laws will provide the necessary mechanisms to ensure the well-being of the American people."

The NRA is telling supporters that President Obama will outlaw guns in a second term by appointing Supreme Court justices to reverse the gains made in the Heller and McDonald decisions. The White House denies that it has any such aim.

"The real threat to the Second Amendment is the reelection of President Obama," said LaPierre.

He believes that other Democratic candidates will stay away from gun issues so as not to draw attention to Obama's ultimate game plan.

"Their strategy is to fog the issue through the 2012 election, because they don't want the Second Amendment or guns to prevent the reelection of President Obama," LaPierre said of the Democrats.

Texas executes man caught years after crime by DNA

Texas executed a convicted murderer by lethal injection on Thursday, administering the ultimate punishment to a man who had been paroled for an assault in Michigan when his DNA linked him to a years-old murder in San Antonio.

Rodrigo Hernandez, 38, was convicted of sexually assaulting and strangling Susan Verstegen in 1994, leaving her body in a San Antonio trash can.

The execution, which a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said was carried out at a prison in Huntsville, was the second in the United States this year after Oklahoma executed Gary Welch on January 5 for stabbing a man to death during a drug dispute.

Among Hernandez's final statements, he said: "I want to tell everybody that I love everybody. Keep your heads up," according to the Department of Criminal Justice spokesman. "We are all family, people of God almighty."

Shortly before lapsing into unconsciousness, he said: "This stuff stings, man," according to Jason Clark, the department spokesman.

Hernandez's victim was a 38-year-old Frito-Lay worker who was stocking snacks at a grocery store when she was attacked in 1994, according to the Texas Attorney General's Office.

Hernandez's DNA wasn't matched to the crime until 2002, when Michigan officials took a sample from him as he was paroled for a separate crime and put it into a national database.

Hernandez was the first person executed this year in Texas, which executed 13 people in 2011 and has put to death more than four times as many people as any other state since the United States reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Hernandez told the San Antonio Express-News in an interview published this month he didn't kill Verstegen and will "take that to the grave."

But Verstegen's mother, Anna Verstegen of San Antonio, said this week she hoped Hernandez would, before he died, feel sorry for what he did to her daughter, who left behind a 15-year-old son.

"It's never too late," she told Reuters. "We're just praying for him. The kind of God I believe in can forgive."

In 2010, Michigan investigators said DNA evidence linked Hernandez to the 1991 murder of Muriel Stoepker, 77, of Grand Rapids, but that he would not be tried because he was already on death row in Texas.

An execution that had been scheduled in Texas for next week was stayed on Wednesday by the Supreme Court. The convict granted the reprieve, Donald Newbury, was to be executed for his role in the 2000 murder of an Irving, Texas, police officer.

Newbury, part of a group known as the "Texas Seven," escaped from prison and robbed a sporting goods store at gunpoint. The officer, Aubrey Hawkins, was killed outside the store as the group left the scene.

Newbury was granted the stay after his attorneys raised concerns about the effectiveness of his lawyers during post-conviction proceedings.

Nationwide, the number of executions fell for the second year in a row in 2011, with 43 inmates put to death compared with 46 in 2010 and 52 in 2009, Death Penalty Information Center figures show. In 1999, a record 98 prisoners were executed.

U.S. experts urge more study of nanotechnology threat

Studying the potential health hazards of nanotechnology will require an additional $24 million a year to close the knowledge gap about the tiny particles used in a fast-growing array of consumer products, the National Research Council said on Wednesday.

A new federal oversight agency is also required to integrate research by private business, universities and international groups, the non-profit research council said in a study sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nanotechnology involves designing and manufacturing materials on the scale of one-billionth of a meter. It is used in areas ranging from stain-resistanth cloting and cosmetics to food additives.

The sector's product sales were about $225 billion in 2009 and it is expected to expand rapidly in the next decade, said the study by the research council, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Despite the promise of nanotechnology, without strategic research into emergent risks associated with it -- and a clear understanding of how to manage and avoid potential risks -- the future of safe and sustainable nanotechnology-based materials, products, and processes is uncertain," said the study by a committee of 19 scientists.

There is insufficient understanding about the environmental, health and safety effects of engineered nanotechnology materials (ENMs). Little progress has been made on the health effects of ENMs that have been swallowed, inhaled or absorbed by humans, it said.

There also has been little research on potential damage from more-complex ENMs that are expected to come into the market in the next decade.

The federal Centers for Disease Control says there are indications "that nanoparticles can penetrate the skin or move from the respiratory system to other organs."

"At this time, the limited evidence available suggests caution when potential exposures to nanoparticles may occur," the CDC says on its website.

CHALLENGING MATERIALS

Half of nanomaterials are made from ceramic nanoparticles, with another 20 percent each from carbon nanotubes and nanoporous materials, the report said.

The complexity of ENMs and their coatings make them challenging to assess as risks. For example, a nanomaterial can change its surface properties depending on where it is, such as in lung fluid or air, the study said.

The federal government has set aside $123.5 million in its 2012 budget for ENM safety research, and that level should remain stable for about five years, the report said.

Public, private and international groups should designate another $5 million a year for collecting and disseminating information on ENM, and $10 million for instrumentation, it said.

Investment in developing and providing benchmark nanomaterials should be from $3 million to $5 million a year. Identifying nanomaterials sources and developing research networks each need $2 million a year.

All the new spending should be kept in place for five years, the report recommended.

The panel called for replacing the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which coordinates federal agencies' investments in sector research and development, with a body that has the authority to direct federal safety research.

The new body also should ensure that federal research is meshed with that from private business, universities and international organizations, it said.

U.S. commandos free two hostages in daring Somalia raid

Elite U.S. Navy SEALs swooped into Somalia on Wednesday and rescued two hostage aid workers after killing their nine kidnappers, a rare and daring raid in the Horn of Africa nation to free foreign captives.

American Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Hagen Thisted, 60, of Denmark, humanitarian aid workers for a Danish demining group, were rescued three months after they were kidnapped on October 25 in the town of Galkayo in the semi-autonomous Galmudug region of the Horn of Africa country.

The SEALs came from the same elite Navy unit -- SEAL Team Six -- that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan last year, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The mission also involved other U.S. forces providing airlift for the SEALs to and from the raid.

"The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

The SEALs parachuted into a location near the town of Gadaado in central Somalia and then hiked to the encampment where the two hostages were being held by their nine abductors, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

It was not clear that any of the same SEALs were involved in both the Somalia and bin Laden raids even if they came from SEAL Team Six.

The raiding party arrived prepared to detain the kidnappers but was not able to do that and all nine were killed, Pentagon officials said. The kidnappers were heavily armed and had explosives nearby, they said. None of the U.S. forces was hurt.

Obama authorized the raid on Monday and military commanders gave the final go-ahead on Tuesday, Pentagon officials said.

They said a confluence of factors, from the health of the hostages to the available intelligence and operational conditions, gave Obama a window of opportunity to act and prompted Washington to move ahead with the raid.

Buchanan was suffering from a possible kidney infection, according to people involved with the hostages. New evidence obtained last week suggested her health was deteriorating, said Pentagon officials, who would not elaborate on her condition.

"We're confident that there was enough of a sense of urgency, there was enough actionable intelligence to take the action that we did, for the president to make the decision that he did," said Navy Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.

Buchanan and Thisted were flown to neighboring Djibouti, home to the only U.S. military base in Africa and France's largest base on the continent, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. They were under the care of U.S. military doctors, officials said.

'GOOD JOB TONIGHT'

Obama was overheard congratulating Panetta on the success of the operation as the president entered the U.S. House of Representatives chamber on Tuesday for his annual State of the Union speech.

Panetta had been at the White House before the speech and had been monitoring the progress of the operation. The raid was still being wrapped up when the president spoke to him.

"Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight," Obama said.

The Pentagon said there were no known links between the kidnappers and Islamist militant groups in the region. Kirby said the U.S. military had no evidence to connect them to piracy.

But Obama called them "criminals and pirates" in his statement, as did local officials.

"About 12 U.S. helicopters are now at Galkayo. We thank the United States. Pirates have spoilt the whole region's peace and ethics. They are mafia," Mohamed Ahmed Alim, leader of the Galmudug region, told Reuters.

He was speaking from Hobyo, a pirate base north of Haradheere, where he said he was negotiating the release of an American journalist seized on Saturday, also from Galkayo.

Somali pirate gangs typically seize ships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden and hold the crews until they receive a ransom. The kidnapping of the aid workers in Galkayo would be an unusual case of a pirate gang being behind a seizure on land.

U.S. and French forces have intervened to rescue pirate hostages at sea, but attacks on pirate bases are rare.

Pirates and local elders say the American journalist and a number of sailors from India, South Korea, the Philippines and Denmark are being held by pirate gangs.

A British tourist kidnapped from Kenya on September 11, 2011, is also still held captive in Somalia.

Somalia's government applauded the mission and said it welcomed any operation against pirates.

U.S. special forces killed senior al Qaeda militant Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a raid in southern Somalia in 2009. Several other al Qaeda or al Shabaab officials have been killed in U.S. drone strikes in Somalia over the past few years.

In an excerpt of a CBS "60 Minutes interview released on Wednesday, Panetta said al Qaeda "is still a threat" that the United States would pursue around the world, including Africa.

"We're confronting the nodes of al Qaeda in Yemen, in Somalia, in North Africa," Panetta said.

Panetta visited U.S. troops in Djibouti last month on his way to Afghanistan and Iraq, in a stopover that reflected Obama's growing focus on the militant and piracy threats from Yemen and the eastern edge of Africa.

In Djibouti, the United States has a platform to monitor al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen and Somalia's al Shabaab, a hard-line rebel group with links to al Qaeda.

In State of the Union address, Obama says ‘basic American promise’ is at risk

President Obama warned in his State of the Union address Tuesday that the nation's middle class is at risk because of growing economic inequality, and argued that the government must do more to preserve the basic American dream.

In a speech that is likely to set the theme of his 2012 re-election bid, Obama said "the basic American promise" that hard work can allow one to own a home and support a family are at risk if the government doesn't do more to balance the scale between the nation's rich and poor.

"The defining issue of our time is how to keep that promise alive. No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important," Obama declared. "We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.  What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values.  We have to reclaim them."

In his third such address to the Congress, Obama's focus was not just on the future—as he laid out broad proposals to boost an "economy built to last, where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded."

But in a message that was unmistakably aimed at voters in the upcoming presidential election, Obama reminded his audience that the nation's economic troubles began long before he arrived at the White House, starting with the collapse of the nation's leading banks in 2008 due to lax regulation and "bad behavior."

"In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs.  And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect," Obama said.

But he argued that the country is turning around under his policies, pointing to 3 million jobs created in the last 22 months. In a sign that Obama will campaign against the Republican-led Congress as much as a his eventual GOP presidential rival, the president indicated he will take a hard stand against lawmakers determined to block his economic agenda.

"The state of our union is getting stronger, and we've come too far to turn back now," Obama insisted. "As long as I'm president, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place."

The president argued that he's laying out a "blueprint for an economy that's built to last" based on four main themes: American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers and "a renewal of American values."

Among other things, Obama called for a rollback for tax breaks for American companies that outsource jobs overseas and proposed new tax cuts for manufacturers that build their products stateside--a proposal that generated muted applause among Republican lawmakers in the House chamber. He also announced the creation of a "trade enforcement unit" that would investigate unfair trade practices in counties including China--an issue that has been a big issue on the 2012 campaign trail.

"Our workers are the most productive on Earth, and if the playing field is level, I promise you--America will always win," Obama declared.

Tackling an issue that will be big in the general election, Obama called on Republicans to pass immigration reform, including the DREAM Act. "If election-year politics keeps Congress from acting on a comprehensive plan, let's at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, and defend this country," Obama said. "Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship. I will sign it right away."

Obama also called for aid to boost the nation's struggling housing market--proposing new tax incentives to help homeowners save $3,000 a year on their mortgages. He also announced the creation of a federal task force to monitor banks, mortgage lenders and credit card companies for fraud.

"Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a government and a financial system that do the same," Obama said. "It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody."

Obama sounded familiar themes on energy--calling for a rollback of tax cuts on oil companies in favor of investments in clean energy sources. He announced a federal incentive to build clean energy projects on government land.

On education, he called on states to pass laws to mandate that all minors stay in school until they graduate or turn 18. He also called on Congress to enact measures to ensure student aid--but he also warned higher education institutions to crack down on skyrocketing education costs.

"If you can't stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down," Obama said. "Higher education can't be a luxury--it's an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford."

He repeated a call for investment in the nation's crumbling infrastructure, announcing that he will sign an executive order to clear the "red tape" slowing federal construction projects. "But you need to fund these projects. Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home," Obama said.

The White House has been signaling for weeks that Obama would embrace populist themes about the economy, as a way of drawing a line in the sand between him and his Republican rivals ahead of his 2012 re-election push. Like other presidents before him, he was joined in the House chamber by individuals aimed at personifying elements of his speech, including Debbie Bosanek, the secretary to billionaire financier Warren Buffett, whose argument that he shouldn't be paying a lower tax rate than average workers has become a rallying cry for the White House.

"We don't begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it," Obama insisted. "When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it's not because they envy the rich. It's because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don't need and the country can't afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference."

But the larger message of Obama's remarks was obvious, as the president at one point returned to one of the major themes of his 2008 presidential bid: Rising above cynicism and partisan gridlock to enact real change in Washington. He noted that the "greatest blow to confidence in our economy" came during last year's combative debt ceiling talks.

"Who benefited from that fiasco?" Obama asked. "I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street.  But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad--and it seems to get worse every year."

He called for lawmakers to "lower the temperature" and "end the notion" that Democrats and Republicans must be locked in a "perpetual campaign of mutual destruction."

At the same time, he warned again that he wouldn't wait for Congress to enact major reforms in Washington. "With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions that help the economy grow," Obama said. "But I can do a whole lot more with your help. Because when we act together, there is nothing the United States of America can't achieve."