Venezuela's top court endorses Chavez inauguration delay

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's top court endorsed the postponement of Hugo Chavez's inauguration this week and ruled on Wednesday that the cancer-stricken president and his deputy would continue in their roles, despite a cacophony of opposition complaints.

Critics had argued the 58-year-old's absence from his own swearing-in ceremony on January 10 meant a caretaker president must be appointed. Chavez has not been seen in public nor heard from in almost a month following surgery in Cuba.

"Right now we cannot say when, how or where the president will be sworn in," Supreme Court Chief Judge Luisa Morales told a news conference.

"As president re-elect there is no interruption of performance of duties ... The inauguration can be carried out at a later date before the Supreme Court."

The decision opens the door in theory for Chavez to remain in office for weeks or months more from a Cuban hospital bed - though there is no evidence he is even conscious.

It leaves the South American country in the hands of Vice President Nicolas Maduro, as de facto leader of the government.

The opposition say that is a brazen violation of the constitution, and that Maduro should leave office on Thursday when the current presidential term had been due to expire.

They say National Assembly boss Diosdado Cabello, another powerful Chavez ally, should take over the running of the country while new elections would be organized within 30 days.

Maduro would be the ruling Socialist Party's candidate.

Government leaders insist Chavez, 58, is fulfilling his duties as head of state, even though official medical bulletins say he suffered complications after the surgery, including a severe lung infection, and has had trouble breathing.

His resignation or death would transform politics in the OPEC nation, where he is revered by poor supporters thankful for his social largesse, but denounced by opponents as a dictator.

RALLY PLANNED FOR THURSDAY

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost a presidential election to Chavez in October, said the Supreme Court had become politicized under the socialist leader's administration.

"The tribunal gave an interpretation (of the constitution) in order to solve a problem that the government has," Capriles told a news conference.

Moody's Investors Service warned on Wednesday that Venezuela's sovereign credit rating, already at junk status, faces short-term risks over any political transition.

Prices of Venezuela's widely traded bonds have soared lately on Chavez's health woes, but dipped this week as investors' expectations of a quick government change apparently faded.

The president has undergone four operations, as well as weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, since being diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer in his pelvic area in June 2011.

He looked to have staged a remarkable recovery from the illness last year, winning a new six-year term at a hard-fought election in October. But within weeks of his victory he had to return to Havana for more treatment.

The government has called for a huge rally outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on Thursday, and allied leaders such as Uruguay's Jose Mujica, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega have said they will visit - despite Chavez's absence.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, a close friend, has announced plans to visit Chavez in Cuba on Friday.

The unprecedented silence by Chavez, who is well known for his hours-long rambling speeches, has convinced many Venezuelans that his 14 years in power may be coming to an end.

Unlike after his previous operations in Cuba, no photographs have been published of him recuperating, and social media in Venezuela is buzzing with rumors he is on life support.

Cabello, the pugnacious head of the National Assembly, has repeatedly ruled out taking over as caretaker president to order a new presidential election, saying Chavez remains in charge.

"Tomorrow we will all go to the Miraflores palace," he told a televised Socialist Party meeting on Wednesday. "The people will be invested as president. We are all Chavez!"

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga, Diego Ore and Enrique Andres Pretel; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Eric Walsh)

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US plays tough with Karzai on Afghan troops

WASHINGTON: US officials plan a mix of hardball negotiating and flattery during a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as President Barack Obama decides how deeply to cut forces in America's longest war.

Karzai will be Obama's first foreign visitor of 2013, with a White House meeting on Friday and State Department dinner on Thursday. The Afghan leader met Wednesday with senators including Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

The talks come as the freshly re-elected Obama charts out plans to pull most of the 68,000 US troops out of Afghanistan. The United States and its allies have already agreed to withdraw combat troops by the end of 2014 but questions remain on a US training and security role after that.

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters Tuesday that Obama sought to prevent Al-Qaeda's return to Afghanistan but would not rule out any ideas including the so-called zero option -- leaving no US troops at all.

Afghanistan watchers in Washington largely saw the hints as a strategy aimed at Karzai, who has had a tumultuous relationship with the Obama administration and is seen as wanting US troops to stay as long as possible.

James Dobbins, a former US diplomat involved in the establishment of Karzai's government in 2001, called the airing of the zero option "a tactical move designed to indicate to Karzai that he has less leverage in this negotiation than he might otherwise."

Dobbins, who considered a Taliban return to power in post-2014 Afghanistan to be possible but unlikely, said troop levels would be determined by how much the United States was willing to spend after more than 11 years of war.

"My view is it's a straight cost/risk ratio. The more you're prepared to pay, the lower your risk; the higher your risk tolerance, the less you can get away with," Dobbins, now an expert at the Rand Corp., said at the Atlantic Council think tank.

News reports have said that some administration officials favour as few as several thousand troops in Afghanistan. Obama's nominees as his next secretary of state and defence secretary, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, are both seen as supportive of a wide-scale military drawdown.

Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute said he expected Karzai to press hardest during the White House meetings over what equipment, including air power, the United States would leave or provide Afghan forces.

"He doesn't want the US to pull out completely and he doesn't think the US wants to pull out completely. So that's the meeting point, but he wants to use that as leverage to extract as much as possible," Weinbaum said of Karzai.

Weinbaum said the visit was also aimed at preserving a friendly atmosphere with Karzai, who "is so thin-skinned, if you look at him the wrong way, he thinks you're plotting his demise."

"A lot of these meetings are just to try to keep the chemistry from getting too ugly," said Weinbaum, who believed the plentiful events for Karzai "improve the chances that maybe you can convince him that he's loved."

Tensions rose between the United States and Afghanistan after Karzai won presidential elections in 2009 despite widespread charges of irregularities.

The Obama administration has also pressed Karzai to curb corruption, considered by some US officials to be a major impediment to increasing the government's legitimacy in Afghan eyes.

Opinion polls for several years have shown that the US public is tired of the human and financial cost of the Afghanistan war, initially launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. US forces killed Osama bin Laden, the attack's mastermind, in Pakistan in 2011.

But neoconservative analysts Fred and Kimberly Kagan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said that leaving only a tiny US military presence would impede operations against Al-Qaeda and risk a renewal of ethnic civil war.

"Those who say that Afghanistan can't get any worse than it is today lack both imagination and any knowledge of the country's recent history," they wrote.

- AFP/jc

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Pakistani attackers took away soldier’s head as ‘trophy’

NEW DELHI: The fog of war is a reality even during peace time along the troubled Indo-Pak border. So it is not surprising that Tuesday's gruesome attack on Indian soldiers has slightly different narratives, according to who you speak to.

What is clear is that three soldiers of 13 Rajputana Rifles, the "Barasingha" battalion deployed with two others in the Mendhar sector, were together when they were attacked by the Pakistani intruders. The soldiers were close to the LoC, ahead of Indian fencing built several meters inside the LOC.

The intelligence establishment says the three were returning after manning through the night to an advance post, ahead of the fence, when they were ambushed. They were on their way to the company headquarters around 10.45am when the attack took place.

However, Army officials said the three were acting as "scouts" ahead of the seven-member "area domination patrol" when they were ambushed.

All, however, agree the two — Lance Naik Hemraj and ​Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh—were killed immediately. The Pakistanis beheaded Hemraj — and carried his head back across the border as a "trophy" — and were then were trying to severe Singh's head but failed. Probably, it was then that the other Indian troops opened fire.

The gun-battle lasted for over 30 minutes. The third soldier, who was injured but escaped a brutal death, is being treated at the military hospital in Udhampur.

The Pakistani attackers took away the personal weapons of both Hemraj and Singh. Some sources indicate there was even hand-to-hand engagement between the two sides, knife injuries on the dead are indicative of that.

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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White House Won't Rule Out $1 Trillion Coin

(United States Mint/Wikimedia Commons)

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney today flatly ruled out any negotiations with Congress over raising the debt ceiling, but there’s one odd-ball solution he would not rule out:  minting trillion dollars coins to pay off the debt.

“There is no Plan B. There is no backup plan. There is Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills of the United States,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters at the daily White House briefing.

READ: $1-Trillion Coins: The Ultimate Debt Ceiling End-Around?

Asked if the administration would rule out minting trillion dollars coins if Congress fails to act, Carney deflected saying “you could speculate about a lot of things.”

“Nothing needs to come to these kinds of… speculative notions about how to deal with a problem that is easily resolved by Congress doing its job, very simply,” he added.

Pressed further on why they won’t offer a clear yes-or-no answer to the question, Carney referred questions to the Treasury Department.

“I answered it thoroughly,” he later joked. “And I have no coins in my pocket.”

Some have suggested the President could invoke the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution – which states, “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned” – and ignore the debt ceiling altogether.  On that question, Carney has offered a straight answer:  the 14 Amendment does not apply to the debt ceiling.

“We just don’t believe that it provides the authority that some believe it does,” Carney said.

The trillion-dollar-coin idea has been floated by, among others, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

Here’s our full Q and A:

KARL: I heard you unequivocally rule out using the 14th Amendment on the debt ceiling. I heard you unequivocally rule out negotiating with Congress. But you did not rule out this trillion-dollar coin idea. So can I ask you just a yes-or-no question? Does the White House rule out the idea of minting trillion-dollar coins as a way of dealing with the debt ceiling?

CARNEY: I would refer you to Treasury for the specifics of this question. I can tell you that the president does not believe that there is a backup plan or a plan B or an off-ramp. The only viable option here is Congress to fulfill its — that Congress fulfills its responsibility and ensures that the United States of America pays its bills, as it has always paid its bills throughout its history.

KARL: But why have we ruled out the 14th Amendment and not ruled out the trillion-dollar coin idea?

CARNEY: Again, I can tell you that there are no back-up plans. There are no plan B’s. I’d refer you to the Treasury.

–

KARL: Jay, the speaker of the House has made it perfectly clear that he is willing to increase the debt ceiling, but the principle is for every dollar the debt ceiling is increased, a dollar of spending must be cut. Given that you’re saying that the White House will not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling, are you willing to accept that principle from the speaker, a dollar in cuts for every dollar increase?

MR. CARNEY: I think the president’s been very clear that his absolute principle is that we need to reduce our deficit in a balanced way that does not shift all the burden, through cuts exclusively, on senior citizens, on families who have disabled children, on families who are trying to send their kids to school. That’s just unacceptable.

You know, one of the things we learned in the process that we just went through late in — late last year is that when it comes to specificity, we never saw any specificity from Republicans in terms of how exactly they would achieve the kind of sweeping cuts that they say they want and out of whose — you know, from whom would they demand that payment.

And what the president has been very clear about is he will not negotiate on Congress’ responsibility to pay its bills. He will negotiate and is willing to compromise, as he has demonstrated repeatedly, when it comes to moving forward in a balanced way to reduce our deficit. We have to deal with the sequester. We have to deal with a variety of budgetary and economic and fiscal challenges.

But he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. And the threat itself is a problem, as we saw in the summer of 2011. The binary choice that Republicans seem to want to present to the American public is either we gut Medicare and Social Security or we tank the global economy. I’m not a communications director for the speaker of the House or the Senate minority leader, but I would think selling that would be very hard.

KARL: But help me understand how this works. You say you will not negotiate on this issue. They’ve put out a principle, so they produce something — and they say they will — that cuts a dollar for every dollar increase. And you’re saying you won’t negotiate on that?

MR. CARNEY: Have you seen that?

KARL: Well, this is what they say they are going to go forward.

MR. CARNEY: Well, I mean, you know –

KARL: So either –

MR. CARNEY: — words are not actions, and there has been, at — to this date, very little specificity, you know, since we — since the Ryan plan, which itself was lacking in specifics. And if their — if their position is we’re going to voucherize Medicare or tank the global economy, they should say so. That is unacceptable to the American people. It’s certainly unacceptable to the president.

Look, here’s the thing. Congress has the authority to authorize money, right, not the president. Congress racked up these bills. Congress has to pay these bills. We are very interested in a discussion and negotiation about getting our fiscal house in order. This president has already signed into law over $2 trillion in deficit reduction. He is eager to do more in a balanced way.

But it is not appropriate to — in this president’s view — to say that if I don’t get what I want, I’m not going to raise the debt limit. That is basically saying, I will abandon the history of the United States maintaining the full faith and credit of its currency and its — and its treasury by refusing to pay bills because I didn’t get what I want politically.

And that’s just not acceptable to the president.

KARL:  I’m not sure I understand how that works — you’re not going to negotiate at all? –

MR. CARNEY: We’re not going to negotiate. Congress has a — if Congress wants to give the president the responsibility to raise the debt ceiling, he would take it, as we saw when — in 2010 or — I forget, there have been so many of these confrontations — in — when — in 2011 when the so-called McConnell plan was adopted, you know. But they assigned themselves this responsibility. They need to be — the fact that they, you know, assigned it to them is something that they have to deal with. They assigned it to themselves, they need to act, and they need to, without drama or delay, raise the debt ceiling. We still have — there is plenty of opportunity outside of threatening the full faith and credit of the United States to debate fundamental differences over our economic and fiscal policy proposals, but it is not wise to do that around raising the debt ceiling, not wise to do it around the simple principle that we, the United States of America, pay our debts.

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Venezuela postpones inauguration for cancer-stricken Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will postpone the inauguration of President Hugo Chavez for a new term due to health problems, the government said on Tuesday, another sign the socialist leader's cancer may be bringing an end to his 14 years in power.

The 58-year-old former soldier who has dominated the South American OPEC nation since 1999 has not been heard from since surgery on December 11 in Cuba - his fourth operation since he was diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer in June 2011.

The delay has outraged opposition leaders who insist that Chavez must be sworn in before the National Assembly on January 10 as laid out in the constitution, or temporarily step aside and leave an ally in power.

"The commander president wants us to inform that, based on his medical team's recommendations, the post-operative recovery should extend past January 10," Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a letter read to the legislature.

"As a result, he will not be able to be present at the National Assembly on that date."

The letter said authorities would seek another date for the inauguration ceremony but did not say when it would take place, nor give any time frame for Chavez's recovery or his return from Havana.

Rather than being sworn in by the legislature, he would take his oath at a later date before the Supreme Court, the letter said, as allowed by the constitution.

Government leaders insist Chavez is completely fulfilling his duties as head of state - even though official medical bulletins say he has a severe pulmonary infection and has had trouble breathing.

The government has called for a massive rally of supporters outside the presidential palace on Thursday, and allies including Uruguayan President Jose Mujica and Bolivian leader Evo Morales have confirmed they will visit Venezuela this week despite Chavez's absence.

But the unprecedented silence by the president - famous for regularly speaking for hours in meandering broadcasts - has left many convinced he could be in his last days.

His resignation or death would upend politics in the oil-rich nation where he enjoys a deity-like status among poor supporters thankful for his social largesse.

His critics call him a fledgling dictator who has squandered billions of dollars from crude sales while dashing the independence of state institutions.

CONSTITUTION DISPUTE

The constitution does not specify what happens if the president does not take office on January 10.

Opposition leaders argue that Congress chief Diosdado Cabello should take over as mandated by the constitution if the president's absence is formally declared. Cabello, a close Chavez ally, has ruled that out, saying the president continues to be in charge.

"Venezuela is not a monarchy. Ours is not the Cuban system where power is passed around without an election," opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in the October presidential election, told reporters on Tuesday.

Supporters have held near-daily vigils for Chavez's recovery, while opposition activists accuse the president's allies of a Cuban-inspired manipulation of the situation.

Vice President Maduro, who Chavez named last month as his successor, has taken over the day-to-day running of the government and looks set to continue in the role past Thursday.

The mustachioed former bus driver lacks Chavez's charisma, but he has sought to imitate the president's style with rambunctious attacks on the opposition and televised ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

With the micro-managing Chavez away, major policy decisions in Venezuela, such as a widely expected devaluation of the bolivar currency, appear to be on hold.

Opposition predictions of fighting within the ruling Socialist Party have not materialized, however, with Maduro and Cabello in particular pledging unity despite rumors of rivalry.

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Eric Beech)

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Depardieu skips drink-drive court for Strauss-Kahn film

PODGORICA: Gerard Depardieu skipped a drink-driving court appearance in Paris on Tuesday to work on a film in Montenegro in which he will play Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but claimed he had told French officials he would be absent and the matter had been settled.

The "Cyrano de Bergerac", "Green Card" and "Asterix & Obelix" star, who has already pleaded guilty to driving his scooter while intoxicated, could not attend court because he was on a planned trip to Montenegro, Depardieu told reporters in Podgorica.

"I fled neither from the court, nor from justice," Depardieu said after meeting with Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic.

"I informed the court, I never fled.... I am ready to appear when they want, on the condition that I am there and that I can defend myself," the French star said.

But the no-show meant the hulking actor, embroiled in a bitter tax row that saw him take Russian nationality and angrily vow to quit France, risks being tried by a criminal court where he could face up to two years in jail.

The 64-year-old was in the Balkan nation to meet producers of the film in which he will play the disgraced ex-IMF boss Strauss-Kahn. A police official there told AFP that rumours he was seeking Montenegrin citizenship were false.

Depardieu has said he wants the role because he did not like Strauss-Kahn, who was tipped to be the next French president until a sordid US sex scandal ended his career, because he was "like all French people, a little arrogant".

The actor, whose highly-publicised flight into tax exile has embarrassed President Francois Hollande, was arrested in Paris in November after falling off a scooter he was riding while three times over the legal alcohol limit.

If he had turned up Tuesday in court he would have escaped with a small fine and penalty points on his licence. Now the rotund actor, whose many previous exploits include urinating in a bottle on a plane, could face criminal proceedings.

But Depardieu insisted the case has already been settled.

"The justice (system) in France and my lawyers have informed me that all is fine," he said.

He said he was not a "criminal, I've slipped with my scooter, I fell asleep, that's it.

"I had a low level of alcohol in (my) blood as I had a salad with a drop more of vinegar and it was over the limit," he said jokingly.

"This issue is settled, all is fine and I can return to France and there will be no problems."

Depardieu hit the headlines in December when he bought a house just over the border in Belgium after accusing the French Socialist government of punishing "success, creativity and talent" with allegedly excessive taxes.

That prompted Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to brand his move as "shabby and unpatriotic" -- which in turn prompted the actor to threaten to give up his French citizenship.

The saga became ever more farcical when Russian President Vladimir Putin, eyeing a potential propaganda coup, offered the star Russian nationality.

Depardieu leapt at the chance, travelling last weekend to get his new passport and for some hugs and a meal with the Russian strongman in his sumptuous dacha in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

He was later given a hero's welcome -- and an offer of a free apartment and the job of culture minister -- in Mordovia, a Russian region best known for its Soviet-era gulags.

In the unlikely event that he spends at least six months of the year in Russia, he would benefit from a tax rate of just 13 per cent. His anger at the French government was focused on its planned 75 per cent tax on millionaires.

France's top constitutional authority, the Constitutional Council, struck down the proposed new tax rate on December 29, but the government has vowed to push ahead with it.

- AFP/jc

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Absconding Himachal MLA surrenders

PANCHKULA/DHARAMSHALA: In a face-saving exercise, the Himachal Pradesh Congress on Tuesday forced its on-the-run MLA from Doon constituency Ram Kumar Chaudhary, wanted in a murder case of a dalit woman, to surrender before a Panchkula magistrate hours before the party's newly-elected legislators took oath at Dharamshala.

A police team had been camping in Dharamshala for the past few days to nab the MLA if he arrives for the swearing-in ceremony. The Panchkula police on Monday had announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh for any information on Chaudhary.

Anticipating an embarrassing situation in the HP assembly as the Opposition BJP was planning to target the Congress for protecting a MLA accused of murder, the ruling party apparently asked Chaudhary to surrender before the start of the session on Tuesday morning.

The 42-year-old MLA, who is one of the four accused in the murder of 24-year-old Jyoti Devi, arrived in the court of chief judicial magistrate Bhavna Jain around 10.30am. He was accompanied by his lawyer. Soon, a police team reached there and took the MLA into custody with the permission of the court.

Later in the afternoon, the cops brought him to the court seeking police remand. However, the MLA's attempt to avoid media drew the court's flak this time as Chaudhary, was brought to the courtroom through the backdoor which is normally used by the judges. After hearing the arguments of both the sides, the court remanded Chaudhary in police custody for six days.

The body of Jyoti, a resident of Hoshiarpur, was found in Sector 21 in Panchkula on November 22. A Panchkula court had issued arrest warrants against Chaudhary and his three associates - Dharampal, Paramjeet and Gurmeet - on December 20, 2012.

When asked about Chaudhary's expulsion from the party following his surrender before the court, chief minister Virbhadra Singh said in Dharamshala that law will take its course.

"This case has affected the party's image but it will not have any impact on the stability of the government. He can take oath later, even in the room of the Speaker, but it would have been better had he surrendered earlier," he said after the oath-taking ceremony of new MLAs.

Leader of the Opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal said, "We will not say anything about the Congress party's stand over the accused legislature. But it is not proper for a sitting legislature to go against the law."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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CIA Nominee May Have 'Zero Dark Thirty' Problem

Navy SEALs are seen fighting through a dust storm in the new thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow, "Zero Dark Thirty." (Columbia Pictures/AP Photo)

There’s only one White House staffer portrayed in the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” and it is someone described in the credits as “National Security Advisor.”

It’s a position that’s possibly filled in real life by John Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism advisor, who President Obama nominated Jan. 7 to be director of C.I.A.. The character in the movie, with references to the C.I.A’s involvement in the flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that led the U.S. into war in Iraq, explains to a frustrated agency representative the difficulty of the president’s decision in acting on partial intelligence.

Spoiler alert: The president does ultimately act on that partial intelligence and Osama bin Laden is nabbed.

The character in real life – Brennan – has been opposed by some for his work at the C.I.A. under President Bush and the “enhanced interrogation” policies like waterboarding that also play a prominent role in the movie.

President Obama makes a cameo in the movie in the form of a “60 Minutes” interview in which he declares that, “America doesn’t torture, and I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.”

That declaration is viewed, in the film, by a table full of CIA agents in Pakistan who have been involved in “enhanced” interrogations.

The U.S. used waterboarding on three al Qaeda detainees at secret prisons run by the CIA.  It  ended the practice of using secret prisons in September of 2006 under President Bush and in 2009 President Obama signed executive orders in his first days in office that banned of the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

But that was after the techniques had already scuttled Brennan’s first chance to head the CIA.  Brennan wasn’t nominated to be CIA director back in the early days of the Obama administration, but he was widely considered to be a front-runner for the job. ABC’s Jake Tapper reported at the time that Brennan withdrew his name for consideration and most of the opposition came as a result of his work at the C.I.A. when those techniques were in use.

And there is indication that they will make his nomination difficult this year.

“I appreciate John Brennan’s long record of service to our nation, but I have many questions and concerns about his nomination to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, especially what role he played in the so-called enhanced interrogation programs while serving at the CIA during the last administration, as well as his public defense of those programs,” said Sen. John McCain after Brennan was nominated Monday.  ”I plan to examine this aspect of Mr. Brennan’s record very closely as I consider his nomination.”

The movie has certainly brought “enhanced interrogation” – it’s critics call it torture – back into the conversation about the war on terror, as ABC’s Lee Ferran reported Monday:

Last week three high-powered senators, Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) and 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain (R.-Ariz.), revealed they had written two letters to Morell in December demanding to know what impact the CIA may have had on the depiction of enhanced interrogation in the film and whether the agency “misled” the filmmakers into thinking the tactic was effective.

“As you know, the film depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees. The film then credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques as providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the [bin Laden] compound,” one letter says. “The CIA cannot be held accountable for how the Agency and its activities are portrayed in film, but we are nonetheless concerned, given the CIA’s cooperation with the filmmakers and the narrative’s consistency with past public misstatements by former senior CIA officials, that the filmmakers could have been misled by information they were provided by the CIA.”

Brennan, for his part, has said he opposed torture techniques, as Jake Tapper reported back in 2008 when Brennan removed his name from consideration for the C.I.A. job in 2008.

In a letter released to the media, apparently by Brennan or someone operating on Brennan’s behalf, the former CIA official wrote, “It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, too include waterboarding. The fact that I was not involved in the decision making process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored. Indeed, my criticism of these policies within government circles why I was twice considered for more senior-level positions in the current Administration only to be rebuffed by the White House.”

But Brennan did defend the practice in news media interviews when he described the actions of C.I.A. director George Tenet. This is what Brennan told CBS’s Harry Smith about enhanced interrogation in 2007: “The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures….There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.”

Brennan has also spoken out in support of “rendition” – the practice where the U.S. government captures terror suspects in one country and relocates them to another. That’s a practice still employed by the Obama administration, according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

Related: Watch Martha Raddatz’s Nightline interview with ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Director Kathryn Bigelow:

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