Syria releases images of site 'targeted by Israel'

Damascus' state-run TV station airs images of Jamarya Research Center, northeast of country capital, which was allegedly 'flattened' by IAF jets Syria's state-run television channel aired first images of the site allegedly targeted by Israel last week.

The images, aired on Saturday, show the damage caused by what Syria claims was an overnight air raid against the Jamraya scientific research base on the outskirts of Damascus.

Jamarya is located several dozens of miles northwest of Damascus. Time magazine reported Friday that "The center was flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad."

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the raid targeted a convoy of trucks carrying surface-to-air missiles from a military complex suspected of housing chemical agents towards the Lebanese border.

While both Jerusalem and Washington refrained from commenting on reports of the alleged strike, US security officials were quoted by several top American media outlets as saying that Israel informed the US about its intentions, adding that the target was a shipment of SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons that could cut into Israel's ability to fly reconnaissance flights over Lebanon.

SA-17s are highly sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically "game-changing" in the hands of Hezbollah.

Syria, Lebanon and the rest of the Arab world, were unanimous in their condemnation of the alleged strike.

Damascus announced it "reserves the right to retaliate," adding that numerous air-defense battalions - particularly those deployed in the area stretching between the Syrian capital and the Lebanese border – were placed on high alert.

Iran said that it will "Lend its full support to Syria to keep it strong. The Arab world has to do everything it can to minimize the suffering of the Syrian people as they fight against Israel's aggressions and the international community's arrogance."

Turley criticized the war-torn country's inaction. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu urged Damascus to retaliate: "Why didn't (Bashar) Assad even throw a pebble when Israeli jets were flying over his palace and playing with the dignity of his country?" Davutoglu told reporters Saturday.
 "Why didn't the Syrian Army, which has been attacking its own innocent people for 22 months now from the air with jets and by land with tanks and artillery fire, respond to Israel's operation? Why can't Assad, who gave order to fire Scud missiles at Aleppo, do anything against Israel?"

Ankara, he said, "Will not stand by when a Muslim country is attacked."

Box office update: 'Warm Bodies' warms up the chart with $8.7 million on Friday

Its main star may be a dead guy, but Summit’s new release Warm Bodies exhibited nothing but life in its first day at the box office.

The zombie-themed romantic comedy (zom-rom-com?) easily topped the chart on Friday with $8.7 million. Last year, the teen superpower adventure Chronicle earned $8.6 million the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday and finished the frame with $22 million. Since Warm Bodies, which is based on the popular novel by Isaac Marion, already has a built-in following, it’s likely that it will be more frontloaded and finish the weekend with about $20 million. Still, that’s a tremendous start for a high-concept comedy that cost about $35 million.

The weekend’s other new wide release, Sylvester Stallone’s R-rated action flick Bullet to the Head, got off to an even worse start than Arnold Schrwazenegger’s The Last Stand did two weeks ago. Bullet to the Head, which cost a reported $55 million, only bulleted a fifth place start with an anemic $1.7 million from 2,404 theaters. The film is headed to a truly terrible $4.5 million weekend.

In between those newcomers were three holdovers that finished in the $2-3 million range. In second place, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters scored another $2.9 million, putting it on pace for a $9 million weekend and over $34 million total. Silver Linings Playbook finished one spot behind with $2.4 million, good for a frame just under $8 million, while Mama stayed strong in fourth place with $2.3 million, setting it up for a $7 million weekend.
1. Warm Bodies – $8.7 million
2. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters – $2.9 million
3. Silver Linings Playbook – $2.4 million
4. Mama – $2.3 million
5. Bullet to the Head – $1.7 million

French President Hollande pledges to help rebuild Mali

Timbuktu crowds chant "Hollande is our hero"

French President Francois Hollande has said his government will help rebuild Mali, three weeks after launching an offensive against Islamist rebels who had seized the north of the country.

Speaking in the capital, Bamako, he pledged more French aid to its former colony and vowed to restore cultural sites damaged by the rebels.
Mr Hollande said France would help Mali re-establish control in the north.
"Terrorist groups have been weakened, but not disappeared," he said.
French troops would stay in Mali "as long as necessary", he added, reiterating that France would hand over to African troops "once the sovereignty of Mali is restored".
Mr Hollande was speaking alongside Mali's interim leader, Dioncounda Traore, who thanked France for freeing the north to from "barbarity and obscurantism".
'Vive la France'

The French president also promised to help restore cultural artefacts damaged by the rebels - who set fire to about 2,000 priceless manuscripts in Timbuktu, a Unesco World Heritage site.

"We cannot tolerate what happened in Timbuktu," he said.
Earlier on Saturday Mr Hollande travelled to the northern city, which was recaptured by French and Malian troops six days ago.
Thousands of residents welcomed him with chants of "Vive la France".
Many women wore vibrantly coloured clothes and jewellery, which correspondents say they could not do during the past year of Islamist rule."The women of Timbuktu will thank Francois Hollande forever," 53-year-old Fanta Diarra Toure, one of thousands of people who gathered in the city's main square, told the AFP news agency.
The French president's visit comes as armoured columns of French and Malian troops continued their advance in northern Mali.
They are attempting to secure the north-eastern city of Kidal, the militants' last stronghold, having captured the airport on Wednesday.
In Bamako, Mr Hollande also said "terrorists" must be punished, but added: "You must do it while respecting human rights."
There have been allegations of human rights violations committed by the Malian army, including summary executions and disappearances.
There had also been reports of incidents of mob lynching and looting of properties belonging to Arab and Tuareg communities, which had been accused of supporting armed Islamist groups, the UN says.
A total of 3,500 French troops are currently in Mali.
Nearly 2,000 army personnel from Chad and Niger are already helping consolidate the recent gains. A further 6,000 troops will be deployed as part of the UN-backed African-led International Support Mission to Mali (Afisma).
The BBC's Andrew Harding in Timbuktu says this was a big moment for President Hollande, but there is a danger that this is as good as it may get for him.
Now, things get more complicated, our correspondent adds, and if the French get their exit strategy wrong and move too quickly, Mali could easily be plunged back into chaos.

Missing Woman Found Dead in Turkey

The story of the American woman missing in Istanbul took a dark turn Saturday when Turkish authorities confirmed her dead. Sarai Sierra's body was discovered near an ancient city wall in a low-income area where she appeared to have been the victim of a stabbing. Nine people have already been arrested in connection with her death, according to a Turkish news agency. The 33-year-old Staten Island-native had been vacationing alone when she went missing. In security footage obtained by police, she's seen walking around a mall on January 20—one day before she was scheduled to fly home. She leaves behind a husband and two kids.

Turkey says tests confirm leftist bombed U.S. embassy

By Seltem Iyigun and Nick Tattersall

ISTANBUL | Sat Feb 2, 2013 1:24pm EST

(Reuters) - A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its "slave" carried out a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, the Ankara governor's office cited DNA tests as showing on Saturday.

Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.

The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a U.S. "puppet".

"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.

It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.

Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their nation.

DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor's office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.

Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.

Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.

Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.

Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.

The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. U.S. officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

SYRIA

The DHKP-C statement called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil.

The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard Turkey, a NATO member, against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.

"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.

Turkey has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syriaand has become one of President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics, a stance groups such as the DHKP-C view as submission to an imperialist agenda.

"Organizations of the sectarian sort like the DHKP-C have been gaining ground as a result of circumstances surrounding the Syrian civil war," security analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan wrote in a column in Turkey's Daily News.

The Ankara attack was the second on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War, and it fired rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. It has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Obama a skeet shooter? See new White House photo

In this photo released by the White House, President Barack Obama shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David, Md., Saturday, Aug. 4, 2012. The White House released a photo of Obama firing a gun, two days before he heads to Minnesota to discuss gun control. In a recent interview with The New Republic magazine, Obama said yes when asked if he has ever fired a gun. He said "we do skeet shooting all the time," except for his daughters, at Camp David. (AP Photo/The White House, Pete Souza)

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE

Associated Press /  February 2, 2013

________________________________________________________________________

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two days before President Barack Obama’s first trip outside Washington to promote his gun-control proposals, the White House tried to settle a brewing mystery when it released a photo to back his claim to be a skeet shooter.

Obama had set inquiring minds spinning when, in an interview with The New Republic magazine, he answered ‘‘yes’’ when asked if he had ever fired a gun. The admission came as a surprise to many.

‘‘Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,’’ Obama said in the interview released last weekend, referring to the official presidential retreat in rural Maryland, which he last visited in October while campaigning for re-election. Asked whether the entire family participates, the president said: ‘‘Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there.’’

Few could recall Obama ever talking about firing a gun or going skeet shooting ‘‘all the time.’’

The official White House photo released Saturday is dated Aug. 4, 2012. The caption says Obama is shooting clay targets on the range at Camp David. Obama is outdoors amid grass and trees with a rifle cocked in his left shoulder, his left index finger on the trigger and smoke coming from the barrel. He is wearing jeans, a dark blue, short-sleeved polo shirt, sunglasses and headphones.

Asked at Monday’s press briefing how frequently Obama shoots skeet and whether photos of the outings existed, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he didn’t know how often. Pictures may exist, he said, but he hadn’t seen any.

‘‘Why haven’t we heard about it before?’’ Carney was asked.

‘‘Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs,’’ Carney said.

Obama is accompanied almost everywhere by at least one White House photographer.

Carney did not immediately respond Saturday when asked to comment on the decision to release the photo. But it could be part of an effort to portray Obama as sympathetic to gun owners and opponents of his gun-control measures who argue the proposals would infringe on an individual’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.

In the interview, which appears in the Feb. 11 issue of The New Republic, Obama said gun-control advocates should be better listeners in this latest debate over firearms in the U.S. He also declared his deep respect for the tradition of hunting in this country, which dates back generations.

‘‘I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations,’’ Obama said. ‘‘And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake. Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were 10, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family’s traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that.’’

‘‘So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes,’’ Obama said.

His gun control measures, which include a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as universal background checks for anyone who wants to buy a firearm, have met some resistance on Capitol Hill and from opponents of tighter restrictions on access to guns, including the powerful National Rifle Association.

In Minneapolis on Monday, Obama plans to make remarks as well as discuss his proposals with local and law enforcement officials during a stop at the police department’s special operations center. He’s also expected to visit with community members to hear about their experiences with gun violence, the White House said.

Obama announced his proposals in mid-January, about a month after the Dec. 14 shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

What it really takes to make a flexible phone (Smartphones Unlocked)

Had Dr. Dipak Chowdhury known just how accident-prone I really am, he never would have handed over the 0.1-millimeter sheet of glass for me to bend between my fingers.

Luckily for me, the vice president and director of Corning's Willow Glass division is a trusting soul and gave CNET the world's very first public demo of this glass so thin it can bend without breaking.

Flexible glass and flexible screens have been a hot topic for some time, culminating with fanfare at Samsung's demo of its curvy Youm OLED display at CES.

Companies like Samsung, Nokia, and even Apple have been working on flexible smartphone displays for a years, but for the first time, there's enough real research and development in this area to, perhaps, start getting excited.

Just think of what a bendable smartphone could do: curve with your body's movement so it sits more comfortably in a pocket; drop from a height and flex on impact, rather than shatter; pack into any number of compartments without having to triple-swath it in bubble wrap.

But don't get too frothed up yet. Willow Glass isn't the hearty Gorilla Glass 3, Samsung's Youm screens have nothing to attach to yet, and smartphones that sway in the breeze are still years out.

There's more that needs to go with the flow than just the display and its glass.

The problems with flexible glass

One of the biggest challenges with a flexible phone is getting the cover glass to bend -- and it's a common misconception that bendable glass is unbreakable.

Corning's Dr. Chowdhury stresses that Willow Glass was designed as a substrate material -- glass that belongs on the inside of a smartphone -- but in its current form, it isn't strong enough to serve as the tough barrier guarding the internal materials from the elements. It wasn't designed to be.