Rail Budget 2013: Coach PM gets Bansal to keep it on track

NEW DELHI: Pawan Bansal's induction in the railway ministry last year was ascribed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Fed up with hemorrhaging of railway finances under successive regional chieftains who lorded over the crucial infrastructure ministry, the PM was keen on bringing in someone more in league with his own reformist instincts.

Tuesday's rail budget, marked by a focus on restoring fiscal discipline after years of runaway profligacy, shows that Bansal has lived up to expectations. Although understated, some proposals are so significant that the discerning can be excused if they think these were written by the PM himself.

It signals the Congress leadership's acquiescence to the harsh economic reality which has cramped the room for sops, to the extent that the PM and the finance minister today are on the same page. It provides a foretaste of what could be in store on Thursday when P Chidambaram presents his budget.

The austere presentation contrasts sharply with the populist grandstanding under Bansal's predecessors, Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad, focusing more on consolidation. Bansal said right at the outset that the public transporter was unable to improve users' amenities, safety and efficiency because his predecessors were not concerned about financial sustainability. There is a reference to social responsibility but only as part of the larger argument to ensure the organization's financial stability.

Barring projects conceived from the point of view of national security, Bansal forthrightly said that funding would be available only to those projects that will be commercially viable. Put simply, it puts a question mark on the fate of schemes launched for political reasons and were justified on the ground of social obligations. "The thin spread of scarce resources can be overcome only in this manner,'' the minister said.

He refrained from hiking passenger fares but that did not take away from the budget's reformist thrust. Having raised fares only recently, Bansal had headroom to showcase his concern for commuters. But, he proposed to mop up a considerable amount increasing charges on services. More importantly, he made a pitch for an annual increase of 5-6% in fares. Read along with the bold advocacy to align fares with fuel prices, this is a far cry from the days when asking passengers to pay more was an anathema.

While the inspiration may have come from the PM, Bansal was helped by the fact that he, being the representative of the Union Territory of Chandigarh, was not handicapped by the need to cater to a large constituency. As a result, while there were expected protests against non-fulfillment of demands, there was no jealousy towards the region that Bihar and Bengal evoked under Lalu and Mamata.

Bansal stressed that the railways will close the current fiscal with a surplus, and that operating ratio is expected to improve to 87.88%. The proposals seemed designed to help achieve the objective to restore financial viability of railways and, if implemented, can mark an important step towards the paradigm shift that the budget talks about.
Budget 2013 > Rail Budget 2013 > Economic Survey 2013

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C. Everett Koop, 'rock star' surgeon general, dies


NEW YORK (AP) — Dr. C. Everett Koop has long been regarded as the nation's doctor— even though it has been nearly a quarter-century since he was surgeon general.


Koop, who died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96, was by far the best known and most influential person to carry that title. Koop, a 6-foot-1 evangelical Presbyterian with a biblical prophet's beard, donned a public health uniform in the early 1980s and became an enduring, science-based national spokesman on health issues.


He served for eight years during the Reagan administration and was a breed apart from his political bosses. He thundered about the evils of tobacco companies during a multiyear campaign to drive down smoking rates, and he became the government's spokesman on AIDS when it was still considered a "gay disease" by much of the public.


"He really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," said Chris Collins, a vice president of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.


Even before that, he had been a leading figure in medicine. He was one of the first U.S. doctors to specialize in pediatric surgery at a time when children with complicated conditions were often simply written off as untreatable. In the 1950s, he drew national headlines for innovative surgeries such as separating conjoined twins.


His medical heroics are well noted, but he may be better remembered for transforming from a pariah in the eyes of the public health community into a remarkable servant who elevated the influence of the surgeon general — if only temporarily.


"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," said Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade later under President George W. Bush.


Koop's religious beliefs grew after the 1968 death of his son David in a mountain-climbing accident, and he became an outspoken opponent of abortion. His activism is what brought him to the attention of the administration of President Ronald Reagan, who decided to nominate him for surgeon general in 1981. Though once a position with real power, surgeon generals had been stripped of most of their responsibilities in the 1960s.


By the time Koop got the job, the position was kind of a glorified health educator.


But Koop ran with it. One of his early steps involved the admiral's uniform that is bestowed to the surgeon general but that Koop's predecessors had worn only on ceremonial occasions. In his first year in the post, Koop stopped wearing his trademark bowties and suit jackets and instead began wearing the uniform, seeing it as a way to raise the visual prestige of the office.


In those military suits, he surprised the officials who had appointed him by setting aside his religious beliefs and feelings about abortion and instead waging a series of science-based public health crusades.


He was arguably most effective on smoking. He issued a series of reports that detailed the dangers of tobacco smoke, and in speeches began calling for a smoke-free society by the year 2000. He didn't get his wish, but smoking rates did drop from 38 percent to 27 percent while he was in office — a huge decline.


Koop led other groundbreaking initiatives, but perhaps none is better remembered than his work on AIDS.


The disease was first identified in 1981, before Koop was officially in office, and it changed U.S. society. It destroyed the body's immune system and led to ghastly death, but initially was identified in gay men, and many people thought of it as something most heterosexuals didn't have to worry about.


U.S. scientists worked hard to identify the virus and work on ways to fight it, but the government's health education and policy efforts moved far more slowly. Reagan for years was silent on the issue. Following mounting criticism, Reagan in 1986 asked Koop to prepare a report on AIDS for the American public.


His report, released later that year, stressed that AIDS was a threat to all Americans and called for wider use of condoms and more comprehensive sex education, as early as the third grade. He went on to speak frankly about AIDS in an HBO special and engineered the mailing of an educational pamphlet on AIDS to more than 100 million U.S. households in 1988.


Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.


Koop's speeches and empathetic approach made him a hero to a wide swath of America, including public health workers, gay activists and journalists. Some called him a "scientific Bruce Springsteen." AIDS activists chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances and booed other officials.


"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."


Koop angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.


He got static from some staff at the White House for his actions, but Reagan himself never tried to silence Koop. At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day.


After his death was reported Monday, the tributes poured forth, including a statement from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has made smoking restrictions a hallmark of his tenure.


"The nation has lost a visionary public health leader today with the passing of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who was born and raised in Brooklyn," Bloomberg said. "Outspoken on the dangers of smoking, his leadership led to stronger warning labels on cigarettes and increased awareness about second-hand smoke, creating an environment that helped millions of Americans to stop smoking — and setting the stage for the dramatic changes in smoking laws that have occurred over the past decade."


Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health taught Koop what was known about AIDS during quiet after-hours talks in the early 1980s and became a close friend.


"A less strong person would have bent under the pressure," Fauci said. "He was driven by what's the right thing to do."


Carmona, a surgeon general years later, said Koop was a mentor who preached the importance of staying true to the science in speeches and reports — even when it made certain politicians uncomfortable.


"We remember him for the example he set for all of us," Carmona said.


Koop's nomination originally was met with staunch opposition. Women's groups and liberal politicians complained Reagan had selected him only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.


Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."


But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed as surgeon general after he told a Senate panel he would not use the post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word and eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy.


Koop was modest about his accomplishments, saying before leaving office in 1989, "My only influence was through moral suasion."


The office declined after that. Few of his successors had his speaking ability or stage presence. Fewer still were able to secure the support of key political bosses and overcome the meddling of everyone else. The office gradually lost prestige and visibility, and now has come to a point where most people can't name the current surgeon general. (It's Dr. Regina Benjamin.)


Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.


"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.


In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."


He maintained his personal opposition to abortion. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.


Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.


Worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, Koop opened an institute at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.


Koop was the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats. He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.


He received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it. In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children. Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.


He was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.


Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.


___


Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.; Jeff McMillan in Philadelphia; and AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington.


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Tempers Flare at Jodi Arias Murder Trial












Tempers flared between accused murderer Jodi Arias and prosecutor Juan Martinez today as Martinez tried to detail Arias' history of spying on her boyfriends, but Arias complained that his aggressive style of questioning made her "brain scramble."


Arias and Martinez, who have sparred throughout two prior days of cross-examination in Arias' murder case, spent more than 10 minutes bickering over Martinez's word choices and his apparent "anger."


The morning's testimony, and Martinez's points about Arias' alleged spying, were largely interrupted by the spats. Arias is accused of killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.


"Are you having trouble understanding me?" Martinez yelled.


"Yes because sometimes cause you go in circles," Arias answered.


Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial


"You said you were offended by Mr. Alexander's behavior, do you remember that? This just happened. How is that you are not remembering?" he asked.


"Because you are making my brain scramble,"she said.


Martinez, becoming agitated, barked back, "I'm again making your brain scramble. The problem is not you, it's the prosecutor, right?"


Martinez paced the courtroom in front of Arias asking her whether she had trouble with her memory or trouble answering truthfully.










Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video





"You don't know? You don't know what you just said? Didn't it just happen? You can't even remember what you just said?"


"I think I'm more focused on your posture, your tone, and your anger," Arias said, causing Martinez to become even angrier.


"So it's the prosecutor's fault because he is angry? You are having problems on the witness stand because of the way the prosecutor is asking the questions? So the answers depend on the style of the prosecutor? You're saying you're having trouble telling us the truth because of the way the questions are being posed," he said, gesturing with his hands.


Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage


Eventually, Arias's attorney Kirk Nurmi, who had been objecting sporadically to Martinez's questions, stood in the courtroom and told Judge Sherry Stephens that they should all approach the bench before Martinez continued. When they returned, Martinez briefly stood in different parts of the courtroom, asking Arias if she was more comfortable depending on where he stood, before moving on.


Arias, 32, is charged with murder for killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander at his home in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008. She claims she killed him in self defense and that he had been increasingly violent and sexually demanding in the months before the confrontation. She also claimed he was interested in young boys.


The prosecution claims she killed him in a jealous rage. She could face the death penalty if convicted of first degree murder.


Martinez finally began to make his points that Arias snooped on Alexander's phone messages and Myspace messages, and had gone through an ex-boyfriend's email messages to see if they were cheating. Arias admitted that her behavior was "dishonest."



See the Evidence in the Jodi Arias Murder Trial


Martinez also showed that after Arias went through the messages and found evidence of cheating, she acted quickly to end the relationships with Alexander and two former boyfriends, suggesting that Arias was not under as much of Alexander's influence as she had previously testified.


"So you seem to be very assertive. You were very assertive even at age 17 or 18, you didn't waste any time when you'd been cheated on," Martinez said. "You have the ability to make the decisions necessary for yourself and even from the time you were younger, it appears you were assertive."


"It depends on how comfortable I am with the person," Arias replied.






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BP accused of greed, lax safety at US oil spill trial






NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana: Prosecutors accused BP of letting greed triumph over safety Monday in the opening of a multi-billion dollar trial over the devastating 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

A federal judge in New Orleans is tasked with determining how much BP and its subcontractors should pay for the worst environmental disaster in US history.

US prosecutors are determined to prove that gross negligence caused the April 20, 2010 blast that killed 11 workers and sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, sending millions of barrels of oil gushing into the sea.

The US government plans to introduce ample evidence of "systemic problems of corporate recklessness" and how a "culture of disregard to safety" led to the blowout, said Michael Underhill, lead trial counsel for the United States.

"Reckless actions were tolerated, sometimes encouraged by BP to squeeze every dollar," he told the court.

"Every fork in the road, BP chose time and money over safety in the operation of what (one rig worker) called the 'well from hell.'"

BP is equally determined to avoid a finding of gross negligence, which would drastically increase its environmental fines to as much as $17 billion.

BP is also hoping to shift much of the blame -- and cost -- to rig operator Transocean and subcontractor Halliburton, which was responsible for the runaway well's faulty cement job.

Transocean's poor safety record was the focus of the first lawyer to speak, Jim Roy, who represents thousands of individuals and businesses impacted by the spill through a steering committee.

Roy told the court that the Swiss giant's top safety official on the multimillion dollar rig "was not even minimally competent for this job."

"His training consisted of a three-day course. Amazingly, he had never been aboard the Deepwater Horizon," Roy said, noting that the blowout was the seventh major incident aboard a Transocean rig in the space of 17 months.

Transocean defended its "well-trained" crew whose "death-defying acts of heroism" ensured that "every single man and woman who could have survived, did," and described BP's attempt to shift the blame as "shameful."

"None of this had to happen. It happened because BP was behind schedule and needed to get this done," said Brad Brian, Transocean's lead attorney.

"BP considered another alternative to this: Plug the well and abandon it. but that would have cost over $10 million."

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell urged the judge to ensure that BP and its contractors bear responsibility for their actions.

"Today, less than 30 miles from the door of this courthouse, over 212 miles of Louisiana coast are being polluted and continue to be oiled," he told the court.

It took 87 days to cap BP's runaway well, which blackened beaches in five states and crippled the region's tourism and fishing industries in a tragedy that riveted the nation.

The British energy giant has already resolved thousands of lawsuits linked to the deadly disaster out of court, including a record $4.5 billion plea deal with the US government in which BP pleaded guilty to criminal charges and a $7.8 billion settlement with people and businesses affected by the spill.

BP spent more than $14 billion on the response and cleanup and paid another $10 billion to businesses, individuals and local governments that did not join the class action lawsuit.

It remains on the hook for billions in additional damages, including the cost of environmental rehabilitation.

The first phase of the civil trial will determine the cause and apportion fault for the disaster.

The second phase, not expected to start for several months, will determine exactly how much oil was spilled in order to calculate environmental fines.

The third phase will deal with environmental and economic damages.

Protesters camped outside the courthouse said they hope that Judge Carl Barbier will assess the maximum penalties possible under the law.

"This is not just about something that's going to take decades to clean up," said Chris Canfield, vice president of Gulf of Mexico conservation and restoration for the National Audubon Society.

"This is about making sure that bad actors are punished for a series of decisions that put profits ahead of people and the environment."

-AFP/ac



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Punjab and Haryana high court quashes policy depriving judges of leave travel concession benefits

CHANDIGARH: In a respite to over 400 judicial officers working in various subordinate courts of Haryana, the Punjab and Haryana high court has quashed the instructions issued by the state government depriving the officers of leave travel concession (LTC) benefits. Directing the state to consider the judges of subordinate courts at par with the other employees of the state government in the matter of grant of benefits, HC has held the action of the Haryana government as "discriminatory, arbitrary" and violative of the equality in the matter of benefits to the state employees. HC also held that the state cannot create a class within the employees of the state for depriving them of such benefits.

The government had denied the LTC benefits to the judges on the ground that the judges constitute a separate class, thus not entitled for such monetary benefits. A division bench comprising Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Ritu Bahri has passed the order while allowing a petition filed by the Haryana Judges Association.

In its petition, the Judges Association had challenged the Haryana government's instructions issued on December 28, 2010, whereby the judicial officers working in the state were denied benefit of cash payment in lieu of LTC in a block of four years in a discriminatory manner, as the said benefit has been granted to other employees of the state.

Haryana had framed LTC scheme in February 2009 for all state employees, which includes for members of the Haryana Civil Service (Executive) Branch Officers as well but not the officers of state judicial services. As per the said scheme, one-month salary is admissible to the state government employees, who do not avail LTC facility in the block of four years.

The petitioners had argued that the judicial officers are employees of the state of Haryana and entitled to be treated at par with other employees and cannot be treated as separate class so as to deny the benefit of cash payment in lieu of the scheme applicable to all employees.

However, contesting the petition, Haryana had taken the stand that the pay-scale and other benefits to the judicial officers are in terms of the judgment of the Supreme Court in All India Judges Association versus Union of India, and the orders passed from time to time. "Such benefit of LTC is not contemplated either in the report of Shetty Commission or by the Supreme Court regarding the pay and perks of the judicial officers, which constitutes a separate class," argued the state.

However, bench quashed the state's policy.

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Mediterranean-style diets found to cut heart risks


Pour on the olive oil, preferably over fish and vegetables: One of the longest and most scientific tests of a Mediterranean diet suggests this style of eating can cut the chance of suffering heart-related problems, especially strokes, in older people at high risk of them.


The study lasted five years and involved about 7,500 people in Spain. Those who ate Mediterranean-style with lots of olive oil or nuts had a 30 percent lower risk of major cardiovascular problems compared to those who were told to follow a low-fat diet but who in reality, didn't cut fat very much. Mediterranean meant lots of fruit, fish, chicken, beans, tomato sauce, salads, and wine and little baked goods and pastries.


Mediterranean diets have long been touted as heart-healthy, but that's based on observational studies that can't prove the point. The new research is much stronger because people were assigned diets to follow for a long time and carefully monitored. Doctors even did lab tests to verify that the Mediterranean diet folks were consuming more olive oil or nuts as recommended.


Most of these people were taking medicines for high cholesterol and blood pressure, and researchers did not alter those proven treatments, said one study leader, Dr. Ramon Estruch of Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.


But as a first step to prevent heart problems, "we think diet is better than a drug" because it has few if any side effects, Estruch said. "Diet works."


Results were published online Monday by the New England Journal of Medicine and were discussed at a nutrition conference in Loma Linda, Calif.


People in the study were not given rigid menus or calorie goals because weight loss was not the aim. That could be why they found the "diets" easy to stick with — only about 7 percent dropped out within two years. There were twice as many dropouts in the low-fat group than among those eating Mediterranean-style.


Researchers also provided the nuts and olive oil, so it didn't cost participants anything to use these relatively pricey ingredients. The type of oil may have mattered — they used extra-virgin olive oil, which is minimally processed and richer than regular or light olive oil in the chemicals and nutrients that earlier studies have suggested are beneficial.


The study involved people ages 55 to 80, just over half of them women. All were free of heart disease at the start but were at high risk for it because of health problems — half had diabetes and most were overweight and had high cholesterol and blood pressure.


They were assigned to one of three groups: Two followed a Mediterranean diet supplemented with either extra-virgin olive oil (4 tablespoons a day) or with walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds (a fistful a day). The third group was urged to eat a low-fat diet heavy on bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, fruits, vegetables and fish and light on baked goods, nuts, oils and red meat.


Independent monitors stopped the study after nearly five years when they saw fewer problems in the two groups on Mediterranean diets.


Doctors tracked a composite of heart attacks, strokes or heart-related deaths. There were 96 of these in the Mediterranean-olive oil group, 83 in the Mediterranean-nut group and 109 in the low-fat group.


Looked at individually, stroke was the only problem where type of diet made a big difference. Diet had no effect on death rates overall.


The Mediterranean diet proved better even though its followers ate about 200 calories more per day than the low-fat group did. The study leaders now are analyzing how each of the diets affected weight gain or loss and body mass index.


The Spanish government's health research agency initiated and paid for the study, and foods were supplied by olive oil and nut producers in Spain and the California Walnut Commission. Many of the authors have extensive financial ties to food, wine and other industry groups but said the sponsors had no role in designing the study or analyzing and reporting its results.


Rachel Johnson, a University of Vermont professor who heads the American Heart Association's nutrition committee, said the study is very strong because of the lab tests to verify oil and nut consumption and because researchers tracked actual heart attacks, strokes and deaths — not just changes in risk factors such as high cholesterol.


"At the end of the day, what we care about is whether or not disease develops," she said. "It's an important study."


Rena Wing, a weight-loss expert at Brown University, noted that researchers provided the oil and nuts, and said "it's not clear if people could get the same results from self-designed Mediterranean diets" — or if Americans would stick to them more than Europeans who are used to such foods.


Dr. George Bray of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., said he would give the study "a positive — even glowing — comment" and called it "the best and certainly one of the largest prospective dietary trials ever done."


"The data are sufficiently strong to convince me to move my dietary pattern closer to the Mediterranean Diet that they outline," he added.


Another independent expert also praised the study as evidence diet can lower heart risks.


"The risk reduction is close to that achieved with statins," cholesterol-lowering drugs, said Dr. Robert Eckel, a diet and heart disease expert at the University of Colorado.


"But this study was not carried out or intended to compare diet to statins or blood pressure medicines," he warned. "I don't think people should think now they can quit taking their medicines."


___


Online:


Journal: http://www.nejm.org


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Arias Had No Remorse: Prosecutor












Prosecutor Juan Martinez hammered alleged murderer Jodi Arias today with accusations that she felt no remorse when she lied over and over again about killing her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.


"Ma'am you have a problem with telling the truth don't you?" Martinez asked as his first question today, the 11th day Arias has been on the stand explaining her role in Alexander's death.


"Not typically," Arias responded.


Martinez then took Arias through a series of lies she admittedly told in the days after she stabbed and shot Alexander to death on June 4, 2008, lying to friends, investigators and even Alexander's grandmother, going so far as to send a dozen irises to his grandmother expressing her sympathy.



See the Evidence in the Jodi Arias Murder Trial


Arias, 32, has testified that she killed Alexander in self-defense during a violent argument and lied about it out of "shame."


But prosecutors say that the 27 stab wounds, a slashed throat, and two bullets she fired at Alexander's head prove that she murdered him. She could face the death penalty if convicted.


Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage


Today Martinez tried to raise doubts about Arias' earlier testimony in which she depicted Alexander as an increasingly menacing and sexually demanding lover by grilling her about the lies she told after she killed Alexander.


Martinez pointed out that Arias lied to Detective Esteban Flores of the Mesa, Ariz., police department as he investigated Alexander's death. She initially denied to the detective that she was at Alexander's Mesa, Ariz., home when he was killed, and later said he was murdered by a pair of masked intruders.








Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video









Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video





"You told (Flores) you would help him, but that was a lie right? You weren't there to tell the truth. You were there for another purpose: to make sure he didn't get the truth.... You were hoping, ma'am, that (Flores) would believe what you were saying so you could walk out of jail," Martinez said.


Arias argued with Martinez, claiming that she lied to investigators out of shame, and lied to friends immediately after the death out of confusion.


"My mind wasn't right during all that period," Arias said referring to the hours immediately following the killing when she drove through the Arizona desert and made phone calls to ex-boyfriend Matthew McCartney and new love interest Ryan Burns.


"It's like I wasn't accepting it in my mind... because I never killed anyone before," she said.


Martinez also suggested that Arias tried to find out the status of the investigation into Alexander's death so that she could know if she were about to be arrested. When a friend of Alexander's called her to report the news about Alexander's death, Arias asked about details into the investigation, the prosecutor said. She also called Alexander's Mormon bishop and asked him what he knew about the case, and then asked friends and family members what they knew, according to Martinez.


"You needed to see what you needed to know to make sure you weren't charged. What purpose would there be for that information other than to benefit you?" Martinez asked. "You called [the bishop] at 3 a.m. You call him and spoke to him because you wanted to get the information about what he knew about the investigation. That was going to help you."


Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial


Martinez also went over lies that Arias told to her friend, Leslie Udy, and Ryan Burns, both of whom she saw in Utah the day after killing Alexander. She talked to both about Alexander as if he were still alive. Martinez pointed out that Arias even made out with Burns in his bedroom during their visit.


But Arias claimed that it was Burns who lied about their encounter.


"And with Mr. Burns, didn't you get on top of him and grind on him?" Martinez asked.


Arias said she was on top of Burns at one point, but they did not "grind."


"Well, when you were romantic kissing, he did put his hand between your legs, didn't he?" Martinez said, referring to Burns' own testimony in court weeks earlier.


"No," Arias said. "It could be that he's full of crap...when he says he got near my vaginal area."


"This is the person who lied to him, to (friends), to Detective Flores, and yet you're telling us someone else is full of crap," Martinez asked incredulously.


"When it comes to that, yes," she said.






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Huge protest vote pushes Italy towards deadlock


ROME (Reuters) - A huge protest vote by Italians enraged by economic hardship and political corruption pushed the country towards deadlock after an election on Monday, with voting projections showing no coalition strong enough to form a government.


With more than two thirds of the vote counted, the projections suggested the center left could have a slim lead in the race for the lower house of parliament.


But no party or likely coalition appeared likely to be able to form a majority in the upper house or Senate, creating a deadlocked parliament - the opposite of the stable result that Italy desperately needs to tackle a deep recession, rising unemployment and a massive public debt.


Such an outcome has the potential to revive fears over the euro zone debt crisis, with prospects of a long period of uncertainty in the zone's third largest economy.


Italian financial markets took fright after rising earlier on hopes for a stable and strong center-left led government, probably backed by outgoing technocrat premier Mario Monti.


The projected result was a stunning success for Genoese comic Beppe Grillo, leader of the populist 5-Star Movement, who toured the country in his first national election campaign hurling obscenity-laced insults against a discredited political class.


With vague election promises and a team of almost totally unknown candidates, the shaggy haired comedian channeled pure public anger against what many see as a sclerotic and useless political system.


The likely result was also a humiliating slap in the face for colorless center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani, who appeared to have thrown away a 10-point opinion poll lead less than two months ago against Silvio Berlusconi's center right.


Berlusconi, 76, who staged an extraordinary comeback from sex and corruption scandals since diving into the campaign in December, appeared to be leading in the Senate race, but Grillo's projected bloc of Senators would leave him well short of a majority.


Projections gave Bersani's center-left alliance a lead of less than one percentage point in the lower house. If confirmed, that would be enough to control the chamber because of election laws that guarantee a 54 percent majority to the party with the largest share of the vote.


In the Senate the picture was different. The latest projection from RAI state television showed Berlusconi's bloc winning 112 Senate seats, the center-left 105 and Grillo 64, with Monti languishing on only 20 after a failed campaign which never took off. The Senate majority is 158.


Berlusconi, a master politician and communicator, wooed voters with a blitz of television appearances and promises to refund a hated housing tax despite accusations from opponents that this was an impossible vote buying trick.


Grillo has attacked all sides in the campaign and ruled out a formal alliance with any group although it was not immediately known how he would react to his stunning success or how his supporters would behave in parliament.


DANGER OF NEW ELECTION


A bitter campaign, fought largely over economic issues, made some investors fear a return of the kind of debt crisis that took the euro zone close to disaster and brought the technocrat Monti to office, replacing Berlusconi, in 2011.


The projected results showed more than half of Italians had voted for the anti-euro platforms of Berlusconi and Grillo.


Officials from both center and left warned that the looming deadlock could make Italy ungovernable and force new elections.


A center-left government either alone or ruling with Monti had been seen by investors as the best guarantee of measures to combat a deep recession and stagnant growth in Italy, which is pivotal to stability in the currency union.


The benchmark spread between Italian 10-year bonds and their German equivalent widened from below 260 basis points to above 300 and the Italian share index lost all its previous gains after projections of the Senate result.


"These projections suggest that we are heading for an ungovernable situation", said Mario Secchi, a candidate for Monti's centrist movement.


Stefano Fassina, chief economic official for Bersani's center-left, said: "The scenario from the projections we have seen so far suggests there will be no stable government and we would need to return to the polls."


If the results are confirmed the only possibility looks like a "grand coalition" combining right and left, like the one Monti led for a year. But politicians said before the vote this could not work for long and would struggle to work decisively.


Monti helped save Italy from a debt crisis when Rome's borrowing costs were spiraling out of control, but few Italians now see him as the savior of the country, in its longest recession for 20 years.


Grillo's movement rode a huge wave of voter anger about both the pain of Monti's austerity program and a string of political and corporate scandals. It had particular appeal for a frustrated younger generation shut out of full-time jobs.


"I'm sick of the scandals and the stealing," said Paolo Gentile, a 49-year-old Rome lawyer who voted for 5-Star.


"We need some young, new people in parliament, not the old parties that are totally discredited."


Berlusconi, a billionaire media tycoon, exploited anger against Monti's austerity program, accusing him of being a puppet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but in many areas Grillo was a bigger beneficiary of public discontent.


Italy desperately needs a strong, reform-minded government to revive growth after two decades of stagnation and address problems ranging from record youth unemployment to a dysfunctional justice system and a bloated public sector.


Italians wrung their hands at prospects of an inconclusive result that will mean more delays to these reforms.


"It's a classic result. Typically Italian. It means the country is not united. It is an expression of a country that does not work. I knew this would happen," said 36-year-old Rome office worker Roberta Federica.


Another office worker, Elisabetta Carlotta, 46, shook her head in disbelief. "We can't go on like this," she said.


(Additional reporting by Stefano Bernabei, Steve Scherer, Gavin Jones, Naomi O'Leary and Giuseppe Fonte in Rome and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Peter Graff)



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UN 'deeply concerned' by Darfur tribal fighting






KHARTOUM: The UN on Sunday expressed deep concern over the latest deadly tribal violence in Sudan's Darfur region, which has hampered assistance for tens of thousands of people forced to flee earlier fighting.

Residents in the town of El Sireaf said an Arab militia firing heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades burned houses and killed more than 50 people on Saturday.

The North Darfur state governor, Osman Kbir, said 51 people died and 62 were wounded, the official SUNA news agency reported.

"We are deeply concerned by the violence," Damian Rance of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told AFP.

"It's affected our ability to run a humanitarian operation."

About 100,000 people had already been displaced or severely affected by battles since early January between the Rezeigat tribe and rival Arabs from the Beni Hussein group in the Jebel Amir gold mining area of North Darfur.

The violence caused the largest uprooting of Darfur's population in years, aid workers said.

People were displaced across a wide area but most ended up in El Sireaf town, where Saturday's fighting occurred.

Aid convoys are still moving in the surrounding area but "we don't have access to El Sireaf town" because of the fighting, Rance said.

He added that the violence had forced some people from the town into the surrounding district while others had moved over the nearby border to West Darfur state.

A local resident told AFP that displaced people who had sought shelter on the outskirts of El Sireaf, where the heaviest fighting occurred, had moved into the town centre.

Some were simply staying in the street or under trees, he said, adding that people feared further attacks although on Sunday there were no reports of fighting.

Residents said the attackers wore uniforms and belonged to a militia of the Rezeigat tribe.

A Rezeigat source could not be reached on Sunday.

Governor Kbir confirmed that Rezeigat were responsible for the latest attack but said they had come from West and Central Darfur states.

Speaking in El Sireaf, he said security forces will "intervene strongly" to ensure peace between the two tribes.

"The situation will improve within two days. There is communication between both sides," Kbir said.

"The government will review the humanitarian situation so as to let the NGOs do their job of delivering aid to affected people."

On Thursday, OCHA reported that about 65,000 displaced had been given soap, chlorine and other sanitation supplies.

"Water is trucked in daily, hand pumps have been repaired, and submersible water pumps and bladders to increase access to safe water have been installed," OCHA said in its weekly bulletin.

In late January Amnesty International said the fighting began when a Rezeigat leader, who is an officer in Sudan's Border Guard force, apparently laid claim to a gold-rich area in Beni Hussein territory.

The violence illustrates the changed nature of Darfur's conflict, where 10 years ago on Tuesday rebels from black tribes began an insurrection against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime.

Darfur's top official, Eltigani Seisi, told AFP last week "the major issue" now is not rebel attacks but "ethnic violence" such as that in Jebel Amir.

He admitted that government-linked militia in North Darfur have "committed atrocities against innocent civilians" but he said the armed groups are to be disbanded.

The UN said 1.4 million people were already living in camps for the displaced before the Jebel Amir violence.

- AFP/jc



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Sunil Joshi murder accused possessed a foreign pistol: NIA

BHOPAL: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had seized a 7.65mm automatic pistol, a Webley & Scott Ltd. London & Birmingham make, from the possession of an accused arrested in connection with the murder of RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi. This was revealed after the federal agency handed over the list of seized articles to defence counsel before a special court on Saturday.

"We have got the list after a long wait. We would examine it," said Pramod Saxena, lawyer for Pragya Thakur—the key accused in Joshi murder case. Defence had moved an application before the special NIA court seeking list of seized articles during the last hearing.

NIA informed that the pistol inscribed 'Webley & Scott Ltd. London & Birmingham' was seized from the residence of Dilip Jagtap at Suman Colony in Indore. Other seizures included one magazine of the pistol, four live cartridges of 7.65mm inscribed "KF 7.65", one 12-bore double barrel country made rifle, five 12 bore cartridges, pass books and other documents.

The NIA however failed to mention the actual owner of the foreign weapon, said sources. In January the NIA had recovered one of the weapons, which they claimed was used to kill Joshi from Balbir Singh, his alleged accomplice who was arrested recently from Mandalwada in Indore district.

NIA also claimed that two of the accused Lokendra Sharma and Rajendra Chaudhary, the accused in the case, had stayed at Balbir Singh's house after Joshi's murder on December 29, 2007.

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