APTN journalist: News of Kim's death a shock (AP)

PYONGYANG, North Korea ? Associated Press Television News senior video journalist Rafael Wober is one of the few outside reporters in North Korea covering the death of longtime leader Kim Jong Il. Wober, based in Hong Kong, has been visiting North Korea regularly for nearly a decade and manages the video news bureau in Pyongyang, which opened in 2006. He spoke Tuesday afternoon outside a meeting hall in the North Korean capital.

Question: Tell us what the scene was like in Pyongyang as people learned of Kim Jong Il's death.

Wober: Well, the announcement came as a complete surprise. It was warned on state television that a special announcement was going to be made at midday on Monday, local time. But there was no hint as to what the content would be. As soon, though, as the announcer appeared wearing this black traditional Korean dress, it looked very serious and within seconds she got to the point. I was staying in a hotel, I went out, I could see immediately in the corridors hotel staff crying. In the restaurant and the shop downstairs, hotel staff in tears, sobbing.

Question: What is the mood like in the country and the capital at the moment?

Wober: All over the city you can see separate mourning events. Like here, outside one major meeting hall, hundreds of people are lining up to go and stand in front of the portrait of the deceased General Kim Jong Il ? crying and wailing for a few minutes before they are moved along so that the next group can come up. This kind of thing is going on all over the city, and there is also a strong sense of mourning, in that the normal activity of shops and the normal way that people might drink, or eat, or enjoy themselves is basically discouraged during this period.

Question: Tell us about the successor to Kim Jong Il.

Wober: Kim Jong Un is largely thought to be unknown to foreigners. He did study in Switzerland when he was young. But since then, since he appeared on state media here ? on television in September last year for the first time ? he hasn't met many foreigners and most foreigners do not have a clear idea of his age or education.

Question: What can we expect to see during the national mourning period that has been declared?

Wober: The period of mourning has been set until the 28th and 29th. Those will be the major events. The 28th is supposed to be a long procession around the city with the body traveling on a bier. This is the laying-to-rest period on the 28th December. And then, on the 29th, there should be a gathering of senior leaders and officials of the country. A national funeral. Before then, it's likely there will be more of these individual events like you see behind me now, going on around the city and the country.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111220/ap_on_re_as/as_kim_jong_il_ap_journalist

mark kelly jeff goldblum uc berkeley ohio state basketball annie annie zuccotti park

Around the Web?

It’s Thursday! Take a break this afternoon with these interesting clicks: Mariah Carey‘s twins make their music video debut for new holiday song — JustJared.com Parents, can?you relate to these 10 hilarious scenes from Up All Night? — lilSugar.com How to break the code of your baby’s body language — Parents.com VIDEO: Children reunite with [...]

Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/0StZercTqLs/

time person of the year sag nominations sag nominations derek jeter time magazine person of the year time magazine person of the year la clippers

This Week's Top Web Comedy Video: Sh*t Girls Say [Video]

What happens when you take one of the funniest accounts on Twitter and reproduce it in video form? A glorious, dragtastic rundown of the shit girls say. If any of this sounds familiar, well, it should. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/sGcOHQfZ8P0/this-weeks-top-web-comedy-video-sht-girls-say

alex smith fidel castro south korea gpa calculator ndaa snapdragon

NATO closes up training mission in Iraq (Reuters)

BAGHDAD (Reuters) ? NATO closed its seven-year training mission in Iraq on Saturday, at the same time as U.S. troops withdraw from the country after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The alliance said on Monday it would end its mission after talks with Iraqi officials to extend the programme failed, due to disagreements over legal framework covering NATO forces in Iraq.

"We respect the decisions of a sovereign Iraq and salute the fact that Iraqi is fully responsible for directing its own path," NATO training mission commander Lieutenant General Robert Caslen said at the closing ceremony.

The decision followed U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement in October that U.S. troops would go home at year-end after talks to keep thousands in Iraq as trainers fell apart over Washington's demand for legal immunity for troops.

American forces signed over their last military base to Iraqi officials on Friday following a formal ceremony to end nearly nine years of war in Iraq.

NATO started its training mission in Iraq in 2004, although unlike in Afghanistan, its Iraq operation has been small and largely under the radar.

The alliance has provided expertise in areas like logistics and policing for Iraqi security forces, with around 100 troops training more than 5,000 military and 10,000 police in Iraq.

(Writing by Rania El Gamal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/wl_nm/us_iraq_withdrawal_nato

bath and body works coupons frys ad a very gaga thanksgiving black friday walmart 2011 sams club dancing with the stars winner pecan pie recipe

The Harvester [omigosh01 & rizzyrat]

"W-where is she?" a lanky man asked the surrounding police officers as he stepped onto the scene. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and gray slacks. A pair of thick black-rimmed glasses covered his eyes and his curly brunette hair laid in every which way, clearly showing the man's disinterest (or lack of skill) in keeping with the latest trends. His name was Nolan Lauer, and he was one of the prime investigators for 'The Harvester? killings. The policeman closest to him pointed him feebly pointed in the direction of the crime scene and then quickly made for the exit, as if he were going to 'make sick' once he reached the outdoors.

At the moment they were underground, in a subway tunnel beneath New York City and despite Detective Lauer?s request, the mayor had decided that the trains would continue to run during his investigation of the crime scene, and as a result the tunnels were packed with people. He had little to no privacy during his search, and every fifteen minutes or so a light tremor would shake the ground beneath him as another subway train went by. But regardless of his situation, Lauer managed to keep his cool and made his way over to the direction the other officer had pointed out earlier.

As he continued walking he realized that his path was leading toward the women?s bathroom. It was beginning to make sense now how the killer could?ve accomplished such a feat in such a public setting. Lauer thought to himself, 'The man must have captured her while she was in one of the stalls, locked the door, and... and uhm...' The man began to pale at the thought of what went on in the stalls earlier that night.

Once he opened the doors, he was surprised to find that there was no odd stench to be smelled, but it also made sense, seeing as the victim had been dropped in such a public place, she was bound to be found rather quickly, which never allowed her body the proper amount of time to sour.

He walked into the lavatory with hesitance, as if his mind knew that he didn't want to see what lay ahead, but his curiosity egged him on. And so he motioned for the all of the lower level officers to get out before he continued toward the body. He scratched around the base of his brunette hair, trying to grasp every detail of the scene before making an assumption. The only reason that he was not queasy from the sight was because he had been on the same case for several years now, and after seeing the murderer?s first kill the rest of them became less of a shock as time went on. The only person that he ever allowed near him while he went to work was his partner, and that was only because he had too. Nolan was much more of an introverted sort of person, and he often found that his partner's presence was more of a deterrence to him than a benefit.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/oRHlzw27hJM/viewtopic.php

happy halloween history of halloween eagles cowboys eagles cowboys trick or treat times trick or treat times madoff

Safety seemed to be an afterthought before the BP oil spill

Reporting from Washington?

?

The petroleum industry and federal regulators focused more on exploration and production than safety in the years leading up to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, helping to set the stage for the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history, according to a new independent report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council.

Conducted at the behest of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the report said the "multiple flawed decisions that led to a blowout" on the Deepwater Horizon rig resulted from "a deficient overall systems approach to safety" among the corporations that ran the drilling of the Macondo well, including BP, Transocean and Halliburton.

The report, titled "Macondo Well ? Deepwater Horizon Blowout, Lessons for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety," echoed many findings from previous studies of the disaster. But it added new levels of detail and put the nation's top engineering peer group behind a call for redesigning a massive set of valves, rams and hydraulic devices once thought to be fail-safe: the blowout preventer that failed to stem the flow of more than 200 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico.

"There were numerous warnings to both industry and regulators about potential failures of existing BOP [blowout preventer] systems" over the previous decade, according to the report, which demanded greater emphasis on safety than industry and regulators have shown, and questioned industry and regulatory norms that could erode safety.

The fragmented nature of offshore oil drilling, with different companies responsible for highly specialized tasks, means that few people on a rig may have a complete sense of the risks involved in the drilling operation, the report concluded.

The report committee's chairman, former Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter, said that improvements in regulatory oversight and in industry response to offshore disasters gave him confidence that offshore drilling should continue. But he stressed that more work needed to be done.

"Our concern is whether this is a good first step in the right direction," Winter said in a conference call, "or whether these changes represent a transient response in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon."

The Interior Department said in a statement that it welcomed the report's findings, which it said backed the regulatory policies it has pursued since the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010.

The department introduced more stringent environmental and safety regulations, and the industry responded by developing new oil spill response and containment systems, incorporating lessons from the gulf disaster.

But the report expressed concerns about how serious and sustained industry efforts might be, given that its research and development efforts over the last 20 years have been shrunk and outsourced. And most of those efforts have "been focused disproportionately on exploration, drilling, and production technologies as opposed to safety."

Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute trade group defended the industry's research focus. "The industry is leading the way in applying the best elements of the most successful existing safety programs, including the use of independent auditing and certification by third parties," Milito said.

Complacency about safety, particularly in the case of blowout preventers, became apparent in testimony before the committee that showed "a misplaced confidence that blowout preventers could provide a guarantee, an insurance policy to the blowout," Winter said.

The industry seems to have tempered its confidence in the reliability of blowout preventers, said Roger L. McCarthy, a private engineering consultant from Palo Alto and a member of the report committee. Still, there is no uniform standard for blowout preventers and no independent certification of their efficacy, McCarthy said.

"You can't buy a circuit breaker for your home that hasn't been independently certified by Underwriters Laboratories," McCarthy said, "while a BOP is kind of a circuit breaker for an incredible amount of power that comes up the drill string, and it's not certified to any standard."

Deep offshore oil drilling is becoming more common, as evidenced by the $337 million in bids offered Wednesday in the Interior Department's first auction of federal leases in the western Gulf of Mexico since the BP spill.

In such an environment, the industry needs to approach safety through a "proactive" system that articulates all the risks inherent to each particular process and puts in place steps to prevent them, the report recommended. Although that approach was adopted in the North Sea in the wake of disasters there a generation ago, not all companies use the approach beyond their North Sea operations.

neela.banerjee@latimes.com

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/LHAVta1iv7Q/la-na-bp-spill-report-20111215,0,6496189.story

adrian peterson lee corso lee corso thanksgiving appetizers greg jennings thanksgiving recipes thanksgiving recipes

Dutch pot sales to foreigners go up in smoke (Reuters)

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) ? The reputation of the Netherlands as the go-to country for a legal joint will begin to vanish like a puff of smoke next year as sales to foreigners of cannabis and hashish in coffee shops are banned.

The Dutch government has been clamping down on the sale of soft drugs since 2007 because of gang-related crime and concern about the risk to health, particularly as stronger forms of cannabis have been introduced.

"The Dutch drugs policy's appeal to foreign users has to be reduced," Dutch Security and Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten said in a letter to parliament.

"Drug use by minors will be strongly discouraged and in particular, vulnerable young people will be protected against drug use," the minister added.

The new rules, which will first take effect in the south and gradually be extended countrywide, limit sales of cannabis to residents of the Netherlands who must enroll as members of a coffee shop, the minister said.

The rules will come into effect from January 1, 2012, but will not be enforced until May 1, starting in the three southern provinces where drug tourism is most common and regarded as a problem by many local residents.

The rest of the country, including Amsterdam, whose drugs scene is a tourist magnet, will enforce the new rules from January 1, 2013.

From that year onwards, a coffee shop can have a maximum of 2,000 members.

The Dutch government, whose push for a stricter drugs policy is led by the Christian Democrats party, will forbid any coffee shops within 350 m (yards) of a school, with effect from 2014.

The government in October launched a plan to ban what it considered to be highly potent forms of cannabis -- known as "skunk" -- placing these in the same category as hard drugs such as heroin or cocaine.

(Reporting by Gilbert Kreijger)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oddlyenough/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/od_nm/us_dutch_cannabis

weldon danica patrick david garrard indy car kinder morgan zachary quinto zachary quinto