By Simon Evans DENVER, Colorado, March 21 (Reuters) - A leadership role rarely falls to a 24-year-old playing in just his second World Cup qualifier but U.S. defender Omar Gonzalez will have little choice but to be an organiser on Friday against Costa Rica. Gonzalez, who plays Major League Soccer with L.A. Galaxy, lacks an experienced partner to guide him after former captain Carlos Bocanegra was left out. Injuries have robbed Klinsmann of his main options at full-back - Steve Cherundolo, Timmy Chandler and Fabian Johnson. ...
JERUSALEM (AP) ? President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned appeal Thursday for Israel to recognize that compromise will be necessary to secure peace and lasting security for the Jewish state.
Telling an audience of university students that the United States is their country's best friend and most important ally, Obama said the U.S. will never compromise in its own commitment to Israel's defense, particularly against threats such as the one posed by Iran and its nuclear program.
But he also stressed that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians if it is to ensure its survival and long-term viability as a homeland for the Jewish people. Israeli occupation of areas that the Palestinians claim for their state must end, he said.
"The Palestinian people's right to self-determination and justice must ... be recognized," he said. "Put yourself in their shoes - look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day."
Obama made no explicit demands of Israel but said its people should understand that specific actions, notably ongoing construction of Jewish housing on disputed territory, can hurt the chances for restarting stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, who have made a halt to such building a demand for returning to negotiations.
"Israelis must recognize that continued settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace, and that an independent Palestine must be viable ? that real borders will have to be drawn," Obama said.
Earlier Thursday in the West Bank, standing alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama made similar comments but essentially abandoned his previous support for the Palestinian demand that settlement activity end before talks resume.
Obama said the United States continues to oppose the construction of Jewish housing on land claimed by the Palestinians but stressed that issues of disagreement between the two sides should not be used as an "excuse" to do nothing.
"If the expectation is that we can only have direct negotiations when everything is settled ahead of time, then there is no point for negotiations, so I think it is important to work through this process even if there are irritants on both sides," Obama said at a joint news conference with Abbas in Ramallah.
Abbas and other Palestinian officials said they would not drop the demand, noting that much of the world considers the settlements to be illegal and not merely an impediment to peace talks.
"We require the Israeli government to stop settlements in order to discuss all our issues and their concerns," Abbas told the news conference, a marquee event during Obama's brief visit to the West Bank on the second day of his Mideast visit. "It's the duty of the Israeli government to stop the settlement activities to enable us to talk about the issues in the negotiations."
During his first four years in office, Obama had sided with the Palestinians on the issue. He and his surrogates repeatedly have demanded that all settlement activity cease. However, when Israel reluctantly declared a 10-month moratorium on construction, the Palestinians balked at returning to negotiations until shortly before it expired and talks foundered shortly thereafter.
The Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem ? territories Israel captured in the 1967 war ? but are ready for minor adjustments to accommodate some settlements closest to Israel. Since 1967, Israel has built dozens of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that are now home to 560,000 Israelis ? an increase of 60,000 since Obama became president four years ago.
Obama's comments in Ramallah echoed those of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly called for the Palestinians to drop preconditions for re-launching the stalled peace talks. Obama's remarks were sure to reinforce deep skepticism among Palestinians about whether he is willing or able to use U.S. influence to push Israel on key issues.
In what appeared to be an attempt to blunt such criticism, Obama used his speech to the Israeli students to appeal to their love of freedom, respect for human rights and common values with Americans to do the right thing.
He offered profuse praise for Israel's history as a haven for refugees fleeing social and religious persecution. He hailed the technological innovations made by Israeli scientists and engineers.
___
Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Ramallah and Ian Deitch and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Spring is here! Or at least, it should come around any minute now ... Just picture it: Billowy clouds, warm afternoons, half as many layers and ice tea on the weekends.
To get us in the mindset and lift away the winter blues, we've compiled all our favorite stars who look just the part in short shorts. You're welcome.
For the second time this month, the Obama administration has chosen to put a terror suspect linked to Al Qaeda on trial in a civilian court.
By Warren Richey,?Staff writer / March 20, 2013
The Northeast gate marks the end of U.S. soil as the road leads into Cuba at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base. On Wednesday, officials announced they would try a suspected Al Qaeda operative in a civilian court in Brooklyn, not in a military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
REUTERS/Bob Strong
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Justice Department officials announced on Wednesday that they would try a suspected Al Qaeda operative in civilian court in Brooklyn rather than sending him to Guant?namo Bay for trial before a military commission.
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The announcement came as federal officials unsealed a six-count indictment naming Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun in various plots dating from 2001. Mr. Harun was secretly extradited from Italy in October and has been held in New York ever since.
Harun, also known as ?Spin Ghul,? is accused of plotting to murder American military personnel in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, and plotting to bomb US diplomatic offices in Nigeria from 2003 to 2005.
He is also charged with conspiring to provide material support, and actually providing material support, to Al Qaeda. In addition, the indictment charges him with using a machine gun, gunpowder, explosives, grenades, and missiles during the plots.
The decision to place him on trial in a civilian court follows the administration?s recent decision to transfer Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden?s son-in-law, to a federal court in New York.
Harun is a citizen of Niger who was born in Saudi Arabia. According to court documents, Harun traveled to Afghanistan in 2001, where he received training in Al Qaeda camps. After the 9/11 attacks, he allegedly fought against US forces while associated with Al Qaeda members in Pakistan.
The Nigeria bombing plot never materialized. After a co-conspirator was arrested, Harun traveled to Libya on his way to Europe. He was arrested and held in Libya until the government released him in June 2011.
Harun was taken into custody by Italian officials while on a refugee ship headed for Italy. He was held in Italy until his extradition to the US in October 2012.
If convicted, Harun faces life in prison.
?As alleged in the indictment, the defendant was a prototype Al Qaeda operative, trained by Al Qaeda in terrorist tradecraft, deployed to fight American servicemen, and dispatched to commit terrorist attacks throughout the world,? Loretta Lynch, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
?Whether they try to attack our servicemen on the battlefield or scheme to kill our diplomats and citizens in embassies abroad, terrorists will find no refuge,? she said
The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, said he was pleased the administration chose to use the federal court system to try the terror case.? ?We should not fear our Constitution ? terrorists should,? he said in a statement.
Raha Wala of Human Rights First also praised the administration?s decision to use the civilian courts for Harun?s trial.
?This is just the latest in a long line of cases that show that federal courts can handle prosecuting terrorism suspects captured abroad,? Mr. Wala said in a statement.
He said nearly 500 cases related to international terrorism had been prosecuted in the federal courts since 9/11. Sixty-seven of those defendants involved individuals captured overseas, Mr. Wala said.
NIST guides seek interoperability for automated fingerprint ID systemsPublic release date: 20-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael E. Newman michael.newman@nist.gov 301-975-3025 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
A new set of publications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could make it easier, faster, and most importantly, more reliable, for forensic examiners to match a set of fingerprints with those on file in any database, whether local, state or national.
Automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) allow forensic examiners to match latent printsthose left at a crime sceneagainst known (or exemplar) prints on file. Currently, forensic examiners must encode the distinctive features of a latent print into an AFIS to make this happen. If there are different identification systems involvedsuch as searches against prints stored at the local, state or national levelsthe notation methods and data definitions may differ from one AFIS to the next. Examiners must re-encode each print for each new search on a different AFIS. This lack of latent print search interoperability impacts the ability to rapidly and accurately make positive identifications.
To address the problem, in 2008 NIST and the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) convened the Latent Print AFIS Interoperability Working Group, a body made up of experts from state, local and federal law enforcement and forensic and information technology organizations. Based on one of the Working Group's recommendations, NIST's Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) partnered with NOBLIS, a nonprofit research corporation headquartered in Falls Church, Va., to facilitate implementation of the Extended Feature Set (EFS), a standard method for encoding fingerprint, palmprint or footprint features known as friction ridges regardless of what AFIS is used. The latest result of this partnership is the issuance of three NIST Special Publications (SP) to help forensic examiners better understand and more effectively use the EFS, and provide organizations with guidance on procuring an interoperable AFIS. These are:
NIST SP-1134Extended Feature Set Profile Specification: This guide defines EFS Profiles, sets of reference friction ridge characteristics that let examiners "triage" their search strategies so that they are appropriate to the image quality and information content of the latent print being studied. The availability of different profiles gives examiners the flexibility to provide the AFIS with no detail (an "image only" search) all the way up to a complete input of every feature present. As a result, examiners can make effective trade-offs between encoding effort and resulting search accuracy.
NIST SP-1151Markup Instructions for Extended Friction Ridge Features: This guide provides instructions for latent print examiners to encode a very rich set of latent ridge print information using the EFS. These instructions ensure that examiners use the same terminology, references and procedures to describe friction ridge characteristics. The common definitions are necessary for AFIS interoperability and facilitate the exchange of data between examiners.
NIST SP-1152Latent Interoperability Transmission Specification: This guide describes the application profile language by which different AFIS can communicate with each other, define what transactions are permitted between systems, and what responses can be expected.
The EFS conforms to the ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 standard* and the FBI's Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBITS) .**
All three publications can be downloaded via links on the Latent Print AFIS Interoperability Working Group Web page, http://www.nist.gov/oles/afis_interoperability.cfm.
###
*Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information (ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011) is published in NIST SP 500-290, available at http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910136.
** Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (FBICJIS EBTS), is available at http://www.fbibiospecs.org/ebts.html.
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NIST guides seek interoperability for automated fingerprint ID systemsPublic release date: 20-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Michael E. Newman michael.newman@nist.gov 301-975-3025 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
A new set of publications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could make it easier, faster, and most importantly, more reliable, for forensic examiners to match a set of fingerprints with those on file in any database, whether local, state or national.
Automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) allow forensic examiners to match latent printsthose left at a crime sceneagainst known (or exemplar) prints on file. Currently, forensic examiners must encode the distinctive features of a latent print into an AFIS to make this happen. If there are different identification systems involvedsuch as searches against prints stored at the local, state or national levelsthe notation methods and data definitions may differ from one AFIS to the next. Examiners must re-encode each print for each new search on a different AFIS. This lack of latent print search interoperability impacts the ability to rapidly and accurately make positive identifications.
To address the problem, in 2008 NIST and the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice (NIJ) convened the Latent Print AFIS Interoperability Working Group, a body made up of experts from state, local and federal law enforcement and forensic and information technology organizations. Based on one of the Working Group's recommendations, NIST's Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) partnered with NOBLIS, a nonprofit research corporation headquartered in Falls Church, Va., to facilitate implementation of the Extended Feature Set (EFS), a standard method for encoding fingerprint, palmprint or footprint features known as friction ridges regardless of what AFIS is used. The latest result of this partnership is the issuance of three NIST Special Publications (SP) to help forensic examiners better understand and more effectively use the EFS, and provide organizations with guidance on procuring an interoperable AFIS. These are:
NIST SP-1134Extended Feature Set Profile Specification: This guide defines EFS Profiles, sets of reference friction ridge characteristics that let examiners "triage" their search strategies so that they are appropriate to the image quality and information content of the latent print being studied. The availability of different profiles gives examiners the flexibility to provide the AFIS with no detail (an "image only" search) all the way up to a complete input of every feature present. As a result, examiners can make effective trade-offs between encoding effort and resulting search accuracy.
NIST SP-1151Markup Instructions for Extended Friction Ridge Features: This guide provides instructions for latent print examiners to encode a very rich set of latent ridge print information using the EFS. These instructions ensure that examiners use the same terminology, references and procedures to describe friction ridge characteristics. The common definitions are necessary for AFIS interoperability and facilitate the exchange of data between examiners.
NIST SP-1152Latent Interoperability Transmission Specification: This guide describes the application profile language by which different AFIS can communicate with each other, define what transactions are permitted between systems, and what responses can be expected.
The EFS conforms to the ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 standard* and the FBI's Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBITS) .**
All three publications can be downloaded via links on the Latent Print AFIS Interoperability Working Group Web page, http://www.nist.gov/oles/afis_interoperability.cfm.
###
*Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information (ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011) is published in NIST SP 500-290, available at http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=910136.
** Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (FBICJIS EBTS), is available at http://www.fbibiospecs.org/ebts.html.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's economy will grow less this year and next than official forecasts showed in December, Chancellor George Osborne said in his budget statement on Wednesday.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility now expects the economy to expand by 0.6 percent in 2013 and 1.8 percent in 2014, Osborne said.
The OBR then expects the recovery to pick up to 2.3 percent in 2015, as forecast in December.
In December, the budget watchdog cut its forecast for economic growth in 2013 to 1.2 percent and predicted an expansion of 2 percent next year.
Britain has been struggling to recover from a steep slump in output caused by the 2008 financial crisis, slipping into a second recession since then and now teetering on the verge of a third.
(Reporting by Olesya Dmitracova, editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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Public release date: 20-Mar-2013
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