EPA methane report further divides fracking camps

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency has dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new EPA data is "kind of an earthquake" in the debate over drilling, said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. "This is great news for anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks."

The scope of the EPA's revision was vast. In a mid-April report on greenhouse emissions, the agency now says that tighter pollution controls instituted by the industry resulted in an average annual decrease of 41.6 million metric tons of methane emissions from 1990 through 2010, or more than 850 million metric tons overall. That's about a 20 percent reduction from previous estimates. The agency converts the methane emissions into their equivalent in carbon dioxide, following standard scientific practice.

The EPA revisions came even though natural gas production has grown by nearly 40 percent since 1990. The industry has boomed in recent years, thanks to a stunning expansion of drilling in previously untapped areas because of the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects sand, water and chemicals to break apart rock and free the gas inside.

Experts on both sides of the debate say the leaks can be controlled by fixes such as better gaskets, maintenance and monitoring. Such fixes are also thought to be cost-effective, since the industry ends up with more product to sell.

"That is money going up into the air," said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, adding he isn't surprised the EPA's new data show more widespread use of pollution control equipment. Pielke noted that the success of the pollution controls also means that the industry "probably can go further" in reducing leaks.

Representatives of the oil and gas industry said the EPA revisions show emissions from the fracking boom can be managed.

"The methane 'leak' claim just got a lot more difficult for opponents" of natural gas, noted Steve Everley, with Energy In Depth, an industry-funded group.

In a separate blog post, Everley predicted future reductions, too.

"As technologies continue to improve, it's hard to imagine those methane numbers going anywhere but down as we eagerly await the next installment of this EPA report," Everley wrote.

One leading environmentalist argued the EPA revisions don't change the bigger picture.

"We need a dramatic shift off carbon-based fuel: coal, oil and also gas," Bill McKibbern, the founder of 350.org, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "Natural gas provides at best a kind of fad diet, where a dangerously overweight patient loses a few pounds and then their weight stabilizes; instead, we need at this point a crash diet, difficult to do" but needed to limit the damage from climate change.

The EPA said it made the changes based on expert reviews and new data from several sources, including a report funded by the oil and gas industry. But the estimates aren't based on independent field tests of actual emissions, and some scientists said that's a problem.

Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor of ecology who led a 2011 methane leak study that is widely cited by critics of fracking, wrote in an email that "time will tell where the truth lies in all this, but I think EPA is wrong."

Howarth said other federal climate scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published recent studies documenting massive methane leaks from natural gas operations in Colorado and other Western states.

Howarth wrote that the EPA seems "to be ignoring the published NOAA data in their latest efforts, and the bias on industry only pushing estimates downward — never up — is quite real. EPA badly needs a counter-acting force, such as outside independent review of their process."

The issue of methane leaks has caused a major split between environmental groups.

Since power plants that burn natural gas emit about half the amount of the greenhouse gases as coal-fired power, some say that the gas drilling boom has helped the U.S. become the only major industrialized country to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions. But others believe the methane leaks negate any benefits over coal, since methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas.

The new EPA figures still show natural gas operations as the leading source of methane emissions in the U.S., at about 145 million metric tons in 2011. The next biggest source was enteric fermentation, scientific jargon for belches from cows and other animals, at 137 million metric tons. Landfills were the third-biggest source, at 103 million metric tons.

But the EPA estimates that all the sources of methane combined still account for only 9 percent of greenhouse gases, even taking into account methane's more potent heat-trapping.

The EPA said it is still seeking more data and feedback on the issue of methane leaks, so the report may change again in the future.

The EPA revisions have international implications, too. The agency says the new report, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, was submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change by an April 15 deadline.

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Online: http://1.usa.gov/PhONGa

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Why This Prom in Georgia Just Changed History

Earlier this month, TakePart reported on the efforts of a group of high school students in Georgia raising funds to hold their county’s first multi-racial prom—otherwise known as regular prom in the rest of the country.

Last night, those kids got their wish at Wilcox County's first-ever "Integrated Prom," where students of all races were welcome. By all accounts, it was a remarkably successful event.

According to local crews, the entrance to the dance was so swarmed with news cameras, it resembled something closer to a Hollywood red carpet event, rather than a high school dance. Students made their way in front of reporters, stopping for pictures while throngs of parents cheered them on and held back tears.

Quanesha Wallace, one of the students responsible for organizing the event, told one news reporter, “It turned out really well. I didn’t even know this many people were coming. I didn’t even know this many tickets were being sold.”

 

 

Wilcox County, GA has had a segregated prom system since the school was racially integrated just several decades ago. The school's dances have always been privately funded and held away from school grounds, allowing for the segregation to continue without any legal consequence.

But this year, a group of students at Wilcox County High School had enough, with one in particular, Keela Bloodworth, explaining to WSFA, “It’s embarrassing to know that I’m from the county that still does this.”

That’s when Bloodworth, Wallace, and a goup of their friends decided to raise funds on their own to hold an integrated prom. While their initial thoughts were of local bake sales and car washes, those became unnecessary once online news sites got a hold of their story. Just two days after that story broke, those students reached their funding goal, according to their Facebook page. Then they quickly surpassed it.

Since then, they’ve continued to collect donations from supporters across the country, with the excess money going towards their own college scholarships, as well as to funds for two unidentified local families, each of whom have recently “suffered a major loss.”

In the weeks leading up to the dance, the students reported there had been some community backlash, mostly in the form of their fliers getting ripped down and disappearing.

And though several of Georgia’s lawmakers publicly championed the students’ efforts, Georgia’s own governor, Nathan Deal initially refused to comment on the events because he didn't "want to take sides," according to a statement released by his spokesperson.

Nonetheless, after several weeks of mounting public pressure, Deal did release a carefully-worded statement, that concluded with, “I think that people understand that some of these are just local issues and private issues, and not something that the state government needs to have its finger involved in.” And that may explain why segregation is alive and well in Georgia.

While their governor seemed content to sit this one out, these very determined high school students took it upon themselves to effect a change in their county, one that will hopefully be recognized for generations to come. In the meantime, if these are the kids who are representative of our future, we might be okay.

What would be your response if you found out that your county held segregated proms? Let us know in the Comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• These Los Angeles Cops Are Super-Excited About Taffeta and Tiaras

• What Every Parent Should Know: How to Help Your Kids Deal With Peer Conflicts at School

• Could Compassion Be the Key to Reducing Dropout Rates?

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com.

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Police say 4 people stabbed at Albuquerque church

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Police say a 24-year-old man stabbed four people at a Catholic church in Albuquerque as a Sunday mass was nearing its end.

Police spokesman Robert Gibbs says Lawrence Capener jumped over several pews at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church around noon Sunday and walked up to the choir area where he began his attack.

The injuries to the four church-goers weren't life-threatening. All four were being treated at hospitals.

An off-duty police officer and others at the church subdued Capener and held him down until police arrived.

Some of those who were stabbed were members of the choir.

Gibbs says Capener is now being interviewed by police and is expected to face felony charges.

It's not yet known whether Capener has an attorney.

Gibbs says investigators don't yet know the motive for the stabbings, whether Capener had ties to the victims or whether he regularly attended the church.

The stabbings occurred as the choir had just begun its closing hymns.

Archbishop of Santa Fe Michael Sheehan released a statement saying he was saddened by the attack.

"I pray for all who have been harmed, their families, the parishioners and that nothing like this will ever happen again," Sheehan said.

The church didn't immediately return calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.

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Pattern seen in alleged chemical arms use in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — The instances in which chemical weapons are alleged to have been used in Syria were purportedly small in scale: nothing along the lines of Saddam Hussein's 1988 attack in Kurdish Iraq that killed thousands.

That raises the question of who would stand to gain as President Bashar Assad's regime and the opposition trade blame for the alleged attacks, and proof remains elusive.

Analysts say the answer could lie in the past — the regime has a pattern of gradually introducing a weapon to the conflict to test the international community's response.

The U.S. said last week that intelligence indicates the Syrian military has likely used sarin, a deadly nerve agent, on at least two occasions in the civil war, echoing similar assessments from Israel, France and Britain. Syria's rebels accuse the regime of firing chemical weapons on at least four occasions, while the government denies the charges and says opposition fighters have used chemical agents in a bid to frame it.

But using chemical weapons to try to force foreign intervention would be a huge gamble for the opposition, and one that could easily backfire. It would undoubtedly taint the rebellion in the eyes of the international community and seriously strain its credibility.

Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Geneva, said it would also be difficult for the rebels to successfully employ chemical agents.

"It's very difficult to weaponize chemical weapons," he said. "It needs a special warhead, for the artillery a special fuse."

In the chaos of Syria's civil war, pinning down definitive proof on the alleged use of weapons of mass destruction is a tricky task with high stakes. President Barack Obama has said any use of chemical arms — or the transfer of stockpiles to terrorists — would cross a "red line" and carry "enormous consequences."

Already, the White House's announcement that the Syrian regime appears to have used chemical arms has ratcheted up the pressure on Obama to move forcefully. He has sought to temper expectations of a quick U.S. response, saying too little is known about the alleged attacks to take action now.

Analysts suggest that a limited introduction of the weapons, with little ostensible military gain, could be an attempt by the Syrian government to test the West's resolve while retaining the veil of plausible deniability. This approach would also allow foreign powers eager to avoid a costly intervention in Syria to remain on the sidelines, while at the same time opening the door for the regime to use the weapons down the road.

"If it's testing the water, and we're going to turn a blind eye, it could be used widely, repeatedly," Alani said. "If you are silent once, you will be silent twice."

The slow introduction of a weapon to gauge the West's response fits a pattern of behavior the Assad regime has demonstrated since the uprising began in March 2011, according to Joseph Holliday, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

When largely peaceful protesters initially took to the streets, the regime responded with small arms fire and a wave of arrests. As the government ramped up its violent crackdown, the opposition began to take up arms in late 2011, prompting yet another escalation in force by the regime.

In early 2012, government troops began using heavy weapons, first in a relatively restrained manner on military targets.

"Once they could confirm that there wasn't going to be a major reaction from the West, they were able to expand the use of artillery," Holliday said.

By the summer of 2012, government troops were pounding rebellious neighborhoods with tank fire, field cannons and mortars, but the rebellion was stronger than ever, prompting Assad to turn to his air force, and the regime's MiG fighter jets and helicopter gunships began to strike military targets in rural areas.

After the government was satisfied that the international community wasn't going to impose a no-fly zone like NATO did in Libya, Assad unleashed the full might of his air power, and warplanes have been indiscriminately bombing rebel-held areas since.

"It all fits the pattern of being able to do this incrementally," Holliday said.

"It's been important for the regime to introduce these capabilities as gradually as possible so that they don't trip the international community's red lines," he added. "I think this is basically a modus operandi that the Assad regime has established and tested with the United States, and confirmed that it works, and he's using it again with chemical weapons."

Syria has never confirmed it even has chemical weapons. But it is believed to possess substantial stockpiles of mustard gas and a range of nerve agents, including sarin, a highly toxic substance that can suffocate its victims by paralyzing muscles around their lungs.

Concern rose last summer when then-Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told a news conference that Damascus would only use chemical or biological weapons in case of foreign attack, not against its own people. The ministry then tried to blur the issue, saying it had never acknowledged having such arms.

Weapons of mass destruction are generally viewed as a deterrent against foreign attack, and their use a sign of desperation. But Assad appears far from desperate at the moment, and in fact is operating from a position of relative strength.

While much of northern Syria has fallen to the rebels, the government's hold on Damascus is firm and its forces have been on the offensive in the capital's suburbs and in the countryside near the border with Lebanon. In the northwest, regime troops recently opened up a key supply road to soldiers fighting in the embattled city of Aleppo.

Two of the alleged attacks the Syrian opposition blames on the regime took place in and around Aleppo: one in Khan al-Assal west of the city on March 19, and another in the contested Shiekh Maqsoud neighborhood on April 13. The other alleged instances were in the central city of Homs on Dec. 23 and in the village of Otaybah outside Damascus on March 19.

It is not clear exactly how many people died in those attacks because of the scarcity of credible information. The Syrian government seals off areas it controls to journalists and outside observers, making details of the attacks sketchy. But reports from anti-Assad activists and the government provide a basic outline.

Opposition activists have posted videos and pictures online of alleged victims of the attacks foaming at the mouth or with blister burns — symptoms consistent with chemical weapons attacks, but also other munitions. The Syrian state news agency, after one attack it blamed on rebels, published photos of casualties, including children. None showed signs of physical injuries.

Both sides in the civil war, which has already killed more than 70,000 people, have tried to use the issue to sway international opinion.

Rebels have been clamoring for more robust international action against the Assad regime. At a recent gathering in Turkey of the rebellion's international supporters, the opposition political leadership demanded drone strikes on regime targets and the imposition of a no-fly zone, and it reiterated calls for transfers of heavier weapons to its fighters.

The regime has seized on the opposition's demands for outside support to bolster its argument that rebels may have used chemical weapons to frame the government and precipitate foreign intervention.

In December, after rebels captured a chlorine factory in Aleppo, the government warned the opposition could be planning a chemical attack to frame the regime. To back up its assertions, the state news agency pointed to internet videos that purported to show regime opponents experimenting with poisons on mice and rabbits.

In the video, a masked man mixes gases in a glass box containing two rabbits. About a minute later, the animals start to spasm and then collapse. A narrator then says, "This is what will happen to you, Assad supporters." The origin of the video was not known.

Alani dismissed the possibility of the rebels, including Islamic extremist groups among the most powerful opposition fighting factions, carrying out a chlorine attack.

He noted that al-Qaida militants used chlorine on at least two occasions in Iraq in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, but abandoned the practice because "the impact of the chlorine was far less than conventional explosives."

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Follow Ryan Lucas on Twitter at www.twitter.com/relucasz

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Homeland security chairman: FBI checking training angle in bombing

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said Sunday that the FBI is investigating in the United States and overseas to determine whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing receiving training that helped them carry out the attack.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with joining with his older brother, Tamerlan, who's now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The bombs were triggered by a remote detonator of the kind used in remote-control toys, U.S. officials have said.

U.S. officials investigating the bombings have told The Associated Press that so far there is no evidence to date of a wider plot, including training, direction or funding for the attacks.

A criminal complaint outlining federal charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described him as holding a cellphone in his hand minutes before the first explosion.

The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents.

"I think given the level of sophistication of this device, the fact that the pressure cooker is a signature device that goes back to Pakistan, Afghanistan, leads me to believe — and the way they handled these devices and the tradecraft — ... that there was a trainer and the question is where is that trainer or trainers," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, on "Fox News Sunday."

"Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?" McCaul said. "In my conversations with the FBI, that's the big question. They've casted a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals."

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he thought it's "probably true" that the attack was not linked to a major group. But, he told CNN's "State of the Union," that there "may have been radicalizing influences" in the U.S. or abroad. "It does look like a lot of radicalization was self-radicalization online, but we don't know the full answers yet."

Last week, Rep. Peter King of New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, told Fox there was "a real sophistication with those weapons" and that "the indicators are that he received training. I'm not saying there's any evidence yet, but I think most professionals involved in this would think that there had to be some training from overseas, some direction from overseas."

Homemade bombs built from pressure cookers have been a frequent weapon of militants in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen once published an online manual on how to make one.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was an ardent reader of jihadist websites and extremist propaganda, officials have said. He frequently looked at extremist sites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate.

In recent years, two would-be U.S. attackers reported receiving bomb-making training from foreign groups but failed to set off the explosives.

A Nigerian man was given a mandatory life sentence for trying to blow up a packed jetliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb sewn into his underwear. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had tried to set off the bomb minutes before the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight landed.

The device didn't work as planned, but it still produced smoke, flame and panic. He told authorities that he trained in Yemen under the eye of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric and one of the best-known al-Qaida figures.

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed al-Awlaki in 2011.

In 2010, a Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square also received a life sentence. Faisal Shazad said the Pakistan Taliban provided him with more than $15,000 and five days of explosives training.

The bomb was made of fireworks fertilizer, propane tanks and gasoline canisters. Explosives experts said the fertilizer wasn't the right grade and the fireworks weren't powerful enough to set off the intended chain reaction.

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Venezuela's Capriles raised false hopes on vote audit: election body

By Daniel Wallis and Enrique Andres Pretel

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's electoral authority said on Saturday the opposition created false hopes about a vote audit being prepared after President Nicolas Maduro's narrow election win, adding that his rival had failed to present compelling proof of foul play.

The National Electoral Council had stressed from the start that the "expanded" audit it agreed to after the April 14 vote would not change the results, which made Maduro the successor to the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles says there were thousands of irregularities during the vote, and that his own calculations showed he won. He says he will challenge the outcome in the OPEC nation's courts.

"We have always insisted that Capriles had the right to challenge the process," Tibisay Lucena, president of the electoral council, said in a televised national broadcast.

"But it is also his obligation to present proof."

She dismissed various opposition submissions alleging voting irregularities as lacking key details, and said Capriles had subsequently tried to present the audit in very different terms than the electoral council had agreed to.

"It has been manipulated to generate false expectations about the process, including making it look like the consequence of the wider audit could affect the election results," she said.

Capriles has said that unless the audit includes all the relevant paperwork from polling centers, his team would not take part in a process that would end up being "a joke."

He has conceded that his legal challenge to Maduro's election faces a difficult path through the South American country's courts. Critics say Chavez packed the judiciary with loyal political appointees during his 14 years in power.

POST-ELECTION CLASHES

Capriles, a 40-year-old centrist state governor, confounded opinion polls to run a close finish against Maduro in the election, held just five weeks after Chavez's death from cancer. Capriles lost by less than two percentage points, according to official results.

The government blames Capriles for post-election violence that it says killed nine people, and the "Chavista"-dominated Congress is investigating him in connection with the unrest.

On Saturday, security forces arrested a retired general who is now a senior official with an opposition party and was recorded on video apparently advising rioters during clashes with police in a Caracas square a day after the election.

The opposition said the arrest was "illegal and cowardly."

The government also has arrested an American citizen it says was financing opposition student protesters to destabilize the country on behalf of an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency.

Relatives and friends of Timothy Hallet Tracy, 34, described him to U.S. media as a documentary-maker who was in Venezuela to make a film about the presidential election.

Some Maduro allies say the violence was proof that the opposition tried to launch a coup, while the opposition accuses the authorities of exaggerating the trouble and counting victims of common crime among its figures.

Both sides have called on their followers to march again on May 1, creating another potential flashpoint.

On Saturday, Maduro was on an official visit to Cuba to strengthen ties between the two countries. Chavez helped support Cuba's economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Maduro spoke at a tribute where President Raul Castro described Chavez as Cuba's best friend, and he signed cooperation accords for 51 projects.

Capriles, who accuses Cuba's Castro brothers of meddling in Venezuela's affairs, criticized the trip on Twitter.

"The Big Connected-One (Maduro) goes to Havana to receive instructions from his Boss. We always said it, there's nothing more powerful that the truth!" the opposition leader tweeted.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

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White House: Anthony Foxx in line for transportation post

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Monday will nominate Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Anthony Foxx as his new transportation secretary.

That's according to a White House official.

If confirmed by the Senate, Foxx would replace outgoing Secretary Ray LaHood.

Foxx is Obama's first black nominee among the new Cabinet members appointed for the second term. The president faced criticism early in his second term for a lack of diversity among his nominees.

The official insisted on anonymity to avoid public discussion of the pick before the official announcement.

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Feminist author Mary Thom, 68, killed in NY motorcycle crash

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned feminist and former women's magazine editor Mary Thom was killed in a motorcycle crash over the weekend in Yonkers, New York, friends and colleagues said.

Thom, 68, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, crashed her motorcycle on the Saw Mill Parkway on Friday evening, said Eleanor Smeal, publisher of Ms. Magazine and a close friend of Thom.

An accomplished author, editor and journalist, Thom devoted her career to giving voice to women's rights issues in books, magazine columns and through her work within the women's movement, which mourned the loss over the weekend.

"We, who are Mary's friends and family haven't absorbed her loss yet: it's too sudden,'' said actress Jane Fonda and feminist authors Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, three co-founders of the Women's Media Center, in a statement.

"Ms. Magazine, the Women's Media Center, the women's movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow."

Thom, an Akron, Ohio, native, spent more than a quarter century at Ms. Magazine and wrote a book about working her way from an entry level research position to executive editor in "Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement," according to Smeal.

Thom also edited a book of letters sent to the magazine during the publication's formative years between 1972-1987.

Smeal said she would sorely miss Thom's virtually constant presence at the heart of the movement over decades.

"She was always there,'' Smeal said on Sunday. "She was always there as a guiding hand to make sure that the spirit of feminism came through in everything we wrote at the Women's Media Center and at Ms. Magazine. She will truly be missed."

Thom was an avid motorcycle enthusiast who never owned a car and had been riding for four decades, her nephew Thom Loubet told the Journal News newspaper in Westchester, New York.

She was a top editor at the Women's Media Center at the time of her death, Smeal said.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jackie Frank)

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Man stabs 4 people at church in Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Police say a man stabbed four people at a Catholic church in Albuquerque as a Sunday mass was nearing its end.

Police spokesman Robert Gibbs says a man in his 20s jumped over several pews at St. Jude's Church around noon on Sunday and walked up to the choir area where he began his attack.

The injuries to the four church-goers weren't life-threatening. All four were being treated at hospitals.

Numerous parishioners subdued the attacker and held him down until police arrived.

Gibbs says the attacker is in custody but that police don't yet know his identity, the motive for the stabbings, whether he had any ties to the victims or whether he regularly attended the church.

The stabbings occurred as the choir had just begun its closing hymns.

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Mother of Boston Marathon bomb suspects found deeper spirituality

BOSTON (AP) — In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.

But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.

Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.

Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons — Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured — are innocent.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Amid the scrutiny, Tsarnaeva and her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, say they have put off the idea of any trip to the U.S. to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit Dzhokhar in jail. Tsarnaev told the AP on Sunday he was too ill to travel to the U.S. Tsarnaeva faces a 2012 shoplifting charge in a Boston suburb, though it was unclear whether that was a deterrent.

At a news conference in Dagestan with Anzor last week, Tsarnaeva appeared overwhelmed with grief one moment, defiant the next. "They already are talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist," she said. "They already want me, him and all of us to look (like) terrorists."

Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Mass. With four children, Anzor and Zubeidat qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.

Zubeidat took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor, who had studied law, fixed cars.

By some accounts, the family was tolerant.

Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat's two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.

"I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was," Smith told the newspaper. "Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter."

Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.

"I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said.

By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.

"She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised," Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog. "She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting."

Kilzer wrote that Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings. But she stopped visiting the family's home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, she "started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims."

"It's real," Tsarnaeva said, according to Kilzer. "My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet."

In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat's eldest son got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a child who is about 3 years old.

Zubeidat married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.

It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor and Zubeidat divorced in 2011.

About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service.

The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010. That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan at the family's home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother's name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.

After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan. The Russians also recorded Zubeidat talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

Anzor's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.

While Tamerlan was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Mass., and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a department store.

She failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.

___

Seddon reported from Makhachkala, Russia. Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.

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Lawmakers: Syria chemical weapons could menace U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons could be a greater threat after that nation's president leaves power and could end up targeting Americans at home, lawmakers warned Sunday as they considered a U.S. response that stops short of sending military forces there.

U.S. officials last week declared that the Syrian government probably had used chemical weapons twice in March, newly provocative acts in the 2-year civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The U.S. assessment followed similar conclusions from Britain, France, Israel and Qatar — key allies eager for a more aggressive response to the Syrian conflict.

President Barack Obama has said Syria's likely action — or the transfer of President Bashar Assad's stockpiles to terrorists — would cross a "red line" that would compel the United States to act.

Lawmakers sought to remind viewers on Sunday news programs of Obama's declaration while discouraging a U.S. foothold on the ground there.

"The president has laid down the line, and it can't be a dotted line. It can't be anything other than a red line," said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. "And more than just Syria, Iran is paying attention to this. North Korea is paying attention to this."

Added Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.: "For America to sit on the sidelines and do nothing is a huge mistake."

Obama has insisted that any use of chemical weapons would change his thinking about the United States' role in Syria but said he didn't have enough information to order aggressive action.

"For the Syrian government to utilize chemical weapons on its people crosses a line that will change my calculus and how the United States approaches these issues," Obama said Friday.

But Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, said Sunday the United States needs to consider those weapons. She said that when Assad leaves power, his opponents could have access to those weapons or they could fall into the hands of U.S. enemies.

"The day after Assad is the day that these chemical weapons could be at risk ... (and) we could be in bigger, even bigger trouble," she said.

Both sides of the civil war already accuse each other of using the chemical weapons.

The deadliest such alleged attack was in the Khan al-Assal village in the Aleppo province in March. The Syrian government called for the United Nations to investigate alleged chemical weapons use by rebels in the attack that killed 31 people.

Syria, however, has not allowed a team of experts into the country because it wants the investigation limited to the single Khan al-Assal incident, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged "immediate and unfettered access" for an expanded investigation.

One of Obama's chief antagonists on Syria, Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., said the United States should go to Syria as part of an international force to safeguard the chemical weapons. But McCain added that he is not advocating sending ground troops to the nation.

"The worst thing we could do is put boots on the ground," McCain said.

His friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also said the United States could safeguard the weapons without a ground force. But he cautioned the weapons must be protected for fear that Americans could be targeted. Raising the specter of the lethal bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, Graham said the next attack on U.S. soil could employ weapons that were once part of Assad's arsenal.

"The next bomb that goes off in America may not have nails and glass," he said.

Rogers and Schakowsky spoke to ABC's "This Week." Chambliss and Graham were interviewed on CBS's "Face the Nation." McCain appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press."

___

Follow Philip Elliott on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Philip_Elliott

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Obama to nominate Anthony Foxx as transportation secretary

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to nominate on Monday Charlotte, North Carolina, Mayor Anthony Foxx to be his next transportation secretary, a White House official said on Sunday.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Foxx would replace Ray LaHood, who has served as transportation secretary since January 2009.

Foxx is African-American and would add to the Obama Cabinet's racial diversity, something the president's supporters have been urging him to do.

As Charlotte mayor, Foxx is credited with improving the city's transportation systems.

"Foxx's career as a public official, in a rapidly changing urban environment, has been marked by an ability to integrate local, state and federal resources to meet important transportation challenges," the White House official said.

North Carolina has been an important swing state in presidential elections. It voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, but backed Obama in 2008. Charlotte hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2012.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Stacey Joyce and Mohammad Zargham)

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Exclusive: Boston bomb suspects' parents retreat to village, cancel U.S. trip

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN NORTH CAUCASUS, Russia (Reuters) - The father of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects has abandoned plans to travel to the United States to bury one son and help in the defense of the other, he told Reuters on Sunday in an interview in southern Russia.

Anzor Tsarnaev said he believed he would not be allowed to see his surviving son Dzohkhar, who was captured and has been charged in connection with the April 15 bomb blasts that killed three people and wounded 264.

"I am not going back to the United States. For now I am here. I am ill," Tsarnaev said. He agreed to the face-to-face interview on condition that his location in the North Caucasus, a string of mainly Muslim provinces in southern Russia, not be disclosed.

"Unfortunately I can't help my child in any way. I am in touch with Dzhokhar's and my own lawyers. They told me they would let me know (what to do)," he said.

Tsarnaev had said in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan on Thursday that he planned to travel to the United States to see Dzkhokhar and bury his elder son, Tamerlan, who was shot dead by police in a firefight four days after the bombings.

(Reporting by Maria Golovnina; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Leftist priests: Francis can fix church 'in ruins'

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff says Pope Francis has what it takes to fix a church "in ruins."

Previous popes tried to silence the Brazilian leftist, but Boff says the former Argentine cardinal who became pope last month has both the vigor and tenderness to create a new spiritual world.

Boff told a packed room at the Buenos Aires book fair Saturday that with Francis, the Vatican's campaign to stamp out liberation theology is over. He says Francis is anything but a closed-minded conservative.

Boff says "Pope Francis comes with the perspective that many of us in Latin America share... our churches work together to support universal causes, causes like human rights, from the perspective of the poor, the destiny of humanity that is suffering."

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Kentucky woman ordained as priest in defiance of Roman Catholic Church

By Mary Wisniewski

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) - In an emotional ceremony filled with tears and applause, a 70-year-old Kentucky woman was ordained a priest on Saturday as part of a dissident group operating outside of official Roman Catholic Church authority.

Rosemarie Smead is one of about 150 women around the world who have decided not to wait for the Roman Catholic Church to lift its ban on women priests, but to be ordained and start their own congregations.

In an interview before the ceremony, Smead said she is not worried about being excommunicated from the Church - the fate of other women ordained outside of Vatican law.

"It has no sting for me," said Smead, a petite, gray-haired former Carmelite nun with a ready hug for strangers. "It is a Medieval bullying stick the bishops used to keep control over people and to keep the voices of women silent. I am way beyond letting octogenarian men tell us how to live our lives."

The ordination of women as priests, along with the issues of married priests and birth control, represents one of the big divides between U.S. Catholics and the Vatican hierarchy. Seventy percent of U.S. Catholics believe that women should be allowed to be priests, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll earlier this year.

The former pope, Benedict XVI, reaffirmed the Catholic Church's ban on women priests and warned that he would not tolerate disobedience by clerics on fundamental teachings. Male priests have been stripped of their holy orders for participating in ordination ceremonies for women.

In a statement last week, Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz called the planned ceremony by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests a "simulated ordination" in opposition to Catholic teaching.

"The simulation of a sacrament carries very serious penal sanctions in Church law, and Catholics should not support or participate in Saturday's event," Kurtz said.

The Catholic Church teaches that it has no authority to allow women to be priests because Jesus Christ chose only men as his apostles. Proponents of a female priesthood said Jesus was acting only according to the customs of his time.

They also note that he chose women, like Mary Magdalene, as disciples, and that the early Church had women priests, deacons and bishops.

The ceremony, held at St. Andrew United Church of Christ in Louisville, was attended by about 200 men and women. Many identified themselves to a Reuters reporter as Catholics, but some declined to give their names or their churches.

'NEW ERA OF INCLUSIVITY'

The modern woman priest movement started in Austria in 2002, when seven women were ordained by the Danube River by an independent Catholic bishop. Other women were later ordained as bishops, who went on to ordain more women priests and deacons.

"As a woman priest, Rosemarie is leading, not leaving the Catholic Church, into a new era of inclusivity," said Bishop Bridget Mary Meehan during her sermon Saturday. "As the Irish writer James Joyce reminded us, the word 'Catholic' means 'Here comes everybody!'"

Smead had to leave the rigorous Carmelite life due to health reasons, and earned a bachelor's degree in theology and a doctorate in counseling psychology. She taught at Indiana University for 26 years, and works as a couples and family therapist.

During the ordination ceremony, Smead wept openly as nearly everyone in the audience came up and laid their hands on her head in blessing. Some whispered, "Thanks for doing this for us."

During the communion service, Smead and other woman priests lifted the plates and cups containing the sacramental bread and wine to bless them.

A woman in the audience murmured, "Girl, lift those plates. I've been waiting a long time for this."

One of those attending the service was Stewart Pawley, 32, of Louisville, who said he was raised Catholic and now only attends on Christmas and Easter. But he said he would attend services with Smead when she starts to offer them in Louisville.

"People like me know it's something the Catholic Church will have to do," said Pawley.

(Editing by Tim Gaynor and Mohammad Zargham)

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Man stabs four choir members in New Mexico church: police

By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - A man visiting a Catholic church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, stabbed four choir members as they were singing the closing hymns of a Mass on Sunday, police said.

Parishioners at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church jumped on the unidentified man after the attack and were restraining him when police officers arrived just before noon local time, Albuquerque Police spokeswoman Tasia Martinez said.

The four injured choir members were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Martinez said the man arrested for the attack was not a member of the church and the reason for the stabbings was not known.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by David Bailey and Paul Simao)

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Reclusive lawyer opens up about defending killers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Judy Clarke is in the business of cheating death, but she rarely talks about it.

Clarke, one of the nation's top lawyers and defender of the despised, broke her silence Friday in a speech at a legal conference, where she spoke about her work saving notorious criminal defendants from execution.

The names of her past clients — Susan Smith, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and most recently, Tucson shooter Jared Loughner — run like a list of the most reviled in American criminal history. But she did not say whether she would add to that list the latest name in the news: The suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Clarke was reticent throughout her keynote speech and declined to take questions from the audience. Instead, she talked about how she had been "sucked into the black hole, the vortex" of death penalty cases 18 years ago when she represented Smith, who drowned her two children.

"I got a dose of understanding human behavior and I learned what the death penalty does to us," she said. "I don't think it's a secret that I oppose the death penalty. "

She saved Smith's life and later would do the same for Kaczynski, Loughner and the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. All received life sentences instead of death.

Before an audience of lawyers, judges and law students at Loyola Law School's annual Fidler Institute, Clarke shared her approach in handling death penalty cases.

"The first clear way death cases are different is the clients," said Clarke, now a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia. "Most have suffered from serious severe trauma, unbelievable trauma. We know that from brain research. Many suffer from severe cognitive development issues that affect the core of their being."

She added that they had another thing in common: When she first meets them, they do not want to plead guilty. Her job is to change their resolve, she said.

"They're looking into the lens of life in prison in a box," she said. "Our job is to provide them with a reason to live."

Connecting with the client by finding out "what brought them to this day that will define the rest of their lives" is the first step, she said. In most cases, she said she finds underlying mental illness. Kaczynski was ultimately diagnosed as schizophrenic and, on the eve of seating a jury, he agreed to plead guilty.

Clarke said a veteran lawyer once told her: "The first step to losing a capital case is picking a jury.

The San Diego-based attorney often appears in court as a federal public defender, and appealed to judges in the audience to provide sufficient funding for death penalty cases. She also told defense lawyers and students that death penalty clients deserve their loyalty.

"Our clients are different," she said. "We should enjoy the opportunity to step into their lives. It can be chaotic. But it's a privilege to be there as a lawyer."

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More than 1,000 suits against NuvaRing may go to trial this fall

A NuvaRing contraceptive. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty)Rachel Lietzke Payne started using Nuvaring in 2008, when she was a 20-year-old college student. The contraceptive device appealed to her because it was easy to use. Birth control pills have to be taken every day, but Nuvaring, which came onto the market in 2001, is inserted into the vagina and removed each month—and is just as effective at preventing pregnancy.

One Monday in October of 2010, more than a year after she first began using the vaginal ring, Payne met her father for a standing lunch date at Buffalo Wild Wings in Casselberry, north of where they lived in Orlando. When she and her dad walked out of the restaurant, Payne suddenly fell ill and spat up quarter-size chunks of blood onto the cement.

Payne was rushed to the hospital, where she spent 10 days being pumped with anti-coagulants to thin her blood. She was diagnosed as having developed a blood clot in her lung, a condition that could have been fatal. “It took them a while to figure out that it was blood clots because I was 22 at the time,” said Payne, who is now a married 25-year-old aspiring air traffic controller with a toddler son. She was also a non-smoker, fit, and had no family history of blood clots, all potential risk factors.

But the doctors landed on what they believed might have caused the clotting: the Nuvaring.

Payne is now one of more than 1,000 women suing Merck & Co—the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the birth control—in a federal district court in Missouri. They allege that the company’s device caused them to suffer blood clots—in a few cases, fatal ones—the risks of which they say they were inadequately warned about.

The suits are the latest in a pricey legal backlash over a variety of hormonal contraceptives that have come to the market in the past 10 years. Thousands of women sued over the Ortho Evra patch, citing studies that showed a higher blood clot risk compared to traditional birth control pills, costing Ortho McNeil, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, millions of dollars. And as of 2012, more than 10,000 suits were filed against Bayer, the makers of Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills, which has set aside more than $1.5 billion to settle claims against them.

Roger Denton, the lead counsel for the multi-district litigation against Nuvaring in Missouri, said he thinks the case could be as lucrative for his clients as Bayer’s litigation over Yaz and Yasmin. (Bayer has settled for an average of $216,000 with each plaintiff in that case.)

Hormonal contraceptives inhibit ovulation by releasing a combination of estrogen and progestin. While earlier iterations of progestin have shown only a slight increase in blood clot risk, recent studies have shown that newer forms of progestin—called third- and fourth-generation progestins, which were developed in the 1990s and 2000s—are associated with higher rates of blood clotting among women who take them compared to second-generation iterations of the hormone.

In fact, more than a dozen studies conducted over more than a decade have shown that women taking contraceptives containing a third-generation progestin—such as that used in Nuvaring and some birth control pills—have a 1.4 to 4 times higher risk of developing blood clots than women on contraceptives containing second-generation progestin.

The studies include a recent one funded by the FDA that tracked the health records of more than 835,000 women, found that those who used the vaginal ring were more likely to experience venous thrombosis than women who took oral contraceptives. But the researchers warned that the finding is “new and raises concern,” and “needs to be replicated in other studies.”

A handful of other studies, however, have shown no increased risk. Overall, the risk is still very low, with only around six to 10 out of 10,000 women developing blood clots over a year.

The plaintiffs in the Nuvaring case say it's not just the hormone in the device that caused their blood clots, but also the delivery system. Unlike other forms of birth control, Nuvaring dispenses hormones directly into the bloodstream, which the plaintiffs' expert witness argues could cause "spikes" of hormones that make women more susceptible to blood clots. There's currently no large study to back up that claim.

Some experts, however, warn the results of the studies conducted are being overblown by the media and trial lawyers, and may be scaring women away from effective birth control. More than 20 international researchers published an open letter in the Journal of Family Health and Reproductive Planning earlier this month saying the media and attorneys are creating a “scare” that is not based on adequate research and could create more harm than good. They argue that large database studies, such as the one funded by the FDA, can be inaccurate because they don’t take into account all the confounding variables, such as obesity, that could affect blood clotting.

The letter notes that third- and fourth-generation hormonal contraceptives overall contain a very low risk of blood clots, and that more studies are needed before that risk can be determined. Overall, it notes, about four to six additional women out of every 10,000 on the newer forms of birth control would suffer a blood clot compared to women taking the older form of birth control. The risk goes up dramatically for pregnant women: 29 per 10,000 pregnant women develop a blood clot, meaning that the risks of unintended pregnancy are far greater than that of any hormonal birth control on the market.

The plaintiffs in the Nuvaring case say Merck did not adequately test or label the Nuvaring product to warn of these risks. Merck has disputed this, saying the company is confident its product is safe, and that it followed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for its packaging.

The company was awarded a judicial victory last week, when a judge in New Jersey threw out seven separate suits against Nuvaring, saying the plaintiffs did not prove that Nuvaring was the cause of their blood clots. New Jersey courts have tougher standards for suing an FDA-approved product than the federal court system, however, where some of the more than 1,000 suits face trial beginning in October.

“We are confident the company has provided appropriate and timely information about Nuvaring to consumers and the medical, scientific and regulatory communities,” Lainie Keller, a spokeswoman for Merck, said in a statement. “We remain confident in the efficacy and safety profile of Nuvaring, and will continue to always act in the best interest of patients.”

But Denton, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said he’s sure his cases in the district court won’t be dismissed.

“That’s what all these drug companies say,” Denton said. “'It’s good enough for the FDA, that’s the end of the story.’ But under our law that doesn’t matter. The jury decides.”

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Muslim-Christian relationship fuels row in Egypt

CAIRO (AP) — An alleged romance between an Egyptian Muslim college student and a Coptic Christian man heightened sectarian tension on Friday in a small rural Egyptian town where police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing Muslims who surrounded a Coptic church in anger over the inter-faith relationship, a security official and priest said.

The Muslim protesters accuse Saint Girgis Church of helping 21-year-old Rana el-Shazli, who is believed to have converted to Christianity, flee to Turkey with a Coptic Christian man.

Stories of conversions to Christianity or Islam, inter-faith romances and the illegal building and expanding of churches have caused a series of deadly sectarian incidents in recent years. Since Islamists rose to power after Egypt's 2011 uprising that forced out longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Christians have grown more fearful of intimidation and violence from fellow Egyptians, especially ultraconservative Salafis.

The alleged romance has been fueling sectarian tension for nearly two months in Wasta, a rural town in Beni Suef province, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Cairo.

Muslims have attacked churches there and forced Christians to close their shops for nearly eight days last month and members of the Christian man's family have been arrested, including his mother and father, after a prosecutor accused them of collaborating in hiding the woman. The woman's family issued an ultimatum for the church to bring her back early this month, but when it didn't, violence erupted anew.

On Friday, ultraconservative Salafis distributed flyers accusing the church of "proselytizing Christianity," according to a copy of the flyer posted on a social networking site. It called on residents to rally inside a mosque located meters (yards) from the church to "rescue a Muslim soul and bring her back from the deviant path."

Father Bishoy Youssef of the church said he heard loudspeakers from the adjacent mosque calling on worshippers to join a march to the church for the sake of the girl. He said churches in Wasta had been forewarned about "threats to attack the churches" and scheduled early morning masses that would be finished before Friday prayers at the mosque.

"God protect us," he said. "We have nothing to do with this whole story,"

Clashes erupted when protesters hurled stones at security forces that had cordoned off streets leading to the church. Police fired tear gas, according to a security official, who added that police arrested five people, including the girl's uncle. According to the security official at the scene, two people were injured by gunshots and others suffered breathing problems from the tear gas.

Last month, another priest from the same church told Coptic Christian Karama TV network that protesters set his car on fire.

Like previous incidents, sessions to foster reconciliation were held with elders from the town, but extremists seemed intent on escalating the tension, Youssef said.

Abu Islam, a well-known extremist cleric who was tried in an Egyptian court for insulting Christianity, appeared last month on his television program, which is broadcast on The Nation TV, calling on Muslims to take action against any church network that seeks to convert Muslim women to Christianity.

"This girl is not coming back," he said. "The Christians mess with our honor and faith."

Also on Friday, a Christian girl disappeared in the southern ancient city of Luxor. A security official said the family of 20-year-old Rania Manqaryous filed a complaint with police accusing a Muslim man, who was a neighbor, of abducting their daughter.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In the past, similar incidents have triggered deadly sectarian violence.

In 2010, the ultraconservative Muslim Salafis claimed that Camilla Shehata, a Coptic Christian wife of a priest, had converted to Islam, but was abducted by the church to force her to return to Christianity. Iraq's branch of al-Qaida used the incident as justification for an attack on a Baghdad church that killed 68 people, and threatened to conduct similar attacks in Egypt until the church released her. On Dec. 31, 2011, a suicide bomber killed at least 21 Christians at a church in the port city of Alexandria — an attack linked to the Shehata case.

In May 2011, at least 12 people were killed and a Cairo church was burned in clashes after a Christian woman had an affair with a Muslim man. When she disappeared, the man alleged that Christian clergy had snatched her and were holding her prisoner in a local church because she had converted to Islam.

Separately, dozens of mostly masked protesters hurled stones and firebombs in clashes with riot police at Egypt's presidential palace in a Cairo suburb. Protests have become a weekly occurrence in Egypt with unrest continuing since the 2011 uprising.

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Muslim-Christian romance fuels Egypt sectarian row

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian security official and a priest say police fired tear gas and clashed with a stone-throwing mob of Muslims who had surrounded a Coptic Church in anger over an inter-faith romance.

The Muslim protesters accuse the church of helping to secret away 21-year-old Rana el-Shazli, believed to have converted to Christianity before fleeing her small town with a Coptic Christian man to Turkey.

The alleged romance ignited sectarian tension in Wasta, a rural town in Beni Suef province, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Cairo. Clashes flared anew on Friday after weekly Muslim prayers.

For more than a month, Muslims have attacked churches over the incident and forced Christians to close their shops in the town.

Christians make up nearly 10 percent of Egypt's population of 90 million.

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Egypt's Pope says Islamist rulers neglect Copts

By Yasmine Saleh and Paul Taylor

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Christians feel sidelined, ignored and neglected by Muslim Brotherhood-led authorities, who proffer assurances but have taken little or no action to protect them from violence, Coptic Pope Tawadros II said.

In his first interview since emerging from seclusion after eight people were killed in sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians this month, the pope called official accounts of clashes at Cairo's Coptic cathedral on April 7 "a pack of lies".

He also voiced dismay at attempts by President Mohamed Mursi's Islamist allies to purge thousands of judges appointed under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, saying the judiciary was a pillar of Egyptian society and should not be touched.

"There is a sense of marginalization and rejection, which we can call social isolation," the pope told Reuters on Thursday of the feelings of Christians, who he said make up at least 15 percent of Egypt's 84 million people. Most Egyptians are Sunni Muslims.

Attacks on churches and sectarian tensions increased significantly after the rise of Islamists to power following the 2011 uprising that overthrew Mubarak, even though Christians had demonstrated alongside Muslims for his removal.

Asked about the government's response to this month's attacks, he said: "It made a bad judgment and it was negligent... I would have expected better security for the place and the people."

Mursi and his ministers tried to mend fences with the 60-year-old Coptic pontiff after the April 5 clashes in the town of El Khusus, north of Cairo, in which four Christians and one Muslim were killed.

Sectarian violence spread to the capital's sprawling St Mark's Cathedral, the pope's headquarters, after the funerals.

"Sometimes we get nice feelings from officials, but such feelings require actions, and the actions are slow, and maybe little, and sometimes don't exist at all," the pope said.

Riot police appeared to stand aside during what was the first attack on the seat of Christianity in Egypt in more than 1,400 years, although Coptic churches and community centers have suffered periodic violence for years.

EMIGRATION OUT OF FEAR

The pope said he was concerned by signs that some Copts were emigrating "because they are fearing the new regime". Others were going abroad to study, seek work or join family, he said.

In a concerted drive, the interior minister paid a condolence call on Tawadros on Wednesday and the ministers of information and tourism visited him on Thursday for a meeting televised on state media.

But the pope said that beyond promises to investigate the incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice, nothing practical had been done to improve the lot of Copts.

"After the last incidents, we gained some promises from the authorities and the government, from some ministers, but till now there is nothing new," he said.

Christians have long complained of discrimination in employment and treatment by the authorities and called for changes in laws to make it as easy to build or renovate churches as it is for mosques.

"Christians' problems and hardships have two sides, a religious side and a civilian one. The religious side involves two main issues: building churches and land," the pope said.

"I expect the government to facilitate and solve the chronic problems... For example, the building of a new church takes more than 15-16 years to get permission."

SCATHING

The black-robed pontiff, carrying a white-tipped staff and a Coptic cross in his hand, was particularly scathing about an account of the cathedral violence posted on the Facebook page of Mursi's national security adviser, Essam Haddad.

"It is 100 percent rejected," Tawadros said. "This statement was in English, directed to the U.S. State Department, and was sent with a CD to explain their position and to cover up, but this statement is a pack of lies. It did not tell the truth."

Haddad's office said Christians had instigated the clashes by vandalizing cars outside the cathedral during the funeral procession, and that firearms and petrol bombs had been used from inside the church compound, provoking the security forces.

A Reuters witness saw at least two people carrying guns and petrol bombs on the roof of the cathedral that day, but the pope said mourners had merely been reacting to an assault.

"They did not come to make violence, they came for a funeral, and when they came out of the church, they started to be subjected to violence. And hence they acted. There is a difference between action and reaction," he said.

The pope said the church had not even been asked to provide its account of events to government officials.

Pope Tawadros, the 118th head of Coptic Orthodox church, was picked on November 5 in a ceremony steeped in the traditions of a community that predates Islam's arrival in Egypt. He studied pharmacology in Egypt and England and managed a state-owned pharmaceutical factory for a few years before becoming a monk.

The 60-year-old pontiff succeeded Pope Shenouda III, who had led Egyptian Christians for four decades, clashing early on with former President Anwar Sadat but enjoying warmer relations with Mubarak, who acted as the Copts' political protector.

By contrast, Mursi has kept his distance, staying away from Tawadros' inauguration and shunning Coptic Christmas celebrations, to avoid alienating hardline conservative Salafi Islamists who refuse to recognize Christian holidays.

He offended Copts by setting the date for parliamentary elections on the Coptic Easter holiday, then admitting when he changed the polling day after Christian protests that he had been aware of the religious festival.

During the interview the pope offered an Easter prayer for Mursi, saying: "May God help you to serve in the work you are doing and may the situation in Egypt improve and the bridges of trust between all officials and citizens be strengthened."

(Writing by Paul Taylor; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Indictment: Prison gang leader fathered 5 children with 4 guards

Tavon White in 2009 (Anne Arundel County Police Department)

A Baltimore prisoner is said to have fathered five children with four different corrections officers while incarcerated, according to a recently unsealed federal racketeering indictment.

In addition, the Washington Post reports that 13 female corrections officers assisted imprisoned gang members in criminal enterprises including the trafficking of drugs, witness intimidation and money laundering. Guards also tipped off prisoners about upcoming cell searches.

Tavon White, allegedly of the Black Guerrilla Family gang, reportedly bragged about his position of power within the jail. In an intercepted phone call detailed in the indictment, White is alleged to have said, "I hold the highest seat you can get. So regardless of what anybody say, whatever I say is law. Like I am the law... My word is law..., so if I told any mother-******* body they had to do this, hit a police, do this, kill a mother-******, do anything, it got to get done. Period."

The indictment is as disturbing as it is astounding. In it, prosecutors detail the various sexual relationships White had with different prison guards. Two of the women had the name "Tavon" tattooed on their bodies (one woman got the tattoo on her neck, the other on her wrist). These sexual relations "cemented the business ties and the association of the corrections officers with the enterprise," prosecutors wrote in the indictment. The guards are said to have smuggled in cellphones and drugs to the prisoners.

One prison guard was given a diamond ring by a gang leader. Others were provided with cars to drive (including two Mercedes Benzes, a BMW and an Acura). Two of those cars were purchased by a prisoner using proceeds from the illegal enterprise, according to the indictment.

All told, 25 people were charged with racketeering and drug offenses. They include inmates, guards, and outside suppliers. The Washington Post reports that 20 of them were also charged in a money-laundering conspiracy. Defendants will face a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on the racketeering and drug charges.

"We are committed to ensuring that this activity does not happen again," said Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein in a press conference.

Gary D. Maynard, Maryland secretary of Public Safety & Correctional Services, said, "It becomes embarrassing for me when we expose ourselves and we participate in an investigation that’s going to show what’s going on in our jails that I am not proud of."

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Regret and grandma prove time-tested deterrents to teens’ tattoo pleas

Gable Rhoads' dragon tattoo. (Gable Rhoads/YCN)

“What is it?”

That’s the question Gable Rhoads often fields about one of her tattoos, a black-and-red creature that crawls up her left arm. Is it a skeleton? A bird? A bat?

It’s a dragon. But you might not know it, she says, because not only have the colors and lines of the 27-year-old tattoo faded, but "it was just too large to properly visualize on my upper arm in the first place."

Rhoads, now 49, was no kid when she chose her tattoos. "I got my first tattoo when I was 22 and a recent graduate from Marine Corps boot camp; I thought my tattoo signaled to the world there was a tough woman under my shy, quiet exterior," she says.

But one of her daughters, Jade, was not quite an adult yet when she wanted to hers. And that, as they say, can be a whole different story.

Rhoads' first-person account for Yahoo News was in response to our question: How do parents, especially those tattooed themselves, advise their children against them? That quandary arose somewhat amusingly on Wednesday when President Barack Obama told NBC’s "Today" show that he had warned his daughters that if they got tattoos, he and first lady Michelle Obama would get the same tattoos in the same place—a “family tattoo,” if you will—and show them off on YouTube. Embarrassment, he implied, is ample deterrence.

Time speeds forward inexorably, and many who get inked face a problem: The tattoo that screamed undying love for a high-school cheerleader, say, or a boyfriend, or paid passionate allegiance to Def Leppard may have been badass back then, but now, not so much.

Rhoads' daughter's tattoos. (Gable Rhoads/YCN)

So, First Family aside, what strategies do everyday parents employ to dissuade their kids from getting inked? Yahoo News asked them to share their tactics.

“I never forbade my daughters from getting a tattoo, but I did tell them to think long and hard before permanently changing their bodies,” Rhoads, who also has “Semper Fi” and her ex-husband's name on her arm, says. “The Minnie Mouse tattoo may be cute now, but what will the grandkids think when Minnie is wide and wrinkled?”

Her ex-husband, she says, was more direct: He told Jade—now 25 with a tattoo of her own daughter's name and another of a flower—that women with tattoos were trashy. He later gave her the silent treatment. Those ploys didn't work.

"[My] tattoos are a part of me, and I do not regret them,” Rhoads, of Highland, Ind., says. “Time will tell if she will come to regret [hers].”

Grandma is the first line of defense

The admonishment of “Just Say No” worked in keeping Daniel A. Willis’ teen boys from drugs. But keeping them from tattoos? Not so much.

When Joey, Willis’ older son, turned 15, he offered the logic of "I want a tattoo, all my friends have one, I don't fit in without one.”

Enter Grandma.

Willis says his mother-in-law, Charlotte, is a very conservative woman. Raised in post-World War II Germany, she readily offers her perspective and doesn’t hesitate to dole out punishment. So, Willis issued Joey two ground rules: First, no tattoos on the face or below the shirt-sleeve. Second, he had to show the tattoo to his grandmother.

Condition No. 2, says Willis, who lives in Denver, was “a show-stopper.”

Now 29, Joey didn’t get a tattoo until college. His younger brother, 27-year-old Keith, is ink-free.

Gravity can lead to regret

R.D. Hayes' memorial tattoo of her son Gaje. (Gable Rhoads/YCN)

R.D. Hayes had trouble responding to her 7-year-old daughter’s pleas for a tattoo on her arm. Gracie’s age wasn’t the issue. It was because she was intent on copying her mom’s memorial tattoo of Gaje, Gracie's 6-year-old brother, who had been killed in an automobile accident.

Hayes, who lives in Oklahoma City, decided to simply tell the truth: Tattoos mean pain, gravity and regret.

“I remind [my kids] of all the dangers that can come from tattoos and how they may wake up one day and regret it,” Hayes, 28, says. “I told them that gravity seems to take over as we age and, besides, tattoos can be some of the [worst] pain that you ever felt.”

Hayes, who had been a rebellious kid, says when she got her first tattoo—a small dot between her thumb and index finger—she waited patiently for her father to notice. She doesn't expect her kids will show any less spirit.

Her stepson, Brie, got his tattoo, a colorful teepee on his foot, right after he turned 18. “It looked a bit girlish,” Hayes says. “It was something that I wouldn't have placed on my body. He said it was to show off his Native American pride, but I couldn't help but laugh. [H]e now regrets it."

Which added fuel to her belief that parents should stress regret. Failing that, she recommends taking teens to a professional tattoo artist who can explain why it’s important to wait—or not get tattooed at all.

Read other parents’ strategies:

Fake Infections Convinced Our Kids to Abhor Tattoos

How I Kept My Son from Getting a Spider-Man Tattoo

Mom to Kids: If You Really Want the Tattoo, Wait for It

No Tattoos—at Least in Inappropriate Places

In Warning Kids Against Tattoos, Sometimes Logic Actually Works

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