State of the Union: "Act two" of Obama's 2nd term

When the curtain rises on President Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, the White House wants it viewed as "Act Two" - a follow-up to the national goals and policy objectives of which he spoke 22 days earlier on the West Front of the Capitol.

"The president has always viewed the two speeches, the inaugural address and the State of The Union, as two acts in the same play," said press secretary Jay Carney yesterday.

Though Mr. Obama has given more speeches this year on his proposals to stem gun violence and overhaul immigration policy, the "core emphasis" of his speech tonight is the economy.

"You'll hear from the president a very clear call for the need to take action to help our economy grow and help it create jobs," said Carney.

That includes the showdown with Congress over the mandatory spending cuts due to take effect starting March 1.

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Valerie Jarrett on SOTU: "An optimistic vision"

The president will urge Congress "not to shoot the economy in the foot," said Carney, by agreeing to his plan to avert the across-the-board spending cuts which the White House portrays as mindless and severe.

The president will again make it clear he wants a "balanced" plan that calls for additional tax revenue from America's top earners.

"My message to Congress is this: let's keep working together to solve this problem," the president said Saturday in his weekly address.

But Republican leaders say Mr. Obama already got his tax hikes as part of the "fiscal cliff" package, and now needs to focus exclusively on reductions in spending.

It'll be Mr. Obama's seventh appearance before a Joint Session of Congress and he'll be taking the rostrum aware that the national unemployment rate still hovers just under 8 percent and economic growth fell into negative territory at the end of 2012.

"The economy is not in a worse place than it was before," said Carney, pointing to the progress made since Mr. Obama's first State of the Union Address. "We were in economic freefall."

He said the president will make the case that "we are at a moment when the economy is poised to continue to grow...to build on the job creation that we've achieved -- over 6.1 million jobs created by our businesses over the past 35 or 36 months."

Carney added the president will propose further steps to grow the economy in a way that makes the middle class more secure and helps those trying to climb the ladder into the middle class.

"That is absolutely going to be his focus in the second term as it was in the first term," said Carney.

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Wanted Ex-Cop Possibly in Shootout, Chase

Fugitive former cop Christopher Dorner has barricaded himself inside a mountain cabin near Big Bear, Calif., and exchanged gunfire with police who had pursued him after he broke into a home in the area, authorities said.

Two San Bernadino County Sheriff's deputies injured in the firefight and subsequently airlifted to a nearby hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown.

Dozens of local, state and federal authorities are at the scene in the San Bernadino Mountains, surrounding the cabin and engaged in an intense standoff with Dorner, a former Navy marksman who swore to kill police and their family members in a manifesto discovered online last week.

Dorner is believed to have broken into another home nearby and taken two women hostage before stealing a car, police said. Officials say Dorner crashed the vehicle and fled on foot, where sheriff's deputies and state Fish and Game officers exchanged fire with him, before he barricaded himself in the cabin.

The two hostages, who were tied up by Dorner but later escaped, were evaluated by paramedics and were determined to be uninjured.

Police have sealed all roads going into the area and imposed a no-fly zone above the cabin, which is in a wooded area that has received several inches of snow in recent days.

Four Big Bear area schools were briefly placed on lockdown.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department stopped all traffic leaving the area and thoroughly searched vehicles, as SWAT team and tactical units could be seen driving toward the cabin, their sirens blaring.

Los Angeles Police Department/AP Photo

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FULL COVERAGE: Christopher Dorner Manhunt

Authorities believer Dorner may be watching reports of the standoff and have asked media not to broadcast images of police surrounding the cabin.

"If he's watching this, the message... is: Enough is enough. It's time to turn yourself in. It's time to stop the bloodshed. It's time to let this event and let this incident be over," said Los Angeles Police spokesman Andy Smith, told reporters at a press conference.

Dorner faces capital murder charges that involve the killing of Riverside police officer Michael Crain, who was gunned down in an ambush last Thursday.

Since then a massive manhunt has been underway, focused primarily in the San Bernardino Mountains, but extending to neighboring states and as far away as Mexico.

A capital murder charge could result in the death penalty if Dorner is captured alive and convicted. Crain was married with two children, aged 10 and 4.

The charges do not involve the slayings of Monica Quan and her fiance, who were found shot to death Feb. 3. Quan was the daughter of former LAPD Capt. Randal Quan, who was mentioned as a target of Dorner's fury in his so-called "manifesto," which he posted on his Facebook page.

PHOTOS: Former LAPD Officer Suspected in Shootings

In the 6,000 word "manifesto," Dorner outlined his anger at the Los Angeles Police Department for firing him, and made threats against individuals he believed were responsible for ending his career with the police force five years ago.

Dorner's grievance with police goes back five years when he was fired after filing a false report accusing other cops of brutality.

The LAPD has assigned 50 protection details to guard officers and their families who were deemed possible targets.

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North Korean nuclear test draws anger, including from China

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday in defiance of U.N. resolutions, drawing condemnation from around the world, including from its only major ally, China, which summoned the North Korean ambassador to protest.

Pyongyang said the test was an act of self-defense against "U.S. hostility" and threatened stronger steps if necessary.

The test puts pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama on the day of his State of the Union speech and also puts China in a tight spot, since it comes in defiance of Beijing's admonishments to North Korea to avoid escalating tensions.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting at which its members, including China, "strongly condemned" the test and vowed to start work on appropriate measures in response, the president of the council said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the third of his line to rule the country, has presided over two long-range rocket launches and a nuclear test during his first year in power, pursuing policies that have propelled his impoverished and malnourished country closer to becoming a nuclear weapons power.

North Korea said the test had "greater explosive force" than those it conducted in 2006 and 2009. Its KCNA news agency said it had used a "miniaturized" and lighter nuclear device, indicating it had again used plutonium, which is suitable for use as a missile warhead.

China, which has shown signs of increasing exasperation with the recent bellicose tone of its reclusive neighbor, summoned the North Korean ambassador in Beijing and protested sternly, the Foreign Ministry said.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China was "strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed" to the test and urged North Korea to "stop any rhetoric or acts that could worsen situations and return to the right course of dialogue and consultation as soon as possible".

Analysts said the test was a major embarrassment to China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council and North Korea's sole major economic and diplomatic ally.

Obama called the test a "highly provocative act" that hurt regional stability.

"The danger posed by North Korea's threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community. The United States will also continue to take steps necessary to defend ourselves and our allies," Obama said.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said Washington and its allies intended to "augment the sanctions regime" already in place due to Pyongyang's previous atomic tests. North Korea is already one of the most heavily sanctioned states in the world and has few external economic links that can be targeted.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the test was a "grave threat" that could not be tolerated.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms program and return to talks. NATO condemned the test as an "irresponsible act."

South Korea, still technically at war with North Korea after a 1950-53 civil war ended in a mere truce, also denounced the test. Obama spoke to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday and told him the United States "remains steadfast in its defense commitments" to Korea, the White House said.

MAXIMUM RESTRAINT

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said the test was "only the first response we took with maximum restraint".

"If the United States continues to come out with hostility and complicates the situation, we will be forced to take stronger, second and third responses in consecutive steps," it said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

North Korea - which gave the U.S. State Department advance warning of the test - often threatens the United States and its "puppet", South Korea, with destruction in colorful terms.

North Korea told the U.N. disarmament forum in Geneva that it would never bow to resolutions on its nuclear program and that prospects were "gloomy" for the denuclearization of the divided Korean peninsula because of a "hostile" U.S. policy.

Suzanne DiMaggio, an analyst at the Asia Society in New York, said North Korea had embarrassed China with the test. "China's inability to dissuade North Korea from carrying through with this third nuclear test reveals Beijing's limited influence over Pyongyang's actions in unusually stark terms," she said.

Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, said: "The test is hugely insulting to China, which now can be expected to follow through with threats to impose sanctions."

The magnitude of the explosion was roughly twice that of the 2009 test, according to the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization. The U.S. Geological Survey said that a seismic event measuring 5.1 magnitude had occurred.

U.S. intelligence agencies were analyzing the event and found that North Korea probably conducted an underground nuclear explosion with a yield of "approximately several kilotons", the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.

Nuclear experts have described Pyongyang's previous two tests as puny by international standards. The yield of the 2006 test has been estimated at less than 1 kiloton (1,000 tons of TNT equivalent) and the second at some 2-7 kilotons, compared with 20 kilotons for a Nagasaki-type bomb.

Initial indications are that the test involved the latest version of a plutonium-based prototype weapon, according to one current and one former U.S. national security official. Both previous tests involved plutonium. If it turns out the test was of a new uranium-based weapon, it would show that North Korea has made more progress on uranium enrichment than previously thought.

The United States uses WC-135 Constant Phoenix "sniffer" aircraft to collect samples to identify nuclear explosions. These would need to be deployed quickly to detect whether highly enriched uranium rather than plutonium was used because uranium decays to undetectable levels within a matter of days. Plutonium takes much longer to decay.

North Korea trumpeted news of the test on its state television channel to patriotic music against a backdrop of its national flag.

"It was confirmed that the nuclear test that was carried out at a high level in a safe and perfect manner using a miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously did not pose any negative impact on the surrounding ecological environment," KCNA said.

North Korea linked the test to its technical prowess in launching a long-range rocket in December, a move that triggered the U.N. sanctions, backed by China, that Pyongyang said prompted it to take Tuesday's action.

The North's ultimate aim, Washington believes, is to design an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead that could hit the United States. North Korea says the program is aimed at putting satellites in space.

Despite its three nuclear tests and long-range rocket tests, North Korea is not believed to be close to manufacturing a nuclear missile capable of hitting the United States.

It used plutonium in previous nuclear tests and before Tuesday there had been speculation that it would use highly enriched uranium so as to conserve its plutonium stocks, as testing eats into its limited supply of materials to construct a nuclear bomb.

"VICIOUS CYCLE"

When Kim Jong-un, who is 30, took power after his father's death in December 2011, there were hopes that he would bring reforms and end Kim Jong-il's "military first" policies.

Instead, North Korea, whose economy is smaller than it was 20 years ago and where a third of children are believed to be malnourished, appears to be trapped in a cycle of sanctions followed by further provocations.

"The more North Korea shoots missiles, launches satellites or conducts nuclear tests, the more the U.N. Security Council will impose new and more severe sanctions," said Shen Dingli, a professor at Shanghai's Fudan University. "It is an endless, vicious cycle."

Options for the international community appear to be in short supply. Diplomats at the United Nations said negotiations on new sanctions could take weeks since China is likely to resist tough new measures for fear they could lead to further retaliation by the North Korean leadership.

Beijing has also been concerned that tougher sanctions could further weaken North Korea's economy and prompt a flood of refugees into China.

Tuesday's action appeared to have been timed for the run-up to February 16 anniversary celebrations of Kim Jong-il's birthday, as well as to achieve maximum international attention.

Significantly, the test comes at a time of political transition in China, Japan and South Korea, and as Obama begins his second term. The U.S. president will likely have to tweak his State of the Union address due to be given on Tuesday.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bedding down a new government and South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, is preparing to take office on February 25.

China too is in the midst of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition to Xi Jinping, who takes office in March. Both Abe and Xi are staunch nationalists.

The longer-term game plan from Pyongyang may be to restart international talks aimed at winning food and financial aid. China urged it to return to the stalled "six-party" talks on its nuclear program, hosted by China and including the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia.

Its puny economy and small diplomatic reach mean that North Korea struggles to win attention on the global stage - other than through nuclear tests and attacks on South Korea, the last of which was made in 2010.

"Now the next step for North Korea will be to offer talks... - any form to start up discussion again to bring things to their advantage," predicted Jeung Young-tae, senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim, Christine Kim and Jumin Park in SEOUL; Linda Sieg in TOKYO; Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS; Fredrik Dahl in VIENNA; Michael Martina and Chen Aizhu in BEIJING; Mette Fraende in COPENHAGEN; Adrian Croft, Charlie Dunmore and Justyna Pawlak in BRUSSELS; Mark Hosenball, Paul Eckert, Roberta Rampton, Tabassum Zakaria and Jeff Mason in WASHINGTON; Editing by Nick Macfie, Claudia Parsons and David Brunnstrom)

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Pre-pregnancy folic acid linked to lower autism risk

WASHINGTON: Children born to women who started taking folic acid supplements four to eight weeks before pregnancy appear to be at a lower risk of autism, a study showed on Tuesday.

Pal Suren of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and colleagues looked into the use of folic acid supplements before and during early pregnancy, and any impact on the later risk of various disorders on the autism spectrum.

"Our main finding was that maternal use of folic acid supplements around the time of conception was associated with a lower risk of autistic disorder," the authors wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The journal recalled that many countries recommend flour be enriched with folic acid to lower the risk of birth defects, and that women are often advised to take folic acid supplements before and during pregnancy.

Despite the practice, European and North American studies have found that many pregnant women take less folate in their diet than is necessary to prevent neural tube defects.

Suren's research appears to confirm that the advice to take folic acid supplements is well-founded.

The 85,176 Norwegian children who took part in the study were born between 2002 and 2008.

Among the sample, 270 children, or 0.32 percent, were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders, and researchers found that there was an inverse association between folic acid use and subsequent autism risks.

About 1 in 88 children, or 1.14 percent, in the United States have been identified with an autism spectrum disorder, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mothers who took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy had a 40 percent lower risk of having children with autistic disorder compared with mothers who did not take folic acid, the researchers found.

Folic acid is found in naturally high levels in foods such as dark leafy greens, asparagus and broccoli, as well as citrus fruits.

- AFP/de

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BlueStacks brings a boat-load of Android apps to the Surface Pro

Thanks to BlueStacks, Angry Birds can officially be found on almost every Surface.

(Credit:
BlueStacks)

Hunting around the Windows store for your favorite apps can sometimes be a sad and demoralizing experience, particularly if you just dropped about a grand for that slick new Surface Pro from Microsoft.

Enter the startup BlueStacks on its multi-colored digital steed prepared to liberate the Surface with its
Android app player, shouting "Freedom!" at the top of its lungs a la Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Actually, you can just download a version of the BlueStacks App Player optimized for the
Surface Pro that was just released today, but I do recommend at least donning a bit of blue war paint before clicking to make for a more memorable experience.

BlueStacks' app player is a sort of emulator that allows the whole universe of more than 750,000 Android apps (malware and all) to run on a PC. The Windows and Mac versions were first released last year, and the new
Windows 8/Surface Pro download greatly expands the options for users who previously might have shed a tear when perusing the less than 40,000 apps currently offered on Microsoft's official Windows app market.

According to a release from the company, BlueStacks is officially supported Windows 8 software, which is perhaps the most interesting part of the tale, especially given jabs at Redmond like this one from BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma in the statement:

The number of mobile apps being written overall is expanding exponentially and Microsoft has not added apps to the handful it has. Our goal is to get people more value out of their Surface Pro and Win8 devices.

BlueStacks has struck a handful of deals with PC and component makers like AMD, Asus and Lenovo and says that BlueStacks will come pre-loaded on millions of PCs in the future.

Forget about zombies, folks, from here on out, it looks like we'll have to look for Angry Birds around every corner and on every, uh...Surface.

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Army Sgt. receives Medal of Honor

President Obama today awarded the Medal of Honor to Clinton Romesha, a former active duty Army staff sergeant, for his courageous actions during what Mr. Obama said has been described as "one of the most intense battles of the entire war of Afghanistan."

The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military decoration and "reflects the gratitude of our entire country," Mr. Obama told Romesha from the East Room of the White House, where his entire troop was honored.

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Medal of Honor recipient on battle of Keating

As the section leader of his troop, at Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan's Nuristan Province, Romesha led a fight against a nearly overwhelming Taliban attack. On Oct. 3, 2009, nearly 300 insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades surrounded the outpost, where 53 Americans were stationed.

"To those Americans down below, the fire was coming from every single direction, they'd never seen anything like it," Mr. Obama remarked.

In an interview with CBS News correspondent David Martin, Romesha described the fighting that day as "unreal" and "up close and personal." After receiving the medal today, Romesha said, "I'm grateful that some of the heroes of Combat Outpost Keating are here with us. Any one of them will tell you were were not going to be beat that day."

Eight U.S. soldiers were killed, and more than 20 Afghan security troops were captured. Romesha suffered his own injuries but nevertheless tended to his comrades and called in air strikes to attack the enemy. The air strikes gave some soldiers cover to reach an aid station, while Romesha retrieved the bodies of fallen soldiers.

Romesha is the fourth living recipient to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. He specifically was serving as a Section Leader with Bravo Troop, 3d Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. He now works in oil field safety and lives in Minot, N.D., with his wife and three children.

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Benedict's Legacy Marred by Sex Abuse Scandal

When Pope Benedict XVI resigns at the end of this month, he leaves behind a Church grappling with a global fallout from sex abuse and a personal legacy marred by allegations that he was instrumental in covering up that abuse.

As the sex abuse scandal spread from North America to Europe, Benedict became the first pope to meet personally with victims, and offered repeated public apologies for the Vatican's decades of inaction against priests who abused their congregants.

"No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," the pope said in a 2008 homily in Washington, D.C., before meeting with victims of abuse for the first time. "It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention." During the same trip to the U.S., he met with victims for the first time.

For some of the victims, however, Benedict's actions were "lip service and a public relations campaign," said Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota lawyer who represents victims of sex abuse. For 25 years, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican office responsible for investigating claims of sex abuse, but he did not act until he received an explicit order from Pope John Paul II.

In 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, Ratzinger approved plans for a priest to move to a different German parish and return to pastoral work only days after the priest began therapy for pedophilia. The priest was later convicted of sexually abusing boys.

Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images

PHOTOS: Church Sex Scandals

In 1981, Cardinal Ratzinger became head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the office once known as the Inquisition -- making him responsible for upholding church doctrine, and for investigating claims of sexual abuse against clergy. Thousands of letters detailing allegations of abuse were forwarded to Ratzinger's office.

A lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the Survivors' Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a victims' rights group, charges that as head of the church body Ratzinger participated in a cover-up of abuse. In an 84-page complaint, the suit alleges that investigators of sex abuse cases in several countries found "intentional cover-ups and affirmative steps taken that serve to perpetuate the violence and exacerbate the harm."

"Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, either knew and/or some cases consciously disregarded information that showed subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes," the complaint says.

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's lawyer in the U.S., told the AP the complaint was a "ludicrous publicity stunt and a misuse of international judicial processes."

In the 1990s, former members of the Legion of Christ sent a letter to Ratzinger alleging that the founder and head of the Catholic order, Father Marcial Maciel, had molested them while they were teen seminarians. Maciel was allowed to continue as head of the order.

In 1996, Ratzinger didn't respond to letters from Milwaukee's archbishop about a priest accused of abusing students at a Wisconsin school for the deaf. An assistant to Ratzinger began a secret trial of the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, but halted the process after Murphy wrote a personal appeal to Ratzinger complaining of ill health.

In 2001, Pope John Paul II issued a letter urging the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to pursue allegations of child abuse in response to calls from bishops around the world.

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Pope's sudden resignation sends shockwaves through Church

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict stunned the Roman Catholic Church on Monday when he announced he would stand down, the first pope to do so in 700 years, saying he no longer had the mental and physical strength to carry on.

Church officials tried to relay a climate of calm confidence in the running of a 2,000-year-old institution, but the decision could lead to uncertainty in a Church already besieged by scandal for covering up sexual abuse of children by priests.

The soft-spoken German, who always maintained that he never wanted to be pope, was an uncompromising conservative on social and theological issues, fighting what he regarded as the increasing secularization of society.

It remains to be seen whether his successor will continue such battles or do more to bend with the times.

Despite his firm opposition to tolerance of homosexual acts, his eight year reign saw gay marriage accepted in many countries. He has staunchly resisted allowing women to be ordained as priests, and opposed embryonic stem cell research, although he retreated slightly from the position that condoms could never be used to fight AIDS.

He repeatedly apologized for the Church's failure to root out child abuse by priests, but critics said he did too little and the efforts failed to stop a rapid decline in Church attendance in the West, especially in his native Europe.

In addition to child sexual abuse crises, his papacy saw the Church rocked by Muslim anger after he compared Islam to violence. Jews were upset over rehabilitation of a Holocaust denier. During a scandal over the Church's business dealings, his butler was accused of leaking his private papers.

In an announcement read to cardinals in Latin, the universal language of the Church, the 85-year-old said: "Well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of St Peter ...

"As from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours (1900 GMT) the See of Rome, the See of St. Peter will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is."

POPE DOESN'T FEAR SCHISM

Benedict is expected to go into isolation for at least a while after his resignation. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Benedict did not intend to influence the decision of the cardinals in a secret conclave to elect a successor.

A new leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics could be elected as soon as Palm Sunday, on March 24, and be ready to take over by Easter a week later, Lombardi said.

Several popes in the past, including Benedict's predecessor John Paul, have refrained from stepping down over their health, because of the division that could be caused by having an "ex-pope" and a reigning pope alive at the same time.

Lombardi said the pope did not fear a possible "schism", with Catholics owing allegiances to a past and present pope in case of differences on Church teachings.

He indicated the complex machinery of the process to elect a new pope would move quickly because the Vatican would not have to wait until after the elaborate funeral services for a pope.

It is not clear if Benedict will have a public life after he resigns. Lombardi said Benedict would first go to the papal summer residence south of Rome and then move into a cloistered convent inside the Vatican walls.

The resignation means that cardinals from around the world will begin arriving in Rome in March and after preliminary meetings, lock themselves in a secret conclave and elect the new pope from among themselves in votes in the Sistine Chapel.

There has been growing pressure on the Church for it to choose a pope from the developing world to better reflect where most Catholics live and where the Church is growing.

"It could be time for a black pope, or a yellow one, or a red one, or a Latin American," said Guatemala's Archbishop Oscar Julio Vian Morales.

The cardinals may also want a younger man. John Paul was 58 when he was elected in 1978. Benedict was 20 years older.

"We have had two intellectuals in a row, two academics, perhaps it is time for a diplomat," said Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. "Rather than electing the smartest man in the room, they should elect the man who will listen to all the other smart people in the Church."

Liberals have already begun calling for a pope that would be more open to reform.

"The current system remains an 'old boy's club' and does not allow for women's voices to participate in the decision of the next leader of our Church," said the Women's Ordination Conference, a group that wants women to be able to be priests.

"GREAT COURAGE"

The last pope to resign willingly was Celestine V in 1294 after reigning for only five months, his resignation was known as "the great refusal" and was condemned by the poet Dante in the "Divine Comedy". Gregory XII reluctantly abdicated in 1415 to end a dispute with a rival claimant to the papacy.

Lombardi said Benedict's stepping aside showed "great courage". He ruled out any specific illness or depression and said the decision was made in the last few months "without outside pressure". But the decision was not without controversy.

"This is disconcerting, he is leaving his flock," said Alessandra Mussolini, a parliamentarian who is granddaughter of Italy's wartime dictator. "The pope is not any man. He is the vicar of Christ. He should stay on to the end, go ahead and bear his cross to the end. This is a huge sign of world destabilization that will weaken the Church."

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, secretary to the late Pope John Paul, said the former pope had stayed on despite failing health for the last decade of his life as he believed "you cannot come down from the cross."

While the pope had slowed down recently - he started using a cane and a wheeled platform to take him up the long aisle in St Peter's Square - he had given no hint recently that he was considering such a dramatic decision.

Elected in 2005 to succeed the enormously popular John Paul, Benedict never appeared to feel comfortable in the job.

"MIND AND BODY"

In his announcement, the pope told the cardinals that in order to govern "... both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

Before he was elected pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was known as "God's rottweiler" for his stern stand on theological issues. After a few months, he showed a milder side but he never drew the kind of adulation that had marked the 27-year papacy of his predecessor John Paul.

U.S. President Barack Obama extended prayers to Benedict and best wishes to those who would choose his successor.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the pope's decision must be respected if he feels he is too weak to carry out his duties. British Prime Minister David Cameron said: "He will be missed as a spiritual leader to millions."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, said he had learned of the pope's decision with a heavy heart but complete understanding.

CHEERS AND SCANDAL

Elected to the papacy on April 19, 2005, Benedict ruled over a slower-paced, more cerebral and less impulsive Vatican.

But while conservatives cheered him for trying to reaffirm traditional Catholic identity, his critics accused him of turning back the clock on reforms by nearly half a century and hurting dialogue with Muslims, Jews and other Christians.

After appearing uncomfortable in the limelight at the start, he began feeling at home with his new job and showed that he intended to be pope in his way.

Despite great reverence for his charismatic, globe-trotting predecessor -- whom he put on the fast track to sainthood and whom he beatified in 2011 -- aides said he was determined not to change his quiet manner to imitate John Paul's style.

A quiet, professorial type who relaxed by playing the piano, he showed the gentle side of a man who was the Vatican's chief doctrinal enforcer for nearly a quarter of a century.

The first German pope for some 1,000 years and the second non-Italian in a row, he traveled regularly, making about four foreign trips a year, but never managed to draw the oceanic crowds of his predecessor.

The child abuse scandals hounded most of his papacy. He ordered an official inquiry into abuse in Ireland, which led to the resignation of several bishops.

Scandal from a source much closer to home hit in 2012 when the pontiff's butler, responsible for dressing him and bringing him meals, was found to be the source of leaked documents alleging corruption in the Vatican's business dealings.

Benedict confronted his own country's past when he visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Calling himself "a son of Germany", he prayed and asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, most of them Jews, were killed there.

Ratzinger served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory. He was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime.

(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie, Barry Moody, Cristiano Corvino, Alexandra Hudson in Berlin, and Dagamara Leszkowixa in Poland; Editing by Peter Graff)

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US urges G20 to avoid competitive devaluation

WASHINGTON: The United States on Monday urged the Group of 20 economic powers, which holds a meeting later this week, to avoid competitive currency devaluation that would threaten economic growth.

"To ensure growth strategies in the world's largest economies are mutually compatible and promote global growth, the G20 needs to deliver on the commitment to move to market-determined exchange rates and refrain from competitive devaluation," said Lael Brainard, the Treasury official who will lead the US delegation to the meeting.

Japan's recent monetary easing has stoked fears, especially in Europe, of a currency war between the major economies as policymakers seek to devalue their currencies to make exports more competitive.

Brainard, the Treasury under secretary for international affairs, notably called on China to do more to let the yuan float more freely in the market.

"It will be important that China... reinvigorate the move to a market-determined exchange rate and interest rates," she said.

Brainard was speaking at a news conference focused on the G20 finance chiefs meeting that opens Friday in Moscow.

She underscored that some emerging-market economies have tightly run exchange-rate regimes with extensive capital controls.

"The asymmetry in exchange rate policy creates the potential for conflict" and "generates protectionist measures," she noted.

She also called on Beijing to improve its adherence to international trade rules.

The United States regularly accuses China, which had a record US$315 billion trade surplus with the US in 2012, of favouring its state-controlled businesses and subsidizing exports.

Saying that global growth was still weak after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, Brainard warned against complacency and recommended avoiding any severe budget adjustments.

"We must avoid jeopardising the recovery with a premature shift to restraint," she said.

One-third of the G20 advanced and emerging-market economies, which represent almost 90 per cent of the global economy, were in recession, she said.

Brainard said that the International Monetary Fund's recent admission that it had underestimated the impact of austerity plans on growth should raise a red flag when policymakers look at making budget cuts.

"The G20 has to do a better job balancing medium-term fiscal consolidation with the imperative of supporting near-term growth," she said.

"We need to do more to get people back to work."

As for the United States, Brainard said that big across-the-board spending cuts due to take effect March 1, known as sequestration, pose a serious threat to the country. Without an agreement in Congress to avert the cuts, the Defense Department budget will be cut by up to 10 per cent.

"It's important to avoid sequestration, which is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument that poses a serious threat to national security, domestic priorities and the economy, she said.

- AFP/jc

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How the humble light projector supercharges your tech

Here's one good, quick, easy way to find a vein: flash some light on it.

(Credit:
Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

With the flick of a switch and a flash of green light, a network of veins springs to the fore, mapped out below the surface of the skin. This is no medical lab -- it's a darkened suite inside San Francisco's designer Clift Hotel -- but I already see how the recent sting of a donation nurse thumping the inside of both elbows in search of a vein could, and should, be a time-consuming thing of the past.

The Vein Viewer Flex isn't new. In fact, the first generation of VeinViewer debuted in 2006. But its use of infrared light to illuminate a hidden network within the body is seldom appreciated outside of medical circles.

Light, it turns out, and the projectors that channel it, can do quite a bit.

Let's go back to why I'm here in this dimly-lit hotel room in the first place, staring at squiggly lines under infrared light. It's because DLP, a subsidiary of Texas Instruments (which also makes smartphone and
tablet processors), is showing off the various ways its partners use its chips.

There are the cinema-grade chips you encounter in every IMAX theater and even in home projectors like this one. Then there are the much tinier pico projectors show up in everything from phone-charging sleeves and specialty toys to tablets and smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Beam.

The demo table also holds a 3D printer that uses UV light produced from the DLP chipset to help cure the resin, a technique that DLP claims will create more accurate printables with higher-resolution details.

Beckoning me to a second room within the suite, the TI team reveals a tall, thick bust of a
car console, illuminated from behind by -- you guessed it -- a DLP projector chipset.

The console idea, which CNET car tech writers saw in a concept Bentley this past January, features a long touch screen and dials that are devoid of any circuitry.

Although you twist the volume and jog wheels as you would in any other car, it's an infrared camera and infrared light that track your motions and respond with shifting 1080p HD imagery. The result of the demo was a responsive display that supports taps, gestures, and logic to determine if it's the driver or passenger calling the shots.

Since the car console uses no traditional capacitive film, it you won't have to worry if you're wearing gloves. DLP thinks

Samsung Galaxy Beam's cool, built-in projector

DLP is also working on an even more involved heads-up display that inserts some augmented reality into the mix. Sometime starting in 2016, look for your navigation assistant to project a turn signal in your sight line so it looks like it's in the middle of the road, marking out exactly where you want to turn, rather than as a vague suggestion that prompts you to careen down an alley. Expect German car-makers to lead the way.

DLP isn't the only maker of projection chipsets by a long shot, and its partners and developers have long hacked its components for commercial and home-grown use.

Now, though, the company is taking a more proactive approach in supplying drivers and software to developers, so its projectors show up in more places, maybe even in your tablet or living room.

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