City Answers Gang-Rape Cover-Up Allegations

As Steubenville, Ohio, prepares for the high-profile rape trial of two high school football players, officials, battling allegations of a cover-up, announced the creation of a new website today to debunk rumors and create what they said would be a transparent resource for the community.

"This site is not designed to be a forum for how the Juvenile Court ought to rule in this matter," the website, called Steubenville Facts, said.

A timeline of the case, beginning with the alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old girl at a party on Aug. 11-12, 2012, is posted on the site. Summaries of Ohio law relating to the case and facts about the local police force including statistics on how many graduated from Steubenville schools, is included.

The case gained national attention last week when hacking collective Anonymous leaked a video of Steubenville high school athletes mocking the 16-year-old female victim and making crude references to the alleged rape.

Steubenville Herald-Star, Michael D. McElwain/AP Photo

"It's disgusting, and I've had people calling, numerous people call here, upset, they have seen it, one woman, two women were crying, because of what they witnessed," Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said. "It really is disgusting to watch that video."

Anonymous has called for more arrests, however Steubenville Police have said their hands are tied.

"Steubenville Police investigators are caring humans who recoil and are repulsed by many of the things they observe during an investigation," the website said, addressing the video. "Like detectives in every part of America and the world, they are often frustrated when they emotionally want to hold people accountable for certain detestable behavior but realize that there is no statute that allows a criminal charge to be made."

Occupy Steubenville, a grassroots group, estimated 1,300 people attended a rally today outside the Jefferson County Courthouse, where rape victims and their loved ones gathered to share their stories.

The father of a teenage rape victim was met with applause when he shared his outrage.

"I've tried to show my girl that not all men are like this, but only a despicable few," he said. "And their mothers that ignore the truth that they gave birth to a monster."

Authorities investigated the case and charged two Steubenville high school athletes on Aug. 22, 2012.

The teenagers face trial on Feb. 13, 2013 in juvenile court before a visiting judge.

Attorneys for the boys have denied charges in court.

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Tennis: China's Li beats Zakopalova in Shenzhen final

BEIJING: Chinese star Li Na captured her seventh career title and second on home soil when she beat Klara Zakopalova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 1-6, 7-5 on Saturday in the Shenzhen Open final.

The world number seven and the competition's top seed had lost two of the pair's three previous meetings and suffered some final set jitters at the $500,000 tournament when she allowed the fifth-seeded Czech to come back from 2-5 down to 5-5.

But Li closed out victory with two quick games.

Li's previous victory in China came at Guangzhou in 2004 that made her the first Chinese player ever to win a tour trophy.

Her other five WTA titles came at Gold Coast in 2008, Birmingham in 2010, Sydney and the French Open in 2011 and Cincinnati in 2012.

"Klara played well and I managed my mood swings well, and I'm glad I made it," Li said as she continued her build-up to the opening Grand Slam event of the year, the Australian Open which starts in Melbourne on January 14.

"Winning the title certainly helps boost my confidence for the coming weeks, but it also depends on how I'm playing on the courts. Confidence itself won't guarantee a win.

"But I'm very happy to win and the Shenzhen Open was a great tournament - I believe it will get even better in future years."

Zakopalova is now 2-10 in WTA finals, but she has the consolation of knowing that she is projected to rise from her current world ranking of 28 past her career-high of 26, which she set back in 2006.

"It was about a few points today but she really proved she's a top player - she played her best from 5-all," Zakopalova said.

"She's playing unbelievably fast and flat, and she's hitting her backhand down the line very well. To me she's one of the top three players right now and I hope she can make it there.

"There's no way to be sad about losing - I lost to a top player and I'm happy to reach the final."

- AFP/de

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Abbas sees Palestinian unity as Fatah rallies in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Abbas predicted the end of a five-year split between the two big Palestinian factions as his Fatah movement staged its first mass rally in Gaza with the blessing of Hamas Islamists who rule the enclave.

"Soon we will regain our unity," Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the 2007 civil war between the two factions, said in a televised address to hundreds of thousands of followers marching in Gaza on Friday, with yellow Fatah flags instead of the green of Hamas.

The hardline Hamas movement, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, expelled secular Fatah from Gaza during the war. It gave permission for the rally after the deadlock in peace talks between Abbas's administration and Israel narrowed the two factions' ideological differences.

The Palestinian rivals have drawn closer since Israel's assault on Gaza assault in November, in which Hamas, though battered, claimed victory.

Egypt has long tried to broker Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, but past efforts have foundered over questions of power-sharing, control of weaponry, and to what extent Israel and other powers would accept a Palestinian administration including Hamas.

An Egyptian official told Reuters Cairo was preparing to invite the factions for new negotiations within two weeks.

Israel fears grassroots support for Hamas could eventually topple Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

"Hamas could seize control of the PA any day," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

The demonstration marked 48 years since Fatah's founding as the spearhead of the Palestinians' fight against Israel. Its longtime leader Yasser Arafat signed an interim 1993 peace accord that won Palestinians a measure of self rule.

Hamas, which rejected the 1993 deal, fought and won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006. It formed an uneasy coalition with Fatah until their violent split a year later.

Though shunned by the West, Hamas feels bolstered by electoral gains for Islamist movements in neighboring Egypt and elsewhere in the region - a confidence reflected in the fact Friday's Fatah demonstration was allowed to take place.

"The success of the rally is a success for Fatah, and for Hamas too," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "The positive atmosphere is a step on the way to regain national unity."

Fatah, meanwhile, has been riven by dissent about the credibility of Abbas's statesmanship, especially given Israel's continued settlement-building on West Bank land. The Israelis quit Gaza unilaterally in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

"The message today is that Fatah cannot be wiped out," said Amal Hamad, a member of the group's ruling body, referring to the demonstration attended by several Abbas advisers. "Fatah lives, no one can exclude it and it seeks to end the division."

In his speech, Abbas promised to return to Gaza soon and said Palestinian unification would be "a step on the way to ending the (Israeli) occupation".

(Editing by Dan Williams, Alistair Lyon and Jason Webb)

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SC endorses chorus for deterrent punishment for crime against women

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday endorsed the clamour for deterrent punishment to offenders in cases of crime against women saying no leniency be shown while sentencing the guilty in such cases.

The strong pitch for tougher punishment for those guilty of crime against women came as part of a judgment, where a bench of Justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi upheld life imprisonment for two sisters along with their mother, who were convicted of bride burning.

The verdict also dealt with the evidentiary value of multiple dying declarations in a case particularly if they diverge; an issue of crucial significance for the Nirbhaya case.

The Delhi Police had to record two statements of Nirbhaya following an allegation by a sub-divisional magistrate that senior police officers had tried to influence the recording of the first one. In what could help the prosecution in the horrific gang-rape case, Justices Sathasivam and Gogoi said, "When the court is satisfied that the dying declaration is voluntary, not tainted by tutoring or animosity, and is not a product of her imagination, there is no impediment in convicting the accused on the basis of such dying declaration". The judges added, "When there are multiple dying declarations, each dying declaration has to be separately assessed and evaluated and assess independently on its own merit as to its evidentiary value and one cannot be rejected because of certain variation in the other".

The bench stressed that the need of the hour was to overhaul the criminal justice system to inflict deterrent punishment on those found guilty in cases of crime against women.

Justices Sathasivam and Gogoi focused on the spiraling number of cases relating to bride burning, cruelty, sexual harassment, rape and suicide by women despite the presence of stringent laws to protect women.

The two judges said that while there was no lack of tough laws to deal with the challenge, the deterrent was weakened by the sentencing system as it exists. "A complete overhaul of the system is a must in the form of deterrent punishment for the offenders so that we can effectively deal with the problem," said Justice Sathasivam, who authored the judgment for the bench.

The case in hand related to the murder of Vandana on March 5, 2003, by her mother-in-law Kesharbai and two sisters-in-law Ashabai and Kavita. All three were ill-treating her, despite the husband's protests, for her alleged inability to conceive. On the day of incident, the mother-in-law poured kerosene on her and at the behest of the two sisters-in-law, lit match box and set Vandana on fire.

The victim gave four dying declarations, which were relied on by the Jalgaon trial court to convict the three accused and sentence them to life imprisonment. The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court had dismissed their appeals. During the pendency of the appeal in SC, the mother-in-law had died.

The apex court dismissed the appeal of the two sisters as it found that there were no contradictions in the four dying declarations given by the deceased which clearly pointed out the specific roles played by the three accused.

While upholding the conviction of the two sisters in the murder of Vandana and life sentence awarded to them, the bench said, "In view of the clinching evidence led in by the prosecution, there cannot be any leniency in favour of the appellants, who are sisters-in-law of the deceased and at whose instance the deceased was burnt at the hands of her mother-in-law."

dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com

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FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.

The long-overdue regulations are aimed at reducing the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

The FDA's proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Obama Poised to Name New Defense, Treasury Chiefs

With the "fiscal cliff" crisis behind him, President Obama is poised to name two new key players to his cabinet, with at least one announcement expected early next week.

The announcement of who will replace outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta could come as soon as Monday, sources told ABC News.

Meanwhile, the president is also eyeing a replacement for outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the longest-serving member of Obama's first-term economic team and one-time lead negotiator for the administration in the "fiscal cliff" talks.

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is a leading candidate to head the Department of Defense, while current chief of staff Jack Lew is the likely nominee for the top role at Treasury.

Geithner plans to depart his post "around the inauguration" Jan. 20, a Treasury spokesperson said Thursday, putting the department in transition just as the administration confronts the next "cliffs" over the automatic spending cuts and nation's debt limit.

During an appearance on ABC's "This Week" in April, Geithner said the next Treasury secretary would need to be someone who is "willing to tell [Obama] the truth and, you know, help him do the tough things you need to do."

Lew, a former two-time Office of Management and Budget director and trusted Obama confidant who has held the chief of staff role since early 2012, is the front-runner for the job.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry -- Obama's nominee to replace outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- has begun making more regular appearances at the U.S. State Department before his expected confirmation later this month.

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His Senate hearings are set to begin shortly after Obama's inauguration, sources say. The administration still expects Clinton to testify about the Sept. 11 Benghazi, Libya, attacks before Kerry is confirmed.

But it is the potential nomination of Republican Hagel that has caused the most stir.

Critics from across the political spectrum have taken aim at the former senator from Nebraska's record toward Israel and what some have called a lack of experience necessary to lead the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy or its operations. The controversy has set the stage for what would be a contentious confirmation process.

"A lot of Republicans and Democrats are very concerned about Chuck Hagel's position on Iran sanctions, his views toward Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, and that there is wide and deep concern about his policies," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told "Fox News Sunday."

He would not say whether Republicans felt so strongly as to expect a filibuster of the nomination.

"I can tell you there would be very little Republican support for his nomination," Graham said. "At the end of the day, they will be very few votes."

Still, Hagel, 66, a former businessman and decorated veteran who served in the Vietnam War, has won praise and admiration from current and former diplomats for his work on Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board and Panetta's Policy Advisory Board.

"Hagel is a statesman, and America has few of them," former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan Ryan Crocker wrote in a "Wall Street Journal" editorial this week.

"He knows the leaders of the world and their issues. At a time when bipartisanship is hard to find in Washington, he personifies it. Above all, he has an unbending focus on U.S. national security, from his service in Vietnam decades ago to his current position on the Intelligence Advisory Council," he said.

Obama defended Hagel in an interview last week, calling him a "patriot" who has done "extraordinary work" in public service, although he said he still had not made a final decision on who would head the Pentagon.

Other potential nominees for the DOD job include Michele Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and a senior Obama campaign adviser for national security, and Ashton Carter, the current deputy secretary of defense.

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Delhi gang-rape victim's boyfriend speaks out

NEW DELHI: The boyfriend of a 23-year-old woman who died after a brutal gang rape on a New Delhi bus spoke out Friday for the first time about the savage attack that has sparked protests across the nation and his own trauma over his inability to save her.

The 28-year-old man, who suffered a fractured leg and other injuries in the attack, has been deeply traumatised and is currently at his parents' home in rural northern India where he is taking time out from his job at a software firm in New Delhi.

"What can I say? The cruelty I saw should not be seen ever. I tried to fight against the men but later I begged them again and again to leave her," he told AFP in an interview by phone from Gorakhpur, a town in Uttar Pradesh state.

On December 16, the couple had been out to watch a movie and decided to get into a private bus when several rickshaws had refused to drive them back to the victim's home in a New Delhi suburb.

Once in the bus, he was attacked and his girlfriend was gang-raped by six allegedly drunk men, including the driver, who also violated her with an iron bar causing immense internal damage that would lead to her death last weekend.

The horrifying crime has appalled India and brought simmering anger about widespread crime against women to the boil amid angry calls for better protection by police and changed social attitudes.

The boyfriend, who asked not to be named, also recounted how passersby had failed to come to their rescue after they were thrown out of the moving vehicle at the end of their nearly hour-long ordeal.

He was also critical of police for failing to be sensitive to his and his girlfriend's mental condition and also raised questions about the emergency care given in the public hospital where she was admitted.

"A passerby found us (after the attack), but he did not even give my friend his jacket. We waited for the police to come and save us," he told AFP.

The police have since arrested six suspects for the crime -- five men and a minor believed to be aged 17 -- who were charged with murder, rape and kidnapping in a city court on Thursday.

"I was not very confident about getting into the bus but my friend was running late, so we got into it. This was the biggest mistake I made and after that everything went out of control."

The driver of the bus then made lewd remarks and his accomplices joined him "to taunt" the couple, the boyfriend said.

He said he told the driver to stop the bus, but by then his accomplices had locked the two doors.

"They hit me with a small stick and dragged my friend to a seat near the driver's cabin."

After that the "driver and the other men raped my friend and hit her in the worst possible ways in the most private parts of her body".

"I cannot tell you what I feel when I think of it. I shiver in pain," he said.

He said the police who came to their rescue took his girlfriend to a government hospital, but failed to take into account his injuries and mental trauma.

"I was treated like an object by the police.... They wanted all the help to solve the case even before getting me the right treatment. Nobody witnessed the trauma I suffered," he said.

- AFP/jc

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Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

The semi-official al-Ikhbariya television station showed footage of 10 burnt bodies and Red Crescent workers searching for victims at the site.

The opposition Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus said the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car.

There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the bombing in the Barzeh al-Balad district, whose residents include members of the Sunni Muslim majority and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The station is usually packed even when it has no fuel," said an opposition activist who did not want to be named. "There are lots of people who sleep there overnight, waiting for early morning fuel consignments."

It was the second time that a petrol station has been hit in Damascus this week. Dozens of people were incinerated in an air strike as they waited for fuel on Wednesday, according to opposition sources.

In northern Syria, rebels were battling to seize an air base in their campaign against the air power that Assad has used to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, a much higher death toll than previously thought.

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of rebel fighters were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said much of the base was still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions cut off by the rebels, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" on rebel-controlled areas.

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by shelling and bombing nearby towns.

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble. The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people died in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to step down. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Giles Elgood)

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Chiranjeevi urges Vietnam to facilitate film shoots

NEW DELHI: Agreeing to ease visa restrictions between India and Vietnam, tourism minister K Chiranjeevi pitched for strengthening of ties with Hanoi and suggested the south-east Asian country assist in promoting Indian shoots in their country.

Addressing a seminar on trade and investment organized by the Embassy of India in Hanoi in coordination with Ministry of Industry and Trade and Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he said, "India gives high priority to strengthening its engagement with Vietnam both bilaterally and within the framework of ASEAN."

"We have set a target of $100 billion for ASEAN-India trade by 2015. The ASEAN India Free Trade Area (FTA) in goods and the conclusion of negotiation on the ASEAN-India FTA in services and investments have laid the foundations for an ASEAN-India Free Trade Area, comprising 1.8 billion people and a combined GDP of US$3.8 billion," an official statement here quoted the minister as saying.

Expressing India's willingness to extend cooperation in other fields with Vietnam, he said, "We stand ready to add more content to our strategic partnership especially in economic, commercial, defence and security, scientific and technical and cultural fields."

The tourism minister also had a bilateral meeting with the chairman of Vietnam National Tourism Administration Nguyen Van Tuan.

During the discussion, the minister said the potential for cooperation between the two countries in tourism is very big and proposed that the two countries give the lead to promote the cooperation's among tour operators of Vietnam and India. Chiranjeevi requested Vietnam to introduce a good package for film delegations from India so that they can come and shoot films about Vietnam.

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CDC: 1 in 24 admit nodding off while driving

NEW YORK (AP) — This could give you nightmares: 1 in 24 U.S. adults say they recently fell asleep while driving.

And health officials behind the study think the number is probably higher. That's because some people don't realize it when they nod off for a second or two behind the wheel.

"If I'm on the road, I'd be a little worried about the other drivers," said the study's lead author, Anne Wheaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the CDC study released Thursday, about 4 percent of U.S. adults said they nodded off or fell asleep at least once while driving in the previous month. Some earlier studies reached a similar conclusion, but the CDC telephone survey of 147,000 adults was far larger. It was conducted in 19 states and the District of Columbia in 2009 and 2010.

CDC researchers found drowsy driving was more common in men, people ages 25 to 34, those who averaged less than six hours of sleep each night, and — for some unexplained reason — Texans.

Wheaton said it's possible the Texas survey sample included larger numbers of sleep-deprived young adults or apnea-suffering overweight people.

Most of the CDC findings are not surprising to those who study this problem.

"A lot of people are getting insufficient sleep," said Dr. Gregory Belenky, director of Washington State University's Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane.

The government estimates that about 3 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve drowsy drivers, but other estimates have put that number as high as 33 percent.

Warning signs of drowsy driving: Feeling very tired, not remembering the last mile or two, or drifting onto rumble strips on the side of the road. That signals a driver should get off the road and rest, Wheaton said.

Even a brief moment nodding off can be extremely dangerous, she noted. At 60 mph, a single second translates to speeding along for 88 feet — the length of two school buses.

To prevent drowsy driving, health officials recommend getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, treating any sleep disorders and not drinking alcohol before getting behind the wheel.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

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