World Briefing | Science and Health: Lack of Funds Could Weaken Malaria Fight, Report Says

The world has made great progress against malaria in the last decade, but the fight is stalling for lack of funds, the World Health Organization’s annual report on malaria concluded on Monday. The amount spent on the disease by all countries rose to $1.8 billion last year, compared with $100 million in 2000, and, as a result, about one million children’s lives were probably spared over that time, the report said. But it would take $5 billion a year to get nets, insecticide spraying, diagnostic kits, effective drugs and hospital treatment to everyone needing them, and donor contributions, especially to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have been nearly flat since 2010. Last year, the number of new nets purchased fell sharply, to 66 million from 145 million two years ago. Since nets wear out in three years and children are always being born, large numbers of infants and toddlers will soon be unprotected if more money does not come in, the report warned. The W.H.O. estimated that there were 219 million malaria cases in the world in 2010, with 660,00 deaths.

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President Delivers a New Offer on the Fiscal Crisis to Boehner

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Speaker John A. Boehner returned to his office on Monday after meeting with President Obama.

WASHINGTON — President Obama delivered to Speaker John A. Boehner a new offer on Monday to resolve the pending fiscal crisis, a deal that would raise revenues by $1.2 trillion over the next decade but keep in place the Bush-era tax rates for any household with earnings below $400,000.

The offer is close to a plan proposed by the speaker on Friday, and both sides expressed confidence that they were closing in on a major deficit-reduction plan that could be passed well before January, when more than a half-trillion dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts would kick in.

Senior Republican aides said the speaker was to meet with House Republicans on Tuesday morning to discuss the state of negotiations. But they cautioned that obstacles remained.

“Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the president has made previously is a step in the right direction,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “We hope to continue discussions with the president so we can reach an agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem.”

The two sides are now dickering over price, not philosophical differences, and the numbers are very close.

Mr. Boehner had offered the president a deficit framework that would raise $1 trillion over 10 years, with the details to be settled next year by Congress’s tax-writing committees and the Obama administration. In response, Mr. Obama reduced his proposal to $1.2 trillion from $1.4 trillion on Monday at a 45-minute meeting with the speaker at the White House. That was down from $1.6 trillion initially.

The White House plan would permanently extend Bush-era tax cuts on household incomes below $400,000, meaning that only the top tax bracket, 35 percent, would increase to 39.6 percent. The current cutoff between the top rate and the next highest rate, 33 percent, is $388,350.

On spending, the two sides are also converging.

The White House says the president’s plan would cut spending by $1.22 trillion over 10 years, compared with $1.2 trillion in cuts from the Republicans’ initial offer. Of that, $800 billion is cuts to programs, and $122 billion comes from adopting a new measure of inflation that slows the growth of government benefits, especially Social Security. The White House is also counting on $290 billion in savings from lower interest costs on a reduced national debt.

Of the $800 billion in straight cuts, the president said half would come from federal health care programs; $200 billion from other so-called mandatory programs, like farm price supports, not subject to Congress’s annual spending bills; $100 billion from military spending; and $100 billion from domestic programs under Congress’s annual discretion.

To make all this happen, Mr. Obama proposed fast-track procedures to help Congressional tax writers overhaul the individual and corporate tax code and make changes to other programs.

Senior Republican aides made it clear that differences remain. For instance, they say the president is still pressing for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes because the change in the way inflation is calculated would not only slow the growth of spending but also raise more revenue by slowing the rate at which tax brackets rise each year with the cost of living. That would mean that incomes would probably grow faster than the rise in tax brackets, pushing people more quickly into higher tax rates.

They also disagree with the president over counting lower interest payments on the national debt as savings.

“A proposal that includes $1.3 trillion in revenue for only $930 billion in spending cuts cannot be considered balanced,” said another spokesman for Mr. Boehner, Michael Steel, using the Republicans’ calculation for the president’s offer.

The president is also insisting on some protections for what he has called the “most vulnerable populations,” which Republican aides said they had not been expecting. The new inflation calculations, for instance, would probably not affect wounded veterans and disabled people on Supplemental Security Income.

And Mr. Obama is sticking by his request for additional upfront spending on infrastructure and an extension of expiring unemployment benefits.

He would also secure some tax and policy changes long sought by both parties but unattainable in the context of smaller budget deals. His proposal would permanently extend popular business tax breaks like the credit for corporate research and development, permanently stop the expansion of the alternative minimum tax so it does not affect more of the middle class, and stop a long-planned and deep cut to Medicare health providers, which Congress has never had the stomach to allow to kick in.

To keep the country from returning to fiscal showdowns, Mr. Obama wants the government’s borrowing limit to rise high enough to take the issue off the table for two years, although he said that Congress could periodically weigh in and try to override a presidential lifting of the debt ceiling, should it want to.

Senior Republican aides made it clear on Monday night that the plan was not what the speaker had wanted. He had proposed higher income tax rates on income over $1 million. That revenue would be supplemented by reinstating a provision in the tax code — phased out by the Bush-era tax cuts — that automatically limits tax deductions and credits for the affluent. The speaker was also ready to accept a White House proposal from Mr. Obama’s first days in office that would limit tax deductions to 28 percent, trimming back deductions for charitable giving and other activities from the top rate paid by the giver, 35 percent currently.

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A collection that identifies California as a world apart

PALO ALTO — Something was unusual about the 1663 map of the Western Hemisphere.

Yes, much of the North and South American coasts followed contours geographers would recognize today. And in California, Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara and Point Reyes were clearly marked. But wait! What was that body of water marked Mare Vermiglio, or Red Sea, separating California from the mainland? And why was California a big carrot-shaped island?

That geographic oddity caught the attention of Glen McLaughlin, an American businessman who was browsing through antique maps at a shop in London in 1971. He bought it — and began pursuing a quirky and expensive passion that would lead him to devote an entire room in his San Jose-area home to what is believed to be the largest private collection of such maps.

"It was not a very pretty map, but it had the concept that California was a very different place, a special place," McLaughlin recalled about that first purchase.

Four decades later, his collection of 800 maps, all showing California as an island, is making a splash in academia. And to both California lovers and haters, it promotes the sentiment that the state, even if not a physical island, remains a cultural and political one.

McLaughlin recently turned his collection over to Stanford University's Branner earth sciences library in an arrangement that was part sale, part donation. It is thought to be worth $2.1 million.

An Oklahoman who found a new home and success as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, McLaughlin became intrigued with 17th and 18th century depictions of California as a mysterious island of riches and, he said, "hope for the future."

From early exploration to Gold Rush days to the current high-tech era, California has been a kind of island of freedom and innovation, he said. "There is enormous tolerance for different points of view. So inventors, who might be called kooks or nuts someplace else were embraced here and encouraged," said McLaughlin, a hearty 77. It is, he added, "the grandest place on Earth."

The maps and an online repository are expected to enrich scholars' knowledge of the first California experiences by European explorers. Spurred in part by imaginary descriptions in an early 16th century novel, Spanish travelers originally searched for an island supposedly populated by cannibalistic Amazons with plentiful jewels and gold. It took two more centuries to refute that and other island theories.

The collection shows "layer upon layer of history," said Julie Sweetkind-Singer, a Stanford map librarian. "It shows the perceptions of the times and the idea of exploration and finding new worlds." In their day, the maps excited people the way images from the Hubble Space Telescope do today, she added.

Among the first to study the maps intensively will be author and geography expert Rebecca Solnit, whose 2010 book, "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas," mapped that city for such things as Native American place names, contemporary murders and coffeehouses. She soon will start a six-month fellowship at Stanford with the goal of writing a book based on the McLaughlin collection.

Although the maps are technically wrong, their symbolism remains powerful, she said.

"California is not an island and doesn't have an east coast and no Vermilion Sea. But it is so separate from other parts of the United States, economically, culturally and even spatially," Solnit said. With mountains and deserts isolating California, and its agriculture, high-tech and entertainment industries so well developed, "who's to say we are not this magical, amazing place?"

The maps, she added, "show this weird kind of dance between imagination and desire on the one hand and exploration and fact on the other."

McLaughlin said he has cartography in his DNA. His great-grandfather was a surveyor, his father once won a school contest in drawing maps, and McLaughlin himself was an Air Force pilot trained in navigation. He fell in love with Northern California when stationed there in the late 1950s and returned as a civilian to its high-tech and finance industries. Among other positions, he was a co-founder of Greater Bay Bancorp, a large bank that was acquired by Wells Fargo.

Not a golfer or one for the party circuit, he fell into his map habit as quiet relief from the financial minutiae of his work and the stress of dealing with the computer world's "bits and bytes."

It also gave him entree to the rarefied world of scholars and collectors, where the mistaken island images, like misprinted postage stamps, "always draw more attention than the run of the mill," said McLaughlin, an unexcitable man who recounts his map acquisitions like a retired professor recalling good students of the past.

The growing size of his collection sometimes exasperated his wife, Ellen. At first he stored them under a bed, but that made them difficult to protect from the family cat. He then acquired architects' cases and eventually moved them to a dedicated study in a 10-room house in Saratoga. With part-time helpers, he produced well-regarded essays and catalogs on his collection and UC Berkeley's.

Recently, he and his wife moved to a smaller home nearby, pared their possessions and arranged the transfer to Stanford. The collection is expected to move across campus in 2014 to a center that will be created at the university's main Green Library; the space will be named after David Rumsey, a real estate developer who is donating his immense collection of 18th and 19th century Western Hemisphere maps and atlases.

McLaughlin's maps, carefully stored in Mylar sleeves or framed behind glass, display beautiful curiosities. His first, in English and Latin, shows sea monsters and galleons in the oceans. A 1656 French one gives "Californie Isle" a foot-like northern coast with five peninsula toes. A 1670 Dutch version shows angels on top and below a bare-chested Native American chief with snakes and bars of gold.

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 17

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Springsteen, Gaga join Stones; Newtown noted

NEW YORK (AP) — Only at a Rolling Stones concert could appearances by Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga seem almost like afterthoughts.

Those superstars and other top acts including the Black Keys and John Mayer jammed with the Stones on Saturday night, winding down a series of concerts celebrating the 50th year of rock’s most enduring band (the occasion was also marked by a pay-per-view special).

The Boss rocked out with the band on out “Tumbling Dice”; Gaga matched Mick Jagger shimmy-for-shimmy on “Gimme Shelter”; the Black Keys joined on “Who Do You Love,” and John Mayer and Gary Clark Jr. showed their considerable guitar chops alongside Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood on “Goin’ Down.”

But the Stones would not be upstaged. While the sold-out crowd roared with each special guest, it was the aging but dynamic foursome that generated the most excitement of the night, as they put new energy into their decades-old catalog of hits, including “It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It),” ”Start Me Up,” ”Brown Sugar,” ”Sympathy for the Devil” and more.

The band took a moment to acknowledge the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school Friday in Newtown, Conn. “We just wanted to send our love and condolences to all the people who lost loved ones in the tragedy in Connecticut,” Jagger early on in the concert as the audience applauded. Jagger noted the entire world was feeling the pain of the stunned nation.

But it was the only somber moment in an a frenetic show that showed why the Stones are considered by many to be the greatest rock band, and belied the much-discussed advanced age of the group’s lineup (their ages range between 65 and 71).

Jagger himself poked fun at the senior citizen status of the band and their fans; speaking of the pay-per-view crowd at home, he joked: “Some of you have got your grandchildren watching you.”

But few acts in their so-called prime would have been able to match the energy the Stones radiated onstage. The group had the crowd on its feet for the entire show as Jagger gyrated across the stage, his voice in top form. Both Wood and Richards dazzled on guitar (Richards got a raucous, sustained ovation as he took over vocals on two songs). And Charlie Watts kept the beat strong on the drums.

Before performing in London together late last month for the first of the concerts, the Stones hadn’t performed in concert together since 2007. Going into these shows, there was some speculation that Saturday’s concert, held at the Prudential Center, might be their last.

Earlier in the evening, Jagger teased that the concert might signal the end: “This could be the last time; I don’t know,” he said. But by the end of the evening, it seemed clear that the question was not when the Stones would return, but when.

“This is the last show of our anniversary tour, and we hope to see you all again soon,” Jagger said.

Perhaps the night’s most special guest was Mick Taylor, the former Stones guitarist who was part of some of their biggest moments from 1969 to 1975, when he left the group. He rejoined his band mates (and the man who replaced him, Wood) onstage for a powerful performance of “Midnight Rambler”.

At the concert’s end, while other special guests gave their final bows and left the stage, Jagger motioned for Taylor to stay, and the five took their final bow together.

___

Nekesa Mumbi Moody is the AP’s Global Entertainment & Lifestyles Editor. Follow her at http://twitter.com/nekesamumbi

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Experts Say Thimerosal Ban Would Imperil Global Health Efforts

A group of prominent doctors and public health experts warns in articles to be published Monday in the journal Pediatrics that banning thimerosal, a mercury compound used as a preservative in vaccines, would devastate public health efforts in developing countries.

Representatives from governments around the world will meet in Geneva next month in a session convened by the United Nations Environmental Program to prepare a global treaty to reduce health hazards by banning certain products and processes that release mercury into the environment.

But a proposal that the ban include thimerosal, which has been used since the 1930s to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination in multidose vials of vaccines, has drawn strong criticism from pediatricians.

They say that the ethyl-mercury compound is critical for vaccine use in the developing world, where multidose vials are a mainstay.

Banning it would require switching to single-dose vials for vaccines, which would cost far more and require new networks of cold storage facilities and additional capacity for waste disposal, the authors of the articles said.

“The result would be millions of people, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, with significantly restricted access to lifesaving vaccines for many years,” they wrote.

In the United States, thimerosal has not been used in children’s vaccines since the early 2000s after the Food and Drug Administration and public health groups came under pressure from advocacy groups that believed there was an association between the compound and autism in children.

At the time, few, if any, studies had evaluated the compound’s safety, so the American Academy of Pediatrics called for its elimination in children’s vaccines, a recommendation that the authors argued was made under the principle of “do no harm.”

Since then, however, there has been a lot of research, and the evidence is overwhelming that thimerosal is not harmful, the authors said. Louis Z. Cooper, a former president of the academy and one of the authors, said that if the members had known then what they know now, they never would have recommended against using it. “Science clearly documented that we can’t find hazards from thimerosal in vaccines,” he said. “The preservative plays a critical role in distribution of vaccine to the global community. It was a no-brainer what our position needed to be.”

Advocacy groups have lobbied to include the substance in the ban, and some global health experts worry that because the government representatives due to vote next month are for the most part ministers of environment, not health, they may not appreciate the consequences of banning thimerosal in vaccines. The Pediatrics articles are timed to raise a warning before the meeting.

“If you don’t know about this, and you’re a minister of environment who doesn’t usually deal with health, it’s confusing,” said Heidi Larson, senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who runs the Vaccine Confidence Project.

In an open letter to the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Health Organization this year, the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs, a nonprofit group that supports the ban, disputed the assertion that scientific studies had offered proof that thimerosal is safe, and urged member states to include it in the ban.

That it is being used in developing countries, but not developed countries, is an “injustice,” the letter said.

The World Health Organization has also weighed in. In April, a group of experts on immunization wrote in a report that they were “gravely concerned that current global discussions may threaten access to thimerosal-containing vaccines without scientific justification.”

Dr. Larson said she believed that the efforts of pediatricians and global health experts, including the W.H.O., would influence the negotiations in Geneva and that the compound would most likely be left out of the final ban.

“You can’t just pull the plug on something without having a plan for an alternative,” she said.

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In Spain, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck

Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Raul, a truck driver in Castellón, Spain, hoped last month to be paid from a government fund. Courts are jammed with requests.

VALENCIA, Spain — Over the past two years, Ana María Molina Cuevas, 36, has worked five shifts a week in a ceramics factory on the outskirts of this city, hand-rolling paint onto tiles. But at the end of the month, she often went unpaid.

Still, she kept showing up, trying to keep her frustration under control. If she quit, she reasoned, she might never get her money. And besides, where was she going to find another job? Last month, she was down to about $130 in her bank account with a mortgage payment due.

“On the days you get paid,” she said at home with her disabled husband and young daughter, “it is like the sun has risen three times. It is a day of joy.”

Mrs. Molina, who is owed about $13,000 by the factory, is hardly alone. Being paid for the work you do is no longer something that can be counted on in Spain, as this country struggles through its fourth year of an economic crisis.

With the regional and municipal governments deeply in debt, even workers like bus drivers and health care attendants, dependent on government financing for their salaries, are not always paid.

But few workers in this situation believe they have any choice but to stick it out, and none wanted to name their employers, to protect both the companies and their jobs. They try to manage their lives with occasional checks and partial payments on random dates — never sure whether they will get what they are owed in the end. Spain’s unemployment rate is the highest in the euro zone at more than 25 percent, and despite the government’s labor reforms, the rate has continued to rise month after month.

“Before the crisis, a worker might let one month go by, and then move on to another job,” said José Francisco Perez, a lawyer who represents unpaid workers in the Valencia area. “Now that just isn’t an option. People now have nowhere to go, and they are scared. They are afraid even to complain.”

No one is keeping track of workers like Mrs. Molina. But one indication of their number can be seen in the courts, which have become jammed with people trying to get back pay from a government insurance fund, aimed at giving workers something when a company does not pay them.

In Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, the unemployment rate is 28.1 percent and the courts are so overwhelmed that processing claims, which used to take three to six months, now takes three to four years.

Since the start of the crisis in 2008, the insurance fund has paid nearly a million workers nationally back pay or severance. In 2007, it paid 70,000 workers. It is on track to pay more than 250,000 this year, and experts say the figures would be much higher if not for the logjam in the courts.

Often the unpaid workers, like Mrs. Molina, whose company is now in bankruptcy proceedings, hope their labor will keep a struggling operation afloat over the long run. Unemployment benefits last only two years, they point out, and they wonder what they would do after that. But in the meantime, they cannot even claim unemployment benefits. And no amount of budgeting can cover no payment at all.

Beatriz Morales García, 31, said she could not remember the last time she went shopping for herself. A few years ago, she and her husband, Daniel Chiva, 34, thought that they had settled into a comfortable life, he as a bus driver and she as a therapist in a rehabilitation center for people with mental disabilities. His job is financed by the City of Valencia, and hers by the regional government of Valencia.

They never expected any big money. But it seemed reasonable to expect a reliable salary, to take on a mortgage and think about children. In the past year, however, both of them have had trouble being paid. She is owed 6,000 euros, nearly $8,000. They have cut back on everything they can think of. They have given up their landline and their Internet connection. They no long park their car in a garage or pay for extra health insurance coverage. Mr. Chiva even forgoes the coffee he used to drink in a cafe before his night shifts. Still, the anxiety is constant.

“There are nights when we cannot sleep,” he said. “Moments when you talk out loud to yourself in the street. It has been terrible, terrible.”

Mrs. Morales said it was particularly hard to watch other mothers in the park with their children while she must leave her own toddler to go to work, unsure she will ever get paid.

“We are working eight hours, and we’re suffering more than people who are not working,” she said.

The couple’s pay has been so irregular that they are having a hard time even keeping track of how much they are owed, because small payments show up sporadically in their account.

Rachel Chaundler contributed reporting.

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In Connecticut, a mother coped silently with a troubled son

NEWTOWN, Conn. — On the outside, Nancy Lanza was the picture of contented motherhood: volunteering at her sons' school, gardening, keeping a picture-perfect home so well-ordered a neighbor described it as pristine.

Outside public view, say some who knew her, she had a struggle on her hands, and that was her son Adam: a brilliant but sometimes difficult boy.

Lanza battled with the school district over Adam and eventually quit her job, pulled him out of school and educated him at home, said her sister-in-law, Marsha Lanza.

"I know she had issues with the school. … In what capacity, I'm not 100% certain if it was behavior, if it was learning disabilities, I really don't know," Marsha Lanza told reporters. The investigation widened Saturday into the still-baffling shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., with police releasing the identities of the 26 students and teachers they say Adam Lanza shot before turning the gun on himself.

His mother, police said, was shot at the family home before her son set out on his deadly rampage through the school.

"Adam, he was … definitely the challenge to the family in that house," Marsha Lanza said. "Every family has one. I have one. They have one. … But he was a very bright boy, he was smart."

Jim Leff, who knew Nancy Lanza casually through a friend, said he had been put off by an impression that she was high-strung, until he came to understand what she was trying to cope with as Adam's mother.

"Now that I've been filled in by friends about how difficult her troubled son … was making things for her, I understand that it wasn't that Nancy was overwrought about the trivialities of everyday life, but that she was handling a very difficult situation with uncommon grace," he wrote in a testimonial to her on his blog.

Neighbors said the Lanzas moved several years ago into the hilly neighborhood of graceful houses and pastoral views and immediately fit into the social scene, attending the picnic after the annual Labor Day parade and a rotating ladies' night at several homes.

By the accounts of some who knew her, Nancy Lanza, who grew up in rural New Hampshire, was comfortable using guns and kept several in the house.

Landscaper Dan Holmes said Lanza often talked about her gun collection, and about taking her sons target practicing. "One thing I will note is that she was a big, big gun fan," Leff wrote on his blog.

Police have said the three weapons found near Adam Lanza's body inside the school were legally purchased and registered to his mother.

Yet it appears that Adam may have tried to buy a weapon of his own before Friday's shootings. Just days before, two federal law enforcement officials say, the 20-year-old attempted to purchase a single "long gun" rifle from a Dick's Sporting Goods store in Canton, Conn., but was turned away because he did not want to wait for a required background check.

"He didn't want to wait the 14 days," said one source, declining to be identified because the case was still under review. "The sale did not take place."

Marsha Lanza, whose husband is the brother of Adam's father, Peter Lanza, said the entire family was trying to understand what happened. She said her sister-in-law never talked of being threatened by her son, or about any violence he had committed.

"And if he did, I know she wouldn't tolerate it," she said. "If he needed help, I know they would have gotten it for him.

"Because they were the type of parents — when they were married, as well as being separated — if the kids had a need, they would definitely fulfill it."

She said Nancy Lanza divorced in 2009 and was awarded the house and enough money — up to $12,450 a month in alimony, according to local news outlets that reviewed the divorce files — that she didn't have to work.

A law enforcement source said the couple were ordered to undergo parental counseling as a condition of their divorce, but another source familiar with the case said that is a standard condition of divorces in Connecticut involving a minor child.

Other Lanza family members emerged from seclusion Saturday, and, like Marsha Lanza, expressed disbelief.

"The family of Nancy Lanza shares the grief of a community and nation as we struggle to … comprehend the loss that we all share. ... On behalf of Nancy's mother and siblings, we reach out to the community… and express our heartfelt sorrow for their incomprehensible tragedy and loss of innocence that has affected so many," the family said in a statement.

It was read at a news conference by the sheriff of Rockingham County, N.H., where Nancy Lanza's brother is employed as a law enforcement officer.

Adam Lanza's father, Peter, also issued a statement.

"Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are," it said. "We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why."

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

kim.murphy@latimes.com

richard.serrano@latimes.com

Hennessy-Fiske reported from Newtown, Murphy from Seattle and Serrano from Washington, D.C.

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Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space

To a geologist, glaciers are among the most exciting features on Earth. Though they seem to creep along at impossibly slow speeds, in geologic time glaciers are relatively fast, powerful landscape artists that can carve out valleys and fjords in just a few thousand years.

Glaciers also provide an environmental record by trapping air bubbles in ice that reveal atmospheric conditions in the past. And because they are very sensitive to climate, growing and advancing when it’s cold and shrinking and retreating when its warm, they can be used as proxies for regional temperatures.

Over geologic time, they have ebbed and flowed with natural climate cycles. Today, the world’s glaciers are in retreat, sped up by relatively rapid warming of the globe. In our own Glacier National Park in Montana, only 26 named glaciers remain out of the 150 known in 1850. They are predicted to be completely gone by 2030 if current warming continues at the same rate.

Here we have collected 13 stunning images of some of the world’s most impressive and beautiful glaciers, captured from space by astronauts and satellites.

Above: Bear Glacier, Alaska

This image taken in 2005 of Bear Glacier highlights the beautiful color of many glacial lakes. The hue is caused by the silt that is finely ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the lake. The particles in this “glacial flour” can be very reflective, turning the water into a distinctive greenish blue. The lake, eight miles up from the terminus of the glacier, was held in place by the glacier, but in 2008 it broke through and drained into Resurrection Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

The grey stripe down the middle of the glacier is called a medial moraine. It is formed when two glaciers flow into each other and join on their way downhill. When glaciers come together, their lateral moraines, long ridges formed along their edges as the freeze-thaw cycle of the glacier breaks off chunks of rock from the surrounding walls, meet to form a rocky ridge along the center of the joined glaciers.

Image: GeoEye/NASA, 2005.

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Pop star Kelly Clarkson announces engagement

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Kelly Clarkson, who became the first contestant to win “American Idol” a decade ago and went on to several chart-topping successes, has gotten engaged to her boyfriend, the singer said in a Twitter message on Saturday.

Clarkson, 30, previously revealed she had been dating talent manager Brandon Blackstock since early this year. Blackstock is the stepson of country singer Reba McEntire.

“I’M ENGAGED!” Clarkson said on Twitter. “I wanted y’all to know!! Happiest night of my life last night!”

She then followed that by posting a link to a photo of her canary yellow diamond engagement ring on a website. She wrote that her boyfriend helped design it and that she “can’t wait to make Brandon’s ring.”

Clarkson’s album “Stronger” hit No. 2 last year on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and she in previous years topped pop charts with her songs “My Life Would Suck Without You” and “A Moment Like This.”

The Texas-born singer won the Fox television singing contest “American Idol” in the show’s debut year in 2002, and has had more success than many of the show’s stars from following years.

Clarkson has burnished an image as an artist willing to speak her mind, even confessing to feelings of loneliness.

Last month, in an appearance on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Clarkson said she had been dating Blackstock since earlier this year and was thankful to have him.

“I am not alone for the first time for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I’m very happy,” she said on the show.

In the same November appearance, Clarkson said she expected to get engaged to Blackstock. “We will totally, probably elope,” she told DeGeneres.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by David Bailey)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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