'Hot' Guns Fueling Crime, US Study Says

Christmas is the one day of the year that Wal-Mart is closed, but for a group of four New Mexico burglars, it was the perfect time to stop in for some firearms.

Video surveillance cameras caught the masked burglars red-handed, stealing rifle after rifle. Police arrested the four men, and were able to recover the guns. But all too often, stolen weapons end up in the hands of criminals.

The New Mexico caper is part of a flood of gun thefts nationwide. And it's not only commercial gun dealers vulnerable to theft.

Guns are a top target for home burglars looking for something they can easily sell on the street.

An estimated 230,000 guns per year are stolen in home burglaries and property crimes, according to a study by the Department of Justice.

"Any burglar that goes in a house and finds guns, their eyes are going to light up," says former ATF Assistant Director Mike Bouchard. "That's the first thing they're going to take."

The statistics for commercial thefts show that nearly 25,000 guns per year are lost or stolen from gun dealers.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), more than 4,000 gun stores and retailers have been targeted in the last three years, with 74,000 guns reported stolen or lost. And criminals will use any method possible to get their hands on some weapons, either for their own use, or to sell on the black market.

Minnesota Public Radio, Jeffrey Thompson/AP Photo

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Recently, thieves have taken to using a stolen vehicle to ram down the front doors of a gun store. In North Charleston, S.C., for example, burglars smashed a stolen truck right through Guns and Gold Trading Post, stealing $4,500 worth of guns before making a quick getaway.

"Gun stores are like candy stores for criminals," says Mike Bouchard.

2012 was a record year for gun sales, with more than 19.5 million background checks run for gun purchases, up almost 20% from the previous year. But while legitimate sales skyrocket, huge numbers of illegal guns are hitting the streets.

According to the Justice Department, more than 1.4 million guns were stolen or lost between 2005 and 2010.

Former ATF Assistant Director Bouchard says crooks have easy access to cheap stolen guns on the street.

"If you talk to any criminal, they can find a gun within an hour or two. Cheaper guns that were stolen can be sold for $50. On the street, a typical good handgun will run you $200 to $300," Bouchard said.

Some thieves have even targeted gun shipments, stealing the weapons before they get to market.

Last November, for example, a rogue truck driver allegedly stole a shipment of 111 guns he was supposed to deliver from the Smith and Wesson factory in Springfield, Mass.

When police caught him, they recovered 28 of the stolen guns, but some had already been used in crimes.

When police arrested the alleged stick-up robber known as the Black Jacket Bandit, they found one of the stolen guns was allegedly used by him in a convenience store robbery within weeks of the delivery heist.

In November, more than 100 powerful AK-47s were stolen from a rail yard in Atlanta. The guns were in a box car containing more than 1,000 guns being shipped from an overseas manufacturer to a major U.S. distributor, authorities say.

A few of the weapons have been recovered, but police are deeply concerned about having scores of new assault rifles falling into the wrong hands.

Given all the gun thefts, police say it is critical for gun owners to secure their weapons in gun safes or locked cases. And authorities are urging gun retailers to fortify their buildings, to try to prevent "smash and grab" type robberies.

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North Korea threatens war with South over U.N. sanctions

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea threatened to attack rival South Korea if Seoul joined a new round of tightened U.N. sanctions, as Washington unveiled more of its own economic restrictions following Pyongyang's rocket launch last month.

In a third straight day of fiery rhetoric, the North directed its verbal onslaught at its neighbor on Friday, saying: "'Sanctions' mean a war and a declaration of war against us."

The reclusive North this week declared a boycott of all dialogue aimed at ending its nuclear program and vowed to conduct more rocket and nuclear tests after the U.N. Security Council censured it for a December long-range missile launch.

"If the puppet group of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. 'sanctions,' the DPRK will take strong physical counter-measures against it," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, referring to the South.

The committee is the North's front for dealings with the South. The North's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Speaking in Beijing, U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Glyn Davies said he found North Korea's rhetoric "troubling and counterproductive," and that he and his Chinese counterparts had agreed a new nuclear test would be harmful.

"We will judge North Korea by its actions, not its words. These types of inflammatory statements by North Korea do nothing to contribute to peace and stability on the peninsula," he said.

"What North Korea has done through its actions, in particular through the launch on December 12 of a rocket in contravention of Security Council resolutions, is they have made it that much more difficult to contemplate getting back to a diplomatic process."

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged North Korea's young leader Kim Jong-un to choose a different path, rather than "continue to waste what little money the country has on missile technologies and things while his people go hungry."

The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea's December rocket launch on Tuesday and expanded existing U.N. sanctions.

On Thursday, the United States slapped economic sanctions on two North Korean bank officials and a Hong Kong trading company that it accused of supporting Pyongyang's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The company, Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Ltd, was separately blacklisted by the United Nations on Wednesday.

Seoul has said it will look at whether there are any further sanctions that it can implement alongside the United States, but said the focus for now is to follow Security Council resolutions.

The resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North Korea of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from conducting further ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from importing materials and technology for those programs. It does not impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.

The United States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

Nuland declined to speculate whether the United States thinks the U.N. steps would change North Korea's behavior.

"What's been important to us is strong unity among the six-party talks countries; strong unity in the region about a positive course forward; and the fact that there will be consequences if they keep making bad choices," she said.

Long-dormant six-nation talks brought together the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas in negotiations to try to induce Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arms quest in exchange for economic aid and diplomatic normalization.

NUCLEAR TEST WORRY

North Korea's rhetoric this week amounted to some of the angriest outbursts against the outside world coming under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who took over after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011.

On Thursday, the North said it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test, directing its ire at the United States, a country it called its "sworn enemy".

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the comments were worrying.

"We are very concerned with North Korea's continuing provocative behavior," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

"We are fully prepared ... to deal with any kind of provocation from the North Koreans. But I hope in the end that they determine that it is better to make a choice to become part of the international family."

North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

South Korea and others who have been closely observing activities at the North's known nuclear test grounds believe Pyongyang is technically ready to go ahead with its third atomic test and awaiting the political decision of its leader.

The North's committee also declared on Friday that a landmark agreement it signed with the South in 1992 on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula was invalid, repeating its long-standing accusation that Seoul was colluding with Washington.

The foreign ministry of China, the North's sole remaining major diplomatic and economic benefactor, repeated its call for calm on the Korean peninsula at its daily briefing earlier on Friday.

"The current situation on the Korea peninsula is complicated and sensitive," spokesman Hong Lei said.

"We hope all relevant parties can see the big picture, maintain calm and restraint, further maintain contact and dialogue, and improve relations, while not taking actions to further complicate and escalate the situation," Hong said.

But unusually prickly comments in Chinese state media on Friday hinted at Beijing's exasperation.

"It seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts," said the Global Times in an editorial, a sister publication of the official People's Daily.

"Just let North Korea be 'angry' ... China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of China's position."

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina, Sui-Lee Wee and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Arshad Mohammed and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Editing by Jonathan Standing, Myra MacDonald and Jackie Frank)

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Japan's inflation slips in 2012

TOKYO: Japan's inflation rate slipped 0.1 per cent in 2012, data showed Friday just days after the Bank of Japan set a new target to beat the deflation that has haunted the world's third-largest economy for years.

The figures marked the fourth straight annual price decline. The core index, which excludes volatile prices of fresh food, slipped 0.2 per cent in December alone, meeting the market's expectation.

Deflation is bad for the economy because it encourages consumers to put off spending in the belief their intended purchases will be cheaper in the future, softening demand and hurting producers and their own capital investment plans.

On Tuesday, Japan's central bank adopted a two-per cent inflation target and set out plans for indefinite monetary easing in a bid to turn the economy around, although analysts have been mixed on whether it would stoke growth.

Switching from an inflation "goal" to a more explicit "target" was driven by the "importance of flexibility in the conduct of monetary policy in Japan", the Bank of Japan said.

However, two of the nine BoJ policy board members voted against the new inflation target demanded by the country's hawkish new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who swept to power last month on a promise to heap pressure on the bank for more aggressive policy action as part of his plan to fix the long-suffering economy.

- AFP/fa

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Panel to probe sexual harassment charge against UP magistrate

LUCKNOW: The chief judicial magistrate of Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday constituted an inquiry panel to probe complaints of harassment of two girls against the additional chief judicial magistrate.

CJM Umesh Chandra set up the committee on the instructions of the Allahabad high court's senior judge Justice and administrative judge Sudhir Agarwal in response to a letter written by Gonda district police chief Navneet Kumar Rana. The committee would be exploring all possible aspects related to the case including "authenticity" of the complaint.

The ACJM has been accused of molesting two girls while recording their statements. The report would likely be submitted by Saturday evening and based on the findings further action would be taken. Justice Agarwal said, "I have told the district judge to get in touch with the complainants to record their statements on camera. The statement of the accused judge should also be on camera."

In separate incidents, the two girls had allegedly eloped with their lovers but their families claimed they had been kidnapped. The police found the girls and they were produced before the judicial officer on Monday. Both girls complained to the police that he took them to his room and locked it from inside before touching them inappropriately to "determine whether they were minors or adult".

Rana said that FIR against a judicial officer can be lodged only after taking permission from the administrative judge. Thus, he met the district judge and communicated to him about the matter in writing. "I wrote to him to take cognizance of the matter and direct me on further action," he said, adding he was told about inquiry panel by the district judge on Thursday evening.

Sources in the state government said the matter had been brought before senior officials in the department of home affairs. They have reportedly written to the registrar general of the Allahabad High Court as well. Sources said that the administrative judge had agreed to visit Gonda to take stock of the situation if need be.

On Wednesday lawyers affiliated to the bar association of Gonda had boycotted work and vandalized the chamber of the judicial officer and demanded impartial inquiry with adequate action.

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Penalty could keep smokers out of health overhaul

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation.

The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1.

For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums.

Younger smokers could be charged lower penalties under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. But older smokers could face a heavy hit on their household budgets at a time in life when smoking-related illnesses tend to emerge.

Workers covered on the job would be able to avoid tobacco penalties by joining smoking cessation programs, because employer plans operate under different rules. But experts say that option is not guaranteed to smokers trying to purchase coverage individually.

Nearly one of every five U.S. adults smokes. That share is higher among lower-income people, who also are more likely to work in jobs that don't come with health insurance and would therefore depend on the new federal health care law. Smoking increases the risk of developing heart disease, lung problems and cancer, contributing to nearly 450,000 deaths a year.

Insurers won't be allowed to charge more under the overhaul for people who are overweight, or have a health condition like a bad back or a heart that skips beats — but they can charge more if a person smokes.

Starting next Jan. 1, the federal health care law will make it possible for people who can't get coverage now to buy private policies, providing tax credits to keep the premiums affordable. Although the law prohibits insurance companies from turning away the sick, the penalties for smokers could have the same effect in many cases, keeping out potentially costly patients.

"We don't want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage," said California state Assemblyman Richard Pan, who is working on a law in his state that would limit insurers' ability to charge smokers more. The federal law allows states to limit or change the smoking penalty.

"We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment," added Pan, a pediatrician who represents the Sacramento area.

Obama administration officials declined to be interviewed for this article, but a former consumer protection regulator for the government is raising questions.

"If you are an insurer and there is a group of smokers you don't want in your pool, the ones you really don't want are the ones who have been smoking for 20 or 30 years," said Karen Pollitz, an expert on individual health insurance markets with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "You would have the flexibility to discourage them."

Several provisions in the federal health care law work together to leave older smokers with a bleak set of financial options, said Pollitz, formerly deputy director of the Office of Consumer Support in the federal Health and Human Services Department.

First, the law allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times as much as their youngest customers.

Second, the law allows insurers to levy the full 50 percent penalty on older smokers while charging less to younger ones.

And finally, government tax credits that will be available to help pay premiums cannot be used to offset the cost of penalties for smokers.

Here's how the math would work:

Take a hypothetical 60-year-old smoker making $35,000 a year. Estimated premiums for coverage in the new private health insurance markets under Obama's law would total $10,172. That person would be eligible for a tax credit that brings the cost down to $3,325.

But the smoking penalty could add $5,086 to the cost. And since federal tax credits can't be used to offset the penalty, the smoker's total cost for health insurance would be $8,411, or 24 percent of income. That's considered unaffordable under the federal law. The numbers were estimated using the online Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator.

"The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-income smokers could not afford health insurance," said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions, a nonpartisan research group that called attention to the issue with a study about the potential impact in California.

In today's world, insurers can simply turn down a smoker. Under Obama's overhaul, would they actually charge the full 50 percent? After all, workplace anti-smoking programs that use penalties usually charge far less, maybe $75 or $100 a month.

Robert Laszewski, a consultant who previously worked in the insurance industry, says there's a good reason to charge the maximum.

"If you don't charge the 50 percent, your competitor is going to do it, and you are going to get a disproportionate share of the less-healthy older smokers," said Laszewski. "They are going to have to play defense."

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Online:

Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator — http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx

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Will Women Register for Selective Service?

Jan 24, 2013 5:53pm

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today lifted the ban on women serving in combat positions, opening the door to more than 200,000  new military posts and raising a number of important questions, including: Will women eventually be eligible for the draft?

By law, all male U.S. citizens and permanent residents must register with the Selective Service System within 30 days of their 18th birthday. Registration puts those “male persons” on the list the government uses if ever the draft returns and conscription in the military is deemed necessary in a time of war.

As of a 1994 review, women were still exempt from registering because they did not serve in combat positions. Today’s change in Pentagon policy, however, could ultimately result in a change to the law.

But it will take more than just the stroke of the defense secretary’s pen for the Selective Service Act to include mention of women.

With any change to personnel policies, the Defense Department  is “required to provide an analysis of its impact on the Selective Service Act,” said a senior Pentagon official said on the condition of anonymity.  “So that will be part of the notification to Congress.”

But what comes next is  unclear.

“With regard to what will happen from there, I can’t say,” said the official.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta later admitted to reporters that he, too, did not know the potential impact of the change to the Selective Service Act.

“That’s not our operation,” said Panetta.

Known for his use of colorful language, Panetta then said, “I don’t know who the hell controls Selective Service, if you want to know the truth.”

“But, you know,” Panetta added. “Whoever does, they’re going to have to exercise some judgment based on what we just did.”

The Selective Service System is a federal agency independent of the Department of Defense.

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North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "sworn enemy".

The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North Korea for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules.

North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA.

North Korea is believed by South Korea and other observers to be "technically ready" for a third nuclear test, and the decision to go ahead rests with leader Kim Jong-un, who pressed ahead with the December rocket launch in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.

China, the one major diplomatic ally of the isolated and impoverished North, agreed to the U.S.-backed resolution and it also supported resolutions in 2006 and 2009 after Pyongyang's two earlier nuclear tests.

Thursday's statement by North Korea represents a huge challenge to Beijing as it undergoes a leadership transition, with Xi Jinping due to take office in March.

China's Foreign Ministry called for calm and restraint and a return to six-party talks, but effectively singled out North Korea, urging the "relevant party" not to take any steps that would raise tensions.

"We hope the relevant party can remain calm and act and speak in a cautious and prudent way and not take any steps which may further worsen the situation," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular press briefing.

North Korea has rejected proposals to restart the talks aimed at reining in its nuclear capacity. The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are the six parties involved.

"After all these years and numerous rounds of six-party talks we can see that China's influence over North Korea is actually very limited. All China can do is try to persuade them not to carry out their threats," said Cai Jian, an expert on Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Analysts said the North could test as early as February as South Korea prepares to install a new, untested president or that it could choose to stage a nuclear explosion to coincide with former ruler Kim Jong-il's Feb 16 birthday.

"North Korea will have felt betrayed by China for agreeing to the latest U.N. resolution and they might be targeting (China) as well (with this statement)," said Lee Seung-yeol, senior research fellow at Ewha Institute of Unification Studies in Seoul.

U.S. URGES NO TEST

Washington urged North Korea not to proceed with a third test just as the North's statement was published on Thursday.

"Whether North Korea tests or not is up to North Korea," Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy for North Korean diplomacy, said in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

"We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it," Davies said after a meeting with South Korean officials. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean peninsula."

The North was banned from developing missile and nuclear technology under sanctions dating from its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

A South Korean military official said the concern now is that Pyongyang could undertake a third nuclear test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, opening a second path to a bomb.

North Korea's 2006 nuclear test using plutonium produced a puny yield equivalent to one kiloton of TNT - compared with 13-18 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb - and U.S. intelligence estimates put the 2009 test's yield at roughly two kilotons

North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material for about a dozen plutonium warheads, although estimates vary, and intelligence reports suggest that it has been enriching uranium to supplement that stock and give it a second path to the bomb.

According to estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security from late 2012, North Korea could have enough weapons grade uranium for 21-32 nuclear weapons by 2016 if it used one centrifuge at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

North Korea has not yet mastered the technology needed to make a nuclear warhead small enough for an intercontinental missile, most observers say, and needs to develop the capacity to shield any warhead from re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

North Korea gave no time-frame for the coming test and often employs harsh rhetoric in response to U.N. and U.S. actions that it sees as hostile.

The bellicose statement on Thursday appeared to dent any remaining hopes that Kim Jong-un, believed to be 30 years old, would pursue a different path from his father, Kim Jong-il, who oversaw the country's military and nuclear programs.

The older Kim died in December 2011.

"The UNSC (Security Council) resolution masterminded by the U.S. has brought its hostile policy towards the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) to its most dangerous stage," the commission was quoted as saying.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Ron Popeski)

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Assange hits out at WikiLeaks movie

LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hit out on Wednesday at a Hollywood film about his secret-spilling website, calling the movie "a massive propaganda attack".

Speaking to students at Britain's prestigious Oxford University by videolink from the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Assange revealed that he had acquired a copy of the script for "The Fifth Estate", due to be released in November.

"It is a lie upon lie. The movie is a massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff," the Australian Internet activist told the audience at the university's Oxford Union debating club.

Assange, 41, also blasted the movie for "fanning the flames" of war against Iran by implying that the Islamic republic was working on a nuclear bomb.

Reading from the script, he said the opening scene was set inside a military complex in Iran with documents containing nuclear symbols.

"How does this have anything to do with us?" Assange said from the embassy, where he has been holed up since June after claiming asylum in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sex crimes.

DreamWorks Studios announced on Tuesday that it had begun shooting the WikiLeaks movie, which stars British actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange.

A photo released by the company showed Cumberbatch with lank hair dyed the same platinum shade as the WikiLeaks founder's, with German actor Daniel Bruehl standing beside him as former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

"'The Fifth Estate' traces the heady, early days of WikiLeaks, culminating in the release of a series of controversial and history changing information leaks," DreamWorks said, adding that the movie would open in the United States on November 15.

Director Bill Condon, who directed the final two instalments in the "Twilight" vampire saga, said the movie "won't claim any long view authority on its subject, or attempt any final judgement".

"We want to explore the complexities and challenges of transparency in the information age and, we hope, enliven and enrich the conversations WikiLeaks has already provoked," he said.

Ecuador granted asylum to Assange in August but Britain refuses to grant him safe passage out of the country, leaving the former computer hacker stuck inside the embassy.

Britain says it is obliged to see Assange extradited to Sweden. Assange denies the sex crime allegations, which he says are a politically-motivated attempt to see him sent to the United States and prosecuted.

WikiLeaks enraged the United States in 2010 by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a huge cache of US diplomatic cables that embarrassed governments worldwide.

- AFP/jc

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Limit nutrition plan to only first 2 kids: Panel

NEW DELHI: Should maternity benefits and nutritional support to children under government schemes be restricted to only the first two children in order to "encourage stabilization of population"? Raising a storm among activists, the Parliamentary standing committee has recommended so while assessing the National Food Security Bill. The recommendation has been objected to by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights also.

The other recommendations of the standing committee diluting the existing commitments of the government to provide nutritional security to children, flowing out from various Supreme Court orders, has also drawn criticism from the civil society as well as the commission.

In its report, the standing committee said: "The Committee recommend that the maternity benefit of Rs.1000/- shall be admissible up to the birth of second child only in order to encourage stabilization of population."

It also recommended that pregnant women should be eligible for the maternity benefit of Rs. 1,000 per month after three months into pregnancy and not for six months as is norm now.

The reaction from NCPCR has been strong: "The commission is stunned to see that its submissions to the Standing Committee on critical issues of children's food and nutritional security have not found place in the Report."

Its said, "The universal and unconditional maternal entitlements enabling exclusive breast-feeding to babies for the first six months of life that was provided for in the NFSB is now withdrawn. On the contrary, the Committee imposed the two-child norm denying entitlements to the third born and higher order of babies in order to encourage stabilization of population."

The standing committee report notes that the recommendation to use regulation of nutritional support for population stabilization was made by Congress Member of Parliament Naveen Jindal.

The Commission has criticized the recommendations saying, "The Committee has ignored the importance of exclusive breast-feeding of babies for the first six months of life which is the vital and indispensable factor for survival and growth of children. In would only perpetuate child mortality and malnutrition in the country. This is unjust and violates the fundamental right to equality."

The Right to Food campaign too has severely criticized the recommendation denying the nutritional support to children, "It is now widely recognised that such disincentives do not contribute to population stabilisation and only violate the rights of women and children. India's fertility rate has been steadily declining and anyway approaching the level of population stabilisation."

The campaign added, "It is shocking to learn that the Committee completely obliterated legal guarantees to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and anganwadis on grounds of programmatic and operational gaps in the scheme. This undermines the Supreme Court orders and the advise of hundreds of experts and campaigns that wrote to the Committee on the importance of universalising the ICDS services."

Oddly, it was on the advise of the Union ministry for women and child development that the standing committee decided to keep ICDS out of the list of legal entitlements under the bill. The ministry told the committee, "The scheme is confronted with programmatic and operational gaps which would need to be addressed first. After then only the ICDS scheme would evolve to an acceptable level of performance in terms of delivery of services and outcomes. Therefore, the time is not ripe yet for making the entitlements legal through an Act of Parliament."

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Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk

Smoke like a man, die like a man.

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

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Online:

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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