By the numbers: MLK Day

The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday of service honoring the civil rights leader.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day


• The federal holiday is also the only federal holiday of service


• "Everybody can be great because everybody can serve," Dr. King said

(CNN) -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated on the third Monday in January, although Dr. King was actually born on the 15th of January 1929, 84 years ago.

Below are some facts and numbers related to the federal holiday, in which Americans are encouraged to participate in a day of service.

27 -- The number of years since the very first national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 20, 1986.

1 -- The Montgomery Bus Boycott against segregated seating lasted approximately one year, starting December 1, 1955. This is what Dr. Martin King said in his book, "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story": We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.

1 -- In a speech delivered one day before his assassination Dr. King said, "Let us keep the issues where they are."

"That's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people," he said.

44 -- "Everybody can be great because everybody can serve," Dr. King said in his sermon "The Drum Major Instinct," forty-four years ago on February 4, 1968. Mrs. King read the same statement when, in 1994, she asked congress to make the holiday an official national day of humanitarian service.

4 -- The number of days between the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, and the first legislative bill to establish a federal holiday. Rep. John Conyers (D- Michigan) sponsored the bill on April 8, 1968, 44 years ago.

33 -- The number of years since Stevie Wonder's release of "Happy Birthday," a song asking, in 1980, for a day "in full remembrance."

6 million -- The number of signatures on the King Center petitions Mrs. Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder presented in 1982 to Tip O'Neil, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in support of a federal holiday.

29 -- The number of years since President Reagan signed the November 3, 1983, legislation creating the national holiday, which started in 1986. It was almost 11 years later that the holiday became a day of service, August 23, 1994, when President Clinton signed the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday and Service Act.

3 -- Utah, New Hampshire, and South Carolina were the last to join the rest of the states in making Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day as we know it throughout the nation.

30 -- feet. The height of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Stone of Hope on the National Mall. On one side, it reads, "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope," from Dr. King's speech, "I Have a Dream," presented at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.

1 -- This is the number of federal holidays of service - A Day On, Not a Day Off.

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MLK's "content of character" quote inspires debate

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This sentence spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been quoted countless times as expressing one of America's bedrock values, its language almost sounding like a constitutional amendment on equality.

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Martin Luther King Jr.

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Martin Luther King III talks his father's legacy

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King, Civil Rights Act remembered

Yet today, 50 years after King shared this vision during his most famous speech, there is considerable disagreement over what it means.

The quote is used to support opposing views on politics, affirmative action and programs intended to help the disadvantaged. Just as the words of the nation's founders are parsed for modern meanings on guns and abortion, so are King's words used in debates over the proper place of race in America.

As we mark the King holiday, what might he ask of us in a time when both the president and a disproportionate number of people in poverty are black? Would King have wanted us to completely ignore race in a "color-blind" society? To consider race as one of many factors about a person? And how do we discern character?

For at least two of King's children, the future envisioned by the father has yet to arrive.

"I don't think we can ignore race," says Martin Luther King III.

"What my father is asking is to create the climate where every American can realize his or her dreams," he says. "Now what does that mean when you have 50 million people living in poverty?"

Bernice King doubts her father would seek to ignore differences.

"When he talked about the beloved community, he talked about everyone bringing their gifts, their talents, their cultural experiences," she says. "We live in a society where we may have differences, of course, but we learn to celebrate these differences."

The meaning of King's monumental quote is more complex today than in 1963 because "the unconscious signals have changed," says the historian Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed trilogy "America in the King Years."

Fifty years ago, bigotry was widely accepted. Today, Branch says, even though prejudice is widely denounced, many people unconsciously pre-judge others.

"Unfortunately race in American history has been one area in which Americans kid themselves and pretend to be fair-minded when they really are not," says Branch, whose new book is "The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement."

Branch believes that today, King would ask people of all backgrounds - not just whites - to deepen their patriotism by leaving their comfort zones, reaching across barriers and learning about different people.

"To remember that we all have to stretch ourselves to build the ties that bind a democracy, which really is the source of our strength," Branch says.

Bernice King says her father is asking us "to get to a place - we're obviously not there - but to get to a place where the first thing that we utilize as a measurement is not someone's external designation, but it really is trying to look beyond that into the substance of a person in making certain decisions, to rid ourselves of those kinds of prejudices and biases that we often bring to decisions that we make."

That takes a lot of "psychological work," she says, adding, "He's really challenging us."

For many conservatives, the modern meaning of King's quote is clear: Special consideration for one racial or ethnic group is a violation of the dream.

The quote is like the Declaration of Independence, says Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that studies race and ethnicity. In years past, he says, America may have needed to grow into the words, but today they must be obeyed to the letter.

"The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal," Clegg says. "Nobody thinks it doesn't really mean what it says because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. King gave a brilliant and moving quotation, and I think it says we should not be treating people differently on the basis of skin color."

Many others agree. King's quote has become a staple of conservative belief that "judged by the color of their skin" includes things such as unique appeals to certain voter groups, reserving government contracts for Hispanic-owned businesses, seeking more non-white corporate executives, or admitting black students to college with lower test scores.

In the latest issue of the Weekly Standard magazine, the quote appears in the lead of a book review titled "The Price Was High: Affirmative Action and the Betrayal of a Colorblind Society."

Considering race as a factor in affirmative action keeps the wounds of slavery and Jim Crow "sore and festering. It encourages beneficiaries to rely on ethnicity rather than self-improvement to get ahead," wrote the author, George Leef.

Last week, the RightWingNews.com blog included "The idea that everyone should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin" in a list of "25 People, Places and Things Liberals Love to Hate."

"Conservatives feel they have embraced that quote completely. They are the embodiment of that quote but get no credit for doing it," says the author of the article, John Hawkins. "Liberals like the idea of the quote because it's the most famous thing Martin Luther King said, but they left the principles behind the quote behind a long time ago."

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Obamas Share the Love, Even for Michelle's Bangs

Jan 20, 2013 10:49pm

(Charles Dharapak/AP Photo)

President Obama used the first public remarks of his second term to address what he called the “most significant” event of this weekend: his wife’s much-talked-about new haircut.

“I love her bangs,” Obama told supporters at an inaugural reception at the National Building Museum. “She looks good. She always looks good.”

First lady Michelle Obama, wearing a black sequined cocktail dress and showcasing her new hairdo, also heaped compliments on her husband.

“Let me tell you, it has just been a true thrill to watch this handsome, charming individual grow into the man and the president that he is,” she said, as she reached out to playfully touch the president’s face, sparking laughter from the crowd.

Praising his compassion and courage, the first lady introduced the president as the “love of her life.”

Obama, who was sworn in for a second term in a small White House ceremony earlier today, kept his remarks short, noting he has another big speech to deliver Monday.

“There are a limited amount of good lines and you don’t want to use them all up tonight,” he joked.

Because the Constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration, Jan. 20, fell on a Sunday this year, the traditional, public ceremony was delayed until Monday.

Saving the best for his official inaugural address, the president instead dedicated the bulk of his remarks to thanking supporters for their hard work and dedication to getting him re-elected.

“You understood this was not just about a candidate; it was not just about Joe Biden or Barack Obama. This was about us, who we are as a nation, what values we cherish, how hard we’re willing to fight to make sure that those values live not just for today but for future generations,” he said.

“All of you here understood and were committed to the basic notion that when we put our shoulders to the wheel of history, it moves… It moves forward. And that’s part of what we celebrate when we come together for inauguration,” he said.

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Earth may be crashing through dark matter walls

Earth is constantly crashing through huge walls of dark matter, and we already have the tools to detect them. That's the conclusion of physicists who say the universe may be filled with a patchwork quilt of force fields created shortly after the big bang.

Observations of how mass clumps in space suggest that about 86 per cent of all matter is invisible dark matter, which interacts with ordinary matter mainly through gravity. The most popular theory is that dark matter is made of weakly interacting massive particles.

WIMPs should also interact with ordinary matter via the weak nuclear force, and their presence should have slight but measurable effects. However, years of searches for WIMPs have been coming up empty.

"So far nothing is found, and I feel like it's time to broaden the scope of our search," says Maxim Pospelov of the University of Victoria in Canada. "What we propose is to look for some other signatures."

Bubbly cosmos

Pospelov and colleagues have been examining a theory that at least some of the universe's dark matter is tied up in structures called domain walls, akin to the boundaries between tightly packed bubbles. The idea is that the hot early universe was full of an exotic force field that varied randomly. As the universe expanded and cooled, the field froze, leaving a patchwork of domains, each with its own distinct value for the field.

Having different fields sit next to each other requires energy to be stored within the domain walls. Mass and energy are interchangeable, so on a large scale a network of domain walls can look like concentrations of mass – that is, like dark matter, says Pospelov.

If the grid of domain walls is packed tightly enough – say, if the width of the domains is several hundred times the distance between Earth and the sun – Earth should pass through a domain wall once every few years. "As a human, you wouldn't feel a thing," says Pospelov. "You will go through the wall without noticing." But magnetometers – devices that, as the name suggests, measure magnetic fields – could detect the walls, say Pospelov and colleagues in a new study. Although the field inside a domain would not affect a magnetometer, the device would sense the change when Earth passes through a domain wall.

Dark matter walls have not been detected yet because anyone using a single magnetometer would find the readings swamped by noise, Pospelov says. "You'd never be able to say if it's because the Earth went through a bizarre magnetic field or if a grad student dropped their iPhone or something," he says.

Network needed

Finding the walls will require a network of at least five detectors spread around the world, Pospelov suggests. Colleagues in Poland and California have already built one magnetometer each and have shown that they are sensitive enough for the scheme to work.

Domain walls wouldn't account for all the dark matter in the universe, but they could explain why finding particles of the stuff has been such a challenge, says Pospelov.

If domain walls are found, the news might come as a relief to physicists still waiting for WIMPs to show up. Earlier this month, for instance, a team working with a detector in Russia that has been running for more than 24 years announced that they have yet to see any sign of these dark matter candidates.

Douglas Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was not involved in Pospelov's study, isn't yet convinced that dark matter walls exist. But he is glad that physicists are keeping an open mind about alternatives to WIMPs.

"We've looked for WIMP dark matter in so many ways," he says. "At some point you have to ask, are we totally on the wrong track?"

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.021803

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China 'strongly dissatisfied' with US island remarks

BEIJING: China said it was "strongly dissatisfied" Sunday after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a veiled warning to Beijing not to challenge Tokyo's control of disputed islands at the centre of a bitter territorial row.

China is "strongly dissatisfied with and resolutely opposes" the remarks, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on the ministry's website.

The maritime dispute, which has simmered off and on for years, intensified last year when the Japanese government nationalised islands in the small chain it did not already own, triggering angry responses in China.

China has since increased maritime and air patrols near the East China Sea territory, and in further escalations in recent weeks both Beijing and Tokyo have scrambled fighter jets, though there have been no clashes.

"We urge the US side to treat the issue of the Diaoyu islands with a responsible attitude," Qin said, referring to the territory by its Chinese name. Japan calls the islands the Senkakus.

He also called for Washington to be "careful in words, cautious in actions" and to take "realistic actions to protect the peace and stability of the region and Chinese-US relations".

Qin's statement came after Clinton on Friday said the US opposed "any unilateral actions that would seek to undermine Japanese administration" of the islands.

Clinton, speaking at a press conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington, did not mention Beijing directly but said she wanted China and Japan to settle the issue peacefully.

"We do not want to see any action taken by anyone that could raise tensions or result in miscalculation that would undermine the peace, security and economic growth in this region," she said.

The US insists it is neutral on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands but also says they are under Japan's de facto administration.

China has persistently criticised the US position and Beijing's sending of maritime surveillance ships to the potentially gas-rich area is seen by experts as a way to contest the notion of Japanese control.

Complicating the issue is a security treaty that obliges the US -- which keeps military bases in Japan -- to aid the country in the event it is attacked.

Another factor that has raised tensions is the coming to power last month of hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose party won a landslide victory in elections.

Last week, state media said China will carry out a geographical survey of the islands and also reported that China's armed forces have been instructed to raise their fighting ability in 2013 with "the objective of being able to fight and win a battle".

China's official reaction to Clinton's comments came a day after state media harshly criticised them.

The official Xinhua news agency called it "unwise" for Washington "to throw support behind Japan in Tokyo's islands dispute with Beijing", adding: "This unbalanced position has betrayed its declared intention to stay neutral on the issue."

- AFP/ck

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At least 55 dead in gas plant siege

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Algeria: About 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners are freed


• Algeria has not specified the nationalities of hostages killed


• Among the 32 militants killed, only three were Algerians, officials say

(CNN) -- The hostage crisis in eastern Algeria is over, but the questions remain.

Among them, exactly how many people are unaccounted for at a remote natural gas facility after three days of chaos that ended Saturday, leaving 23 hostages and dozens of Islamist militants dead.

Some 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners were freed, the Algerian interior ministry said.

The White House, in a statement Saturday night, said it remained in close contact with the Algerian government to "gain a fuller understanding of what took place."

The State Department, meanwhile, warned against travel to Algeria.

In the United Kingdom, British Foreign Secretary William Hague echoed the White House's remarks, saying his government too was "working hard to get definitive information" about each individual.

Americans and Britons were among those held hostage, as were workers from various other nations.

Algeria has not specified the nationalities of the hostages killed.

Japan, for example, said Sunday that 10 of its nationals were yet to be confirmed safe.

"As such, we are taking the government announcement that there were multiple Japanese killed extremely seriously," said a spokesman for JGC Corp., an engineering firm that was involved in gas production in In Amenas.

Algeria said that among the 32 militants killed, only three were Algerians; the rest were from other countries.

In a statement Saturday, the Algerian interior ministry said the military found a number of "foreign military uniforms" in its sweep of the facility to clear it of mines planted by militants.

Raids turn deadly

Militants in pickup trucks struck the sprawling gas complex in In Amenas at dawn Wednesday, gathered the Westerners who worked there into a group and tied them up.

The plant is run by Algeria's state oil company, in cooperation with foreign firms such as Norway's Statoil and Britain's BP -- and as such, employed workers from several foreign countries.

The kidnappers wielded AK-47 rifles and put explosive-laden vests on some hostages, according to a U.S. State Department official.

Algeria said the attack was in retaliation for allowing France to use Algerian airspace for an offensive against Islamist militants in neighboring Mali.

But regional analysts believe it was too sophisticated to have been planned in days.

The next day, Algerian special forces moved in because the government said the militants wanted to flee for Mali.

The Islamic extremists also planned to blow up the gas installation, and rigged it with mines throughout, the U.S. official said.

Thursday's military incursion succeeded in freeing some hostages -- but not all.

Some survivors described their harrowing escapes by rigging up disguises, sneaking to safety with locals, and in at least one case, running for his life with plastic explosives strapped around his neck.

Several hostages died. And the Algerian military came under criticism from some quarters for unnecessarily endangering the lives of the hostages.

Undeterred, government followed with a second push Saturday. That assault killed the remaining hostage-takers, but resulted in more hostage deaths.

The army intervened "to avoid a bloody turning point of events in this extremely dangerous situation," the Algerian interior ministry said Saturday.

"It was clear that the terrorists were determined to escape the country with the captives, and to bomb the gas installations."

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond called the loss of life "appalling and unacceptable," but laid the blame solely on the terrorists.

Now, individual nations are scrambling to find out what happened to their citizens. It is not clear how many hostages were seized by the Islamist militants in the first place.

Colombia

Colombia's president said a citizen was presumed dead.

France

There are no known French hostages unaccounted for, the defense ministry said Saturday.

One man -- identified as Yann Desjeux -- died after telling the French newspaper Sud Ouest on Thursday that he and 34 other hostages of nine different nationalities were well-treated.

Japan

There are still 10 Japanese who have yet to be confirmed safe, JGC -- the engineering firm -- said Sunday.

Malaysia

Three hostages were on their way back to Malaysia, the country's state-run news agency said Sunday. But there is a "worrying possibility" that another is dead while a fifth is unaccounted for, the agency said.

Norway

Five Norwegians are missing while eight are safe, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

Romania

One Romanian lost his life, the country's foreign ministry said Saturday. Four other Romanians were freed.

United Kingdom

Five British nationals and one UK resident are missing or feared dead, Hague said Saturday. This is in addition to one Briton, whose death was previously announced.

The Scottish government said eight of its residents are safe.

United States

At least one American, identified as Frederick Buttaccio, is among the dead, the State Department said. Six freed Americans left Algeria and one remained.

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Failed assassination attempt in Bulgaria - caught on tape

January 19, 2013 12:29 PM

In a failed assassination attempt on the leader of Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party, Ahmed Dogan, a man is seen jumping out of the audience and onto the stage where Dogan is speaking. He then points the gun at Dogan's head and the gun reportedly misfires. The attacker is then tackled and beaten by security guards.

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Algeria Hostage Crisis Over, One American Dead

After the Algerian military's final assault on terrorists holding hostages at a gas complex, the four-day hostage crisis is over, but apparently with additional loss of life among the foreign hostages.

One American, Fred Buttaccio of Texas, has been confirmed dead by the U.S. State Department. Two more U.S. hostages remain unaccounted for, with growing concern among U.S. officials that they did not survive.

But another American, Mark Cobb of Corpus Christi, Texas is now confirmed as safe. Sources close to his family say Cobb, who is a senior manager of the facility, is safe and reportedly sent a text message " I'm alive."

Inside Algerian Hostage Crisis, One American Dead Watch Video

American Hostages Escape From Algeria Terrorists Watch Video

In a statement, President Obama said, "Today, the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the families of all those who were killed and injured in the terrorist attack in Algeria. The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa."

According to Algerian state media, 32 militants are dead and a total of 23 hostages perished during the four-day siege of the In Amenas facility in the Sahara. The Algerian Interior Ministry also says 107 foreign nationals who worked at the facility for BP and other firms were rescued or escaped from the al Qaeda-linked terrorists who took over the BP joint venture facility on Wednesday.

The Japanese government says it fears "very grave" news, with multiple casualties among the 10 Japanese citizens working at the In Amenas gas plant.

Five British nationals and one U.K. resident are either deceased or unaccounted for in the country, according to British Foreign Minister William Hague. Hague also said that the Algerians have reported that they are still trying to clear boobytraps from the site.

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NASA planet-hunter is injured and resting

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter

(Image: NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel)

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope has put its search for alien Earths on hold while it rests a stressed reaction wheel.

The injured wheel normally helps to control the telescope's orientation, keeping it pointed continuously at the same patch of sky. Kepler stares at the thousands of stars in its field of view to watch for the telltale blinks that occur when a planet crosses in front of its star. It has found nearly 3000 potential planets outside our solar system since its launch in 2009, transforming the field of exoplanet research and raising hopes of someday finding alien life.

When it launched, Kepler had four reaction wheels: three to control its motion along each axis, and one spare. But last July, one wheel stopped turning. If the spacecraft loses a second wheel, the mission is over.

So when another wheel started showing signs of elevated friction on 7 January, the team decided to play it safe. After rotating the spacecraft failed to fix the problem, NASA announced yesterday that they're placing Kepler in safe mode for 10 days to give the wheel a chance to recover.

The hope is that the lubricating oil that helps the wheel's ball bearings run smoothly around a track will redistribute itself during the rest period.

The telescope can't take any science data while in safe mode. But if the wheel recovers on its own, Kepler's extended mission will run until 2016, leaving it plenty of time to make up for the lost days.

"Kepler is a statistical mission," says Charlie Sobeck, Kepler's deputy project manager at NASA's Ames Research Centre in Mountain View, California. "In the long run, as long as we make the observations, it doesn't matter a lot when we make the observations."

Despite the high stakes, the team doesn't seem too worried.

"Each wheel has its own personality, and this particular wheel has been something of a free spirit," Sobeck says. "It's had elevated torques throughout the mission. This one is typical to what we've seen in the past, and if we had four good wheels we probably wouldn't have taken any action."

"I prefer to picture the spacecraft lounging at the shore of the cosmic ocean sipping a Mai Tai so that she'll be refreshed and rejuvenated for more discoveries," wrote Kepler co-investigator Natalie Batalha in an email.

The team will check up on the wheel on 27 January and return to doing science as soon as possible.

There are two exoplanet missions currently being considered for after Kepler is finished, says Doug Hudgins at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. One, TESS (Terrestrial Exoplanet Survey Satellite), would scan the entire sky for planets transiting the stars nearest to the sun. The other, FINESSE (Fast Infrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer), would take spectra of planets as they passed in front of their stars as a way to probe their atmospheres.

The missions are being evaluated now, and NASA will probably select one this spring, Hudgins says. The winner will launch in 2017.

If Kepler goes down with its reaction wheel, that won't affect which mission wins, he adds. "That's a straight-up competition based on the merits of the two concept study reports."

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IRCC to step up outreach to community

SINGAPORE: The Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circle (IRCC) has launched a newsletter and a song to step up its efforts to reach out to the community.

The newsletter that comes out every three months aims to increase awareness of IRCCs to the community at-large as it shares the key thrusts of IRCCs, strategies that IRCCs undertake to achieve them and updates readers on upcoming events and activities.

It will also help spread the IRCC messages of racial and religious understanding to readers, and complement the IRCC website in outreach and engagement efforts. An electronic version of the IRCC Newsletter is also available on the website.

The song composed by well-known local musicians, Jack and Rai, is titled "Different Races.Many Beliefs.One Nation".

It reflects the roles and functions of IRCCs, as well as highlights the importance of racial and religious harmony in a creative and catchy manner.

Launching the newsletter and song was Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong at the IRCC Family Day on Saturday afternoon.

He said the newsletter will help augment the IRCC's efforts in reaching out to more people, so that everyone in Singapore can play a part in maintaining racial and religious harmony.

- CNA/ck

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