Police: No body yet found in hunt for Dorner

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: San Bernardino sheriff's spokeswoman says smoldering cabin too hot to enter


• Sources earlier tell CNN that LAPD reported body found, ID'd as suspect Dorner


• One sheriff's deputy in gun battle has died, other expected to survive


• Dorner is accused of killing an officer and the daughter and fiance of another cop last week

Follow the story here and at CNN affiliates KCBS/KCAL, KABC, and KTLA.

Near Big Bear Lake, California (CNN) -- Los Angeles police and the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office moved Tuesday night to counter widespread reports that a body believed to be that of renegade ex-Los Angeles police officer Christopher Jordan Dorner had been recovered from a burning cabin near Big Bear Lake, California.

"No body has been pulled out," LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said at a news conference. "No reports of a body being ID'd are true."

The cabin area was "too hot to make entry," Smith added.

Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the lead agency in the case, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department echoed that, saying at a separate news conference that authorities believe whoever was in the cabin never left.

"They believe that there is a body in there, but it is not safe to go inside," she told reporters. She added that officials believed there was still live ammunition in the cabin, which was still smoldering.

CNN and other media quoted numerous sources earlier in the evening as saying authorities had removed a body from the rubble of the fire and identified it as Dorner.

The intense fire, which burned for hours as authorities waited at a distance, began after a SWAT team stormed a cabin near Big Bear Lake where a suspect -- who authorities said matched Dorner's description -- had holed up after a fatal shootout with San Bernadino County sheriff's deputies.

The cabin caught fire after police detonated smoke devices inside the cabin, a law enforcement source told CNN.

One of two San Bernadino County sheriff's deputies wounded earlier Tuesday in the shootout with the suspect died, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters at California's Loma Linda University Medical Center. The other deputy was in surgery "but he should be fine," McMahon said.

The wounded officers were taken to the Loma Linda facility after shots were exchanged with a man at a police roadblock near Big Bear Lake, the sheriff's office said earlier in a statement.

Tuesday's confrontations began when a California Fish and Wildlife officer was driving down a highway near Big Bear and recognized a man fitting the description of Dorner driving a vehicle in the other direction. The wildlife officer chased the vehicle and the driver opened fire on the officer before abandoning the truck, a statement from the agency said.

The officer's vehicle was hit numerous times, the statement said. While not specifically referring to the officer involved in the shootout, the statement said the agency's officers "are all safe and accounted for."

Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, said the suspect fled into the woods then into the cabin where he fired at the approaching deputies and holed up though the afternoon, still exchanging gunfire with authorities.

Later as the fire burned, with authorities staying back, she said authorities weren't 100% sure the suspect was still in the cabin.

Authorities have been searching for Dorner since he was named as the suspect in the shooting deaths February 3 of the daughter of his police union representative and her fiance. Police also say he killed one officer in Riverside, California, and wounded two others last Thursday.

Ex-cop at center of California manhunt

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The violent spree, authorities say, was part of Dorner's campaign of vigilante justice for what he believes was his unfair termination.

Los Angeles police spokesman Lt. Andy Neiman said Tuesday that the department had received more than 1,000 tips on Dorner's whereabouts. Some of the calls have come from Dorner's acquaintances or people who think they have spotted the fugitive.

The pace of tips being given to investigators increased by 400% after the city of Los Angeles put up a $1 million reward on Sunday for information leading to Dorner's arrest and conviction, Neiman said.

The search for the 270-pound, 6-foot Dorner has focused on the Big Bear Lake area, where authorities say his burning truck was discovered last week.

Talk Back: Why do some see Chistopher Dorner as a vigilante hero?

Over the past two weeks, the search, considered one of the largest in the history of Southern California, has taken authorities from Orange County to the border of Mexico and from Los Angeles to Big Bear Lake.

"Big Bear's still where we're looking right now," Neiman said Tuesday. The search area surrounds where Dorner's burning truck was discovered last Thursday .

"Until we can confirm that he's either there or he's not there, this investigation has to stick with what we know and what we know is that we found evidence that he was there," Neiman said.

While the LAPD spokesman told reporters he was "not ready to confirm" that a man seen in security camera video from a Southern California sporting goods store was Dorner, the Los Angeles Times quoted unnamed law enforcement sources saying it was him.

The video, published Monday by the celebrity news website TMZ.com, shows the man carrying what appears to be scuba equipment at the Sports Chalet store in Torrance, California, on February 1, two days before the killings of Monica Quan, the daughter of the police union rep, and her fiancé, Keith Lawrence.

A "no bail" arrest warrant was issued for Dorner after the Riverside County district attorney filed a murder charge Monday against him in the killing of Riverside Police Officer Michael Crain.

"That allows him to be apprehended anywhere within California, out of state or out of the country," District Attorney Paul Zellerbach told reporters Monday.

The murder charge is accompanied by two "special circumstances," including killing a police officer on duty and firing a weapon from a vehicle.

Dorner was also charged with the attempted murder of three other police officers, including another Riverside officer who was wounded when Crain was killed. That officer, whose name has not been released, is in a lot of pain and faces "many surgeries," Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz said.

Dorner is also accused of opening fire on two LAPD police officers, wounding one, in the suburb of Corona.

There has been speculation, based in part on an arrest warrant affidavit filed last week, that Dorner could have crossed state lines into Nevada or made his way to Mexico.

LAPD reopens case that led to Dorner's dismissal

Over the weekend, LAPD said it was reopening the case that resulted in his termination.

Dorner accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest in 2007. The LAPD ruled the complaint unfounded and kicked Dorner off the force for filing a false complaint.

Dorner challenged his firing in court and lost.

Suspect's grudge dates back to 2007 complaint

In a manifesto released last week, Dorner blamed racism and corruption in the LAPD for his termination and vowed to wage "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against LAPD officers and their families. He called it a "last resort" to clear his name and strike back at a department he says mistreated him.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck had a different term for it Sunday.

"This is an act -- and make no mistake about it -- of domestic terrorism," he told reporters Sunday. "This is a man who has targeted those that we entrust to protect the public. His actions cannot go unanswered."

Timeline in manhunt

Targeting police

Authorities say Dorner began making good on his threats on February 3 when he allegedly killed Quan, 27, and Lawrence in an Irvine parking lot, south of Los Angeles.

According to the manifesto, Randal Quan, Monica Quan's father, bungled Dorner's LAPD termination appeal.

Randal Quan represented Dorner during the disciplinary hearing that resulted in his firing. The officer was among dozens named in the manifesto.

The retired officer told investigators he received a call from someone identifying himself as Dorner who told him he "should have done a better job of protecting his daughter," according to a federal arrest warrant affidavit.

Investigators traced the call to Vancouver, Washington, but based on the timing of other sightings, they don't believe Dorner was in Vancouver at the time, the affidavit states.

Days later, early Thursday morning, Dorner allegedly opened fire on two LAPD police officers, wounding one, in the suburban city of Corona.

Roughly 20 minutes later, Dorner allegedly fired on two officers in the nearby city of Riverside, killing Crain and wounding another.

Since then, the LAPD has provided security and surveillance details for more than 50 police officers and their families -- many of whom were named in the manifesto.

Additionally, the LAPD is no longer releasing the police chief's schedule to the public or the media.

'Ghosts' of the LAPD's past

It was Dorner's allegations of racism at the LAPD that led Beck over the weekend to reopen the investigation into his claims.

Beck said he was not doing it to "appease a murderer" but out of concern that Dorner's allegations will resurrect a painful part of the department's history.

LAPD haunted by past

For years, the LAPD was dogged by complaints of racism and corruption. In 1965 and 1992, the city was rocked by racial riots that were sparked, in part, by claims of police racism and brutality.

"I hear the same things you hear: The ghosts of the past of the Los Angeles Police Department," Beck said Sunday. "I hear that people think maybe there is something to what he says, and I want to put that to rest."

Despite numerous reviews of Dorner's case, he said it has "never been reviewed by me."

"If there is anything new, we will deal with it, and we will deal with it in a public way," Beck said.

CNN's Paul Vercammen, Stan Wilson, Casey Wian, Kathleen Johnston, Alan Duke, Matt Smith, Chelsea J. Carter, Michael Martinez and Holly Yan contributed to this report.

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Not surprisingly, House GOP pans State of the Union

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Obama: Both parties know sequester cuts "a really bad idea"

It shouldn't come as a shock that congressional Republicans weren't very impressed by President Obama's State of the Union address. 

For his part, the president didn't hide his suggestion that it's Republicans who are resistant to compromise, leading some Republicans to jab the president, particularly regarding his lack of clarity on how he would replace the so-called sequester cuts set to slash defense and domestic spending on March 1.

"What has he done?" asked Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. "He signed the sequester, he agreed to the sequester, he came up with the sequester and then he complains about House solutions to actually try to deal with it. This president is more interested in campaign-style rhetoric than actual solutions."

While many said there is some room to work with Mr. Obama on issues like immigration, and even some gun safety measures, his new proposals on everything from education to repairing the nation's crumbling bridges were panned not necessarily based on merit, but on the president's claim that the new programs would not increase the deficit "by a single dime."

"I think it doesn't pass the laugh test" said the chairman of the conservative House Republican Study group Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La. "People realize the President promised to cut the deficit in half and it's more than doubled."

"It's economic fairy dust that this President's working with," added Gardner.

On the president's call to address climate change and become more energy independent, Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., called the president's silence on giving the green light to construct the Keystone XL pipeline to pump oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico "deafening."

Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton, R-Mich., also said "With a stroke of the pen, the president could unleash this $7 billion private sector investment. Yet nowhere in this evening's blueprint for the president's policy vision was this critical middle-class jobs project."

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who is expected to be a key House Republican player in immigration talks as a Hispanic-American from a conservative state, said the president's State of the Union this year was "one of the least inspiring speeches I ever heard him give."

But Labrador said he does think Republicans and Democrats will ultimately be able to come together on an overhaul of the nation's immigration system.

"As long as the president and his party don't draw a red line and say that they have to get everything that they want."

Labrador was less optimistic about gun control. He compared his home state of Idaho with low crime and few gun regulations to Mr. Obama's home state of Illinois as an example of why gun laws aren't necessarily effective.

"It has the most stringent gun control legislation and it has some of the highest crime in the United States" Labrador said of Illinois. "Clearly gun control is not going to protect those families."

And while Labrador said he believes the president cares about the victims of gun violence and their families that attended the speech, he said they should not be used as "political pawns."

Labrador said, however, that as a father of five children he was so upset by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that he could not speak of the shooting for two days. He said "if there's things that we can do to save lives without violating the second amendment I think we should consider it."

Democrats gave the speech high marks. In a statement, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she urged the two parties to work together and said "it is time to heed the President's call for real progress to reverse the rising tide of climate change, enact comprehensive immigration reform, and prevent gun violence."

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State of the Union: Obama Pushes Job Creation

Pursuing an aggressive and diverse early second-term agenda, President Obama turned his focus Tuesday night squarely to the economy, using his State of the Union address to unveil new government initiatives aimed at creating jobs.

The defining duty of the new Congress and new administration is to "reignite the true engine of America's economic growth -- a rising, thriving middle class," Obama said Tuesday night from the House chamber.

"That must be the North Star that guides our efforts," he said.

Obama's proposals had a familiar ring, including re-packaged economic ideas but also offering several bold new measures aimed at boosting the middle class.

None of the proposals would add to the deficit "by a single dime," Obama pledged, with costs offset by savings carved out in the budget and from money saved from ending two wars.

"It's not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth," Obama said.

For the first time as president, Obama called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour by 2015. He proposed to ensure future increases by indexing the minimum wage to inflation.

He proposed a national goal of universal pre-school education, an effort to help states provide tens of thousands of low- to middle-income four-year-old children access to quality public education from an earlier age.

Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo

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And, to heal the nation's crumbling roads and bridges, Obama offered a $50 billion "fix it first" infrastructure program that would prioritize repair of existing structures before building new ones.

"Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation," Obama said. "How do we attract more jobs to our shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"

Answers to those questions, the president suggested, include redoubling investments in clean energy technologies -- a step which he said would both benefit the environment and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change," he said.

He called for doubling the amount of renewable electricity generation in the U.S. by 2020, and announced an energy version of his "Race to the Top" education program that would give states grants for the best energy efficiency programs.

Related: 7 Things Obama Says at Every State of the Union

In tandem with his economic focus, Obama announced the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by this time next year, cutting in half the current force and marking a quickened pace for the final exit of U.S. combat forces by a 2014 deadline.

There are currently 66,000 U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan. Obama has vowed to bring nearly all of them home by the end of next year, though a small contingent will likely remain to train Afghan forces and assist counterterrorism operations, officials have said.

Obama touched briefly on his recently-unveiled proposals to overhaul the nation's immigration system, expand rights for gay and lesbian Americans and curb an epidemic of gun violence.

With dozens of victims of gun violence looking on from the House gallery, including former Rep. Gabby Giffords, and families of victims from shootings at Newtown, Conn., Oak Creek, Wisc., and Aurora, Colo., Obama made an emotional plea for an up-or-down vote on his gun control plan.

"Each of these proposals deserves a vote in Congress," he said of proposed restrictions on assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines, and enhanced background checks, among other measures.

"If you want to vote no, that's your choice," he said. "But these proposals deserve a vote. Because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations and anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun."

Read More: President Obama's Past State of the Union Promises

Read More..

Arctic sunshine cranks up threat from greenhouse gases

IT'S a solar double whammy. Not only does sunlight melt Arctic ice, but it also speeds up the conversion of frozen organic matter into carbon dioxide.

The amount of carbon in dead vegetation preserved in the far northern permafrost is estimated to be twice what the atmosphere holds as CO₂. Global warming could allow this plant matter to decompose, releasing either CO₂ or methane – both greenhouse gases. The extent of the risk remains uncertain because the release mechanisms are not clear.

Rose Cory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues analysed water from ponds forming on melting permafrost at 27 sites across the Arctic. They found that the amount of CO₂ released was 40 per cent higher when the water was exposed to ultraviolet light than when kept dark. This is because UV light, a component of sunlight, raises the respiration rate of soil bacteria and fungi, amplifying the amount of organic matter they break down and the amount of CO₂ released.

The thawing Arctic is emerging as a potentially major source of positive feedback that could accelerate global warming beyond existing projections. "Our task now is to quantify how fast this previously frozen carbon may be converted to CO₂, so that models can include the process," Cory says.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1214104110.

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Obama rebukes North Korea over test

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said Tuesday that North Korea's "provocative" nuclear test did not make it more secure and called for "swift" and "credible" international action in response.

Obama also vowed in a written statement that Washington would remain vigilant in the face of the underground detonation by the Stalinist state and steadfast in its defense commitments to its allies in Asia.

"These provocations do not make North Korea more secure," Obama said.

"Far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a strong and prosperous nation, North Korea has instead increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery."

Obama complained that the test was a "highly provocative act" that -- following the North's December 12 ballistic missile launch -- undermined regional stability and violated UN Security Council resolutions.

"The danger posed by North Korea's threatening activities warrants further swift and credible action by the international community," Obama said, ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council called for later on Tuesday.

"The United States will also continue to take steps necessary to defend ourselves and our allies," Obama said.

- AFP/ck

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North Korea says it conducted third nuclear test

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Obama calls the test "highly provocative," calls for "swift" international action


• North Korea confirms it carried out a more powerful test


• It says it used a smaller, lighter bomb than in previous tests


• Pyongyang warned last month it would carry out a third nuclear test

Hong Kong (CNN) -- North Korea said Tuesday that it had conducted a new, more powerful underground nuclear test using more sophisticated technology, jolting the already fragile security situation in Northeast Asia and drawing condemnation from around the globe.

It is the first nuclear test carried out under the North's young leader, Kim Jong Un, who appears to be sticking closely to his father's policy of building up the isolated state's military deterrent to keep its foes at bay, shrugging off the resulting international condemnation and sanctions.

It also provided a provocative reminder of a seemingly intractable foreign policy challenge for President Barack Obama ahead of his State of the Union address later Tuesday.

"The test was carried out as part of practical measures of counteraction to defend the country's security and sovereignty in the face of the ferocious hostile act of the U.S.," the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, referring to new U.S.-led sanctions on Pyongyang in the wake of a recent long-range rocket launch.

The nuclear test Tuesday, which follows previous detonations by the North in 2006 and 2009, had greater explosive force and involved the use of a smaller, lighter device, KCNA reported.

That plays into fears in the United States and its allies that Pyongyang is moving closer to the kind of miniaturized nuclear device that it can mount on a long-range missile.

Despite the North's claims of progress Tuesday, experts have said they believe the secretive state is still years away from having the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead on a missile.

Condemnation from world leaders

After Pyongyang confirmed it had gone ahead with the test in defiance of international pressure, world leaders responded with condemnation.

"This is a highly provocative act" that threatens regional stability, breaches U.N. resolutions and increases the risk of proliferation, Obama said in a statement.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs constitute a threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security," he said. "The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and steadfast in our defense commitments to allies in the region."

Obama called for "further swift and credible action by the international community" in response to Pyongyang's actions.

"It is a clear and grave violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions," the office of Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said in a statement referring to the test.

The United Nations Security Council will meet in New York on Tuesday morning to discuss the development, a security council diplomat said, declining to be identified because of U.N. protocol on such matters.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the test was "extremely regrettable," adding that Tokyo would "strongly" protest it.

U.S. seismologists reported a disturbance on Tuesday morning in North Korea centered near the site of the secretive regime's two previous atomic blasts.

The area around thepicenter of the tremor in northeastern North Korea has little or no history of earthquakes or natural seismic hazards, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps.

The disturbance reported Tuesday had a magnitude of 5.1 -- upgraded from an initial estimate of 4.9 -- took place at a depth of about 1 kilometer, the USGS said.

Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry, said the magnitude of the "artificial tremor" suggested the size of the blast could be in the order of 6 to 7 kilotons, more powerful than the North's two prior nuclear tests.

That calculation, though, was based on the USGS's initial estimate of a 4.9-magnitude seismic disturbance, he said. A 5.1-magnitude tremor could indicate a 10 kiloton explosion.

The China Earthquake Network Center said on its website that the seismic disturbance in North Korea was a "suspected explosion."

News breaks at a quiet time in Asia

The test took place at a time when several East Asian countries, including China, North Korea's major ally, are observing public holidays for the Lunar New Year, which began Sunday.

It also comes ahead of the birthday on Saturday of Kim Jong Il, the former North Korean leader who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Un.

North Korea announced last month that it was planning a new nuclear test and more long-range rocket launches, all of which it said were part of a new phase of confrontation with the United States.

It made the threats two days after the United Nations Security Council had approved the broadening of sanctions on the reclusive, Stalinist regime in response to the North's launching of a long-range rocket in December that succeeded in putting a satellite in orbit.

Pyongyang said it carried out the launch for peaceful purposes, but it was widely considered to be a test of ballistic missile technology.

U.S. analysts say North Korea's first bomb test, in October 2006, produced an explosive yield at less than 1 kiloton (1,000 tons) of TNT. A second test in May 2009 is believed to have been about two kilotons, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told a Senate committee in 2012.

By comparison, the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was a 15-kiloton device.

In May 2012, North Korea said it had amended its constitution to formally proclaim itself a "nuclear state."

CNN's Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong. CNN's K.J. Kwon in Seoul, South Korea; Yoko Wakatsuki and Junko Ogura in Tokyo; Dana Ford and Matt Smith in Atlanta, Georgia; Anna Maja Rappard in New York; and Elise Labott in Washington contributed to this report. Journalist Connie Young in Beijing also contributed reporting.

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State of the Union guests reflect nation's hot-button issues

Several lawmakers are bringing special guests to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night in order to make a statement.

Several lawmakers are bringing guests to help underscore the importance of gun control. More than 20 House Democrats are bringing guests who have been personally affected by gun violence. A bipartisan pair of Arizona lawmakers, meanwhile, will host former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband Mark Kelly.

Other lawmakers are bringing guests tied to issues like immigration and voting rights.

Below is a partial list of officials and the guests they are bringing. CBS News will update the list as more guests are confirmed:

First Lady Michelle Obama:

• Lt. Brian Murphy, who was wounded while responding to the Sikh Temple shooting last August in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. He was struck by 15 bullets.
• Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel Pendleton Sr., parents of 15-year-old Hadiya who was killed in a Chicago park.
• Desiline Victor, a 103-year-old Florida woman who waited in line for several hours to vote.
• Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

House Minority Leader Pelosi:

• Mother and daughter from Newtown, Conn. The 4th grader sent Pelosi a letter asking for her support to strengthen gun laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz.:

• Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband Mark Kelly

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas:

• Musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent

Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.:

• First Selectwoman Pat Llodra, a Republican and the Chief Executive Officer of Newtown
• Newtown Detectives Jason Frank and Dan McAnaspie, two of several first responders who rushed to Sandy Hook Elementary School on the day of the tragedy

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.:

• Undocumented immigrant Gabino Sanchez. The South Carolina husband and father of two U.S. citizen children is fighting deportation. Sanchez entered the country when he was 15 years old and has been working and living peacefully in the U.S. ever since.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.:

• Josh Stepakoff, who in 1999 was shot at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, Calif. Stepakoff, now 20, is a student at California State University Northridge.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.:

• Matt Gross, a New Jersey native who was shot in the head in 1997, at the age of 27. Gross was one of several victims wounded during a shooting attack on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

More House Democrats bringing guests affected by gun violence:

Rep. Jim Langevin, R.I.

Rep. Keith Ellison, Minn.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, N.Y.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Conn.

Rep. David Cicilline, R.I.

Rep. Diana DeGette, Colo.

Rep. Tammy Duckworth, Ill.

Rep. Elizabeth Esty, Conn.

Rep. Lois Frankel, Fla.

Rep. Lujan Grisham, N.M.

Rep. Janice Hahn, Calif.

Rep. Jim Himes, Conn.

Rep. Alan Lowenthal, Calif.

Rep. Gloria Negrete-McLeod, Calif.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Colo.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Ill.

Rep. Brad Schneider, Ill.

Rep. Bobby Scott, Va.

Rep. Mike Thompson, Calif.

Rep. Krysten Sinema, Ariz.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Md.

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North Korea Says it Has Conducted a Nuclear Test

North Korea says it has successfully tested a miniaturized nuclear device Tuesday, according to state media.

A large tremor measured at magnitude 4.9 was detected in North Korea and governments in the region scrambled to determine whether it was a nuclear test that the North Korean regime has vowed to carry out despite international protests.

Official state media said the test was conducted in a safe manner and is aimed at coping with "outrageous" U.S. hostility that "violently" undermines the North's peaceful, sovereign rights to launch satellites. Unlike previous tests, North Korea used a powerful explosive nuclear bomb that is smaller and lighter, state media reported.

President Obama called the test "a highly provocative act" in a statement Tuesday morning.

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

"The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and steadfast in our defense commitments to allies in the region," he added.

The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on North Korea's nuclear test later this morning.

Suspicions were aroused when the U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a magnitude 4.9 earthquake Tuesday in North Korea.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization told ABC News, "We confirm that a suspicious seismic event has taken place in North Korea."

North Korea Threatens More Nuclear Tests, Warns U.S. Watch Video

"The event shows clear explosion-like characteristics and its location is roughly congruent with the 2006 and 2009 DPRK (North Korea) nuclear tests," said Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the organization.

"If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act would constitute a clear threat to international peace and security, and challenges efforts made to strengthen global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation," Toth said in a statement on the organization's web site.

Kim Min-seok, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman, told reporters that North Korea informed United States and China that it intended to carry out another nuclear test, according to the AP. But U.S. officials did not respond to calls from ABC News Monday night.

The seismic force measured 6 to 7 kilotons, according to South Korea.

"Now that's an absolutely huge explosion by conventional terms. It's a smallish, but not tiny explosion by nuclear terms. It's about two-thirds the size of the bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima," James Acton, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told ABC News.

North Korea threatened in January to carry out a "higher-level" test following the successful Dec. 12 launch of a long range rocket. At the time, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un said his country's weapons tests were specifically targeting the United States.

The suspicious tremor comes just hours before President Obama is to give the State of the Union address, and it marks the first diplomatic test in the region for new Secretary of State John Kerry.

Also, South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye, is scheduled to be sworn in on Feb. 25. One of North Korea's biggest holidays, Kim Jong-il's birthday, falls on Feb. 16.

China, North Korea's main ally in the region, has warned North Korea it would cut back severely needed food assistance if it carried out a test. Each year China donates approximately half of the food North Korea lacks to feed its people and half of all oil the country consumes.

Both of North Korea's previous tests used a plutonium-based method for making bomb fuel. The first was deemed a failure, the second only slightly less so. If the most recent test used HEU (highly enriched uranium), a far more difficult-to-detect method of producing bomb fuel, it would be a significant and worrisome step forward for North Korea's weapons program.

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Why we're building a €1 billion model of a human brain

The Human Brain Project has just won a €1 billion research prize. Its director Henry Markram says the initiative will unify our understanding of the brain

Your project aims to recreate the human brain in a supercomputer. Why?
We want to reach a unified understanding of the brain and the simulation on a supercomputer is the tool. Today you have neuroscientists working on a genetic, behavioural or cognitive level, and then you have informaticians, chemists and mathematicians. They all have their own understanding of how the brain functions and is structured. How do you get them all around the same table? We think of the project as like a CERN for the brain. The model is our way of bringing everyone, and our understanding, together.

What do you hope will come of the project?
There are three goals. As the model becomes more accurate and behaves more like a brain, we could couple it to a robot and see the robot learning. Then we'll be able to trace the chain of events from molecules to cognition.

Second, we plan to collect data from hospitals around the world to search for biological signatures of disease. We believe this will give us a new classification of brain disease, which can be used to diagnose people objectively - not solely based on their symptoms.

And finally, we want to build neuromorphic computers, which would have processors that can learn, mimicking the way the brain does.

How close are you to recreating a brain?
We've developed an algorithm to work out some of the rules for how to reconstruct the brain. We can now make thousands of predictions that when tested are accurate, and we can reconstruct small brain circuits of up to about 1 million rat neurons. Now we've got to connect those groups of neurons to make brain regions, then connect the regions to make a computer model of a whole brain. Once we've modelled a rat brain, then we update the rules and gradually move towards a human model.

Could the model be too detailed?
People are afraid of detail and complexity. But a drug is a molecule. It doesn't hit a cell, or the brain, it hits other molecules. There's no reason why we shouldn't try to explain how all the molecules are interacting with one another. Sheer numbers do not equal complexity. One hundred billion neurons is numbers, not complexity.

What about criticisms that it drains funds from more readily achievable neuroscience?
That is an incredibly short-sighted view of how a big science project impacts the rest of the field. Take the Human Genome Project - you can criticise them for all the promises they made at the time, but we would be in the dark ages now if we hadn't done that project. It has benefitted every biologist and geneticist on the planet today.

Once completed, could the simulated brain ever become conscious?
When we couple the model to a robot, the robot will behave, and we'll see this in the way its neurons are firing. Does that mean it's conscious? That's a philosophical question - and an unresolved one.

This article appeared in print under the headline "One minute with... Henry Markram"

Profile

Henry Markram is the director of the Human Brain Project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). The project just won a €1 billion European research prize

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Tech giants summoned by Australia pricing inquiry

SYDNEY: Global technology giants Microsoft, Apple and Adobe were on Monday ordered to appear before a pricing inquiry examining the often-higher cost of tech goods in Australia compared with other economies.

The lower house committee holding the probe, which was launched last May, said it had summoned the trio to appear at a public hearing next month to explain why Australian customers paid more for the same products.

"The committee is looking at the impacts of prices charged to Australian consumers for IT products," it said in a statement.

"Australian consumers often pay much higher prices for hardware and software than people in other countries."

The inquiry was set up to examine claims by consumer advocacy groups of price discrimination for Australians on technology, with music, games, software, and gaming and computer hardware costing substantially more than elsewhere.

According to consumer lobby group Choice, Australians pay on average 73 percent more on iTunes downloads than the United States, 69 percent more on computer products and a staggering 232 percent more on PC game downloads.

Office software was on average 34 percent more expensive in Australia when compared with the United States, Choice said in its submission to the inquiry, with hardware coming in at 41 percent more expensive.

One software package was A$8,665 (US$8,939) more expensive to buy in Australia than the United States -- a gap that Choice described as "particularly unreasonable".

"For this amount, it would be cheaper to employ someone for 46 hours at the price of $21.30 per hour and fly them to the US and back at your expense -- twice," Choice said.

Choice only did comparisons to the United States and Britain; the inquiry is examining discrepancies with these countries as well as with Asia-Pacific economies.

Apple and Microsoft have both made their own submissions to the committee, arguing that prices differed across jurisdictions due to a range of factors including freight, local taxes and duties and foreign exchange rates.

The Australian Information Industry Association, which represents Adobe and other major ICT firms, has submitted to the committee that the "costs of doing business in Australia are higher than in many other countries".

It pointed to retail rent costs and high wages as some of the main factors behind business costs in Australia being "5-10 percent higher than any other country... and these costs are passed onto consumers".

Apple and Microsoft both declined to comment when contacted by AFP while Adobe said it would "cooperate with the committee as we have done since the inquiry began".

- AFP/ir

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