TOKYO - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 struck off Japan's Hokkaido island late on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported.
The quake hit at a depth of 103 kilometres (64 miles) at 23:17pm (1417 GMT), about 109 kilometres west of Kushiro, Hokkaido, the USGS said.
There is need to pay more attention to crimes against women, elderly and children, the Chief Justice told the first convocation of the Rajiv Gandhi National Law University here.
Fast-track courts are being set up in consultations with Central and state governments for expeditious disposal of cases, he said.
Voicing concern over increasing cases of crime against women, Justice Kabir said high courts have been asked to coordinate with state governments for infrastructure needed for setting up these special courts.
Expressing concern over pendency of cases in the apex court, Justice Kabir said that two more courts will be set up in the Supreme Court.
He stressed the need for separate hearing of civil and criminal cases in the Supreme Court.
Justice Kabir asked women to adopt law as a profession. He said there has been an increase in recent times in the number of women opting for a career in law.
The convocation took place at the new campus of the university in Sidhuwal village.
Some 173 students of the university were given degrees of BA, LLB, LLM and PhD.
Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana high court A K Sikri was also present on the occasion.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.
For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.
Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.
The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.
Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.
"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.
The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.
The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.
"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.
Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.
The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.
Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.
Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.
"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.
The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.
A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.
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A brother and sister who escaped the school bus where a 5-year-old autistic boy was taken hostage by a retired Alabama trucker are speaking out about the standoff and the man who threatened the lives of the children on board.
"I look up and he's talking about threatening to kill us all or something," 14-year-old Terrica Singletary told ABC's "Good Morning America." "He's like, 'I'll kill all y'all, I'll kill y'all, I just want two kids.'"
Singletary and her brother, Tristian, 12, said Jimmy Lee Dykes boarded the bus on Tuesday and offered the driver what appeared to be broccoli and a note, before demanding two children.
"The bus driver kept saying, 'Just please get off the bus,' and [Dykes] said, 'Ah alright, I'll get off the bus," said Terrica Singletary, "He just tried to back up and reverse and [Dykes] pulled out the gun and he just shot him, and he just took Ethan."
PHOTOS: Worst Hostage Situations
School bus driver Charles Albert Poland Jr., 66, was fatally shot several times by Dykes.
The siblings and the rest of the students on board were able to get away unharmed, but were shocked by what had transpired just five days ago.
"I never thought I would have to go through a shootout," Singletary said.
They said they had seen Dykes, 65, working on his fence, and described him as a menacing figure.
"He was very protective of his stuff," Tristian Singletary said. "Whenever he stares at you, he looks kinda crazy."
Dykes has been holed up in his underground bunker with his 5-year-old hostage named Ethan near Midland City, Ala. for five days now. Neighbors told ABCNews.com that Dykes has been known to retreat underground for up to eight days.
READ: Alabama Hostage Suspect Jimmy Dykes 'Has No Regard for Human Life'
While Dykes, who was described as having "no regard for human life," has allowed negotiators to send Ethan's medicine, as well as coloring books, into the bunker for the boy through a ventilation pipe that leads into the 6 by 8 foot subterranean hideout 4 feet underground, authorities are staying quiet about their conversations with Dykes.
While negotiations continue and it was reported that Ethan is physically unharmed, an official told the Associated Press that the boy has been crying for his parents.
Meanwhile, his peers are steadfast that he will return home soon.
"Ethan will make it out there, Ethan will make it out there," said Tristian Singletary.
ABC News' Kevin Dolak and Gio Benitez contributed to this report.
ANKARA (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed a Turkish security guard at the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Friday, blowing the door off a side entrance and sending smoke and debris flying into the street.
Ankara Governor Alaaddin Yuksel said the attacker was inside U.S. property when the explosives were detonated. The blast sent masonry spewing out of the wall of the side entrance, but there did not appear to be any more significant structural damage.
The bomber was also killed.
U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone emerged through the main gate of the building, which is surrounded by high walls, shortly after the explosion to address reporters, flanked by a security detail as a Turkish police helicopter hovered overhead.
"We are very sad of course that we lost one of our Turkish guards at the gate," Ricciardone he said, thanking the Turkish authorities for a prompt response.
A Reuters witness saw one wounded person being lifted into an ambulance as police armed with assault rifles cordoned off the area.
"It was a huge explosion. I was sitting in my shop when it happened. I saw what looked like a body part on the ground," said travel agent Kamiyar Barnos whose shop window was shattered around 100 meters away from the blast.
One witness said the blast was audible a mile away.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The British Consulate-General to Turkey said the blast a "suspected terrorist attack".
Islamist radicals, far-left groups, far-right groups and Kurdish separatist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.
The main domestic security threat comes from the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), deemed a terrorist group by the United States, European Union and Turkey, but the PKK has focused its campaign largely on domestic targets.
Turkey has led calls for international intervention in neighboring Syria and is hosting hundreds of NATO soldiers from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands who are operating a Patriot missile defense system along its border with Syria, hundreds of kilometers away from the capital.
The U.S. Patriots were expected to go active in the coming days.
The most serious attacks of this kind in Turkey occurred in November 2003, when car bombs shattered two synagogues, killing 30 people and wounding 146. Authorities said the attack bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
Part of the HSBC Bank headquarters was destroyed and the British consulate was damaged in two more explosions that killed a further 32 people a week later.
(Writing by Nick Tattersall and Daren Butler; Editing by Jon Hemming)
LONDON: Force India unveiled their new car for the forthcoming Formula One season at Silverstone on Friday, but they are still to confirm the identity of British driver Paul di Resta's teammate.
The vacancy next to Di Resta is one of only three across the grid for the 2013 season, which begins with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 17.
French driver Jules Bianchi, the team's third driver in 2012, was expected to be announced as Di Resta's teammate.
However, he was present at the launch of Ferrari's new F1 car on Friday as he is a member of the Italian team's academy.
Former driver Adrian Sutil and ex-Sauber man Kamui Kobayashi have also been linked with the role.
Force India team principal Robert Fearnley refused to be drawn on the identity of the new driver at the launch, telling reporters: "We do not want to confuse the two stories."
The VJM06 is the third of four cars unveiled so far for the 2013 season that have jettisoned the stepped nose design that featured widely in last year's world championship.
The Indian team finished seventh in last season's constructor championship, but saw German driver Nico Hulkenburg leave to join rivals Sauber at the end of the year.
- AFP/de
BANGALORE: One more BJP MLA DN Suresh resigned his assembly on Friday to join rebel camp Karnataka Janata Party ( KJP) headed by former chief minister BS Yeddyurappa. Suresh, representing Tarikere assembly segment, joins the list of 12 MLAs who resigned on Tuesday to join Yeddyurappa camp.
On finding that Speaker KG Bopaiah was not in Bangalore, Suresh reached out to the Speaker in Kodagu, 250km from the City, and put in his papers.
While state BJP KS Eshwarappa said no more MLAs would resign, former minister CM Udasi, one of the chief campaigner for Yeddyurappa, on Friday said there were more than 70 MLAs waiting to resign their assembly membership and quit also BJP.
NEW YORK (AP) — Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.
In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health officials on Thursday say such cases seem to be increasing.
The CDC recommends thoroughly washing your hands after handling hedgehogs and cleaning pet cages and other equipment outside.
Other pets that carry the salmonella bug are frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, lizards, chicks and ducklings.
Seven of the hedgehog illnesses were in Washington state, including the death — an elderly man from Spokane County who died in January. The other cases were in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Oregon.
In years past, only one or two illnesses from this salmonella strain have been reported annually, but the numbers rose to 14 in 2011, 18 last year, and two so far this year.
Children younger than five and the elderly are considered at highest risk for severe illness, CDC officials said.
Hedgehogs are small, insect-eating mammals with a coat of stiff quills. In nature, they sometimes live under hedges and defend themselves by rolling up into a spiky ball.
The critters linked to recent illnesses were purchased from various breeders, many of them licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CDC officials said. Hedgehogs are native to Western Europe, New Zealand and some other parts of the world, but are bred in the United States.
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Online:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr
At least one person was killed in what the State Department called a "terrorist blast" outside the U.S. Embassy in Turkey today.
The explosion, which occurred at a checkpoint to the embassy in Ankara in the early afternoon local time, claimed the life of an embassy guard and wounded a Turkish citizen, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardione told reporters.
A Turkish provincial governor said the blast was the work of a suicide bomber, according to a report by the BBC.
Television footage from the scene showed damage to a part of an outer gatehouse, which is adjacent to the main building.
U.S. officials said that Turkish police are investigating the incident.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
AMMAN (Reuters) - The revolt against President Bashar al-Assad first flared in Deraa, but the southern border city now epitomizes the bloody stalemate gripping Syria after 22 months of violence and 60,000 dead.
Jordan next door has little sympathy with Assad, but is wary of spillover from the upheaval in its bigger neighbor. It has tightened control of its 370-km (230-mile) border with Syria, partly to stop Islamist fighters or weapons from crossing.
That makes things tough for Assad's enemies in the Hawran plain, traditionally one of Syria's most heavily militarized regions, where the army has long been deployed to defend the southern approaches to Damascus from any Israeli threat.
The mostly Sunni Muslim rebels, loosely grouped in tribal and local "brigades", are united by a hatred of Assad and range from secular-minded fighters to al Qaeda-aligned Islamists.
"Nothing comes from Jordan," complained Moaz al-Zubi, an officer in the rebel Free Syrian Army, contacted via Skype from the Jordanian capital Amman. "If every village had weapons, we would not be afraid, but the lack of them is sapping morale."
Insurgents in Syria say weapons occasionally do seep through from Jordan but that they rely more on arsenals they seize from Assad's troops and arms that reach them from distant Turkey.
This month a Syrian pro-government television channel showed footage of what it said was an intercepted shipment of anti-tank weapons in Deraa, without specifying where it had come from.
Assad's troops man dozens of checkpoints in Deraa, a Sunni city that was home to 180,000 people before the uprising there in March 2011. They have imposed a stranglehold which insurgents rarely penetrate, apart from sporadic suicide bombings by Islamist militants, say residents and dissidents.
Rebel activity is minimal west of Deraa, where military bases proliferate near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Insurgents have captured some towns and villages in a 25-km (17-mile) wedge of territory east of Deraa, but intensifying army shelling and air strikes have reduced many of these to ruin, forcing their residents to join a rapidly expanding refugee exodus to Jordan, which now hosts 320,000 Syrians.
However, despite more than a month of fighting, Assad's forces have failed to winkle rebels out of strongholds in the rugged volcanic terrain that stretches from Busra al-Harir, 37 km (23 miles) northeast of Deraa, to the outskirts of Damascus.
Further east lies Sweida, home to minority Druze who have mostly sat out the Sunni-led revolt against security forces dominated by Assad's minority, Shi'ite-rooted Alawite sect.
"KEY TO DAMASCUS"
As long as Assad's forces control southwestern Syria, with its fertile, rain-fed Hawran plain, his foes will find it hard to make a concerted assault on Damascus, the capital and seat of his power, from suburbs where they already have footholds.
"If this area is liberated, the supply routes from the south to Damascus would be cut," said Abu Hamza, a commander in the rebel Ababeel Hawran Brigade. "Deraa is the key to the capital."
Fighters in the north, where Turkey provides a rear base and at least some supply lines, have fared somewhat better than their counterparts in the south, grabbing control of swathes of territory and seizing half of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city.
They have also captured some towns in the east, across the border from Iraq's Sunni heartland of Anbar province, and in central Syria near the mostly Sunni cities of Homs and Hama.
But even where they gain ground, Assad's mostly Russian-supplied army and air force can still pound rebels from afar, prompting a Saudi prince to call for outsiders to "level the playing field" by providing anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
"What is needed are sophisticated, high-level weapons that can bring down planes, can take out tanks at a distance," Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief and brother of the Saudi foreign minister, said last week at a meeting in Davos.
Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf state Qatar have long backed Assad's opponents and advocate arming them, but for now the rebels are still far outgunned by the Syrian military.
"They are not heavily armed, properly trained or equipped," said Ali Shukri, a retired Jordanian general, who argued also that rebels would need extensive training to use Western anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons effectively even if they had them.
He said two powerful armored divisions were among Syrian forces in the south, where the rebels are "not that strong".
It is easier for insurgents elsewhere in Syria to get support via Turkey or Lebanon than in the south where the only borders are with Israel and Jordan, Shukri said.
Jordan, which has urged Assad to go, but seeks a political solution to the crisis, is unlikely to ramp up support for the rebels, even if its cautious policy risks irritating Saudi Arabia and Qatar, financial donors to the cash-strapped kingdom.
ISLAMIST STRENGTH
"I'm confident the opposition would like to be sourcing arms regularly from the Jordanian border, not least because I guess it would be easier for the Saudis to get stuff up there on the scale you'd be talking about," said a Western diplomat in Amman.
A scarcity of arms and ammunition is the main complaint of the armed opposition, a disparate array of local factions in which Islamist militants, especially the al Qaeda-endorsed Nusra Front, have come to play an increasing role in recent months.
The Nusra Front, better armed than many groups, emerged months after the anti-Assad revolt began in Deraa with peaceful protests that drew a violent response from the security forces.
It has flourished as the conflict has turned ever more bitterly sectarian, pitting majority Sunnis against Alawites.
Since October, the Front, deemed a terrorist group by the United States, has carried out at least three high-profile suicide bombings in Deraa, attacking the officers' club, the governor's residence and an army checkpoint in the city centre.
Such exploits have won prestige for the Islamist group, which has gained a reputation for military prowess, piety and respect for local communities, in contrast to some other rebel outfits tainted by looting and other unpopular behavior.
"So far no misdeeds have come from the Nusra Front to make us fear them," said Daya al-Deen al-Hawrani, a fighter from the rebel al-Omari Brigade. "Their goal and our goal is one."
Abu Ibrahim, a non-Islamist rebel commander operating near Deraa, said the Nusra Front fought better and behaved better than units active under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.
"Their influence has grown," he acknowledged, describing them as dedicated and disciplined. Nor were their fighters imposing their austere Islamic ideology on others, at least for now. "I sit with them and smoke and they don't mind," he said.
The Nusra Front may be trying to avoid the mistakes made by a kindred group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, which fought U.S. troops and the rise of Shi'ite factions empowered by the 2003 invasion.
The Iraqi group's suicide attacks on civilians, hostage beheadings and attempts to enforce a harsh version of Islamic law eventually alienated fellow Sunni tribesmen who switched sides and joined U.S. forces in combating the militants.
Despite the Nusra Front's growing prominence and its occasional spectacular suicide bombings in Deraa, there are few signs that its fighters or other rebels are on the verge of dislodging the Syrian military from its southern bastions.
Abu Hamza, the commander in the Ababeel Hawran Brigade, was among many rebels and opposition figures to lament the toughness of the task facing Assad's enemies in the south: "What is killing us is that all of Hawran is a military area," he said.
"And every village has five army compounds around it."
(Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
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