Taliban not demanding Afghan power monopoly

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban representatives at a conference did not insist on total power in Afghanistan and pledged to grant rights to women that the militant Islamist group itself brutally suppressed in the past, according to a Taliban statement received Sunday.

The pledges emerged from a rare meeting last week involving Taliban and Kabul government representatives.

The less strident substance and tone came in a speech delivered at a conference in France. The French hosts described it as a discussion among Afghans rather than peace negotiations.

It was hard to determine whether the softer line taken by the Taliban representatives reflected a real shift in policy or a salvo in the propaganda war for the hearts and minds of Afghans.

The speech said that a new constitution would protect civil and political rights of all citizens. It promised that women would be allowed to choose husbands, own property, attend school and seek work, rights denied them during Taliban rule, which ended with the 2001 U.S. invasion. The speech was emailed from Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

“We are not looking to monopolize power. We want an all-Afghan inclusive government,” the speech said. It was delivered by two Taliban officials, Mawlawi Shahbuddin Dilawar and Muhammad Naeem during the conference on Thursday and Friday.

Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government welcomed such talks but did not expect them to bridge the gap between the warring sides.

The United States started to embrace the idea of peace talks after President Barack Obama took office, but discussions stalled in recent years, despite the formation of an Afghan government council tasked with reaching out to the Taliban and the establishment of a Taliban political office in Qatar.

“The peace initiative is a process, and one or two or three meetings are not going to solve the problems. But we are hopeful for the future,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Janan Mosazai said. He said the government’s preconditions for the talks with the Taliban have not changed: a cease-fire, recognition of the Afghan constitution, cutting ties with international terrorists and agreeing to respect the rights of Afghan citizens including women and children.

The Taliban speech reiterated the group’s own longtime policies, declaring that the current constitution was “illegitimate because it is written under the shadow of (U.S.) B-52 aircraft” and that the Taliban remained the legitimate government of the country, a reference to the U.S.-led campaign that drove the Taliban from power.

It also called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces and said a 2014 national election was “not beneficial for solving the Afghan quandary” because it would take place while the country was still under foreign occupation.

Most NATO forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by 2014. The Kabul government and its international backers hope that a peace deal can be brokered with the Taliban and other militant groups before the pullout. NATO still has more than 100,000 troops, including 66,000 U.S. soldiers, on the ground. Washington is now determining the size of a scaled down force the United States will keep in Afghanistan after 2014.

“The occupation must be ended as a first step, which is the desire of the entire nation, because this is the mother of all these tragedies,” the speech said.

The conference was also attended by the Hezb-e-Islami group, which is allied with the Taliban, and political opponents of President Hamid Karzai, whom the Taliban regard as a puppet of Washington.

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RIM shares fall at the open after earnings

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker’s Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services.

RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the high-margin business under pressure.

Shares fell 16.0 percent to $ 11.86 in early trading on the Nasdaq. Toronto-listed shares fell 15.8 percent to C$ 11.74.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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Few tests done at toxic sites after superstorm

OLD BRIDGE, N.J. (AP) — For more than a month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said that the recent superstorm didn’t cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic waste sites it’s monitoring in New York and New Jersey.

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water are being conducted, just visual inspections.

The EPA conducted a handful of tests right after the storm, but couldn’t provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week. New Jersey officials point out that federally designated Superfund sites are EPA’s responsibility.

The 1980 Superfund law gave EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes that threaten human health or the environment. The sites can involve long-term or short-term cleanups.

Jeff Tittel, executive director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey, says officials haven’t done enough to ensure there is no contamination from Superfund sites. He’s worried toxins could leach into groundwater and the ocean.

“It’s really serious and I think the EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems,” Tittel said.

The EPA said last month that none of the Superfund sites it monitors in New York or New Jersey sustained significant damage, but that it has done follow-up sampling at the Gowanus Canal site in Brooklyn, the Newtown Creek site on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, and the Raritan Bay Slag site, all of which flooded during the storm.

But last week, EPA spokeswoman Stacy Kika didn’t respond to questions about whether any soil or water tests have been done at the other 243 Superfund sites. The agency hasn’t said exactly how many of the sites flooded.

“Currently, we do not believe that any sites were impacted in ways that would pose a threat to nearby communities,” EPA said in a statement.

Politicians have been asking similar questions, too. On Nov. 29, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the EPA to ask for “an additional assessment” of Sandy’s impact on Superfund sites in the state.

Elevated levels of lead, antimony, arsenic and copper have been found at the Raritan Bay Slag site, a Superfund site since 2009. Blast furnaces dumped lead at the site in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and lead slag was also used there to construct a seawall and jetty.

The EPA found lead levels as high as 142,000 parts per million were found at Raritan Bay in 2007. Natural soil levels for lead range from 50 to 400 parts per million.

The EPA took four samples from the site after Superstorm Sandy: two from a fenced-off beach area and two from a nearby public playground. One of the beach samples tested above the recreational limit for lead. In early November, the EPA said it was taking additional samples “to get a more detailed picture of how the material might have shifted” and will “take appropriate steps to prevent public exposure” at the site, according to a bulletin posted on its website. But six weeks later, the agency couldn’t provide more details of what has been found.

The Newtown Creek site, with pesticides, metals, PCBs and volatile organic compounds, and the Gowanus Canal site, heavily contaminated with PCBs, heavy metals, volatile organics and coal tar wastes, were added to the Superfund list in 2010.

Some say the lead at the Raritan Bay site can disperse easily.

Gabriel Fillippeli, director of the Center for Urban Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said lead tends to stay in the soil once it is deposited but can be moved around by stormwaters or winds. Arsenic, which has been found in the surface water at the site, can leach into the water table, Fillippeli said.

“My concern is twofold. One is, a storm like that surely moved some of that material physically to other places, I would think,” Fillippeli said. “If they don’t cap that or seal it or clean it up, arsenic will continue to make its way slowly into groundwater and lead will be distributed around the neighborhood.”

The lack of testing has left some residents with lingering worries.

The Raritan Bay Slag site sits on the beach overlooking a placid harbor with a view of Staten Island. On a recent foggy morning, workers were hauling out debris, and some nearby residents wondered whether the superstorm increased or spread the amount of pollution at the site.

“I think it brought a lot of crud in from what’s out there,” said Elise Pelletier, whose small bungalow sits on a hill overlooking the Raritan Bay Slag site. “You don’t know what came in from the water.” Her street did not flood because it is up high, but she worries about a park below where people go fishing and walk their dogs. She would like to see more testing done.

Thomas Burke, an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says both federal and state officials generally have a good handle on the major Superfund sites, which often use caps and walls to contain pollution.

“They are designed to hold up,” Burke said of such structures, but added that “you always have to be concerned that an unusual event can spread things around in the environment.” Burke noted that the storm brought in a “tremendous amount” of water, raising the possibility that groundwater plumes could have changed.

“There really have to be evaluations” of communities near the Superfund sites, he said. “It’s important to take a look.”

Officials in both New York and New Jersey note they’ve also been monitoring less toxic sites known as brownfields and haven’t found major problems. The New York DEC said in a statement that brownfields in that state “were not significantly impacted” and that they don’t plan further tests for storm impacts.

Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency has done visual inspections of major brownfield sites and also alerted towns and cities to be on the lookout for problems. Ragonese said they just aren’t getting calls voicing such concerns.

Back at the Raritan Bay slag site, some residents want more information. And they want the toxic soil, which has sat here for years, out.

Pat Churchill, who was walking her dog in the park along the water, said she’s still worried.

“There are unanswered questions. You can’t tell me this is all contained. It has to move around,” Churchill said.

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Pope visits jailed butler to grant pre-Christmas pardon

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict made a surprise pre-Christmas visit to the jail holding his former butler on Saturday and pardoned him for stealing and leaking documents that alleged corruption in the Vatican.

The pope and Paolo Gabriele spent about 15 minutes together before Gabriele was freed and allowed to return to his wife and children in their Vatican apartment, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said.

“What they said to each other will remain a secret between them … he knows he made a mistake,” Gabriele’s lawyer Cristiana Arru, who was in the apartment when he returned home, told Reuters.

Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft on October 6 in a case that shone unwelcome publicity on the Vatican. He had been serving an 18-month sentence in a jail cell in the city state’s police headquarters.

Lombardi called the pope’s action “a paternal gesture towards a person with whom the pope shared his daily life for several years … this is a happy ending in this Christmas season to this sad and painful episode.”

Both Lombardi and Arru described the encounter as “intense” because it was the first time the two had seen each other since last May, when Gabriele was arrested after Vatican police found many documents in his possession that had been stolen from the pope’s office.

The pope also pardoned a Vatican computer expert who had received a suspended sentence in a separate trial.

VATILEAKS SAGA

In a saga that became known as “Vatileaks”, Gabriele leaked documents showing what appeared to be a power struggle at the highest ranks of the Church, and internal conflict about how transparent the Vatican’s scandal-plagued bank should be with outside financial authorities.

He told investigators he had acted because he saw “evil and corruption everywhere in the Church” and that information was being hidden from the pope.

The Vatican said Gabriele would no longer be able to work there but would be helped to find a job and start a new life outside its walls together with his family.

“When he came home, the kids jumped up and hung from his neck. It was a very tough time for them. I don’t think the whole episode has sunk in for them yet,” lawyer Arru said.

Gabriele, 46, said at his trial – one of the most sensational in the recent history of the Holy See – that he did not consider himself a thief and that he was motivated by “visceral” love for the Church.

The butler, who served the pope his meals and helped him dress, photocopied sensitive documents under the nose of his immediate superiors in a small office adjacent to the papal living quarters in the Apostolic Palace.

He then hid more than 1,000 copies and original documents, including some the pope had marked “to be destroyed”, among many thousands of other papers and old newspaper clippings in a huge armoire in the family apartment inside the Vatican walls.

A former member of the small, select group known as “the papal family”, Gabriele was one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator leading directly to the pope’s apartments.

He said at the trial that from his perch as papal butler he was able to see how easily a powerful man could be manipulated by aides and kept in the dark about things he should have known.

The leaked papers revealed inner workings of an institution long renowned for its secrecy, and triggered one of the biggest crises of Pope Benedict’s papacy when they emerged in a muckraking expose by an Italian journalist earlier this year.

The case was all the more embarrassing at a time when the Church was trying to limit the fallout from a series of scandals involving sexual abuse of minors by clerics around the world, as well as from mismanagement at its bank.

However, many people believe the butler could not have acted alone and was a fall-guy for others in the Vatican. Gabriele said during the trial that while he may have been influenced by others, he had no direct accomplices.

The Vatican said the pope had also decided to pardon a second Vatican employee and friend of Gabriele’s, Claudio Sciarpelletti, who was convicted separately of giving police conflicting testimony and given a two-month suspended sentence.

Sciarpelletti, a computer expert, will be able to keep his job in the Vatican.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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Official: North Korea could have U.S. within missile range

SEOUL (Reuters) - This month's rocket launch by reclusive North Korea shows it has likely developed the technology, long suspected in the West, to fire a warhead more than 10,000 km (6,200 miles), South Korean officials said on Sunday, putting the U.S. West Coast in range.

North Korea said the December 12 launch put a weather satellite in orbit but critics say it was aimed at nurturing the kind of technology needed to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.

North Korea is banned from testing missile or nuclear technology under U.N. sanctions imposed after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear weapons tests and the U.N. Security Council condemned the launch.

South Korea retrieved and analyzed parts of the first-stage rocket that dropped in the waters off its west coast

"As a result of analyzing the material of Unha-3 (North Korea's rocket), we judged North Korea had secured a range of more than 10,000 km in case the warhead is 500-600 kg," a South Korean Defense Ministry official told a news briefing.

North Korea's previous missile tests ended in failure.

North Korea, which denounces the United States as the mother of all warmongers on an almost daily basis, has spent decades and scarce resources to try to develop technology capable of striking targets as far away as the United States and it is also working to build a nuclear arsenal.

But experts believe the North is still years away from mastering the technology needed to miniaturize a nuclear bomb to mount on a missile.

South Korean defense officials also said there was no confirmation whether the North had the re-entry technology needed for a payload to survive the heat and vibration without disintegrating.

Despite international condemnation, the launch this month was seen as a major boost domestically to the credibility of the North's young leader, Kim Jong-un, who took over power from his father who died last year.

Apparently encouraged by the euphoria, the fledgling supreme leader called for the development and launching of "a variety of more working satellites" and "carrier rockets of bigger capacity" at a banquet in Pyongyang on Friday which he hosted for those who contributed to the lift-off, according to North Korean state media.

(Editing by Jack Kim and Nick Macfie)

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Canada spending growth sluggish in November, Mastercard says

(Reuters) – Canada‘s holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in November with retail sales rising only 1.3 percent from the previous year, compared with 4.2 percent growth a year earlier, according to data released by MasterCard on Thursday.

Still, the shopping season was still young in November. MasterCard Advisors, the payment company’s research and consulting division, found that in recent years, holiday shopping peaks from December 20 to December 22.

“Many Canadians may have gotten an early start with Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, but it’s still a very young phenomenon in Canada,” Senior Vice-President Richard McLaughlin, said in a release.

The Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving is the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season south of the border, and in recent years retailers have imported Black Friday sales to Canada.

Some also promote online sales the following Monday.

Canada’s online retail sales continued to grow in November, increasing 26.4 percent.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Facebook’s SnapChat-Style Sexting App Is Called Poke (Seriously)

Oh, well would you look at Facebook, trying to make a Christmas funny with its SnapChat copycat app. It’s called Poke! Get it? Because SnapChat is what the kids are all using for their sexting these days, apparently, and Poke — you know, that once kinda flirty Facebook future that’s now pretty much useless — can kind of do the same thing, and it kind of sounds like some bad sexual pun, too! Funny, Facebook, very funny, and way to admit the dirty little truth behind “poking” that we knew all along.

RELATED: Facebook to Launch Its Own SnapChat as Social-Network Clone Wars Live on

Oh, wait. They’re serious? Oh, yeah: Friday afternoon Facebook released Poke, its rumored iPhone app for the incredible vanishing half-message “that makes it fun and easy to say hello to friends wherever you are.” But don’t get too heavy on the old-school “Poke” comparisons, because the new app can actually send regular messages, photos, or videos, too — but only for short periods of time, because that is apparently what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat’s huge success is any indication. There’s more of a time-bomb component to Poke, though: users can choose how long someone sees a poke before it ceases to exist forever — so you could sext poke all day long, because that, too, is apparently what the kids like doing these days, if SnapChat’s huge, smashing, sexy success is any indication.

RELATED: The Life and Philosophy of Mark Zuckerberg

Why would anyone use Poke over SnapChat? Well, the Facebook app itself has a much smoother interface than SnapChat, and you can report people behaving badly, and everyone’s already on Facebook, right? Maybe this is the breaking point Justin Bieber could never hit, when something sexy goes from the tween set to actual human beings. We’ll let you know when Poke shows up in our iPhone’s App Store; for now we’re not entirely sure if this is just some bad joke. (Although it is in the iTunes Store, so… we’ll see?)

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‘Smart-Tattoos’: How They Could End Up Saving Your Life

So they’re not exactly cute, but if you came of age during the 90s, chances are you have at least regrettable tattoo anyway. (Raise your hand if that same tattoo is in the shape of a butterfly!)   But the latest temporary tattoos do much more than serve as a symbol of misspent youth; they can read a body’s internal processes and alert the user of potential dangers like a dip in blood sugar or a drop in kidney function− all without having to draw any blood.

A recent collaboration between researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Toronto created a lightweight and stick-on “smart tattoo.” Embedded in its fibers are a set of “ion-selective electrodes” which is a cooler way of saying “sensors that detect the pH or salt levels of the skin, as well minerals like potassium, and even blood oxidation.”

In other words, it can monitor athletic performance at a granular level, but without any of the bulk or wiring of older sensors. It also means that for the first time, detailed athletic response testing would no longer be limited to the walls of a sports clinic, but could be done daily by the athlete herself. And because the stick-ons are both quick and cheap to produce, it seems a natural fit with a mass market roll-out. Researchers are hoping they’ve designed the next big thing in sports training and expect it to hit shelves within the next twelve months.

MORE: One in Ten Adults Will Be Diabetic in 20 Years

But this athletic testing sensor is only the latest iteration of a variety of body-reading tattoos set to hit the market in the coming year.

Sano Intelligence is in the testing phase of a smart tattoo that reads a wearer’s blood markers. The application would be particularly useful for diabetics, who need to keep strict control over their blood sugar levels and often have to resort to finger-prick tests to determine if those levels are within normal range. The Sano patch would not only allow them to forgo the pain of finger-pricks, but the constant hassle of dragging around testing devices and interrupting daily activities to draw their own blood.

And Boston-based MC10 announced earlier this year that it would soon release its own “stretchable electronics” patch, that can be applied internally to human organs, or externally to human skin, or clothing, depending on what needed to be monitored.  The stick-on’s ability to remain flexible while reading vital signs means that it could effectively gauge the function of specific organs, track brain processes, and monitor more mainstream functions like heart rate, blood oxidation and body hydration. 

What’s going to make the biggest difference in our daily lives as a result of this technology isn’t even the technology itself- it’s that for the first time, we as patients will be able to maintain our mobility and independence as we’re being monitored. This presumably could mean it would be easier to catch oncoming deficiencies before they manifest any symptoms, and the distance between the patient and her specialist would no longer be a hinderance to treatment.

Do you think this kind of technology would be useful in your own life, or do you think that a sensor monitoring your vital signs is just too “sci-fi” for your taste?

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Five Years Out of Juvenile Detention, Depression, Addiction Linger

• Researchers Are Closing In On Method to Predict Flu Outbreaks

• The Most Vulnerable Pay a High Price for Flu Infection

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ reaches 1B views on YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) — Viral star PSY has reached a new milestone on YouTube.

The South Korean rapper’s video for “Gangnam Style” has reached 1 billion views, according to YouTube’s own counter. It’s the first time any clip has surpassed that mark on the streaming service owned by Google Inc.

It shows the enduring popularity of the self-deprecating video that features Park Jae-sang‘s giddy up-style dance moves. The video has been available on YouTube since July 15, averaging more than 200 million views per month.

Justin Bieber’s video for “Baby” held the previous YouTube record at more than 800 million views.

PSY wasn’t just popular on YouTube, either. Earlier this month Google announced “Gangnam Style” was the second highest trending search of 2012 behind Whitney Houston, who passed away in February.

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Parents hesitant about NRA armed schools proposal

MIAMI (AP) — The nation's largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for the placement of an armed police officer in every school, but parents and educators questioned how safe such a move would keep kids, whether it would be economically feasible and how it would alter student life. Their reactions ranged from supportive to disgusted.

Already, there are an estimated 10,000 sworn officers serving in schools around the country, most of them armed and employed by local police departments, according to a membership association for the officers. Still, they're deployed at only a fraction of the country's approximately 98,000 public schools, and their numbers have declined during the economic downturn. Some departments have increased police presence at schools since last week's shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 dead, but say they can only do so temporarily because of funding.

The National Rifle Association said at a news conference that it wants Congress to fund armed officers in every American school, breaking its silence on the Connecticut shootings. The idea made sense to some anxious parents and teachers, but provoked outright anger in others.

"Their solution to resolve the issue around guns is to put more guns in the equation?" said Superintendent Hank Grishman of the Jericho, N.Y., schools on Long Island, who has been an educator for 44 years. "If anything it would be less safe for kids. You would be putting them in the midst of potentially more gunfire."

Where school resource officers are already in place, they help foster connections between the schools and police, and often develop a close enough relationship with parents and children that they feel comfortable coming forward with information that could prevent a threat, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

But an Oklahoma educator who teaches at a school with armed officers described the NRA's proposal as a "false solution," though she's not opposed to the presence of more police.

"I teach at a school that has four armed police officers on campus every day, but it's more than a quarter of a mile from the main office to my room, and I'm not even the farthest room away," said Elise Robillard, a French teacher at Westmoore High School. "If (a student) put a loaded gun in their bag and came to my classroom and pulled it out and started shooting, by the time the police officer figured out what was going on and got to my classroom, we'd all be dead. This whole hallway could be dead before a policeman got here."

Around the country, school systems sometimes rotate armed officers through schools or supplement them with unarmed safety agents. New York City's school district is the largest in the country with more than 1 million students. The NYPD has 350 armed officers who rotate throughout the school system, and they're supplemented by unarmed safety personnel who also report to the department. In Philadelphia, school officials have rejected armed patrols in city schools and instead use unarmed school police.

In rural Blount County, Ala., a tobacco tax is used to fund a squad of nine armed sheriff's deputies and a supervisor who are assigned to work inside the system's 16 schools on a full-time basis, superintendent Jim Carr said Friday. They also assist in sports games and other after-school events.

An armed sheriff's deputy assigned to Columbine High School the day of the massacre there in 1999 was unable to stop the violence, though police procedures around the country have changed since then.

According to a Jefferson County Sheriff's Department report released in 2000, the uniformed sheriff's deputy was eating lunch in his patrol car at a park near the school when he rushed to the school in response to a radio report about the violence. The deputy briefly exchanged fire with one of the gunmen, but the gunman ran back inside the building to continue the rampage.

The officer radioed for assistance, and police followed the then-standard procedure of waiting for a SWAT team to arrive before entering the building. Since that tragedy, police procedures have been changed to call for responding officers to rush toward gunfire to stop a gunman first.

In his speech, NRA chief executive officer Wayne LaPierre said Congress should appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every school. In the meantime, he said the NRA would develop a school emergency response program that would include volunteers from the group's 4.3 million members to help guard children.

The NRA's call came two days after a Kentucky county sheriff announced on Facebook that deputies would have an increased school presence beginning in January. The announcement was met with dozens of notes of thanks and positive comments from parents.

"Thank you so very much," wrote one commenter. "I can stop stressing a little while at work now."

"This is the best news we could have received for Christmas!" wrote another.

Monte Evans, a sixth grade teacher in Wichita, Kan., said schools should have a designated point person licensed and trained to shoot a gun.

"What am I going to stop them with? A stapler?" said Evans, an NRA member. "You need equal force."

Rose Davis, 47, who lives in Chicago's South Side Englewood neighborhood and helps care for her two young grandchildren, said she supports the idea of having armed police officers in schools. Her neighborhood is beset by gang violence and she worries about it spilling into schools.

"With the things going on today, you really don't feel secure," she said.

Even those who support the proposal, however, questioned how practical it would be.

"The real question is sustainability," said Ken Trump, president of the Cleveland-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services. "In the long haul, how are you going to fund that?"

But Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's largest teachers' unions, called the NRA's idea "irresponsible and dangerous."

"Schools must be safe sanctuaries, not armed fortresses," she said.

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that posting armed guards outside schools wouldn't make classrooms safer or encourage learning.

"You can't make this (school) an armed camp for kids," he said.

Jacina Haro, a college educator from Malden, Mass., and the mother of two young children said the solution shouldn't be about having more weapons on campus.

"Schools shouldn't be about guns," said the 38-year-old. "It should be a safe place to learn, free from weapons and the like. I understand wanting to protect our children, but I don't know if that's the right solution. It's a scary solution."

___

Associated Press writers Frank Eltman in Mineola, N.Y.; Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia; Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa; Jason Keyser in Chicago, Sean Murphy, Oklahoma City; Colleen long in New York; Colleen Slevin in Denver and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., contributed to this report.

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