Country Star Mindy McCready Shot Herself, Cops Say

Mindy McCready, the country singer who soared to the top of the charts with her debut album, "Ten Thousand Angels," but struggled with substance abuse, served time in jail and fought a lengthy battle with her mother over custody of her son has died of what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. She was 37.

Deputies from the Cleburne County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to a report of gun shots fired at McCready's Heber Springs, Ark., home at around 3:30 p.m. today.

There they found McCready on the front porch. She was pronounced dead at the scene from what appeared to be a single self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a statement from the sheriff's office.

McCready's boyfriend, David Wilson, died in January of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. McCready was ordered to enter rehab shortly after Wilson's death, and her two children, Zander, 6, and 9-month-old Zayne were taken from her. She was released after one day to undergo outpatient care.

McCready scored a number-one Billboard country hit in 1996 with "Guys Do It All the Time," but in recent years, the country crooner has received more media attention for her troubled personal life than her music.

She has been arrested multiple times on drug charges and probation violations and has been hospitalized for overdoses several times, including in 2010, when she was found unconscious at her mother's home after taking a painkiller and muscle relaxant.

Angela Weiss/Getty Images

Her mother, Gayle Inge, was appointed to be her son Zander's legal guardian in 2007 after McCready was arrested for violating probation on a drug-related charge. The boy's father is McCready's ex-boyfriend Billy McKnight.

Following a custody hearing in May 2011, McCready released a statement, saying, "We have progressed in a positive manner to reunite me and my son, Zander. I feel very optimistic this will happen in the near future."

But just six months later, in November 2011, was accused of violating a court order for failing to bring Zander back to her mother in Florida after a visit. The boy was placed in foster care while McCready and her mother worked out the custody dispute.

McCready's struggle with substance abuse was broadcast in 2010 on the third season of "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew."

McCready also claimed to have carried on a decade-long affair with baseball star Roger Clemens that began was she was 15 years old and he was 28. Clemens denied that the relationship was sexual in nature.

"You know what, I don't think I'm ever going to be one of those people that has a normal, quiet existence," McCready told ABC Radio in 2010. "I've been chosen for some reason to be bigger and larger than life in every way. Negative and positive."

McCready, who was born and raised in southern Florida, moved to Nashville when she was 18 to start her music career.

Within a few months, she was starting to work with producer David Malloy, who got her tapes to RLG Records. The company signed her to a contract after seeing her in concert, giving her a record deal less than a year after her arrival in Nashville.

Her debut album, "Ten Thousand Angels," went gold within six months of its release in April 1996, and eventually went multi-platinum. Two more followed: "If I Don't Stay the Night," in 1997; and "I'm Not So Tough" in 1999.

Her most recent album, "I'm Still Here," featuring new versions of her early hits "Ten Thousand Angels" and "Guys Do It All the Time," was released in March 2010.

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Pakistani governor criticizes security forces after bombing

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A provincial official criticized Pakistani security forces on Sunday after a bombing targeting the Shi'ite Hazara community killed 80 people in the northwestern city of Quetta.

"The terrorist attack on the Hazara Shi'ite community in Quetta is a failure of the intelligence and security forces," Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Magsi, governor of Baluchistan province, said while touring a hospital.

"We had given a free hand to security (forces) to take action against terrorist and extremist groups, but despite that the Quetta incident took place."

The death toll from Saturday's bombing rose overnight to 80, with most of the casualties in the main bazaar of the town, capital of Baluchistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

Most of the dead were Hazaras, a Shi'ite ethnic group. A senior security official said the figure could rise as 20 people were critically wounded.

Pakistan's government, already unpopular over a range of issues such as poverty and power cuts ahead of elections expected in a few months, is under mounting pressure to go after hardline Sunni extremists who regard Shi'ites as non-Muslims.

A spokesman for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a Sunni group, claimed responsibility for the bomb in Quetta, which also caused casualties near a school and a computer center.

LeJ has also said it was behind a bombing last month in Quetta which killed nearly 100 people, one of Pakistan's worst sectarian attacks.

Shi'ite political organizations have called for a strike in Quetta to protest against the latest carnage. Many shops and bazaars are closed. Relatives of the wounded responded for an appeal for blood made by hospitals.

Pakistani intelligence officials say extremist groups, led by LeJ, have escalated their bombings and shootings of Shi'ites to trigger violence that would pave the way for a Sunni theocracy in U.S.-allied Pakistan.

More than 400 Shi'ites were killed in Pakistan last year, many by hitmen or bombs. Some hardline Shi'ite groups have struck back by killing Sunni clerics.

The schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites developed after the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 when his followers could not agree on a successor.

(Reporting by Gul Yousufzai; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Briton survived Outback by drinking contact lens fluid

SYDNEY: A British backpacker who endured three days missing in Australia's punishing Outback survived by drinking his contact lens fluid and urine, his mother said Sunday.

Samuel Woodhead, 18, was found Friday on the sprawling remote property Upshot Station, about 130 kilometres (80 miles) from the far-flung central Queensland town of Longreach, from where he had set off on Tuesday.

He became lost in extremely harsh terrain and mother Claire Derry credited his training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst for his survival in the remote and unforgiving Outback with little more than sunburn and dehydration.

"He tried drinking his own urine and he wasn't able to cope much with that, so he drank tiny sips of the contact lens fluid," Derry told the Sun-Herald newspaper.

He lost 15 kilograms over three days and nights and Derry said she and her son were both incredulous that he'd been found alive.

"Sam is incredibly fit, that was something I clung on to," she said, adding that her son wanted to go into the Royal Marines or the army.

"He'd not long ago been on an appropriateness course for Sandhurst... so I knew he had a lot of knowledge to draw on."

Australian authorities had held grave fears for the man's survival in a region where heat, a lack of water, venomous snakes and the possibility of injury could prove deadly.

Planes, motorbikes, and four-wheel drives were being used in the search, with neighbours also combing the area on foot and horseback and an emergency services helicopter dispatched with medical staff.

When he was found Derry said her son told her his rescuers said "they normally find people out here with their eyes pecked out.

"All he could say was 'Mum, just thank these wonderful people. I've loved Australia from the minute I arrived here. These people are extraordinary'."

Derry was on board a flight from Britain to Australia and had been fearing the worst when she learned that her son had been found alive. She celebrated by embracing the flight crew and popping some champagne.

"One of the airline staff came up to me and he was smiling. He handed me this piece of paper saying Sam was found alive and well," she said.

- AFP/ir

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Over 50 arrested for stone-pelting after Afzal Guru's hanging

Srinagar: Over 50 youths have been arrested for allegedly being involved in stone-pelting during protests that rocked parts of the Kashmir Valley following execution of Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru.

"Police have arrested 53 persons from different districts of the Valley on the charges of stone-pelting and creating trouble after Guru's hanging," a police spokesman said.

Protests were held at many places across Kashmir even after authorities imposed curfew in the Valley after Guru was hanged in Tihar Jail in Delhi on February 9.

Of the 53 youths nabbed during protests, 13 were arrested from Srinagar, six from Budgam in central Kashmir while 23 held from north Kashmir, which includes eight from Baramulla and 15 from Sopore, he said.

In south Kashmir's Anantnag district, police arrested eight youths while three nabbed from Pulwama, he added.

Meanwhile, police refuted the reports of a police post being torched by protestors in north Kashmir's Bandipora district.

"The reports about torching of a police post in Paribal Aaloosa area of Bandipora are factually incorrect. Some miscreants had attacked the post, but police exercised maximum restraint and repulsed them. There was however, some minor damage to the post," the spokesman said.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.

U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.

Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.

He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.

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Meteor Blast Creates Rush to Cash In

The shattered glass and broken walls caused by the massive explosion of a monstrous meteor over this remote, industrial Russian city is not even cleaned up, and people are already trying to cash in.

Some residents want to turn this city known mostly for its tank factory into a tourist destination, while others from all around the world are determined to find fragments of the meteorite.

Meteor hunters say it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. A small piece of the space rock that exploded over Russia Friday could be worth thousands of dollars, and bigger chunks could fetch hundreds of thousands.

SEE PHOTOS: Meteorite Crashes in Russia

"I haven't been able to sleep for the last two days because of this," said Michael Farmer, who runs the website Meteor Hunter. "This is a once in a lifetime event. We've never seen anything like this in the last hundred years."

He said he started planning a trip to Chelyabinsk as soon as the meteorite exploded.

"The next morning I was on the phone working on visas. I'd like to get a visa and get over to Russia as quickly as possible," he said. "When this type of thing happens, you know hours count so we try to arrange that as fast as possible."

A day after a massive meteor exploded over this city in central Russia, a monumental cleanup effort is under way.

Authorities have deployed around 24,000 troops and emergencies responders to help in the effort.

Officials say more than a million square feet of windows -- the size of about 20 football fields -- were shattered by the shockwave from the meteor's blast. Around 4,000 buildings in the area were damaged.

Nasha gazeta, www.ng.kz/AP Photo

The injury toll climbed steadily on Friday. Authorities said today it now stands at more than 1,200. Most of those injuries were from broken glass, and only a few hundred required hospitalization.

According to NASA, this was the biggest meteor to hit Earth in more than a century. Preliminary figures suggest it was 50 feet wide and weighed more than the Eiffel Tower.

NASA scientists have also estimated the force of the blast that occurred when the meteor fractured upon entering Earth's atmosphere was approximately 470 kilotons -- the equivalent of about 30 Hiroshima bombs, but it did not cause major damage because it occurred so high in the atmosphere.

"This was caused by a small asteroid, about 15 meters in diameter, coming in at around 18 kilometers per second, that's in excess of 40-thousand miles per hour," NASA planetary scientist Paul Abell said. "As the asteroid comes in, it interacts with the atmosphere and effectively it converts all the energy, the kinetic energy of the asteroid, the mass of the asteroid and the velocity and it's actually that velocity, the asteroid just effectively explodes and that creates the pressure wave, the blast wave that comes down."

Treasure hunters hoping to cash in on the bits of space rock aren't the only ones eager to find pieces of the meteor, Abell said. Scientists say the material could offer valuable information.

"One of the things we'd like to learn is first of all, what was the composition of the asteroid, where did it come from," he said. "We know it came from the asteroid belt but can we link it to a bigger asteroid and also, get an idea of the dispersal pattern."

Residents said they still can't believe it happened here.

"It was something we only saw in the movies," one university student said. "We never thought we would see it ourselves."

Throughout the city, the streets are littered with broken glass. Local officials have announced an ambitious pledge to replace all the broken windows within a week. In the early morning hours, however, workers could still be heard drilling new windows into place.

Authorities have sent divers into a frozen lake outside the city, where a large chunk of the meteor is believed to have landed, creating a large hole in the ice. By the end of the day they had not found anything.

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Exclusive: North Korea tells China of preparations for fresh nuclear test - source

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea has told its key ally, China, that it is prepared to stage one or even two more nuclear tests this year in an effort to force the United States into diplomatic talks, said a source with direct knowledge of the message.

Further tests could also be accompanied this year by another rocket launch, said the source, who has direct access to the top levels of government in both Beijing and Pyongyang.

North Korea conducted its third nuclear test on Tuesday, drawing global condemnation and a stern warning from the United States that it was a threat and a provocation.

"It's all ready. A fourth and fifth nuclear test and a rocket launch could be conducted soon, possibly this year," the source said, adding that the fourth nuclear test would be much larger than the third, at an equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT.

The tests will be undertaken, the source said, unless Washington holds talks with North Korea and abandons its policy of what Pyongyang sees as attempts at regime change.

North Korea also reiterated its long-standing desire for the United States to sign a final peace agreement with it and establish diplomatic relations, he said. North Korea remains technically at war with both the United States and South Korea after the Korean war ended in 1953 with a truce.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged North Korea to "refrain from additional provocative actions that would violate its international obligations" under three different sets of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit nuclear and missile tests.

North Korea "is not going to achieve anything in terms of the health, welfare, safety, future of its own people by these kinds of continued provocative actions. It's just going to lead to more isolation," Nuland told reporters.

The Pentagon also weighed in, calling North Korea's missile and nuclear programs "a threat to U.S. national security and to international peace and security."

"The United States remains vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations and steadfast in our defense commitments to allies in the region," said Pentagon spokeswoman Major Catherine Wilkinson.

Initial estimates of this week's test from South Korea's military put its yield at the equivalent of 6-7 kilotons, although a final assessment of yield and what material was used in the explosion may be weeks away.

North Korea's latest test, its third since 2006, prompted warnings from Washington and others that more sanctions would be imposed on the isolated state. The U.N. Security Council has only just tightened sanctions on Pyongyang after it launched a long-range rocket in December.

Pyongyang is banned under U.N. sanctions from developing missile or nuclear technology after its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

North Korea worked to ready its nuclear test site, about 100 km (60 miles) from its border with China, throughout last year, according to commercially available satellite imagery. The images show that it may have already prepared for at least one more test, beyond Tuesday's subterranean explosion.

"Based on satellite imagery that showed there were the same activities in two tunnels, they have one tunnel left after the latest test," said Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University in South Korea.

Analysis of satellite imagery released on Friday by specialist North Korea website 38North showed activity at a rocket site that appeared to indicate it was being prepared for a launch (http://38north.org/2013/02/tonghae021413/).

NORTH 'NOT AFRAID' OF SANCTIONS

President Barack Obama pledged after this week's nuclear test "to lead the world in taking firm action in response to these threats" and diplomats at the U.N. Security Council have already started discussing potential new sanctions.

North Korea has said the test was a reaction to "U.S. hostility" following its December rocket launch. Critics say the rocket launch was aimed at developing technology for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

"(North) Korea is not afraid of (further) sanctions," the source said. "It is confident agricultural and economic reforms will boost grain harvests this year, reducing its food reliance on China."

North Korea's isolated and small economy has few links with the outside world apart from China, its major trading partner and sole influential diplomatic ally.

China signed up for international sanctions against North Korea after the 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests and for a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in January to condemn the latest rocket launch. However, Beijing has stopped short of abandoning all support for Pyongyang.

Sanctions have so far not discouraged North Korea from pursuing its nuclear ambitions.

"It is like watching the same movie over and over again," said Lee Woo-young, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies. "The idea that stronger sanctions make North Korea stop developing nuclear programs isn't effective in my view."

The source with ties to Beijing and Pyongyang said China would again support U.N. sanctions. He declined to comment on what level of sanctions Beijing would be willing to endorse.

"When China supported U.N. sanctions ... (North) Korea angrily called China a puppet of the United States," he said. "There will be new sanctions which will be harsh. China is likely to agree to it," he said, without elaborating.

He said however that Beijing would not cut food and fuel supplies to North Korea, a measure it reportedly took after a previous nuclear test.

He said North Korea's actions were a distraction for China's leadership, which was concerned that the escalations could inflame public opinion in China and hasten military build-ups in the region.

The source said he saw little room for compromise under North Korea's youthful new leader, Kim Jong-un. The third Kim to rule North Korea is just 30 years old and took over from his father in December 2011.

He appears to have followed his father, Kim Jong-il, in the "military first" strategy that has pushed North Korea ever closer to a workable nuclear missile at the expense of economic development.

"He is much tougher than his father," the source said.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Phillip Stewart in WASHINGTON; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, David Brunnstrom and Jackie Frank)

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Anti-North Korea leaflets launched on Kim's birthday

IMJINGAK, South Korea: North Korean defectors in the South launched 200,000 anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the tense inter-Korean border on Saturday, the birth anniversary of the North's late leader Kim Jong-Il.

The defectors used gas-filled balloons to float the leaflets along with $1 currency notes across the western border town of Imjingak, despite high tensions owing to the North's third nuclear test on Tuesday.

The balloons were inscribed with slogans such as "Stop provocative acts with missiles and nuclear tests", "North Koreans rise up" and "The Kim dynasty will soon collapse".

North Korea celebrates the birthdays of both late leaders -- Kim Jong-Il's on February 16 and his father Kim Il-Sung's on April 15 -- as major national holidays.

Kim Jong-Il, who died of heart attack in December 2011, was succeeded by his son Jong-Un.

Anti-Pyongyang activists momentarily suspended such leaflet launches until after the South's presidential election in December as the government urged them to halt such activities for fear of provoking Pyongyang.

North Korea has in the past threatened "merciless military strike" in response to anti-regime propaganda leaflets, with local residents warned to evacuate such areas.

The North conducted a third nuclear test on Tuesday, whose detonation power was much larger than those of two previous ones in 2006 and 2009.

Pyongyang said the test was a riposte to UN sanctions imposed after its launch of a long-range rocket in December, which it claimed was part of a legitimate space programme.

- AFP/ck

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Rains in Andhra Pradesh kill three, damage crops

HYDERABAD: Three people were killed and crops over hundreds of acres were damaged in the unseasonal rains that lashed parts of Andhra Pradesh since Friday evening, officials said on Saturday.

Two farmers died and six others were injured in Adilabad district of Telangana region when trees, uprooted by strong winds, fell on them.

A shepherd died in Warangal district in the same region.

The sudden showers came as a shock to farmers as standing crops in several districts were badly damaged.

Adilabad, Warangal, Karimnagar, Mahabubnagar and Nalgonda districts were the worst hit with groundnut, pigeon pea, black gram, corn and mango crops damaged over hundreds of acres. Chilli and turmeric farmers also suffered huge losses in districts like Guntur, Krishna and Khammam, officials of the agriculture department said.

The heavy downpour also damaged cotton kept at various markets in Telangana districts.

The cotton bags brought by farmers to the markets in Warangal and Mahabubnagar districts for sale were soaked in rains.

Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who is away in Delhi, spoke to chief secretary Minni Mathew over phone to review the situation. He directed her to depute officials for assessing the damages.

With the forecast of more rains over the next 24 hours, the chief minister directed the district collectors to be on alert to prevent loss of life and property.

Visakhapatnam Cyclone Warning Centre has forecast rains in many places in Telangana and Rayalaseema regions and isolated rains in coastal Andhra.

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States' choices set up national health experiment

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is unfolding as a national experiment with American consumers as the guinea pigs: Who will do a better job getting uninsured people covered, the states or the feds?

The nation is about evenly split between states that decided by Friday's deadline they want a say in running new insurance markets and states that are defaulting to federal control because they don't want to participate in "Obamacare." That choice was left to state governments under the law: Establish the market or Washington will.

With some exceptions, states led by Democrats opted to set up their own markets, called exchanges, and Republican-led states declined.

Only months from the official launch, exchanges are supposed to make the mind-boggling task of buying health insurance more like shopping on Amazon.com or Travelocity. Millions of people who don't have employer coverage will flock to the new markets. Middle-class consumers will be able to buy private insurance, with government help to pay the premiums in most cases. Low-income people will be steered to safety net programs like Medicaid.

"It's an experiment between the feds and the states, and among the states themselves," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit ratings group that has devised an online tool used by many federal workers to pick their health plans. Krughoff is skeptical that either the feds or the states have solved the technological challenge of making the purchase of health insurance as easy as selecting a travel-and-hotel package.

Whether or not the bugs get worked out, consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect Jan. 1. That's also when two other major provisions of the law kick in: the mandate that almost all Americans carry health insurance, and the rule that says insurers can no longer turn away people in poor health.

Barring last-minute switches that may not be revealed until next week, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have opted to run their own markets or partner with the Obama administration to do so.

Twenty-six states are defaulting to the feds. But in several of those, Republican governors are trying to carve out some kind of role by negotiating with federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Utah's status is unclear. It received initial federal approval to run its own market, but appears to be reconsidering.

"It's healthy for the states to have various choices," said Ben Nelson, CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. "And there's no barrier to taking somebody else's ideas and making them work in your situation." A former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Nelson was one of several conservative Democrats who provided crucial votes to pass the overhaul.

States setting up their own exchanges are already taking different paths. Some will operate their markets much like major employers run their health plans, as "active purchasers" offering a limited choice of insurance carriers to drive better bargains. Others will open their markets to all insurers that meet basic standards, and let consumers decide.

Obama's Affordable Care Act remains politically divisive, but state insurance exchanges enjoy broad public support. Setting up a new market was central to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts. There, it's known as the Health Connector.

A recent AP poll found that Americans prefer to have states run the new markets by 63 percent to 32 percent. Among conservatives the margin was nearly 4-1 in favor of state control. But with some exceptions, including Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, Republican-led states are maintaining a hands-off posture, meaning the federal government will step in.

"There is a sense of irony that it's the more conservative states" yielding to federal control, said Sandy Praeger, the Republican insurance commissioner in Kansas, a state declining to run its own exchange. First, she said, the law's opponents "put their money on the Supreme Court, then on the election. Now that it's a reality, we may see some movement."

They're not budging in Austin. "Texas is not interested in being a subcontractor to Obamacare," said Lucy Nashed, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who remains opposed to mandates in the law.

In Kansas, Praeger supported a state-run exchange, but lost the political struggle to Gov. Sam Brownback. She says Kansans will be closely watching what happens in neighboring Colorado, where the state will run the market. She doubts that consumers in her state would relish dealing with a call center on the other side of the country. The federal exchange may have some local window-dressing but it's expected to function as a national program.

Christine Ferguson, director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, says she expects to see a big shift to state control in the next few years. "Many of the states have just run out of time for a variety of reasons," said Ferguson. "I'd be surprised if in the longer run every state didn't want to have its own approach."

In some ways, the federal government has a head start on the states. It already operates the Medicare Plan Finder for health insurance and prescription plans that serve seniors, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Both have many of the features of the new insurance markets.

Administration officials are keeping mum about what the new federal exchange will look like, except that it will open on time and people in all 50 states will have the coverage they're entitled to by law.

Joel Ario, who oversaw planning for the health exchanges in the Obama administration, says "there's a rich dialogue going on" as to what the online shopping experience should look like. "To create a website like Amazon is a very complicated exercise," said Ario, now a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions.

He thinks consumers should be able to get one dollar figure for each plan that totals up all their expected costs for the year, including premiums, deductibles and copayments. Otherwise, scrolling through pages of insurance jargon online will be a sure turn-off.

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