Kabang, who lost half her face after jumping in front of a motorcycle to save the lives of two girls, received a rousing welcome Monday in Zamboanga, a city in the southern Philippines.

The mixed-breed came back from months-long treatment at the University of California, Davis, veterinary hospital, paid for with $27,000 in donations raised in the Philippines and abroad. She was reunited with her owner, Rudy Bunggal, and the girls she saved from the accident in December 2011 the owner's daughter, Dina, and cousin Princess Diansing.

"She is not just my friend, she is like a part of our family," 13-year-old Dina Bunggal said. "I am very thankful to her, because without her, maybe I will not be alive today."

Kabang and Rudy Bunggal rode in the back of a pickup truck festooned with yellow balloons to the Municipal Hall, where Mayor Celso Lobregat bestowed the title "Pride of Zamboanga" on the dog.

Motorcycles and cars took part in the motorcade that drove Kabang through the port city. Residents snapped photos of the dog and kids petted her. At the mayor's office, Kabang was given a bag of treats.

But all is not well in Kabang's household.

Rudy Bunggal, who told reporters he was struggling with drinking and financial problems, asked the veterinarian who had accompanied Kabang to the U.S., Anton Lim, to temporarily care for the dog.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer also quoted Bunggal's wife, Christina, as saying the couple has separated.

The husband, who worked as a mechanic, now lives alone in a shanty and found a new job as a construction worker, earning less than $5 a day.

___

Online:

http://www.careforkabang.com

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Toddlers are less likely to have asthma and itchy rashes if their parents "cleaned" their pacifiers by sucking on them when the kids were infants, a small new study suggests.

The findings don't prove that technique protects kids against asthma, eczema or other allergies. But researchers said it's possible the transfer of mouth microbes from parents to baby may help boost the bacterial diversity of the young child's digestive system and foster immunity.

"We know these bacteria are important for development," said Dr. Wilfried Karmaus from the University of Memphis, who has studied asthma and eczema but wasn't involved in the new research.

Being delivered through a vaginal birth, for example, exposes babies to more of their moms' bacteria and has been linked to fewer allergies in childhood. But no one has ever looked at transfer of bacteria through pacifiers, Karmaus said.

For the new study, researchers recruited pregnant women at one Swedish hospital and followed them and their children through phone calls and exams over three years. The 184 infants in the study were particularly allergy-prone: 80 percent had at least one parent with allergies.

When the babies were six months old, 65 parents reported "cleaning" their pacifiers by sucking on them. Most parents also said they rinsed pacifiers with tap water.

The children were then brought in for allergy testing at 18 and 36 months of age.

At the first visit, 46 of them had eczema and 10 had asthma symptoms. Kids whose pacifiers had been sucked on by parents were 63 percent less likely to have eczema at 18 months and 88 percent less likely to have asthma, compared to the children of parents who didn't use that cleaning technique.

By 36 months, the difference had gone away for asthma. Parental pacifier sucking was still tied to a 49-percent lower chance of a child having eczema, researchers led by Dr. Bill Hesselmar from Queen Silvia Children's Hospital in Gothenburg found.

There was no clear link between parents' pacifier cleaning method and babies' sensitization to common allergens, such as cat and dog dander or eggs and peanuts, at either age.

In a smaller analysis of 33 infants, the researchers found that babies whose parents did or didn't suck on their pacifiers had different types of bacteria living in their mouths, the group reported Monday in Pediatrics.

"With the different oral flora, it supports the hypothesis and the findings," Hesselmar told Reuters Health.

Still, he said the study can't prove the pacifier cleaning method protected kids against asthma and eczema, and that it's too early to recommend this technique to parents.

"It's always hard to tell if it's the only explanation, but we have tried to analyze as many other possibilities as we can think of," he said.

"This is a simple measure which is really, really nice," Karmaus said. "But we need a trial to be really sure that this is protective."

A gold-standard trial would involve randomly assigning some parents to regularly clean pacifiers by sucking on them and others to never use that method. In the current study, Karmaus said, it's possible parents who decided on their own to suck on their child's pacifier were different from parents who didn't in other important, allergy-related ways.

"It could be that these parents have more time with their children, a less stressful relationship with their children, hug their children more or whatever," he told Reuters Health.

For now, he said, parents should know that using their mouth to clean an infant's pacifier may be worth trying - and at the very least, shouldn't be harmful.

That technique may also be a necessity from time to time, Karmaus noted.

"Sometimes you take two or three pacifiers with you but if all are dirty and your child is crying, there's nothing you can do" but clean it yourself.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online May 6, 2013.

The Austrian parachutist known as "Fearless Felix" reached 843.6 mph, according to official numbers released Monday. That's equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.

His top speed initially was estimated at 10 mph slower at 834 mph, or Mach 1.24.

Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and hopped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute "quite remarkable," according to Brian Utley, the record-keeping official who was present for the Oct. 14 feat.

The 43-year-old's heart rate remained below 185 beats a minute, and his breathing was fairly steady.

The leap was from an altitude of 127,852 feet. That's 248 feet lower than original estimates, but still stratospheric.

"He jumped from a little bit lower, but he actually went a little bit faster, which was pretty exciting," said Art Thompson, technical project director for the Red Bull-sponsored project.

"It's fun for us to see reaching Mach speeds and proving out a lot of the safety systems," Thompson said in a phone interview from his aerospace company in Lancaster, Calif.

Thompson said everything pretty much unfolded as anticipated, with no big surprises in the final report. The updated records were provided by Utley, official observer for the National Aeronautic Association's contest and records board. Utley was in Roswell, N.M., for Baumgartner's grand finale following two test jumps.

Based on all the data collected from sensors on Baumgartner's suit, Utley determined that Baumgartner was 34 seconds into his jump when he reached Mach 1. The speed for breaking the sound barrier depends on the temperature at a given altitude; for Baumgartner, that came together just shy of 110,000 feet.

He reached peak speed by the time he was at 91,300 feet, 50 seconds into the jump, and was back to subsonic by 75,300 feet, give or take, 64 seconds into his free fall.

His entire free fall lasted four minutes, 20 seconds. He used a parachute to cover the final 5,000 feet, landing on his feet in the desert outside Roswell.

Not everything went well.

Baumgartner went into a dreaded flat spin while still supersonic. He spun for 13 seconds at approximately 60 revolutions per minute, making 14 to 16 spins before using his body to regain control, Thompson said. The skydiver was well within safety limits the entire time, he noted. Baumgartner's brain remained under 2G, or two times the force of gravity, during the spin.

If the flat spin had lasted longer and been more severe exceeding six continuous seconds at 3.5 G Baumgartner's drogue, or stabilizing, parachute would have deployed automatically. Doctors worried about him blacking out and suffering a stroke or, in the case of a suit tear, his blood boiling at such an extreme altitude. The outside temperature registered as low as minus 96 Fahrenheit.

In the foreword of the 71-page report, Baumgartner said he never imagined how many people would share in his dream to make a supersonic free fall from so high.

Some 52 million people watched YouTube's live stream of the exploit.

The scientific and engineering experts who helped bring him back alive "broke boundaries in their own fields just as surely as I broke the sound barrier," Baumgartner wrote.

Baumgartner shattered the previous record set by Joe Kittinger, an Air Force officer, in 1960. Kittinger did not quite reach supersonic speed during his jump from 19.5 miles up.

Kittinger noted in the Red Bull Stratos report (Stratos for stratosphere) that future work is needed to test a stabilizing parachute for use at extreme altitudes.

The private project was aimed, from the start, at helping future space crews whether NASA or commercial survive high-altitude accidents.

If a highly trained jumper like Baumgartner with 2,500 jumps couldn't prevent a flat spin, "an astronaut, pilot or space tourist could not overcome this spinning probability," Kittinger wrote.

Thompson agreed, noting that given the right safety gear and the right conditions, there's "a remote possibility" a space crew could survive even under such harsh circumstances as were faced by the space shuttle Columbia astronauts.

All seven astronauts perished as Columbia returned to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003. One of the crew, Laurel Clark, was married to the former NASA flight surgeon who led Baumgartner's medical team, Dr. Jonathan Clark.

"You never know what the possibilities are ... that's the direction we need to look at," Thompson said.

___

Online:

http://www.redbullstratos.com/

Michael Adebowale, 22, was charged late Wednesday by counterterrorism officers and will appear in court on Thursday, police said. He is one of two main suspects in the killing of Lee Rigby, 25, who was struck by a car and stabbed to death last week near his barracks in southeast London's Woolwich district.

Gruesome images that emerged after the attack showed two men wielding bloody knives and meat cleavers. Both men were shot and wounded by police.

Suspect Michael Adebolajo, 28, remains hospitalized in stable condition. Adebowale was discharged from a hospital Tuesday and taken into custody. Adebowale also was charged with a firearms offense related to possessing a 9.4 mm revolver with the intent "to cause persons to believe that unlawful violence would be used," police said in a statement announcing the charges.

The charges, coming just hours after police said Rigby's autopsy showed he died from "multiple incised wounds," shed further light on the frenzied attack.

Witnesses reported seeing the soldier struck by a car, then set upon by two men wielding long knives and cleavers. Adebolajo, bloodied and clutching a cleaver, was seen in a video boasting about the attack and railing against the government.

The attack has raised questions about whether Britain's intelligence services could have done more to prevent Rigby's murder. British officials said the two main suspects had been known to them for some time as part of previous investigations.

Kenyan police have said they believed Adebolajo, a British citizen, had earlier associated with a radical Kenyan Muslim cleric who tried to help him join an al-Qaida-linked rebel group in neighboring Somalia.

Police said an inquest on Rigby's death will open Friday. In Britain, inquests are conducted to establish the circumstances surrounding unexpected or violent deaths.

Ten people have been arrested in the case, including the two main suspects. Two were released and several others have been set free on bail pending further inquiries.

One of the men arrested for questioning in the case released a statement through his lawyer Wednesday proclaiming his innocence. Hayden Allen, 21, said he wanted to send his condolences to Rigby's family.

"My family are wholly uninvolved," said Allen, who has not been charged and is free on bail. "I ask that the police continue to investigate and that my family be allowed without harassment to continue their lives."

Rigby's murder has raised racial enmities in many parts of England, with far-right groups mobilizing to protest. The English Defense League, a right-wing group with strong anti-Islam leanings, has held a series of protests, while Muslim community organizations have reported a surge in attacks and harassment.

One mosque in the northern England town of Grimsby was firebombed, and the word "ISLAM" was daubed in big red letters across the Royal Air Force Bomber Command memorial in London's Green Park, near Buckingham Palace.

Two people have been charged in the arson attack. It was unclear who was responsible for the graffiti.

Hackers have also posted a purported list of English Defense League leaders and supporters online. The list was at least partially genuine, according to English Defense League supporter Glen Warren, 32, whose name and phone number were among those posted.

Amid the unrest, British prison officers have been warned to be on the lookout after a hostage drama blamed on extremist Muslim inmates, British newspapers reported Wednesday.

An email to high-security prisons and young offenders' institutes warned that Sunday's incident at Full Sutton detention facility in the northern England region of Yorkshire was linked to religious extremism and warned of an increased risk of attacks at other institutions, according to several British papers, including The Yorkshire Post and The Times.

"Three Muslim prisoners took an officer hostage in an office. Their demands indicated they supported radical Islamist extremism," the letter was quoted as saying. "All staff are reminded to remain vigilant to the increased risk of potential attacks on prison officers inspired by these and last Wednesday's events."

The hostage-takers' demands have not been disclosed. Britain's Ministry of Justice declined to comment on the email.

___

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Banks have failed, the yen has fallen and Japan's economy has collapsed, leading to political turmoil. Its great ally, the United States, abandons it. Then comes the final straw: an attack by North Korean guerrillas posing as Korean tourists.

"From the Fatherland, With Love", by veteran Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, chronicles the political fumbling that is the Japanese government's response and the eventual counterattack by a motley group of homeless, psychotic misfits using largely homemade weapons.

The book is written at least partly from the point of view of the North Koreans, echoing this year's Pulitzer prize-winning novel: "The Orphan Master's Son," by Adam Johnson.

Murakami, 61, who has played in rock bands and dabbled in filmmaking, is often referred to as the "enfant terrible" of Japanese literature for the dark, satiric lens he turns on Japanese society. He spoke with Reuters about his book.

Q: You've said before that all your books start from a "seed," what was the seed for this one?

A: After the end of the bubble economy, Japan - economically, politically and socially - has had a sense of being stalled. Many seriously unsettled misfits have emerged and there are crimes as a result. There hasn't been anything big like terrorism yet, but I wondered about a group of dangerous young people getting together and doing something. On top of that, I'd had (in mind) a vague story about the North Korean High Command invading a Japanese city, Fukuoka. I started feeling that I'd like to write about those misfits facing off with the North Koreans.

Q: And from there?

A: I'd thought as far as North Korea attacking, but if the real North Korean army came, it would just turn into an ordinary war. There was a Hollywood movie just at that time with Michael Caine, and they were trying to kidnap Churchill. German soldiers dressed in English uniforms and pretending to be English military, and that became a hint for me. If you have a group of soldiers who are basically set up as rebels, that allows the government to disown them - and that intrigued me. It wouldn't become a war. If it became a war, it would just turn into a war novel. I also thought the Japanese government would end up in a very tight spot this way.

Q: North Korea, as it has shown up in novels like "The Orphan Master's Son", is really still an unknown country. How did you manage to come up with the North Korean characters?

A: I read a lot of books. A lot of books. There's also North Korean movies that most people can't see - but there's one store in Tokyo that sells those movies. I must have seen 10 movies or so. As a result, I got a pretty good idea of peoples' lives. Scenes of Pyongyang and the countryside show up in the news, and of course I also spoke with refugees from North Korea in the South. They'd always been asked about their escapes, apparently - how and why - but instead I asked about their lives, where they lived, please draw a map of the towns, diagram your houses, and so on. They all thought I was a spy.

Q: Does the fact that the misfits fight back instead of the government to repel these invaders symbolize something?

A: In principle, governments and companies are supposed to guide their organization in a certain direction and have an image of what that direction is. The basic reason Japan's government is dysfunctional is that they don't really seem to understand which direction they should move in.

In most novels, if it was just entertainment, somebody like James Bond emerges and fights everybody. I didn't want to write that kind of book, I wanted the irony of these homeless and really rather strange misfits ending up doing the fighting.

Q: Was envisioning North Korea the hardest part?

A: The North Korean High Command are the ones that tell all the stories, that made things very difficult ... They tell all the stories as if they're the only main characters. But of course there are plenty of things all people have in common - taking care of their parents, falling in love. We all have basic things in common - that we're sad if our mother dies, it hurts if you break a bone, your own son and daughter are unbelievably dear to you. So I wrote based on that, and on the movies that showed a special North Korean way of thought.

Q: Can anybody outside of North Korea understand it? Perhaps the only way is through literature.

A: Nobody really knows the truth there...The thing I think of most vividly is something that happened when the commandos, pretending to be Korean tourists, checked into the hotel. One of them touches some tissues sitting there. It's the softest thing he's ever touched in his life. There's nothing like that in North Korea. First of all they were surprised that Japan had the skills to make something like this, but then they also realized that they would never lose to people who were so soft as to use fluffy paper like this. The tissue paper is a very simple symbol that shows the distance and difference between the two countries. And when I wrote that, it was a hint to me of how to enter the minds of the commandos. I figured that would allow me to really figure out how they thought.

Q: By using this kind of device in literature, you can actually approach close to the truth.

A: Yes. It's all a question of imagination.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

Confused? So are President Barack Obama, the Internal Revenue Service and members of the very Congress that has been enacting contradictory laws on the subject for decades.

"We have not done a good job, I think, of putting out guidance on even how to figure out what 'primarily' means," Steven Miller, IRS acting director until Obama recently replaced him, told the Senate Finance Committee last month.

The puzzlement over the requirements, which Obama recently called "a bunch of ambiguity," is one sub-plot in the outcry over the IRS' heavy-handed treatment of tea party and other conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status from 2010 to 2012.

No one defends how the IRS purposely looked for conservative groups and demanded details about donors, website postings and other queries that the agency has conceded were inappropriately intrusive. Yet tax experts, former IRS officials and others agree that the rules governing political activities by tax-exempt groups including a welter of vague government regulations are maddeningly hard to follow.

"It's good for lawyers, it's hard for organizations" trying to qualify for tax-exempt designation, said Abby Levine, who advises scores of liberal groups as legal director of the Alliance for Justice.

Part of the confusion stems from Congress' reaction to New York University Law School's entry into the noodle business but more on that later.

In the spotlight is a revenue code section that has become increasingly attractive to many organizations, 501(c)(4), which grants tax-exempt status to so-called social welfare groups. Many organizations targeted recently by the IRS sought that designation.

Over the years, such groups have been allowed to participate in overt election campaign activity as long as they focus mostly on social welfare one of many broadly defined terms in this arena. While many groups engage seldom or never in politics, those who do, enjoy a valuable benefit: Donors can remain anonymous.

After the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision allowing unfettered political spending by companies and unions, campaign expenditures by social welfare groups mushroomed. Between the 2008 and 2012 elections, it tripled to $254 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The IRS received 3,357 applications for Section 501(c)(4) status last year, nearly double the number in 2010, according to the Treasury Department.

Yet even as interest in the designation has grown, uncertainty over its requirements has remained.

The story behind the confusion began in 1913, when Congress enacted legislation laying the groundwork for the modern income tax.

Exempted from the corporate income tax were nonprofit organizations, including those "operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare." An IRS history says it is assumed that provision was requested by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Fast forward to 1947, when wealthy graduates donated the C.F. Mueller Co., a pasta maker, to the NYU law school. That transaction, and a court ruling letting NYU keep its Mueller profits tax-free, helped call attention to the tax treatment of nonprofits.

NYU and other nonprofits had been fattening their coffers through ownership of factories, department store chains, cattle ranches, the Encyclopedia Britannica and other profitable businesses on which they were not paying taxes. One congressional estimate put the lost tax revenue at $173 million a year, a large sum at the time.

Urged on by President Harry Truman, Congress passed a law in 1950 allowing some nonprofits to keep unrelated businesses if they paid income tax on them.

But that left a contradiction: a 1913 statute saying groups must operate "exclusively" for social welfare purposes and the 1950 law saying they could do unrelated things, as long as they paid taxes on the profits.

"So 'exclusively' couldn't mean 'exclusively,' because later law acknowledged these organizations could engage in other activities" if you tax them, said Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor and expert on tax-exempt organizations at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

The government soon faced another issue a 1954 revamping of the entire federal tax code. Feeling a need to overhaul tax regulations, the Treasury Department issued new ones in 1959.

The new regulations addressed the two laws defining nonprofits by, for the first time, saying groups need only be "primarily engaged in promoting in some way the common good and general welfare." The rules permit "direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns" for or against candidates, as long as that isn't the group's principal activity.

"Congress made no effort to harmonize those statutes," said Marcus S. Owens, a Washington tax attorney who spent the last decade of his 25-year IRS career heading its tax-exempt organizations division. So the government adopted the "primarily" approach "as the only methodology they could think of to harmonize the statutes," Owens said.

Despite decades of IRS rulings and court cases refining the rules, definitions remain hazy for terms like "primarily," ''social welfare" and "intervention in political campaigns." Many lawyers, for example, say "primarily" means such groups can devote up to 49 percent of their resources to campaign activity, while others are more cautious.

"Social welfare" can include political issues if the work doesn't clearly support or oppose the election of a candidate. That is a blurry distinction in an age when sophisticated political ads tie politicians to specific viewpoints without explicitly calling for their defeat or re-election.

Mark W. Everson, IRS commissioner from 2003 to 2007, said there's a "virtue to vagueness," a view shared by many. "It's difficult to say you should write regulations or statutes that can contemplate all possible events."

The ambiguous wording serves another purpose too.

The IRS has removed tax-exempt status for groups supporting each major political party, including the conservative Christian Coalition and the Democratic Leadership Council. But the imprecision of the regulations makes that hard to do and makes it easier for groups to wade into politics, benefiting Democrats and Republicans alike, analysts say.

"Congress was pretty happy leaving it up to the IRS to enforce this case-by-case," Owens said. Because the IRS had dealt with groups that clearly overstep the boundaries, "there's been no incentive for Congress to dabble there" with additional fine-tuning, he added.

Owens said he's unaware of any congressional efforts to clarify the rules over the decades.

To this day the IRS investigates each group to see whether it is engaging in political activity, using tests such as whether an election is approaching or whether the group gives opposing candidates equal opportunities to participate in events. If it is, the agency determines whether politics is the group's primary activity a difficult judgment that can involve measuring money, time spent by workers and other factors.

"Congress put the IRS in the position of being the gatekeeper," said Gregory Colvin, a San Francisco attorney who has helped advise numerous nonprofit groups. He said that forces the agency to do "a huge job with an inadequate staff."

Colvin said he would prefer to see political activity restricted to an "insubstantial" part of their work, perhaps 15 percent.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look at how Washington works _ or doesn't.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and officers heading each branch of the military were to testify Tuesday on Capitol Hill, but it will be members of the Senate who will provide clues as to whether Congress embraces a far-reaching approach to limit the authority that commanders have to discipline the forces they lead.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is a proponent of ambitious legislation that would remove commanders from the process of deciding whether serious crimes, including sexual misconduct cases, go to trial. That judgment would rest with seasoned trial counsels who have prosecutorial experience and hold the rank of colonel or above.

The military has serious reservations about Gillibrand's plan, concerned that stripping commanders of some authority would make it difficult for them to maintain good order and discipline. Not so, say some lawmakers, who argue that the military's piecemeal approach clearly hasn't been the answer.

The Pentagon estimated in a recent report that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year, up from an estimated 19,000 assaults in 2012, based on an anonymous survey of military personnel. While the number of sexual assaults that members of the military actually reported rose 6 percent to 3,374 in 2012, thousands of victims were still unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs aimed at curbing the crimes, the report said.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., a co-sponsor of the Gillibrand bill and chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the legislation "bold" and "out of the box." She dismissed concerns that it goes too far in overhauling the military justice system, saying it's time to try a new approach to solving a problem that has persisted for years.

"I think 26,000 sexual assaults is going too far," Mikulski said. "And now there is even a criminal investigation of the football team at the Naval Academy, where we are training the next best."

A steady drumbeat of high-profile cases combined with the most recent statistics from the Pentagon have spurred Congress to move aggressively on legislation to deal with sexual assault in the military.

Last week, the Pentagon said the U.S. Naval Academy is investigating allegations that three football team members sexually assaulted a female midshipman at an off-campus house more than a year ago. A lawyer for the woman says she was "ostracized" on campus after she reported it.

In recent weeks, a soldier at the U.S. Military Academy was charged with secretly photographing women, including in a bathroom. The Air Force officer who led the service's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit was arrested on charges of groping a woman. And the manager of the Army's sexual assault response program at Fort Campbell, Ky., was relieved of his post after his arrest in a domestic dispute with his ex-wife.

Crucial will be the views of senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee such as Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and several of the female members such as Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Deb Fischer, R-Neb.

Levin declined Monday to say which of the proposals he supports. But he said there were appropriate questions to be asked about the impact on the military of curtailing the authority of commanders to discipline troops in their units.

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, top Republican on the committee, said he was wary of proposals to restrict the authority of commanders to discipline their troops.

"To take the commander out of the process will invite failure," Inhofe said in a speech on the Senate floor Monday. "These commanders have to make decisions to send our brave troops into battle. How ludicrous is it that we would say to our commanders, 'You've got to make a decision to send one of our kids into battle where they may end up losing their life, but you can't participate in the justice system of the troops.' It doesn't make any sense at all."

Gilibrand's legislation has 18 co-sponsors, including four Republicans.

In the House, Reps. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, and Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., have crafted legislation that would establish dismissal or dishonorable discharge as the mandatory minimum sentence under military law for service members found guilty of rape, sexual assault, forcible sodomy or an attempt to commit those offenses. Commanders also would be barred from reducing or commuting the minimum sentence except in situations in which the accused substantially aided the government in the investigation or prosecution of another assailant.

Their bill, however, stops short of taking those cases outside the military chain of command.

The plane, called , took off this morning (June 3) from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. It is scheduled to land at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport early Tuesday (June 4), at around 2:00 a.m. EDT (1:00 a.m. local time in Missouri), after roughly 21 hours in the air.

Today's flight is the third leg of Solar Impulse's unprecedented coast-to-coast expedition, which began at Moffett Airfield near San Francisco, Calif., on May 3. The plane landed in Phoenix the next day, and successfully completed its second leg, from Phoenix to Dallas, late last month. []

Solar Impulse is the first aircraft capable of flying day and night without using a single drop of fuel. Instead, the plane relies solely on its solar panels and onboard batteries for power. During today's flight, the aircraft is expected to reach a cruising altitude of 27,000 feet (8,230 meters).

Each leg of , and features commentary and information on the aircraft's position, altitude and speed. The live feed also provides camera views inside the cockpit and from Solar Impulse's mission control center in Switzerland.

En route to St. Louis

Solar Impulse founders Bertrand Piccard and Andr Borschberg will continue to alternate piloting the single-seater plane over the five legs of the cross-country journey, company officials said. Piccard was at the controls for today's takeoff from Dallas.

The multiplethat struck the St. Louis area Friday night (May 31), however, threatened to spoil the third leg of Solar Impulse's journey. The severe weekend storms damaged the airplane's reserved hangar at its destination in Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, company officials confirmed today.

Still, Piccard was able to take off as planned this morning, though fight controllers are paying close attention to weather conditions, and have said they will alter the plane's route if necessary.

"Postponing the flight is not an option, as the particularly difficult weather conditions in the region leave only very few flight possibilities between Dallas-Fort Worth and St. Louis, and it might be the only one this week," company officials said in a statement. "If Solar Impulse doesn't seize this opportunity, the chances of reaching [its] final destination of the Across America Mission as scheduled could be compromised."

Cross-country trip

Once Solar Impulse lands in St. Louis, an inflatable structure will be used to protect the aircraft from the elements.

"The Logistics and Mission teams are working hand-in-hand around the clock to face the challenge of bringing the airplane safely to St. Louis and ensuring its protection upon arrival," Solar Impulse officials said.

The stopover in St. Louis was chosen to honor the city's long and storied aviation history. Among the city's other contributions, St. Louis was home to Charles Lindbergh when he became the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris in his single-seater plane, The Spirit of St. Louis.

Solar Impulse's wings span roughly the same length as a 747 jetliner, and the aircraft generates roughly the same amount of power as a small scooter, company officials have said. Theis designed to highlight the potential for "clean technologies" and the benefits of renewable energy.

Later this month, Solar Impulse will fly from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. The fifth and last leg of the trip will end in New York City in late June or early July, company officials said.

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PARIS (Reuters) - If ever there was a year when Spanish dynamo David Ferrer might allow himself to dream a little it is this one.

Racing into the quarter-finals of the French Open without dropping a set, Ferrer has lived up to his top-four seeding and, with king of clay Rafa Nadal in the other half of the draw, the door to a first grand-slam final looks slightly ajar.

Ferrer cut towering South African Kevin Anderson down to size with a ruthless 6-3 6-1 6-1 victory on Sunday, playing almost perfect claycourt tennis to reach his sixth consecutive grand-slam quarter-final.

The 31-year-old Spaniard prefers to deal in reality though.

"I don't want to dream too much," Ferrer told reporters.

"I am so very happy to have reached the quarter-finals. Of course, reaching the finals here would be okay but I wouldn't say that I would not sleep at night thinking about it, or I would sleep better."

A quarter-final against a third fellow Spaniard so far, either Nicolas Almagro, against whom he enjoys a 14-0 career record, or Tommy Robredo, whom he leads 6-2, will certainly not be keeping him awake at night.

The 0-14 losing record against Swiss second seed Roger Federer, his potential semi-final rival, helps Ferrer to keep a sense of perspective but deep inside Ferrer must believe that one day his time will come.

In his five grand-slam semi-finals, Ferrer has lost three times to Novak Djokovic, once to Andy Murray and once to Nadal at Roland Garros last year.

He could be excused for cursing his luck at playing in an era containing three of the greatest players ever to swing a tennis racket, but Ferrer is not courting sympathy.

"Tennis doesn't owe me anything; tennis is one of the fairest sports. It's given me so many extraordinary feelings," he said.

Ferrer was at his miserly best against Anderson, offering up only 11 unforced errors in a relentless onslaught that made his opponent look like a fish out of water.

Twenty-third seed Anderson, the first South African to reach the last 16 since Wayne Ferreira in 1996, possesses one of the biggest serves in the game but it resembled a pea-shooter against Ferrer who broke it at will.

(Editing by Clare Fallon)

VIENNA (Reuters) - The evacuation of tens of thousands of people helped prevent rising cancer rates and other health problems after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, the world's worst in 25 years, U.N. scientists said on Friday.

Radiation exposure following the reactor meltdowns more than two years ago did not cause any immediate health effects, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said after its annual meeting.

That would be in contrast to Chernobyl, the 1986 Soviet reactor explosion which sent radioactive dust across much of Europe and is believed to have caused thyroid cancer in some children.

A magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, killed nearly 19,000 people and devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, spewing radiation and forcing about 160,000 people to flee their homes.

Actions to protect inhabitants in the area, including evacuation and sheltering, significantly reduced the exposure to radioactive substances, the scientific body said after the session to prepare a report for the U.N. General Assembly.

"These measures reduced the potential exposure by up to a factor of 10," said senior UNSCEAR member Wolfgang Weiss.

"If that had not been the case, we might have seen the cancer rates rising and other health problems emerging over the next several decades," he said in a statement.

Weiss, who chairs work on UNSCEAR's Fukushima report, told reporters that dose levels were "so low that we don't expect to see any increase in cancer in the future in the population".

UNSCEAR's findings appeared to differ somewhat from a World Health Organisation (WHO) report published in February which said people in the area worst affected have a slightly higher risk of developing certain cancers.

NO RADIATION-RELATED DEATHS

Weiss suggested the UNSCEAR study, carried out by 80 experts and with the involvement of five international organizations including the United Nations health agency, was based on information covering a longer period after the accident.

UNSCEAR's 27 member states scrutinised the draft during this week's session in Vienna, it said, adding it would be the most comprehensive scientific analysis of the issue so far.

While a few received very high doses, no radiation-related deaths or acute effects were observed among nearly 25,000 workers - including employees of the operator Tokyo Electric Power Co - involved at the accident site, it said.

Highlighting the differences between Chernobyl and Fukushima, Weiss said people close to the then Soviet plant were exposed to radioactive iodine that contaminated milk.

The thyroid - a gland in the neck that produces hormones that regulate vital body functions - is the most exposed organ as radioactive iodine concentrates there. Children are deemed especially vulnerable.

"In Chernobyl, many children used milk which had high iodine concentrations, resulting in high thyroid doses, resulting in an increase of thyroid cancer," Weiss said, adding that the doses in Japan were "much, much lower".

In Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries most affected by Chernobyl, more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer had been reported by 2005 in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, UNSCEAR says on its web site.

"Many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident," it adds.

(Editing by Alistair Lyon)