Democratic leader Harry Reid and Republican John McCain, longtime Johnson supporters, joined fellow boxing champions Lennox Lewis and Laila Ali, the daughter of retired boxing legend Muhammad Ali, in backing Tyson's petition on grassroots campaign website Change.org.

The petition says Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion of the world "is long overdue a pardon. Johnson paved the way for black boxers like me."

"Thanks to @MikeTyson for joining effort to pardon Jack Johnson's racially motivated conviction," McCain said on Twitter on Thursday.

"One great boxer standing up for another," Reid tweeted on Wednesday.

Reid and McCain, along with Senator William Cowan and U.S. Representative Peter King, introduced a resolution calling for Johnson's pardon in March. Pardons require presidential approval.

More than 1,400 people have signed the petition since Tyson launched it Wednesday.

Johnson, the world heavyweight champion from 1908 until 1915, was convicted in 1913 for transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. The law, meant to combat prostitution, was often used in the segregation era as a way to punish interracial couples.

Johnson, who was married three times, all to white women, was arrested in 1920 after seven years in exile and spent a year in jail. He died in 1946 at age 68.

At least two previous attempts to get Johnson pardoned have come to nothing in the past 10 years.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

The leaders signed a letter on Sunday expressing concern and saying policemen allegedly used force and prevented clergymen and pilgrims from entering places of worship during Holy Saturday earlier this month.

The event drew thousands of people to Jerusalem's Old City and hundreds of Israeli police were on guard during the day.

A spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, Paul Hirschson, says Israel apologized this week to Egypt for the incident on Holy Saturday, which involved a Coptic Egyptian cleric. He said the incident was being investigated.

Israeli police said they received no formal complaint about the incident.

WASHINGTON/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A trip to New Zealand will put America's chief prosecutor on the same soil as a flashy internet mogul who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges he assisted massive piracy of copyrighted movies and music.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visits New Zealand next week for an annual meeting of a "quintet" of attorneys general from mostly English-speaking countries - and not to meet up with the entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.

The founder of defunct file-sharing service Megaupload, Dotcom has oscillated between assailing Holder's trip and wanting to hear what he has to say in person.

It was unclear on Thursday whether Holder would appear in public. His speech at the University of Auckland is planned primarily for students and will be closed to the public and the media, although his U.S. speeches are usually open to the media.

In Twitter posts, Dotcom requested a ticket to the speech, offered to send T-shirts and an ethics manual to wherever Holder is staying and challenged his followers to film Holder while a Megaupload theme song plays for a $500 prize.

Dotcom tweeted that he would like to understand Holder's definition of cybercrime, one issue the quintet works on.

An extradition hearing for Dotcom is scheduled for August, although appeals could further delay it, said Ira Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload. He told Reuters by phone he had no reason to expect a meeting between Holder and Dotcom.

Holder declined an interview through a spokeswoman on Thursday. Federal prosecutors in Virginia who are handling the case declined to comment on how it is proceeding.

Dotcom got rich from founding Megaupload, which allowed users to upload and download movies, music, television shows, e-books and software. The site once commanded 4 percent of global online traffic before U.S. prosecutors shut it down.

The United States began a criminal copyright case against Dotcom in January 2012. At Washington's request, New Zealand law enforcement officers conducted a dramatic raid on his mansion outside Auckland.

Attempts to have him sent to the United States for trial were delayed after a New Zealand court last year found that New Zealand used unlawful warrants in his arrest and illegally spied on him in the lead-up to the raid.

PRECEDENT SETTER?

Dotcom and six associates face U.S. charges that they conspired to infringe copyrights, launder money and commit racketeering and fraud.

The copyright case could set a precedent for internet liability laws and, depending on its outcome, may force entertainment companies to rethink their distribution methods.

Dotcom maintains that Megaupload, which housed everything from family photos to Hollywood blockbusters, was merely a storage facility for online files, and should not be held accountable if content stored on the site was obtained illegally.

The Justice Department counters that Megaupload encouraged piracy by paying money to users who uploaded popular content and by deleting content that was not regularly downloaded.

It said Megaupload cost copyright holders such as movie studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds. It called the case among the largest ever involving criminal copyright.

Dotcom launched a new file-sharing service, Mega, in January.

Many New Zealanders view Dotcom, born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, as a folk hero fighting for online freedom and willing to stand up to the U.S. and New Zealand governments.

Dotcom, who has been released on bail and is suing the New Zealand government for illegal surveillance, predicted Holder would keep a low profile during his visit.

"It's probably risk management and avoidance of bad PR because the story has not yet arrived in any big way in the U.S. media," he wrote in an email to Reuters. "Any bad coverage here might spill over to the U.S."

Holder's visit to Dotcom's country of residence is not his choice. The attorneys general of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States began meeting as a quintet in 2009 to discuss legal matters including cybercrime.

After a gathering in Ottawa last year, it was New Zealand's turn to host.

(Reporting by David Ingram in Washington and Naomi Tajitsu in Wellington; Editing by Howard Goller and Xavier Briand)

These are just a couple of examples of the emergency cases Dr. Karen Halligan has seen involving household items that seem harmless until an animal decides to munch on them.

Hundreds of pets undergo surgery every year to remove small articles of clothing and other objects from their stomachs and intestines, said Halligan, author, TV consultant and director of veterinary services for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Los Angeles.

"It's very common in private practice and in large institutions to be removing non-food items out of dogs and cats," she said.

It also can be very dangerous.

Ingested clothing and fabric items, for instance, won't show up on X-rays. Within 48 hours, a pet that has consumed a piece of clothing will develop symptoms like vomiting, loss of appetite, lethargy, fever and depression.

If caught early, a vet can remove the item from inside the animal and everything will be fine. If not, the pet's intestines will start to die because blood can't get through, Halligan said. Removing the intestine is an option if the obstruction is eventually found.

If left untreated, the problem can be fatal because of dehydration or bacteria leaking into the stomach, causing peritonitis.

"We had one Great Dane. Three times we had to cut him (open) for his mother's shoulder pads. He loved his mother's shoulders pads," Halligan said.

And surgeries to remove or dislodge things that pets swallow are not cheap.

"We are talking $2,500 to $5,000 at the least," Halligan said.

Socks are probably the most popular pet-pilfered pieces of clothing across the country. They're especially irresistible to pets after they've been worn. "It's the scent that attracts them," Halligan said.

One of Halligan's older clients came in with his toy poodle and said the dog ate one of his tube socks.

"I was skeptical. I X-rayed, and it didn't show up. But he was absolutely certain. He was adamant," she said.

Halligan said she made the dog vomit and "sure enough, we pulled a foot-long tube sock out of this miniature apricot poodle, and the dog was fine."

X-rays quite clearly show many other things pets swallow.

In March, Tim Kelleher's 13-year-old Jack Russell terrier got sick and he rushed him to the vet. X-rays showed the dog had eaten a pile of pennies.

Dr. Amy Zalcman at BluePearl Veterinary Partners in New York used a camera attached to a net to fish 111 pennies out of Jack's stomach. Scooping up five at a time, it took a couple of hours.

Letting the coins pass could have killed Jack because pennies made after 1982 contain toxic zinc.

Zalcman didn't check the dates on the pennies, "but many were corroded, suggesting that they were being digested," she said.

Jack goes jogging daily and eats the best holistic food on the market, but he's got a voracious appetite and is always licking things off the floor, Kelleher said.

The day the long-legged, broken-coat terrier ate the pennies, Kelleher had left a sack with a few bagel crumbs on his desk. While going after it, Jack knocked over a jar of pennies. As Jack licked the crumbs off the floor, he slurped up the pennies too.

Kelleher thought he had "Jackproofed" his apartment. But just a few days ago, the dog ate a whole bag of hamburger rolls after pulling it off a kitchen counter.

While some human foods are fine for pets, others, like chocolate, can be deadly to dogs and cats.

For those who keep flower bouquets in the house, eating just one lily can kill a cat. Preservative packets for the water in the vase also can make animals sick if they drink it.

In seven years of emergency veterinary medicine, Zalcman has removed a variety of items from pets, including jewelry, condoms and a new No. 2 pencil with an eraser. Some of her colleagues have retrieved forks and blades, she said.

In Halligan's 24 years as a vet, the most unusual object she had to retrieve from a dog's stomach was a Mickey Mouse hat.

"You could see the plastic parts on the X-ray," Halligan said.

___

Online:

http:://www.dochalligan.com

http://newyork.bluepearlvet.com

The Ukrainian was never troubled by Pianeta, finishing off the previously unbeaten Italian southpaw with a right-left combination. Pianeta stayed down before attempting to continue, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable and referee Ernie Sharif ended the bout 2:52 into the round.

"Francesco tried. He has a fighting heart," Klitschko said. "He's a positive example in boxing. I'm sure he's learned a lot and that he has a great future ahead of him."

Klitschko rocked Pianeta inside the first 30 seconds, knocked him to the canvas with a straight right down the middle in the fourth, and again with a left blow in the fifth.

The 37-year-old Klitschko improved to 60-3 after his 52nd knockout, while Pianeta dropped to 28-1-1.

"I'm very disappointed and sad," said Pianeta, a cancer survivor who lives in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. "I can't say anything. It wasn't my day. He's the world champion. It wasn't enough. That was rubbish today."

The fighters worked together briefly last year and Klitschko tried to be kind to his former sparring partner.

"Francesco wasn't easy to box," Klitschko said. "He punched with the hardest punches I've ever felt. Luckily, they didn't hit me."

Vitali Klitschko, who holds the WBC belt, said he had no worries ahead of his younger brother's 23rd championship bout.

"My brother was very strong," Vitali Klitschko said. "Francesco has a big heart. You have to pay him respect."

Next up for the younger Klitschko is a likely bout with mandatory challenger Alexander Povetkin of Russia, the "regular" WBA champion after Klitschko was elevated to "super champion" status.

Over the weekend, the Syrian Electronic Army, a mysterious collection of hackers who support embattled President Bashar al-Assad, took control of several Twitter accounts belonging to The Guardian and its staffers.

— The Guardian (@guardian)

"We will keep hacking #Twitter accounts and cause for you problems if you keep suspending our accounts #SEA," one tweet from a Guardian account, since deleted, .

The BBC, NPR, CBS, and the Associated Press have all been  in recent weeks. Most notably, the SAE claimed credit for sending alast week that claimed President Obama had been wounded in an attack on the White House. That tweet sent stock markets tumbling, albeit briefly, as investors scrambled to verify whether bombs had, in fact, erupted in the White House.

Formed in 2011, the SAE has a nebulous relationship with the Assad regime. The SAEas "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria."

However, there's little hard evidence to tie the group directly to Assad. One researcher who has followed the SAE since its inceptionit clearly seemed like the two had some link, though he cautioned that the relationship was mostly one of "tacit support." 

While social media has increasingly played a role as unrest continues in the Middle East, the SAE is unique in that it is working to defend the government, not to topple it.

From the :

But unlike Tunisia, Egypt and Libya — whose former regimes were caught badly off guard — Assad's government has been fighting back. It has created an increasingly rambunctious group of counter-revolutionary hackers. These hackers have a twin function: To punish western news organizations seen as critical of Syria's regime, and to spread Damascus's alternative narrative. This says that the war in Syria isn't a popular uprising against a brutal, despotic family-military dynasty but rather an attempt by Islamist terrorists to turn Syria into a crazy al Qaeda fiefdom. []

And as The Guardian itselfin acknowledging it had been hacked, reporters there have frequently covered alleged crimes committed by the Assad regime, and even published leaked e-mails from his close advisers.

View this article onGetIssues of The Week

Other stories from this section:

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More parents of teen girls not fully vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) are intending to forgo the shots altogether - a trend driven by vaccine safety concerns, new research suggests.

That's despite multiple studies showing the vaccine isn't tied to any serious side effects but does protect against the virus that causes cervical cancer, researchers said.

"There were a lot of very sensationalized anecdotal reports of (girls) having bad reactions to the vaccine," said pediatrician and vaccine researcher Dr. Amanda Dempsey from the University of Colorado Denver.

"Safety concerns have always risen to the top of the pile, in terms of being one of the main reasons people don't get vaccinated, which is unfortunate because this is one of the most well-studied vaccines in terms of safety and is extremely safe," Dempsey, who wasn't involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all kids - both boys and girls - receive three HPV shots as preteens.

Researchers led by Dr. Paul Darden from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City got their data from a national immunization survey that involved phone calls to almost 100,000 parents.

They found that from 2008 to 2010, the percentage of teens who were up to date on their Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis), MCV4 (meningococcal) and HPV vaccines all increased slightly.

Still, about three-quarters of girls ages 13 to 17 were not up to date on their HPV series in 2010. And the proportion of parents of those girls who said they didn't plan to get their daughters the rest - or any - of their HPV shots rose from 40 percent to 44 percent, the research team wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

At the same time, the proportion who cited safety concerns as their reason for abstaining from getting the HPV vaccine increased from less than five percent to 16 percent.

For all three vaccines asked about in the survey, other reasons parents gave for skipping their teenagers' shots included not thinking they were necessary, not having had a specific vaccine recommended by a doctor and, for the HPV vaccine, believing their child was not sexually active.

"These are wonderful vaccines preventing severe diseases," Darden told Reuters Health in an email. "HPV is the first vaccine that will prevent cancer which is a tremendous health benefit."

Dempsey said past research has suggested that although more girls are being vaccinated against HPV, vaccine rates haven't increased as quickly as for other shots, such as Tdap.

Darden reports having been a consultant for Pfizer, and one of his co-authors is on a safety monitoring board for vaccine studies funded by Merck, which makes Gardasil, one of the HPV vaccines.

Parents shouldn't rely on the media or Internet to learn about vaccines, according to Dempsey, since it's hard to tell what information is legitimate.

"If they have questions or concerns, they should trust their provider to give them accurate information about the vaccine," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online March 18, 2013.

That most intriguing one is called Kepler-62f, a rocky world just 1.4 times bigger than Earth that circles a star smaller and dimmer than the sun. Kepler-62f's newfound neighbor, Kepler-62e, is just 1.6 times larger than Earth, making the pair among the smallestyet found in their star's habitable zone the just-right range of distances where liquid water can exist on a world's surface.

Kepler-62e and f, which are part of a newly discovered five-planet system, "look very good as possibilities for looking for life," said Kepler science principal investigator Bill Borucki, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. []

The third potentially habitable planet, called Kepler-69c, is 1.7 times bigger than Earth and orbits a star similar to our own. It's the smallest world ever found in the habitable zone of a sunlike star, researchers said, and represents a big step toward discovering the first-ever "."

"We're moving very rapidly toward finding an Earth analogue around a star like ," Borucki told SPACE.com.

Researchers announced these newfound planets all three of which are "," or worlds slightly larger than our own today at a NASA news conference. The Kepler-62 discovery paper, led by Borucki, was also published today in the journal Science.

The three potentially habitable worlds are part of a larger haul. All told, the scientists rolled out seven new exoplanets today five in the Kepler-62 system and two in Kepler-69.

Alien water worlds?

The five newfound planets in the Kepler-62 system, which is located about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, range from 0.54 to 1.95 times the size of Earth. Only Kepler-62e and f are potentially habitable; the other three zip around the star at close range, making them too hot to support life as we know it, researchers said.

Kepler-62e and f take 122 and 267 days, respectively, to complete one orbit around their star, which is just 20 percent as bright as the sun. While nobody knows what the two exoplanets look like, a separate modeling study suggests they're both probably water worlds covered by endless, uninterrupted global oceans.[]

"There may be life there, but could it be technology-based like ours? Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy," lead author Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

"Nonetheless, these worlds will still be beautiful blue planets circling an orange star and maybe lifes inventiveness to get to a technology stage will surprise us," she added.

Not surprisingly, Kepler-62e should be warmer than its more distantly orbiting neighbor. In fact, Kepler-62f may require a greenhouse effect to keep its ocean from freezing over, researchers said.

Kepler-62e probably has a very cloudy sky and is warm and humid all the way to the polar regions," co-author Dimitar Sasselov of Harvard said in a statement. "Kepler-62f would be cooler, but still potentially life-friendly."

The new modeling study has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Searching for Earth's twin

The $600 millionlaunched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Kepler finds alien worlds by detecting the tiny brightness dips caused when they transit, or cross the face of, their stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler has used this technique to great effect, spotting more than 2,700 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. While just 120 or so of these candidates have been confirmed to date, mission scientists estimate that more than 90 percent will end up being the real deal.

While Kepler has yet to discover a true , it's getting closer and closer, Borucki said, pointing to the confirmation of Kepler-69c as an example. (That planet lies 2,700 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-69c's neighbor Kepler-69b, which is about twice the size of Earth and too hot to host life, was also announced today.)

"I think we're making excellent progress in that direction," Borucki said. "We have a number of candidates that look good."

Such steady progress makes sense, since Kepler will of course spot more transits the longer it looks. The telescope needs to observe three transits to flag a planet candidate, so detecting a potentially habitable world in a relatively distant orbit can take several years.

Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that, Borucki said.

"This is one of the early steps, but there's no mistake we are on our way to explore the galaxy, to learn about life in the galaxy," he said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter.Follow us,or. Originally published on