She hurled paint into a Learjet engine on Tuesday from a tarmac in West Palm Beach, splattering the colors onto a canvas to create the abstract designs for which she has become known. The jet engine pushes the paint into a force several times greater than hurricane winds, creating an intense power and heat. Von Anhalt says that power and heat helps create this one-of-a-kind art.

She started her artwork in 2006 after studying the work of her mentor and late husband, Prinz Jurgen von Anhalt.

Tuesday's demonstration is part of an event by a private jet services company and an art group to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Learjet.

"I do not endorse actions that move Boston and our nation into a police state mentality, with surveillance cameras attached to every light pole in the city," Commissioner Edward Davis said in prepared remarks for the House Homeland Security Committee. "We do not and cannot live in a protective enclosure because of the actions of extremists who seek to disrupt our way of life."

Investigators used surveillance video from a restaurant near one of the explosions to help identify Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a police shootout, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who survived, as the bombing suspects.

"Images from cameras do not lie. They do not forget," Davis said. "They can be viewed by a jury as evidence of what occurred. These efforts are not intended to chill or stifle free speech, but rather to protect the integrity and freedom of that speech and to protect the rights of victims and suspects alike."

The Associated Press obtained a copy of Davis' remarks.

The hearing on Capitol Hill comes less than three weeks after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's arrest. The committee chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said it will be the first in a series of hearings to review the government's initial response, what information authorities received about the brothers before the bombings and whether they handled it correctly. The FBI and CIA separately received vague warnings from Russia's government in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother were religious militants.

"What we want to know is ... what happened that day, what mistakes may have been made and what we can do in the future to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil," McCaul told the AP.

No one from the federal government was expected to testify at Thursday's hearing.

Davis had harsh words for the bombing suspects, calling them "cowardly" and "reprehensible deviants."

The Massachusetts homeland security director, Kurt Schwartz, and former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut also were scheduled to testify.

Davis and Schwartz said in their prepared remarks that federal homeland security money spent since the 2001 terror attacks has benefited Boston, and they urged Congress not to reduce that spending.

In his written testimony, Lieberman said the "homeland defense system failed in Boston."

Lieberman, former chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, co-wrote the legislation that created the Homeland Security Department and overhauled the U.S. intelligence system after the 9/11 attacks. His committee held hearings examining the threat of radicalization and homegrown terrorism in the U.S. It also issued a report on the government's failure to prevent the deadly 2009 mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas.

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.

"We figure we got 15 pounds of bees out of there," said Bachman, who said that converts to about 60,000 honeybees.

Bachman was called to the A-frame cabin last month in Eden, Utah. Taking apart a panel that hid roof rafters, he had no idea he would find honeycombs packed 12 feet long, 4 feet wide and 16 inches deep.

The honeybees had been making the enclosed cavity their home since 1996, hardly bothering the homeowners. The cabin was rarely used, but when the owners needed to occupy it while building another home nearby, they decided the beehive wasn't safe for their two children. A few bees had found their way inside the house, and the hive was just outside a window of a children's bedroom.

They didn't want to kill the honeybees, a species in decline that does yeoman's work pollinating flowers and crops.

So they called Bachman, owner of Deseret Hive Supply, a hobbyist store that can't keep up with demand for honeybees. Bachman used a vacuum cleaner to suck the bees into a cage.

"It doesn't hurt them," he said.

The job took six hours. At $100 an hour, the bill came to $600.

"The bees were expensive," said Paul Bertagnolli, the cabin owner. He was satisfied with the job.

Utah calls itself the Beehive state, a symbol of industriousness. Whether this was Utah's largest beehive is unknown, but Bachman said it would rank high.

"It's the biggest one I've ever seen," he said. "I've never seen one that big."

He used smoke to pacify the bees, but Bachman said honeybees are gentle creatures unlike predatory yellow jackets or hornets, which attack, rip apart and eat honeybees, he said.

"They just want to collect nectar and come back to the hive," he said. "Most people never get stung by honeybees it's a yellow jacket."

Bachman reassembled the hive in a yard of his North Ogden home, while saving some of the honeycomb for candles and lotions at his store. He left other honeycombs for the cabin owners to chew on.

"We caught the queen and were able to keep her," Bachman said. "The hive is in my backyard right now and is doing well."

Watch this related video from Discovery Channel:

Speaking with young students in Denver, Sotomayor noted that some people asked whether authorities had done enough to track the two suspects, both ethnic Chechens.

"Is that profiling? Could be," she said. "Is it something you just can't ignore? Maybe sometimes not."

Sotomayor, who was in Denver for the dedication of a new state courts building, said police who rely only on racial profiling to decide if someone committed a crime are usually wrong. But she said investigators need to pay attention to some "indicators" about suspects, without saying what they might be.

"It's a fine line society walks in trying to be fair," she said.

Sotomayor, who became the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court when she took office in 2009, said she was the subject of racial stereotyping after her appointment, and it was hurtful.

Her biggest challenge was dealing with other people's low expectations, she said, "and having fun proving them wrong."

Sotomayor took questions from about 100 eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders before ceremonies to open the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center.

Shortly after Michael Bender, chief justice of the state Supreme Court, introduced her, Sotomayor stepped off the speaker's platform and roamed the aisles around the students, answering questions eye-to-eye and engaging them in banter.

She frequently referred to her new memoir, "My Beloved World," and urged the children to dream big and explore career possibilities, even if they seem intimidating.

"When I was your age, I didn't know there was a Supreme Court," she said. She said she learned about the legal system by watching "Perry Mason" television dramas.

She promised her young audience that if any of them became a justice, "I'll come and swear you in."

The new building was named for Ralph Carr, Colorado's governor from 1939 to 1943, who spoke out for the constitutional rights of Japanese-Americans who were confined to internment camps during World War II.

The $258 million building houses courtrooms for the state Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals as well as offices of the attorney general, the state public defender and court administrators.

While praising the center, Sotomayor looked up from her notes and said with a smile, "The kids in this audience today won't remember a time in their lives when this building didn't exist."

On Thursday night, after speaking at a Metropolitan State University of Denver gymnasium about her struggles and achievements, Sotomayor roamed the aisles flanked by her security detail, shaking hands, posing for photos with children and repeatedly saying: "Thank you. Thank you very much. You're being so nice."

___

Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP .

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LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese scientists have confirmed for the first time that a new strain of bird flu that has killed 23 people in China has been transmitted to humans from chickens.

In a study published online in the Lancet medical journal, the scientists echoed previous statements from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese officials that there is as yet no evidence of human-to-human transmission of this virus.

The H7N9 strain has infected 109 people in China since it was first detected in March. The WHO warned on Wednesday that this strain is "one of the most lethal" flu viruses and is transmitted more easily than the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed hundreds around the world since 2003.

Kwok-Yung Yuen of the University of Hong Kong, who led the study, said its findings that chickens in poultry markets were a source of human infections meant that controlling the disease in these places and in these birds should be a priority.

"Aggressive intervention to block further animal-to-person transmission in live poultry markets, as has previously been done in Hong Kong, should be considered," he told the Lancet.

He added that temporary closure of live bird markets and comprehensive programmes of surveillance, culling, biosecurity and segregation of different poultry species may also be needed "to halt evolution of the virus into a pandemic agent".

"The evidence ... suggests it is a pure poultry-to-human transmission and that controlling (infections in people) will therefore depend on controlling the epidemic in poultry," he said.

Yuen's findings do not mean all cases of human H7N9 infection come from chickens, or from poultry, but they do confirm chickens as one source.

The WHO has said 40 percent of people infected with H7N9 appear to have had no contact with poultry.

Other so called "reservoirs" of the flu virus may be circulating in other types of birds or mammals, and investigators in China are working hard to try find out.

CASE STUDIES

Yuen's team conducted detailed cases studies on four H7N9 flu patients from Zhejiang, an eastern coastal province south of the commercial hub Shanghai.

All four patients had been exposed to poultry, either through their work or through visiting poultry markets.

To find out whether there was transmission of the virus from poultry to humans, the researchers took swabs from 20 chickens, four quails, five pigeons and 57 ducks, all from six markets likely to have been visited by the patients.

Two of the five pigeons and four of the 20 chickens tested positive for H7N9, but none of the ducks or quails.

After analysing the genetic makeup of H7N9 virus in a sample isolated from one patient and comparing it to a sample from one of the chickens, the researchers said similarities suggest the virus is being transmitted directly to humans from poultry.

The team also checked more than 300 people who had had close contact with the four patients and found that none showed any symptoms of H7N9 infection within 14 days from the beginning of surveillance. This suggests the virus is not currently able to transmit between people, they said.

But they noted that previous genetic analysis shows H7N9 has already acquired some gene mutations that adapt it specifically to being more able to infect mammals - raising the risk that it could one day cause a human pandemic.

"Further adaptation of the virus could lead to infections with less severe symptoms and more efficient person-to-person transmission," the scientists wrote. (Editing by Kevin Liffey)

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The Catholic Church has excommunicated a Brazilian priest after he defended homosexuality, open marriage and other practices counter to Church teaching in online videos.

In a statement released late on Monday, the priest's diocese said Father Roberto Francisco Daniel, known to local parishioners as Padre Beto, had "in the name of 'freedom of expression' betrayed the promise of fealty to the Church."

The priest "injured the Church with grave statements counter to the dogma of Catholic faith and morality." The actions amount to "heresy and schism," the statement said, the penalty for which is excommunication, or expulsion from the Church.

The rare punishment follows what Daniel's bishop and the priest himself said were repeated rebukes about the videos and other public activities, such as a radio broadcast and local newspaper column, in which he challenged Church doctrine.

The 47-year-old cleric, who studied theology in Germany, is popular in the southeastern city of Bauru, where he has been a priest since 2001. He is known for his rock T-shirts, a silver stud pierced through his right ear and his habit of posing, as on his official Facebook page, with a glass of beer.

On Facebook and Twitter, Daniel posted a brief statement about the excommunication: "I feel honored to belong to the long list of people who have been murdered and burned alive for thinking and searching for knowledge."

SPREAD OF MODERATE VIEWS

Daniel's excommunication, which prompted headlines across Brazil and protests in social media, illustrates the rising influence of more moderate social views in Brazil, Latin America's biggest country, and much of the rest of the region.

Progressive stances on sexuality, birth control, scientific research and other delicate topics for the Church are increasingly common in Latin America, home to 42 percent of the world's Catholics, more than any other region worldwide.

The shifting views are among the many challenges faced by Pope Francis, an Argentine who ascended in March to become the first Latin American pope in history.

The excommunication comes just two months before Francis is scheduled to attend World Youth Day, expected to attract as many as 2 million young Catholics to Rio de Janeiro.

Though Francis is known to be a traditionalist on social issues and Church doctrine, his appointment raised hopes that the first non-European pope in 13 centuries would do more than his predecessors to modernize Catholicism.

But Daniel's beliefs clearly went too far for church leaders.

In one of the recent videos he posted on YouTube.com and his own Website, the priest said a married person who chose to have an affair, heterosexual or otherwise, would not be unfaithful as long as that person's spouse allowed it. "If someone is in an extramarital relationship and that relationship is accepted by the spouse, then faithfulness still exists there," he said.

A "REBEL SON"

In a telephone interview, Daniel said his statements "are personal reflections that should be considered and discussed in the dialogue of the church." The excommunication, he said, is "the sad act of a lukewarm and disengaged church that is out of touch with today's society."

The diocese retained a church expert in canonical law to oversee the excommunication process. The diocese also initiated a separate process at the Vatican through which Daniel will be stripped of clerical authority.

Last Tuesday, Bishop Caetano Ferrari gave Daniel a letter asking him to take the videos offline and publicly retract his statements. In an interview posted on the diocese Web site shortly afterward, Ferrari called Daniel "brilliant," but characterized him as a "rebel son" who "crosses the line."

On Monday, Daniel said he went to the diocese headquarters planning to renounce his clerical duties rather than retract any of his comments. But before he had a chance, the bishop and canonical expert made him face a committee of Church officials.

"It was a trial," Daniel said. "I told them I was not there to be tried, that I had not been indicted."

Shortly afterward, the Church issued the statement announcing his excommunication.

(Editing by Todd Benson and Cynthia Osterman)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration has gone to court to try to block a subpoena from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York seeking White House documents about the government's requirement of insurance coverage for birth control.

The subpoena requesting documents from President Barack Obama and his senior advisers would be burdensome to fulfill, the administration said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the suit also argues that civil subpoenas of the president's executive office are inappropriate except in extraordinary circumstances.

The lawsuit was filed on Thursday and released on a court website on Friday.

Religious organizations, individuals and corporations have filed scores of suits to block a planned mandate that employers generally include coverage of contraception in health insurance plans they offer workers.

Though the mandate has some exceptions for religious employers, the New York archdiocese, one of the largest in the United States, said it expected to incur nearly $200 million each year in penalties if it refuses to comply.

The Catholic Church teaches that artificial birth control is sinful because it violates natural law.

A judge in Brooklyn federal court allowed an archdiocese lawsuit over the mandate to move forward in December, over the administration's argument that it was premature.

A lawyer for the archdiocese declined to comment on Friday on the administration's court action.

Obama has been trying to negotiate a settlement of the highly charged dispute, which pits advocates for women's health against those who say a mandate would violate the religious freedom of employers who oppose birth control.

A version of the mandate released in February would not apply to churches and other places of worship even when they operate schools and social services.

It would apply to others, including religiously affiliated nonprofit groups. But in those cases, it calls on private insurers to cover contraceptives through separate plans for employees, not through the employer's group plan.

The mandate was part of the 2010 healthcare law championed by Obama and congressional Democrats.

The Justice Department is representing the White House in the subpoena fight. A department spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Col. Thierry Burkhard said Gilles Le Guen was arrested this week north of Timbuktu, the fabled city in Mali's northern desert that had been his base for some two years.

Le Guen, a former merchant marine from France's western Brittany region, was arrested overnight Sunday and was being interrogated by his French captors. He would be turned over shortly to Malian authorities, who can then decide whether to expel him to France, Burkhard said by telephone.

"We captured a French terrorist," Burkhard said.

Le Guen, thought to be in his 40s, is well known to the French. He appeared in an online video in October wearing a black turban with an assault rifle at his side, threatening France if it intervened in Mali to chase out religious radicals. He had flaunted his radicalism while living in Timbuktu, where residents said he had a wife and two children.

"I am following the road traced by Osama bin Laden," Le Guen said in a telephone interview with the French newsmagazine L'Express in January, days before the French intervention began.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algeria-based al-Qaida offshoot, began moving into Mali's vast north a decade ago. Two other groups made up mainly of Malians joined the Algerian jihadist group, known as AQIM, and took over the north, controlling major cities and imposing strict Shariah law, like cutting the hands of thieves. AQIM is holding at least five French hostages. Other groups are holding hostages as well.

President Francois Hollande ordered a surprise French intervention in Mali in January to stop the west African country from becoming what he said was a sanctuary for terrorists that could threaten France and Europe. The first of some 4,000 troops arrived on Jan. 11. They quickly retook major cities like Timbuktu but are trying to clean out the region permanently, a task that some experts have said would be hard to achieve.

France has worried that Mali would become a magnet for Muslim radicals, particularly French citizens, or dual French-Mali nationals. It was a concern that grew with the intervention. However, only a handful of French are known to have joined the jihad in Mali. One French-Malian citizen suspected of being a scout to set up a jihadist network, Ibrahim Ouattara,was detained in Mali in November and sent to France in March. He remains in custody.

The French government also worries that French citizens hardened in battle or driven by jihad might continue their mission on home soil or spread their message to Malian immigrants in France.

The French Defense Ministry said last week that the military operation in Mali, which is now concentrated on combing the northern region to search for terrorists, has uncovered 200 tons of munitions and arms.

French forces in Mali are backed by Malian, Chadian and other African troops. France plans a staggered withdrawal with 1,000 French soldiers expected to still be in place by the year's end. U.N. peacekeepers are to join the troops to keep peace ahead of presidential elections that could take place as early as July.

Burkhard said that Le Guen was found "in the zone north of Timbuktu" in a desert area, but provided no further information on the location and would not say whether he was alone. He said he was being held at a French camp, but did not name the location.

Le Guen has been an unusual case among foreign jihadists, refusing to hide his presence in northern Mali.

Agaly Cisse, who runs the restaurant in Timbuktu's largest hotel, said recently that Le Guen lived mostly off of wire transfers from his family in Europe, and did odd jobs, especially technical and mechanical work, like fixing cars and broken water pumps.

One of the notables of Timbuktu, Diadie Hamadoun Maiga, who was appointed to the crisis committee that attempted to represent the city during the 10-month-long occupation, said that although the village of Danga, where Le Guen is said to have lived, is not far from Timbuktu, people in the city only started seeing him after the jihadists invaded in the spring of 2012. Maiga said he was assigned to patrol the town, and carried a weapon. He was convinced of the jihadist ideology, said Maiga, but he endeared himself to residents by taking a firm stance against the flogging of women.

"He openly took a position against Mohamed Mossa (the head of the Islamic police) especially in regards to the brutal treatment of women," said Maiga. "He was among those who went to see the big boss, Abou Zeid, to ask for Mossa to be removed," he said, naming one of the top commanders of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and the de facto ruler of Timbuktu during the occupation. Zeid was killed in February by troops.

"Gilles Le Guen won a lot of points with us because he took our side. He openly criticized Mossa, including in speeches that he gave at the market. One day he even burst into the prison and liberated the women that had been arrested by Mohamed Mossa," Maiga said by telephone.

The French press reported widely before the intervention that Le Guen had been arrested by other jihadists. Weeks later, he was shown on TV free again.

Some question how tight he really was with the jihadists. When French forces were closing in on Timbuktu, the jihadists fled en masse, but they reportedly left Le Guen behind. It's unclear if he stayed behind by choice, or was simply abandoned.

"The jihadists gave him a car. They had stolen lots of cars in the area. And they gave him a luxury, two-cabin, 4-by-4. They also gave him two barrels of gasoline, each of 200 liters," said Maiga.

He claimed that Le Guen was caught on the road to Taoudeni, around 40 kilometers (24 miles) north of the city.

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Callimachi reported from Dakar, Senegal.