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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council brought Iraq one step closer on Thursday to ending United Nations sanctions imposed on Baghdad more than two decades ago after former President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait In 1990.
The 15-member council unanimously agreed that the issue of missing Kuwaiti people, property and archives should be dealt with under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter - which urges countries to peacefully resolve any conflicts - instead of Chapter 7.
Chapter 7 of the charter allows the Security Council to authorize actions ranging from sanctions to military intervention if states do not abide by council demands.
The move by the council is a significant political boost for Baghdad as it struggles to restore its international standing a decade after a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam in 2003.
The Security Council resolution recognized "the importance of Iraq achieving international standing equal to that which it held prior to (1990)." U.S.-led troops drove Iraq out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
"This is a new beginning for the relations between our two neighborly and brotherly countries," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters after the vote. "This is an example for other countries also to resolve their disputes and differences through peaceful means."
The only issues linked to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that remain under Chapter 7 are an arms embargo and Baghdad's payment of $52 billion in compensation to Kuwait, diplomats say. Iraq still owes $11 billion and has said it expects to pay by 2015.
There are still a range of Chapter 7 issues imposed on Baghdad after Saddam's ouster in 2003, diplomats say, including the freeze and return of Saddam-era assets and trade ban on stolen Iraqi cultural property.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended that the U.N. political mission in Iraq should take responsibility for facilitating the search for missing Kuwaitis, or their remains, property and the country's national archives.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Vicki Allen)
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Every year, people add 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That's contributing to climate change. A few scientists have been dreaming about ways to pull some of that CO2 out of the air, but face stiff skepticism and major hurdles. This is the story of one scientist who's pressing ahead.
Peter Eisenberger is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Earlier in his career, he ran the university's famed Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and founded Columbia's Earth Institute. He was never one of those scientists who tinkered into the night on inventions. But he realized he didn't need to be.
"If you looked at knowledge as a commodity, we had generated this enormous amount of knowledge and we hadn't even begun to think of the many ways we could apply it," Eisenberger says. He decided he'd settle on a problem he wanted to solve and then dive into the pool of knowledge for existing technologies that could help him.
He started looking for a way to pull carbon dioxide right out of the air. "And it turned out the best device already exists," he says. "It's called a monolith. That is the same type of instrument that's in the catalytic converter in your car. It cleans up your exhaust."
Eisenberger's monoliths grab carbon dioxide from the air and release it again when you heat them up.
He teamed up with a colleague at Columbia, Graciela Chichilnisky, and formed a company to develop the idea. Global Thermostat got seed money from Edgar Bronfman, Jr. ? CEO of Warner Music Group and the former CEO of Seagram's, his family's business.
The company has built two pilot plants at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. But of course there are big issues to solve: What do you do with the carbon dioxide once you've captured it, and how do you make money?
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," says Peter Eisenberger, co-founder of Global Thermostat, a firm that's building a device to pull carbon dioxide from the air.
Chris Schmauch/Global Thermostat
"So we then we looked for ways to monetize CO2 and found that lots of people wanted to use CO2 as a feedstock to make a valuable product," Eisenberger says.
Growers pipe carbon dioxide into greenhouses. Oil companies pump it underground to help them squeeze out more oil. Soda companies use it to put bubbles in their drinks. These are mostly small-scale applications.
Maybe someday Eisenberger could get paid to clean up the atmosphere by sucking out the CO2 and burying it underground, though there's no market for that now.
But using carbon dioxide to make fuel could someday be big. So Eisenberger's first project involves using CO2 to feed algae that churn out biofuel.
"Our first demonstration plant is being erected right now down in Daphne, Alabama, with an algae company called Algae Systems, which sits on Mobile Bay," Eisenberger says. "They'll be floating their algae in plastic bags on the top of the water. We'll be piping in CO2 that we pull out of the air, and the sun will do the rest."
Of course, this one project will have zero effect on how much carbon dioxide is in the earth's atmosphere. But Eisenberger has much grander ambitions.
"I believe we have something that's economically viable, so our company will be successful," he says. "But I'm really in this because I want to contribute to a long term solution that the world needs."
Eisenberger says if he can open the door to capturing carbon dioxide from the air ? and make the process cheap enough ? someday we could actually slow down, or possibly even reverse, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Robert Socolow at Princeton University started hearing a buzz about this technology a few years back.
"It's catchy," Socolow admits. "It's attractive conceptually that one could basically pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the next several decades and pull it out later and everything would be fine." But the appeal of the idea also worried him ? people might use the mere prospect of this technology as an excuse not to act.
So Socolow spearheaded a critique of the technique, on behalf of the American Physical Society.
Socolow's panel concluded that the technology would be hopelessly expensive, costing $600 for every ton of carbon dioxide it drew out of the air. And the scale would also be huge. In order to capture the emissions would waft into the air from a single coal-fired power plant, you'd need to build a structure 20 miles long and 30 feet high. "It's like the Great Wall of China," Socolow says.
The committee concluded that it would make a lot more sense to cut down on emissions first ? make our cars, homes and factories more efficient. Panel members also said it makes much more sense to capture carbon dioxide directly from smokestacks, where it's concentrated, instead of from the air.
Socolow says, maybe someday we'll have our emissions under control, and then we might need to remove some of the carbon dioxide that's already in the air with a capture technology. But, in his view, that's a long way away. "I locate it in the 22nd century," he says. In other words, this might be a good project for Eisenberger's great-great-great grandchildren.
Researchers currently working on carbon dioxide capture technologies say the American Physical Society critique has made it much harder for them to raise money. Klaus Lackner at Columbia University says he was turned down for a government grant. David Keith at Harvard and the University of Calgary says he struggled to get funding for his small company.
"It's a very powerful report from a very credible group of people, and it may well help to kill us and other efforts," Keith says.
Proponents of air-capture technologies say some of the panel's conclusions are just plain wrong ? especially the estimated cost of $600 per ton.
"We have had third party reports, independent people, evaluating our technology, and it's under $50 a ton," Eisenberger says. He hasn't actually demonstrated that cost yet, and he agrees that nobody should take his word for it. But he's stopped arguing with his critics.
"I'm just going to go do it," he says. "And doing it or not ? that's the answer."
Pursuing a big idea takes some hard-headedness and thick skin.
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," Eisenberger says. "Because what you do when you innovate is you disturb the existing order."
Fortunately, this won't be an academic argument forever. "That's the beauty of science. The people that take the time to come into the lab and see it working and do their own evaluation of the cost and the performance, they know it's not crazy."
If the researchers pursuing this technology can really make it inexpensive to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Eisenberger says it could be a game-changer.
We could start producing fuels with the carbon dioxide that's already in the air, instead of unearthing more fossil fuels. This won't happen quickly, though.
"The energy infrastructure of the world is $55 trillion," Eisenberger says. So a technology to replace that is "not like a new Google app."
Still, human societies have made such transitions before. "They just don't happen in a day," Eisenberger says. "But they happen."
There's certainly no guarantee that capturing carbon dioxide from the air would ever become a big enough enterprise to make a difference to Earth's climate. But it won't even be put to the test unless people like Eisenberger give it a try.
LONDON (Reuters) - The government promised on Thursday to upgrade roads and carry out what it said was the biggest rail investment in more than 100 years in a strategy to get the economy growing while keeping spending tight.
A day after Chancellor George Osborne announced the latest round of budget cuts, his deputy, Danny Alexander, detailed 100 billion pounds in capital investment plans, calling them "the most comprehensive, ambitious and long-lasting" ever.
Britain's economy is still struggling to generate growth to help narrow one of Europe's biggest budget deficits. Living standards suffered their biggest drop in a generation at the start of 2013, data showed on Thursday.
Alexander said 28 billion pounds would be spent by the government on improving roads from 2014 to 2020 - including enough cash to resurface 21,000 miles - and that it would support 30 billion pounds in rail investments.
A long-awaited announcement of a guaranteed electricity price for renewable energy investors was aimed at making investments in technologies such as wind power and biomass more attractive and less risky to private operators.
The government also announced a guarantee to help build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the south-west of England, for which French utility group EDF won planning permission in March.
The overall spending plan put some flesh on the bones of 300 billion pounds in capital spending commitments set out until 2020. Thursday's announcement was not a new injection of cash; the significance was in the details of where it would be spent.
The Conservative party, which dominates the ruling coalition, wants to persuade voters it is not just focused on spending cuts as it prepares for the 2015 general election. Its tough austerity drive has been criticised by the International Monetary Fund while two of the three main credit rating agencies have downgraded Britain's prized triple-A status.
Leading economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the capital spending plans showed net public sector investment falling as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 1.6 percent in 2014/15 to 1.5 percent in 2015/16 and dropping further thereafter.
"We are hardly entering a new era of massive infrastructure investment," said IFS Director Paul Johnson.
The government's plans also accounted for 15 billion pounds income from the sale of assets such as its portfolio of student loans as well as unused land and property.
PRIVATE INVESTMENT
Much of Thursday's announcement was aimed at drawing in private sector investment, a key tenet of Conservative plans to get maximum economic benefit out of scarce public cash.
But it did not clear up doubts about how quickly Britain could start to get new projects up and running.
"The construction industry and the broader economy will be disappointed in today's announcement as we will only see an economic boost when the shovels hit the ground on these projects," said Nick Prior, head of infrastructure at business advisory firm Deloitte.
The opposition Labour party, which has called for more short-term spending to revive the economy but has been wary about committing itself to increased borrowing, said no investment had been brought forward to 2013 or 2014.
"When is the government going to pull its finger out and actually start to build some of these things?" said Chris Leslie, a Labour spokesman for economic issues.
The government also promised an injection of 3 billion pounds into building new affordable housing - enough, it said, for 165,000 new homes - along with a 12-year rent guarantee to encourage private housing associations to build new projects.
Alexander said 16 billion pounds from 2015 onwards had been earmarked for rail expenditure, including the government's flagship high-speed rail project, designed to improve links between London, the Midlands and the north of the country.
On Wednesday, Britain's transport secretary said the cost of the rail project had risen by almost 10 billion pounds, highlighting the pitfalls of long-term capital projects.
(Additional reporting by William Schomberg and Rosalba O'Brien Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) ? Texas marked a solemn moment in criminal justice Wednesday evening, executing its 500th inmate since it resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982.
Kimberly McCarthy, who was put to death for the murder of her 71-year-old neighbor, was also the first woman executed in the U.S. in nearly three years.
McCarthy, 52, was executed for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of retired college psychology professor Dorothy Booth. Booth had agreed to give McCarthy a cup of sugar before she was attacked with a butcher knife and candelabra at her home in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas. Authorities say McCarthy cut off Booth's finger to remove her wedding ring.
It was among three slayings linked to McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine.
She was pronounced dead at 6:37 p.m. CDT, 20 minutes after Texas prison officials began administering a single lethal dose of pentobarbital.
In her final statement, McCarthy did not mention her status as the 500th inmate to be executed or acknowledge Booth or her family.
"This is not a loss. This is a win. You know where I'm going. I'm going home to be with Jesus. Keep the faith. I love you all," she said, while looking toward her witnesses ? her attorney, her spiritual adviser and her ex-husband, New Black Panther Party founder Aaron Michaels.
As the drug started to take effect, McCarthy said, "God is great," before closing her eyes. She took hard, raspy, loud breaths for several seconds before becoming quiet. Then, her chest moved up and down for another minute before she stopped breathing.
Friends and family of Booth told reporters after the execution that they were not conscious that Texas had carried out its 500th execution since 1982. They said their only focus was on Booth's brutal murder.
Five-hundred is "just a number. It doesn't really mean very much," said Randall Browning, who was Booth's godson. "'We're just thinking about the justice that was promised to us by the state of Texas."
Donna Aldred, Booth's daughter, reading a statement to reporters, said that her mother "was an incredible person who was taken before her time."
Texas has carried out nearly 40 percent of the more than 1,300 executions in the U.S. since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. The state's standing stems from its size as the nation's second-most populous state as well as its tradition of tough justice for killers.
Texas prison officials said that for them, it was just another execution. "We simply carried out the court's order," said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.
With increased debate in recent years over wrongful convictions, some states have halted the practice entirely. However, 32 states have the death penalty on the books. Though Texas still carries out executions, lawmakers have provided more sentencing options for juries and courts have narrowed the cases for which death can be sought.
In a statement, Maurie Levin, McCarthy's attorney, said "500 is 500 too many. I look forward to the day when we recognize that this pointless and barbaric practice, imposed almost exclusively on those who are poor and disproportionately on people of color, has no place in a civilized society."
Outside the prison, about 40 protesters gathered, carrying signs saying "Death Penalty: Racist and Anti-Poor," ''Stop All Executions Now" and "Stop Killing to Stop Killings." As the hour for the execution approached, protesters began chanting and sang the old Negro spiritual "Wade in the Water."
In recent years, Texas executions have generally drawn fewer than 10 protesters. A handful of counter-demonstrators who support the death penalty gathered in another area outside the prison Wednesday.
Executions of women are infrequent. McCarthy was the 13th woman put to death in the U.S. and the fourth in Texas, the nation's busiest death penalty state, since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. In that same period, more than 1,300 male inmates have been executed nationwide, 496 of them in Texas. Virginia is a distant second, nearly 400 executions behind.
Levin, had asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the punishment, arguing black jurors were improperly excluded from McCarthy's trial by Dallas County prosecutors. McCarthy is black; her victim white. All but one of her 12 jurors were white. The court denied McCarthy's appeals, ruling her claims should have been raised previously.
Prosecutors said McCarthy stole Booth's Mercedes and drove to Dallas, pawned the woman's wedding ring she removed from the severed finger for $200 and went to a crack house to buy cocaine. Evidence also showed she used Booth's credit cards at a liquor store.
McCarthy blamed the crime on two drug dealers, but there was no evidence either existed.
Her ex-husband, Michaels, testified on her behalf. They had separated before Booth's slaying.
DNA evidence also tied McCarthy to the December 1988 slayings of 81-year-old Maggie Harding and 85-year-old Jettie Lucas. Harding was stabbed and beaten with a meat tenderizer, while Lucas was beaten with both sides of a claw hammer and stabbed.
McCarthy, who denied any involvement in the attacks, was indicted but not tried for those slayings.
In January, McCarthy was just hours away from being put to death when a Dallas judge delayed her execution.
McCarthy was the eighth Texas prisoner executed this year. She was among 10 women on death row in Texas, but the only one with an execution date. Seven male Texas prisoners have executions scheduled in the coming months.
___
Follow Juan A. Lozano at http://www.twitter.com/juanlozano70.
___
Associated Press videographer John L. Mone contributed to this report.
Rally outside the Supreme Court building (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
For many who had waited hours outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear the outcome of two cases on the future of same-sex marriage, the first news arrived from a man who sprinted from the court building and stripped off his shirt to reveal a pink tank top.
The sight of the colorful undershirt was a signal: The highest court in the land had struck down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Those closest to the steps of the court who knew what the the pink shirt meant cheered and spread the word. Squinting in the sun, demonstrators farther away craned sweaty necks to see what was going on, while others pecked at smartphones for answers.
In all, thousands had gathered along the sidewalk in front of the steps of the courthouse, where they stood for hours beneath a blazing June sun in Washington, D.C., to hear how the justices would rule on DOMA and on the constitutionality of a state ban on same-sex marriage in California. Although polls show the nation at large is split on the issue, virtually all who brought signs to hold in front of the courthouse supported extending marriage rights to gay couples.
Capitol Hill staffers drenched in sweat beneath full business suits wandered through the crowds with activists and newlywed gay men and women, who held up pictures of their weddings. Some Catholics, Mormons and conservative activists who support redefining marriage also claimed spots near the steps.
The scene, however, was far different from the raucous demonstrations in March when the court heard oral arguments for both cases and thousands of anti-gay-marriage demonstrators marched on Washington. Today, only one man was spotted standing in opposition near the courthouse.
PETA activists in front of the Supreme Court (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
In the moments after word spread about the DOMA ruling, many in the crowd were skeptical. (Ironically, those outside the courthouse are often some of the last people after the cases to hear the outcomes. It's hot. It's crowded. Cellphone service is slow. When word spreads like a game of telephone, it's not always accurate.) Americans who follow the Supreme Court's rulings had been burned by bad information before, and they didn't want to be fooled again. After the botched reporting last year about the Supreme Court's ruling on the federal health care law, there was a clear hesitancy to spread false information. On Wednesday, activists with smartphones were cautious before tweeting wrong information or posting a note of celebration on Facebook.
Throughout the crowd, small circles formed like pods around men and women who pulled up the text of the ruling on their phones. The designated readers sounded out each word carefully, taking time to assess the majority opinion for subtle and possibly confusing statements. Law school graduates in the crowd helped explain what the ruling meant.
It wasn't long before a phrase rippled through the crowd.
"DOMA is dead!" people yelled. "DOMA is dead!"
A demonstrator holding a sign depicting the Supreme Court justices (Chris Moody/Yahoo News)
But as the sun beat down on the wilting demonstrators, the celebration quickly quieted in anticipation of the court's decision on Proposition 8.
Near the northern corner of the steps, a group from the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington huddled beneath an umbrella to block the sun.
"I don't know why I'm not more emotional," one of the singers said to the group. "It must be because it's so damn hot right now." They seemed to concur.
When the court finally released its ruling?determining that those who challenged a lower court ruling overturning Proposition 8 did not have standing?activists in the crowd returned to their phones to parse the information. It was the same drill as the last ruling: Initial excitement. Skepticism. Circle up. Digest the ruling. Cheer.
The ruling wasn't exactly what many of them wanted?a national declaration legalizing gay marriage across the country?but both of the decisions combined was good enough. For them, it was a victory.
"I feel ecstatic," said Oscar Soto, a man from Reston, Va. "This is a big victory. This is a huge, huge victory. No one's disappointed today."
As demonstrators walked away from the courthouse, smiling, cheering and hugging one another, the Gay Men's Chorus gathered near the steps, and a conductor led them in the national anthem.
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2013
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