President's brother speaks out on Colombia talks

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) ? A brother of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has revealed that the country's largest guerrilla group had initially proposed to hold peace talks within Colombia or in neighboring Venezuela, rather than in Cuba.

Enrique Santos said in an article published in the newspaper El Espectador on Sunday that the government's team had insisted that the talks not be held in Colombia.

"We decided on Cuba for security and above all because it guaranteed confidentiality," Santos wrote in the article.

Representatives of the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began discussions in Havana on Nov. 19 seeking a deal to end the country's decades-old conflict. They currently are taking a holiday break and are to resume talks on Jan. 14.

Santos, a journalist and former director of the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, is not a member of the team involved in the current talks, though he has acted as an adviser to the government negotiators.

He revealed details of earlier discussions with the rebels starting in February 2011. He said he has been involved "in an irreversible way in this process."

Santos said that one especially complicated matter was getting one of the rebel leaders, Jaime Alberto Parra Rodriguez, to make the trip to Cuba for those initial discussions. Santos said the rebels were distrustful of the plans to shuttle away Parra, who is better known by the nom-de-guerre Mauricio Jaramillo or the nickname "El Medico."

"It was very hard to convince the FARC to ... accept putting (Parra) on a helicopter supplied by the state," Santos wrote. "At the time of picking him up, he appeared guarded by more than 50 men armed to the teeth. In the end there was crying by women guerrillas and a farewell ceremony. That was the first big achievement: getting Jaramillo to Havana. That process lasted nearly a year."

Santos said he and others arrived in Havana on Feb. 23, 2011, ahead of their first contacts with the guerrillas, and that after sitting together about 70 times, they finally signed a preliminary accord in August 2012 to launch the peace talks. Until they reached that point, Santos said, "various times we were on the verge of breaking off" the discussions.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-12-30-Colombia-Peace%20Talks/id-7d5d39d648d44f4e8fbf90f0dd3957d3

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More French troops go to Central African Republic

BANGUI, Central African Republic ?

As rebels advance in Central African Republic, France has deployed an additional 180 troops to protect its interests.

Col. Thierry Burkhard told The Associated Press Sunday that the reinforcements arrived Sunday from nearby Gabon, bringing the total French military force in the capital, Bangui, to nearly 600. The troops are to protect French residents in the capital, which many fear will be attacked by the rebels.

In another security measure, President Francois Bozize imposed a curfew from 7 p.m. until 5 a.m.

Bozize earlier appealed to France for help against the rebels, but Paris said it would only protect French interests.

The rebels have seized 10 cities in recent weeks.

The African Union is attempting to set up negotiations in Gabon between the Bozize government and the rebels.

Source: http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2020019029_apafcentralafricanrepublicrebeladvance.html?syndication=rss

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Senators trade proposals into night to avoid ?fiscal cliff? (Washington Post)

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Revival in the offing for NCR - Real Estate India

??|?? December 30, 2012 ?? 03:44pm ??|Contributed by manoja

Rohit Chaudhary, a software engineer working in Noida, bought a three-bedroom flat on the Greater Noida Expressway a couple of years back. For the last four months, he has been trying to sell it to meet a financial exigency. Despite trying his level best, he has not been able to find a buyer with a reasonable offer for his property.

Rohit is one of the many middle-income buyers who have invested in the real estate sector over the last three years, either in the form of land or flats around the National Capital Region, which, apart from Delhi, include Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad.

A sharp spurt in buyers targeting these areas had in the recent years pushed up the property prices, ultimately tapering off demand forthe area.

One of the major reasons for the fall in demand for property in these markets is the very high property rates prevalent in these areas forcing people to stay away from these properties expecting the prices in the area to correct. Also, there has been a lot of confusion of land acquisition in these areas adding to buying disinterest,? said RV Verma, chairman and managing director of National Housing Bank.

A Crisil report on real estate companies released on Friday also says that subdued demand, high construction costs and high interest rates have dented the earnings and return ratios of real estate companies in India over the past two years but projects a revival in the next financial year.

Crisil?s analysis of 23 listed real estate companies highlights that earnings declined 21 per cent and 9 per cent y-o-y in FY12 and H1FY13, respectively, RoEs declined from 7.7 per cent in FY10 to 4.7 per cent in H1FY13. The agency blamed subdued demand and high construction costs on top of a high interest cost regime as the reasons behind the soft revenues and margins.

Revival

Some early signs of the decline in demand had started showing up early in 2012. Offtake of flats in the middle-income group segment (flats in the below Rs 60 lakh category), eased off through the first three quarters of the 2012 calendar year.

However, satellite towns, Faridabad and Gurgaon and even Greater Noida did better than Delhi. In Faridabad demand increased by at least 12 per cent. The uptick in the industrial town is due to it being the second cheapest in the region at an average price of Rs 4,000 per square feet.

Experts like Santosh Kumar, CEO (Operations) Jones LangLasalle believe that the market will recover in next financial year but interest costs have to come down. ?An RBI repo cut soon will help which should bring in more buyers,? he said.

Data from PropEquity, a real estate advisory firm, however, shows the pace of increase for high-end segment (flats above Rs 60 lakh) have slowed. For instance during the third quarter of 2012 there was a 539 per cent increase in absorption rates in the Greater Noida area. That looks impressive but it pales when pitched against the 3,691 per cent increase in new launches in the area during the same period, albeit from a thin base.

No wonder experts are divided on the nature of the slowdown in the NCR. ?The year 2012 has been a mixed bag for residential real estate. Overall, the residential unit sales in NCR have seen a drop of approximately 42 per cent in 2012 as compared to 2011.

The NCR area witnessed a drop of approximately 51 per cent in new launches in the ticket price segment of less than Rs 60 lakh,? said Samir Jasuja, CEO of PropEquity. But Anuj Puri, MD of Jones LangLasalle said that 50 per cent of the launches across the country have been in the NCR area ?so demand is arguably strong?.

And as the valuation of the real estate firms focussed on the NCR in the Crisil data set shows they have underperformed the Nifty. Parsvnath Developers, with a strong Delhi presence is expected to grow its revenues at a CAGR of 11 per cent in next financial year but its EBITDA margin is expected to decline from 46.6 per cent in the current year to 39.1 per cent due to declining contribution from the high-margin projects.

Experts like Santosh Kumar expect the revival to begin from here. Pradeep Mishra, managing director of Sainik Estates, another real estate advisory firm said ?The demand in the real estate market in the region will recover only after end users start buying, which is not the case now. Due to various reasons, I do not see the demand for homes from end users picking in the near future and the recovery is going to take some time?.

The countdown

But real estate companies believe that the demand in the market is going to turn around soon. ?There is no reason why we should see any slowdown in the market. Yes, we could possibly see a decline in the high-end flat market (of Rs 60 lakh and above) because of the small size of such buyers available but property in the segment below that will always find takers,? said Pankaj Bajaj, president, Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India, Delhi-NCR Chapter (CREDAI-NCR) and MD of Edelco Infrastructure.

The reasons for the unsteady performance could be many ranging from buyers wanting to purchase properties purely for making an investments to some of the developers releasing their inventory in batches. By itself, timing the market is not questionable but coupled with a speculative demand led to a surge that has cooled off.

?Overleveraged, many large real estate companies could not substantially reduce debt. Most real estate stocks, therefore, have significantly underperformed the benchmark S&P CNX NIFTY and trade at historically low valuations,? said the Crisil report. Verma says that the revival in demand for these markets will be fastest when prices cool off even marginally. The portends of a better priced market are moving into place.

Last week the Reserve Bank of India allowed external commercial borrowing to be accessed for low-cost housing projects. This could be a significant gamechanger but till it happens Rohit will have to wait.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/revival-in-the-offing-for-ncr/1048702/0

News Published Under:?? Real Estate India | Comments Off

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Source: http://www.indianrealtynews.com/real-estate-india/revival-in-the-offing-for-ncr.html

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Child finds gun in wrapped Christmas gift

By NBCNewYork.com

NEW YORK -- A Harlem woman is demanding increased security for gift donation programs after one of her six foster children found a gun in a wrapped Christmas present that had been dropped off at a SoHo church.?

Sheeba Anderson picked up a slew of pre-wrapped presents last week from St. Anthony's Church, which collects gifts for foster children during the holidays, and brought them to her home in the Frederick Douglass Houses. The gifts were given to St. Anthony's by a nonprofit organization that has a contract with the Administration for Children's Services, according to The New York Post.

Also on NBCNewYork.com:?Woman accused in Newtown victim scam

Anderson handed out the presents Christmas morning. When her 8-year-old daughter opened one of the boxes, she discovered a handgun slipped inside the cardboard that contained a mother-and-baby teddy bear set, the Post reported. The child told the paper she reached inside the package and felt something hard, which she initially thought was a stand or another gift. But when she pulled the item out of the packaging, she saw it was a gun.

---

The child's foster mother was horrified.

"I heard her say, 'Look, Miss Sheeba, I found a gun! She was waving it around and playing with it," Anderson, 42, told the Post. "This is something you never expect on Christmas. I feel like we narrowly avoided what could have been a terrible disaster."

Anderson grabbed the gun from the child and checked the other presents she had picked up from the church to make sure they didn't contain anything dangerous. Then she called police to pick up the weapon. The Post reported there were no visible serial numbers on the gun and the firing pin had been removed. Authorities were checking the make and model and looking into how it was donated.

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St. Anthony's did not immediately return the Post's requests for comment.?

The ACS said in a statement it was investigating "how and why an inoperable weapon was discovered in a foster home."

"We are concerned when any potential risk in a foster home comes to our attention, and are working to ensure that all of the children in the home remain safe," the agency said.

Anderson called for increased security for programs that work with the city to provide gifts to children who otherwise might not have any to open for Christmas.

?Who knows what else was going on with this bear? It could have had drugs or needles or anything else in there,? she told the Post. ?This is the last thing I would have expected. Security has to be improved. These are anonymous donations. They could have come from anywhere and anyone.?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16195932-child-finds-handgun-in-wrapped-christmas-gift-dropped-off-at-nyc-church?lite

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Lack of low-end BlackBerry 10 phone could be a serious stumbling block in RIM comeback bid

RIM

South Africa is one of Research In Motion?s (RIMM) top five markets in the world, and it is a decent proxy for the entire African market. Leading regional carrier Vodacom?s November smartphone statistics illustrate exactly why BlackBerry 10 cannot arrive soon enough? and why RIM badly needs a cheap new BlackBerry 10 model by spring.

[More from BGR: Apple CEO Tim Cook sees pay drop 99% in 2012]

Vodacom holds more than 50% of the South African handset market and South Africa is the largest mobile phone market in the continent.

[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]

On November 12th, Vodacom announced that it had 2.7 million BlackBerry users on its South African network, a number that increased by 300,000 in three months. The number of Android users grew by 200,000 to 700,000 subscribers. The number of iPhone users grew by 250,000 to 500,000.

Of course, there are many ways at looking at these trends but it?s striking that the growth of the BlackBerry user base has slowed down to 12% in a quarter while Android growth is now at 40% and iPhone growth is 100%. Even though the pool of BlackBerry users is still expanding in the most important African market, we are now close to the tip-off point where the absolute number of both Android and iPhone users added each quarter is going to be larger than the number of new BlackBerry subs.

RIM announced last week that its global customer base has finally started shrinking?? the BlackBerry subscriber pool dropped from 80 million to 79 million between the August and November quarters.

During the August quarter, RIM still managed to add 2 million BlackBerry subscribers. The non-U.S. BlackBerry subscriber base is still growing, but too slowly to offset the U.S. erosion. This is the trend that the Vodacom November numbers also reflect. In Africa and Asia, that BlackBerry growth slowdown is unlikely to reverse until RIM launches a cheap, sub-$250 model with the new BlackBerry 10 OS.

In South Africa, affluent buyers are now flocking under the iPhone banner, while Samsung (005930) and Chinese vendors are mopping up middle class consumers with cheap Android models. New high-end phones in the $600 range are not going to change this equation.

RIM must?strike hard in the low-end market to regain its African momentum. By Easter, Android and iPhone camps will have pulled ahead of RIM in new subscriber additions at Vodacom. Next spring, South Africa could well be the most important global bellwether of RIM?s struggle to recapture subscriber growth.

This article was originally published by BGR

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lack-low-end-blackberry-10-phone-could-serious-143013531.html

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Diet and lifestyle Tips to get Younger Skin | Health and Fitness Tips ...

8 to 10 portions of water each day might seem like a great deal but our physiques actually need much water to remain healthy inside and outside. This helps within the removal of wastes and harmful toxins in the skin. Moisturize The Skin. The sun?s rays is the skin?s worst enemy. Whenever you sunburn the skin you damage cells.

The skin may be the primary organ within your body and mirrors your way of life. Skin safeguards us in the extremes in our atmosphere and from contaminants in mid-air around us. It reflects your food intake, drink or do. Keeps the skin searching fresh by finding the way your lifestyle and skin-care habits shape the skin every day? Stay well hydrated. Consuming lots of water does indeed help the skin become more healthy and fewer prone to facial lines.

When skin cells are broken, the skin must produce new cells to exchange them which process weakens the skin each time it?s repeated. The skin are affected from impulsive aging if you do not safeguard if from Ultra violet sun rays and repeated sunburns. Although Ultra violet sun rays cause the skin to glance older than however they may also cause cancer of the skin. The only method to fully defend the skin is by using a sun screen lotion cream each day. You?ll find daily skin lotions with Ultra violet protection in addition to foundation makeup with SPF?s as much as 15. Put on a hat or visor to safeguard the face in the sun. Clothing alone won?t safeguard the skin from Ultra violet sun rays. Smoking may also cause the skin to appear pale or gray colored. Giving up smoking will get a lean body and the look of the skin greatly.

Skin wants lots of oxygen to remain healthy and just what better technique to get added oxygen rather than exercise. Do regular cardio and plug your lung area track of just as much oxygen as possible inhale in. Working out keeps the skin well developed as well as your body who is fit. Whenever your is who is fit it is best outfitted to help keep its organs healthy. Exfoliated skin is good skin. You need to exfoliate the dead cells out of your skin on the normal basis to maintain your skin searching good. If you do not exfoliate the skin it will likely be less in a position to take advantage of the creams and skin lotions are applying into it. Rubbing ocean salt on the skin with a little water is a superb method to exfoliate. Utilizing a moisturizer in it every single day can help the skin stay elastic and healthy searching.

A moisturizer in it ought to be used all around the body every time you bathe or shower. Body oil put on faintly wet skin following a shower will aid seal in moisture and the skin from becoming dry. Use a moisturizer in it in your face each morning and during the night. Ascorbic Acid creams can offers brilliant wrinkle control plus they could also aid liver spots to fade. An item which consists of alpha hydroxy chemicals could be good at keeping the skin more youthful searching too. For good proper care of the skin internally it provides you with plenty of many years of protection without causing you to look over the age of your years.

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Tags: diet tips to get younger skin, lifestyle Tips, Younger Skin
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012 and is filed under Health Tips, Skin Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://www.hhtip.com/diet-and-lifestyle-tips-to-get-younger-skin/

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Source: http://www.clippergirl.com/great-weekly-magazine-specials-on-parents-shape-taste-of-home-and-family-fun

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Big changes coming to Sunsong Ranch in 5.2

There's been plenty of talk over the last couple of months about Sunsong Ranch, the farm that players can adopt and use to grow various crops of their own. A lot of that talk revolved around whether or not Sunsong Ranch was the first step towards player housing, a feature that a lot of players have been wistfully wishing for since the days of vanilla. Earlier this month, we asked Cory Stockton and Dave Kosak if this was indeed the case, and the response was that while the ranch could be interpreted that way, player housing wasn't something intended for the future.

However, both Stockton and Kosak were excited with how well the farming feature had been received, and with how well it integrated with other features in the game. As a new feature, the farm works seamlessly with other professions in the game. Being able to grow your own resources has been a tremendous boon for players, but the question still remained -- how could the farming feature be improved even further?

Well ... how about as an additional means to gather reputation?

Farm improvements in 5.2

Patch 5.2 will see a few new features added to Sunsong Ranch, the most important being the option to purchase it. Technically, while players are able to use the farm, it still belongs to Farmer Yoon -- he's just allowing players to use the farm because they've been such a tremendous help in getting the farm cleaned up, and getting Yoon in with the Tillers to boot. Even though players have earned the favor of everyone in Halfhill, the farm still isn't really their property.

With patch 5.2, you'll be able to purchase the farm from Yoon and own it outright. This means that the farm will turn into a rest point like an inn, and players will be able to bind their hearthstones to their farms and instantly log out at that location. As far as requested improvements go, this was at the top of the list for many players. As for how much that farm will cost you ... well, we'll have to wait and see. The new Sunsong Ranch features will not be available on the PTR, but they will be coming soon.

But purchasing the farm does more than give you a new hearthstone option. If you own the farm, you'll begin to get work orders from the various factions scattered across Pandaria. Filling out those work orders will give you a reputation boost with the issuing faction. This additional feature does two things -- makes that reputation grinding a little easier, and further cements that integrated nature of the farm that the developers seem to be so fond of.

We don't currently know what form that reputation boost will take -- whether it will be a flat amount of reputation rewarded, or a buff that increases reputation gain with a faction. But any bonus to reputation gain is apt to be well-received, and it's a purpose for the farm that goes beyond the usual helpful boost to professions.

Quality of life improvements

But that's not all we'll be seeing out of Sunsong Ranch. Along with the option to purchase the farm, several quality-of-life improvements will be added as well. Players that are tired of planting 16 seeds one at a time will be glad to hear that seed bags will now be available, allowing you to plant four plots worth of crops at a time.

Special crop seeds have been in since Mists of Pandaria's launch. While you can use these special crop seeds to gather materials like fabric, cloth, leather, and enchanting materials, the yield on these special crop seeds was pretty low. In 5.2, the yield has been improved to make farming more competitive with gathering these items out in the world -- making the seeds a much more useful purchase.

Planting seeds has always resulted in crops that need to be tended to. Players have to water the plants, pull pesky weeds, spray for bugs, or murder encroaching wildlife. But there was a dual-layered nature to farming that got tiresome -- if you picked a plant, you'd either end up with soil that needed to be tilled, a weed that needed to be pulled before the soil could be tilled, or occupied soil with a virmen that needed to be killed before the soil could be tilled.

If you've reached exalted with the Tillers and purchased a Master Plow, in 5.2 it will now do something about those annoying virmen living in the soil. Running the Master Plow over the offending soil will pop the virmen out of the ground stunned and at 30% health, making them far less of a nuisance. In addition, Wild Crops -- the swinging vines that require players to hop on and wrestle for a minute or so -- will now occur less often.

It's really nice to see that this useful new feature is still being worked on and improved over time, and in ways that are genuinely useful to players. The ability to use the farm as an additional means to gain reputation is a really good move. And even though Sunsong Ranch really can't be considered player housing, it's still nice that we'll be able to buy the place, bind our hearthstones, and call it a far more personal home than any inn in Pandaria.

---

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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Tags: chee-chee, cooking, ella, farm, farmer-yoon, farming, fish-fellreed, gina-mudclaw, halfhill-market, haohan-mudclaw, jogu-the-drunk, mists-of-pandaria, old-hillpaw, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, reputation-rewards, sho, sunsong-ranch, the-tillers, tillers, tina-mudclaw, wow-farming

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

Source: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/27/big-changes-coming-to-sunsong-ranch-in-5-2/

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Opening Remarks: Pet Hall of Fame | Advocate Magazine

This article is 2 of 13 in the 01.2013 issue.

After my wife?s conversion, ours includes cats

When I first met my wife, she wasn?t a ?cat person.? She grew up in a family with dogs, and they were her ?go to? pets.

When I grew up, we had a farm overflowing with animals ? cats, a dog, cattle and chickens, along with the occasional horse and pig.

My wife?s dogs had the run of her house. They were part of the family, and she talks about the ones that were standouts ? Big Dog, CB, Elvis ? as she describes their escapades during the long small-town Texas summers.

Animals on our farm, though, were there for a purpose rather than entertainment. The cattle were there to provide food or breed, with their calves sold each year to help pay our bills. The chickens produced eggs to eat, the pigs typically wound up in our freezer, and we always kept one cow to provide our milk each day. The horses were my sisters? youth agriculture projects, the cats lived in the barn and chased down mice and rats, and the dog was the intruder alarm system.

Anyway, when we married, my wife politicked constantly for a dog. But dogs need lots of attention, and since we both worked outside the home, that wasn?t possible. So I suggested instead that we get a cat, because they sleep most of the day anyway. And so we did.

Our first cat was friendly and loving, but it developed a serious problem that led to a week?s stay at an emergency vet facility. The cat recovered after a long and expensive stay, and when it came home, it loved us just the same.

But it hated ? and I do mean hated ? everyone else. Which was fine because we didn?t have a lot of visitors back then anyway.

Its eventual replacement has a place in my wife?s pet hall of fame: Spike trailed my wife throughout the house as first one son, and then another, was born and grew. It was common to see all four of them (my wife, two tiny sons and the cat) clambered together in a rocking chair, watching Winnie the Pooh at two in the morning when one son was sick and the other couldn?t sleep.

That cat wanted to be in the middle of everything; he was ?Nana Kitty,? the self-appointed third parent. We rescued it from the SPCA primarily because when our almost 2-year-old saw the cat, he accidentally picked it up with an under-the-neck chokehold, and the cat just hung there like a rag doll, enjoying the attention.

Spike lived with us 13 years, until his little body finally gave out.

Now, as I write this column, our two cats (both rescued from local shelters, one after a car accident claimed its front left leg when it was 12 weeks old) are curled up next to my wife. They?re purring and occasionally stirring a bit just to make sure they?re not missing anything.

My wife is now a cat person. She claims she can look at the cats? faces and tell what they?re thinking.

I look at their faces, and all I see are two round eyes staring back. I?m sure there?s something going on back there, but I choose not to worry about it.

If they?re hungry or thirsty, they let us know. And they?re no longer animals or even pets. Instead, they?re always hanging around with us, just like family.

Because that?s what they are.

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Source: http://prestonhollow.advocatemag.com/2012/12/25/opening-remarks-pet-hall-of-fame/

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Marijuana goes legal in Washington state amid mixed messages

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Hundreds of marijuana enthusiasts huddled near Seattle's famed Space Needle tower on Thursday night with pipes, bongs and hand-rolled joints to celebrate Washington's new status as the first state in the nation to legalize pot for adult recreational use.

The public gathering at the downtown Seattle Center, like a smaller turnout at a nearby spot hours earlier, defied a key provision of the state's landmark marijuana law, which allows possession of small amounts of cannabis but forbids users from lighting up outside the privacy of their homes.

Police kept their distance from both gatherings, underscoring mixed law enforcement messages about the new statute, known by its ballot designation as Initiative 502. The measure took effect on Thursday.

Seattle's city attorney issued a stern warning on Wednesday that public pot puffing would not be tolerated and that violators faced citations with $100 fines.

But the Seattle Police Department said its officers had been directed to limit any enforcement actions related to Initiative 502 to verbal warnings only, at least for now.

The new law, passed by voters last month in a move that could set the state up for a showdown with the federal government, removes criminal sanctions for anyone 21 or older possessing 1 ounce (28.5 grams) or less of pot for personal use.

Colorado voters likewise chose to legalize pot for personal recreational use, but that measure is not due to take effect until next month. Both states are among 18 that have already removed criminal sanctions for medical use of marijuana.

The Washington law also legalizes possession of up to 16 ounces (0.45 kg) of solid cannabis-infused goods - such as brownies - and up to 72 ounces (2.4 kg) of weed in liquid form.

But driving under the influence of cannabis or imbibing in public places where the consumption of alcohol is already banned remain illegal.

NO SELLING OR SHARING ALLOWED

The new law ultimately will permit cannabis to be legally sold and taxed at state-licensed stores in a system to be modeled after those in many states for alcohol sales. The state Liquor Control Board, along with agriculture and public health officials, have until next December to set up such a system.

For now, it remains a crime to sell, cultivate or even share one's own stash, even though the law allows individuals to purchase a limited amount for personal possession.

Ironically, the first known court challenge of the law came from a medical marijuana patient in Olympia, who filed suit last week seeking to block enforcement of a new standard for marijuana impairment while driving, similar to the blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving.

The plaintiff, Arthur West, says the new legal limit - 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood of THC, pot's active ingredient - would unfairly subject him to prosecution for a THC level at which he routinely drives without impairment. A hearing on his request for an injunction was set for Friday.

Little if any of the law's fine points seemed to matter to the mellow group of about 300 people - from college-age tokers to middle-aged Baby Boomers - who assembled at the Seattle Center fountain, a short distance from the Space Needle.

Convivial laughter, laid-back conversation and occasional coughing filled the air as the pungent smell of marijuana wafted through the crowd, many wearing sweatshirt hoodies to ward off the chill, on a cold, crisp evening.

'SAFER THAN ALCOHOL'

Carrying a sign, "marijuana is safer than alcohol," Jared Allaway, 30, described the night as "iconic."

"Seattle's always been friendly to cannabis," Allaway said. "Hopefully this will spread to eastern Washington. You get outside of Seattle, it's a different world."

Seated in a wheelchair that sported a "Goddess" sticker, medical marijuana patient Penny Simons, 52, said she traveled with friends from Renton, Washington, south of Seattle, to attend the smoke-in.

"It's history," she said. "I've been thinking about the people across the country who are jailed for this. It's nice to see things change."

A smaller crowd of about 100 pot-smoking celebrants had assembled about 19 hours earlier nearby for a count-down to the law taking effect at the stroke of midnight, blaring the music of reggae legend Bob Marley from loudspeakers.

Both gatherings were peaceful, with no reports of arrests.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in Olympia; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Todd Eastham, Peter Cooney and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-goes-legal-washington-state-amid-mixed-messages-022036795.html

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