The ranking Republican member on Washington state's House Transportation Committee thinks that riding bicycles causes more pollution than driving cars, the Seattle Bike Blog reported Saturday.

State Rep. Ed Orcutt (R), pictured, wrote an email to a constituent who disagreed with his support for a new tax on the sales of bicycles, a proposal being considered as part of a larger piece of transportation legislation. Reached by the Seattle Bike Blog, he confirmed the email is real.

In his message, sent to the owner of a bicycle shop, Orcutt wrote: "If I am not mistaken, a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride."

He added that when citizens drive cars they are helping to pay for the roads, whereas bicyclists "need to start paying for the roads they ride on rather than make motorists pay."

Al-Sweady inquiry into accusations against British troops opens with evidence of alleged signs of torture on prisoners

A public inquiry into allegations that British troops murdered up to 20 unarmed prisoners and tortured five others following a fierce battle with Iraqi insurgents has opened in London with evidence that some of their death certificates recorded what were described as signs of severe mutilation.

Several of the deceased were said to bear signs of torture after their corpses were handed back to their families by British personnel at Camp Abu Naji, while the Iraqi death certificates recorded that one man's penis had been removed and two bodies were missing eyes, the inquiry was told on Monday.

But there is a "stark dispute" between the relatives of the dead men and the Ministry of Defence over the way in which the deaths occurred, said Jonathan Acton Davis QC, counsel to the inquiry.

"The Iraqi witnesses say that the evidence points to there having been a number of Iraqi men having been taken into Camp Abu Naji alive by the British military on 14 May 2004, and who were handed back to their families dead the next day.

"The military say the evidence points to 20 Iraqi dead having been recovered from the battle ... and handed back to the families the next day."

The two sides, said Acton Davis, could not reach agreement even over the number of deceased, or their identities.

The three-week standoff involving a band of Filipino rebels who stormed a northern Borneo village has now claimed at least 26 lives. Two Malaysian commandos and a dozen members of the Royal Army of Sulu died in a police raid on the insurgent-held territory on Friday evening, with a further five Malaysian policemen ambushed and killed nearby the next day. Another seven insurgents were reportedly slain in a separate incident on Saturday. While most of the remaining Sulu militants refuse to budge, police fear that some are planning further strikes in the surrounding coastal regions. The turmoil is causing domestic upheaval for the two governments involved; Malaysia has general elections due before the end of June, while Philippine President Benigno Aquino III could face renewed strife on home soil after he appeared to sanction the foreign use of deadly force against his defiant countrymen.

The situation, which was at first greeted with raised eyebrows within the international community, has deteriorated rapidly. On Feb. 9, more than 100 followers of self-professed Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, from the autonomous island province of Sulu in the southwestern Philippines, landed in the Malaysian province of Sabah to press their historic claim to the land. They seized control of the village of Lahad Datu only to be surrounded by the Malaysian security forces. Philippine President Benigno Aquino III appealed for his compatriots to return home peacefully and even sent a navy ship staffed with Filipino-Muslim leaders, social workers and medical personnel to facilitate their withdrawal. However, he finally lost patience with the recalcitrant Sulu insurgents and on Saturday said that they must surrender "without conditions." The rebels had previously snubbed two deadlines to vacate the land.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi says the Islamic Republic is building 3,000 new-generation uranium enrichment centrifuges.

"The [construction of the] final production line of these centrifuges has concluded and the earlier generations of these centrifuges that have a low efficiency will soon be phased out," Abbasi said.

On February 23, Iran said more than 180 second-generation centrifuges had been put in place at its Natanz nuclear facility, and that more 180 IR2M centrifuges would gradually be installed there.The Iranian private sector has successfully designed 360-megawatt nuclear power reactors, Abbasi said on Sunday, adding, "We are ready to cooperate with foreign parties in the construction of power reactors and so far we have had proposals from Russia and some Western countries in this regard."

An Air Force general's decision to overturn a jury's guilty verdict and reinstate a fighter pilot convicted of sexual assault could prove to be a lightning rod in efforts to legislatively strip commanders of their long-held authority in sexual assault cases, victims' advocates say.

Third Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin's decision to reinstate Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was a stunning example of structural problems in an outdated military justice system rife with bias that discounts victims while emboldening offenders, advocates said.

"It's really shocking," Susan Burke, a lawyer who represents numerous military women in lawsuits against the Defense Department, said of the case.

"It's inexcusable. It's like the poster child for why we need reform. It proves to Congress why they have to act," she said.

Greg Jacob, policy director of the Service Women's Action Network and a former Marine infantry officer, was likewise taken aback.

"It's atrocious. It's infuriating," he said. "It's a perfect example of the due process system being overridden just at the whim of the commander. It's a real travesty of justice.

"Now suddenly he's not guilty? If there's a sexual assault in this guy's unit after he shows up, do you think anyone's going to report it?"

The case has also outraged legislators and is expected to be examined at a congressional hearing later this month.

Twin explosions killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 150 in a Shiite Muslim area of Karachi in southern Pakistan, officials said. Nearby apartment buildings caught fire in the bombing.

The cause of the first blast was a remote-detonated improvised explosive device strapped to a motorcycle at the entrance of Abbas Town, following which a CNG cylinder of a car exploded a few minutes later, the Pakistani based newspaper News International reports.

A suicide bomber is suspected to be behind the attack, Reuters quotes police Inspector General Fayyaz Leghari.

"There were two blasts but it was not clear whether the second was also a bomb", Leghari said.

The first explosion was so powerful that it blew off the facades of several flats facing the explosion. Window panes of most surrounding buildings were smashed, even some doors came off hinges, witnesses told the News International newspaper.

Chinese state TV broadcasts live images of four condemned killers shortly before they are executed. Human rights lawyers and others express outrage at the unprecedented coverage.

Beijng- It was reality television in the extreme.

Chinese state television Friday broadcast live images of the last moments of four foreign drug traffickers who were about to be executed for the 2011 killings of 13 Chinese fishermen on the Mekong River. Although the cameras pulled away before the lethal injections, the coverage was unprecedented, unleashing a storm of criticism and debate about the death penalty.

Psychologists decried the coverage as distressing to children. Lawyers complained that it violated a clause in the criminal code against parading the condemned before execution.

"This carnival on CCTV was a violation not only of ethics, but of the criminal code regulations that the death penalty not be carried out in public," wrote human rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan on a microblog. Many others, however, applauded the execution of the four drug traffickers for unusually heinous slayings that had galvanized the public.

The execution coverage appeared to a large extent intended to illustrate China's rising power to both the domestic and foreign public. The drug traffickers had been captured in Laos after an extensive manhunt that some commentators likened to the U.S. search for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan in 2011 by U.S. forces.

China executes about 4,000 people each year, more than all other countries in the world combined, although the numbers and the crimes carrying the death penalty are gradually being reduced.

Seattle has become the next city to start using crime prediction software. Mayor Mike McGinn and Police Chief John Diaz announced that two precincts in the Southwest and East will begin using the software known as PREDPOL, short for "predictive policing."

"The predictive policing software is estimated to be twice as effective as a human data analyst working from the same information. It's all part of our effort to build an agile, flexible and innovative police department that provides the best service possible to the public," said Diaz.

The program consists of a mathematical algorithm similar to the one used in earthquake prediction. Sociological informaton about criminal behavior and five years' worth of past crime data is compiled to predict when and where a future crime will likely take place, down to a 500-square-foot area.

"This technology will allow us to be proactive rather than reactive in responding to crime; this investment, along with our existing hot spot policing work, will help us to fulfill the commitments we made in the '20/20' plan to use data in deploying our officers to make our streets safer," said McGinn during a recent news conference.

As soon as April, police plan to roll out the software to every precinct in the city. Civil liberties advocates have already questioned if the software has the ability to collect data on specific individuals.

Officially, since June 2009 the US economy has been undergoing an economic recovery from the December 2007 recession. But where is this recovery? I cannot find it, and neither can millions of unemployed Americans.

The recovery exists only in the official measure of real GDP, which is deflated by an understated measure of inflation, and in the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate, which is declining because it does not count discouraged job seekers who have given up looking for a job.

No other data series indicates an economic recovery. Neither real retail sales nor housing starts, consumer confidence, payroll employment, or average weekly earnings indicate economic recovery.

Neither does the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. The Fed's expansive monetary policy of bond purchases to maintain negative real interest rates continues 3.5 years into the recovery. Of course, the reason for the Fed's negative interest rates is not to boost the economy but to boost asset values on the books of "banks too big to fail."

The low interest rates raise the prices of the mortgage-backed derivatives and other debt-related assets on the banks' balance sheets at the expense of interest income for retirees on their savings accounts, money market funds, and Treasury bonds.

Homeland Security's specifications say drones must be able to detect whether a civilian is armed. Also specified: "signals interception" and "direction finding" for electronic surveillance.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department's unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States' northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police.

Homeland Security's specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they "shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not," meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify "signals interception" technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and "direction finding" technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained a partially redacted copy of Homeland Security's requirements for its drone fleet through the Freedom of Information Act and published it this week. CNET unearthed an unredacted copy of the requirements that provides additional information about the aircraft's surveillance capabilities.