Cyanide linked to $1 million lottery winner's death

Urooj Khan, 46, won $1 million before taxes on an Illinois lottery scratch ticket in June.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Urooj Khan, 46, won $1 million before taxes on an Illinois lottery scratch ticket


• He died suddenly weeks later; authorities first ruled his death "natural"


• Revisiting the case, they found he died of "cyanide toxicity," a medical examiner says


• Chicago police are investigating, but haven't made any arrests

(CNN) -- One day, Urooj Khan literally jumped for joy after scoring a $1 million winner on an Illinois lottery scratch ticket.

The next month, he was dead.

The Cook County medical examiner's office initially ruled Khan's manner of death natural. But after being prompted by a relative, the office revisited the case and eventually determined there was a lethal amount of cyanide in Khan's system.

"That ... led us to issue an amended death certificate that (established) cyanide toxicity as the cause of death, and the manner of death as homicide," Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Steve Cina said Monday.

Why did Khan, an Indian immigrant who was described as a well-liked, hardworking and successful businessman, die? And who is responsible?

Finding that out is now up to the Chicago police. No arrests have been made.

"We are investigating it as a murder, and we're working closely with the medical examiner's office," Chicago police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton said Monday.

On June 26, Khan was all smiles at a 7-Eleven in the Rogers Park section of Chicago. Surrounded by his wife, daughter and friends, he held an oversized $1 million check and recalled his joy upon playing the "$3 million Cash Jackpot!" game, where tickets sell for $30 apiece.

"I scratched the ticket, then I kept saying, 'I hit a million!' over and over again," the 46-year-old Khan said, according to a press release from the Illinois Lottery.

"I jumped two feet in the air, then ran back into the store and tipped the clerk $100."

The plan, he explained, was to use the money for his mortgage, paying off bills, a donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and investing more in his dry cleaning businesses.

"Winning the lottery means everything to me," Khan said.

He would have to wait a few weeks to collect his actual winnings, which amounted after taxes to about $425,000. According to CNN affiliate WGN, that check was issued July 19, but Khan never got to spend it.

The next night, Khan came home, ate dinner and went to bed, according to an internal police department document obtained by the Chicago Tribune. His family later heard him screaming and took him to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, the paper reported, citing the document.

That's where the Cook County medical examiner's office came in, investigating Khan's death because it was "sudden and unexpected," Cina said.

At the time, there were no allegations of foul play or evidence of trauma. So, following the office's policy, Khan's body underwent what Cina described as an "external examination (and) basic toxicology testing," neither of which turned up anything abnormal.

So the medical examiner ruled Khan had died of arterial sclerotic cardiovascular disease -- which encompasses incidents like heart attacks, strokes and aortic ruptures -- and that his manner of death was natural, according to Cina.

A few days later, a family member approached the doctor who had examined the body "and said they felt uncomfortable that it was being ruled a natural and they suggested that we look into it further," the chief medical examiner said.

"So we did that," he added. "Forensics is not a static field. If new evidence comes to light, we'll revisit cases."

That meant more in-depth toxicology tests. In early September, new screening results came back indicating cyanide in Khan's blood. With that, the official manner of death was changed from natural to pending, Cina said, and Chicago police got involved.

In late November, a more detailed blood analysis came back showing "a lethal level of cyanide" and Khan's death became a murder case.

Chicago police haven't offered details, including a possible motive, about what they call an "ongoing investigation." Talking briefly with CNN affiliate WBBM and the Tribune, Khan's widow described her husband as kind and exemplary.

Jimmy Goreel, who runs the 7-Eleven where the winning lottery ticket was sold, offered similarly glowing comments about Khan.

"I would never think that anybody ... would hurt him," Goreel told WGN. "(He was a) nice person, very hopeful and gentle (and) very hardworking."

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Pakistan: U.S. drones kill 8 suspected militants

Updated 1:10 a.m. EST

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan Several missiles fired from American drones slammed into a compound near the Afghan border in Pakistan early Tuesday, killing eight suspected militants, Pakistan officials said.

The two intelligence officials said the compound was located near the town of Mir Ali, in the North Waziristan tribal area.

One of the officials said an al Qaeda operative was believed to have been killed in the strike.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

North Waziristan, the area where the strike occurred, is considered a stronghold for insurgent groups operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is one of the few parts of the tribal areas that border Afghanistan in which the Pakistani military has not conducted a military operation to root out militants, despite repeated pushes to do so from the American government.

Tuesday's strike was the fourth since the new year began.

On Sunday, nine Pakistani Taliban fighters were killed when American missiles fired from several drones flying overhead slammed into three militant hideouts in another tribal area, South Waziristan.

The militant in charge of training suicide bombers for the Pakistani Taliban was believed by Pakistan intelligence officials to have died in Sunday's strike.

On Jan. 2, a drone strike killed a top Pakistani militant commander, Maulvi Nazir. He was accused of carrying out deadly attacks against American and other targets across the border in Afghanistan. But unlike most members of the Taliban in Pakistan, he negotiated a truce with the Pakistani military in 2009 and did not attack Pakistani troops or domestic targets.

The covert U.S. drone program is extremely controversial in Pakistan, where many in the country look at it as an infringement on their sovereignty. Many Pakistanis complain that innocent civilians have also been killed, something the U.S. rejects.

Islamabad officially opposes the use of U.S. drones on its territory, but is believed to have tacitly approved some strikes in past.

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Meet Obama's Defense Secretary Nominee

President Obama nominated former Senator Chuck Hagel as the next U.S. secretary of defense. To those who haven't followed the Senate closely in the past decade, he's probably not a household name.

Hagel is a former GOP senator from Nebraska and Purple-Heart-decorated Vietnam veteran, but he wouldn't necessarily be a popular pick with Republicans in Congress.

At age 21, Hagel and his brother Tom became the next in the family to serve in the United States Army. They joined the masses of Americans fighting an unfamiliar enemy in Vietnam.

In his book, he describes finding himself "pinned down by Viet Cong rifle fire, badly burned, with my wounded brother in my arms."

"Mr. President, I'm grateful for this opportunity to serve our country again," Hagel said after Obama announced his nomination Monday.

In 1971, Hagel took his first job in politics as chief of staff to Congressman John Y. McCollister, a position he held for six years. After that, he moved to Washington for the first time, where he went on to work for a tire company's government affairs office, the 1982 World's Fair and in 1981, as Ronald Reagan's Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration.

Obama Taps Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary Watch Video

Sen. Chuck Hagel's Defense Nomination Draws Criticism Watch Video

Obama's Defense Nominee Chuck Hagel Stirs Washington Lawmakers Watch Video

He worked in the private sector for most of the 80s and 90s before his first election to the Senate in 1997.
Since the turn of the century, Hagel has followed a curvy path of political alliances that puts his endorsements all over the map. Hagel's record of picking politically unpopular positions could be a large part of why Obama is naming him for the job, as Slate's Fred Kaplan surmises the next Defense secretary will be faced with tough choices.

In 2000, he was one of few Republican senators to back Sen. John McCain over then-presidential-candidate George W. Bush.

After that election, Hagel fiercely criticized Bush for adding 30,000 surge troops to Iraq, in place of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's proposal of a draw-down and regional diplomacy, which Hagel preferred. When Bush instead announced that more troops would go to Iraq, Hagel co-sponsored a nonbinding resolution to oppose it, along with then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel told Esquire in June 2007. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

Hagel's fierce opposition to America's involvement in Iraq – he called it one of the five monumental blunders of history, on par with the Trojan War – will be of substantial importance as the Obama administration charts our course out of Afghanistan, deciding how to withdraw the last of the troops in 2014 and how much of a presence to leave behind.

Hagel's support for McCain, which was substantial in his competition against Bush, disappeared in the 2008 election. Hagel toured Iraq and Afghanistan with Obama during his first campaign for the presidency.

In October 2008, Hagel's wife, Lillibet, announced her support for the Obama team, after the Washington Post reported on her donations to his campaign. She donated again in 2012.

Before the 2008 election, Hagel wrote: "The next president of the United States will face one of the most difficult national security decisions of modern times: what to do about an Iran that may be at the threshold of acquiring nuclear weapons."

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West vs Asia education rankings are misleading

Western schoolchildren are routinely outperformed by their Asian peers, but worrying about it is pointless

MATHEMATICS and science are as essential to modern economies as coal was to the industrial revolution. So when the results of international tests show Western schoolchildren lagging behind their peers in countries like Singapore and Japan, alarm bells start ringing.

The latest results to cause consternation are from a comparison of mathematical and scientific knowledge called TIMSS, or Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. This is given every four years to 9-10-year-olds and 13-14-year-olds from more than 50 countries.

The results, released last month, show that students from the UK, US and Australia continue to perform disappointingly. In maths, for example, English, American and Australian 13-year-olds were outperformed by their peers in South Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan and Russia. It was a similar story in science.

Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth. US secretary of education Arne Duncan lamented that "a number of nations are out-educating us today... If we as a nation don't turn that around, those nations will soon be outcompeting us in a knowledge-based, global economy."

Australia's Education Standards Institute director Kevin Donnelly said the results proved that the country's education system had gone "pear-shaped".

However, there are reasons to think that such worries are misplaced.

First of all, although the results are not world-beating, they are far from terrible. All were above average, and better than many other developed nations. For the US at least, they continue a trend of long-term improvement. In the first international mathematics survey, conducted in 1964, the US finished second from bottom.

Second, the common-sense connection between test scores and future economic success doesn't necessarily hold up. For developed nations, there is scant evidence that TIMSS rankings correlate with measures of prosperity or future success. The same holds for a similar test, the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA).

In 2008, Christopher Tienken, then at Rutgers University in New Jersey, compared 1995 TIMSS scores with the 2006 Growth Competitiveness Index. This index was devised by the World Economic Forum to measure a nation's future economic health. Tienken found that for developed countries there was no statistically significant relationship (International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership, vol 3, no 4).

Tienken, now at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, has since done a similar analysis of the 2003 PISA mathematics rankings and two measures of economic success: per-capita GDP in 2010, and the 2010-2011 Growth Competitiveness Index. The study, to be published in April, again found no statistically significant relationship.

These findings make TIMSS and PISA rankings seem irrelevant. But it could be worse than that. In many cases, high test scores correlate with economic failure.

Japanese students, for example, have always been near the top of the TIMSS. You might expect those high-flying students to be driving a high-flying economy. Yet the Japanese economy stagnated throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

There may be no causal connection, but the same negative correlation is seen elsewhere.

In 2007, Keith Baker of the US Department of Education made a rough comparison of long-term correlations between the 1964 mathematics scores and several measures of national success decades later.

Baker found negative relationships between mathematics rankings and numerous measures of prosperity and well-being: 2002 per-capita wealth, economic growth from 1992 to 2002 and the UN's Quality of Life Index. Countries scoring well on the tests were also less democratic. Baker concluded that league tables of international success are "worthless" (Phi Delta Kappan, vol 89, p 101).

A more recent analysis of 23 countries found a significant negative relationship between 2009 PISA scores and ranking on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's measure of perceived entrepreneurial capabilities. This counts the percentage of people in a country who feel confident that they could start a business.

With so many indicators showing a negative relationship, perhaps we need to reconsider how we interpret success - or failure - on international education scores. "If we believe that these tests actually tell us how well a kid or a country is doing, and then we hold people accountable for that, those people are going to focus on what's most likely to be tested, and they're going to cut out everything else," says Tienken.

This is especially relevant to the UK, where the education secretary Michael Gove has justified some of his controversial reforms by referring to the country's performance on the international educational stage.

We might instead consider that in a global economy, where the answers to almost any standard question are a few smartphone taps away, skills like creativity and initiative will be the true drivers of prosperity. None of these traits can be measured easily by tests. When testing consumes precious educational time, focus and money, they get squeezed out.

"Standardised tests reward the ability to find answers to pre-existing questions, but finding the question is more important," says Yong Zhao, an education researcher at the University of Oregon in Eugene who found the negative relationship between PISA scores and entrepreneurship.

We must, of course, continue to promote the importance of mathematics and science, but fixating on international tests as a way to achieve this could prove counterproductive.

MacGregor Campbell is a New Scientist consultant based in Portland, Oregon, and a former teacher

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Conservancy workers trained to help make estates safer

SINGAPORE: More conservancy workers have been trained to help make the estates safer.

About 270 workers in the the east went through a half-day training workshop, named "Workers-on-Watch".

They were taught how to look out for suspicious characters and activities.

The workshop was organised by Bedok Police Division, with support from the Singapore Civil Defence Force, Singapore Customs and National Crime Prevention Council.

The programme started in 2008, with 30 workers at East Coast Town Council and has been expanded to four more town councils - Tampines, Marine Parade, Pasir Ris-Punggol and Moulmein-Kallang.

- CNA/xq

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NHL, players reach tentative agreement

From Maria P. White and Josh Levs, CNN

updated 1:11 PM EST, Sun January 6, 2013

Mike Brown of the Toronto Maple Leafs strips the puck from Nicklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings during a game last January.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Games could resume "hopefully, within a few days," Fehr says


• Fans react with a mix of frustration and excitement


• The two sides reach an agreement after a marathon negotiating session


• If approved, the agreement would end a three-month lockout

(CNN) -- The National Hockey League and the NHL Players' Association struck a tentative agreement early Sunday that may end a three-month lockout of unionized players, league and union officials announced.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said the "basic framework" of a deal had been agreed upon after a 16-hour negotiating session at a Manhattan hotel. The details must be approved by both the players and the league's governing board, Bettman told reporters in a predawn news conference, and he said it was too early to provide details about what it might mean for a shortened hockey season.

But players' union chief Donald Fehr said he expected those steps to follow "fairly rapidly and with some dispatch."

Breaking down the new deal

"Hopefully, within a very few days, the fans can get back to watching people who are skating and not the two of us," Fehr said.

Sunday's deal could salvage the second half of the season and the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The NHL scrapped its preseason and all games through the end of 2012 after its contract with the players expired on September 15, with no agreement between the two sides. There were 526 games, nearly 43% of the season, scheduled from the start of the regular season on October 11 through December 30, the NHL said.

A similar labor dispute canceled the entire 2004-05 NHL season. Bettman has said any abbreviated regular season should probably have a minimum of 48 games per team.

Some players had a "crucial role in the final stages" of reaching the agreement, the union said. "Players in the room early Sunday for the announcement were: Craig Adams, Chris Campoli, Mathieu Darche, Shane Doan, Andrew Ference, Ron Hainsey, Jamal Mayers and George Parros," the players association said.

Sports Illustrated has tracked the intricacies of the talks and flashpoint issues, and argued that the NHL is "in dire need" of a new way of handling labor relations.

Initial reactions shared with CNN on social media were mixed.

"They waited too long. I think they're gonna take a well-deserved hit from hockey fans," HBobbie McLeod wrote on Facebook.

But some fans expressed excitement.

"Now time to see the LAKings raise their banner! #Finally," wrote Lisa, a self-described former hockey fan, on Twitter. But, she added, "after being a fan for 23 years through 4 lockouts, enough is enough."

What do you think? Post comments below or weigh in at Facebook or Twitter.

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Google head Eric Schmidt on way to North Korea

Updated 3 a.m. EST Jan. 7, 2013

BEIJING The Google chairman wants a first-hand look at North Korea's economy and social media in his private visit Monday to the communist nation, his delegation said, despite misgivings in Washington over the timing of the trip.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of one of the world's biggest Internet companies, is the highest-profile U.S. executive to visit North Korea -- a country with notoriously restrictive online policies -- since young leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago.

Schmidt departed Beijing on Monday aboard a flight to Pyongyang with a delegation led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has traveled more than a half-dozen times to North Korea over the past 20 years. Richardson called the trip a private, humanitarian mission.

"This is not a Google trip, but I'm sure he's interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect. So this is why we are teamed up on this," Richardson said without elaborating on what he meant by "the social media aspect."

"We'll meet with North Korean political leaders. We'll meet with North Korean economic leaders, military. We'll visit some universities. We don't control the visit. They will let us know what the schedule is when we get there," he said.

Richardson also said the delegation plans to inquire about a Korean-American U.S. citizen, Pae Jun Ho, detained in North Korea.

"We're going to try to inquire the status, see if we can see him, possibly lay the groundwork for him coming home," Richardson said. "I heard from his son, who lives in Washington state, who asked me to bring him back. I doubt we can do it on this trip."

The four-day trip, which is taking place just weeks after North Korea fired a satellite into space using a long-range rocket, has drawn criticism from U.S. officials. Washington condemned the Dec. 12 launch, which it considers a test of ballistic missile technology, as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring Pyongyang from developing its nuclear and missile programs. The Security Council is deliberating whether to take further action.

"We don't think the timing of the visit is helpful, and they are well aware of our views," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters last week.

The trip was planned well before North Korea announced its plans to send a satellite into space, two people with knowledge of the delegation's plans told The Associated Press. AP first reported the group's plans last Thursday. Schmidt, a staunch proponent of Internet connectivity and openness, is expected to make a donation during the visit, members of the delegation told AP. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to divulge details of the delegation's plans to the media.

The visit is the first by a Google executive to North Korea and comes just days after Kim, who took power following the Dec. 17, 2011, death of his father, Kim Jong Il, laid out a series of policy goals for North Korea in a lengthy New Year's speech. He cited expanding science and technology as a means to improving the country's economy as a key goal for 2013.

Computer and cell phone use is gaining ground in North Korea's larger cities.

However, most North Koreans only have access to a domestic Intranet system, not the World Wide Web. For North Koreans, Internet use is still strictly regulated and allowed only with approval.

Schmidt, who oversaw Google's expansion into a global giant, speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology.

Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea's neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.

Accompanying Schmidt is Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who heads Google's New York-based think tank. The two collaborated on a book about the Internet's role in shaping society, called "The New Digital Age," which comes out in April.

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Pastor Accused of Killing Wives Faces Trial

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday for Pastor Arthur Schirmer, who is accused of killing his second wife and then staging a car accident to hide it.

Schirmer, 64, also faces a second trial at a later date for the death of his first wife. He has said he is innocent of all charges.

In 2008, the pastor and his wife, Betty, were involved in what appeared at the time to be a car crash. Schirmer told police at the time that he had been driving 55 mph and swerved to miss a deer, causing him to drive off the road, according to a police affidavit obtained by ABC News.

Schirmer also said at the time that his wife's head had come forward and struck the windshield, according to the affidavit. Betty died a day later and her body was cremated at the request of Schirmer.

It wasn't until a grisly suicide in 2010 inside Schirmer's office that authorities decided to revisit the case of Betty Schirmer's death and arrest the pastor.

The man who broke in and shot himself at the desk in Schirmer's office at the Reeders United Methodist Church, Joseph Mustante, was the husband of the pastor's secretary, Cynthia Mustante, Poconos Township Police Detective James Wagner said.

Pocono Record, David Kidwell/AP Photo

Mustante's suicide was prompted by the discovery that his wife and the pastor had apparently been having an affair, Wagner said. He was alone at the time of his death.

Investigators looking into the suicide say that several church parishioners had concerns about the deaths of Schirmer's two wives.

"That suicide eventually exposed the affair publicly and subsequent to that, questions arose about the loss of [Schirmer's] wives and his character became questionable," Wagner said.

Relaunching the investigation into the two deaths, Wagner said he quickly suspected that "foul play existed, and the car crash was staged," allegedly, by Schirmer. Wagner said investigators also believed there was something "suspicious" about the first wife's death, a marriage that investigators had not known about prior to the suicide.

Investigators Look Into Deaths of Rev. Arthur Schirmer's Wives

Schirmer's first wife, Jewel, died in April 1999 from a traumatic brain injury after she purportedly fell down a flight of stairs in Lebanon, Pa., Wagner said.

Lebanon is about 100 miles southwest of Reeders, where Schrimer later moved with his second wife.

At the time of Jewel's death, Wagner said, a relative told police that he suspected Schirmer may have had a hand in his wife's death but that the investigation was "never completed."

On Dec. 11, 2012 -- more than 13 years after Jewel died, a Lebanon County judge ruled Schirmer would be tried for her murder.

When investigators looked at the death of Betty Schirmer, they saw inconsistencies, Wagner said.

"There was no airbag deployment and it simply looked like a car that had driven off the road at a very low speed," Wagner said. "It didn't match the injuries to [Betty's head].

"I know there are people out there who probably know him and feel like there is absolutely no way he would be capable of doing this," Wagner of Schirmer. "But they clearly don't know him."

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Silent Skype calls can hide secret messages

Got a secret message to send? Say it with silence. A new technique can embed secret data during a phone call on Skype. "There are concerns that Skype calls can be intercepted and analysed," says Wojciech Mazurczyk at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland. So his team's SkypeHide system lets users hide extra, non-chat messages during a call.

Mazurczyk and his colleagues Maciej Karaś and Krysztof Szczypiorski analysed Skype data traffic during calls and discovered an opportunity in the way Skype "transmits" silence. Rather than send no data between spoken words, Skype sends 70-bit-long data packets instead of the 130-bit ones that carry speech.

The team hijacks these silence packets, injecting encrypted message data into some of them. The Skype receiver simply ignores the secret-message data, but it can nevertheless be decoded at the other end, the team has found. "The secret data is indistinguishable from silence-period traffic, so detection of SkypeHide is very difficult," says Mazurczyk. They found they could transmit secret text, audio or video during Skype calls at a rate of almost 1 kilobit per second alongside phone calls.

The team aims to present SkypeHide at a steganography conference in Montpellier, France, in June.

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Twin suicide attack at Afghan tribal meeting: officials

KANDAHAR: Two suicide bombers struck inside a meeting of community leaders in the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldak on Sunday, causing an unknown number of casualties, local officials said.

"There has been a twin suicide bombing in the Spin Boldak council building. The blasts were inside the hall during a meeting of tribal elders," Jawed Faisal, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, told AFP.

"There are casualties but we don't have the numbers at this time."

Witnesses said that two explosions were heard, followed by small arms fire in Spin Boldak, a town in the restive Kandahar province close to the border with Pakistan.

The council building was badly damaged and some people were feared trapped in the rubble.

"Every Sunday the local shura (council) meet at the administrative building, that is where the attack happened," said Mohammad Ali, the border police chief in Spin Boldak, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Kandahar city.

"Two suicide attackers detonated themselves during the meeting."

- AFP/xq

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