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NALEO Honors New York State Assemblyman Peter Rivera

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2011 –

Legislator receives organization's prestigious award for outstanding public service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) this evening honors New York Assemblyman Peter Rivera with the prestigious Edward R. Roybal Award for Outstanding Public Service, presented during the Edward R. Roybal Legacy Gala at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in our nation's capital.

The Edward R. Roybal Award for Outstanding Public Service was established by NALEO as a tribute to the organization's founder, the late U.S. Rep. Edward R. Roybal, who was elected in 1962 as the first Latino congressman from California since 1879. This award recognizes current or former elected or appointed officials who have distinguished themselves in public office.

Assemblyman Rivera's public service mirrors that of our founder. The New York legislator has had a leadership role advancing mental health programs and AIDS funding, and improving services for the elderly and disenfranchised communities.

Elected to the New York State Assembly in 1992, Peter Rivera represents portions of New York City's Bronx borough, and serves as the Assembly's Speaker Pro Tempore. A native of Ponce, Puerto Rico, Assemblyman Rivera is a former prosecutor, NYPD detective and DEA agent, and is a graduate of Pace College and the St. John's University Law School.

"Among his many professional and public service accomplishments, we honor Assemblyman Rivera today for his committed efforts to help advance the community," said NALEO President Sylvia R. Garcia. "His tireless efforts to help a new generation of leaders is in the same spirit of public service as the Honorable Edward R. Roybal, who continues to inspire public officials across the country to press toward building a strong future for our constituents and communities."

The 2011 Chair for the Edward R. Roybal Legacy Gala is Southwest Airlines and the Vice-Chair is Toyota.

About NALEO

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials is the leadership organization of the nation's more than 6,000 Latino elected and appointed officials.

CONTACT: Patricia Guadalupe, (202) 546.2536,

SOURCENational Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO)

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Craig leads S.C.-Upstate past Stetson 72-59

DELAND, Fla. – Torrey Craig scored 20 points and grabbed 14 rebounds to carry South Carolina-Upstate past Stetson 72-59 on Friday night.

The win, which avenged last month's 74-71 loss to the Hatters in Spartanburg, S.C., was the second straight for the Spartans (4-19, 3-10 Atlantic Sun Conference) after 13 losses in a row.

Stetson (6-18, 4-9), led by Corey Walden's 13 points and game-high nine assists, has now dropped seven consecutive games.

Craig, notching his 14th straight game in double figures and his sixth 20-point performance of the season, was 6 of 12 from 3-point range. He also contributed four assists, two blocked shots and two steals.

Mezie Uzochukwu added 13 points, Josh Chavis 12 and Tony Dukes 11 for USC Upstate.

For Stetson, Luis Jacobo added 12 points and Ridge Graham 10.

The Spartans trailed only once — for 31 seconds — early in the game.

Food costs at records as U.N. warns of volatile era

MILAN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Global food prices tracked by a U.N. agency hit their highest level on record in January, a problem set to worsen after a massive snowstorm in the United States and floods in Australia.

The United Nations said on Thursday its Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index rose for the seventh month in a row to reach 231 in January, topping the peak of 224.1 last seen in June 2008. It is the highest level the index has reached since records began in 1990.

"These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come," FAO economist and grains expert Abdolreza Abbassian said in a statement.

Wheat underscored the problem affecting commodity prices around the world, settling on Thursday slightly lower after hitting a 2- year high earlier in the day. Corn and soybeans, which also have been hovering near long-term highs, also declined.

Global food inflation is a mounting worry for world leaders. It has contributed to political unrest in countries with high poverty rates and unemployment, as evidenced in the toppling of Tunisia's president in January. That unrest has spilled into Egypt, Yemen and Jordan.

In response, some countries are increasing food imports and have built stockpiles to meet their domestic needs. Among them is Algeria, wary after food riots in early January. It has made huge wheat purchases to avoid shortages, and on Thursday it announced plans to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency in a bid toavert spreading protests.

In Central America, Honduras has frozen prices on many basic foodstuffs despite complaints from farmers. El Salvador is increasing anti-poverty programs by 30 percent, and Guatemala is considering slashing import tariffs on wheat and is handing out food and cash vouchers to landless peasants.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick in a Reuters interview urged world leaders to "wake up" to the dangers of rising food inflation, a problem said he sees no relief from.

"We are going to be facing a broader trend of increasing commodity prices, including food commodity prices," he said.

SUPPLY THE KEY

Catastrophic storms and droughts have slammed the world's leading agriculture countries in recent months, including flooding and a massive cyclone in Australia and a powerful winter storm that swept across the United States.

Dubbed "Stormageddon," one of the biggest snowstorm in decades dumped up to 20 inches of snow in some parts of the U.S. grain belt this week, paralyzing the shipment of grain and livestock.

A deep-freeze forecast for the Midwest, the bread basket of the United States, threatens the region's winter wheat because it may lack sufficient insulating moisture to withstand the cold.

Sugar prices also have surged to three-decade highs on fears of damage Cyclone Yasi would bring to the Australian cane crop. Prices for Malaysian palm oil, a cooking staple in the developing world, hit 3-year highs on flooding.

Big companies have had to adjust to higher raw material costs. Kellogg Co, the world's largest breakfast cereal company, said on Thursday it has boosted prices on many of its products to offset rising costs for ingredients such as grains and sugar.

"Today's announcement by the Food and Agriculture Organization should ring alarm bells in capitals around the world," said Gawain Kripke, a policy and research director for Oxfam America, an international development group.

"Governments must avoid repeating the mistakes of the past when countries reacted to spiraling prices by banning exports and hoarding food. This will only make the situation worse and it is the world's poorest people who will pay the price," he said.

Janis Huebner, economist at Germany's DekaBank said inflation partly fueled by increasing food prices could in turn trigger interest rate rises in several countries this year.

"This could mean a slowing down of growth in the countries which raise their interest rates," he said. "This could involve Asian countries and other regions, this would somewhat brake growth but I do not expect a hard landing."

STOCK BUILDING

Some countries, particularly where food prices loom large in household budgets, have been building up food stocks to contain prices -- and to limit the political and social fallout.

During the last food price crisis, the World Bank estimated that some 870 million people in developing countries were hungry or malnourished. The FAO estimates that number has increased to 925 million.

"2008 should have been a wake-up call, but I'm not yet sure all the countries in the world that we need to support this have woken up to it," the World Bank's Zoellick said.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest economy, last week bought 820,000 tons of rice, lifting rice prices, while suspending import duties on rice, soybeans and wheat.

Algeria last week bought almost 1 million tons of wheat, bringing its purchases to at least 1.75 million since the start of January, and ordered a speeding up of grain imports.

On a day of bloody confrontation in Egypt, where protesters are demanding an end to the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the U.N. World Food Programme's Executive Director Josette Sheeran said the world was now in an era where it had to be very serious about food supply.

"If people don't have enough to eat they only have three options: they can revolt, they can migrate or they can die. We need a better action plan," she said.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul in London, Martinne Geller in New York, Lesley Wroughton and Christopher Doering in Washington and Michael Hogan in Hamburg; editing by Jonathan Thatcher, Keiron Henderson, Russell Blinch and Xavier Briand)

Male model behind the Mona Lisa, expert claims

ROME – A male apprentice, longtime companion and possible lover of Leonardo da Vinci was the main influence and a model for the "Mona Lisa" painting, an Italian researcher said Wednesday.

But the researcher, Silvano Vinceti, said the portrait also represents a synthesis of Leonardo's scientific, artistic and philosophical beliefs. Because the artist worked on it at various intervals for many years, he was subjected to different influences and sources of inspiration, and the canvas is full of hidden symbolic meanings.

"The 'Mona Lisa' must be read at various levels, not just as a portrait," Vinceti said.

This is one of many theories that have circulated over the decades about the identity of "Mona Lisa" and the meaning for her famously enigmatic smile. Others have said the painting was a self-portrait in disguise, or the depiction of a Florentine merchant's wife — the latter drawing a consensus among scholars.

The world famous portrait is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known as Salai, worked with Leonardo for more than two decades starting in 1490. Vinceti described their relationship as "ambiguous," and most art historians agree Salai was a Leonardo lover.

Several Leonardo works, including "St. John the Baptist" and a lesser-known drawing called "Angel Incarnate," were based on Salai, Vinceti told a news conference at the Foreign Press Association. These paintings show a slender, effeminate young man with long auburn curls.

Vinceti said similarities with the "Mona Lisa's" nose and mouth are striking.

"Salai was a favorite model for Leonardo," he said. "Leonardo certainly inserted characteristics of Salai in the last version of the Mona Lisa."

It was not the first time that Salai's name had been associated with the "Mona Lisa," though some scholars expressed skepticism. Pietro Marani, art historian and Leonardo expert, called the theory "groundless."

Vinceti said other influences may have affected Leonardo. He does not rule out that Lisa Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, may have provided an early inspiration.

Equally, Vinceti said further inspiration may have come from noblewoman Beatrice D'Este, who was married to Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan at whose court Leonardo worked in the late 15th century. Vinceti said that Leonardo often would see the woman while he was painting "The Last Supper" for the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, where she went to pray.

Traditionally, art historians say Leonardo started panting the "Mona Lisa" in 1503, when he was back from that Milan stay. But Vinceti has said he may have started in the late 1490s in Milan.

Vinceti, a media-savvy writer and art investigator, made his name when he said he had located Caravaggio's long-lost bones last year. He combines state-of-the-art, CSI-like techniques with old-fashioned library research.

Analyzing high-definition scanned images of the "Mona Lisa," Vinceti claimed in recent weeks to have found the letter "S" and "L" in the model's eyes, and the number "72" under the arched bridge in the backdrop of the painting.

He attaches several symbolic meanings to these letters: the "S" pointed him to Salai and the Sforza dynasty that ruled Milan, while the "L" is a reference to the artist himself and Lisa Gherardini.

Marani, the Leonardo expert, said at least three historical documents prove that Gherardini was the original model. He said there are no known paintings of Salai, though he conceded it was entirely possible that the young apprentice might serve as a model for other Leonardo works such as "St. John the Baptist."

But he warned against reading too much into possible similarities between subjects.

"All Leonardo subjects look like each other because he represents an abstract ideal of beauty. Therefore they all have this dual characteristic of masculine and feminine," said Marani, an art professor at Milan's Politecnico university.

"The work began as the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, but over the years in Leonardo's hands it slowly turned into something else: an idealized portrait, not a specific one," Marani said. "That's also why you have this fascinating face that transcends time and transcends a specific person, and why all these theories keep piling up."

Giffords husband willing to meet with family of alleged gunman

Mark Kelly would consider meeting the family of Jared Loughner, the man accused of opening fire in Tucson last week and shooting Kelly’s wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

In his first televised interview since the shooting, KellyABC’s Diane Sawyer that he doesn’t think Loughner’s parents are at fault for their son’s decision to carry out a mass shooting.

“I’d probably see them. You know, I don’t think it’s their fault. It’s not the parents fault,” Kelly said in portions of the interview that ABC released Monday. “You know, I’d like to think I’m a person that’s, you know, somewhat forgiving. And, I mean, they’ve got to be hurting in this situation as much as much as anybody.”

A father himself, Kelly understands the love a parent has for one’s child.

“Gabby has two stepdaughters, and I have children,” Kelly said. “And they must, I’m sure they love their son. And they must be, you know, as distraught over this as all of us are.”

Three days after the shooting took place, the Loughner family released aof apology: “This is a very difficult time for us. We ask the media to respect our privacy. There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there were, so we could make you feel better. We don’t understand why this happened. It may not make any difference, but we wish that we could change the heinous events Saturday. We care very deeply about the victims and their families. We are so very sorry for their loss.”

Kelly’s full interview is set to air Tuesday during a special edition of 20/20.

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