E-cigarettes may soon be sold as life-saving medicine

* Required fields

* First name

* Last name

* Country

* Email address

* Password
Password must contain only letters and numbers, and be at least 8 characters

* Confirm password

Read More..

Gbagbo lawyer slams "political trial" at ICC

THE HAGUE: Laurent Gbagbo's lawyer hit out at a "political trial" at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, where judges are to decide if the Ivorian ex-president should face charges of crimes against humanity.

Gbagbo, 67, is the first former head of state brought before the ICC, where he is accused of masterminding a campaign of violence during a bloody 2010-2011 presidential election standoff in the West African nation in which over 3,000 people died.

"The Ivorian people deserve better than a political trial, they deserve a trial of those who are really responsible for the country's decade-long destruction and the court deserves to have been able to look at what really happened in Ivory Coast," lawyer Emmanuel Altit told the court on the second day of the confirmation of charges hearing.

Gbagbo maintains that he is the rightful president of Ivory Coast and that he was evicted in favour of his rival, current President Alassane Ouattara, thanks to a plot led by former colonial ruler France.

Gbagbo faces four counts of crimes against humanity for allegedly fomenting the wave of violence. He has denied the charges against him.

Altit said the evidence against Gbagbo had holes in it and did not represent reality.

"Why aren't they here, why aren't they being prosecuted?" said Altit, listing officials in Ouattara's government.

While thousands died during the five-month standoff, forces loyal to Gbagbo as well as those loyal to Ouattara have been accused of massive human rights abuses.

Prosecutors and the defence are to spend just over a week arguing their cases before a three-judge bench, who will then decide if there are "substantial grounds to believe that Gbagbo committed the crimes" and should be charged.

The prosecution says Gbagbo masterminded a plan to "stay in power by all means... through carefully planned, sustained and deadly attacks" against Ouattara supporters.

Between November 28, 2010 and May 8, 2011 Gbagbo's forces killed between 706 and 1,059 people and raped more than 35 women, prosecutors say.

His supporters have accused Ouattara's camp of practising "victor's justice" as many of the former president's backers are now behind bars -- including Gbagbo's wife Simone, who is also wanted by the ICC -- while none of those close to the Ouattara regime have been arrested.

The hearings started on Tuesday and are to last over a week, with Gbagbo expected to speak on the final day, February 28.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

How to find and get the most out of an entrepreneurial mentor

I don't know where I'd be today without my entrepreneurial mentors. A lot of successful entrepreneurs will tell you the same thing.

Every 20-something entering the job market should have a mentor that can help her navigate the business world, but the bond between an entrepreneur and her mentor is unique. There aren't a lot of tougher mountains to climb than starting a company from scratch, and the emotional stress of a startup can be overwhelming. Being able to learn from somebody who's gone through the ups and downs is invaluable.

"Mentorship is a critical part of building an entrepreneurial community," says TechStars Chicago Managing Director (and one of my entrepreneurial mentors) Troy Henikoff. "Having successful entrepreneurs helping newer ones creates a sustainable culture were everyone participates and gives back."

I've written about this topic before, but I wanted to expand on the subject with some thoughts and advice on how to find and get the most out of an entrepreneurial mentor. Naturally, I turned to my mentors (Troy Henikoff and Redbox SVP Mark Achler), as well as a few friends, for some sagelike advice.

Here are the five lessons I recommend remembering:

1. Like any strong relationship, mentorship isn't forced

You can't force a relationship, whether it's love or business. It took me years to learn this lesson. While you may want something out of somebody new you meet (an investment, an introduction, advice, mentorship, and so on), coming out of the gate with that will only turn people off.

More importantly, you won't know whether somebody will be a great mentor for you until you've had time to get to know them and work with them. Mentorship is a lifetime relationship, so don't rush in.

2. Lawyers and accountants are surprisingly well connected

Mark Achler

(Credit:
Redbox)

When it comes to finding a mentor, the first place you should be looking is your existing network. But when that fails, you should talk to your fellow entrepreneurs.

"One of the best ways to find a great mentor, if you haven't encountered and built these personal relationships up over time through your previous work history, is to talk to fellow entrepreneurs/CEOs and ask them who have they worked with and recommend," says Redbox SVP of New Business (and my longtime entrepreneurial mentor) Mark Achler.

CEOs and founders aren't the only people who are connected to potential mentors, though. Trades that cater to entrepreneurs -- lawyers, accountants, advisors, and the like -- are also great resources.

"I have also found that attorneys and accountants who specialize in the startup world often already have these relationships and can provide the right access and recommendations to the appropriate mentors," Achler adds.

3. Keep your mentors in the loop

Troy Henikoff

(Credit:
Excelerate/TechStars Chicago)

While mentors are there to help you when you're dealing with a crisis, this should not be the only time you reach out to them.

"Keep your mentors and advisers updated with regular e-mails monthly on your progress," says Henikoff. "Then when you need their advice, you don't have to waste time updating them on the basics, but keep them focused on the issue at hand."

Just like the investor update (which every entrepreneur should be sending to their investors quarterly), the mentor update keeps the lines of communications fresh.

4. Open up!

In Silicon Valley, there is a tendency for entrepreneurs (and VCs) to say that "Everything is awesome!" when asked about how their company is doing. Entrepreneurs don't want to show any weakness publicly, lest it hurt their chances for a Series A.

These barriers must come down when it comes to your mentor, though. If you can't tell your mentor exactly what's happening, both the good and bad, then you aren't getting the most out of your mentor. You're just going through the motions and doing a disservice to your company and your team.

"The right mentor is a father confessor," Achler argues, "allowing the entrepreneur to let down their walls and share the emotions -- both high and low. The right mentor is an invaluable sounding board of advice."

Achler also says that the right mentor is a trusted friend, "who will tell you both the good (and let's face it everyone needs a pat on the back every once in a while) as well as give you the honest swift kick in the rear end when appropriate."

5. Take your mentor's advice to heart

The mentor-mentee relationship is built not just on trust and friendship, but on learning. One must be open to hard lessons and be humble enough to recognize the gaps in his or her knowledge.

"The biggest mentor I've had has been [Y Combinator founder] Paul Graham," says Justin.tv and Exec founder Justin Kan. "His number one piece of advice was simply 'make something people want.' -- which is pretty good advice, because if you don't make something people want, you have no product, and no sales."

I'd say that Kan has done a good job following his mentor's advice. And while not everything a mentor advises you to do will be the right course of action, more often than not they are right and you are wrong. So go into the relationship willing to learn and humbled by the fact that you still have a lot more to learn.

Read More..

Florida Python Hunt Captures 68 Invasive Snakes

It's a wrap—the 2013 Python Challenge has nabbed 68 invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, organizers say. And experts are surprised so many of the elusive giants were caught.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states—most of them inexperienced hunters—registered for the chance to track down one of the animals, many of which descend from snakes that either escaped or were dumped into the wild.

Since being introduced, these Asian behemoths have flourished in Florida's swamps while also squeezing out local populations of the state's native mammals, especially in the Everglades. (See Everglades pictures.)

To highlight the python problem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its partners launched the 2013 Python Challenge, which encouraged registered participants to catch as many pythons as they could between January 12 and February 10 in state wildlife-management areas within the Everglades.

The commission gave cash prizes to those who harvested the most and longest pythons.

Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and scientific leader for the challenge, said before the hunt that he would consider a harvest of 70 animals a success—and 68 is close enough to say the event met its goals.

It's unknown just how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but catching 68 snakes is an "exceptional" number, added Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Snakes in the Grass

Finding 68 snakes is impressive, experts say, since it's so hard to find pythons. For one, it's been unusually warm lately in Florida, which means the reptiles—which normally sun themselves to regulate their body temperature—are staying in the brush, making them harder to detect, Krysko said.

On top of that, Burmese pythons are notoriously hard to locate, experts say.

The animals are so well camouflaged that people can stand right next to one and not notice it. "It's rare that you get to see them stretched out—most of the time they're blending in," said Cheryl Millett, a biologist at the Nature Conservancy, a Python Challenge partner.

What's more, the reptiles are ambush hunters, which means they spend much of their time lying in wait in dense vegetation, not moving, she said.

That's why Millett gave the hunters some tips, such as looking along the water's edge, where the snakes like to hang out, and also simply listening for "something big moving through the vegetation."

Even so, catching 68 snakes is "actually is a little more than I expected," said Millett.

No Walk in the Park

Ruben Ramirez, founder of the company Florida Python Hunters, won two prizes in the competition: First place for the most snakes captured—18—and second place for the largest python, which he said was close to 11 feet (3.4 meters) long. The biggest Burmese python caught in Florida, nabbed in 2012, measured 17.7 feet (5.4 meters).

"They're there, but they're not as easy to find as people think," said Ramirez. "You're not going to be stumbling over pythons in Miami." (Related blog post: "What It's Like to Be a Florida Python Hunter.")

All participants, some of whom had never hunted a python before, were trained to identify the difference between a Burmese python and Florida's native snakes, said Millett. No native snakes were accidentally killed, she said.

Hunters were also told to kill the snakes by either putting a bolt or a bullet through their heads, or decapitating them-all humane methods that result "in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain," according to the Python Challenge website.

Ramirez added that some of the first-time or amateur hunters had different expectations. "I think they were expecting to walk down a canal and see a 10-foot [3-meter], 15-foot [4.5-meter] Burmese python. They thought it'd be a walk in the park."

Stopping the Spread

Completely removing these snakes from the wild isn't easy, and some scientists see the Python Challenge as helping to achieve part of that goal. (Read an opposing view on the Python Challenge: "Opinion: Florida's Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt.")

"You're talking about 68 more animals removed from the population that shouldn't be there—that's 68 more mouths that aren't being fed," said the Florida museum's Krysko. (Read about giant Burmese python meals that went bust.)

"I support any kind of event or program that not only informs the general public about introduced species, but also gets the public involved in removing these nonnative animals that don't belong there."

The Nature Conservancy's Millett said the challenge had two positive outcomes: boosting knowledge for both science and the public.

People who didn't want to hunt or touch the snakes could still help, she said, by reporting sightings of exotic species to 888-IVE-GOT-1, through free IveGot1 apps, or www.ivegot1.org.

Millett runs a public-private Nature Conservancy partnership called Python Patrol that the Florida wildlife commission will take on in the fall. The program focuses not only on eradicating invasive pythons but on preventing the snake from moving to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Key West.

Necropsies on the captured snakes will reveal what pythons are eating, and location data from the hunters will help scientists figure out where the snakes are living—valuable data for researchers working to stop their spread.

"This is the most [number of] pythons that have been caught in this short of a period of time in such an extensive area," said the University of Florida's Mazzotti.

"It's an unprecedented sample, and we're going to get a lot of information out of that."

Read More..

Fiery Debate Over Pistorius' Story at Bail Hearing

As prosecutors today outlined their case against South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius, providing details that they say indicates a premeditated act of murder against his girlfriend, his lawyers swatted at each bit of evidence on the dramatic second day of a bail hearing that will likely foreshadow the upcoming trial.

The Johannesburg courtroom sat riveted as police investigators said that Pistorius, a double-amputee who gained global acclaim for racing at the 2012 London Olympics, shot his girlfriend through a closed bathroom door at a high angle from which he had to be wearing his prosthetic legs.

Prosecutors insisted that Pistorius took a moment to put the legs on, indicating that he thought out and planned to kill Reeva Steenkamp, his model girlfriend, when he shot her three times through a closed bathroom door early on the morning of Valentine's Day.

There was a "deliberate aiming of shots at the toilet from about 1.5 meters [about 5 feet]," prosecutor Gerrie Nel said.

Read Oscar Pistorius' Full Statement to the Court

Nel said Pistorius fired four shots into the bathroom, hitting Steenkamp three times in the head, elbow, and hip.

Nel also said a witness would testify to hearing "non-stop talking, like shouting" in the early hours before the dawn shooting.

Oscar Pistorius: Defense Presents New Evidence Watch Video

'Blade Runner' Appears in Court to Hear Murder Charges Watch Video

Pistorius' lawyer, who argued Tuesday that the runner accidently fired on Steenkamp believing she was an intruder, assailed each bit of the prosecution's evidence, even getting a lead investigator to concede that police had not found anything to conclusively disprove the Olympian's story.

"[The angle] seems to me down. Fired down," Police officer Hilton Botha told the court, suggesting Pistorius was standing high up on his fake legs.

PHOTOS: Paralympics Champion Charged in Killing

But when pushed by defense lawyer Barry Roux, Botha admitted he did not know whether Pistorius was wearing the prosthetics.

When asked about the witness who allegedly heard yelling between Pistorius and Steenkamp, Botha admitted under cross-examination that the woman was about 600 yards -- six football fields -- away at the time.

When the prosecutor questioned Botha a second time, he backtracked to say the witness was actually much closer.

The prosecution showed a floor-plan of the couple's apartment and said there was no way for Pistorius to cross from one side of the bedroom toward the bathroom, or retrieve his hidden pistol, without realizing Steenkamp was not in bed.

"There's no other way of getting there," prosecutor Nel said.

The defense further suggested that Steenkamp had gone to the bathroom on her own, and not to flee from Pistorius, because her bladder was empty. Had she simply run there to hide at 3 am, it would have more likely been full, Roux said.

Asked by defense attorney Roux whether Steenkamp's body showed "any pattern of defensive wounds," suggesting she had put up a fight, Botha admitted it did not.

Prosecutors also said that they found two boxes of testosterone and needles in the bedroom, although the defense disputed the finding, calling the substance a "herbal remedy," not banned drugs or steroids.

Botha told the court today that he arrived at Pistorius' home at 4:15 a.m., Feb. 14, to find Steenkamp already dead, dressed in a white shorts and a black vest, and covered in towels. The first thing Pistorius told police was that "he thought it was a burglar," officials said.

Read More..

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

If you want to stem rising obesity levels, sugary drinks should be taxed like cigarettes. So urges the UK Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which is calling for pilots of taxes that hike prices by 20 per cent. The idea is to lower consumption by making sugary drinks dearer, a strategy known to cut sales of cigarettes and alcohol.

Hungary introduced a food tax in 2011 and quarterly soft drinks sales dropped from 117 to 69 million litres within six months.

Potential health benefits of reducing calorie intake were demonstrated after the Cuban economy collapsed in the late 1980s, says Simon Capewell, on the steering committee for the academy's report. Hard-up citizens ate an average of 1000 calories a day less. Within a decade or so, the incidence of obesity halved, with falls of 51 and 35 per cent respectively in diabetes and heart attacks (American Journal of Epidemiology, doi.org/bjzg25).

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Read More..

Yemen military aircraft crashes in Sanaa, kills 12

SANAA: A Yemeni military aircraft ploughed into a building in a residential neighbourhood of Sanaa on Tuesday, killing the pilot and at least 11 civilians, medics and witnesses said.

Medics said the toll, which included two children and three women and left another 22 injured, was expected to rise

Several hours after the crash rescue teams were still sifting through the rubble in search of any survivors in the Qadissiya area of homes and shops near Change Square, epicentre of the 2011 uprising that ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A military source identified the plane as a Russian-made Sukhoi SU-22 attack aircraft, but was unable to say what caused the crash that he said killed pilot Mohammed Shaker.

The defence ministry said the pilot was returning to his base after a training mission and had asked authorisation to land when suddenly the aircraft lost altitude and crashed. An investigation is underway.

"I saw the plane drop and we were afraid it would crash on Sanaa University, but the pilot crashed on nearby buildings," said Mohammed al-Sabri.

The aircraft hit one building on Rabat Avenue in eastern Sanaa, then smashed into another before finally crashing on top of a third, witnesses said.

An AFP correspondent said the building was badly damaged and that several ambulances rushed to the scene as helicopters hovered overhead.

A loud explosion shook the area when the crash occurred, witnesses said. Thick black smoke billowed over the district, where several cars were ablaze.

Panicked residents took to the streets, many screaming.

"We heard a loud explosion and we thought it was a mortar shell that landed on the neighbourhood," one of the residents, Taha al-Inad, told AFP.

An air base is located near the Sanaa international airport, just 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of the capital.

Tuesday's crash was the latest in a series of air accidents in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country.

In November, a Yemeni air force Antonov M26 crashed during a training mission in a northern district of Sanaa, killing all 10 on board.

A fighter jet crashed on takeoff on a routine training mission in the south in October, killing the pilot and injuring another crew member, after what the defence ministry described as a "technical failure."

And in October 2011, four people were killed when an Antonov crashed on landing at Al-Anad air base in southern Yemen.

Sanaa was gripped by violent clashes between rival military groups during the 2011 uprising to oust Saleh, who finally stepped down a year ago under a UN-backed power transition agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council.

-AFP/ac

Read More..

Microsoft to begin connecting Skype and Lync by June 2013

Lync is Microsoft's unified communications platform for business users.

(Credit:
Screenshot/Microsoft)

Microsoft provided an updated road map for its Lync unified-communications platform today, the opening day of the company's first Lync Conference in San Diego.

The biggest piece of news is that Lync-Skype connectivity/federation is coming later than many expected. The first piece of that connectivity --- sharing of presence, instant messaging, and voice across the two services -- will be available to all Lync users as of June 2013. Video connectivity between Skype and Lync isn't coming until sometime in the next 18 months, executives confirmed today.

Customers who were testing Microsoft's Lync 2013 last year noted that Skype federation was one of the features of Lync 2013. Microsoft also confirmed Skype federation was designed to be part of the Lync 2013 release. But when Lync Server 2013 was released in October 2012, along with the rest of the new Office client/server products, Skype federation seemingly wasn't part of the final product, after all.

Lync is Microsoft's unified communications platform for business users. It includes corporate IM, VoIP, and conferencing capabilities. Skype is Micrsosoft's unified communications platform for consumers. As of three months ago, Microsoft moved the Lync team under the Skype team, so that Lync reports to Tony Bates, the president of Skype. (That said, Lync will continue to report its financial results as part of the Microsoft Business Division, not the Entertainment & Devices unit, which is where the Skype division reports.)

Microsoft executives also unveiled as part of today's updated Lync road map:

• Lync 2013 mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS will be available in early March, with Android coming about a month later. The new versions of these apps all get VoIP and video over IP. iPad users also get the ability to view shared desktop and application content in a Lync meeting.


• The next version of Lync Server is coming in the second quarter of 2014. That's about 18 months after the Lync Server 2013 product was released to manufacturing -- instead of two to three years later, as has been the cadence for new Office Server deliveries.


• Lync Online, the Microsoft-hosted version of Lync Server, is on a quarterly update schedule. This is the same schedule that Office 365 and its other elements -- Exchange Online and SharePoint Online -- currently follow. So no change there. The team hasn't yet decided how often it will provide feature updates to Lync on-premises, executives said, noting that on-premises users don't necessarily want the latest updates more often than annually, at best.


• Enterprise voice support for Lync Online is on the list of features due sometime in the next 18 months. (Microsoft acknowledged back in 2011 that enterprise voice was coming for Lync Online but has declined to provide a date until now.)


• Structured meeting support for Lync Online and Lync Server also are on the list of functionality coming sometime in the next 18 months. This will enable those still using Live Meeting to move over to Lync, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced at the Lync Conference that a handful of the company's hardware partners are embedding Lync into their next-generation conferencing systems. These new integrated devices will be called "Lync room system" products. Partners who announced initial support include Crestron, Lifesize, Polycom, and SMART.

Microsoft said 90 out of the Fortune 100 companies are Lync customers. About 90 percent of Lync deployments are on-premises, not in the cloud, the company said.

This story originally appeared at ZDNet under the headline "Microsoft to begin connecting Skype and Lync by June 2013."

Read More..

Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

Read More..

Oscar Pistorius Describes 'Sense of Terror'

Olympian Oscar Pistorius today denied that he willfully killed his girlfriend, telling a South African court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.

Pistorius, 26 and a double-amputee Olympian, was charged today with premeditated murder, or a Schedule 6 offense, which under South African law limits his chances for parole if convicted.

"I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder because I had no intention to kill my girlfriend," Pistorius said in a statement, read by his lawyer.

"I deny the accusation," he said. "Nothing can be further from the truth that I planned the murder of my girlfriend."

The court adjourned today with no decision on his bail and the hearing is scheduled to resume Wednesday.

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

Pistorius, who gained worldwide fame for running on carbon-fiber blades and competing against able-bodied runners at the Olympics, is accused of shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 14.

In a statement read by his lawyer today, the runner said he and Steenkamp went to bed together before he was awoken by a noise he thought was an intruder coming from the bathroom.

Filled with a "sense of terror," he removed the 9-mm pistol he kept hidden under his bed and, without putting on his prosthetic legs, began shooting through the bathroom door, according to his statement.

"I was scared and didn't switch on the light," he said. "I got my gun and moved towards the bathroom. I screamed at the intruder because I did not have my legs on. I felt vulnerable. I fired shots through the bathroom door and told Reeva to call police.

Oscar Pistorius: Was Shooting Premeditated? Watch Video

Conflicting Theories Muddle Oscar Pistorius Murder Case Watch Video

Oscar Pistorius Allegedly Fought the Night of Shooting Watch Video

"I walked back to the bed and realized Reeva was not in bed. It's then it dawned on me it could be her in there," he said.

That's when he realized Steenkamp was not in bed, he said in the statement. Fearing she was inside the bathroom, he says, he broke down the door using a cricket bat and carried the woman outside, where he called for help, and she soon died.

Excerpts of Prosecutor's Case Against Pistorius

Pistorius appeared in court today for the first time since his Valentine's Day arrest, as prosecutors laid out their case, insisting that the runner could not have mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder.

"[Pistorius] shot and killed an innocent woman," Gerrie Nel, the senior state prosecutor, said in court, adding that there is "no possible explanation to support" the notion that Pistorius thought Steenkamp was an intruder.

Prosecutors said, "There is no possible explanation to support his report that he thought that it was a burglar. Even [in] his own version, he readied himself, walked to the bathroom with the clear intention and plan to kill the 'burglar' and did so whilst the burglar was harmless and contained in a toilet. This in itself also constitutes premeditated murder of a 'defenseless burglar.''

Pistorius said he and Steenkamp were in his bedroom the night before Valentine's Day, when she
was doing yoga exercises and he was in bed watching television. "My prosthetic legs were off," according to his statement. "We were deeply in love and I could not be happier. I
know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine's Day
but asked me only to open it the next day.

"After Reeva finished her yoga exercises she got into bed and we both fell
asleep."

Later, police responding to neighbors' calls about shouting and gunshots at Pistorius' home in the guarded and gated complex in the South African capital discovered Steenkamp's body. A 9-mm pistol was recovered at the home.

Prosecutors said Steenkamp had arrived at the house with the expectation of spending the night with Pistorius. They said that Steenkamp was shot while in the bathroom, which is about 21 feet from the main bedroom, and that the two rooms are linked by a passage. The door to the toilet was broken down from the outside, prosecutors said, implying that the bathroom door had been locked.

Prosecutors believe it's a case of premeditated murder because, they say, Pistorius had to stop, put on his prosthetic legs, grab a gun and then walk 21 feet to a bathroom.

The premeditated murder charge means that he would likely be sentenced to life in prison if convicted, and that he is likely to be denied bail.

Read More..