Croatia Withdrawing Soldiers from U.N. Force on Israel-Syria Frontier

Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic of Croatia said Thursday that his country would withdraw its soldiers from a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights following reports that Croatia was funneling weapons to antigovernment fighters in Syria.

Croatia has nearly 100 soldiers serving with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, which is responsible for maintaining the fragile calm between Israeli and Syrian troops at the demilitarized zone along Syria’s Golan frontier that was established after a cease-fire ended the 1973 war.

The decision to withdraw the soldiers from the area came after The New York Times reported on Monday that Saudi Arabia had underwritten a large purchase of infantry arms in Croatia. Croatia has denied selling weapons to either Saudi Arabia or the Syrian rebels. But Mr. Milanovic said that reports of the sales had put Croatian soldiers at risk and that he was compelled to withdraw them because their safety could no longer be assured.

“We can deny over and over again, but everyone has already read these reports and our soldiers are no longer safe. We want them to return home safe and sound,” he told a cabinet meeting in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Citing the Times report, he said, “We can’t be sure if someone will take action against our units after the release of the information.”

According to United States and Western officials, in December arms left over from the Balkan wars of the 1990s began to reach rebels battling the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, via Jordan.

Since then, officials said, several planeloads of weapons had left Croatia. Yugoslav weapons previously unseen in the conflict, including recoilless guns, assault rifles and machine guns, began to appear in videos posted by Syrian rebels on YouTube.

The infusion of arms appeared to signify a more activist approach to helping Syria’s armed opposition, and as a counterweight to Iranian support for the Assad government.

Before the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, Croatia had relatively strong political and economic ties to Damascus. But analysts said that Croatia, which is to join the European Union this year, had since firmly sided with the rebels, abiding by European Union sanctions against Damascus, offering financial aid to Syrian refugees and recognizing the Syrian opposition as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

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Natalie and Derrica Wilson Help Find the Missing

Heroes Among Us

By Nicole Weisensee Egan

02/28/2013 at 02:45 PM EST

Natalie Wilson (left) and Derrica Wilson

Shaul Schwarz

One spring day in 2004 a young African-American woman named Tamika Huston vanished from her Spartanburg, S.C., apartment.

Her family did everything they could to get the media to pay attention to the 24-year-old's disappearance, sending out emails, calling newspapers and TV stations – to no avail.

"It was painful watching them struggle for any kind of media coverage-local or national," says Derrica Wilson, who was born and raised in Spartanburg. "This could have been one of my family members."

One year almost to the day later, high school senior Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba. And that story, of course, was everywhere. "It made me angry but angry in a positive way," says Derrica. "I wanted to do something to help families like Tamika's."

So she turned to her own family to make that happen. In 2008, Derrica and her sister-in-law, Natalie Wilson, started the Black and Missing Foundation, a non-profit geared toward helping minority families find missing loved ones. By working closely with police, the media and the families themselves, they have helped locate more than 113 missing people – 71 of them alive.

It's a daunting task: Thousands of African-Americans go missing each year (one-third of all missing-persons cases). The problem has caught Hollywood's eye: Tyler Perry recently offered a $100,000 reward for tips leading to the discovery of two missing Florida men.

The Wilsons fund the foundation out of their own pockets and make themselves available day and night to grieving families – even though they both have full-time jobs and families of their own. "Let's just say it's a calling," says Derrica, 34. They have more than 2,000 cases in their database (they only take on cases in which police reports were filed).

"I believe in what they do," says Washington, D.C. assistant police chief Diane Groomes, who was so impressed with their work she joined their board of directors.

The sisters in law divvy up their duties based on what they do best. Derrica, a cop for years who currently works as an investigator for a D.C. agency, coaches families on how to deal with law enforcement and the media. Natalie, 43, a public relations expert, works on getting the cases coverage on radio, newspapers, the web and television.

They've also partnered with TV One and national radio host Michael Baisden to get ongoing coverage of different cases. "It's one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had," says Baisden, whose show has helped find 14 children. "There is nothing more traumatizing than losing your child and not knowing if they are alive or dead."

On Feb. 13, the sisters-in-law started a support group for families that meets weekly in Washington, D.C. "Coping with a missing loved one is traumatic and overwhelming," says Natalie. "We want families to know that they are not alone." On May 25, they will host a 5K run in Ft. Washington, Md. to raise awareness of the issue.

No one is more appreciative of these efforts than the families they are helping. "If I had the next hundred years I couldn't thank them enough," says Unique Harris, 45, who says Derrica and Natalie got the Washington, D.C. media to give some much-needed attention to the still-unsolved disappearance of her daughter Valencia, 24.

"When I talk to Natalie and Derrica I let them know I love them, "she says, "and they're like family now."

Know a hero? Send suggestions to heroesamongus@peoplemag.com. For more inspiring stories, read the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine

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WHO: Small cancer risk after Fukushima accident

LONDON (AP) — People exposed to the highest doses of radiation during Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011 may have a slightly higher risk of cancer but one so small it probably won't be detectable, the World Health Organization said in a report released Thursday.

A group of experts convened by the agency assessed the risk of various cancers based on estimates of how much radiation people at the epicenter of the nuclear disaster received, namely those directly under the plumes of radiation in the most affected communities in Fukushima, a rural agricultural area about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Some 110,000 people living around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant were evacuated after the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 knocked out the plant's power and cooling systems, causing meltdowns in three reactors and spewing radiation into the surrounding air, soil and water.

In the new report, the highest increases in risk appeared for people exposed as infants to radiation in the most heavily affected areas. Normally in Japan, the lifetime risk of developing cancer of an organ is about 41 percent for men and 29 percent for women. The new report said that for infants in the most heavily exposed areas, the radiation from Fukushima would add about 1 percentage point to those numbers.

"These are pretty small proportional increases," said Richard Wakeford of the University of Manchester, one of the authors of the report.

"The additional risk is quite small and will probably be hidden by the noise of other (cancer) risks like people's lifestyle choices and statistical fluctuations," he said. "It's more important not to start smoking than having been in Fukushima."

Experts had been particularly worried about a spike in thyroid cancer, since iodine released in nuclear accidents is absorbed by the thyroid, especially in children. After the Chernobyl disaster, about 6,000 children exposed to radiation later developed thyroid cancer because many drank contaminated milk after the accident.

In Japan, dairy radiation levels were closely monitored, but children are not big milk drinkers there.

WHO estimated that women exposed as infants to the most radiation after the Fukushima accident would have a 70 percent higher chance of getting thyroid cancer in their lifetimes. But thyroid cancer is extremely rare, one of the most treatable cancers when caught early, and the normal lifetime risk of developing it is about 0.75 percent. That risk would be half of one percentage point higher for women who got the highest radiation doses as infants.

Wakeford said the increase in such cancers may be so small it will probably not be observable.

For people beyond the most directly affected areas of Fukushima, Wakeford said the projected risk from the radiation dropped dramatically. "The risks to everyone else were just infinitesimal."

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York, an expert on radiation-induced cancers, said that although the risk to individuals is tiny outside the most heavily exposed areas, some cancers might still result, at least in theory. But they'd be too rare to be detectable in overall cancer rates, he said.

Brenner said the numerical risk estimates in the WHO report were not surprising. He also said they should be considered imprecise because of the difficulty in determining risk from low doses of radiation. He was not connected to the WHO report.

Some experts said it was surprising that any increase in cancer was even predicted.

"On the basis of the radiation doses people have received, there is no reason to think there would be an increase in cancer in the next 50 years," said Wade Allison, an emeritus professor of physics at Oxford University, who was not connected to the WHO report. "The very small increase in cancers means that it's even less than the risk of crossing the road," he said.

WHO acknowledged in its report that it relied on some assumptions that may have resulted in an overestimate of the radiation dose in the general population.

Gerry Thomas, a professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, accused the WHO of hyping the cancer risk.

"It's understandable that WHO wants to err on the side of caution, but telling the Japanese about a barely significant personal risk may not be helpful," she said.

Thomas said the WHO report used inflated estimates of radiation doses and didn't properly take into account Japan's quick evacuation of people from Fukushima.

"This will fuel fears in Japan that could be more dangerous than the physical effects of radiation," she said, noting that people living under stress have higher rates of heart problems, suicide and mental illness.

In Japan, Norio Kanno, the chief of Iitate village, in one of the regions hardest hit by the disaster, harshly criticized the WHO report on Japanese public television channel NHK, describing it as "totally hypothetical."

Many people who remain in Fukushima still fear long-term health risks from the radiation, and some refuse to let their children play outside or eat locally-grown food. Kanno accused the report of exaggerating the cancer risk and stoking fear among residents.

"I'm enraged," he said.

___

Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

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Cuts imminent, Senate Democrats, GOP stage votes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Squabbling away the hours, the Senate moved toward certain defeat of last-minute plans to avoid $85 billion in broad-based spending reductions Thursday as the two political parties blamed each other for the latest outbreak of gridlock and the Obama administration readied plans to put the cuts into effect.

The immediate impact was uncertain as the administration pulled back on its earlier warnings of long lines developing quickly at airports and teacher layoffs affecting classrooms. But there was no doubt about the outcome of back-to-back votes on the Senate floor.

There, a Republican plan requiring Obama to propose an alternative package of $85 billion in cuts faced rejection at the hands of Democrats.

And, just as surely, a Democratic proposal to spread the cuts over a decade and replace half of them with higher taxes on millionaires and corporations headed for defeat at Republican hands.

"We have the opportunity to avoid the kind of calamity and disaster that is being threatened and is completely unnecessary," said Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the Republican proposal.

"The question is, are we going to achieve these savings through badly designed spending cuts that make no attempt whatever to distinguish between more sensible government spending and less sensible spending?"

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said that sensible distinguishing was precisely what Democrats had tried to do by proposing the deferral of Pentagon cuts until U.S. combat troops have come home from Afghanistan in two years' time.

At the same time, she said the Democrats had reasonably proposed replacing half of the pending cuts with higher taxes on "the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations."

Across the Capitol, House Speaker John Boehner led the chorus of Republican critics, saying that "Obama and Senate Democrats are demanding more tax hikes to fuel more 'stimulus' spending."

In fact, the Democratic measure included small increases in funding for a variety of small programs such as biodiesel education, assistance for biomass crops and certification of organic foods.

With no last-minute plans to seek a delay in the looming cuts, Obama invited Boehner and the other top leaders of Congress to a White House meeting on the subject on Friday.

It was not clear whether he would seek negotiations to replace the across-the-board cuts before they begin to bite.

But already, some Republicans held out hope the current struggle might lead to talks on completing work on the final piece of a deficit reduction package that has been more than two agonizing years in the making.

"The objective here ought to be not just to deal with sequester but to deal with the underlying spending problems, which require tax reform" as well as reform of benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security," said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

In a cycle of crisis followed by compromise over the past two years, Obama and congressional Republicans have agreed to more than $3.6 trillion in long-term deficit savings over a decade. While much of that has come from spending restraint, the GOP let legislation pass late last year that raises taxes on upper-income Americans by $600 million.

None of the savings to date has come from the big benefit programs that lawmakers in both parties say must be tackled if the country is to gain control over its finances. Each party fears the political fallout of confronting them on their own, but Democrats, in particular, are reluctant to scale back programs that they count as their political birthright.

Their rival speeches on the Senate floor weren't the first time that Toomey and Murray disagreed on economic issues.

Both served on a so-called congressional Supercommittee in 2011 that was charged with producing at least $1.2 trillion in savings over a decade.

The panel deadlocked, automatically triggering the across-the-board cuts that now are imminent.

As constituted, the cuts would total $85 billion through the end of the current budget year — Sept. 30 — half each from defense and non-defense programs. Large parts of the budget are off-limits, including programs for veterans, Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The Republican alternative would require Obama to propose an alternative that relied exclusively on spending cuts, ruled out tax increases and limited what he could take from Pentagon accounts. Congress could reject his new approach, but under the alternative, his recommendations would be likely to take effect.

The Democratic measure would have canceled the $85 billion in cuts, and replaced them with a combination of tax increases and cuts to defense and farm programs that would phase in over a decade. Under that plan, deficits would rise by more $42 billion in the first year and $38 billion over the two following years before gradually beginning to decline.

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IHT Rendezvous: Eve Best Returns to the Globe, This Time as a Director

LONDON — The recent press conference announcing the 2013 season at Shakespeare’s Globe on one level seemed like variations on an ongoing theme.

A onetime Falstaff at this address, Roger Allam, is returning to open the season as Prospero in “The Tempest,” directed by Jeremy Herrin, while the perennial favorite, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” will be seen in May in a new staging, this time from the Globe’s artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. The 2011 Olivier winner Michelle Terry (“Tribes”) will play Titania.

The international season that so galvanized the space for six weeks last spring will return in a greatly pared-down form, and there will be three new plays, including one, “Blue Stockings” by Jessica Swale, that tells of the first female students at Cambridge University.

But it’s the last in the trio of supernaturally charged Shakespeares that promises to break fresh theatrical ground. In what represents her first-ever stab (you’ll forgive the word in context) at directing, the much-laureled actress Eve Best will stage a new production in June of “Macbeth.” Joseph Millson and Samantha Spiro have signed on as the murderous couple at the play’s black, bleak heart.

What prompted one of the most accomplished stage performers of her generation (an actress with an Olivier Award and two Tony nominations) to make the shift? The answer was arrived at via a lengthy phone call to a remote island in Denmark, where Ms. Best, 41, is currently filming “Someone You Love” for the director Lars von Trier’s Zentropa production group. This film’s specific director is Pernille Fischer Christensen.

To hear Ms. Best describe it, she thought her time at the Globe was finished, at least for a while, following a triumphant 2011 production of “Much Ado About Nothing” in which she played Beatrice opposite Charles Edwards’s no less witty and scintillating Benedick. (That staging opened within days of a contrasting commercial production of the same play, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and trumped its starrier competitor hands down.)

“I love the Globe so much,” Ms. Best recalled, “and wanted any excuse to spend some time there, having played Beatrice which was just my most favorite part ever. But I did think I was sort of running out of parts to play for a little while until I get into the world of Cleopatra and those kinds of parts” — that’s to say, Shakespeare’s more senior women.

But all that was before Mr. Dromgoole surprised Ms. Best with an offer to take on the directing of the Shakespeare tragedy in which she had made her Globe debut in 2001, opposite Jasper Britton.

“I put myself forward to direct something thinking that they might say yes in a couple of years and that if they did say yes they might start me off with something light or something simpler or more obscure,” she said.

“I was not prepared for them to turn around and say, ‘Yes, all right, and what about “Macbeth?”’ Ms. Best continued, delight evident in her voice. “It took me back. My first response was: ‘Absolutely no way; you must be kidding!’”

The play is particularly challenging at the Globe. Open to the elements, the theater is a tricky fit for a text suffused with darkness, and it can be hard to focus the gathering intensity of the Macbeths’ toxic rise and fall.

“We are in the broad daylight and the open air,” Ms. Best acknowledged, “and that particular circular shape is certainly going to have a significant effect on the kind of production ours is. We can’t set it in the dark with candles, so we just have to embrace what it is that the Globe will give us: I’m very interested in just seeing the play as clearly as we possibly can and focusing on the human relationships within it.”

Mr. Dromgoole for his part said he thought Ms. Best would be able to meet the play head-on without lots of additional mumbo jumbo. “I wanted someone who I thought could just let [“Macbeth”] play itself rather than forcing it down a tunnel of darkness.”

As it happens, Ms. Best has firsthand knowledge of both central roles. In addition to acting Lady Macbeth at the Globe, she participated in workshops of the play in New York with the Scottish actor Alan Cumming in which she played the title role opposite Mr. Cumming’s Lady. Mr. Cumming is soon to open his own solo take on the play on Broadway.

(For those collecting “Macbeths,” the West End is now hosting the film actor James McAvoy in a modern-dress, gory, commendably visceral version. That one, at the Trafalgar Studios, will have finished roughly two months before Ms. Best’s begins.)

“What’s really lovely about this play — and all Shakespeare plays obviously — is that they are so magnificently and eminently flexible,” said Ms. Best, who was sounding in no way deterred by other productions arriving before hers. “They can encompass 6 or 8 or 10 productions all going on at the same time, all equally fascinating, all equally interesting, with all kinds of different approaches.”

Nor was she sounding spooked by a famously hexed play that has on occasion brought disaster in its wake. Whereas theater lore, for instance, often insists that those involved with this text refer to it as “the Scottish play,” Ms. Best was having none of that.

“I’ve been saying it like mad,” she said. “If we’re going to be working on it for two months, life’s too short to be worried.”

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PHOTOS: Jennifer Lawrence Works the Camera for Dior

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/26/2013 at 11:30 AM ET

You’ve seen the gorgeous ads — now see Jennifer Lawrence make them! In this just-released clip, the Oscar winner works the cameras for the Miss Dior handbag line.

“Dior represents beauty and strength in women and that’s how I feel when I’m wearing his clothes,” Lawrence tells the cameras. “It just makes you feel so confident.”

Lauding the iconic handbags, the actress also reiterates how excited she is to front the brand. “Being part of something with such incredible history is an honor.”

Hear more from Lawrence in the clip above.

PHOTOS: SEE MORE CELEBRITIES STARRING IN AD CAMPAIGNS

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Wall Street climbs 1 percent on Bernanke, economic data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose 1 percent on Wednesday, erasing much of the week's losses as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke remained steadfast in his support of the Fed's stimulus policy and data pointed to economic improvement.

In his second day before a congressional committee, Bernanke repeated testimony in which he defended the Fed's policy of buying bonds to keep interest rates low in order to promote growth and bring down the unemployment rate.

The remarks helped the market rebound from its worst decline since November and put the S&P 500 back above 1,500, a closely watched level that has been technical support until recently.

The comments also seemed to remove a headwind from markets that last week contributed to equities breaking a seven-week streak of gains on concerns the quantitative easing program may end earlier than had been anticipated.

"The Fed continues to encourage risk-taking in markets, which is a powerful tool that makes the danger not being long stocks, not in being too long," said Tom Mangan, a money manager at James Investment Research Inc in Xenia, Ohio.

Adding to the positive tone was economic data which showed a gauge of planned U.S. business spending in January recorded its largest increase in just over a year, while contracts to buy new homes neared a three-year high last month.

The S&P 500 had climbed 6 percent for the year and came within reach of all-time highs before pulling back on concerns about Fed policy, as well as this week's inconclusive elections in Italy, which rekindled fears of a new euro zone debt crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 140.76 points, or 1.01 percent, at 14,040.89. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 16.15 points, or 1.08 percent, at 1,513.09. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 33.56 points, or 1.07 percent, at 3,163.21.

The S&P is down 0.2 percent on the week, recovering from a plunge on Monday that was the index's biggest daily drop since November. That drop came on concerns over Italy's election, as well as over sequestration - U.S. government budget cuts that will take effect starting on Friday if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on spending and taxes.

"While the rally remains intact and there are reasons to be long-term bullish here, there are also reasons to not be surprised if we get a correction," said Mangan, who helps oversee $3.7 billion. Issues like the sequester and Europe "could mean that this ends up being a more difficult year for equities."

In earnings news, Priceline.com gained 3.4 percent to $702 after reporting adjusted earnings that beat expectations. TJX Cos Inc jumped 1.7 percent to $44.40 after the retail chain operator posted higher fourth-quarter results.

The S&P retail index <.spxrt> climbed 1.6 percent.

Target Corp appeared poised for a solid showing in the first quarter and forecast a higher profit for the full year after a weak performance in the key holiday season. The stock dipped 1.1 percent to $63.32.

With 93 percent of the S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 69.5 percent beat profit expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6.2 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Vt. lye victim gets new face at Boston hospital

BOSTON (AP) — The 2007 chemical attack left the Vermont nurse unrecognizable to anyone who knew her.

But now Carmen Blandin Tarleton's face has changed again following a facial transplant this month.

Doctors at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston said Wednesday that the 44-year-old's surgery included transplanting a female donor's facial skin to Tarleton's neck, nose and lips, along with facial muscles, arteries and nerves.

"I know how truly blessed I am, and will have such a nice reflection in the mirror to remind myself what selfless really is," Tarleton wrote on her blog Wednesday.

The Thetford, Vt., woman suffered burns on more than 80 percent of her body and was blinded after her estranged husband attacked her with a baseball bat and doused her with lye in 2007.

Tarleton, who once worked as a transplant nurse, has undergone more than 50 surgeries since the attack, including work to restore some of her vision.

The latest surgery took 15 hours and included a team of more than 30 medical professionals. The lead surgeon, Bohdan Pomahac, called her injuries among the worst he's seen in his career.

"Carmen is a fighter," the doctor said Wednesday. "And fight she did."

Pomahac's team has performed five facial transplants at the hospital. He said the patient is recovering very well and is in great spirits as she works to get stronger.

He said she was very pleased when she saw her face for the first time, and that her appearance will not match that of the late donor's face.

"I think she looks amazing, but I'm biased," he said with a smile.

The donor's family wants to remain anonymous, but released a statement through a regional donor bank saying that her spirit would live on through Tarleton and three other organ recipients.

The estranged husband, Herbert Rodgers, pleaded guilty in 2009 in exchange for a prison sentence of at least 30 years.

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IHT Rendezvous: Memories of Floating Over Luxor, Now Tinged With the Macabre

My 5-year-old son spent the entire hot-air balloon ride over Luxor crouched in the bottom of the basket, terrified of the flames that kept shooting into the balloon—the flames that produced the hot air that kept us afloat. He missed the glorious views: of the ancient ruins and the quilts of green grass, of the magnificent sunrise and the dancing shadows it created out of the dozens of other hot-air balloons with which we shared the early-morning sky.

We had hardly thought about danger when we booked the ride, a staple of Luxor vacations, worrying only about whether it would be worth the $240 pricetag for our family of four—and the 4:40 a.m. wake-up call. Less than two months later, with Tuesday’s horrific headlines about a crash on one of those very balloons that killed at least 18, it seems my son may have been on to something.

This is not my first there-but-for-the-grace experience. Days after I went skydiving in the Chicago suburbs to celebrate a friend’s 40th birthday, I read that a skydiver who crash-landed into a lake we had flown over had drowned. While covering the small-plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota in 2002, I discovered that the day I had spent with him three weeks earlier was on the very same King Air A-100.

Skydiving and small-plane rides in rural areas are known risks. But a fatal hot-air balloon ride? Did not occur to me. (Maybe it’s that tourist mentality: I never inquired about whether the camels we rode through back roads and villages were insured, either.)

Before this morning, the balloon ride was easily one of the best memories of our weeklong adventure in Luxor and Cairo over New Year’s.

It did not begin well: The hotel failed to make that 4:40 a.m. wake-up call, and we were hopelessly late. That meant we kept a literal boatload of Chinese tourists waiting to cross the Nile. Aboard the rickety wooden boat there was instant coffee, tea, and, oddly, Twinkies. On the other side, we were shuttled in vans to the open field where these huge, colorful balloons were in various stages of life—some lying limp on the ground, others half-filled, some taking flight.

My twins hoped for one of the multicolored balloons, but we ended up in red. Some 20 strangers joined us in the basket, where the kids were just the right height to peer out of the footholds we had used to climb in. My daughter peeked; my son cowered. The blue flames roared, and we were
airborne.

The ride lasted perhaps a half-hour, each minute offering a landscape transformed by the relative height of our balloon, the others, and the emerging sun. It was remarkable, if was not quite peaceful — there were those loud, hot flames shooting up a few feet away every few seconds. It was flames like those that, for the doomed balloon, ignited the stream from a ripped gas hose at landing, sending it bouncing back into the air to explode.

For us, on Dec. 31, the landing was smooth. Once on the ground, each rider was given a signed certificate commemorating the flight. (We passed on the offers to purchase
photographs or video.)

My daughter excitedly pasted her certificate into the vacation journal she was keeping for kindergarten. Now that seems like a macabre piece of memorabilia. We will be waiting a long time to tell our children the postscript to our adventure.

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Meet the New Stars of DWTS

Dancing with the Stars: Meet the Season 16 ContestantsLisa Vanderpump, Kellie Pickler, Aly Raisman and more celebrities will hit the ballroom on March 18

Credit: Jen Lowery/Splash News Online

Updated: Tuesday Feb 26, 2013 | 10:00 AM EST

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