Idle Thoughts of a Schizophrenic Fellow

The Glory of Poland

2010-06-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

NYT: April 13, 2010, By Roger Cohen

NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn.
My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:
“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”
Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.
“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”
Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”
The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.
I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.
It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Ask the Poles. They know.

Anna Quindlen Graduation Ceremony Speech

2010-02-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of at American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write
a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".

Rain Cycles after the Ice Age

2009-12-11T00:30:00.000-08:00

Today, Sahara is a huge desert area, with erratic dunes (ergs) and plains covered by rugged rocks (hamada), punctuated by mountains with heights of up to 3,400 m (11,000 ft), covering 8.8 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles), a surface bigger than that of Australia. At great distances one from another, one can find modest bursts of life, the oases. This desert is supposed to be at least 2.5 million years old. During the last 40,000 years, the borders of the desert have moved southward and northward and, in particular periods, the desert has even disappeared completely, the sand dunes being replaced by wooded savannas.
At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today, 18,000 to 8,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age, Sahara reached its peak, having moved 400 km (250 mi) south from its current location. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.
During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers
Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile Valley. Being so crowded, prime real estate in the Nile Valley was difficult to come by. Disputes over land were often settled with the fist, as evidenced by the cemetery of Jebel Sahaba where many of the buried individuals had died a violent death.
But around 10,500 years ago, a sudden burst of monsoon rains over the vast desert transformed the region into habitable land.
This opened the door for humans to move into the area, as evidenced by the researcher's 500 new radiocarbon dates of human and animal remains from more than 150 excavation sites.
"The climate change at [10,500 years ago] which turned most of Sahara into a savannah-type environment happened within a few hundred years only, certainly within less than 500 years," said study team member Stefan Kroepelin of the University of Cologne in Germany.
In the Egyptian Sahara, semi-arid conditions allowed for grasses and shrubs to grow, with some trees sprouting in valleys and near groundwater sources. The vegetation and small, episodic rain pools enticed animals well adapted to dry conditions, such as giraffes, to enter the area as well.
Humans also frolicked in the rain pools, as depicted in rock art from Southwest Egypt.
In the more southern Sudanese Sahara, lush vegetation, hearty trees, and permanent freshwater lakes persisted over millennia. There were even large rivers, such as the Wadi Howar, once the largest tributary to the Nile from the Sahara.
"Wildlife included very demanding species such as elephants, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, and more than 30 species of fish up to 2 meters (6 feet) big," Kroepelin states.

A timeline of Egyptian Sahara occupation:
1/ 22,000 to 10,500 years ago: The Sahara was devoid of any human occupation outside the Nile Valley and extended 250 miles further south than it does today.
2/ 10,500 to 9,000 years ago: Monsoon rains begin sweeping into the Sahara, transforming the region into a habitable area swiftly settled by Nile Valley dwellers.
3/ 9,000 to 7,300 years ago: Continued rains, vegetation growth, and animal migrations lead to well established human settlements, including the introduction of domesticated livestock such as sheep and goats.
4/ 7,300 to 5,500 years ago: Retreating monsoonal rains initiate desiccation in the Egyptian Sahara, prompting humans to move to remaining habitable niches in Sudanese Sahara. The end of the rains and return of desert conditions throughout the Sahara after 5,500 coincides with population return to the Nile Valley and the beginning of pharaonic society.

In the western Sahara, 6,000-8,000 years ago, the rainfall was abundant, and Neolithic rock paintings found in the Tassili n'Ajjer Mountains and other areas of Sahara depict crocodiles, ostriches, rhinos, giraffes, buffaloes, hippopotamus and elephants, encountered today only in Africa, south of Sahara, but also oryx antelopes and gazelles. The Sahara was filled with lakes in the region of modern Niger and people hunted antelopes, while its mountains were covered by forests. After that, 4,500 years ago, the region turned into the arid desert we know today. A new research published in the Science journal shows that this change occurred gradually over 3,000 years, based on the analysis of sediments from a Saharan surviving lake, Previous studies analyzing Atlantic dust deposits had found that Sahara's aridification took place in just a few hundred years. But the team led by Stefan Kroepelin, a geologist from the University of Cologne in Germany, considered that a stronger proof could come from lake sediments. a theory that comes to contradict the idea that the Sahara turned into a desert in a rapid manner.

The team investigated 9 m (30 ft) of the lake's sediment, analyzing the remains of animal and plant life, dust deposition, and the lake's salt content over the millennia. The sediments showed a gradual change in the ecosystem occurring from 6,000 to 2,700 years ago, meaning not as rapid as previously believed. Even so, this was an "abrupt climate change, meaning it was still difficult for animals, plants, and even people to adapt," said Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University in State College.

Summer monsoon rains started to modify Sahara about 12,500 years ago. But 7,000 years ago, decreased solar radiation weakened the African monsoons, resulting in the aridification of the area.

-The Past 6000 years climate-driven ecosystem succession in the Sahara
-Simulation of an abrupt change in saharan vegetation in the mid-Holocene
-Sahara abrupt desertification started by a change in desert orbit, accelerated by atmospheric feedback
-Wadi Howar [UNESCO Heritage Natural Site]

A Public Relation Crisis ?!

2009-11-30T04:14:00.000-08:00

Predictably, the kind of muslim friction with rest of the world consumed most of social tolerance worldwide..... the rightwing is rising everywhere, and self-defeting leftwing is simply irreliable.

Pro-activity & real change in attitude is demanded from muslims......

Swiss ban mosque minarets in surprise vote

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 29, 6:40 pm ET

GENEVA – Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population.

Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland's international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations and wealthy investors who bank, travel and shop there.

The referendum by the nationalist Swiss People's Party labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 percent by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.
Muslims comprise about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and about one in 10 actively practices their religion, the government says.
The country's four standing minarets, which won't be affected by the ban, do not traditionally broadcast the call to prayer outside their own buildings.
The sponsors of the initiative provoked complaints of bias from local officials and human-rights group with campaign posters that showed minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman. Backers said the growing Muslim population was straining the country "because Muslims don't just practice religion."
"The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls," the sponsors said. They said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared mosques to Islam's military barracks and called "the minarets our bayonets." Erdogan made the comment in citing an Islamic poem many years before he became prime minister.
Anxieties about growing Muslim minorities have rippled across Europe in recent years, leading to legal changes in some countries. There have been French moves to ban the full-length body covering known as the burqa. Some German states have introduced bans on head scarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Mosques and minaret construction projects in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovenia have been met by protests.

Amnesty International said the vote violated freedom of religion and would probably be overturned by the Swiss supreme court or the European Court of Human Rights.
The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government had spoken out strongly against the initiative but the government said it accepted the vote and would impose an immediate ban on minaret construction.
It said that "Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others, and live according to their beliefs just as before." It took the unusual step of issuing its press release in Arabic as well as German, French, Italian and English.
Sunday's results stood in stark contrast to opinion polls, last taken 10 days ago, that showed 37 percent supporting the proposal. Experts said before the vote that they feared Swiss had pretended during the polling that they opposed the ban because they didn't want to appear intolerant.

The People's Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.

Againt Typification

2009-10-23T13:53:00.001-07:00

It is a Conflict of Ideas & Wills before everything

2009-09-12T02:49:00.000-07:00

or, when you are cursed with such pointless enemies.......

The Afghan Stakes

A U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would have terrible consequences in the war on terror.

By BRET STEPHENS, Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2009

So George Will has noticed that Afghanistan is a backward place ill-suited to nation-building, and Nicholas Kristof thinks that war is a tricky, dirty business, and Tom Friedman is hedging his bets on yet another conflict he once supported but which now disturbs his moral equilibrium.
Thus do three paladins of the right, left and center combine to erode support for a war that, if lost, would be to the United States roughly what the battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. —you can look it up—was to the Roman Empire. Things did not go well for Western civilization for 1,100 or so years thereafter.

Overstated? I don't think so.

The simplistic case for NATO's mission in Afghanistan is that it's the country that harbored al Qaeda when the plans for 9/11 were hatched.
The simplistic rebuttal is that nothing prevents al Qaeda from planning another attack from another country, if not in the Pakistan hinterland then perhaps in Somalia or Yemen—and the U.S. has no plans to physically occupy any of these places.
Ergo, goes the argument, we should "offshore" our military and intelligence capabilities so we can strike at will while leaving Afghans to their own incompetent and tragic devices.

But Afghanistan matters not because that's where 9/11 was conceived. It matters because that's where it was imagined.

In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A little less than a decade later, the Soviets left, humiliated and defeated. Within months the Berlin Wall fell and two years later the USSR was no more. Westerners may debate whether credit for these events belongs chiefly to Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Charlie Wilson or any number of people who stuck a needle in the Soviet balloon. But in Islamist mythology, it was Afghan and Arab mujahedeen who brought down the godless superpower. And if one superpower could be brought down, why not the other?

You can’t “offshore” a handshake.

Put simply, it was the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that laid much of the imaginative groundwork for 9/11. So imagine the sorts of notions that would take root in the minds of jihadists—and the possibilities that would open up to them—if the U.S. was to withdraw from Afghanistan in its own turn.

Notion One: Attacks on the scale of 9/11 are by no means fatal to the cause of radical Islam. On the contrary, despite the huge losses the movement has suffered over the past eight years, it would emerge from a U.S. defeat in Afghanistan with something it was denied in Iraq: a monumental political and ideological victory from which it could recruit a new field of avid jihadists. Ergo, further attacks on the U.S. homeland could yield similar long-term benefits.

Notion Two: The U.S. has no stomach for long-term counterinsurgency. Ergo, surrender or political accommodation to apparent U.S. military success is pointless; if you hold out long enough, they leave and you win.

Notion Three: The U.S. is not prepared to stand by its clients in the Third World if it believes those clients are morally tainted. That happened to South Vietnam's Nguyen Van Thieu, it happened to the Shah of Iran and, if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, it will happen to the lamentable Hamid Karzai. Ergo, other shaky or dubious U.S. allies in the Muslim world—Algeria, for instance, or, yes, Saudi Arabia—are prime targets for renewed assault.

Notion Four: A U.S. that doesn't have the stomach for a relatively easy fight like Afghanistan, where even now casualties are a fraction of what they were in Iraq during the worst of the fighting, will have even less stomach for much tougher fights. Ergo, maximum efforts should go into destabilizing and, not implausibly, taking over Pakistan, a country that, as Mr. Will says, "actually matters."

And from here the possibilities flow.
1/ Withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a Taliban takeover in Kandahar and perhaps Kabul, would plunge Afghanistan into another civil war infinitely bloodier than what we have now.
2/ Withdrawal would force Islamabad to abandon its war on terror and again come to terms with its own militants, as it did in the 1990s. Only this time, it wouldn't be clear who is patron and who is client.
3/ Withdrawal would give Pakistan's jihadists the freedom to shift fronts to India, with all the nightmare scenarios that entails.
4/ Withdrawal would invite the al Qaeda remnant in Iraq—already on an upswing—to redouble its efforts, and do so with the confidence that the U.S. has permanently soured on Middle Eastern interventions.

This is a partial list. The alternative is a winding and bloody struggle to defend and improve a hapless and often corrupt government in a godforsaken land of often (though by no means pervasively) ungrateful people. This is not the noblest fight, and no sane nation would wage it by choice. But we did not choose it and, if we keep our nerve, we can win it. Otherwise, the consequence will be ashes flying again in our own streets, something to remember on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.

..
About Bret Stephens.
Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs, which runs every Tuesday in the U.S. and is also published in the European and Asian editions of the paper.
He is a member of the Journal's editorial board, and has previously worked for the paper as an assistant editorial features (op-ed) editor in New York and as an editorial writer in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
From March 2002 to October 2004 Mr. Stephens was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, a position he assumed at age 28. At the Post, he was responsible for the paper's news and editorial divisions. He also wrote a weekly column. In 2004, Mr. Stephens was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, where he is also a media fellow.
He is the recipient of a prize for commentary from the South Asian Journalists Association for his coverage of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, and of the Frank Knox Media Award for his coverage of U.S. military affairs.
He is the 2008 winner of the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism. Raised in Mexico City and educated at The University of Chicago and the London School of Economics.

When you are fed-up desperate & no one to help you

2009-08-15T01:50:00.000-07:00

And your Government - as usual - Does Not Care the Shet about your Fate.....

Captive Egyptians defeat Somali pirates, sail free

Using machetes and guns, the men fought a desperate battle to take control of two boats off the Somali coast. But this time, it wasn't pirates who launched the attack — it was Egyptian fishermen who had been held hostage for four months and who killed two brigands and took others captive as they regained control of their vessels.

On Friday, the roughly three dozen newly liberated fishermen sailed toward home. One pirate was in custody in Somalia after local fishermen found him near shore with machete wounds, police said.

Another pirate, who said he escaped during the fight on Thursday, described the struggle in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
"They attacked us with machetes and other tools, seized some of our guns and then fought us," said the pirate who identified himself only his nom de guerre, Miraa. "I could see two dead bodies of my colleagues lying on the ship. I do not know the fate of the nine others."

The fishermen on both vessels coordinated their attack and some of the pirates even cooperated with them, making it easier for the other gunmen to be overpowered, said Mohamed Alnahdi, the executive manager of Mashrq Marine Product, which had hired the fishing boats.
"The crew on both boats started their operations at one time. They were coordinating among themselves," he told the AP in a telephone interview from Bossaso, a Somali town where he spent more than a month trying to negotiate the fishermen's' release.
Alnahdi, whose company is based in Yemen, said the ransom talks deadlocked Thursday, with him offering $200,000 but the pirates demanding $1.5 million.
The Ahmed Samara and Momtaz 1fishing boats sailed Friday for Yemen, where the crews were to hand over the captured pirates. The crew will then fly home to Egypt, said Mohammad Nasr, owner of the Ahmed Samara.
The struggle took place off the coastal town of Las Qorey along the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest waterways. It is infested with Somali pirates.

Clues about Metastasis

2009-06-26T04:14:00.000-07:00

Howard Hughes Medical Institute
[May 6th 2009]

Researchers Identify Genes that Drive Breast Cancer’s Spread to the Brain

Researchers have uncovered the first genetic clues that suggest how invasive breast cancer cells pry their way into the tightly protected interior of the brain, where they can grow into new and lethal tumors.

Studies indicate that those renegade cancer cells use some of the same strategies that other breast cancer cells rely on to invade the lungs – but also need more specialized molecular tools to infiltrate the brain.

Metastasis occurs when cells from a primary tumor break off and invade another organ. It is the deadliest transformation that a cancer can undergo, and is the cause of 90 % of all cancer deaths. Metastases to the brain –
usually from breast or lung cancers -- can be particularly devastating.
Even with treatment, patients usually survive only six to 10 months after diagnosis.

"Metastasis is what we fight with post-operative therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, yet very little is known about the mechanisms that drive it"

Some cancerous cells, such as lung cancer cells, seem well equipped to invade multiple tissues soon after a tumor develops. But for breast cancer cells, metastasis takes time. When breast cancer spreads to distant organs, new tumors may not appear until years – or even decades -- after the original tumor has been removed from the breast. Massagué says this indicates that breast cancer cells do not become fully metastatic until they accumulate the
genetic alterations that allow them to infiltrate new tissues and survive in that environment. “If metastasis occurs, the primary tumor must have released cells that were competent to be released and to hide away,” he said. “However, when they were released, they evidently did not yet have everything that it takes to grow in the bones, or the lungs, or the brain. It may take years to acquire that capacity.”

Breast cancer metastases to the brain develop even more slowly than metastases to other organs. Massagué says this suggests that cells need a particularly specialized set of tools to enter and grow in the brain. This should not come as a surprise, he says, because the brain is well protected by a tightly woven, double-layered network of cells called the blood-brain barrier.

Massagué’s lab had already demonstrated that metastatic breast cancer cells acquire certain genetic characteristics that permit them to invade and survive in different organs, such as bone or lung. He likens cancer cells’ adaptation to
these tissues to the evolution of different species of finches in the Galápagos Islands. Like the birds, whose beaks are shaped to best exploit the food source on individual islands, metastatic breast cancer cells acquire the specific properties they need to survive in a particular environment, Massagué says.

To find out which genetic adaptations are associated with brain metastases, the group implanted tumor cells from a patient with advanced breast cancer into mice. They later isolated cells that generated tumors in the brains of the
mice.
The scientists measured gene activity in the metastatic cells and found 243 genes whose expression appeared abnormal.
They next measured the activity of those 243 genes in clinical tumor samples and narrowed their focus to 17 genes associated with brain metastases.
“Cells that have these genes activated are better ready to invade the brain of a mouse,” Massagué explained. “We also found that patients whose primary tumors have these genes activated have a higher rate of brain metastases.”
“These results show that for entry into the brain tissue, breast cancer cells use some of the genes that they use to penetrate into the lung, but then some more.
They are also using genes that are more specialized for the blood-brain barrier,” he said. The next step, he says, is to see if they can determine the biological roles of these genes in cancer cells. His team has already done these kinds of studies for three of the candidate genes identified in their study. When they reduced the activity of any of the three genes in cells grown in the laboratory, those cells were not as effective at infiltrating a cellular model of the blood-brain barrier.

Two of the genes, COX2 and HBEGF, also help breast cancer invade the lungs.
The third gene, ST6GALNAC5, appears to specifically enable metastasis to the brain.

ST6GALNAC produces a protein that normally modifies the surface of cells in the brain. The cancer cells appear to use it to insinuate themselves into the brain “like a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Massagué says.
Further characterization of the other genes Massagué’s group identified could provide new ideas for cancer therapy, or new markers to predict which cancers are most likely to spread to the brain, Massagué says. But importantly, their findings are already providing a new glimpse into the mechanisms that control metastasis to the brain.

Approaches in Antibodies Bioindustry - Simplicity

2009-06-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

antibodies are complex protein tailored to clamp onto a specific target. Immune cells in the blood and lymph use antibodies either to identify enemies for attacks or to directly bind to and neutralize intruders.

Scientists now regularly develop antibodies for use in medicines against cancers and other diseases or in sensors to warn of dangerous microbes and chemicals. Unfortunately, the antibodies currently used irreversibly break down at high temperatures, often limiting extended use in the field.

Llama, camel and shark antibodies consist just of chains of heavy proteins, missing the additional lighter protein chains that more complicated antibodies from other species use. Their relative simplicity makes them more durable, capable of withstanding temperatures of almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Past studies revealed that the binding regions of these antibodies and those from camels and sharks are unusually small, just one-tenth the size of common human antibodies.

The researchers generated more than a billion kinds of antibody binding regions in the laboratory based on genes taken from small blood samples from llamas. After testing their antibodies against various biological threats, the researchers found they could within days successfully identify antibodies targeting cholera toxin, a smallpox virus surrogate and ricin, among other known menaces, invaluable features for the development of biosensors for biothreats in the field

2009-05-20T03:35:00.000-07:00

The 47 million year old fossilized remains of a primate is seen at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

an almost perfectly intact fossil of a 47 million-year-old primate, Officially known as Darwinius masillae, the fossil of the lemur-like creature dubbed Ida shows it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws, the cat-sized animal's hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright.

A team of amateur fossil hunters discovered the near-perfect remains inside a mile-wide crater outside of Frankfurt in 1983.
Experts believe the pit was a volcanic caldera where scores of animals from the Eocene epoch were killed and their remains were kept remarkably well-preserved.
Though the pit has been a bountiful source of other fossils, the inexperienced archeologists didn't realize the value of their find.
Years later, the University of Oslo bought the 95%-intact fossil, and Hurum studied it in secret for two years.

The Illusions of Obama's Idealism Abroad

2009-04-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

David Paul Kuhn
Candidate Barack Obama was dogged by charges of naiveté. President Obama has done little to disprove the accusation. He has been championed as a realist. But he has acted the ungrounded idealist.
It was a young John Kennedy who described himself as "an idealist without illusions." But Kennedy proved otherwise early on. The Bay of Pigs undercut US power nearly 48 years ago to the day.

Obama is more cautious than Kennedy. He is also more taken with illusions of the green diplomatic sort: that popularity wins policy or kindness woos kindness.
The damage has been limited to theatrics. But as Kennedy learned, weak theatrics can induce aggression. And Obama is accumulating some weak theatrics.
A North Dakota native was sentenced this weekend to eight years in prison for espionage. The conviction was by secret trial. It came a month after Obama committed himself to a new era of engagement with Iran that is "honest and grounded in mutual respect."
Meanwhile, Iran is undeterred in its effort to construct the ultimate deterrent. The White House continues to push for talks with Iran. Iran continues to master the nuclear fuel cycle. The West looks resigned to an Iranian bomb. It hopes to contain a rising regional power after it has nuclear weapons. Look how well that worked with Pakistan and North Korea.
Earlier this month Obama spoke of "a world without nuclear weapons." That same day nuclear North Korea test fired a ballistic missile. "I am not naïve," Obama responded to the atomic irony.
Obama subsequently doubled down on his naiveté. He spent political capital by assigning his U.N. ambassador to win a "resolution with some teeth." Obama came up all gums, as Kimtologists foretold. Russia and China were not suddenly moved to reverse policy and agree to seriously punish Pyongyang. The U.N. issued a statement. Tempered caution led North Korea to act most intemperate. Kim Jong Il left the six-nation disarmament talks and restarted his nation's nuclear weapons program.
This past weekend, as Iran convicted Roxana Saberi without even her attorney present, Obama was attending the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. The president entered the summit pledging to "listen and learn." He got an ear full.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega spent 45 minutes reciting the worst U.S. actions and allegations in the Americas. He decried "Yankee troop" invasions and called Obama "president of an empire." But Ortega added, "I want to believe" that Obama has "got the will" to change U.S. policy. How diplomatic.
Obama greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez with a handshake and a smile. It was last month that Chavez called Obama an "ignoramus." So Chavez went about schooling Obama with an Uruguayan historian's book "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent."
The Venezuelan leader quickly posted photos of the handshake with Obama on his government website. The book "Open Veins" began the weekend at 54,295 on Amazon.com. By Sunday night, it soared to No. 2. Propaganda achieved.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner heads a nation that once dreamed of empire and acted accordingly. No matter. She highlighted the failures of the U.S. drug war and its operations in the Americas.
But it's not personal for this president. Kirchner told Obama that this reproach against the United States was "in no way a reproach against you." It was just group therapy. "Simply an exercise to look back at what happened," in her words.
A U.S. president acts multilateral to critics of U.S. unilateralism. Critics greet Obama's olive branch with sanctimonious rants.
Obama responded with humor. "I'm grateful President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old."
To Chavez there was more bite. "Venezuela is a country whose defense budget is probably 1/600th of the United States'," Obama said. "It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States."
Obama's literally right. But the series of missteps sum to no joke. History beckons yellow lights where Obama has seen diplomatic green.

It's not easy to even win over allies. Obama proved popular in Europe earlier this month. But he won no substantial concessions from France and Germany on Afghanistan or stimulus spending. French President Nicolas Sarkozy later demeaned Obama as inexperienced.
Enemies are more difficult. There cannot always be the presumption of rational action. It's flirtation, not dance. No one leads the entire way. One cautious action awaits another. Obama is doing this with Cuba. He slightly eased the embargo. Raul Castro appears to desire the courtship. This same pragmatism is found in Obama's early approach to Afghanistan and Iraq.
But concessions do not always earn concessions. Russia rejected Obama's offer to withhold missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland if Russia helps contain Iran. Pledging diplomatic fresh starts without fresh action can embolden adversaries. North Korea and Iran persist with brinksmanship. Adversaries don't always want to "change" relations at the same time. One leader's peace is another's interpretation of weakness.
Last spring, President Bush ridiculed Obama's promise to negotiate with U.S. enemies. Obama rebutted that if Republicans have a problem with meeting with enemies then they "can explain why they [also] have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that's what he did with Khrushchev."

The meeting of Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev offered the opposite lesson. Kennedy intellectually understood appeasement, as Obama does. JFK's magna cum lade Harvard thesis was on "Appeasement at Munich." By 1961, Kennedy rushed to meet bilaterally with Khrushchev all the same. Khrushchev pummeled Kennedy for U.S. "hypocrisy."
Kennedy said afterward that the Soviet premier "just beat the hell out of me." Khrushchev walked away from the meeting characterizing Kennedy as "too intelligent and too weak." He soon challenged Kennedy as he had not Dwight Eisenhower. The Berlin wall was built a few months later. Kennedy told aides "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war." War almost came the following year with the Cuban missile crisis.
The Bay of Pigs made America look feckless. But when Khrushchev met with Kennedy, the Soviet premier decided the president was feckless as well.
Kennedy once said, "let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." Indeed. Absolute hawkishness offers only aggression to dissuade war. But as Kennedy learned with Khrushchev, premature dovishness can also undercut peace by inviting aggression.

David Paul Kuhn covers national affairs for RealClearPolitics and is the author of The Neglected Voter. He can be reached at david@realclearpolitics.com

2009-04-19T02:52:00.000-07:00

AP - 2008-04-18 Sat.

Riccardo De Luca

Italian neurologist and senator for life Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize winner for Medicine in 1986, seen with a glass, at the end of a press conference for her one hundredth birthday in Rome, Saturday April 18, 2009.

Montalcini will be 100 years old on April 22.

The Italian scientist received the Nobel prize for medicine with Stanley Cohen of the United States, in 1986, for discoveries of mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20.
Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
"At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.

The Turin-born Levi Montalcini recounted how the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime forced her to quit university and do research in an improvised laboratory in her bedroom at home.
"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."
"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom," the scientist said.

Her white hair elegantly coifed and wearing a smart navy blue suit, she raised a glass of sparkling wine in a toast to her long life.

The World worst Place to work

2009-04-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Is your city one of those???

What Heat can produce

2009-02-05T22:51:00.000-08:00

PARIS (AFP) – The boa-like behemoth, dubbed Titanoboa, ruled the tropical rainforests of what is now Colombia some 60 million years ago, at a time when the world was far hotter than now, they report in a study .
The size of the snake's vertebrae suggest the beast weighed some 1.135 tonnes, in a range of 730 kilos (1,600 pounds) to 2.03 tonnes.
And it measured 13 metres (42.7 feet) from nose to tail, in a range of 10.64-15 metres (34.6-48.75 feet), they estimate.
"The discovery of Titanoboa challenges our understanding of past climates and environments, as well as the biological limitations on the evolution of giant snakes," said Jason Head, member of the Panama-based research institute and lead author of the study to be published in Nature magazine.
"This shows how much more information about the history of Earth there is to glean from a resource like the reptile fossil record," said the assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
From the size of the 1.14-tonne Titanoboa, scientists have estimated the average annual temperature in the tropical jungle it inhabited 60 million years ago at 30-34 degrees Celsius (86-93 degrees Farenheit).
"This temperature estimate is much hotter than modern temperatures in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," said Carlos Jaramillo, Smithsonian staff scientist and co-organizer of the excavations in Colombia.
"That means that tropical rainforests could exist at temperatures 3-4 degrees Celsius hotter than modern tropical rainforests experience," he added, alluding to scientific theories that would have tropical forests disappear if global warming boosts temperatures by that measure in the future.
Jonathan Block, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Florida, who co-led the work said "Truly enormous snakes really spark people's imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood."
"The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie 'Anaconda' is not as big as the one we found."
"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips," said David Polly, a geologist at the University of Indiana at Bloomington.
The investigators found the remains of the new species at an unlikely location -- at one of the world's biggest open-cast coalmines, in Cerrejon, Colombia, where giant machines had obligingly gnawed away surface layers of dirt.
Working as huge coal-laden trucks thundered by, the team sifted through the earth, laying bare the remains of supersized snakes and their likely prey -- extinct species of crocodiles and giant turtles -- and evidence that a massive rainforest once covered the ground.
"The giant Colombian snake is a truly exciting discovery. For years, herpetologists have argued about just how big snakes can get, with debatable estimates of the max somewhere less than 40 feet" (12.3 metres), said leading snake expert Harry Greene of Cornell University, New York.
Titanoboa cerrejonensis -- whose Latin name honours the coal mine -- is not only a source of jaw-dropping wonder.
It is also a useful indicator as to the world's climate after the dinosaurs were wiped out some 65 million years ago, the team say.
Unlike mammals, reptiles cannot regulate their own temperature.
As a result, they are limited in body size by the ambient temperature of where they live. For example, reptiles today are bigger in the tropics than they are in cooler latitudes.
Based on T. cerrejonensis, the scientists calculate that the mean annual temperature in equatorial South America 60 million years ago would have been 30-34 degrees Celsius, or 86-93 degrees Fahrenheit.
That makes it around 3-4 C (5.5-7.2 F) hotter than tropical rainforests today.
If so, this is a welcome piece of news about climate change.
Simulations about global warming suggest that, on present trends, the world's surface temperatures could rise by between 1.8-4.0 C (3.2-7.2 F) by 2100.
If the supersnakes are a guide, tropical rain forests could still exist at such temperatures, although a fast, massive rise in warming could well be devastating to many species.
The paper is published by the British-based weekly science journal Nature.
The world's longest snake today is the Asian reticulated python, specimens of which can grow around 10 metres (32.5 feet), and the biggest in terms of mass is the green anaconda, with some specimens weighing 227 kilos (550 pounds).

A handout photo released by Nature magazine shows a Precloacal vertebra of an adult Green Anaconda (Eunectes murinus),lighter colored vertebra dwarfed by a vertebra of the giant boid snake they named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, meaning ``titanic boa from Cerrejon,'' the region where it was found. Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 feet or longer, reaching an estimated 1.27 tons.(AP Photo/University of Florida) Kenneth Krysko)

...für diesen Eid mein Leben einzusetzen

2009-01-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

Die Vereidigung der Wehrmacht auf Adolf Hitler, 2.8.1934

"Ich schwöre bei Gott diesen heiligen Eid, daß ich dem Führer des Deutschen Reiches und Volkes Adolf Hitler, dem Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht, unbedingten Gehorsam leisten und als tapferer Soldat bereit sein will, jederzeit für diesen Eid mein Leben einzusetzen."

The Wehrmacht Oath of Loyalty to Adolf Hitler, 2 August 1934
"I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be prepared, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath."

Healing Heat: Harnessing Infection to Fight Cancer

2009-01-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Publication from American Scientist Magazine

Modern immunology plus historic experiments suggest a better way to gear up the human immune system to battle malignant disease

Uwe Hobohm

Conventional wisdom long held that the human immune system was no match for cancer. Born of native cells, the logic went, cancer fooled the immune system into concluding it was harmless. Thus protected from attack, cancer easily thrived until its host died.
A deeper understanding of our biological defenses has changed that. The human immune system does battle cancer. But we could better optimize our defenses to fend off malignant disease. That’s clear from cancer treatments attempted in New York City and Germany as early as the 19th century. Those experiments and other undervalued evidence from the medical literature suggest that acute infection—in contrast to chronic infection, which sometimes causes cancer—can help a body fight tumors.
It’s not the pathogens that do the good work. But the way our bodies respond to the pathogens is key. Infection events, especially those that produce fever, appear to shift the innate human immune system into higher gear. That ultimately improves the performance of crucial biological machinery in the adaptive immune system. This lesson comes, partly, from doctors who risked making patients sicker to try to make them better.

Toxin Therapy

Elisabeth Dashiell was 17 years old when she entered New York Hospital in the autumn of 1890 with severe pain in her hand but no sign of infection. Her newly trained surgeon, William B. Coley, saw no improvement after a period of observation. In November 1890, a biopsy revealed round-cell sarcoma, a relatively rare form of cancer originating in soft tissue and bone.
Shortly after the biopsy, Dashiell’s arm was amputated below her elbow, but her cancer still spread ferociously. In December a tumor was detected in her right breast; within days, nodules appeared in her left breast. By January a huge tumor swelled in her abdomen and her heart began to fail. On January 23, 1891, Dashiell died.
Medicine back then offered little more than amputation and morphine to cancer patients such as Dashiell. Shocked by his ineffectiveness, Coley dove into hospital records and the medical literature for clues to how to help more. He found about 90 sarcoma case reports. About half contained follow-up histories. The one that grabbed him most involved Fred Stein.
Stein, a German immigrant, had been diagnosed with cheek sarcoma in 1884. Despite four operations, his cancer kept recurring. He was considered a hopeless case. However, in late 1884 Stein developed high fever from erysipelas, a postoperative skin disease common in that era. To the great surprise of his physicians, his tumor disappeared. Stein was discharged from the hospital in February 1885.
Five months after Elisabeth Dashiell died, Coley tracked Stein to New York City’s Lower East Side. Photographed and examined, Stein showed no trace of residual cancer six years after his puzzling recovery. That drove Coley to dig deeper for records of similar cases. The young doctor, who had studied some German at Yale University, likely encountered a report published more than two decades earlier, in 1868, in the journal Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift.
The German physician W. Busch reported that he had observed a patient’s tumor “re-absorbed” after a high fever. Unconstrained by modern ethics rules, Busch tested for some connection himself. That summer, by coincidence, a patient with a mild erysipelas infection that followed an injury and a 19-year-old girl with a huge sarcoma of the neck entered Busch’s clinic at around the same time. Over five months, the sarcoma had grown to the size of a child’s head. The young woman’s breathing was threatened; she could not completely close one eye.
Before antibiotics, erysipelas was one of the leading causes of death from postoperative infections in hospitals. Still, Busch burned a small piece of skin over the girl’s tumor and attached a cotton pad taken from the erysipelas patient onto her wound. The surrounding skin developed signs of erysipelas and the patient developed a high fever—104 degrees Fahrenheit. Her tumor, which had been tight and dense, softened and shrank rapidly. Within two weeks it reached the size of a small apple. She could close her eyes and breathe freely. Unfortunately, the young lady developed circulatory problems, and steps had to be taken to strengthen her weak condition. With the disappearance of the skin inflammation, the tumor reached its prior size. How she fared after leaving the clinic is not known.
In his literature search, Coley found more than 40 cases of disappearance of malignancies during an erysipelas attack. He came across another medical pioneer, Friedrich Fehleisen, also in Germany, who was the first to use cultured bacteria in related experiments. After successes and failures, Fehleisen discontinued the work. Still, Coley decided to try for himself.

In April 1891 an Italian immigrant, Mr. Zola, presented at New York Hospital with a large sarcoma tumor in his neck and an egg-sized metastasis in his right tonsil. He had been operated on twice before but was in hopeless condition. He could hardly speak or swallow and was unable to eat solid food. His life expectancy was, at the very most, a few months. He had nothing to lose by undergoing an experimental treatment.
Since erysipelas was so hazardous, the hospital was reluctant to host Coley’s experiment, so it was performed in a private apartment. Colleagues at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, now part of Columbia University, prepared the bacteria. Three applications were delivered over three weeks, with minor success. Zola’s temperature rose only slightly, and he showed no sign of full-blown infection. Coley tried a fresh preparation and a larger dose. Within hours, Zola developed severe chills, headache and vomiting. His temperature did not reach what one could expect from a full-blown erysipelas infection; it did not exceed 102 degrees Fahrenheit. Both tumors diminished in size. About one month after the treatment began, Zola could eat again.
Via a friend, Coley obtained fresh and potent bacteria culture from the leading German bacteriologist, Robert Koch. That fall, he again treated Zola, whose temperature that time rose above 104 degrees, with nausea, vomiting and severe pain. The infection almost killed him, but within two weeks, the neck tumor was not observable. The tonsil tumor stopped growing. Zola was in excellent health when Coley saw him four years later.
During the following two years Coley attempted to infect 12 patients who had inoperable cancer. He failed to induce a full-blown infection in four and succeeded in eight. All eight responded. Six had partial tumor remissions. Two showed full remission. But two patients died from infection. So Coley abandoned living cultures and turned toward what today we would call a bacterial extract.

Refining a Method

Coley tried inactivated microbes on four patients but obtained only modest fever-inducing effects and temporary changes in their tumors. The preparations likely were too weak. By the end of 1892, the French doctor G. H. Roger had published his observation that the virulence of the erysipelas bacterium, Streptococcus pyogenes, increased when it was grown in the presence of another, then called Bacillus prodigiosus, now Serratia marcescens, a mild pathogen involved in eye and urinary infections.
In January 1893 Coley administered for the first time one variant of what today are still called “Coley’s toxins.” It was a heat-sterilized, combined culture of S. pyogenes and S. marcescens bacteria administered by injection. The patient was a 16-year-old boy with a large inoperable abdominal tumor, a malignant sarcoma. After receiving increasing doses over 10 weeks, the boy developed symptoms mimicking those of a heavy erysipelas infection: chills, headache, fever, local redness and swelling at injection sites. The tumor shrank by 80 percent. Coley kept in touch with his patient, who remained cancer-free for more than 20 years.
Coley treated another five patients during 1893. No result was as promising as his first. Coley published the results of his experiments in the The American Journal of the Medical Sciences under the title “The treatment of malignant tumors by repeated inoculations of erysipelas: with a report of ten original cases” in 1893. The report stirred considerable excitement—for a while.
At the beginning of the 20th century radiation treatment came on the cancer therapy scene. This new procedure captured nearly the full attention of the oncology community due to its immediately visible effects. One could now, it seemed, x ray away tumors. Within the medical mainstream, interest in Coley’s methods faded.
Still, some physicians did try to test Coley’s treatment. Nicholas Senn of Rush Medical College in Chicago reported uniform failure of the method. William Keen, a surgeon in Philadelphia, failed to obtain a response in seven patients. A Dr. Caulkins of Watertown, New York, reported a large number of successes, as did Dr. Matagne from Belgium, who prepared his own fresh extracts. Matagne published his observations in lower-tier French and Belgian journals.
Two stubborn surgeons, S. L. Christian and L. A. Palmer, at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Stapleton, New York, reported a spectacular cure in 1928. Two years before, a U.S. Marine captain they described as “G. B.” developed bone sarcoma and endured an above-the-knee amputation. He was 31 years old. In 1926, G. B. received daily injections of “Coley’s fluid” from January 5 to February 20, until he seemed too weak to endure more. Treatments were started and stopped that spring and started again that summer, fall and winter, with daily injections totaling 20 weeks cumulatively. The patient was last examined on January 9, 1928. No evidence of disease was present.
Coley, throughout his 40-plus-year career, treated hundreds with multiple versions of his toxin. He never achieved a clear-cut, uniform result. Some patients responded. Among them, some were cured, but some were not. At a 1934 meeting, Coley discussed 44 cases of Ewing’s sarcoma. Twelve out of 44 patients had been treated with radiation by other physicians and none of these survived five years. But the remaining 32 patients had been treated with bacterial extract by Coley. Twelve of them remained disease free for more than five years. A five-year survival rate of zero after radiation and 38 percent after Coley’s treatments merited deeper scrutiny.
Helen Coley Nauts, Coley’s daughter, meticulously reexamined her father’s clinical cases after his death. This was not easy. Undoubtedly a man of determination, Coley was not a methodical scientist. His patient records were a mess, he treated different patients for different time periods and his bacterial extracts, over time, were inconsistently made. Coley Nauts counted 15 different preparations. Eleven of them, she concluded, were not potent enough to have a strong effect.
Coley Nauts determined that her father had treated several hundred patients by the time he died in 1936, many of whom had received radiation and sometimes surgery as well. To estimate the overall success of extracts, the analysis should be restricted to patients with inoperable cancer and treated by toxin alone. In another review from 1994, immunologist and oncology researcher Charles Starnes identified 170 such patients with adequate medical records (121 with some form of sarcoma, 43 with carcinoma and myeloma, and 6 with melanoma). The remission rate among them was 64 percent; the five-year survival rate was more than 44 percent.
According to the analyses of Coley Nauts and Starnes, treatment success correlated with length of therapy and the fevers induced by the toxins. Higher was better. This correlation was reported among several other observations but without emphasis or any explanation by the authors.
Only a few uncoordinated attempts to apply Coley’s ideas were pursued from mid-century on. Bacterial extracts used in the later studies, in the 1960s and 1970s, were commercial preparations called MBV (produced by Bayer) and Vaccineurin (produced by Südmedica of Munich). They were similar to, but not identical to, Coley’s extracts. The experimenters appeared to be hunting for anticancerous substances that could be applied a limited number of times to be effective, a traditional cancer therapy model embraced by pharmaceutical companies. Length of treatment and fever level were not adequately considered. A majority of the patients in the studies had been pretreated with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or both, measures that likely distorted the immune response that appears to be triggered by the bacterial extracts. Results were mixed: several remissions, even long-lasting ones, with several failures.
Well-controlled studies of bacterial-extract cancer treatment that incorporate all the lessons from the retrospective analysis of Coley’s and other treatments have not been pursued since. But medical case studies, cancer epidemiology and our more precise understanding of immunology make a strong case that they should.
Spontaneous regression or remission is the partial or complete disappearance of an untreated malignant tumor or a tumor treated with a therapy considered inadequate to exert significant influence. It sounds like fantasy, but about 1,000 case studies in the medical literature during the past century detail spontaneous regression from cancer. Surely more have occurred. And there’s a pattern to some of the cases.
A prior fever was recorded in 25 to 80 percent of documented cases of spontaneous regression of cancer. For instance, Diamond and Luhby in 1951 reported 26 spontaneous remissions in a cohort of 300 cases of childhood leukemia; 80 percent were accompanied by infection. Stephenson and colleagues in 1971 investigated 224 cases of spontaneous regression and reported that in 62 cases, or 28 percent, regression was preceded by either an infection or a persistent temperature elevation. In many cases, S. pyogenes, the pathogen that produced erysipelas, was involved.

Harnessing Immunity

It is not true, as Coley believed of S. pyogenes, that all these pathogens produce some cagey anti-cancerous substance. Even malaria was reported in the case histories—a disease caused by plasmodia rather than a virus or bacterium. It’s unlikely that pathogens of such disparate evolutionary roots could produce the same cancer fighter. Much more likely is that the sequence of immune reactions triggered by the infections was the same.
The immune system is capable of finding a malignant cell, just as it is able to localize a bacterium, a virus, a worm or a malaria plasmodium. As early as 1956, scientists observed that the survival rates of gastric cancer patients correlated with the number of a specific type of immune cell observed in and around their tumors. The more tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), the better. Still, millions of people die from cancer each year. Why?
Barriers must exist to prevent an organism’s immune system from attacking its own tissue. Otherwise, devastating autoimmune diseases would be more common. Mammalian immune systems are structured to maintain a delicate balance between recognition and removal of pathogens and not attacking “self.” Bacteria and viruses are invaders that the immune system generally is poised to attack. Malignant cells, derived from native cells, don’t generate the same reaction since they are “self”—at least that was the long held explanation.
Cancer cells can carry hundreds of mutations that distinguish them from healthy cells. But the immune system often remains in an “observer” state in their presence rather than engaging in battle as it does against bacterial or viral infections. The reason for this incomplete immune response is a long-standing puzzle in cancer immunology. William Coley’s experiments may help today’s scientists solve it.
The human immune system can be broadly divided into two parts, the innate and the adaptive. The older, innate immune system reacts within minutes after invading pathogens are encountered. The adaptive system, which employs evolutionarily younger and more customized tools, takes longer to generate specialized antibodies and T cells to attack threats.
A look into vaccinology illustrates why involvement of the innate system may be crucial. Ordinary vaccines such as those against measles, smallpox, tuberculosis or whooping cough either contain “attenuated” live pathogens, sterilized pathogens or pathogenic antigens. These components are geared toward the adaptive immune system; they lead to the production of pathogen-specific antibodies or T cells.
But all vaccines contain another component, so-called adjuvants. For decades nobody understood why adjuvants enhance the immune reaction. The immunologist Charles Janeway called adjuvants “doctors’ dirty little secret.” Today we know that adjuvants stimulate the underestimated portion of the immune system, the innate arm. Some vaccines would be almost useless without an adjuvant.
Evolution wired both arms of our immune response to work together. A defective innate system allows pathogens to attack more rapidly, putting the slower adaptive system at risk of being overrun. For too long, the attention in cancer immunology was focused on the adaptive part of the immune system alone. Only in recent years have cancer immunologists turned their attention to understanding the role of the innate system.

Scientists have expanded the observation from the 1950s that a high number of lymphocytes near gastric tumor tissue improves patient survival. The same pattern has been found in more than 3,400 patients with cancer of the breast, bladder, colon, prostate, ovary, rectum and brain. In the case of breast cancer, the difference was striking. Patients with high numbers of TIL had a six-year survival rate of more than 60 percent, whereas no patients with very low numbers survived. P. H. Cugnenc et al. observed in 2006 that the location and density of T cells within colorectal tumors is a better predictor of patient survival than tumor classification by size and spread.

This is a profound observation, since it proves that the immune system keeps can constrain cancer, at least for a while.
In these cases, presumably, constant elimination of some malignant tissue takes place, although not complete eradication. At the same time tumor cells evolve due to their inherent genetic instability. They produce variants leading to successive cell populations with different immunogenicity—different vulnerability. Thus, while one variant cell is detected and destroyed, another variant develops for which the immune system has to generate novel bullets. The outcome is often fatal.

Dendritic cells, which link the innate and adaptive immune systems, likely are hugely important players in restraining cancer. Dendritic cells act like patrolling sentries, prowling boundaries between the body and the outer world on and under skin, within the epidermis and within mucous membranes in the mouth, nose, ear and colon. These cells ingest pathogens and cell debris and produce from them structures known as antigens—biological fingerprints that stimulate T cells and B cells to customize their immune attacks. Dendritic cells carry those antigens to lymph nodes and display them on their surfaces to T cells, key actors in the molecular chain that launches adaptive immune attacks.
There is one important requirement in this scenario that has not been recognized until recently. Dendritic cells need so-called danger signals to become maximally activated. Cancer cells do not produce the right signals to activate them; but certain classes of bacterial and viral components do. They are called pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMP).
PAMP is the name for a collection of chemically diverse substances found in parts of biological invaders such as the lipopolysaccaride in bacterial cell walls or the flagellin in bacterial propellers. PAMP also exists includes double-stranded RNA found in viruses and parts of infectious fungi, such as mannan or zymosan. They bind to the same protein family in the human body as do adjuvants in vaccines: so-called Toll-like receptors (TLR), which dendritic cells employ. No other class of substances is known to induce maturation of dendritic cells as efficiently as PAMP. That ability may explain how bacterial infection, in the presence of fever, can mobilize immune attacks against cancer.
The details of this hypothesized cross-immune stimulation are not yet known. But a hint may be distilled from an experiment published in 2004. Cancers are known to tone down immune responses. They produce and release immune-suppressing signals into their environment, phenomena called tumor escape or tumor tolerance induction. Drew Pardoll at Johns Hopkins University and colleagues wanted to break this tolerance and revitalize a normal immune response against an established tumor in mice. His group administered dendritic cells plus tumor antigen, but tolerance for the antigen remained.
In a second experiment, dendritic cells were infected with a virus. That time, tolerance for the cancer antigen was broken and the immune system, pushed into a higher gear, launched a full attack. This makes sense. Viruses produce PAMP. Dendritic cells are fully activated with help from PAMP.
This suggests an explanation for Coley’s success with some of his patients and for those documented spontaneous cancer remissions after fevers. Dendritic cells ingest both pathogens and dying cells and eventually display antigens needed to activate T cells, probably by displaying both on their surface. And it’s likely that fever has an important role in this scenario. As Klemens Trieb and colleagues reported back in 1994, cancer cells can be more vulnerable to heat than normal cells. Fever produces heat, so it is fair to argue that fever may produce an unusually high amount of cell debris from cancer cells, possibly resulting in potentially more cancer-cell antigens being collected by dendritic cells. The immune system requires a certain amount of antigen for full activation; low antigen levels are ignored.

Figure 5. Activated, mature dendritic cells are needed to activate T cells and induce a full-blown immune response. Dendritic cells need antigens from cell debris and pathogens, particularly PAMP, to fully activate. Fever may increase the amount of cancer-cell debris that dendritic cells encounter, improving the chances of specialized attacks on cancer cells...((Barbara Aulicino))

Fever As Weapon
But fever is not recognized as a therapeutic tool in clinical settings. In fact, fever is a nuisance to patients and staff. Fever accompanies dangerous infections, so its removal is equated with removing danger. A proliferative infection can cause circulatory problems, and patients experiencing them need to be monitored closely. Multiple incentives persist to use an aspirin or another antipyretic to shut fever down.
But fever induced by sterilized pathogens or pathogenic substances is much less dangerous than a proliferative infection. Circulatory problems caused by Vaccineurin, a fever-inducing drug containing Streptococcus extracts used in German private clinics until the early 1990s, were extremely rare. These fevers usually lasted less than a day and then declined automatically.
Some clinical tests using PAMP have been pursued in recent years. That comes from the recognition that PAMP represents a novel group of substances that could be patented for profit. However, experiments involving PAMP have been guided by magic-bullet thinking favored by pharmaceutical companies. Important lessons from Coley and his contemporaries, including those related to fever, are not being adequately incorporated in the testing. Fever usually is suppressed as an adverse reaction during the tests. But that is not all.
PAMP therapies usually are tested in patients who have had prior chemotherapy, radiation therapy or both. These patients have compromised immune systems. Optimal results can only be expected in patients with noncompromised immune systems. Also, in contrast to a natural infection, where a mixture of PAMP molecules invades a host, only single substances are tested in the clinical trials. That’s the case even though vaccine research has taught us that living attenuated or sterilized pathogens induce a much stronger immune response than single antigens. Single PAMP, in general, will induce a much weaker immune response than would bacterial extracts.
When cancer worsens, PAMP treatment is stopped. But we know from Coley-era experiments that benefits sometimes take a long time to materialize. Instead, a fixed and not too small number of treatments should be pursued without interruption. The goal of such trials is to cure, which is admirable. But we know from other immunotherapeutic trials that sometimes a stabilization of the disease occurs, where malignant foci do not disappear but stop growing. Stabilization of disease should become an additional goal.
PAMP treatments are applied intravenously. But we have hints that stimulators of the innate immune system can be much more powerful when they are applied where the antigen is—namely close to the tumor. And in the present studies, PAMP doses are applied only a few times. It is likely that the innate immune system, lacking memory, must be stimulated again and again.
A different approach is in order. Multiple types of PAMP should be combined into a cocktail. PAMP should be injected close to tumors. If surgery is required, it might be advisable to start PAMP therapy before surgery, when antigen load is high, and continue it afterward to eradicate residual neoplasm. Fever should be allowed, if not stimulated.
On the Internet today, Coley’s toxins are celebrated as an unjustly ignored therapy ready and able to cure cancers. Such simplicity is a vast overstatement, since Coley himself had very mixed results. But we have much to learn from his experiments, from the suggestive epidemiology and from the records of spontaneous regressions. It is time to integrate what they teach with our improved understanding of the innate immune system. Otherwise, the full potential of PAMP therapy will not be leveraged.
There may be prophylactic potential here as well. Epidemiological studies suggest that a personal history that includes several infections with fever sometimes significantly reduces the likelihood a person will develop cancer later (see What the Literature Says). One potential explanation is that feverish infections reduce would-be malignant cells. If that’s true, the implications are profound.
Antibiotics must be applied immediately for life-threatening diseases such as lung infection or tuberculosis. But we must ask: Should we apply antibiotics and antipyretics (fever lowering drugs) early and for all minor infections? If we do not, more people will endure unpleasant days in bed. But quick alleviation of discomfort should be weighed carefully against the potential loss of long-term benefit.

Bibliography
1/ Busch, W. 1867. Aus der sitzung der medicinischen. Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift 5:137.
2/ Christian, S. L., and L. A. Palmer. 1928. An apparent recovery from multiple sarcoma with involvement of both bone and soft parts treated by toxin of erysipelas and Bacillus prodigiosus. American Journal of Surgery 43:188–97.
3/ Coley, W. B. 1893. The treatment of malignant tumors by repeated inoculations. The American Journal of Medical Sciences 105:487–511.
4/ Coley Nauts, H., F. G. Bogatko and G. A. Fowler. 1953. A review of the influence of bacterial infection and of bacterial products (Coley’s toxins) on malignant tumors in man. Acta Medic Scandinavica 145:5–102.
5/ Everson, T. C., and W. H. Cole. 1968. Spontaneous regression of cancer. Philadelphia: J. B. Saunders & Co.
6/ Hall, S. 1998. A Commotion in the Blood: Life, Death, and the Immune System. New York: Owl Books/Henry Holt & Co. Publishing.
7/ Hobohm, U. 2001. Fever and cancer in perspective. Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy 50:391–396.
8/ Hobohm, U., J. Grange and J. Stanford. 2008. PAMP in cancer immunotherapy. Critical Reviews in Immunology 28:95–107
9/ Maurer, S., and K. F. Koelmel. 1998. Spontaneous regression of advanced malignant melanoma. Onkologie 21:14–18.
10/ Rohdenburg, G. 1918. Fluctuations in the growth energy of malignant tumors in man, with especial reference to spontaneous recession. Journal of Cancer Research 3:193–225.
11/ Stephenson, H. E. et al. 1971. Host immunity and spontaneous regression of cancer evaluated by computerized data reduction study. Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics 133:649–55.
12/ Wiemann, B., and C. O. Starnes. 1994. Coley’s toxins, tumor necrosis factor and cancer research: A historical perspective. Pharmacology & Therapeutics 64:529–64.
13/ Yang, Y., et al. 2004. Persistent Toll-like receptor signals are required for reversal of regulatory T cell mediated CD8 tolerance. Nature Immunology 5:508–515.

sources from wikipedia

The Long History of the 2008 Financial Mess

2008-10-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Banks get depressed

Federal banking didn't necessarily mean smooth sailing, however. There were credit crises late in the 19th century and in 1907, well before the great stock market crash of 1929 which significantly changed the face of American banking.
The Great Crash, eerily similar to the recent events on Wall Street, was caused — in short — by too many people having too many high-risk loans, which were doled out on the assumption that the stock market would continue to rise unabated.
It didn't.
When the bubble popped in October of 1929, there was a run on the nation's banks. People who'd lost almost all of their stock holdings tried to withdraw money from their bank accounts but found nothing, since banks had engaged in risky investments themselves with the depositors' cash, only to lose it all.

With banks basically ceasing to function in 1933, newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt put a few measures in place to prevent the same thing from happening again:
1/ The Glass-Steagall Act, which forbid regular commercial banks (think Bank of America, pre-Merrill) from offering the services of investment and insurance banks (think AIG).
2/ The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which promised to reimburse customers should a bank go out of business.
Combined with the "lender of last resort" role of the Federal Reserve — the central bank of the United States that was created in 1913 — the policies slowly brought confidence in the banking system back up and helped end the Great Depression.

Lehman and Merrill gamble big, and lose

Fast-forward to 1999, when the portions of the Glass-Steagall Act that banned mixed banking were repealed due to pressure from commercial banks wanting to re-enter the lucrative stocks biz.
What that meant was the investment banks — think of them as bankers for big players such as governments and corporations — could now own regular commercial banks (and, less often, vice-versa), and engage in each other's activities, which they began to do to a limited degree. With a surging market, the independent investment banks were poised to make all kinds of money.
Propelling growth for the investment banks was the housing market, which, a few years ago, seemed unstoppable. Companies such as Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers offered mortgages left and right, many to people with poor credit records, gambling that housing prices would continue to rise.
They didn't.
With home foreclosures occurring at an alarming rate in the past year, the investment banks didn't have a leg to stand on. On Sept. 15, Lehman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The same day, a press conference announced the $50 billion sale of investment giant Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.
In some ways, the Glass-Steagall repeal that allowed commercial and investment banks to mingle has saved Wall Street from further ruin, Morgan said.
"Prior to the repeal of parts of Glass-Steagall in 1999, a commercial bank like Bank of America would not have been permitted to buy a company like Merrill Lynch," Morgan told LiveScience, adding that "Bank of America and Barclays are able to keep those firms from complete collapse because the banks were not so risky and were less engaged in the practices of the large independent investment banks that have brought them down."
With the mixing of services now the new norm — as it was prior to the 1929 crash — today's winners (commercial banks) and losers (investment banks) have to be careful not to repeat mistakes made in the last year, said Morgan.
"Let us hope that as the commercial bankers come out on top this time, they will be able to suffuse their new family members with the kind of traditional banking practices that will indeed limit the size of the trauma next time," he said.
Whatever your viewpoint, here's how $700 billion - the figure inked in the initial dead-in-the-water government bailout bill for Wall Street - compares to other vast sums.

NASA in fiscal year 2009 will launch several missions into space and pay for hundreds of people to operate a host of space telescopes and even remote robots on Mars and run a PR and media department that puts most large corporations to shame. The agency's budget: $17.6 billion, or 2.5 percent of the bailout sum.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has an annual budget of $6.06 billion to support research and education on astronomy, chemistry, materials science, computing, engineering, earth sciences, nanoscience and physics (among others) at more than 1,900 universities and institutions across the United States.

You have to turn to much bigger initiatives, like war and defense, to get beyond this chump change and approach the bailout figure. From 2003 through the end of fiscal year 2009, Congress has appropriated $606 billion for military operations and other activities associated with the war in Iraq, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The entire military budget for fiscal 2008 is $481.4 billion.Social Security is a $608 billion annual program.

Many analysts fear the bailout because the cost must ultimately be borne by taxpayers.Based on the U.S. Census Bureau's estimate of the current population of about 305 million people, each person would have to pay $2,300 to fund the $700,000,000,000. If each American (including children) paid a dollar a day, it would take more than six years to pay the money in full. One might argue, however, that this $700 billion would be a modest splash in the bucket of national debt, which already stands at well over $9 trillion (which means you already owe $31,642 each).

The Lean Years

2008-09-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

By John Authers, Investment Editor

Even if viewed solely in market terms, 9/11 was a critical inflection point. The seven years since then have in financial terms been relatively lean years for the US.

Before the towers fell, the US dollar index stood at 114. It now stands at 80 - a fall of 30 per cent. The weak dollar is in turn linked to the price of oil.

Seven years ago, a barrel of crude could be bought for $28. Now, there is excitement over whether that price could fall back below $100. Oil is still almost quadruple its price on 9/11. This has put a particularly heavy weight on the US, given its keenness to consume oil.

These developments have harmed the relative strength of the US. The S&P 500 has underperformed the MSCI All-World index by some 17 per cent since 9/11.
However, while the post-9/11 world has been inhospitable for the US, this needs to be kept in context. Plenty of wealth has been created around the world. The US has underperformed since 9/11, but even after the credit crisis, the MSCI US index is still up 12.6 per cent.

Strip away the effects of the weaker dollar, and the rest of the developed world has done no better - Japan and the UK are up 12 per cent, the eurozone only 9.5 per cent. But the emerging world has prospered. Emerging markets as a whole have risen 164 per cent, led by Latin America, which is up 284 per cent.
As traders talk of disaster again, it is best to remember exactly what happened on 9/11, and the wealth that has been created since.
john.authers@ft.com

Insight: The adventure never ends in the derivatives Wonderland

2008-09-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

By Aline van Duyn, US markets editor

The experiences of those frazzled executives in charge of reducing risks in the credit derivatives market are starting to resemble Alice's adventures in Wonderland. Alice shrank after drinking a potion, but was then too small to reach the key to open the door. The cake she ate did make her grow, but far too much.

It was not until she found a mushroom that allowed her to both grow and shrink that she was able to adjust to the right size, and enter the beautiful garden. It took an awfully long time, with quite a number of unpleasant experiences, to get there.

Just as attempts by Alice to achieve the right fit have a seemingly endless number of unexpected consequences, every time it seems the unregulated $62,000bn credit derivatives beast is a step closer to being tamed, an unexpected horror crops up.

The urgency behind doing this is real. The Federal Reserve realised the systemic risks that lurk in the credit derivatives market when it bailed out Bear Stearns in March. It has made clear it wants these threats reduced.
Yet completely out of the blue, the market was this week hit by its biggest-ever default. The credit derivatives market is now "scrambling", as one of its biggest participants said to me, to cope with it.
The default has a particularly surreal air to it because the debt of the defaulted entities is actually in great shape. Indeed, it is arguably the safest debt on the planet. The defaulters are Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac, the US mortgage giants that on Sunday were embraced by the US government. They have a top-notch triple A credit rating, as they are now explicitly backed by Uncle Sam.

Yet, as part of their effective nationalisation - supported, incidentally, by the same regulators who worry about the market - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by a "conservator". This triggers bankruptcy clauses in credit derivatives contracts.
Although it is the biggest default, just how big is far from clear.
Best estimates are that anywhere between $200bn and $500bn of credit default swaps on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exist. I have also heard one dealer to speak of $1,000bn. That is a worryingly large range.
Even in the case of this very safe debt, the losses on credit insurance will probably be about 5 per cent. On $500bn, that amounts to a not insignificant $25bn. It could be more. Who wrote this insurance? Are these losses concentrated in the hands of a few insurance companies, or spread across the globe? Again, there are no definitive answers.
In any case, the 5 per cent estimate for losses is based on the current assumption that Fannie and Freddie recovery values will be 95 cents on the dollar. That could change depending on how the settlement of the defaulted CDS contracts goes.
A few further complications also exist. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are part of most synthetic collateralised debt obligations. Fitch Ratings estimates Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac are referenced in about 30 per cent of the synthetic CDOs it rates. Fitch analysts expect the defaults to have a "muted" effect, because the recovery rates are likely to be high. Again, though, such an outcome is not guaranteed.

Probably, the market can cope with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle. Whether the settlement process goes smoothly or not will become clear in the next few weeks.
But what if something else happens? One executive put it to me like this, when I asked if there were preparations being made for a possible bankruptcy of a financial giant, such as Lehman Brothers. "We're too busy," was the answer, and it was not said as a joke.

"Down the Rabbit-Hole", the title of the first chapter of Lewis Carroll's book about Alice, is now widely used to describe an adventure into the unknown. Exciting as such a journey may be for individuals, this is a very worrying place for financial markets to be. The lack of hard numbers to measure the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac impact is very troubling indeed.
Alice woke up from her dream, got up and walked away. We have to hope that there will be enough time for the credit derivatives market to do the same.
Aline van Duyn is the FT's US markets editor. aline.vanduyn@ft.com

Untitled !!

2008-09-11T15:15:00.000-07:00

Never Explain yourself to anyone
-People who likes you does not need it & people who don't will never believe you

Don't let some one become a priority in your life when you are merely an option in his, relations have to be balanced

We make them cry those who care for us...
We cry for those who will never care for us...
We care for those who will never cry for us...
Those are the life rules, once you realize them, it is never too late to change

Don't make promises when you are injured...
Don't reply when you are sad...
Don't decide when you are angry...
Think Twice & Act Wise

Time is a river, can't touch the same water twice, what flown will never pass again

When they keep saying "Busy", they never free

Don't say tomorrow, tomorrow may never come

Disgust

2008-09-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

read more here, even the joker will not catch the humor !!!

the source of the cartoon is here

This is ......

2008-09-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

This is not me fullfilling my disteny

This is not me following the footsteps of my father

This is definitely not me saving the world

This is not me,......it is just another Mutha Fuckn decoy

This is me,.......Taking Control

I need time to think

2008-09-01T16:24:00.001-07:00

Out of Touch with the World

2008-08-22T12:36:00.001-07:00

The Incredibly Shrinking Democrats

2008-04-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

By JOE KLEIN, Time Magazine

"This election," Bill Clinton said in the hours before the Pennsylvania primary, "is too big to be small." It was a noble sentiment, succinctly stated, and the core of what Democrats believe - that George W. Bush has been a historic screwup as President, that there are huge issues to be confronted this year. But it was laughable as well. The Pennsylvania primary had been a six-week exercise in diminution, with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - and Bill Clinton too - losing altitude and esteem on an almost daily basis. Even as he spoke, the former President was in the midst of a tiny, self-inflicted absurdity, having claimed in a radio interview that the Obama campaign had played the "race card" against him. And that was the least of the damage.

Hillary Clinton won a convincing victory in Pennsylvania, but it came at a significant cost to the Clinton family's reputation and to the Democratic Party. She won by throwing the "kitchen sink" at Obama, as her campaign aides described it. Her campaign had been an assault on Obama's character flaws, real and imagined, rather than on matters of substance. Clinton also suffered a bizarre self-inflicted wound, having reimagined her peaceful landing at a Bosnian airstrip in 1996 as a battlefield scene complete with sniper fire. After six weeks of this, according to one poll, 60% of the American people considered her "untrustworthy," a Nixonian indictment.

But that was nothing compared with the damage done to Obama, who entered the primary as a fresh breeze and left it stale, battered and embittered - still the mathematical favorite for the nomination but no longer the darling of his party. In the course of six weeks, the American people learned that he was a member of a church whose pastor gave angry, anti-American sermons, that he was "friendly" with an American terrorist who had bombed buildings during the Vietnam era, and that he seemed to look on the ceremonies of working-class life - bowling, hunting, churchgoing and the fervent consumption of greasy food - as his anthropologist mother might have, with a mixture of cool detachment and utter bemusement. All of which deepened the skepticism that Caucasians, especially those without a college degree, had about a young, inexperienced African-American guy with an Islamic-sounding name and a highfalutin fluency with language. And worse, it raised questions among the elders of the party about Obama's ability to hold on to crucial Rust Belt bastions like Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey in the general election - and to add long-suffering Ohio to the Democratic column.

Yes, yes, the bulk of the sludge was caricature, and some of it, especially the stuff circulating on the Internet, was scurrilous trash. But there is an immutable pedestrian reality to American politics: you have to get the social body language right if you want voters to consider the nobler reaches of your message. In his 1991 book, The Reasoning Voter, political scientist Samuel Popkin argued that most people make their choice on the basis of "low-information signaling" - that is, stupid things like whether you know how to roll a bowling ball or wear an American-flag pin. In the era of Republican dominance, the low-information signals were really low - how Michael Dukakis looked in a tanker's helmet, whether John Kerry's favorite sports were too precious (like wind-surfing), whether Al Gore's debate sighs over his opponent's simple obfuscations were patronizing. Bill Clinton was the lone Democratic master of low-information signaling - a love of McDonald's and other assorted big-gulp appetites gave him credibility that even trumped his evasion of military service.

The audacity of the Obama campaign was the belief that in a time of trouble - as opposed to the peace and prosperity of the late 20th century - the low-information politics of the past could be tossed aside in favor of a high-minded, if deliberately vague, appeal to the nation's need to finally address some huge problems. But that assumption hit a wall in Pennsylvania. Specifically, it hit a wall at the debate staged by ABC News in Philadelphia - viewed by an audience of 10 million, including a disproportionate number of Pennsylvanians - that will go down in history for the relentless vulgarity of its questions, with the first 40 minutes focused exclusively on so-called character issues rather than policy. Obama was on the defensive from the start, but gradually the defensiveness morphed into bitter frustration. He kept his cool - a very presidential character trait - and allowed his disdain to show only when he was asked a question about his opponent's Bosnia gaffe. "Senator Clinton deserves the right to make some errors once in a while," he said. "What's important is to make sure that we don't get so obsessed with gaffes that we lose sight of the fact that this is a defining moment in our history."

It is the transcendent irony of this campaign that Obama, who entered the race intent on getting past the "dorm fights of the '60s," has now become deeply entangled in them. Each of the ABC moderators' questions were about controversies that erupted in the '60s. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's black-nationalist sermons had their roots in the black-power movement that corrupted Martin Luther King Jr.'s "beloved community." The sprouting of flag pins on the lapels of politicians was a response to the flag-burning of antiwar protesters; the violence of Weather Underground members like William Ayers, with whom Obama was said to be "friendly," was a corruption of the peace movements as well. All of these occurred before Obama reached puberty - and they helped define the social atmosphere in academic communities like Chicago's Hyde Park, where Obama now lives. For 40 years, the Republican Party has feasted on the secular humanism, feminism, distrust of the military and permissiveness that caricature such communities. For 40 years, the Democratic Party has been burdened by its inability to break free of those stereotypes.

Obama's challenge to the primacy of that sort of politics is both worthy and essential. His point, and Bill Clinton's, is indisputable: there is a need for a big election this year. A decision has to be made about the war in Iraq. The mortgage-market and the health-insurance systems are falling apart. There is a drastic need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels for national-security, environmental and basic supply-and-demand reasons. The physical and educational infrastructures of the country are badly outdated. In order to have an election about those big challenges, we need to shove some serious social issues - like gun control and, yes, even abortion - and phony character issues to the periphery. But Obama is going about it the wrong way. "After 14 long months," he said in his concession speech, "it's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit for tat that consumes our politics, the bickering that none of us are immune to, and it trivializes the profound issues." What's wrong with that, you might ask? It's too abstract, too detached. Too often, Obama has seemed unwilling to get down in the muck and fight off the "distractions" that are crippling his campaign. Obviously, this is strategy - his appeal has been the promise of a politics of civility (and as a black man, he wants to send low-information signals that he is neither angry nor threatening). But what if, after ABC had enabled the smarmy American-flag-pin question from an "average citizen," Obama had taken on George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson directly, "Why aren't you guys wearing pins? Why isn't Hillary?" Indeed, this was Clinton's strategy in an earlier debate, upbraiding her questioners from MSNBC - and it may have turned the tide in her favor in Ohio and Texas.

In the last days of the Pennsylvania campaign, Obama made a halfhearted attempt to go negative. He ran ads distorting Clinton's health-care plan, claiming that it would force everyone to get health insurance (true), even if they couldn't afford it (false). He devoted more and more of his stump speech to slagging Clinton. "She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying - the buffet is coming at me," he said during a whistle-stop tour of southeastern Pennsylvania. His delivery of the kitchen-sink line was droll, but the rest of the tour was surprisingly soporific. He seemed fed up with campaigning - as any reasonably sane human being would be at this point - and embittered by the turn the race had taken.

I'm not sure that Bill and Hillary Clinton are reasonably sane human beings, at least not when they are running for office: they become robo-pols, tireless and seemingly indestructible. Senator Clinton was on fire in the days before the Pennsylvania primary, as energized as I've ever seen her. She barely mentioned Obama at all but fiercely plowed her latest field - the populist granddaughter of a Pennsylvania factory worker, the daughter of a Penn State football player. As she said in her victory speech, "You know, tonight, all across Pennsylvania and America, teachers are grading papers, and doctors and nurses are caring for the sick, and you deserve a leader who listens to you. Waitresses are pouring coffee, and police officers are standing guard, and small businesses are working to meet that payroll. And you deserve a champion who stands with you."

There was a warmth and a feistiness to Clinton in Pennsylvania - the very qualities that Obama was lacking. She had embraced the shameless rituals of politics, including some classic low-information signals, downing shots of Crown Royal and promising lower gas prices, attacking her opponent over trivia and threatening to "obliterate" Iran. It was enough to earn the ire of the New York Times editorial page, which harrumphed, "By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues ... she undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be President."

Well, tsk-tsk and ahem! But part of the problem with editorial writers - and, truth to tell, columnists like me - is a narrow definition of the qualifications necessary to be President. It helps to be a warrior, for one thing. It helps to be able to take a punch and deliver one - even, sometimes, a sucker punch. A certain familiarity with life as it is lived by normal Americans is useful; a distance from the �lite precincts of academia, where unrepentant terrorists can sip wine in good company, is essential. Hillary Clinton has learned these lessons the hard way; Barack Obama thinks they are "the wrong lessons." The nomination is, obviously, his to lose. But the presidency will not be won if he doesn't learn that the only way to reach the high-minded conversation he wants, and the country badly needs, is to figure out how to maneuver his way through the gutter.

Another reason why Spain are such unreliable ally !!!

2008-04-18T10:29:00.001-07:00

""war is a matter of mindset after all, your mindset will determine whether you will pick up the fight or you just flee the struggle....""

Spain's defense minister Carme Chacon reviews troops in Madrid, Monday April 14, 2008. Chacon, Spain's first woman defense minister, was among 17 ministers who took an oath before the king Monday as part of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's new government.

The surprise appointment of Carme Chacon, age 37 and with no military experience, is the boldest statement yet from a Socialist government that has made gender equality one of its top priorities.

Chacon, who was housing minister in the last government, wore heels, a black pant suit and white maternity blouse as she reviewed troops Monday at a ceremony in which she officially took over her post. Her husband is Miguel Barroso, who in the past has worked in Zapatero's press office.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who won re-election in March, unveiled a Cabinet Monday that not only gives Spain its first female defense minister but also features nine women to eight men. That compares to a 50-50 split in his first term, when there were 16 ministers.

Photos of Chacon — who is seven months pregnant — reviewing the soldiers ran on the front page of seven national newspapers on Tuesday, and footage of the appearance dominated Spanish television. Her photo was also on the front page of the International Herald Tribune.

Chacon is now one of the most visible members of a government that has enacted sweeping social legislation designed to rid traditionally male-dominated Spain of gender discrimination.
It legalized gay marriage, streamlined divorce procedures, forced political parties to field more female candidates and passed a law designed to promote women in the workplace and pressure companies to put more of them in their boardrooms.
This time Zapatero even created a new department, the Equality Ministry, to press these goals. The portfolio went to a 31-year-old woman, Bibiana Aido.
Women's advocacy groups are delighted with the prime minister's choice of Chacon to oversee a military force that was not even open to women a generation ago. Now 15 percent of its 130,000 troops are women.

The conservative newspaper El Mundo said it has no problem with seeing a female defense minister, but a pregnant one raises all kinds of concerns, such as whether she will take all of the 16 weeks of leave she is entitled to when the baby is born in June.??!!??

The combination of a crisis situation among Spanish peacekeepers in Afghanistan or Lebanon and a defense minister on maternity leave would leave Spain in an "absurd" situation, it said an editorial. Plus, Chacon has no knowledge of military affairs.
"All signs are that Zapatero is using the armed forces as a guinea pig for a provocative experiment," it said. "Time will tell if this is major progress or nonsense."

Those spaniard leftwingshets just have lost all kind of sense !!!

Financial OverHaul

2008-03-31T11:42:00.000-07:00

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation's biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury's ornate Cash Room, declaring, "A strong financial system is vitally important — not for Wall Street, not for bankers, but for working Americans."

The administration said that it planned to work with Congress to have constructive conversations, but officials would not predict when any aspects of the proposal could be enacted into law.

Asked if Bush's goal was to get the overhaul approved before he leaves office, presidential press secretary Dana Perino told reporters aboard Air Force One, "We'll have to see. It is a big attempt."

The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.

It would give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system while merging day-to-day bank supervision into one agency, down from five at present.

It also would create one super agency in charge of business conduct and consumer protection, performing many of the functions of the current Securities and Exchange Commission.
It would propose eliminating the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, merging their functions into other agencies.

It would ask Congress to establish a federal Mortgage Origination Commission to set recommended minimum licensing standards for mortgage brokers, many of whom now operate outside of federal regulation, and it would also take a first step toward federal regulation of the insurance industry by asking Congress to establish an Office of Insurance Oversight inside the Treasury Department.

Paulson acknowledged in his remarks that most of the changes will not occur until after a lengthy debate in Congress, leaving it to the next administration to deal with the biggest changes proposed by the report. He also said the Bush administration's focus would remain on getting through the current severe credit crisis, which has roiled financial markets since last August.
Paulson rejected Democratic charges that it was lax regulation of mortgage brokers and the financial industry that had led to the current problems.

The proposed overhaul would be the most extensive since the current regulatory system was created in response to the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression.
It comes at a time when the financial system faces its most severe credit crisis in two decades, one that has resulted in billions of dollars of losses for big banks and investment houses and the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, the country's fifth-largest investment bank.
The rising tide of bad debt has made it harder for consumers and businesses to get credit, further weighing on an economy struggling with a prolonged housing slump and soaring energy prices. Many economists believe the country is already in a recession.

Lake Jackson teen awarded Silver Star for gallantry in Afghanistan

2008-03-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

Heroes are made, not born

In this photo released bt the U.S Army, Spc. Monica Brown, right, shakes Vice President Dick Cheney’s hand after receiving the Silver Star medal at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, March 20, for her actions on April 25, 2007, during a combat patrol. Brown is the second female since World War II to earn the Silver Star award for her gallant actions while in combat. Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in front-line combat roles _ in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no real front lines, has seen women soldiers take part in close-quarters combat more than previous conflicts.

Dodging insurgent gunfire, a 19-year-old Lake Jackson (south of Houston-Texas) soldier used her body to shield five injured comrades after a roadside bomb struck her convoy in Afghanistan last spring. That act of bravery has earned her the Silver Star.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown is only the second woman since World War II to receive the medal, one of the nation's highest military awards given for gallantry in combat.

Monica Brown, a medic, 782nd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, was part of a four-vehicle convoy patrolling near Jani Kheil in the eastern province of Paktia when a bomb struck one of the Humvees on April 25, military officials said.
After the explosion, she braved insurgent gunfire and mortars to reach five wounded soldiers. She shielded them as she administered aid and helped drag them to safety, the military said.

The First Women Decorated Silver Star been Leigh Ann Hester, for her direct combat role in Iraq 2005, both Leigh & Monica been born post 1980

BBC Launch an arabic TV service

2008-03-11T03:15:00.000-07:00

SSSSSSHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEETTTTTTT!!!!!!

For 2 years i kept saying it is a damn stupid idea

2008-03-08T00:46:00.000-08:00

Converting land for biofuel worsens global warming
Fri Feb 8

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Clearing raw land to produce biofuels actually contributes to global warming by emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, researchers have warned.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new croplands carved into rainforests, savannas, wetlands or grasslands would easily surpass the overall amount of CO2 emissions reduced through the use of biofuels, according to a report in the February 8 edition of Science.
"If you're trying to mitigate global warming, it simply does not make sense to convert land for biofuels production," said Joe Fargione, a founder of private environment protection agency the Nature Conservancy and co-author of the study.
"All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly," he said.
"Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture."
Converting land to grow corn, sugar cane or soy beans -- crops used in the production of biofuels -- creates a "biofuel carbon debt" by releasing 17 to 420 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas reductions which the biofuels provide by displacing fossil fuels.
Carbon is stored in dead trees and plants as well as in the soil, and naturally seeps into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. Converting native habitats to cropland increases the release of CO2 into the air, the report said.
It would take years, and in some cases centuries, before biofuels derived from crops on converted land would lead to a net reduction of greenhouse gases, according to the report.
The researchers calculated that in Indonesia, where wetlands are being converted to grow palm oil to produce biofuels, it will take 423 years before biofuel CO2 emission savings would repay the carbon debt caused by the land conversion.
"We don't have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management," said report co-author Stephen Polasky, an applied economics professor at University of Minnesota.
"This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions."
An incentive for carbon sequestration or a penalty for carbon emissions is needed in order to slow CO2 emissions and environmental destruction, Polasky said.
The researchers noted that strong growth in the demand for corn-based ethanol in the United States has led to the increasing destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
To address the ethanol demand, US farmers have stopped rotating corn crops with soy, leaving their Brazilian counterparts to produce more soybeans to meet rising global demand, resulting in further Amazon deforestation, they said.
The report stresses that certain biofuels do not contribute to global warming because they leave the natural ecosystem intact, and that obtaining biofuels from biomass waste or forestry products such as wood chips causes less harm to the environment and is the aim of several scientists.

Oncology: Avastin Impact

2008-02-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

U.S. regulators approved Genentech Inc's cancer drug, Avastin, for the treatment of breast cancer, the company said on Friday, adding a potentially significant new revenue source for the medicine.
Genentech shares jumped nearly 9 percent in extended trading as most industry watchers had expected the Food and Drug Administration either to delay a decision or reject the medicine for this use.
Avastin, already approved to treat colon and lung cancer, is considered Genentech's most important drug by Wall Street analysts. It had U.S. sales of $2.3 billion in 2007, and one analyst estimated its use for breast cancer treatment could add nearly $500 million a year.
The FDA decision comes after the U.S. biotechnology company said last week that a study of Avastin in combination with chemotherapy significantly prolonged progression-free survival in breast cancer patients.
An FDA advisory panel in December had narrowly voted to recommend rejecting Avastin for breast cancer, saying data from an earlier study were insufficient to establish that the benefits of the drug outweighed toxicity risks in this patient population.
Analysts had widely expected the FDA to delay its decision while it reviewed the new data submitted from a study sponsored by Roche Holding AG, which holds a majority stake in Genentech and sells Avastin outside the United States.
When the new positive data was announced last week, Kantor said he estimated Avastin sales would increase by $92 million in 2008, based on an assumption it would not be approved until May. Kantor said he would likely raise his 2008 sales estimate again now that it has been approved earlier than he expected.
The drug was approved in combination with paclitaxel chemotherapy for the treatment of patients who have not received chemotherapy for their advanced breast cancer.
The Roche study tested Avastin in combination with a different chemotherapy agent.
"With Avastin plus paclitaxel, we can increase the time a woman's cancer is kept under control, and offer a biologic option to women who previously were limited to chemotherapies alone," Dr. Kathy Miller, who led one of the pivotal Avastin breast cancer studies, said in a statement.
Kantor said he expected the approval news to lift the entire biotech sector.
Investors had become wary that a more conservative FDA was going to start demanding overall survival data before approving any cancer treatments. That is considered to be a much higher bar than progression-free survival data -- or time patients live without their disease advancing.

A decision on federal approval for Genentech's Avastin cancer drug could have ramifications for all companies developing cancer medicines.
Genentech made its case for Food and Drug Administration approval of Avastin using a widely debated measure of drug effectiveness that focuses on tumor growth, not patient survival.
Industry executives been closely watching the decision to see whether the measure will pass muster with federal regulators.
In December, a panel of outside FDA advisers voted 5 to 4 against Genentech's application, arguing the drug's benefits did not outweigh dangerous and toxic side effects. FDA is not required to follow the panel's advice, although it often does.
At issue is how the agency judges the effectiveness of cancer treatments. Traditionally, FDA only approved cancer drugs that extended the lifespan of patients. However, in recent years companies have studied alternate measures of a drug's effectiveness. One of the most controversial measures is so-called progression-free survival, or how long the drug halts the spread of cancer.

Oncology: USA Death Rates Analysis

2008-02-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

The U.S. death rate from cancer has continued a steady decline that began in the early 1990s but it will still kill a projected 565,650 Americans this year, the American Cancer Society said on Wednesday.
The death rate from lung, colorectal, prostate, breast and other cancer types fell in 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, but not as much as in 2003 and 2004, the group said. The actual number of cancer deaths rose.

Cancer Facts & Figures

AIDs: Make no foolish mistakes about that....

2008-02-23T00:51:00.000-08:00

1- Herpes drug does not prevent HIV infection

People who took a drug to reduce outbreaks of genital herpes were not any less likely to become infected with the AIDS virus, an international team of researchers reported on Monday.
The findings raised questions about whether the drug, called acyclovir, worked well enough to stop blistering or whether herpes raises the risk of infection in ways not fully understood.

2- HIV Therapy does not eliminate Transmission Threat

Anti-retroviral drug treatments can dramatically reduce the level of HIV virus in the blood but transmission risks remain, United Nations health agencies said on Friday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS, responding to a study published by Switzerland's Federal AIDS Commission, said "correct and consistent use of condoms" was the best way to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus between sexual partners.
People taking anti-retrovirals can have undetectable amounts of HIV virus in their blood "at certain stages of their treatment," the Geneva-based agencies said in a statement.
"However, it has not been proven to completely eliminate the risk of transmitting the virus," UNAIDS and WHO said.
"More research is needed to determine the degree to which the viral load in blood predicts the risk of HIV transmission and to determine the association between the viral load in blood and viral load in semen and vaginal secretions."
They also stressed that other sexually transmitted diseases may contribute to transmission rates, further underscoring the need for "a comprehensive HIV prevention package" that includes mutual fidelity and a reduced number of sexual partners.

3- HIV drugs makes Breast Feeding Safer

Babies of HIV-infected women who were given the drug nevirapine while they breast-fed were half as likely to become infected, the researchers told a meeting in Boston of AIDS experts.
Nevirapine is already widely used to protect babies at birth. A single dose given to the mother as she goes into labor and to the baby at birth cuts transmission by 47 percent.
But babies continue to become infected after birth, via their mothers' breast milk, which can carry the virus. In many developing countries breast-feeding is the only option.
Dr. Brooks Jackson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and colleagues in Ethiopia, India and Uganda wanted to see if they could safely continue giving the drug to babies for as long as six weeks.
They gave 2,000 new babies either nevirapine or a vitamin solution between 2001 and 2007.
"At 6 months of age, the risk of postnatal HIV infection or death in infants who received the six-week regimen was almost one-third less than the risk for infants given only a single dose," Johns Hopkins said in a statement.
The World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 infants are infected with the AIDS through breast-feeding each year. The fatal and incurable virus infects 33 million people globally.
Nevirapine is sold under the brand name Viramune by privately held Boehringer Ingelheim.

4- Stimulating Thymus Reactivates T-Cell Production

HIV infection destroys T-cells, which leads to the collapse of the immune system and severe infection. The thymus gland produces T-cells early in life but gradually loses function and becomes mostly inactive in adulthood. That means it's difficult for HIV-infected adults to produce new T-cells to rebuild their depleted immune systems.
It has long been believed that it wasn't possible to reactivate T-cell production in the thymus. The new study, by researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is the first to show that therapy can help boost thymus function in adults.
The two-year study of 22 HIV-infected adults found that treatment with growth hormone (GH) increased thymus mass and more than doubled the number of newly made T-cells. The results are published in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
"These results represent new proof-of-principle findings that thymic involution can be reversed in humans," study author Dr. Laura Napolitano, an assistant investigator at Gladstone and an assistant professor of medicine at UCSF, said in a prepared statement.
"Improved T-cell production may be helpful for some medical conditions such as HIV disease or bone marrow transplantation. These findings contribute new information to our understanding of T-cell production and are also an important step to determine whether immune therapies might someday benefit patients who need more T-cells," Napolitano said.
However, much more research is needed to determine whether stimulating production of new T-cells actually provides a health benefit for HIV patients or anyone else, the researchers said.

Bush: Keep abstinence in AIDS program

2008-02-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

President Bush on Sunday said Congress should renew his global AIDS program and preserve a requirement that steers money into abstinence efforts.
"We don't want people guessing on the continent of Africa whether the generosity of the American people will continue," Bush said in Tanzania, the second stop of his African trip.
Congress strongly backs the program, which is credited with getting medicine and preventive treatment to millions of people — most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet its renewal has gotten hung up over ideology and political debate about disease prevention.
Some Democrats want to eliminate a provision in the bill that requires one-third of all prevention spending go to abstinence-until-marriage programs. Critics say that while they don't oppose abstinence programs, the inflexible requirement hampers the effort.
Bush said the time for debate is over, and that those seeking changes on both ends of the political spectrum should "stop the squabbling."
The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEFPAR, expires this year.
"My attitude toward Congress is, see what works," Bush said. "PEPFAR is working. It is a balanced program. It is an ABC program — abstinence, be faithful and condoms. It is a program that's been proven effective."
Tanzania is one of the countries targeted by Bush's emergency AIDS relief effort; more than two-thirds of all people infected with HIV across live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Standing with Bush, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete thanked U.S. lawmakers for the program, but also prodded them to keep it moving. "If this program is discontinued or disrupted, there will be so many people who will lose hope," he said.
Bush is pushing to renew the program at $30 billion over five years, twice his original commitment. Congress has put more than $18 billion into it so far. It is the largest effort to ever target an infectious disease.

When President Bush announced the signature $15 billion President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), there were murmurs of disbelief amid the applause. But five years later, PEPFAR is still the largest and most comprehensive program for HIV patients in history, and may have saved millions of lives. By setting targets of putting 2 million HIV patients on medical treatment, preventing 7 million others from contracting HIV through education programs on abstinence, and providing funding for an estimated 10 million children whose parents have died of AIDS, PEPFAR has made a huge impact in Africa, the continent most affected by the disease.

Oncology: Finding some missing links

2008-02-23T00:04:00.000-08:00

Skin cancer, colon cancer syndrome may be linked

Reuters
A syndrome that increases the risk of some skin cancers may be a subset of a syndrome that increases the risk of colon cancer, report researchers from The Ohio State University, Columbus.
Some people with Lynch syndrome -- an inherited condition that predisposes a person to colon cancer -- are also at greater risk for developing certain skin cancers, a condition known as Muir-Torre syndrome, Dr. Albert de la Chapelle and colleagues explain in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute for February 20.
They found that the skin lesions in patients with Muir-Torre syndrome are characterized by the same molecular defects as tumors in patients with Lynch syndrome.
Because skin tumors often develop before Lynch syndrome is diagnosed in these patients, "all individuals who are diagnosed with a Muir-Torre syndrome-related skin lesions should be screened for Lynch syndrome," the researchers advise.
To determine the frequency of Muir-Torre syndrome in patients with Lynch syndrome, they studied 152 Lynch syndrome patients from 50 different families.
Fourteen families (28 percent) with Lynch syndrome had one family member who had a history of a Muir-Torre syndrome-related tumor (9.2 percent of 152 individuals with Lynch syndrome), leading the study team to suggest that "Muir-Torre syndrome be defined as a variant of Lynch syndrome."
Dr. de la Chapelle's group also observed that 57 percent of individuals affected by both conditions presented with skin disease first.
They therefore recommend that patients with Muir-Torre syndrome undergo further genetic testing to determine if they have Lynch syndrome, in which case intensive cancer surveillance would be warranted. Conversely, they suggest that an annual skin examination is a "reasonable strategy" for patients with Lynch syndrome.
SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, February 20, 2008.

Cancer drug slows multiple sclerosis

Two infusions of the cancer drug Rituxan given 2 weeks apart slowed the progression of multiple sclerosis for nearly 1 year, researchers reported on Wednesday.
And Rituxan appears to be twice as effective as first-line treatments for MS, which reduce the number of relapses by about one third, the researchers said.
[[Rituxan® (Rituximab) is a unique therapy that selectively targets CD20-positive B-cells, shown to play an important role innon-Hodgkin's lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis.]]
"It's quite remarkable that the effect was sustained for 48 weeks with just a single course of therapy," said Dr. Stephen Hauser of the University of California at San Francisco, who worked on the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Multiple sclerosis, which affects as many as 350,000 people in the United States and 2 million worldwide, is apparently caused when the immune system attacks and breaks down the insulation surrounding cells that make up the brain and spinal cord.
MS symptoms may include blurred vision, loss of balance, poor coordination, extreme fatigue, paralysis and blindness. There is no cure.
Although no head-to-head comparison has been done, Hauser said Rituxan appears to work better than existing therapies.
His team tested patients with the relapsing-remitting form of the disease, in which symptoms wax and wane over many years, making it difficult to gauge whether a treatment is really working. They make up about half the patients with MS.
To assess the progress of the Rituxan treatments, they used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to see damage to the nervous system.
"What was so surprising here is that the effect on MS inflammatory measures was so fast," Hauser said. The number of lesions they could see dropped immediately after the two treatments.
Within 12 weeks, there were almost no old or new lesions, while the number of lesions on volunteers who received placebo shots tended to stay the same or increase in number.
But the drug was not as good at preventing relapses.
After 48 weeks, 20 percent of the 69 Rituxan recipients had suffered a relapse. That was still much better than the 35 patients who got placebo infusions and had a relapse rate of 40 percent.
CONCERN VOICED
Rituxan, known generically as rituximab, is made by the biotechnology companies Genentech Inc. and Biogen Idec Inc., which sponsored the study.
It is approved for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis and sold by Roche AG as MabThera outside the United States, Japan and Canada.
Hauser expressed concern that, based on the new results, doctors may begin using the drug on their MS patients even though it has not been approved for that use.
"This trial was not designed to assess long-term safety or to detect uncommon adverse events," the researchers wrote.
"It would be a tragedy if the drug were to get dinged because of a side effect in a patient that shouldn't have received the drug," he said.
The research has also given doctors a better idea of what causes MS, according to Hauser. Rituxan is a monoclonal antibody, a genetically engineered immune system protein, that attacks immune cells called B cells.
"This study has taught us that B cells are absolutely essential to the genesis of inflammatory attacks in multiple sclerosis," Hauser said.

A Possible New Diagnosis Technique

Hair from women with breast cancer can be distinguished from hair obtained from women without the disease, researchers in Australia report.
When hair is exposed to X-rays, the radiation is diffracted in a distinctive pattern by the alpha-keratin that forms hair, the researchers explain in the International Journal of Cancer. Dr. Gary L. Corino and Dr. Peter W. French, based at Fermiscan Ltd in Sydney, used the technique to look at samples of hair from 13 patients diagnosed with breast cancer and 20 healthy subjects.
Hair was cut as close to the skin as possible to obtain samples of the most recent hair growth. The investigators "successfully and consistently generated the basic alpha-keratin X-ray diffraction pattern in every hair sample."
Hair from the breast cancer patients produced the same features "with the only difference being the superimposition of a new feature." This was a distinctive low-intensity ring.
This ring sign was fairly accurate in identifying breast cancer. It missed one of the breast cancer patients, and showed up as a false-positive in three of the healthy subject.
The researchers went on to study a length of hair representing 6 months' growth from a breast cancer patient whose hair fell out following chemotherapy. X-ray diffraction at three points along the hair showed clear evidence of the ring at the position furthest from the hair root, a fainter ring at the middle point, and complete absence of the ring close to the root.
"This progressive reduction in the intensity of the ring appears to correlate with the patient's course of treatment and possibly indicates the eradication of the cancer as a result of that treatment," Corino and French suggest.
As for the reason for the ring pattern, they suggest it may represent "incorporation of extraneous lipid material into the fiber as a result of the presence of a tumor." It may also be that the disease affects hair follicles in some way.
Further testing is needed to establish the accuracy of this methodology as a diagnostic test for breast cancer, they conclude.
SOURCE: International Journal of Cancer, February 15, 2008.

Missing Chromosome Improves Response to Brain Tumor Treatment

The lack of a chromosome actually helps people with a rare, aggressive brain tumor respond better to a new treatment, new findings show.
Gliomatosis cerebri is a type of inoperable brain tumor that is difficult to diagnosis and has an extremely variable prognosis. A study of 25 people with the condition showed that those missing chromosomes 1p and 19q did vastly better on the chemotherapy drug temozolomide, living an average of four years longer than those without the genetic abnormality.
The study is published in the Feb. 19 issue of Neurology.
"Temozolomide is now our first choice of treatment for patients with gliomatosis cerebri, especially when missing chromosomes 1p and 19q," Dr. Marc Sanson of INSERM, the French government health agency in Paris, said in a prepared statement.
Those in the study underwent genetic testing and received monthly treatments of temozolomide for up to two years. The drug had only recently been proposed as a new treatment for gliomatosis cerebri, Sanson said.
Eighty-eight percent of those missing the chromosomes responded well to the drug compared with only 25 percent of those with the chromosomes, Sanson said. Those without it also survived an average of 5.5 years compared with only 15 months for the group with the chromosomes intact. Those missing 1p and 19q also had more months without the tumor progressing, he added.
"Before now, we weren't sure which factors influenced how well a person with this type of brain tumor would respond to the treatment," Sanson said.
More information
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about brain tumors.

Combo Treatment Best for Melanoma, Advanced Ovarian Cancer

Combining periodic infusions of antibodies with a widely used cancer vaccine appears to be more effective and less harsh with melanoma and advanced ovarian cancer patients than using either treatment on its own, a new study shows.
Besides demonstrating the potential usefulness of a vaccine-and-antibody approach, the study -- published online in this week's issue of the the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- suggests a way of refining treatments even further, based on the biological events that antibody treatment sets in motion.
"We now have a better understanding of how the treatment works -- by increasing the ratio of tumor-killing to immune system-suppressing cells," study author Dr. Stephen Hodi, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said in a prepared statement. "This suggests techniques for further focusing the immune system to attack the cancer with less 'fallout' for normal tissue."
Previous studies and clinical experience have shown that certain monoclonal antibodies increase the immune system's tumor-destroying activities in some patients but can also give patients serious inflammatory problems, such as severe diarrhea and rashes.
Hodi's research team focused on a molecular receptor on the surface of the immune system's CD4+ T-cells, which guide an attack on infected or cancerous cells. The receptor, known as CTLA-4 (for cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen), acts as a kind of shut-off valve: When the receptor is stimulated, it causes the T-cells to become inactive, quieting the immune response. Blocking CTLA-4 with a monoclonal antibody offers a way to keep the immune response at full force.
The team looked at a cancer vaccine made from patients' own tumor cells. The tumor cells are irradiated so they stop growing, and a gene in inserted so they produce a protein called GVAX. When the cells are then re-infused into patients, GVAX acts like a siren to the immune system, prompting a more energetic attack on cancer cells throughout the body.
Unfortunately, these results are rarely lasting. Most patients treated with the vaccine eventually die as their disease resumes its progress.
Since blocking CTLA-4 could bolster the immune response spurred by the vaccine, researchers studied whether combining GVAX vaccines with monoclonal antibody therapy could lengthen remissions and quell the inflammatory problems associated with antibody therapy alone.
"Using a vaccine to provoke a stronger immune response to cancer may enable us to use lower levels of CTLA-4 blockers, which could reduce the severity of their side effects," Hodi explained.
The new study tested the combination on 11 melanoma patients. They were infused with a CTLA-4-blocking antibody one to four months after receiving GVAX, and every two to three months thereafter, as needed.
In contrast to previous, more intensive antibody doses, none of the patients had severe side effects, although they all developed mild, low-level inflammatory conditions (usually a rash that went away in a few days). Moreover, in eight participants, tumors throughout the body either receded or became stable. The three other patients experienced less dramatic improvements that became apparent after several months of therapy.
Similarly encouraging results were obtained in nine patients with advanced ovarian cancer, although two of them did develop severe inflammatory problems. Although large die-offs of tumor tissue were less common than in the melanoma group, some of the ovarian cancer patients did experience such results.
More information
The National Cancer Institute has more about cancer vaccines.

They can't be serious !!!

2008-02-22T23:56:00.000-08:00

A drug used to treat impotence could help Israeli fighter pilots operate at high altitude, the Israeli military's official magazine reported in its latest issue.
It said a retired general plans to present to the air force the results of a study he conducted on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania where he found that tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis tablets, improved breathing in a thin atmosphere.
"The study's findings justify the continuation of tests with drugs of this type in low oxygen environments," an unnamed air force officer told Bamahaneh, the military's weekly magazine.
An army spokeswoman said that there were no plans to use any such drug and a statement said the phenomenon of chronic oxygen starvation experienced by mountaineers and the immediate oxygen starvation which pilots suffer at high altitude are different.
"(Because of the different circumstances) there is no significance for medical treatment of any drug for pilots in the Israel Air Force ... and it has no intention of using any form of drug," the statement read.

Algerian Mig-29: Technical or Political Crisis?

2008-02-22T03:08:00.000-08:00

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer

Tue Feb 19

Algeria has demanded that Moscow take back several MiG fighter jets supplied under a major arms deal because of quality concerns, dealing a painful blow to Russian pride, news reports said Tuesday.
The effort to return the planes, which is expected to top the agenda of visiting Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's talks Tuesday in the Kremlin, could tarnish Russia's reputation as a reliable supplier and damage its hopes to expand its niche in the world's arms market.
"The return of the planes would be unprecedented for Russia," said Alexander Khramchikhin, a senior researcher at the Moscow-based Institute for Political and Military Analysis.

Algeria said it wanted to return the first 15 MiG-29 fighter jets supplied last year and refused to take the remaining aircraft under a $1.3 billion contract, Russian news reports said. The 2006 deal envisaged the delivery of 34 MiG-29s in 2007-2008.

Algerian officials said the planes had some old and substandard parts. After months of talks, Russian and Algerian officials reached a deal last week on details of their return, the business daily Kommersant said. It said penalties and other aspects of the issue had yet to be worked out.

Officials at the Algerian Defense Ministry and the government headquarters would not comment on the reports, which cited sources in Russian weapons industries. A spokesman for Russia's state arms trading monopoly, Rosoboronexport, also refused to comment Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bouteflika did not publicly mention the MiG deal as they sat down for talks, but Putin said they had "many issues to discuss, including military-technical cooperation."

The MiG contract was part of a package of arms deals signed during Putin's trip to Algeria in March 2006, worth an estimated $8 billion. In return, Russia has agreed to write off Algeria's $4.7 billion Soviet-era debt to Moscow — much of it owed for weapons deliveries.

Some Russian experts said the collapse of the Algerian contract reflected the steady decline of the nation's weapons industries, which fell on hard times after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Top weapons manufacturers such as MiG have survived largely thanks to export orders.
"The military-industrial complex has degraded because of the personnel exodus and the loss of key technologies," Khramchikhin said. "Control over quality of manufacturing is virtually nonexistent. The number of complaints has grown sharply."

While Russian arms sales have grown steadily, reaching a post-Soviet record of $7.5 billion last year, some deals have caused controversy.

India, a top customer for Russian weapons, has been involved in a broadly publicized dispute over a contract for Russia to refurbish a Soviet-built aircraft carrier. A Russian shipyard has fallen behind schedule on it and demanded a higher price; the Indians protested loudly and the bickering continues.
Russia has been courting India to win a multibillion-dollar contract to supply it with 126 new fighter planes, offering the MiG-35, an advanced version of the MiG-29. Problems with the Algerian deal, on top of the aircraft carrier dispute, could hurt MiG's chances in tough competition from U.S., French and Swedish companies.

Some commentators said that pressure from France, which wants to sell its Rafale jets to Algeria, could also be a factor behind Algeria's reported rejection of the MiGs.

Andrei Maslov, head of a Russian think-tank specializing in African studies, Rosafroexpertiza, said that Algeria could be tempted to purchase French jets as a complement to booming energy sales to France. "The money spent on Rafales would be just a fraction of what it will earn by selling gas to France," said Maslov.

_____________________________________________

Alkhabar, Algeria Independent Newspaper

Algeria and Russia have sealed a military agreement stipulating to send back 15 fighting aircrafts type MIG29 to Russian companies for maintenance, while Moscow proposed to exchange them with more updated aircrafts type MIG29 M II, or MIG 35.A wide debate has been raised yesterday among milieus following the visit President Bouteflika is paying to Moscow, on MIG aircrafts Algerian Defence Ministry decided to turn back to weapons firm in Russia.

In this context, some Russian media sources said the aircrafts have technical faults, while other sources like Komersant daily online denied that fact saying in turn that Algerian military experts “don’t seem having any doubt on the Russian weapon technologies, they have only requested to adapt the 15 MIG 29 aircrafts as to fit Algerian characteristics.”

The same source reported sources familiar with current affairs in Algeria saying the agreement to turn back the aircrafts was sealed before the state visit of President Bouteflika to Russia that begun yesterday and to conclude today, adding the two parties have agreed to turn back the aircrafts by next March.

Furthermore, the Russian Press Agency RIA Novosti said yesterday the agreement falls within a conflict in the top hierarchy of power in Algeria, between a party tending to get weapons from France and another party preferring Russian arms.However, Komersant expected that MIG aircrafts issue is included in the agenda of two Presidents who have already met yesterday in bilateral talks, while expected to meet today with the participation of ministers and military experts from both countries.

_________________________________________________

Moscow Times

Jetmaker MiG denied on Monday that Algeria was set to send back a recently delivered consignment of 15 fighter jets because of technical misgivings over the aircraft.

The planes are part of a $8 billion arms deal signed by Russia and Algeria in March 2006 that saw approximately $4.7 billion of the North African state's Soviet-era debt wiped out.
"The deal has not been broken," a MiG spokeswoman said. "We do not comment on any ongoing discussions."

Citing a source in the United Aircraft Corporation, Kommersant reported Monday that the Algerian Air Force last week agreed to return the planes.

The deal was reportedly inked with state arms-exporter Rosoboronexport, the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation and MiG.
If confirmed, the return of the jets would be the first time that the country's military hardware has been returned over quality concerns. The report came as Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika touched down in Moscow on Monday for a two-day official visit. He was set to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

The Kremlin press office and the Algerian Foreign Ministry could not say what the discussions would cover, but an industry source told Interfax that Bouteflika would discuss the weapons deals during his visit.

The 15 MiG-29 jets were the first of 36 aircraft delivered to Algeria as part of a consignment worth about $1.5 billion.

Algeria stopped taking delivery of the MiGs last year, after concerns were first raised over a consignment that arrived in late 2006, Kommersant Vlast reported last week.
In March, Bouteflika sent a letter to Putin demanding that Russia resolve the problems with the MiGs, Vlast reported.

Although talks have been going for several months, no deal to return the jets had been signed, Interfax said Monday, citing another industry source.

A spokesman for UAC on Monday refused to confirm that any agreement had been struck, saying the matter was not under its control. MiG has not yet been absorbed into the state umbrella company, he said.

A spokesman for the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation refused to comment ahead of any talks between the presidents. Rosoboronexport also refused to comment.
The MiG-29s could be switched for more modern MiG-35 fighters or for Sukhoi jets,

Kommersant cited the UAC source as saying. As part of the March 2006 deal, Algeria agreed to buy 28 Su-30 fighters, Kommersant reported.

A spokesman for Sukhoi refused to say whether the number could rise.
Analysts cast doubt, however, on the Algerian claims of technical problems, saying the moves could be the result of a struggle within the Algerian government or aggressive moves by foreign competitors, including France and China.

Algeria may have found a better deal elsewhere or might be looking to get more modern Russian aircraft, said Andrew Brooke, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
While Russia's arms industry cannot offer discounts, China is willing to undercut its rivals to break into the valuable North African market, Brooke said.

Russia - Handing over the Command

2008-02-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press Writer

Sat Feb 16

MOSCOW - As Russia prepares for March 2 presidential elections, it enters an era of political uncertainty it hasn't seen since President Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin eight years ago.

Putin's longtime protege, Dmitry Medvedev, is expected to emerge as the victor, thanks to the support of the Kremlin's political and media muscle. But what policies a President Medvedev might pursue — or even whether he will be more than a figurehead — are a mystery.

Medvedev has said he will ask his friend and mentor, Putin, to become his prime minister, and emphasizes that he will pursue Putin's policies. If Putin accepts the premiership, Medvedev is expected to serve as Putin's understudy through at least his first months in office — an unprecedented situation.

He will face huge challenges at home and abroad. Within eight months he will be facing a new U.S. president-elect, while inheriting relations with the West that are at their lowest ebb since the Soviet era. Russia's next leader needs to come to an understanding with Europe and the U.N. about future NATO expansion and plans for an anti-missile system near Russia's borders. And he must reassure the world that Russia is a constructive, unthreatening partner while maintaining ties with Iran, North Korea and other regimes considered pariahs in the West.

If Medvedev has any new ideas for dealing with these issues, he hasn't revealed them in his carefully scripted public appearances. He hasn't even formally campaigned or agreed to debate his rivals.

He has, however, given voters a glimpse behind his serious public face, as he did Monday when the rock group "Deep Purple" performed a concert for him at the Kremlin. He spoke nostalgically about being a fan as a teenager, when the band's music was forbidden in the Soviet Union.

"It would be completely surreal to imagine that I would meet this legendary band in the Kremlin, but it happened," Medvedev said with a broad smile.

Experts say Putin could become a kind of presidential adviser and coach to this 42-year-old, who would be the youngest Russian leader since Alexander Kerensky, at 36, was prime minister in the last months before the 1917 communist revolution.

Putin could exercise behind-the-scenes influence as he gradually relinquishes power. Or he might establish himself as a kind of permanent co-president, directing Russia's intelligence, defense and foreign policy efforts, for example, while leaving domestic matters to Medvedev.

Dmitry Trenin, an author and analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, doubts Medvedev will be content with a supporting role forever.

"When you become No. 1 formally, you walk with Peter the Great, the Ivans, the Alexanders of Russia," Trenin said. "You've got to think of yourself as a czar. You cannot simply say I am a figurehead, or holding a place for somebody else."

Nina Khrushcheva, an analyst at the World Policy Institute of New York City's New School, has long been critical of Putin. In an e-mail interview, she wrote that the Russian president's hand-picked successor "has been an obedient flunky of Putin, and all his speeches on law, civil society, combating corruption ... haven't convinced me otherwise."

But Khrushcheva also noted that Russian politics often defies expectations. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sought to dismantle the legacy of his patron, the dictator Josef Stalin; and Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power was supported by the KGB, but his reforms hastened the collapse of the Soviet state.

"So I think the question 'Who are you Mr. Medvedev?' on March 2, 2008, will be even more appropriate than the one asked of Mr. Putin in 2000," Khrushcheva wrote.

The other candidates on the ballot are the pugnacious nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and long-haired leader of Russia's largest Masonic lodge, Andrei Bogdanov.
None is thought to have a serious chance of winning.

The Deep Purple concert aside, Medvedev has done little to dispel his media image as a fixer, policy wonk and levelheaded adviser to Putin.

He has served in the Kremlin in a series of subordinate roles. While he is chairman of the board of the state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, some analysts say his main role there is to execute Putin's orders.

Medvedev has said little about his foreign policy views. While Putin recently said that the U.S. insistence on building a new missile defense system in Poland and the Czech republic had launched a new arms race, Medvedev earlier said publicly he saw no "fundamental problems" in Russia's relations with the West.

Medvedev has spoken with evident conviction about democracy, saying it is "absolutely fundamental" and the only alternative to "a dictatorial or totalitarian regime." But Medvedev has worked for Putin for eight years, as the current Russian president dismantled many of Russia's democratic reforms of the 1990s, concentrated power in the Kremlin and used the power of the state to crush political foes.

Critics say Russia is returning to an authoritarian system. Kremlin officials have said they are building a "managed" or "soverign" democracy, tailored to Russia's tradition of strong central authority.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in January 2007, Medvedev suggested he disagreed with the prevailing Kremlin line when he said Russia was building a democracy that "requires no additional definition."

But in a recent speech, Medvedev hinted that he thinks Russia may need a form of democracy unrecognizable in the West after all. One of the big issues facing Russia, he said, "is how to combine, how to ensure that our national tradition reconciles with a fundamental set of democratic values."

The candidate has also recently contrasted Russian human rights groups that are "fighting against the state," with those that "work with people to protect their rights and to defend their civil liberties." While gently stated, the message seemed to be that groups that criticize the government are illegitimate.

While Medvedev hasn't criticized any of Putin's policies so far, there are marked differences of style between mentor and protege.
Where Putin sometimes uses gangster slang to make a point, Medvedev's remarks sound like academic lectures. Putin makes a point of dressing down Russian officials on television, and is famous for being unapologetically late for appointments. In a recent speech Medvedev asked forgiveness in advance for planning to take up so much of his audience's time.
Medvedev also sometimes blushes in public — something unthinkable for the world's most famous former KGB spy.

In preparation for his new role, Medvedev is struggling to squeeze himself into Putin's mold. Putin is an avid swimmer, so Medvedev has started swimming. Putin loves to ski, so Medvedev tackled the slopes in a resort near the Black Sea city of Sochi one recent weekend.

A bartender at a resort near Sochi once refused to let Putin pay for a cup of tea, and the Russian president famously gave the man his ski goggles. In an awkward bit of political theater, Medvedev handed his goggles to a waiter at a ski resort early this month.
"He's working on himself," Trenin said of Medvedev. "He's trying to crack jokes. He's trying to be relaxed... He is very much walking in the footsteps of Putin, even in a very comical way."

Trenin of the Moscow Center predicted that the world probably won't know who Russia's new president really is, or where he plans to take the country, until several months into his term.
"We'll probably see it when he becomes president in his own right, after a mentoring period or regency period. Then we may see Medvedev's true colors," he said.

NAME: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
AGE: 55. Born Oct. 7, 1952, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Father a machinist, mother a homemaker.
EDUCATION: Law degree and Ph.D. in economics from Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University), 1975.
EXPERIENCE: Recruited as KGB officer, circa 1975, later served in Leningrad Directorate, and in Dresden, East Germany from 1985 to 1990. In 1990 became rector of Leningrad State University, in charge of international affairs. June 1991, became chairman of St. Petersburg's City Council International Relations Committee. (Resigned from KGB August 1991.) Worked as aide to St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak through 1996. Hired by the Kremlin in 1996 as deputy chief of presidential property management department. Named head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB, in July 1998. Appointed prime minister in August 1999. Became acting president on resignation of President Boris Yeltsin Dec. 31, 1999. Elected president of Russia March 26, 2000; re-elected March 2004.
FAMILY: Wife, Lyudmila Alexandrovna Putina; daughter, Marina, born 1985; daughter Yekaterina, born 1986.
___
NAME — Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev.
AGE — 42. born Sept. 14, 1965, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), to university professors.
EDUCATION — Graduated from Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University) in 1987; received a law degree from the same university in 1990.
EXPERIENCE — Taught law at St. Petersburg State University, 1990-1999; aide to St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, 1990-1995; appointed deputy chief of staff for the Russian Cabinet, November 1999; appointed acting President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff, Dec. 31, 1999; headed Putin's 2000 presidential election campaign; appointed Putin's first deputy chief of staff, June 2000; promoted to chief of staff, October 2003; appointed one of two first deputy prime ministers, November 2005, charged with leading efforts to improve key sectors including housing and health care; board chairman of state natural gas monopoly Gazprom, 2002-present.
FAMILY — Married, Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva; son, Ilya, born 1996.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, in his own words:
"It will not happen soon, if it ever happens at all, that Russia becomes a second edition of, say, the United States or Britain in which liberal values have deep historic traditions. For Russians, a strong state is not an anomaly or something to be resisted. Quite the contrary. They see it as the source and guarantor of order and the initiator and driving force of change," Acting President Putin, in essay released Dec. 31, 1999.
___
"The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." State of the nation speech, Moscow, April 25, 2005.
___
Rebuffing U.S. criticism of Russian democracy and treatment of Russia's neighbors: "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone." State of the nation speech, Moscow, May 10, 2006.
___
On President Bush's expressed hope that Russia would follow Iraq on the path to democracy: "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly." Joint news conference with Bush, St. Petersburg, July 17, 2006.
___
"Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force — military force — in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. ... the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?" Speech, Munich, Germany, Feb. 10, 2007.
___
DMITRY MEDVEDEV, in his own words:
On the need for political and business leaders to work together: "If we do not manage to consolidate the elite, Russia may disappear as a unified state. And then everybody will be in trouble, including our immediate and distant neighbors." Interview, Expert Magazine, a Russian business weekly, April 2005.
___
On Russia's January 2006 cutoff of gas to Ukraine, which raised fears for its reliability as a European energy supplier: "Everything done in January was aimed at guaranteeing normal, competitive conditions which ultimately should benefit energy users in Europe." Interview, The Financial Times, April 21, 2006.
___
"But talking about the political regime ... democracy, of course, is absolutely fundamental. The only alternative to democracy is a dictatorial or totalitarian regime." Interview, Expert Magazine, July 25, 2006.
___
"No important global or inter-regional problem in the West or the East can be successfully resolved today without the active participation of our country as an equal player, and even less so if attempts are made to ignore our interests." Expert Magazine, July 25, 2006.
___
"Today we are building new institutions based on the fundamental principles of full democracy. This democracy requires no additional definition. This democracy is effective and is based on the principles of the market economy, supremacy of the law and government that is accountable to the rest of society. We are fully aware that no undemocratic country has ever become truly prosperous, and this for the simple reason that it is better to have freedom than not to have it." Speech to World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 27, 2007
___
On Russia's struggle against corruption: "We need to understand clearly: If we want to become a civilized state, first of all we need to become a lawful one." Speech, Moscow, Jan. 22, 2008.

Some of the international challenges facing Russia's next leader:
• Improving relations between Russia and the West, which are at their lowest ebb since the Soviet era.
• Dealing with the rising economic, military and diplomatic power of China, Russia's neighbor and historic rival.
• Strengthening Russia's control of Central Asian natural gas, and expanding Moscow's role as a major energy supplier to Europe.
• Balancing Russia's diplomatic and economic ties with North Korea, Iran, Syria and other regimes considered pariahs in the West, with joint efforts to combat terrorism and weapons proliferation.
• Reaching understanding with Europe and the U.S. about future NATO expansion, the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and plans to build an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
• Building a close personal relationship with a new U.S. president, as Putin did with President Bush.
• Gaining membership in the World Trade Organization, which Russia has sought for 15 years.

Miseu Sarkuzy, Merci!!

2008-02-18T07:59:00.000-08:00

France is the First to recognize the Independence of Kosovo

France recognized the independence of Kosovo on Monday, ending hours of suspense after Prime Minister Hashim Thaci assured the new republic that Western recognition would come "any minute."
The announcement by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, was a relief for Pristina.
The smooth response Thaci had expected from the European Union and the United States was tripped up earlier, when EU member Spain broke ranks to say 'No'. [Boooo, Booooo]
Then U.S. President George W. Bush appeared to jump the gun ahead of his own State Department.
In a television interview during his tour of Africa, Bush said the people of Kosovo "are now independent." The remark was flashed in Kosovo as meaning U.S. recognition but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "He didn't announce that."
"What he meant by that is that the Kosovars have declared their independence," Perino said, making clear it was the job of the U.S. State Department to officially declare recognition.
Bush was due to make a statement about Kosovo on Tuesday, in line with the original script which calls for the EU to go first in announcing its policy on what the West insists is a "European issue" that Serb ally Russia should not interfere in.
But the first word from Brussels was a disappointment.
"The government of Spain will not recognize the unilateral act proclaimed yesterday by the assembly of Kosovo," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters.
"We will not recognize because we consider ... this does not respect international law," said the minister, whose country is grappling with separatist movements of its own.
Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania have indicated they too are not keen to recognize Kosovo.
Afghanistan officially greeted the new Balkan state, but Vietnam and Azerbaijan said they would not recognize it.
The thumbs-up Kosovo confidently expects from London, Rome, Berlin and up to 100 other governments was still in the pipeline.
There was no shortage of protest by Serbs against the unilateral secession of the southern province, run by the United Nations and NATO for the past 9 years.
Serbs protested against Kosovo's secession for a second day in Belgrade, in their Kosovo stronghold of Mitrovica, and in isolated Serb enclaves in central Kosovo. Several thousand turned out for the rallies, which remained peaceful.
Serbs in the Bosnian Serb capital Banja Luka also demonstrated, shouting "Kill the Albanians!"
The EU appealed for calm after Serb nationalist protesters stoned Western embassies in Belgrade on Sunday night.
(Additional reporting by Ellie Tzortzi, Daria Sito-Sucic, Ivana Sekularac; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Tim Pearce)

Ownership dispute of Saddam's yacht

2008-02-16T01:06:00.000-08:00

The 82-metre (270-feet) Ocean Breeze, built in 1981 by Danish shipyard Helsingor Vaerft for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is seen docked in the harbour at Nice, France, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008. Ocean Breeze, which started life as the Qadissiyat Saddam, is awaiting a buyer in the port of Nice, with an asking price of euro23.5 million (US$34 million)

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer

Fri Feb 15

For sale: A palatial pleasure yacht with swimming pools, opulent salons and, should the winds of war blow, a rocket launcher and mini-submarine.
The sale of the 269-foot Ocean Breeze, built for Saddam Hussein and docked on the French Riviera, could be thwarted, however, if Iraq can prove it belongs to someone in the late dictator's entourage — and now, therefore, to the government in Baghdad.

A court hearing will likely be held in March to determine the rightful owner.
The government in Baghdad suspects the yacht, which French authorities seized on Jan. 31, is still Iraqi. But the posh yacht brokerage firm Nigel Burgess says other owners, whom it will not name, have asked it to sell the vessel. The price has reportedly been set at $35 million.

Viewing is strictly forbidden, but several photos of the interior on the Internet site of Nigel Burgess show an opulent Middle East-style decor in blue and gold hues that match the azure sea at sunset.
A desert fox more than a sailor, Saddam never used the boat he had built in 1981, according to a lawyer representing the Iraqi government, Ardavan Amir-Aslani.

In fact, it barely spent time in Iraqi waters. As war with Iran raged, the vessel was moved to the safety of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Jiddah in 1986.

The vessel was originally called "Qadisiyah Saddam." The name appears to have been an attempt by Saddam to cast his war against Iran in Quranic context, drawing on an epic battle against the Sassanian Persian army that was part of the conquest of the region by the Arab Muslim army around A.D. 630.

Saddam often tried to cast the 8-year-long Iran-Iraq war in religious context, a push to shore up his image as the new Arab and Muslim leader staving off the onslaught of Shiite Persians.

The vessel reportedly remained at Jiddah until last fall, when it showed up in Nice with a new name, "Ocean Breeze," embossed on its streamlined white hulk, Amir-Aslani said.

Its ownership is now as uncertain as Iraq's shifting sands, shrouded in mystery and perhaps intrigue. A cohort of Saddam? A Saudi royal? Or a jet-setter hiding behind a shell company?
"The yacht was ordered and paid for by the Iraqi government at the beginning. That is certain," the lawyer said by telephone. Now, the Iraqis believe the vessel "may belong to Saddam's entourage."
"Iraq is basically trying to recover the money of the Iraqi people that was unlawfully transferred abroad," Amir-Aslani said.

The vessel, however, has a Caribbean connection. A "legal entity" incorporated in the Cayman Islands claims to own the boat, the lawyer said, but it is hiding the "beneficial owner." Whom that may be "is what we need to discover."

This is not the first time Iraq has sought the return from France of Saddam's treasures. Just months ago, it successfully reclaimed a villa in Cannes, Amir-Aslani said. Other cases are pending, but he refused to give details.
When it hears of assets that may belong to Saddam or his entourage, the lawyer said, "Iraq immediately reacts."

The vessel now bobs majestically in the port of Nice, an "extremely luxurious" gem, said Amir-Aslani, who paid a visit.

According to an account in the French daily Le Figaro, corroborated by Amir-Aslani, the Ocean Breeze, made for a 35-member crew, has about 10 rooms, several salons with large-screen TVs, pools, saunas, gold plumbing fixtures, a prayer room and a portable helicopter pad.

Less glamorous but more telling of Saddam's real-world concerns are the bulletproof windows, a missile-launching system — disarmed — and a secret passage leading to a mini-submarine for escape if the vessel comes under attack. It was unclear whether the mini-submarine is still part of the yacht, but the Le Figaro account implied that it is.
There have been other floating pleasure fortresses. A yacht that belonged to the late East German dictator Erich Honecker was built to withstand poison gas attacks.
"We understand the attraction of the history behind this vessel," Alev Karagulle of Nigel Burgess Yachts said of the

Ocean Breeze. But its owners have ordered that "absolutely no information" be given to the media, she said.
Asked whether the owners contest the Iraqi government claim, she said, "I don't really know. They haven't commented on the situation."
"There have been some (yachts) in the last few decades that have attracted interest, but by and large not a lot of yachts garner this much media attention."
Superyachts, as monster luxury yachts are called, are the "ultimate status symbol for billionaires," said Phil Draper, editor of the British quarterly Superyacht Business. There are only about 30 in the world of this size or larger, he said.
Saddam actually had a larger yacht than the one in Nice, the Al-Mansur, named after the caliph who founded Baghdad. But it was bombed into a floating scrap heap by U.S. warplanes in 2003, the year Saddam's regime was toppled. The dictator was hanged in December 2006.

Iraq wants this one back — or the documents proving that someone else owns it.
Some unconfirmed reports claim the yacht was given to the king of Saudi Arabia, renamed Al-Yamamah and then passed on to the Jordanian monarch.

The Iraqi government attorney said the Nice commercial court was expected to convene in March, though a date has not been set.

If another owner, or his legal representative, does not show up, "it will make our job easier ... the court will only hear our arguments," the attorney said.

Karagulle said she felt "sure" the owners' representatives would attend.
The yacht's eventual sale should not be too tough if the market is any indication.

The market for superyachts "has gone absolutely crazy" over the last 15 years, said Draper, the expert, and "really accelerated" in the Middle East.

The Persian Gulf region "is a very aggressive environment for a boat" so costly refitting might be needed. But if the reported price of $35 million is accurate, it could be a bargain. Building the vessel today from scratch could cost upward of $150 million, Draper said.

Photos of yacht interior can be found at Nigel Burgess

Listen Fuckers, Either Treat them or Kill them

2008-02-16T00:29:00.000-08:00

but arresting them for month then nothing, this is what i call Typical Egyptian Police Behaviour

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 15

Egyptian police have stepped up arrests of persons suspected of having HIV, detaining four men this month in a crackdown that violates basic human rights, two international rights groups said Friday.
New York-based Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International warned in a joint statement that the arrests could undermine HIV/AIDS prevention effort as people in Egypt become increasingly afraid to seek information on the subject.
Police denied making any HIV-related arrests but one police official speaking on condition of anonymity said there is a campaign to get persons registered in hospital records as HIV-positive into treatment in "special clinics." The official said he was not authorized to speak to the media. ((This Is The Egyptian Security Way To Counter AIDs))
The latest arrests bring to eight the number of HIV suspects in detention.
Four men were convicted in mid-January of "habitual practice of debauchery," a term used in the Egyptian legal system for consensual homosexual acts, Human Rights Watch said. Those men have been sentenced to one-year prison terms that have been upheld by an appeals court, the group said.
Homosexuality is not explicitly referred to in Egypt's legal code, but a wide range of laws covering obscenity, prostitution and debauchery are applied to homosexuals in this conservative country.
"This not only violates the most basic rights of people living with HIV. It also threatens public health by making it dangerous for anyone to seek information about HIV prevention or treatment," said Rebecca Schleifer of Human Rights Watch.
The police official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that police recently rounded up four men and sent them to "precautionary hospital detention" for treatment. He declined to elaborate.
The two watchdog groups called on Cairo to release all 12 men, both the four convicted and the eight in detention.
The rights groups urged Egypt to establish training for all criminal-justice officials on medical facts and international human rights standards in relation to HIV, and to immediately discontinue all testing of detainees that is not consensual.

No Guns - No Shootin

2008-02-15T23:46:00.000-08:00

Teenage Deadly dreams should be analyzed as a mean of preempting and stopping the acting our of such ideas.

A proposal of a psychological approach given that such "intrusive thoughts" are part of the normal cognition, but psychological tactics are limited by the social context in which juvenile assassins are nurtured.

As long as the right to own semi-automatic arms is legally & socially acceptable, people with the intent to play violent fantasies ((Including Myself)) will have the opportunity to do so.

Disarming the communities of all fire arms [[at least semi-automatics]] will remain the ONLY REAL MEAN of cutting down the incidence of multiple-homosides

Intrusive thoughts are normal & will forever be so, whether it is a terrorist attacker, suicider, armed assault, revenge, armed robbery, drug frenzy, adolisence mania, when such thought become malignant, weapons of mass murder should not be readily available, to young or old in equal, otherwise every one should walk n the street (the brave one style).

I will looooove to see that !!!!

2008-02-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

Anatoly Voropayev, producer of the movie 'The kiss is off the record' is seen at a special screening of the movie in the Khudozhestvenny Cinema in downtown Moscow, Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. The poster in the background reads: The Kiss is Off the Record. Out on DVD for Valentine's Day across Russia is a heartwarming drama about a man and a woman who love each other and their country, and whose life story echoes that of Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila.

Olga Zhulina, director of the movie 'The kiss is off the record' is seen at a special screening of the movie in the Khudozhestvenny Cinema in downtown Moscow, Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. Out on DVD for Valentine's Day across Russia is a heartwarming drama about a man and a woman who love each other and their country, and whose life story echoes that of Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila

By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW - Out on DVD for Valentine's Day across Russia is a heartwarming drama about a man and a woman who love each other and their country — and who bear an uncanny resemblance to Vladimir Putin and his wife, Lyudmila.

Just when it seemed like the Russian president's public image had been burnished to a spotless shine by state television, along comes a film that appears to cast the steely former spy in a softer light — as smitten suitor, loving husband and dedicated dad.

While acknowledging "many similarities" with Putin, producer Anatoly Voropayev coyly claims the lead character in "The Kiss is Off the Record" is based on a "collective image," not the president himself.

"We believe that since today we are not ashamed of our leader, why not make heroes who are like him?" Voropayev told The Associated Press.

The film appears designed to fill a gap in the hagiography of the popular president by providing an inspirational back story for his rise to the Kremlin.

Its nationwide release Thursday on DVD comes 17 days before of the election of his successor, at a time of uncertainty about Putin's future role.

"It's a film about the life of a politician, about love, about people in general and the human relationships every person has," Voropayev told Ekho Moskvy radio last week.
Few people, however, have so much in common with Putin.

Like Putin, the main character courts his wife-to-be in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and moves with her to Cold War East Germany — where Putin was a KGB officer. He then returns home for a stint in St. Petersburg and scales the heights of power in Moscow.

The character, Alexander Alexandrovich Platov, has more hair than Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, but the style is the same. Seen from behind on the promotional poster, the actor playing Platov is a dead ringer for the Russian president.

Another giveaway: Platov, like Putin, is always late.
Few of the people who packed a special screening at a central Moscow movie house Monday night were in doubt about the subject of the film, which will not be released in cinemas.

Natalia Serebrovskaya, who attended the showing, knew Putin from his days in St. Petersburg and said that she recognized the president's speech and gait.

Some opposition activists disrupted the viewing with shouts of "Putin's an executioner!" and unfurled a banner from the balcony that read: "Putin is a criminal." Film critics alternately lambasted it as crude propaganda and sniffed it's so bad it couldn't have been commissioned by the Kremlin — too embarrassing.

Over the past eight years, the Kremlin has spent a lot of effort promoting images of Putin in his public role as a decisive, stalwart and indomitable leader. Television viewers see him almost every night — flying in a jet fighter, speaking in ornate Kremlin halls, chewing out Cabinet ministers.

But little is known of his private life. He seems to talk about his dog more than about his family. His daughters' lives are nearly invisible.

First lady Lyudmila Putin is rarely seen, even more rarely heard. Putin often travels without her, and she appears uncomfortable in front of cameras.

"The Kiss is Off the Record" changes all that. The daughters are prominent, and Platov's wife, Tatyana, is in focus as much if not more than her husband.
As a family man, the hero is a mixture of regular guy and miracle worker.

He sometimes has trouble juggling his family obligations and the demands of his high-pressure job. But he's always there when it counts, helping his wife walk again after a car crash and rescuing the girls from a burning dacha.

There's even a bedroom scene. And Platov appears faithful: When the limping Tatyana sits up one night fearing the worst, he returns with flowers and a cane that he spent hours seeking out.
"My view of the president has changed," said Galina Makarova, a film company employee, after attending the showing. "It shows a new side of our president."

The film's timing has raised eyebrows. Shot in 2002 and 2003, it is being released ahead of the March 2 election, when Russia is expected to ratify Putin's choice of a successor, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

A Tough Veteran !!!

2008-02-13T10:38:00.000-08:00

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Tue Feb 12

MADRID, Spain - Doctors extracted a bullet from an 88-year-old man, recovering a piece of ordnance that eluded medics 70 years ago when he was shot in the Spanish Civil War.

Faustino Olivera proudly held up the rusty, deformed bit of metal — its tip curved and pointy — in video footage that aired Tuesday on the Web site of radio station Cadena Ser.
Olivera spent most of his life oblivious to the bullet that lodged in his left shoulder blade when he was shot with a rifle in 1938 while fighting for the Nationalist forces of Gen. Francisco Franco.
Doctors operated on him at the time but found no bullet.
"I had my suspicions because there was only one hole, the entry wound, but no exit wound," Olivera said, according to the newspaper El Heraldo de Aragon. "I knew I had been wounded."
Two years ago Olivera saw a doctor because of sharp pains in his left side. X-rays detected the bullet, and physicians said it was causing an infection and inflammation.
Doctors left the bullet because it was close to an artery, however. Since then, Olivera had gone to the hospital every few months to have fluid drained.
But last Wednesday, Olivera was rushed to a hospital in the town of Barbastro because he had a huge bulge on his side and doctors delicately extracted the bullet once and for all.

Olivera said he gave the bullet to his nephew as a souvenir.

Gates: Western alliance at risk

2008-02-11T02:20:00.000-08:00

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Sun Feb 10

NATO's survival is at stake in the debate over how the United States and Europe should share the burden of fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.
"We must not — we cannot — become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not," Gates told the Munich Conference on Security Policy, where Afghanistan was a central topic.
"Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance," he added.

Washington has had innumerable disputes with its NATO allies in the 59 years since the security alliance was founded as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union. But Gates portrayed today's debate over the importance of the mission in Afghanistan and how to accomplish as among the most difficult ever.

A central theme of Gates' speech was his assertion that al-Qaida extremists, either in Afghanistan or elsewhere, pose a greater threat to Europe than many Europeans realize.
The Pentagon chief later took questions from his audience, which included dozens of top government officials, mainly from Europe and the U.S., as well as military officers, private security specialists, members of Congress and European parliamentarians.
A member of the Russian parliament, leading off the questioning, accused the U.S. of having created today's al-Qaida threat through American support in the 1980s for the mujahedeen resistance to Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Gates disputed that assertion, but said he did regret that the U.S. abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew in 1989.
"The threat from al-Qaida began with the Soviet invasion of a sovereign state in December 1979, a state that up to that point had not represented a threat to anybody in the world, except to a certain extent its own people because of its weakness and poverty," Gates said.
Also addressing the conference was Sergei Ivanov, the former Russian defense minister who is now a deputy prime minister. He advocated joining forces to fight international terrorism, but suggested the U.S. has motives that are out of step with those of Russia and other countries.
"Some states strive to exploit anti-terrorist activities as a pretext to achieving their own geopolitical and economic goals," Ivanov said, apparently referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In his speech, Gates praised NATO allies for their contributions in Afghanistan, where the Taliban movement ruled in Kabul and provided a haven for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network until U.S. forces invaded after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he said pointedly that more effort is needed and the alliance must find a way to win the fight against a resurgent Taliban.
"In NATO, some allies ought not have the luxury of opting only for stability and civilian operations, forcing other allies to bear a disproportionate share of the fighting and the dying," Gates said.
He named no individual countries; U.S. officials have been pressing Germany to do more.
NATO, through its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is in charge of the military mission in Afghanistan. The top commander is an American, Army Gen. Daniel McNeill, and the U.S. is the biggest provider of troops. Of the 42,000 total ISAF troops, about 14,000 are American. The U.S. has an additional 13,000 separately hunting terrorists and training Afghan forces.
U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock, the NATO supreme commander, said in an interview shortly before Gates' appearance that the troops in Afghanistan would be making more progress if they had the resources they were promised more than a year ago. He said they are short at least three maneuver battalions, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tools to track movements on the ground.
Referring to a "paucity of troops," Craddock said the commanders in Afghanistan are like the coach of an 11-player soccer team that is competing with two players short. He said the effect is that the commanders are unable to attack and defend as aggressively as they would like.
"Give us the resources," Craddock said in the interview with U.S. reporters traveling with Gates.
In his speech, Gates said the Bush administration had learned from mistakes made in Iraq, including the need to more closely integrate the civilian-led stabilization efforts with the military efforts. He said the U.S. and NATO must apply that lesson in Afghanistan to assure success.
Gates is hoping to persuade Europeans that they have a big stake in the outcome in Afghanistan.
"I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security," posed by radical elements in Afghanistan, he said.
The defense secretary, who was a career CIA officer before retiring in 1993, said his remarks on Afghanistan were meant to reach "directly to the people of Europe" in a bid to persuade them on the war's importance.
"The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real — and it is not going to go away," he said, adding that Europe has seen a string of terrorist attacks — in London, Madrid, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Paris and Glasgow, Scotland. He ticked off a list of plots that were disrupted before they could be carried out, including a plan to use ricin and release cyanide in the London Underground and a planned chemical attack in Paris.
"It raises the question: What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success? If they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?
"Aside from the chaos that would instantly be sown in the region, success there would beget success on many other fronts as the cancer metastasized further and more rapidly than it already has," Gate said.

Fantasie Finale !!!

2008-02-11T02:09:00.000-08:00

South Korea's No. 1 national treasure Namdaemun break down as firefighters extinguish a fire in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. About 80 firefighters were fighting to bring the blaze under control and it was not known whether there are any casualties, they said, adding that the cause of the fire has yet to be determined. Namdaemun, literally 'the great southern gate,' was the southern gate of the original walls surrounding Seoul during the Joseon Dynasty. The construction of this gate began in 1395.(AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man)

Chronic pain seen altering how brain works

2008-02-08T02:04:00.001-08:00

An illustration shows differences in the brain between a healthy individual and one suffering chronic pain. The colors illustrate how much activation (red-yellow) or deactivation (dark/light blue) was found at each location. Brain scans of people in chronic pain show a state of constant activity in areas that should be at rest, researchers said on Tuesday, a finding that could help explain why pain patients have higher rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders. REUTERS/Northwestern University/Handout

War Against Mankind that Leftwing does not mind for

2008-02-08T01:56:00.000-08:00

Tobacco could kill 1 billion by 2100

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, right, speaks about the mpower box as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg listens during a press conference announcing WHO's Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008 Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008 in New York. The mpower box is a symbol of the package being offered by the WHO in its effort to combat the 'tobacco epidemic.' (AP Photo/Gary He)

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - The World Health Organization warned in a new report Thursday that the "tobacco epidemic" is growing and could claim 1 billion lives by the end of the century unless governments dramatically step up efforts to curb smoking.

In its first comprehensive report on tobacco use in 179 countries, the U.N.s health agency said governments around the world collect more than $200 billion in tobacco taxes every year but spend less than one-fifth of 1 percent of that revenue on tobacco control, it said.
"We hold in our hands the solution to the global tobacco epidemic that threatens the lives of 1 billion men, women and children during this century," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in an introduction to the report.
The WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2008 calls on all countries to dramatically increase efforts to prevent young people from beginning to smoke, help smokers quit and protect nonsmokers from exposure to second hand smoke.
It urges governments to adopt six "tobacco control policies" — raise taxes and prices of tobacco; ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; protect people from second hand smoke; warn people about the dangers of tobacco; help those who want to quit smoking; and monitor tobacco use to understand and reverse the epidemic.
Chan announced the report Thursday at a news conference with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, helped fund it with a $2 million grant. The report examines the tobacco policies of 179 countries for the first time, Bloomberg said.
According to the report, nearly two-thirds of the world's smokers live in 10 countries: China, which accounts for nearly 30 percent, India with about 10 percent, Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.
It forecast that more than 80 percent of tobacco-related deaths will be in low- and middle-income countries by 2030.
Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of WHO's Tobacco Free Initiative, said WHO estimates 5.4 million smoking-related deaths a year, rising to more than 8 million a year by 2030 if nothing is done. That adds up to 175 million between 2005 and 2030. Beyond that, he said, deaths will continue to rise and statistical projections put the death toll at near 1 billion by the end of the century.
Tobacco use is growing fastest in low-income countries, the report said, "due to steady population growth coupled with tobacco industry targeting, ensuring that millions of people become fatally addicted each year."
It warned that "the shift of the tobacco epidemic to the developing world will lead to unprecedented levels of disease and early death in countries where population growth and the potential for increased tobacco use are highest and where health care services are least available."
According to the report, 74 countries still allow smoking in health care institutions and about the same number allow smoking in schools. More than half the countries, with two-thirds of the world's population, allow smoking in government offices and workplaces, and only 20 of 179 countries have complete bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
"The tobacco epidemic is growing — it is shifting toward developing countries, with tobacco use growing fastest in low-income countries," Chan said.
For the tobacco industry to survive, and keep existing customers hooked and attract new customers, "it spends tens of billions of dollars a year on advertising, promotion and sponsorship," WHO said.
Michael Pfeil, vice president for communications for Lausanne, Switzerland-based Philip Morris International, said the company advocates "for tough, fair, cohesive regulation of the industry" and believes many countries need to do more. The company has operations in 160 countries.
He said regulations Philip Morris supports mirror some core provisions of the U.N. anti-smoking treaty that came into force last year. These include mandatory health warnings, restrictions on advertising including bans in some media, and minimum age laws for smoking, he said.
"We're going to continue to spend money," Pfeil said in a telephone interview. "I think we have a duty as a commercial entity to continue to grow our business, but ... our interest is in marketing to adult smokers who are smoking competitive products."
David Howard, spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, the second-largest cigarette manufacturer in the U.S., said the company is responsible in its advertising and warns consumers of the risk of smoking.
"The best course of action for any tobacco consumer concerned about their health is to quit," he said.

The Nothern Rock Sunk

2008-01-30T02:32:00.000-08:00

By D'ARCY DORAN, Associated Press Writer

Sat Jan 26

The Northern Rock crisis has revealed systemic failures at Britain's financial regulator after it failed to spot the reckless behavior of the bank's directors, British lawmakers said in a report published Saturday.
The Financial Services Authority, or FSA, failed to properly supervise Northern Rock, Britain's fifth-largest mortgage lender, the Treasury select committee said.
The bank ran into trouble in September because it relied too heavily on short-term money markets instead of deposits for funding. A subsequent profit warning and appeal to the Bank of England for an emergency loan led to the first run on a British bank since 1866. The bank now owes the Bank of England more than $49 billion.
"The FSA appears to have systematically failed in its duty and this failure contributed significantly to the difficulties and risks to the public purse that have followed," committee chairman John McFall said.
The report recommended the FSA improve its communications procedures to prevent panic in the future and an expanded role for central bank's deputy governor, who would advise the government's Treasury chief on potential crises.
Treasury chief Alistair Darling said the government will make proposals within a week to beef up the powers of the Bank of England and the FSA.
"These changes will mean that we can spot risks earlier and try to prevent problems like Northern Rock happening in the future," Darling said in a commentary for the News of the World, a Sunday newspaper. He did not disclose details.
The FSA said it was studying the report and would release the conclusions of an internal review in March.
"As we have already acknowledged publicly, there were clearly supervisory failings in relation to Northern Rock and we are already addressing these," it said in a statement.
The report was published after Darling announced Monday that Northern Rock's central bank debts will be split into government-backed bonds and sold off to investors to help fund a private sale of the bank. If a private fails, the bank could be nationalized.
The plan was necessary to make it possible for Richard Branson's Virgin Group, investment group Olivant Advisors or any new bidder to raise the capital needed to take over the bank. Bidders must submit their proposals to take over the bank by Feb. 4.

The Pathetic Maneuvers of Al-Baath Regime

2008-01-30T02:23:00.000-08:00

And How Every one supported Saddam were actually EXPLOITING him as a GLOBAL PROSTITUTE

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 26
A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits.
Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program and a former Soviet bloc ambassador. He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb, and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.
The 51-year-old Tretyakov had never spoken out about his spying before this week, when he granted his first news media interviews to publicize a book published Thursday. Written by former Washington Post journalist Pete Earley, the book is titled "Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War."
"It's an international spy nest," Tretyakov said of the U.N., during an interview this week with The Associated Press. "Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information."
His defection was first reported by the AP in 2001. Shortly after, the New York Times broke the news that he was not a diplomat, but a top Russian spy who was extensively debriefed by the CIA and the FBI.
Some of the people named or referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov's claims. The Russian mission to the U.N. said Friday it would have no immediate comment.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, described Tretyakov's allegations as potentially serious violations of law and U.N. rules.
But Dujarric said it would be up to others to prosecute if the allegations are substantiated: "Since the U.N. can't prosecute, it is now up to national governments to prosecute."
An 18-month investigation into the oil-for-food corruption, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, culminated in an October 2005 report accusing more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam's regime to bilk the humanitarian program in Iraq of $1.8 billion.
The program was aimed at easing Iraqi suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil provided the bulk of the proceeds were used to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods and to pay war reparations. Volcker's reports blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing corruption in the $64 billion program to go on for years.
Tretyakov defected to the United States with his wife and daughter in 2000, after serving as a double agent passing along secrets to the U.S. government. He calls his defection "the major failure of Russian intelligence in the United States" and warns that Russia, despite the end of the Cold War, harbors bad intentions toward the United States.
The decision to defect, he said, was made only after his mother died in 1997, and he had no other close relatives alive in Russia who could be used to blackmail him. The Tretyakovs now live in retirement in an undisclosed location.
"I got extremely disgusted with the Russian government, and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. I'm not very emotional. I'm not a Boy Scout," said Tretyakov, who was accompanied during the interview by his wife, Helen, and Earley. "Knowing people who are running Russia, I started feeling that it's immoral to help them. And finally in my life, when I defected, I did something good in my life. Because I want to help United States."

Manmade genome maker looks ahead to life

2008-01-30T02:19:00.000-08:00

By MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writer

Fri Jan 25
Genetics pioneer Craig Venter, who synthesized the complete DNA of a bacterium, didn't bring it to life, but he told The Associated Press on Friday he hopes that big step will happen in a matter of months.
Venter said such a process could ultimately lead to creating a new type of climate-friendly fuel, but he cautioned that practical applications would be years away.
The experiment, published online Thursday by the journal Science, is not a living germ, just its genetic structure, but Venter called it a big step forward in comparison to previous man-made life forms.
Making that DNA strand essentially come alive, by inserting it in a cell, is next, Venter said in an interview with AP.
"If we can boot up this chromosome and give it living cells from what we make in the lab and the genetic code, I think that'll be the big step," he said. "We're trying very hard to do it. I've said that I'll be surprised and disappointed if we can't do it this year."
What has already been done "is a big step and we always have to be cautious that scientists — after these breakthroughs in the lab — that we don't over extrapolate from them," he said. "But it's a conceptual change of how we view life, how we view the ability to manipulate life for the good of mankind."
Scientists at the Maryland-based J. Craig Venter Institute started with some off-the-shelf laboratory-made DNA fragments. They overlapped and joined stretches to make ever larger chunks of genetic material, finally ending up with a manmade copy of the entire genome of a small bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium, a genital germ.
The institute described it as the largest manmade stretch of DNA to date, and a key step in the field of synthetic biology.
"Some of my colleagues have argued that these are baby steps, but this is 20 times bigger than any molecule made by humans before," Venter said. "I think it is as important a conceptual step as a technological one."
Venter, who was a co-author of the map of the human genome, likened the effort to creating new kinds of crops or crossbreeding animals to come up with new breeds, actions that humans have been doing for hundreds of years.
"They just didn't know what they were doing," he said. "Now we're doing it based on knowledge versus just random farming experiments."
Last year, Venter's team performed a "genome transplant": Researchers transplanted all the genes from one species of Mycoplasma into another, switching a goat germ into a cattle germ. Somehow, the transplant sparked the donor genes to start working.
The next test is to see if the new artificial Mycoplasma genome can come to life, too — by putting the DNA into a living cell to see if it takes over and becomes a synthetic organism.
___
Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein and medical writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
J. Craig Venter Institute

Those Frenchies expect the world to buy that shet?!?

2008-01-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

By EMMA VANDORE, Associated Press Writer

The rogue futures trader who allegedly cost French bank Societe Generale $7.14 billion had been betting on an even larger scale — with tens of billions in fraudulent deals, the bank said Friday.
France's No. 2 bank apologized to shareholders after discovering what appears to be the largest trading fraud in history to be carried out by a single person. The news Thursday rattled an already jittery banking sector at a time of global economic uncertainty.
A bank official said Friday that 31-year-old trader Jerome Kerviel's positions had reached "several tens of billions of euros" — a staggering sum for a bank with a market capitalization of 35.9 billion euros ($52.6 billion). The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with bank policy.
French presidential aide Raymond Soubie said on LCI television that the trader had been dealing with more than 50 billion euros ($73.31 billion) — a figure greater than annual gross domestic product for entire nations such as Morocco, Bangledesh, Vietnam and Slovakia, according to 2006 IMF figures.
The bank said Kerviel appears to have netted no personal financial gain from the alleged schemes.
Paris prosecutors were conducting a preliminary investigation that combines two legal complaints, judicial officials said: one by Societe Generale accusing the trader of fraud, another by small shareholders in the bank demanding to know how the fraud transpired.
Societe Generale's shares, which have lost nearly half their value over the past six months, were suspended on the Paris bourse Thursday morning. When trading resumed, shares fell 4.13 percent to close at 75.81 euros ($111.16). Friday afternoon, shares were trading up 2.4 percent at 77.66 euros ($113.87).
On Friday, UBS downgraded the bank to neutral from buy. Deutsche Bank also downgraded the stock, to hold from buy.
However, Dresdner Kleinwort analysts Milan Gudka and Arturo De Frias said the bank's announcement "provides us with greater visibility and comfort. Despite our concern as to the adequacy of internal controls, we keep a positive recommendation on the stock."
Undetected by the bank's multilayered security systems, Kerviel had for over a year been fraudulently using the company's funds to bet on European stock markets, Societe Generale said.
The bank said it learned of the fraud last weekend. With money markets in turmoil, Societe Generale was forced to sell the contracts built up by the rogue trader just as stocks were plunging. It took three days to unload them.

With questions swirling over how an individual could rack up $7.14 billion in losses for a company, the Bank of France governor insisted Friday the sum had "nothing to do with the subprime crisis, with the difficulties of the financial market in general."
On RTL radio, Christian Noyer said the vast loss was just "chance."
"If there hadn't been a collapse in the markets early in the week, the size of the loss would have been much smaller," he said.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon was among those who remained skeptical.
"It is difficult ... to imagine how one person alone could, in a relatively short period of time, cause such considerable losses," Fillon said in Luxembourg.
He also said the French government should have been informed immediately, not of four days after the fraud was discovered.
Shareholders had many of the same questions.
"One should not be able to take positions worth 40 billion without being spotted by an audit or a sophisticated computer system, every one agrees on that," said Didier Cornardeau, president of APPAC, a group representing small Societe General shareholders.
"We understand that there is an important disfunction in Societe General, and perhaps in other banks as well."

The company said it expects to post a net profit of 600 million euros to 800 million euros ($874 million to $1.16 billion) for all of 2007 — even after the fraud and another 2.05 billion euros ($2.99 billion) lost in the subprime mortgage crisis that has also roiled markets.
As a result, the bank said it would be forced to raise 5.5 billion euros ($8.02 billion) in new capital.
Founded in 1864 after a decree signed by Napoleon III, Societe Generale is now present in 77 countries and employs 120,000 people.

Can The Immune System be [Re-Defined] as Computer Operation Softwares??

2008-01-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

An Australian girl spontaneously switched blood groups and adopted her donor's immune system following a liver transplant in the first known case of its type, doctors treating her said Thursday.
Demi-Lee Brennan was aged nine and seriously ill with liver failure when she received the transplant, doctors at a top Sydney children's hospital told AFP.
Nine months later it was discovered that she had changed blood types and her immune system had switched over to that of the donor after stem cells from the new liver migrated to her bone marrow.
She is now a healthy 15-year-old, Michael Stormon, a hepatologist treating her, told AFP. Stormon said he had given several presentations on the case around the world and had heard of none like it.
"It is extremely unusual -- in fact we don't know of any other instance in which this happened," Stormon told AFP from the Children's Hospital.
"In effect she had had a bone marrow transplant. The majority of her immune system had also switched over to that of the donor."
An article on the case was published in Thursday's edition of the leading US medical journal The New England Journal of Medicine.
Doctors who treated Brennan say she is now only under treatment as an outpatient and are interested to know if the case could have other applications in transplant surgery, where rejection of donor organs by the recipient's immune system is a major hurdle.
Stormon said it appeared that Brennan may have been fortunate because a "sequence of serendipitous events", including a post-transplantation infection, may have given the stem cells from her donor's liver the chance to proliferate.
The task now was to establish whether the same sort of outcome could be replicated in other transplant patients, he said.

Israel: We are Damn Sick and want no ties with Gaza

2008-01-24T04:32:00.000-08:00

A top Israeli defense official said Thursday that Israel wants to relinquish all responsibility for the Gaza Strip, including the supply of electricity and water, now that the territory's southern border with Egypt has been opened.
"We need to understand that when Gaza is open to the other side we lose responsibility for it," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said, according to his office. "So we want to disconnect from it."
It was not immediately clear if Vilnai spoke for the entire government.
"We want to stop supplying electricity to them, stop supplying them with water and medicine, so that it would come from another place," Vilnai said.
Israel will continue to be responsible for the flow of such supplies into the Gaza Strip until an alternative is found, the office quoted him as saying.
Vilnai spoke as thousands of Gazans flooded into Egypt the day after most of the wall on the border was toppled. Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip a week ago, allowing only minimal humanitarian supplies and fuel for a power station in retaliation for a rise in rocket fire on southern Israel.

Bull's eye target for child leukemia found: study

2008-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

British researchers have identified the cancer stem cells that spawn tumors in the most common form of childhood leukemia, and said on Thursday it provided a "bull's eye" target for new drugs.
These rare stem cells are a minute component of the blood but self-renew and act like a control centre, producing millions of cancerous leukemia cells that overwhelm the normal system, said Tariq Enver, a researcher at the University of Oxford, who worked on the study.

"Our next goal is to target both the pre-leukaemic stem cell and the cancer stem cell itself with new or existing drugs to cure leukemia while avoiding the debilitating and often harmful side effects of current treatments," Enver said.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, the source of all cells and tissue, like brain, blood, heart, bones, muscle and skin. So-called adult stem cells circulate in the body throughout life, providing a source of renewed cells and tissues.

ROOT OUT
A growing body of research suggests there are also cancer stem cells, and the team which included Mel Greaves of the Institute of Cancer Research in Britain, say they have found such cells that can escape conventional chemotherapy and cause relapse. This makes it critical to root them out.
"It is like chopping down the weeds but not pulling out the roots," Enver told reporters. "It will look good for a while but they will grow back."
Key to the study were identical twin girls -- Olivia who has leukemia and her healthy sister Isabella. Studying them allowed the researchers to look back in time to understand the origins of the disease.
The researchers believe two or more genetic mutations cause all childhood leukemia, with the first occurring in the womb and the other early in life. This raised the question why didn't Isabella develop the disease as well.
"By the time a child has leukemia a lot has gone on," Enver said. "We want to know where it starts. Isabella gives us that opportunity to almost look back in time."

Researchers compared cells in the blood of both girls and found Isabella's cells also had the damaged gene TEL-AML1, the first genetic mutation that can cause acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Then the team, which published its findings in the journal Science, manufactured the master cancer stem cells with the original mutation in a lab and transplanted them into mice.
This showed the mutation can persist in the blood like a ticking time bomb waiting to trigger the disease after a second genetic mutation. For the twins, this means Isabella remains at risk for the same sort of second "hit" that caused her sister to develop leukemia.
The researchers do not know what causes either of the genetic changes, but believe the second could be something as simple as routine infection.

Internet Usage in Campaigns

2008-01-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

The business of US politics is booming on the Internet, as 2008 White House hopefuls rake in donations, organize, and get their message out, hoping that online efforts will yield real-world votes.
Campaigns also provide tools to help supporters create do-it-yourself fundraising and mobilization sites, and have set up shop on "social networking" portals where young voters can compare tastes on pop music or politicians.
A recent poll by the non-partisan Pew Research Center that tracks public opinion found that roughly a quarter of the US public regularly turns to the World Wide Web for White House race news -- less than television, but still double the number from 2004 and nearly triple 2000 levels.
"Increasingly, the conversation about the campaign is taking place online, and you ignore it at your peril," according to Mike Feldman, a former senior adviser to Al Gore during the vice president's 2000 presidential campaign.
The number soars to 42 percent for people under 30 years old, who are also more likely to use "social networking" sites like MySpace.com or Facebook.com to promote a politician as they would a favorite movie or music group.
"You become the salesman, in a way. If I think the world of Joe, and Joe says on his site that he really likes (Republican candidate) John McCain, I might go give McCain another look," said David Almacy, former Internet communications director for the White House under US President George W. Bush.
Feldman, who chuckled that Gore's bare-bones Web site was "cutting edge" in 2000, said that some candidates hope to mimic the excitement of Democrat Howard Dean's Web-driven presidential run in 2004 but avoid fizzling out as he did.

Long-shot Republican White House hopeful Ron Paul grabbed headlines when his web-centered donation drives -- known to his supporters as "money bombs" -- helped scoop up roughly 20 million dollars in the final months of 2007.

On the other side, Democrats point to presidential candidate Barack Obama's efforts to use the Internet to counter rival Hillary Clinton's perceived advantage in traditional fundraising and get-out-the-vote operations.

As of January 3, 60 percent of the 500,000 people giving to Obama did so online, while campaign-provided online tools had fostered the creation of 6,000 active volunteer groups and 20,000 fundraising Web pages, the campaign says.
"It's amazing how capable and energetic people can be when you give them the tools," Joe Rospars, the campaign's "new media" director, told AFP.

But while ever-larger swathes of the US public are using the Internet to follow the campaign, give money, and rally their friends to favorite candidates, experts warn against seeing it as a campaign cure-all.
"It's unforgivable not to be in that space, but they're not going to win because they are in that space," said Almacy.
"It's just a tool, period. Learn its abilities and limitations, and then incorporate it where possible in all aspects of a campaign," said Josh Margulies, a co-founder of the successful Internet-driven effort to bring retired general Wesley Clark into the 2004 presidential campaign.

Margulies said that the Internet makes mass mailings much easier; enables campaigns to fine-tune their message and pitch different ideas to different audiences; and makes it "absurdly easy" to donate money.
But a candidate cannot "assume that, just because I'm willing to click three buttons and send you a few bucks (dollars), I'm willing, also, to set my alarm and get out of bed early enough (on election day)," he warned.

On the communications front, campaigns looking for a way around the scrutiny of traditional media can also rely on electronic mail and friendly or independent sites, explained Almacy.
But it's not all poll standings and position papers, or even all positive, as Republican George Allen learned when he lost his Senate bid after an amateur video of him using the word "macaca," widely seen as an ethnic slur, hit the Internet.

That is Sucks for Torrents Users

2008-01-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

Time Warner links web prices with usage

Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads.
Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed at improving the network performance by making it more costly for heavy users of large downloads. Dudley said that a small group of super-heavy users of downloads, around 5 percent of the customer base, can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity.
Dudley said he did not know what the pricing tiers would be nor the download limits. He said the heavy users were likely using the network to download large amounts of video, most likely in high definition.
It was not clear when exactly the trial would begin, but Dudley said it would likely be around the second quarter. The tiered pricing would only affect new customers in Beaumont, not existing ones.
Time Warner Cable is a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company.

EU probes drug companies

2008-01-17T11:10:00.000-08:00

The European Commission raided some of the world's largest drugmakers on Wednesday, launching a broad investigation into whether they made illegal deals or abused patents to limit competition and harm consumers.
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said the European Union regulator suspected companies had conspired to delay cheap generic alternatives to branded medicines.
The sweep involved collecting confidential information from firms including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L), AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) and Sanofi-Aventis SA (SASY.PA).
The dawn raids and sector inquiry, which the Commission said was not based on specific suspected violations, could lead to cartel charges against companies and potentially huge fines.
Patents are the life blood of the pharmaceutical industry but critics allege some companies misuse patent rights to delay the introduction of generic medicines in unjustified ways.
The cost of medicines is a vexed issue in Europe, where governments are seeking to clamp down on runaway healthcare bills at the same time as encouraging the development of the high-tech pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors.
Kroes said the aim was to ensure governments and consumers got more new products and value for money. She said Europeans spent around 200 billion euros ($300 billion) annually on pharmaceuticals, or about 400 euros for each person.
"If innovative products are not being produced, and cheaper generic alternatives to existing products are in some cases being delayed, then we need to find out why and, if necessary, take action," she said in the statement.
Mike Ward, an industry analyst at stockbroker Nomura Code, said the probe highlighted the pressure on drugmakers worldwide to prove their patent maneuvers were above board.
"There have been mutterings in the United States as well, particularly with regards to deals that have been struck by companies to keep certain generics off the market," he said.

ASTRAZENECA IN FOCUS
During a news conference, Kroes cited AstraZeneca as a clear example of a company in which competition was not functioning optimally, referring to a 2005 decision in which the Commission fined the company 60 million euros.
The Commission found that AstraZeneca had misused the patent system to delay market entry of rivals to its ulcer drug Losec.
AstraZeneca and other firms involved with the new investigation said they were cooperating fully with officials.
Other companies, including Roche Holding AG (ROG.VX), Merck KGaA (MRCG.DE) and Bayer Schering Pharma (BAYG.DE) said they were not aware that they were involved or had not received inquiries from officials.
Novartis AG (NOVN.VX) said its Sandoz generics unit was cooperating but the main branded drugs unit was not implicated.
The Commission said the probe followed concerns competition was not functioning properly and it highlighted the fact that the number of innovative drugs had decreased in recent years.
The raids will help establish if companies created barriers to competitors, whether they misused patent rights or engaged in "vexatious litigation" and if some firms abused their dominance of the market.
The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations said it hoped the inquiry would enable the Commission to better understand the importance of intellectual property rights in driving drug innovation.
The EU executive expects to announce preliminary results late this year and make a complete report in the spring of 2009.
The Commission said it raided firms because patents, litigation and settlement agreements are by their nature highly confidential.
"Such information may also be easily withheld, concealed or destroyed. This is why inspections have been considered appropriate," it said.
Backing up its case that the number of new drugs reaching the market had decreased, the Commission cited figures showing that from 1995 to 1999 there were 40 new "molecular entities" launched each year but the figure dropped between 2000 and 2004 to only 28.
In all cases, the Commission is focusing on medicines for human consumption.
The Commission has already conducted sector inquiries into energy, financial services and telecommunications. This marks the first time a sector inquiry has begun with raids.

The Egyptian Regime Hypersensitivity

2008-01-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Egyptian foreign ministry on Thursday summoned the ambassadors of European Union countries in Cairo to express its "complete rejection" of a European Parliament draft resolution critical of human rights.
"The ambassadors of 27 European Union countries have been summoned in order to inform them of Egypt's complete rejection of a draft resolution over human rights in Egypt," ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said in a statement.

The foreign ministry "will not accept any attempt by any country to comment on the human rights situation in Egypt, as it will not allow itself to lecture other countries over their domestic affairs," Zaki said.

On Wednesday, the speaker of parliament threatened to sever links with the European Parliament if it passes the resolution, according to the official MENA news agency.
"The People's Assembly (Egypt's lower house) will consider cutting ties with the European Parliament... as long as it continues to use the language of commands and condescension," Fathi Surur told MENA, rejecting the draft text as a "flagrant interference in Egypt's domestic affairs."

He said the resolution, if passed, threatened to "harm the historic relationship between Egypt and Europe."
The European Parliament is on Thursday due to discuss the resolution which criticises Egypt over the status of religious minorities, alleged torture practices and Egypt's decades-long state of emergency.

The resolution also calls for the immediate release of jailed dissident Ayman Nur, who mounted an unprecedented campaign against President Hosni Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections and was jailed for fraud in a conviction widely seen as politically motivated.

International rights groups have repeatedly expressed concern about human rights in Egypt, including continued crackdowns on political dissent.

In December, the New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned "a pattern of abuse" made possible under Egypt's state of emergency, imposed in 1981 and in effect ever since.
The state of emergency allows the interior ministry to detain and interrogate persons without arrest warrants and to issue detention orders repeatedly for up to six months at a time without a hearing.

The government is currently drafting a new counter-terrorism law to replace the emergency law, but observers have expressed concern that the new law will also restrict human rights.

Egypt said that if the resolution is passed on Thursday, "it would have a negative effect on Egyptian-European relations and will cast a shadow on efforts of cooperation and coordination between both sides."

The draft resolution also urges Egypt to do more to protect the border with the Gaza Strip, now controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, regarded as a terror group by Israel and the West.

Earlier this month US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Cairo in an interview to do more to stop arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip, an issue which has strained Egypt's ties with Israel.

During a brief stop in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh at the tailend of a landmark tour of the Middle East, US President George W. Bush refrained from publicly touching on Egypt's human rights record.
The US leader instead gently broached the subject by urging Mubarak to take a leading role in boosting democracy in the region.

ACE OF BASE - A Nostalgia I Don't Want to Cure !

2008-01-12T02:56:00.000-08:00

Call Me Madlene & Kiss MY Pussy, I don't fuckin care, It is the sinn I Am Never Gonna Say I Am Sorry for.......[I am a die-hard Fan of Ace of base]

((NB. it is really green obnoxious that some how, the AoB fans are linked to Gays??!?, FUCK OFF I AM CANNON STRAIGHT<@#??@ GOD DAMMIT))

it is back to the 1996, a Cruel Summer for such a bone-headed Juvenile when i first caught a Sign of them by pure Luck on a BBC-Arabic Service Music program [They were still credible, not the current Leftwingshets], before that i did not have the slightest interest in any thing related to music, first knew music by them

I explored Ace of Base with very few fans around, the first clip i saw was at MBC [They had their copy of TOTP British Show Program] at 1998!....[for a conservative family, satellite was a No-No, Internet ..... what was that???]

The Ace of Base literally took me to Romantis, aboard the Gripens [Fly High Sweden Aces], all the way to The Caribbean Sun

Their songs taught me that life is demanding without understanding, to never turn around, never apologize for my freak nature, life is too precious to waste it on my surroundings typifications, walk at dawn to clear your mind, and most importantly, that certainly all women want an idiot to exploit.

The Ace of Base had a Strange Way to disappear, by 1999 they been literally no activity at all, an abrupt return at 2002 [DaCapo] but ....... without the Team Goddess, Malin

The [Linn Mystry] partly solved once you understand the team, The Guthenburg (Sub-urban Rookees) who shaked the world, starting from summer festivals at sweden 1990, they did every thing, Composing Songs, Music, of course Vocals, production companies only to give them access to the audience, So few bands that used to perform all stages of business by their own, the ACE of Base been the most successful, selling 45 million records in less than 4 years, 20 of them in the American market (by a European Band, WWWOOO....)

Ace of Base never been bound with long term contracts to any production company, they wanted to be free, at least Malin had clearly another view of her own, she said (I sing but don't want to be a singer) , by 1998 a series of Family hardships helped her to choose the sourest decision, To Quit!..................Malin appeared last time in the Clip of Unspeakable, but silent like an illusionist ghost, the Lyric is clear Tribute from the 3 Aces [Jenny, Joker, Buddha] to the Goddess [Malin]

Give me a reason

To not deny my needs

I was unwilling

to give my love away

But you decided
To give yours anyway

Oh I can't express

The feeling I posses for you baby

All I wanna say to you is Unspeakable

All I wanna say to you Words can't describe it

All I wanna say to you Words can't define

Unspeakable

You helped me to recover

What's been eluding me

You're a sensation

That makes my love run free

And now I'm speechless

It's all so clear to me

Oh yes, it is so clear to me, Malin did not Quit till her sweatheart younger sister able to hold the band herself, at the early years Jenny been so dependent on malin, performing as background or corus-duetto, some songs been Malin-Only speciality, [Every Time It Rains] a tough song that eluded elder vocalists, Jenny totally fialed to do it, but Malin left it to top charts.

Nevertheless, years of practice left Jenny's voice mature enough to sing solo The Ravine, leaving me speachless---unbelievable !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lost Relics:

Ace of Base have many DEMOs, or undistributed, some of their best hits been DEMOs from their early 90th, a few been issued in the European & Japanese Tracks, many others never been recorded for distribution

they are kept at private DJs, jealously protected and very few leaked to the internet, there is 2 dozens known, enough to make 2 albums, some of them are real hits.....I wish one day to get them all at HQ record !!!!!

I have just noticed something, [Relics, Ravens, AoB, Infamous DJs, Malin Mystry]...enough elements to make a fair PS-3 game !!!!, ending by collection the stolen relics & break the Malin Guardian Spirit Free [abstract from The Golden Compass (call the ER, it is AoB manic episode again)]

Is it a "Real" Revival??

I am very conservative with my expectations for the Future of the Band, definitely they have a Rock-Solid fan masses around the globe, but the odds are against them

Their last Journey in Russia & The Baltics must been a success, [Die-Hard Fans Spots], but outside the Nothern Equators........hmmmm.

*First of all, the Time Factor, they are not the Blooming offsprings at their early twenties, (Jenny the youngest 1972), all are married with families, i just can't resist comparing how the sisters looked like at 90th and now....

*Second, The atmosphere.....the Pop Renissance is over...we are living in the ugly era of African Beats.....Sucken Fucken Smelly Shetty rappers, crazy hiphops & bitches rule the world, .........let's NUKE them all.

*Third, The Malin-Factor...Ace of Base = 4 Aces, Jenny is capable indeed, but Malin is just indespensable....

What is Next?

For the time present, I console my self that they are all fine and well, i have a vivid dream that they may read this post.......a Hearty Tribute to The Aces ....for such a Beautiful Life we lived

Milky Way could hold hundreds of rogue black holes: study

2008-01-10T10:52:00.000-08:00

This Spitzer Space Telescope image released in 2006 shows the galactic center of The Milky Way galaxy. Hundreds of rogue black holes may be roaming around the Milky Way waiting to engulf stars and planets that cross their path, US astronomers said Wednesday.(AFP/NASA-HO/File)

Hundreds of rogue black holes may be roaming around the Milky Way waiting to engulf stars and planets that cross their path, US astronomers said Wednesday.
The astronomers believe these "intermediate mass" black holes are invisible except in rare circumstances and have been spawned by mergers of black holes within globular clusters -- swarms of stars held together by their mutual gravity.
These black holes are unlikely to pose a threat to Earth, but may engulf nebulae, stars and planets that stray into their paths, the researchers said.
"These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe," said Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
"Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, (or gravitational radius) is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometers. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood."
The evidence for "intermediate mass" black holes, as opposed to supermassive or stellar-mass black holes, is still largely theoretical and therefore controversial. Only two tentative observations of objects of this sort have been made to date.
But the theoretical case for them is strong, and X-ray observations in recent years suggestive of their existence encouraged Holley-Bockelmann and colleagues at the University of Michigan and Penn State University to simulate what would happen if intermediate mass black holes combined with stellar-sized black holes, which are plentiful in globular clusters.
Using sophisticated computer modeling, they calculated that these mergers would generate hundreds of mid-size black holes, and that the force of their combinations would catapult them out of the globular cluster at speeds of up to 4,000 kilometers per second.
That would leave these black holes, each weighing several times the mass of the sun, to careen around interstellar space, unattached to any stellar system, at high speeds. Hence the term rogue.
Bockelmann presented her findings Wednesday at the 211th American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.
Separately, researchers reported that they have discovered a new X-ray source in the galaxy of Centarus A.
The X-ray appeared in new observations of the galaxy taken in 2007, but was not visible in a survey taken in 2003. The new ray is much smaller than the X-ray jets that have long been a feature of the galaxy, but it still glows brightly.
The new object is most likely a binary star system, the researchers from Ohio State University said. The two stars probably formed at the same time, with one much more massive than the other.
The more massive star evolved more quickly, and collapsed to form a black hole. It is now slowly devouring its companion. Such binary systems are thought to be rare.

Researchers ask: Is China the sleeping giant of biotech?

2008-01-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

by Boris Cambreleng, AFP

China's biotech sector accounts for just a sliver of its pharmaceutical industry and operates under the cloud of a massive review of licenses issued under a regulator executed last year for accepting bribes.
Even so, experts say, Chinese purveyors of genetically engineered drugs and vaccines -- targeting everything from cancer to Alzheimer's -- are growing at a frenzied pace and are likely to become major actors on the world stage.
"There is no question that the sector is established," said Peter Singer of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto who was lead researcher of a study published Monday in Nature Biotechnology.
"What we found really surprising is that in an industry that's only 10 years old, China has innovative products on the market," he told AFP.
For their study, Singer and his colleagues selected 22 small- and medium-sized biotech firms from literally thousands operating in the health sector for close scrutiny. They looked for companies that were innovative, both scientifically and in business.
The portrait that emerged is of a dynamic sector that has been growing 30 percent annually over the past decade, reaching a turnover of three billion dollars in the domestic market in 2005.
Yet its activity is dominated by a few big stars and remains dogged by doubts as to its integrity.
It is also a sector led in large measure by "sea turtles" ("hai gui") -- Chinese-born scientists with a decade or two of US or European lab experience under their belts who have come home to found Chinese companies, often with generous backing from the government.

In a market of one billion potential patients, 15 biotech products for health are already on the market, with another 60 in the pipeline, Singer said.
Exhibit A: Gendicine, the first gene therapy product approved after clinical trials anywhere in the world.
A recombinant human adenovirus, Gendicine carries the p53 gene and is administered by injection directly into cancerous tumours in the head and neck, including nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
More than 5,000 patients have received the treatment in combination with radiotherapy, including 400 foreign patients from outside China.
The company became profitable shortly after the launch of the product, approved in 2005 by China's State Drug and Food Administration (SDFA).
That, as it turns out, was not an unimpeachable recommendation.
The SDFA's former director, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed in July 2007 for accepting bribes in return for issuing drug approvals without proper review.
As a result, a staggering 170,000 licenses granted by the SDFA, especially between 1999 and 2002, are currently under review.

Another company, Shenzhen Beike Technologies, provides a treatment based on umbilical cord and bone marrow stem cells for Alzheimer's, autism, brain trauma, cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury, as well as a dozen other diseases and conditions. The medication is injected directly into the spinal cord of patients.
"There is no need to do clinical trials for this kind of procedure in China," said the study's lead author, Sarah Frew, also a researcher at McLaughlin-Rotman.
"The approach this company is taking is trying the thing on patients rather than doing scientific research," added Singer.
The product has nonetheless been a commercial success, first with Chinese patients and more recently with international patients. When Frew visited the clinic a year ago, there were a dozen foreigners present.
The company's website is filled with glowing testimonials on the effectiveness of the treatment, which costs tens of thousands of dollars.
In most cases the therapies and vaccines developed in China are far less controversial. Indeed, more than 90 percent of products produced in the health biotech sector are biogenerics, with novel products accounting for 3-to-5 percent of the total.
A more recent development are international joint ventures and investment.

Shenzhen Chipscreen Biosciences, for example, has developed an anti-cancer drug in cooperation with Huya Bioscience, based in San Diego, California. Once the medication is on the market, the Chinese partner will hold the rights for China, while Huya can lay claim to the rest of the world.

WuXi PharmaTech, which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the summer of 2007, is the first biotech service company in China with major foreign clients, including US pharmaceutical giant Merck and Britain's AstraZeneca.
The fact that WuXi has attracted such companies "punctures a little bit the legend that there is no intellectual property in China," said Singer.

Another myth that may soon fall by the wayside is that China can only reproduce what other have done already.
"There is no longer a hegemony on the part of industrialised countries in global biotech innovation," Singer said.

What The Fuck???

2008-01-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

FDA approves daily Cialis doses

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Eli Lilly and Co on Tuesday said U.S. regulators approved once-daily use of two low-dose forms of its Cialis anti-impotence drug, offering greater convenience for men expecting frequent sexual activity.

The Indianapolis drugmaker said the once-daily formulations, in dosages of 2.5 milligrams and 5 milligrams, will allow men to attempt sexual activity any time between doses.

A Swedish Experience

2008-01-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

Stockholm streets: one-third fewer workers

Sweden is the only nation in the European Union that has criminalized prostitution, and the only country in the world to make it illegal to buy – but not sell – sex services.
The law reflects a commonly held belief among Swedish feminist groups and government officials that prostitution victimizes women and that tackling the demand for sex is more effective that criminalizing people who sell their bodies.
To date, about 1,000 sex customers have been arrested. Of those, about 260 were formally charged and fined up to 40 days of their salary, according to the Stockholm city government's prostitution unit.
"The law has helped," says Agneta Borg, who has headed the unit since 1996. "We know that street prostitution is down, and we have no evidence that it's increased elsewhere." In Stockholm, the number of street workers has fallen from around 300 in 1999 to around 200 today, she says.
Ms. Borg also points to statistics showing that illegal trafficking of prostitutes, many of whom are young Eastern Europeans, is now less of a problem here than in other Nordic countries. Sweden receives an estimated 400 to 500 such women a year. By comparison, up to 15,000 travel to Finland every year and 6,000 to Norway and Denmark, Borg says.
"Police tell us that they've learned from wire-taps and other detective work that many of these trafficking gangs now try to avoid Sweden because we've focused so much on this issue – not just by passing the law, but because we've kept it high on our political agenda," she says.
Borg will meet Coaker on Thursday and plans to tell the minister that Sweden's model works.
Still, there is no evidence that the 1999 law has reduced prostitution in Sweden as a whole. A recent report by the country's National Board of Health and Welfare acknowledged that there is no hard data backing up claims that fewer men buy sex – only that the venue for prostitution has changed.
But Borg argues that Sweden's approach will build a national intolerance to prostitution, and it and its problems will start to wither. When the law was passed, most Swedes opposed it. Today, she said, 80 percent are in favor. "So perhaps, when we're at 95 percent, there won't be so many men willing to buy sex," Borg said.

And What The Bitches Think About it?

Swedish Sexworkers and Allies Network, a trade organization with 50 members, estimates that only 10 percent of sex workers walk the streets today. The rest make contact with their customers at clubs, bars, casinos, underground brothels and, above all, in cyberspace.
"I have many customers who would never dare to contact me on the street," says Isabella Lund, a sex worker based in the southern university city of Lund. "But on a whole, our industry has exploded after the Internet came – just like in every other country."
Ms. Lund, who uses a fictitious name to protect her two teenage children, argues that criminalizing the trade has made it more dangerous for workers. Customers are now much more reluctant to reveal personal information, which makes it tougher to sort "good guys" from "bad."

The Wahabist Venom

2008-01-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

Maldives' President Maumoon Gayoom, left, meets boy scout Mohammed Jaisham Ibrahim at a hospital in Male, Maldives, Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008. Ibrahim, 15-year-old, foiled an attempt to assassinate the president of this island nation by grabbing the attacker's knife.

Scout: Islamic militant attacked prez

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, Associated Press Writer

The 15-year-old Boy Scout who saved the president of this Indian Ocean archipelago from a knife-wielding attacker said Thursday the assailant shouted "God is Great" before the assault.
Mohammed Jaisham Ibrahim's account matches stories filtering out of the remote island where the incident took place and is likely to heighten concerns about rising Islamic militancy in the country best known for high-end resorts and stunning coral reefs.
Officials have played down the Islamic extremism angle, saying Tuesday's attack on President Maumoon Gayoom may have been politically motivated but offering no other details.
Police arrested the alleged assailant at the scene and picked up four other suspected accomplices Wednesday.
Ibrahim said he had no doubt that the attacker was an Islamic militant or inspired by an extremist vision of the world, a view seconded by people who know the man.
"He had a long beard; he shouted 'God is Great' when he took out his knife. He kept shouting it," Ibrahim told The Associated Press in an interview from the hospital in Male where he is recovering from wounds to his left hand sustained in the attack.
Wearing his khaki Maldives scout uniform with a blue kerchief, Ibrahim was among the scores of people who turned out to greet Gayoom when he arrived Tuesday on Hoarafushi, one of 1,190 coral islands in the Indian Ocean that make up the Maldives.
He said the attacker was behind him, jostling to get closer to Gayoom.
"He pushed me, and I pushed him back," said Ibrahim, his left hand wrapped in bandages and lanky frame sprawled out on a bed in a small hospital room crowded with family and well-wishers.
"Then I saw him take out the knife. It was wrapped in a flag, a Maldives flag. He took it, he unwrapped it, and started to move for my president. I tried to grab it," Ibrahim said.
The knife sliced open his hand — "blood was shooting out!" — but Ibrahim said he was never scared.
"The Scouts saying is 'Be prepared.' I was prepared," he said, referring to the motto of the international Boy Scout movement.
It has clearly become a well-practiced line for the boy, whose quick-thinking heroics have earned him acclaim across this sparsely populated archipelago.
"Every person in the world knows about our Boy Scout," gushed Rilwan Tholal, a 36-year-old shop owner in Male.
But with word spreading that the alleged attacker, 20-year-old Mohamed Murshid, may have been an Islamic extremist, the attack has also threatened Maldives' reputation as a peaceful island paradise for well-heeled foreigners.
Murshid's mother said her son had long been pious and often listened to Islamic CDs, according to Thursday's edition of the Haveeru newspaper.
Tuesday's attack was the latest violence to hit the islands in recent months.
On Sept. 29, a bomb blamed on Islamic militants exploded in a park in Male, wounding 12 tourists.
A week later, police and soldiers raided an island that was a reputed insurgent stronghold, sparking a battle with masked men armed with clubs and fishing spears that wounded more than 30 security officers.

Pakistan's paradox: bombs, blood and record profits

2008-01-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

By Mark Bendeich, Reuters

little more than six years ago, immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities, few sane investment advisers would have recommended Pakistani stocks.
They should have. Their clients could have made a fortune.
Since 2001, the nuclear-armed South Asian country, blamed for spawning generations of Islamic militants and threatening global security, has been making millionaires like newly minted coins.
As Western governments have fretted about Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of militants, the Karachi Stock Exchange's main share index has risen more than 10-fold.
And it is not just that Karachi is a thinly traded market, able to be dragged skyward at time by speculators. Profits have taken off as well.
Even last month's assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, and the brief but terrifying tornado of violence it unleashed, failed to make much more than a dent in the market.
Businessmen are more worried than brokers, but all agree it will take more than Bhutto's death to destroy this boom, which has been based on open-door investment policies and privatization.
"It's sad, and it does affect the business, but I guess it's been happening for so long that people just get used to it," shrugged Omer Sabir, who sells luxury sports cars from upwards of $100,000 each at Karachi's only Porsche dealer.
Home to 14 million people, Pakistan's biggest city is booming.

The port city, notorious as the place where U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamist extremists in 2002, has seen property prices soar and shopping malls sprout up.
Foreign banks such as Standard Chartered and ABN Amro have bought up local banks. Just this month Bank Muscat and Japan's Nomura Holdings agreed to a $200 million takeover of Pakistan's Saudi Pak Bank.
Barclays is also looking to build a local business.
Even during frequent power blackouts, Pakistan's bankers can see by the light of their generators that profits are good, among the strongest bank returns in the world, says Invisor Securities.
At Karachi's underground night-club scene -- literally, underground -- sons and daughters of the upper middle-class drink vodka, whisky or just soft-drinks in glittering semi-darkness and listen to DJs play the latest beats.

TIME TO SELL?
But right now, the party might be coming to an end.
The stock market is still trading just 3 percent below its life-time closing high (14,814.85 points), but the outlook is far less certain than six years ago, when President Pervez Musharraf began his reforms, spurring local and foreign investment.
The economy, which averaged around 7 percent annual growth in the five years to June 2007, is slowing and inflation is rising. Foreign investment and the farm sector, two important drivers of Pakistan's economic success story, have also moved down a gear.
The street is also getting angry.
For many Pakistanis, the boom has been mainly a spectator sport. They can see the new shopping malls but cannot afford to buy anything there. About a quarter of them still live in poverty, earning around 1,000 rupees ($16) a month, though the proportion has been falling, according to 2006 government data.
A few blocks away from the Porsche dealership, men and women queue in vain for hours to buy a bag of flour at a government store. Power blackouts make the winter bleaker still.
"I have been coming here for a month and, look, my hands are empty," said Taj Fareed, showing his palms as he stood near a crowd jostling at the door of a government store to buy flour.
So if these Pakistanis find their voice in elections scheduled for February 18, will there be changes in store for broad economic policy and the rich crust of Pakistan society?
The answer from businessmen, political analysts and economists seems to be a unanimous but rather hopeful "no."
"Whoever comes in next, I can assure you that they will follow the same policies," said Javed Faruqi, leaning back in his chair in the high-rise executive suite of Samaa, one of several new TV channels born out of a surge in advertising spending.
Samaa occupies the same tower as business channel CNBC Pakistan, a Middle East-backed franchise launched in late 2005.
"I don't see it going into reverse but there may be a struggle with the forces who do want it to go into reverse," admits Tahir Ikram, programming director for CNBC Pakistan.
Islamist parties, and their campaigns against Western decadence and corruption, appeal strongly to the poor, but recent polling suggests the mainstream parties will dominate the next government, assuming the February 18 elections are free and fair.
Bhutto's party, Pakistan's biggest, has been campaigning under the slogan "Food, Shelter, Clothing" and still plans to contest the elections, but political analysts do not expect it to usher in a state-driven economy if it wins power.
"The overall direction of the Pakistan economy would be the same," said political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi.
(Editing by Megan Goldin)

The History-on-Neva

2007-12-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

The new headquarters of Russia's Constitutional Court is seen in St. Petersburg, December 23, 2007. The renovated classical 18th-century building overlooks the Neva River where the Senate and the Holy Synod, two important institutions under the tsars, were located until the 1917 revolution. President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia's Constitutional Court on Sunday to complete its move to St Petersburg from Moscow by May, saying it would help his home town regain its former imperial glory.REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk (RUSSIA)

A monument to Peter The Great, foreground left, is seen next to the new Russian Constitutional Court headquarters, the 18th century neoclassical Senate and Synod buildings complex, in St. Petersburg

Jerry No Longer Fear Glaring Tom

2007-12-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

Japan

Scientists at Tokyo University say they were able to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats — showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.
"Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said research team leader Ko Kobayakawa.
In his experiment, the genetically altered mice approached cats, even snuggled up to them and played with them. Kobayakawa said he chose domesticated cats that were docile and thus less likely to pounce.

South Korea

This picture taken through a special filter in a dark room shows, a cat, left, possessing a red fluorescent protein that makes the animal glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays, appearing next to a normal cloned cat, right, at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, south of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007. South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said

The development means other genes can also be inserted in the course of cloning, paving the way for producing lab cats with genetic diseases, including those of humans, to help develop new treatments, the ministry said.

Ancestor of Whales

2007-12-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Reuters, AP

This undated handout artist rendering provided by Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) shows The 48 million year old ungulate Indohyus from India. Indohyus is a close relative of whales, and the structure of its bones and chemistry of its teeth indicate that it spent much time in water. In this reconstruction, it is seen diving in a stream, much like the modern African Mousedeer does when in danger

What might be the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers or an overgrown long-legged rat, fossils indicate.
The creature is called Indohyus, and recently unearthed fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises.
For years, the hippo has been the leading candidate for the closest land relative because of its similar DNA and whale-like features. So some scientists were skeptical of the new hypothesis by an Ohio anatomy professor whose work was being published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Thewissen, who earlier published papers on fossils of what he called the first amphibious whale and the skeleton of the oldest known whale, studied hundreds of Indohyus bones unearthed from mudstone in the Kashmir region of India. From that cache of bones he created a composite skeleton of a 48 million-year-old creature.

The key finding connecting Indohyus to the whale is its thickened ear bone, something only seen in cetaceans. An examination of its teeth showed that the land-dwelling creature spent lots of time in the water and may have fed there, like hippos and whales. Also, the specific positioning and shape of certain molars connects Indohyus to the earliest whales, which are about 50 million years old, Thewissen said.

India and Pakistan were the general region where early whales lived. That matches with the Indohyus but not the early African hippos, Thewissen said. While modern-day cetaceans are known to be smart, early whales and Indohyus had small brains, the researcher said.

Hans Thewissen's whale origins research

Bush signs bill boosting fuel standards

2007-12-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Dec 19th, By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer

President Bush signed into law Wednesday legislation that will bring more fuel-efficient vehicles into auto showrooms and require wider use of ethanol, calling it "a major step" toward energy independence and easing global warming.
The legislation signed by Bush at a ceremony at the Energy Department requires automakers to increase fuel efficiency by 40 percent to an industry average 35 miles per gallon by 2020. It also ramps up production of ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.

Bush was flanked by Democrat and Republican members of Congress who had ushered the legislation through.
The House passed the energy bill Tuesday by a 314-100 vote after the Senate cleared it last week following lengthy negotiations and sometimes testy confrontations. Bush had vowed to veto the original legislation passed by the House because it included $21 billion in taxes.
The tax provisions were dropped to get the bill approved.
Congress delivered the legislation to the White House late Tuesday in a gas-hybrid sedan.

Bush noted that earlier this year he had proposed a plan to cut gasoline use by 20 percent over the next 10 years. But the president has long opposed arbitrary numerical standards for vehicle fuel economy.
The legislation increases the federal standard automakers must meet to an industry wide 35 mpg for passengers cars, SUVs and small trucks. The standard for cars today is 27.5 mpg and for trucks and SUVs 22.2 mpg.
It requires refineries to increase the use of ethanol from about 6 billion gallons a year this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022 and mandates that by then at least 21 billion gallons are to come from feedstocks other than corn.
Bush praised that provision which would spur the development of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks such as prairie grass and wood chips.
"We understand the hog growers are getting nervous. The price of corn is up," said the president.

Flanking Bush were Senate Majority Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California as well as Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a longtime protector of the auto industry. Dingell played a key role in working out a compromise on the vehicle fuel economy measure.

Democrats have hailed the legislation as a turn to a new direction in U.S. energy policy.
"I firmly believe this country needs to have a comprehensive energy strategy," said Bush before signing the bill. He referred to the need for more nuclear energy and domestic oil production — issues that the new energy bill ignores.
Instead, the bill focuses largely on conservation, calling for more energy efficiency in "light bulbs to light trucks" as Dingell observed during the House debate on the legislation.
"This is a choice between yesterday and tomorrow" on energy policy, Pelosi said Tuesday shortly before the House passed the bill, sending it to the White House.

The bill also calls for improved energy efficiency of appliances such as refrigerators, freezers and dishwashers, and a 70 percent increase in the efficiency of light bulbs. It also calls for energy efficiency improvements in federal buildings and construction of commercial buildings.
The new lighting standards alone are projected to lower consumers' annual electricity bills by $13 billion in 2020, remove the need for 60 mid-size power plants and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, by 100 million tons a year, said the advocacy group Alliance to Save Energy.

Democrats said the fuel economy requirements will save motorists $700 to $1,000 a year in fuel costs and reduce oil demand by 1.1 million barrels a day when the fuel-stingy vehicles are widely on the road.
The overall bill including more ethanol use and various efficiency requirements and incentives, will cut U.S. oil demand by 4 million barrels a day by 2030, more than twice the current daily imports from the volatile Persian Gulf, Democrats said.

The Snow Princess is the Ukraine PM

2007-12-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

Dec.18th, By MARIA DANILOVA & Olga Bondaruk Associated Press

Parliament elected the fiery Yulia Tymoshenko prime minister Tuesday by the narrowest possible margin, in a striking political comeback likely to strengthen Ukraine's ties to the West and aggravate tensions with Russia.
Now the big question is whether the 47-year-old heroine of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which split the country between those who favor close ties to Moscow and those who seek greater integration with Europe, can hang onto her job.
Tuesday marked the second time Tymoshenko has won the prime minister's post: her first stint ended after just seven months, when she was fired by her Orange Revolution partner Viktor Yushchenko.
Speaking shortly before the vote, Tymoshenko said it was critical that the two parties put their differences aside.
"Today's vote is a moment of truth for the democratic coalition," she told parliament.
Moscow openly endorsed the Orange Revolution's major foe, Viktor Yanukovych, in the 2004 presidential contest — and the Kremlin has bitterly denounced the results as part of an effort by the West to weaken and surround Russia.
But Moscow reacted with soft words Tuesday, welcoming the prospect of a Cabinet taking shape in Ukraine.
Tymoshenko outraged the Kremlin in April, when the U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs published an article in which she urged Western nations to oppose what she called Moscow's effort to restore control of its "lost empire."
More recently, she vowed to get rid of a company, half-owned by Russia's state-owned Gazprom, that acts as a middleman in Russian natural gas sales to Ukraine. She has called the sales arrangement "corrupt."
"There cannot be any mediators on the gas market," she said Tuesday.
Tymoshenko received 226 votes — the minimum required for confirmation by the 450-member parliament — from deputies in her bloc and Yushchenko's party.
Tymoshenko took the oath of office clad in a dazzling white dress and wearing her signature coif — her blond hair braided and curled in a halo.
"I congratulate everybody who voted for the democratic forces, and those who did not — we will make sure that we are their team too," Tymoshenko said, with a triumphant smile. "What we have to do now is show society high-quality results."
But the narrow vote was an ominous sign of how difficult it will be for the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko coalition to govern.
The Party of Regions, led by the Orange Revolution's old adversary, former Prime Minister Yanukovych, is expected to challenge Tymoshenko and Yushchenko's allies in parliament.
Yanukovych demonstrated his skill at parliamentary politics last year by wooing his opponents in the legislature to join in a coalition with the Party of Regions.
Tymoshenko and Yushchenko have a history of tensions. Both have shown interest in running in the 2010 presidential elections.
Viktor Luhovyk, a political analyst with the Dragon Capital investment house, said that while the Orange leaders have agreed to share power for now, their partnership is unstable.
"There can be no guarantee the promises made today will be kept in a year from now," he said.
Party of Regions lawmaker Hanna Herman predicted the coalition would quickly fall apart, saying "the earlier they come, the earlier they'll leave."
Tymoshenko was one of the most energetic and recognizable figures during the Orange Revolution, the 2004 mass street protests that led to Yushchenko's election as president.
Demonstrations broke out after Yanukovych was declared the winner of an election that a court later ruled had been fraudulent. The Supreme Court annulled the vote, and Yushchenko won a rerun.
Yushchenko struggled to rule the country, unable to form a stable alliance with Tymoshenko, while Yanukovych refused to give up and returned as prime minister in 2006.
Yushchenko this year accused Yanukovych of trying to usurp power and called early elections. In September's parliamentary vote, his supporters and those of Tymoshenko won a narrow majority of seats. Weeks later they agreed to form a coalition.
Tuesday's vote was a laborious process in which each lawmaker was called to raise his hand and voice support or opposition to Tymoshenko.
The process was adopted following charges by Tymoshenko's supporters that last week's vote — in which she got only 225 votes, one short of victory — was sabotaged when someone tampered with parliament's vote-tallying machine.
U.S. Ambassador William Taylor Tuesday called Tymoshenko's election a vote for reform.
"It's great to have a prime minister that we can now deal with, and we hope that this is the first step toward forming a reform-minded government," he said. "We hope there will be a stable government."
Yushchenko has consistently advocated moving this nation of 47 million closer to the West, pushing for quick membership in NATO and the European Union.