China: 4 more rare bird flu cases, new steps taken

BEIJING (AP) ? China reported Tuesday that four more people in one province have been seriously sickened by a bird flu virus new to humans, as cities along the eastern seaboard stepped up public health measures to guard against the disease, which has already caused two deaths.

The health bureau of eastern Jiangsu province said three women and a retired man from different cities in the province were all critically ill with the H7N9 virus, a diagnosis confirmed by the provincial disease prevention center. The cases are the second batch to be confirmed after three in Anhui province and nearby Shanghai on Sunday.

The H7N9 bird flu virus has previously not been a problem in humans. That compares to the more virulent H5N1 strain, which began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003 and has since killed 360 people worldwide, mostly after close contact with infected birds.

The reports of the new cases suggest that authorities are taking a closer look at severe flu cases after identifying the first known infections on Sunday.

"When you don't look, you don't find them, but when you look, you'll find," said Dr. Ray Yip, a public health expert who heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in China.

"A lot of people get severe respiratory conditions, pneumonias, so you usually don't test them. Now all of a sudden you get this new reported strain of flu and so people are going to submit more samples to test, (so) you're more likely to see more cases," Yip said.

All of the new patients have been sick since about March 19, when they had fevers, coughs and other flu-like symptoms, the Jiangsu health bureau said in a statement. Their conditions worsened over periods of time ranging from a week to 11 days and they were transferred to intensive care units in the provincial capital, Nanjing.

Based on the statement, only one of the patients appeared to have had daily contact with birds ? a 45-year-old woman who was described as a poultry butcher. The four cases did not appear to be connected, and other people who have had close contact with the patients have not reported having fevers or respiratory problems, it said.

The provincial health bureau said it was strengthening measures to monitor suspicious cases and urged the public to stay calm, joining Beijing and China's financial capital, Shanghai, in rolling out new steps to respond to the virus.

The three earlier cases reported Sunday included two men who died in Shanghai, resulting in the city activating an emergency plan that calls for heightened monitoring of suspicious flu cases. Under the plan, schools, hospitals and retirement facilities are to be on alert for fevers, and administrators are to report to health authorities if there are more than five cases of flu in a week.

Cases of severe pneumonia with unclear causes are to be reported daily by hospitals to health bureaus, up from the weekly norm. The plan also calls for stronger monitoring of people who work at poultry farms or are exposed to birds.

"The health bureau will take effective and powerful measures to prevent and control the disease, to make sure the flu epidemic is effectively guarded against and to safeguard the health of the city's residents," said Xu Jianguang, head of the Shanghai Health Bureau.

Health officials said this week there was no evidence that any of the three earlier cases, who were infected over the past two months, had contracted the disease from each other, and no sign of infections in the 88 people who had closest contact with them.

Health authorities in Beijing also upped the capital's state of readiness, ordering hospitals to monitor for cases of flu and pneumonia without clear causes, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The announcements, which lacked many details, show that the government has become mildly more transparent in handling health crises than it was a decade ago during the SARS pneumonia epidemic. Then, as rumors circulated for weeks of an outbreak of an unidentified disease in southern Guangdong province, government silence contributed to the spread of the virus to many parts of China and to two dozen other countries.

Scientists are closely monitoring these viruses for fear they could mutate into a strain that easily spreads among people, but there's no evidence of that occurring.

___

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting in Shanghai contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-4-more-rare-bird-flu-cases-steps-133557850.html

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FTC reveals $50,000 Robocall Challenge winners, alarms Rachel from card services (video)

The FTC has managed to find two non-violent solutions to its Robocall Challenge, aimed at blocking auto-dialing telemarketers, thanks to winners Serdar Danis and Aaron Foss. The pair, who will receive $25,000 each, came up with variations on a system that would pre-screen calls before ringing your phone while allowing the FTC to blacklist known scammers at the same time. Google took a non-cash prize in a separate category with a scheme that would foil caller-ID spoofing often used by boiler rooms like the notorious "Rachel from card services" outfit, which has over a hundred numeric aliases. The FTC receives a whopping 200,000 complaints per month about the nuisance and screened nearly 800 submissions (see the More Coverage link), many of which show a certain, shall we say, passion for the topic. Check winner Foss' video submission after the break.

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Obama introduces $100 million brain mapping initiative

President Barack Obama exits the East Room following his BRAIN initiative unveiling. (Charles Dharapak/AP)

UPDATED 11:50 a.m. ET

President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), a $100 million project aimed to increase understanding of the human brain.

The president, who publicly unveiled the program in the White House East Room, asked observers to imagine technology improving the lives of billions of people by reversing the effects of Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and traumatic brain injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder for military veterans.

"There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked" within the human brain, Obama said. And the BRAIN Initiative "will change that."

The initiative?a subject the president first referenced during his State of the Union address in January?would support technologies that map the brain in order to gain greater understanding of a variety of diseases in the hopes of leading to new cures, prevention and treatment, as well as the links between the brain and behavior.

But the president on Tuesday also promoted his program as an economic effort.

"Every dollar we spent to map the human genome has returned $140 to our economy," Obama said.

The president also argued that efforts such as the BRAIN Initiative keep America ahead in innovation and help produce new discoveries that might otherwise be made in countries such as "China, India or Germany."

"Ideas are what power our economy," he said. "We do innovations better than anyone else."

The $100 million in government funds being spent on the program will be included in Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget to be released April 10. The funding breakdown includes: $40 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH); $50 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is part of the Department of Defense; and $20 million from the National Science Foundation.

Support will also be provided by private sector foundations.

Some critics have suggested that the cost of the program is too low when compared to other research initiatives, but in a phone call with reporters following the president's unveiling, Francis Collins, NIH director, said the amount is "substantial ... considering this is the first year" of the project.

It's a "pretty good start for getting this project off the ground," Collins said.

Still others, notably some Republicans and fiscal conservatives, suggested Tuesday that the country needs to re-evaluate federal funds already being spent on this subject and took issue with the price.

?Mapping the human brain is exactly the type of research we should be funding, by reprioritizing the $250 million we currently spend on political and social science research into expanded medical research, including the expedited mapping of the human brain," Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said in a statement. "It's great science."

Chris Moody contributed to this story

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-introduce-brain-mapping-initiative-132407332--politics.html

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Suit says Huffington Post founder trashed NYC loft

NEW YORK (AP) ? A lawsuit accuses Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington of trashing a New York City loft that she leased from a documentary filmmaker.

Huffington calls the allegations false.

Filmmaker Eric Steel filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday. It asks for $275,000 in damages.

The lawsuit says cabinets were broken and "the walls of the apartment were gouged, stained and otherwise damaged" during the two years Huffington rented the apartment.

Under the terms of the lease agreement, Steel says Huffington was told she could not use the loft for business or parties.

The apartment was designed by Steel's stepfather, modernist architect Charles Gwathmey.

In a statement, Huffington says Steel "happily" renewed the lease twice and visited the apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea section. She says he has refused to return her $93,000 deposit.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suit-says-huffington-post-founder-trashed-nyc-loft-131510922.html

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DNA: How to unravel the tangle

Monday, April 1, 2013

A research coordinated by the scientists at SISSA of Trieste has now developed and studied a numeric model of the chromosome that supports the experimental data and provides a hypothesis on the bundle's function.

A chromosome spends most of its life "diluted" in the nuclear cytoplasm. To the untrained eye it may look like a randomly entangled thread, yet biologists claim the opposite: although a chaotic component does exist in the bundle, experimental measurements have identified regions that tend to contain specific genes. Thanks to such measurements, researchers have obtained maps of the chromosome in its diluted form, the one in which the DNA transcription processes occur.

Cristian Micheletti, a physicist of SISSA, the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste, has coordinated an international research team - in which Marco Di Stefano and Angelo Rosa stand out - that has devised an ingenious method which, on one hand, has allowed to verify the already known experimental measures and, on the other, to find data in support of a theory which explains why the DNA bundle is arranged in regions. "Employing the vast amount of publicly available data on gene expression, we have identified families of genes co-regulated within a chromosome" explains Micheletti. The co-regulated genes codify "in accord", but how such synchronization occurs is a mystery, since often the genes are located very far from one another on the DNA filament. "Two main hypotheses may be considered: either 'messengers' exist that travel back and forth from one gene to the other and coordinate the activity, or the DNA filament folding up inside the tangle brings the genes belonging to the same family physically close."

On the basis of the second assumption Micheletti and his colleagues have used the computer to induce the DNA numeric model to bring the co-regulated genes closer. "The outcome of the simulation has provided a map of chromosome arrangement that is very close to the one obtained through experimentation," explains Micheletti. "Besides, the model has successfully brought closer the genes belonging to the same family, as we had asked for, in 80% of cases, that is without too much effort, which corroborates the validity of the hypothesis and the effectiveness of the simulation."

The article was chosen by PLOS Computational Biologyjournal as the cover story for the March issue.

###

International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA): http://www.sissa.it

Thanks to International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127533/DNA__How_to_unravel_the_tangle

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'Fast & Furious 7' May Be In The Works Soon As Vin Diesel Teases Plans

Vin Diesel stars in the "Fast & Furious" movies.

With months until the release of "Fast & Furious 6," Universal may already have plans for a seventh film in the ongoing franchise.

"Fast Six" star Vin Diesel posted a photo of himself to Facebook on Saturday with a caption reading, "There was an early screening in LA this week of 'Fast 6.' The crowd reaction was surreal... and their demand for the continuation was powerful."

Diesel teased plans for an upcoming "Fast & Furious 7" by adding, "It's remarkable to think I first embodied this character in 1999... and the evolution continues... Filming begins this summer in LA, where it all started... talk about a studio in sync with the audience."

"Fast Six" hits theaters on May 24.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/31/fast-and-furious-7-vin-diesel_n_2989412.html

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Palestinian leader clamps down on critics

HUSSAN, West Bank (AP) ? Mahmoud Abbas' government in the West Bank is getting tougher with critics, interrogating, prosecuting and even jailing several journalists and bloggers in recent months for allegedly "defaming" the Western-backed Palestinian leader.

Rights activists say the legal hassles are meant to silence dissent and that the campaign is intensifying despite promises to the contrary by Abbas. Targets of the crackdown include supporters of Abbas' political rival ? the Islamic militant Hamas ? and political independents who have written about alleged nepotism and abuse of power in Abbas' Palestinian Authority.

Abbas' aides insist the Palestinian leader opposes any curb on expression. They blame overzealous prosecutors and security officials, but government critics say Abbas could easily halt the clampdown.

"It's a good cop, bad cop routine. The bad cops are the security services, and the good cop is the benevolent president," said Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian Authority insider. They want to send a chilling message, she said, "and it works."

Abbas' foreign backers, who view him as key to delivering any future peace deal with Israel and maintaining quiet in the West Bank, have said little in public about the issue. Instead, during a visit to the West Bank in late March, President Barack Obama showered Abbas and his security forces with praise for their efforts to prevent militant attacks on Israel.

The new tactic of taking journalists and bloggers to court has invited speculation about timing and motive.

Some say Abbas and his inner circle are lashing out at critics because they feel increasingly vulnerable politically. Others suggest the 78-year-old Abbas is either an old-school Arab politician not used to criticism or an out-of-touch leader getting bad advice.

"It's a weak authority and that's why it's doing this," said Shahwan Jabareen, who heads the human rights group Al-Haq. "They fear the criticism is growing ? that they will lose the (Palestinian) authority ? and they are trying to keep it by acting like this."

Such insecurities are rooted in the political split of 2007, when Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Abbas.

Since then, Hamas has been going after sympathizers of Abbas' Fatah movement in Gaza, while Abbas' security forces have tried to dismantle the Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank to prevent a similar takeover there.

Reconciliation efforts have failed, and both sides are entrenched in their respective territories.

The split has prevented new elections, meaning Abbas has already overstayed his term as president by four years, weakening his claim to lead. His troubles are compounded by a cash crisis in his foreign aid-dependent government and lack of progress toward his main objective of negotiating terms of a Palestinian state with Israel.

There have been waves of crackdowns on political rivals, particularly Hamas, since the Palestinian Authority was established two decades ago, as part of interim peace deals with Israel.

However, Palestinian journalists say they are increasingly being targeted.

"I think it is getting worse, although we are getting very rosy promises" from the president's office, said Nabhan Khraishi, a spokesman for the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate, a union with hundreds of members.

Ahead of Obama's March 21 meeting with Abbas, 18 Palestinian journalists were told that they would not be allowed to enter the president's compound to cover the event. Veteran reporters were among those denied accreditation apparently for being perceived as politically hostile to the Palestinian Authority.

Khraishi said that in talks with the journalists' union, political advisers and security officials blamed each other for banning an unprecedented number of journalists from covering Obama.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, an Abbas adviser who dealt with the issue, did not return phone messages Sunday.

Two recent court rulings have drawn more attention to the clampdown on free speech.

On Thursday, an appeals court in the West Bank upheld a one-year prison term for Mamdooh Hamamreh for "defaming" Abbas. Hamamreh allegedly posted a photo montage on his Facebook page in September 2010 that showed Abbas next to that of a TV villain. A caption read: "They're alike in all ways." The villain in the TV drama collaborated with French colonial rule in Syria.

Hamamreh, a Hamas activist in his college years, denies having posted the photos. He said he spent 53 days in interrogation, missing the birth of his son and was banned from seeing his lawyer for the first 20 days.

After his release on bail, his trial and an appeal dragged on for more than two years. Abbas pardoned him hours after the appeals court decision Thursday, and Hamamreh was released later that day.

Nimer Hamad, an Abbas adviser, said the Palestinian leader hadn't pushed for Hamamreh to be prosecuted. "This young man did not deserve such a sentence," Hamad said. "The freedom and right of expression is guaranteed to all people and the president is keen on protecting freedom of expression."

Hamamreh said he believes the main point was to deter him and others from speaking out, and that he will stay clear of any potential trouble in his work.

"I now censor myself regarding anything I say," the 29-year-old said Saturday, surrounded by well-wishers at his family home in the village of Hussan, near Bethlehem. "It's the one thing they (the authorities) succeeded in doing, which is intimidation."

On the same day as Hamamreh's verdict, another court in the northern town of Salfit sentenced a blogger, Anas Ismail, to six months for "liking" three Facebook posts critical of the Ministry of Telecommunications and the minister himself.

Ismail, 30, said he was jailed for 17 days of interrogation in February and convicted and sentenced Thursday for "insulting a minister." The judge allowed him to appeal immediately, meaning he is staying out of prison for now.

He later posted on his Facebook page: "For a 'tag,' you get one year. For a 'like,' you get six months, for a 'share' you get a suspended sentence. A comment invites the biggest disaster."

A Palestinian advocacy group, MADA, said it counted 238 violations of the rights of Palestinian journalists last year, including detentions, travel bans and the closing of media outlets. MADA said that of those, 70 percent, or 164, were committed by Israel and the rest in equal measure by the two rival Palestinian governments.

Last year, 12 journalists were detained by Palestinian security forces, up from five in 2011, while 13 were summoned for questioning, the group said. Overall, there was a drop in Palestinian and a rise in Israeli violations, the group said.

Jihad Harb, an independent Palestinian commentator, said dragging journalists to court for defaming the president and the government is a relatively new tactic.

Harb himself was summoned to the prosecutor's office in Ramallah in November, three months after writing about he claimed was nepotism in filling senior public service positions. Harb said he is still waiting to hear how the case against him, on possible defamation charges, will proceed.

"The biggest loser is the president, Mahmoud Abbas, and his image in the world," said Harb.

Another journalist, Yousef Shayeb, said he was jailed for interrogation for eight days, after writing in a Jordanian newspaper last year about alleged abuse of power in the PLO embassy in Paris. He said he faces a civil suit by the Palestinian foreign minister and two top embassy officials who have dismissed Shayeb's allegations as baseless.

Buttu, a former legal adviser in the Palestinian Authority, said it's unclear to what extent Abbas is involved in the clampdown or is being pushed by those around him.

"Part of it is that they fear they have lost their grip on Palestinian society," she said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/palestinian-leader-clamps-down-critics-183110334.html

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