It's by no means a phone, so adjust your expectations accordingly. Samsung's Android-infused Galaxy NX camera, revealed last week at the company's London bonanza, has just reared its LTE-capable body at the FCC. Sporting model number EK-GN120, the portable mirrorless camera offers up no real surprises -- it has all the internal trimmings Samsung already officially announced, like WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and radios for WCDMA (850/1900MHz) and LTE (Band 5). Nothing in the filing pegs this as a US release, so the usual "(insert carrier)-friendly bands" won't apply here. In fact, its mix of radios clearly mark this Galaxy NX for a South Korean debut. Just when that'll be, we still don't know. It's currently slated for a vague summer release in the UK. On the plus side, this means you still have plenty of time to save up for what should be a hefty price tag.
Tropical?storm?Cosme?is strengthening off the coast of Mexico, and the U.S. National Hurricane Center says tropical storm Cosme will probably become a hurricane midday Tuesday.
By Associated Press / June 24, 2013
NOAA has projected the likely path of tropical storm Cosme as it continues up the coast of Mexico. The orange circle indicates the tropical storm's position at 2 p.m. on Monday. Black circles with an S indicate tropical storms, with wind speeds between 39-73 mph. Black circles with an H indicate hurricane-force winds, with speeds between 74-110 mph.
Courtesy of NOAA
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Tropical?Storm?Cosme?is strengthening in Pacific waters southwest of the Mexican mainland and forecasters say it's expected to become a hurricane within a day.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
The?storm's?maximum sustained winds Monday afternoon have risen to 60 mph (95 kph). The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says more strengthening is expected in the coming 48 hours with?Cosme?expected to become a hurricane sometime Tuesday.
Cosme?is centered about 335 miles (535 kilometers) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, and is moving northwest at 14 mph (22 kph).
No coastal watches or warnings are in effect.
The hurricane center says ocean swells generated by the?storm?will begin affecting a swath of the Pacific coast from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes later Monday night with life-threatening surf and rip currents possible.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Automatic federal spending cuts that kicked in March 1 have seriously hurt city and local governments, hampering their ability to deliver essential services to citizens, Mayor Michael Nutter said Tuesday in a blunt message to Washington.
The federal sequester has transferred costs onto local governments, said Nutter, the immediate past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In Philadelphia, he said, deep cuts to a program that helps homeowners avert foreclosure will potentially result in more blight, while the school district is facing an existential budget crisis that has forced it to lay off 3,800 employees and eliminate sports, music, art and all after-school programs.
"This is not a sustainable model for cities. The federal government cannot balance its budget on the backs of cities and local governments," Nutter said.
The second-term Democrat spoke at a meeting of the State Budget Crisis Task Force at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The event was designed to bring attention to the eroding financial condition of state governments, but Nutter spoke on behalf of cities.
"We've already been to the fiscal cliff. We've made our cuts. We've cut back on services and we've raised people's taxes at the same time," Nutter said. "We're now trying to come back. Please don't stand in the way."
A top Treasury Department official said the federal government, after running trillion-dollar deficits as it tried to stabilize financial markets and stimulate the economy, has to begin getting its own fiscal house in order.
Having sent more than $280 billion to state and local governments between 2009 and 2012, largely to be spent on education, infrastructure and health care, "we need to begin pulling back the federal safety net," said Mary John Miller, Treasury's undersecretary for domestic finance, who was taking part in a panel discussion.
"As we see unemployment coming down, as we see the housing market beginning to recover, as we see the economy growing ... we see that we need to now turn our attention to reducing our federal deficits," she said.
Former President Bill Clinton was due to give the keynote address later Tuesday.
The nonpartisan State Budget Crisis Task Force ? led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch ? issued a report last year that said U.S. states are grappling with long-term budget problems that threaten their ability to pay for basic services such as law enforcement, local schools and transportation. The group cites rising Medicaid and pension costs, reduced federal aid and eroding tax revenues as a few of the challenges facing the states.
Addiction relapse might be thwarted by turning off brain triggerPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF study points to potential strategy for erasing memory of addiction
A new study by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco offers encouraging findings that researchers hope may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions.
In the study, conducted in rats, the UCSF researchers were able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to the memories that cause cravings for alcohol, thus preventing the animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse.
"One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by the memory by certain cues - like going into a bar, or the smell or taste of alcohol," said lead author Segev Barak, PhD, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of co-senior author Dorit Ron, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology.
"We learned that when rats were exposed to the smell or taste of alcohol there was a small window of opportunity to target the area of the brain that reconsolidates the memory of the craving for alcohol and to weaken or even erase the memory, and thus the craving" he said.
The study, also supervised by co-senior author Patricia H. Janak, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology, will be published online on June 23, 2013 in Nature Neuroscience.
In the first phase of the study, rats had the choice to freely drink water or alcohol over the course of seven weeks, and during this time developed a high preference for alcohol. In the next phase, they had the opportunity to access alcohol for one hour a day, which they learned to do by pressing a lever. They were then put through a 10-day period of abstinence from alcohol.
Following this period, the animals were exposed for 5 minutes to just the smell and taste of alcohol, which cued them to remember how much they liked drinking it. The researchers then scanned the animals' brains, and identified the neural mechanism responsible for the reactivation of the memory of the alcohol - a molecular pathway mediated by an enzyme known as mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1).
They found that just a small drop of alcohol presented to the rats turned on the mTORC1 pathway specifically in a select region of the amygdala, a structure linked to emotional reactions and withdrawal from alcohol, and cortical regions involved in memory processing.
They further showed that once mTORC1 was activated, the alcohol-memory stabilized (reconsolidated) and the rats relapsed on the following days, meaning in this case, that they started again to push the lever to dispense more alcohol.
"The smell and taste of alcohol were such strong cues that we could target the memory specifically without impacting other memories, such as a craving for sugar," said Barak, who added that the Ron research group has been doing brain studies for many years and has never seen such a robust and specific activation in the brain.
In the next part of the study, the researchers set out to see if they could prevent the reconsolidation of the memory of alcohol by inhibiting mTORC1, thus preventing relapse. When mTORC1 was inactivated using a drug called rapamycin, administered immediately after the exposure to the cue (smell, taste), there was no relapse to alcohol-seeking the next day. Strikingly, drinking remained suppressed for up to 14 days, the end point of the study. These results suggest that rapamycin erased the memory of alcohol for a long period, said Ron.
The authors said the study is an important first step, but that more research is needed to determine how mTORC1 contributes to alcohol memory reconsolidation and whether turning off mTORC1 with rapamycin would prevent relapse for more than two weeks.
The authors also said it would be interesting to test if rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug currently used to prevent organ rejection after transplantation, or other mTORC1 inhibitors that are currently being developed in pharmaceutical companies, would prevent relapse in human alcoholics.
"One of the main problems in alcohol abuse disorders is relapse, and current treatment options are very limited." Barak said. "Even after detoxification and a period of rehabilitation, 70 to 80 percent of patients will relapse in the first several years. It is really thrilling that we were able to completely erase the memory of alcohol and prevent relapse in these animals. This could be a revolution in treatment approaches for addiction, in terms of erasing unwanted memories and thereby manipulating the brain triggers that are so problematic for people with addictions."
###
The other co-authors of the paper are Feng Liu, PhD, Sami Ben Hamida, PhD, Quinn V. Yowell BS, Jeremie Neasta, PhD, and Viktor Kharazia, PhD, all of the Gallo Center and UCSF Department of Neurology.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and funds from the State of California for Medical Research on Alcohol and Substance Abuse administered through UC San Francisco.
The UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center is one of the world's preeminent academic centers for the study of the biological basis of alcohol and substance use disorders. Gallo Center discoveries of potential molecular targets for the development of therapeutic medications are extended through preclinical and proof-of-concept clinical studies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Addiction relapse might be thwarted by turning off brain triggerPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF study points to potential strategy for erasing memory of addiction
A new study by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco offers encouraging findings that researchers hope may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions.
In the study, conducted in rats, the UCSF researchers were able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to the memories that cause cravings for alcohol, thus preventing the animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse.
"One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by the memory by certain cues - like going into a bar, or the smell or taste of alcohol," said lead author Segev Barak, PhD, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of co-senior author Dorit Ron, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology.
"We learned that when rats were exposed to the smell or taste of alcohol there was a small window of opportunity to target the area of the brain that reconsolidates the memory of the craving for alcohol and to weaken or even erase the memory, and thus the craving" he said.
The study, also supervised by co-senior author Patricia H. Janak, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology, will be published online on June 23, 2013 in Nature Neuroscience.
In the first phase of the study, rats had the choice to freely drink water or alcohol over the course of seven weeks, and during this time developed a high preference for alcohol. In the next phase, they had the opportunity to access alcohol for one hour a day, which they learned to do by pressing a lever. They were then put through a 10-day period of abstinence from alcohol.
Following this period, the animals were exposed for 5 minutes to just the smell and taste of alcohol, which cued them to remember how much they liked drinking it. The researchers then scanned the animals' brains, and identified the neural mechanism responsible for the reactivation of the memory of the alcohol - a molecular pathway mediated by an enzyme known as mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1).
They found that just a small drop of alcohol presented to the rats turned on the mTORC1 pathway specifically in a select region of the amygdala, a structure linked to emotional reactions and withdrawal from alcohol, and cortical regions involved in memory processing.
They further showed that once mTORC1 was activated, the alcohol-memory stabilized (reconsolidated) and the rats relapsed on the following days, meaning in this case, that they started again to push the lever to dispense more alcohol.
"The smell and taste of alcohol were such strong cues that we could target the memory specifically without impacting other memories, such as a craving for sugar," said Barak, who added that the Ron research group has been doing brain studies for many years and has never seen such a robust and specific activation in the brain.
In the next part of the study, the researchers set out to see if they could prevent the reconsolidation of the memory of alcohol by inhibiting mTORC1, thus preventing relapse. When mTORC1 was inactivated using a drug called rapamycin, administered immediately after the exposure to the cue (smell, taste), there was no relapse to alcohol-seeking the next day. Strikingly, drinking remained suppressed for up to 14 days, the end point of the study. These results suggest that rapamycin erased the memory of alcohol for a long period, said Ron.
The authors said the study is an important first step, but that more research is needed to determine how mTORC1 contributes to alcohol memory reconsolidation and whether turning off mTORC1 with rapamycin would prevent relapse for more than two weeks.
The authors also said it would be interesting to test if rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug currently used to prevent organ rejection after transplantation, or other mTORC1 inhibitors that are currently being developed in pharmaceutical companies, would prevent relapse in human alcoholics.
"One of the main problems in alcohol abuse disorders is relapse, and current treatment options are very limited." Barak said. "Even after detoxification and a period of rehabilitation, 70 to 80 percent of patients will relapse in the first several years. It is really thrilling that we were able to completely erase the memory of alcohol and prevent relapse in these animals. This could be a revolution in treatment approaches for addiction, in terms of erasing unwanted memories and thereby manipulating the brain triggers that are so problematic for people with addictions."
###
The other co-authors of the paper are Feng Liu, PhD, Sami Ben Hamida, PhD, Quinn V. Yowell BS, Jeremie Neasta, PhD, and Viktor Kharazia, PhD, all of the Gallo Center and UCSF Department of Neurology.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and funds from the State of California for Medical Research on Alcohol and Substance Abuse administered through UC San Francisco.
The UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center is one of the world's preeminent academic centers for the study of the biological basis of alcohol and substance use disorders. Gallo Center discoveries of potential molecular targets for the development of therapeutic medications are extended through preclinical and proof-of-concept clinical studies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
International software company, Axe Finance, has described Nigeria as Africa?s leading IT innovative country in the banking sector with modern infrastructure and a robust customer base.
In a chat with Vanguard? at a workshop organised for financial institutions in Lagos, Senior Manager, Axe Finance, Mr. Dhafer Berrachid, however, stressed that there was need to continue to improve on the infrastructure for global competitiveness.
He said: ?Nigeria is a leading country in the banking sector in Africa. The banks are very mature in terms of IT equipment and there is a strong will to continue to improve the infrastructure and the process for the international market.?
Berrachid explained that the workshop was to present his company?s integrated solution, which according to him, supports financial institutions all over the world through an innovative approach by automating their credit and risk management processes.
The IT expert said: ?Basically, we are in Nigeria to present our company, our partners, our solution and to have a testimonial and return on experience of our current customers.
?We have a lot of banks looking at our solutions and we want to bring everybody together to exchange views and have live reactions about the solution.?
He further explained that the solution was designed to help financial institutions improve their revenues, streamline and automate their processes and enable them to better assess the risk and improve efficiency of their operations.
He said: ?Axe Credit Portal is the solution to more effectively manage your credit life cycle, to optimise firm-wide credit and risk processes and to enable better informed credit origination and risk management decisions.?
International software company, Axe Finance, has described Nigeria as Africa?s leading IT innovative country in the banking sector with modern infrastructure and a robust customer base.
Speaking at a workshop organised for financial institutions in Lagos, Senior Manager, Axe Finance, Mr. Dhafer Berrachid, however, stressed that there was need to continue to improve on the infrastructure for global competitiveness.
He said: ?Nigeria is a leading country in the banking sector in Africa. The banks are very mature in terms of IT equipment and there is a strong will to continue to improve the infrastructure and the process for the international market.?
Berrachid explained that the workshop was to present his company?s integrated solution, which according to him, supports financial institutions all over the world through an innovative approach by automating their credit and risk management processes.
The IT expert said: ?Basically, we are in Nigeria to present our company, our partners, our solution and to have a testimonial and return on experience of our current customers.
?We have a lot of banks looking at our solutions and we want to bring everybody together to exchange views and have live reactions about the solution.?
He further explained that the solution was designed to help financial institutions improve their revenues, streamline and automate their processes and enable them to better assess the risk and improve efficiency of their operations.
He said: ?Axe Credit Portalis the solution to more effectively manage your credit life cycle, to optimise firm-wide credit and risk processes and to enable better informed credit origination and risk management decisions.?
Comments are moderated. Please keep them clean and brief.
* U.S. official sees good case for extradition under treaty
* U.S. hacked Chinese mobile phone companies -report
* Snowden sought representation from rights lawyers -sources (Adds details, background)
By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The United States said on Saturday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges.
Legal sources say Snowden, who is believed to be hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance activities to news media.
"If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" to bring Snowden back to America to face trial and expected Hong Kong to comply with its extradition treaty.
"We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of Snowden back to the United States," Donilon said.
He added that U.S. law enforcement officials were in a "conversation" with Hong Kong authorities about the issue.
A senior U.S. law enforcement source said extradition "can, of course, be a lengthy legal process" but expressed optimism that Snowden would be sent back to the United States.
The South China Morning Post reported that Snowden was not detained or in police protection - as reported elsewhere - and instead he was in a "safe place" somewhere in Hong Kong.
The paper also quoted Snowden offering new details about America's spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone companies and targeting China's top Tsinghua University.
"The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS (texting) data," Snowden was quoted by the newspaper as saying in a June 12 interview.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.
On Friday, the Guardian newspaper, citing documents shared by Snowden, said Britain's spy agency GCHQ had tapped fiber-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the NSA.
ESPIONAGE CHARGES
The United States charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, according to the June 14 criminal complaint made public on Friday.
The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
Scores of Americans have been sent back home from Hong Kong to face trial under the extradition treaty. But the process can take years, lawyers say, and Snowden's case could be particularly complex.
America's use of the Espionage Act against Snowden has fueled debate among legal experts about whether that could complicate his extradition, since the treaty includes an exception for political offenses and Hong Kong courts may choose to shield him from prosecution.
Snowden says he leaked the details of the classified U.S. surveillance to expose abusive and illegal programs that trampled on citizens' privacy rights.
President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.
Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law who studies national security issues, said there is no clear definition of what constitutes a political offense under the treaty.
"My intuition says it'll be easier for Snowden to argue espionage is a political offense than (the U.S. charge of) theft of government property," Vladeck said.
Should he return to the United States, Snowden would face trial in a federal court in Virginia that has a long track record of hearing cases related to national security and also to cyber crime.
In the past 20 years, the U.S. government has racked up remarkable success rates in winning convictions or guilty pleas from people brought before the federal court in Virginia who were accused of espionage or terrorism. Because of its speed, the court is considered a "rocket docket." (Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in Hong Kong, Diane Bartz in Washington and Nate Raymond in New York.; Writing by Phil Stewart.; Editing by Eric Beech and Christopher Wilson)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows smoke rises in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows smoke rises in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Syrian rebel firing his weapon in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian government forces stepped up their attack against rebel strongholds north of the capital Damascus on Saturday, while opposition fighters declared their own offensive in the country's largest city Aleppo.
Both sides intensified operations as an 11-nation group that includes the U.S., dubbed the Friends of Syria, began meeting in Qatar to discuss how to coordinate military and other aid to the rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on an extensive network of activists in Syria, said the shelling of the district of Qaboun has killed three children, including two from the same family, since Friday.
Activists reported heavy shelling on many fronts on districts north of Damascus, apparently an attempt to cut links between rebel-held districts that have served as launching pads for operations against the capital.
The Lebanese TV station Al-Mayadeen, which had a reporter embedded with Syrian government forces in the offensive, quoted a military official as saying that the operation aims to cut rebel supply lines, separate one group from another, and secure the northern entrances to the capital. The regime's forces have struggled for months to regain control of these suburbs.
The Observatory said the neighborhood was being attacked from several different sides, while the shelling has caused structural damage and started fires. Activists from Qaboun posted on Facebook that government forces had brought up new tanks to reinforce its positions outside the neighborhood, and the bombardment had brought buildings down.
The Observatory said rebels targeted a police academy in the nearby Barzeh area Saturday, pushing back against a government attempt to storm the neighborhood. One rebel was killed in overnight fighting, it said.
A recent declaration by the U.S. that it had conclusive evidence that President Bashar Assad's regime used chemical weapons on a small scale against opposition forces prompted Washington to authorize the arming of rebels, a major shift in policy. The decision also followed advances by the government forces aided by fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Rebels say they have already received new weapons from allied countries? but not the U.S. ? that they claim will help them to shift the balance of power on the ground. Experts and activists said the new weapons include anti-tank missiles and small quantities of anti-aircraft missiles.
It was not clear if any of the new weapons have made it to the Damascus area. A spokesman for one of the main groups fighting outside of Damascus, the al-Islam brigade, said his group had none of the new weapons. The unnamed spokesman spoke to The Associated Press through Skype.
He said government forces were shelling Barzeh from Qasioun mountain overlooking Damascus. Syria's main Western-backed opposition group said Thursday that 40,000 civilians in the two northern districts of Damascus are suffering from shortages of food and medical supplies.
Rebels and government also clashed in and around the northern city of Aleppo, where government forces announced an offensive earlier this month. Activists said troops clashed in the southern neighborhoods of Rashideen and Hamdaniya and in the western suburbs.
The Observatory said rebels pounded a military academy in the area, causing a fire in the compound. There were no immediate reports of casualties. In Rashideen, rebel forces have pushed government forces out from parts of the neighborhood, according to the local Aleppo Media Center network and posts on Facebook.
A statement by a coalition of rebel groups, posted on the Center's page, declared that the fighters are launching a new operation to seize control of the western neighborhoods of Aleppo. Amateur showed what appeared to be intense government shelling of villages in the area.
On Saturday, a dozen shells from Syrian forces landed in a northern Lebanese border town, some landing near homes, causing a panic among residents, the Lebanese news agency reported.
Syria's official news agency said government troops were targeting a group of infiltrators across the border. It gave no further details.
Rockets from Syria fall regularly into towns and villages near the border. On Friday, a rocket slammed into a suburb of Beirut, bringing the war closer to Lebanon's bustling capital, the second in less than a month. No one claimed responsibility for that attack, but rebels in Syria have vowed to retaliate against Hezbollah's Beirut strongholds for its increasingly active role assisting Assad.
Syria's 2-year civil war has killed nearly 93,000 people. It increasingly pits Sunni against Shiite Muslims and threatening the stability of Syria's neighbors.
HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.
In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."
Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: "The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden."
It was a blow to Obama's foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China. The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama.
The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned Western Hemisphere nations that Snowden "should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States," a State Department official said.
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely knew and approved of Snowden's flight to Russia and predicted "serious consequences" for a U.S.-Russian relationship already strained over Syria and human rights.
"Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States - whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden," Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN's "State of the Union" program. He also saw "the hand of Beijing" in Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave the Chinese territory despite the U.S. extradition request.
ECUADOR ROLE
Ecuador, which has been sheltering WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange at its London embassy for the past year, once again took center stage in an international diplomatic saga over U.S. data secrecy.
Ecuador's ambassador to Russia, Patricio Alberto Chavez Zavala, told reporters at a Moscow airport hotel he would hold talks with Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative.
Hours later, shortly after midnight (2000 GMT Sunday), the ambassador emerged from a business-class lounge near the hotel and refused to say whether he had met Snowden or make any other comment. Shortly before he appeared, a cart with three plates of salmon and a Starbucks bag were rolled into the lounge.
Snowden, who had worked at a U.S. National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, had been hiding in Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China in 1997, since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance programs to news media.
U.S. authorities had said on Saturday they were optimistic Hong Kong would cooperate over Snowden.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of federal government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
A source at Russian airline Aeroflot said on Sunday that Snowden was booked on a flight scheduled to depart for Havana on Monday at 2:05 p.m. (1005 GMT) from the same Moscow airport where the flight from Hong Kong arrived, Sheremetyevo.
The chief of Cuba's International Press Center, Gustavo Machin, said he had no such information though pro-government bloggers heaped praise on Snowden and condemned U.S. spying activity.
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
HONG KONG VIEW
In their statement announcing Snowden's departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.
The Obama administration has previously painted the United States as a victim of Chinese government computer hacking.
At a summit this month, Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by "cyber-enabled espionage" against the United States and to investigate the problem. Obama also met Putin in Northern Ireland last week.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden - considered a whistleblower by his supporters and a criminal or even a traitor by his critics - as the U.S. request for his arrest did not comply with the law.
However, a U.S. Justice Department official said at no point in discussions through Friday did Hong Kong raise issues about the sufficiency of the U.S. arrest request.
"In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling," the official said.
U.S. sources familiar with the issue said Washington had revoked Snowden's U.S. passport. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said revoking the passport of someone under a felony arrest warrant was routine and does not affect citizenship status.
"It's a shocker," Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University said. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
The issue has been a major problem for Obama, who has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that U.S. surveillance practices violate privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained that the measures have been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States.
The White House had no comment on Sunday's developments.
WikiLeaks said Snowden was accompanied by diplomats and that Harrison, a British legal researcher working for WikiLeaks, was "accompanying Mr Snowden in his passage to safety."
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for Assange, said in a statement.
"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."
WIKILEAKS CASE
Assange, an Australian, said last week he would not leave the sanctuary of Ecuador's London embassy even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
The latest drama coincides with the court-martial of Bradley Manning, a U.S. soldier accused of providing reams of classified documents to WikiLeaks, which Assange began releasing on the Internet in 2010, and, according to some critics, put national security and people's lives at risk.
A spokesman for WikiLeaks said the decision on Ecuador was made by Snowden and that "various governments were approached."
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about U.S. surveillance activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone firms and targeting of China's Tsinghua University.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Snowden needed to be brought back for trial. "He could have a lot, lot more that may really put people in jeopardy," she told CBS's "Face the Nation."
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
The head of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, said he did not know why it failed to prevent Snowden leaving Hawaii for Hong Kong with the secrets.
"We are now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators, what they're doing, what they're taking, a two-man rule," he told ABC's "This Week." "We've changed the passwords. But at the end of the day, we have to trust that our people are going to do the right thing."
(Additional reporting by Fayen Wong in Shanghai; Nishant Kumar in Hong Kong; Andrew Cawthorne, Mario Naranjo and Daniel Wallis in Caracas; Alexandra Valencia in Quito; Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, and Mark Felsenthal, Paul Eckert and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by David Stamp and David Brunnstrom and Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Jackie Frank and Doina Chiacu)
Laos' controversial Xayaburi dam could bring the Giant Catfish to extinction, as well as devastate the Mekong River's other fisheries. The challenge: How to build a dam that allows a 600-pound fish to swim up stream?
By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 22, 2013
Two Thai fishermen show a 293-kilogram (646-pound) giant catfish they caught from the Mekong River in Chiang Khong district of Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand in 2005.
Suthep Kritsanavarin/AP
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The Giant Catfish is an enormous fish with thin, down-turned lips that give it a lonely look. And such a "mournful" visage is not unwarranted.
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Already one of the most endangered fish in the world, a new study has found that a dam underway in Laos could push it to extinction.?
So rare that it is nearly a legend of the Mekong River?s depths, the Giant Catfish belongs to the?shark catfish family and reach upwards of 600 pounds and some 10 feet in length. The brobdingnagian?fish has dwindled in number an estimated 90 percent over the past 20 years ???possibly to just a few hundred animals, though tracking the elusive fish is difficult. It is now found only in the lower Mekong, which runs like a mud-colored vein carrying the economic lifeblood of Southeast Asia through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In recent years, though, progress had been made in rescuing Giant Catfish fish from extinction, as those five countries introduced new protections that banned fishing it.
Now, Laos's controversial Xayaburi dam threatens to undo that.
?The Giant Catfish is endangered, but there?s still a chance for it, and all the countries involved have gotten on board to restrict fishing ? but just when we solved one problem we?re now facing this new one,? says Zeb Hogan, the?study?s author and associate research professor at the University of Nevada,?in a telephone interview.
The Xayabari, the first dam in the lower Mekong, will if finished block the Giant Catfish from making its lifecycle migration from the floodplain rearing areas to upstream spawning sites in northern Laos and Thailand, the study said. The dam could also alter Mekong flows, disrupting the natural cues the fish needs to spawn.
This is not the first warning that the Xayabari project could mean the end for the Giant Catfish. Two years ago, the Mekong River Commission???an advisory body established in 1995 as part of an agreement between five Southeast Asian countries on the development of the Mekong ??convened a panel of experts who concluded that the dam would obstruct the migrations of some 23 to 100 species of fish, including the Great Catfish. The panel recommended a 10-year hold on the Xayaburi project, pending more information on how the dam would affect the river?s ecology.
"The gaps in knowledge on the number of migratory fish species, their biomass and their ability to successfully pass a dam and reservoir leads to considerable uncertainty about the scale of impact on fisheries and associated livelihoods, both locally and in a transboundary context," the report said.
But in November 2012, Laos officially began what is expected to be seven years of construction of the Xayabari dam, the first in several controversial dams planned for the lower Mekong.?
CINCINNATI (AP) ? A plane carrying a wing walker crashed at an air show and exploded into flames Saturday, killing the pilot and stunt walker instantly, authorities said.
The crash of the 450 HP Stearman happened at around 12:45 p.m. at the Vectren Air Show at Dayton International Airport. No spectators were hurt.
A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the plane turn upside-down as the performer sits on top of the wing. The plane then tilts and crashes to the ground, erupting into flames as spectators screamed.
Ian Hoyt, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay, was at the show with his girlfriend. He told The Associated Press he was taking photos as the plane passed by and had just raised his camera to take another shot.
"Then I realized they were too low and too slow. And before I knew it, they hit the ground," he said.
He couldn't tell exactly what happened, but it appeared that the plane stalled and didn't have enough air speed, he said.
"I'm still shaking," Hoyt said. He said he had been excited to see the show because he'd never seen the scheduled performer ? wing walker Jane Wicker ? in action.
Federal records show that biplane was registered to Wicker, who lived in Loudon, Va. A man who answered the phone at a number listed for Wicker on her website said he had no comment and hung up.
Airport spokeswoman Linda Hughes and Ohio State Highway Patrol Lt. Anne Ralston confirmed the deaths of a pilot and stunt walker to the AP. The air show said it wasn't immediately releasing the identities of the dead.
The show was canceled for the rest of the day, but organizers said events would resume Sunday. The National Transportation Safety Board said it is investigating the crash.
Another spectator, Shawn Warwick of New Knoxville, told the Dayton Daily News that he was watching the flight through binoculars.
"I noticed it was upside-down really close to the ground. She was sitting on the bottom of the plane," he said. "I saw it just go right into the ground and explode."
Wicker's website says she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., in 1990, for a wing-walking position, thinking it would be fun. She was a contract employee who worked as a Federal Aviation Administration budget analyst, the FAA said.
She told WDTN-TV in an interview this week that her signature move was hanging underneath the plane's wing by her feet and sitting on the bottom of the airplane while it's upside-down.
"I'm never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything's going to be just fine," she told the station.
Wicker wrote on her website that she had never had any close calls.
"What you see us do out there is after an enormous amount of practice and fine tuning, not to mention the airplane goes through microscopic care. It is a managed risk and that is what keeps us alive," she wrote.
In 2007, veteran stunt pilot Jim LeRoy was killed at the Dayton show when his biplane slammed into the runway while performing loop-to-loops and caught fire.
Organizers were presenting a trimmed-down show and expected smaller crowds at Dayton after the Air Force Thunderbirds and other military participants pulled out this year because of federal budget cuts.
The air show, one of the country's oldest, usually draws around 70,000 people and has a $3.2 million impact on the local economy. Without military aircraft and support, the show expected attendance to be off 30 percent or more.
___
Thomas reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press writers Kerry Lester in Chicago and Randy Pennell in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
Sarah Murnaghan, 10, has woken from a coma after receiving a double lung transplant.
A 10-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis who was given a double-lung transplant after a national debate about organ donation has come out of a coma, according to reports late Friday.
Sarah Murnaghan was able to respond to questions, a family spokesperson told NBC10.com.
She received her new lungs on June 12, after spending three months at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with end-stage cystic fibrosis.
Sarah, of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, became the subject of national media headlines when her parents sued over national transplant rules that place children behind adolescents and adults on the list for adult lungs.
U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson intervened, ordering that Sarah be put on the adult list, where the urgency of her case led to a match days later.
The transplant isn't a cure for cystic fibrosis, but it can extend her life by years.
Family spokesperson Tracy Simon said Sarah woke from the coma on Friday and was responding to simple questions by nodding to indicate yes or no, The Associated Press reported.
Simon added Sarah was doing well but was frustrated by her inability to speak.
The first trailer for the upcoming Jobs biopic is now available online to the public. It's our first look into Ashton Kutcher's role as Steve Jobs and a general idea of what the movie will cover. Originally slated to be released in April, the movie will finally be available in theaters on August 16th.
The movie received mixed reviews when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Now that we've got our own look, however small it may be, what do you think of the trailer? Do you plan on checking it out when it hits theaters in your area?
EXPENSIVE LAUNDRY: The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi-UFJ Ltd. will pay $250 million to the state of New York for laundering billions of dollars in transactions that violated economic sanctions against countries including Iran, Sudan, and Myanmar, New Yorkfinancial regulators said.
THE CHARGES: The state's Department of Financial Services said the bank agreed to the fine and a year of special monitoring for handling the 28,000 U.S. dollar transactions totaling about $100 billion through its New York operation between 2002 and 2007.
REPORTED ITSELF: The bank said Thursday it reported the violations to its regulators and stopped the practice in 2007. It said it will continue to cooperate with regulators.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Thursday:
1. BERNANKE SPEAKS, DOW DROPS
His announcement that the Fed will likely end its extraordinary bond-buying program next year sends the Dow down more than 200 points.
2. JAMES GANDOLFINI, MAGNETIC 'SOPRANOS' STAR, DIES
The actor, most famous for his role as the tormented mob boss Tony Soprano, dies while vacationing in Rome. He was 51.
3. KERRY TRIES TO GET AFGHAN TALKS BACK ON TRACK
He calls Karzai twice in 24 hours, trying to soothe the Afghan leader's anger over the Taliban's high-profile opening of an office in Qatar.
4. STUDENTS, TAKE NOTE
A compromise taking shape in the Senate would prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling on July 1.
5. HOW OBAMA PLANS TO WIELD HIS EXECUTIVE POWERS
Fulfilling a campaign pledge, he's aiming to tackle the pollution blamed for global warming.
6. FBI DRAWING UP GUIDELINES FOR DRONES
Mueller tells Congress that his agency now uses the unmanned aircraft only rarely, but privacy concerns are still "worthy of debate."
7. BRAZIL RESCINDS HIGHER BUS, SUBWAY FARES
The mayors of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro pull back the increases, but demonstrations over the fees and other money issues continue across the country.
8. SEARCH FOR UNION BOSS COMES UP EMPTY ? AGAIN
Federal and local authorities wrap up an excavation near Detroit that fails to turn up anything that could be linked to Jimmy Hoffa, missing since 1975.
9. 'STRIKING' RESULTS FROM A MEDICAL STUDY
A vaccine against a cervical cancer virus cut infections in teen girls by half, researchers report.
10. WHY PAULA DEEN'S FEELING HEAT OUTSIDE THE KITCHEN
The celeb cook acknowledges in a deposition for a lawsuit that she has used racial slurs.
The paparazzi?s Maria Menounos Booty Cam was in the mix once again yesterday afternoon as the ?Extra? hottie interviewed actress Kerry Washington. The beautiful actress, who most recently starred in last year?s Oscar winning ?Django Unchained,? was on the show to promote her new comedy ?Peeples.?
The Tyler Perry-produced film also stars the hilarious Craig Robinson. Check the plot & trailer below:
Sparks fly in the Hamptons when ?regular guy? Wade Walker (Craig Robinson) crashes the preppy Peeples family reunion to ask for their precious daughter Grace?s (Kerry Washington) hand in marriage. Wade might be a fish out of water among this picture-perfect East Coast clan always trying to keep up appearances, but he?s not about to let himself sink. Instead, in a wild weekend of fun, dysfunction and hilarious surprises, Wade is about to discover there?s room for all kinds of Peeples in this family, no matter their differences. [Source]
Trailer:
And, since we don?t have her interview w/ Maria, let?s watch a press junket with Kerry & Craig Robinson:
Thousands of tiny computers that scavenge power from their surroundings could one day be used to monitor your world
THOUGHT your smartphone or tablet packed a big punch for its size? Pah, that's nothing. The next generation of computers will be able to carry out complex calculations but will be little bigger than a snowflake.
Such tiny computers ? nicknamed smart dust ? would work much like their larger cousins, says Prabal Dutta at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They will have tiny CPUs that run programs on a skeleton operating system and be able to access equally small banks of RAM and flash memory. The plan is for such sensor-packed machines to be embedded in buildings and objects in their hundreds or even thousands, providing constant updates on the world around us.
Dutta's group is creating the first prototypes, which they have dubbed Michigan Micro Motes. These devices, a cubic millimetre in size, come equipped with sensors to monitor temperature or movement, say, and can send data via radio waves.
But how do you charge something so small? "The vision of blanketing the world with smart sensors is very compelling," says Joshua Smith, head of the Sensor Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle. "But a lot of sensor networks researchers found themselves surrounded by mountains of depleted batteries and dead sensor nodes."
So, like microscopic Robinson Crusoes, the motes will live off the power they can scavenge from their surroundings. A mote near a light source might use a tiny solar panel, while a mote running somewhere with greater temperature extremes can be built to tap into that, by converting the heat energy that flows between hot and cold into electricity.
So what will be smart dust's killer app? The Michigan team says Micro Motes could be used to monitor every tiny movement of large structures like bridges or skyscrapers. And motes in a smart house could report back on lighting, temperature, carbon monoxide levels and occupancy. With motes embedded in all of your belongings it might be possible to run a Google search in the physical world. For example, asking Google "where are my keys?" would give you the right answer if they have been fitted with a mote.
Smart dust computers could make efficient medical implants too. The idea is that motes placed inside the body would monitor a patient's vital signs. For example, in as-yet-unpublished research, the Michigan team has implanted a Micro Mote inside a mouse tumour so that it can report back on its growth.
Smith is also working on miniature computing, with his wireless identification and sensing platforms (WISPs). Further along in development than Micro Motes ? albeit larger ? WISPs communicate via radio frequency identification devices, using the same computer language that your next-generation credit card uses. Like Micro Motes, WISPs don't need batteries and only consume what they can scavenge ? stray signals from a nearby TV tower might do the trick, for instance.
But communication remains a key bottleneck for the next wave of computer miniaturisation, says Dutta. For the same chunk of energy a mote could perform 100,000 operations on its CPU but only transmit one bit of information to the outside world, he says.
This article appeared in print under the headline "A sprinkling of smart dust"
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LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - Arsenal will keep with tradition and form a guard of honour for new Premier League champions Manchester United when the sides meet at The Emirates on Sunday. "That is part of the tradition of English football and I want that, of course, to be respected," Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger told a news conference on Friday. "I'm French, I work in England and the English tradition should be respected. When you work somewhere abroad you have to respect the culture of the country," he added. ...
Apr. 17, 2013 ? Do people get caught in the cycle of overeating and drug addiction because their brain reward centers are over-active, causing them to experience greater cravings for food or drugs?
In a unique prospective study Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D., and colleagues tested this theory, called the reward surfeit model. The results indicated that elevated responsivity of reward regions in the brain increased the risk for future substance use, which has never been tested before prospectively with humans. Paradoxically, results also provide evidence that even a limited history of substance use was related to less responsivity in the reward circuitry, as has been suggested by experiments with animals.
The research appears in the May 1, 2013 issue of Biological Psychiatry.
In a novel study using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Stice's team tested whether individual differences in reward region responsivity predicted overweight/obesity onset among initially healthy weight adolescents and substance use onset among initially abstinent adolescents. The neural response to food and monetary reward was measured in 162 adolescents. Body fat and substance use were assessed at the time of the fMRI and again one year later.
"The findings are important because this is the first test of whether atypical responsivity of reward circuitry increases risk for substance use," says Dr. Stice. "Although numerous researchers have suggested that reduced responsivity is a vulnerability factor for substance use, this theory was based entirely on cross-sectional studies comparing substance abusing individuals to healthy controls; no studies have tested this thesis with prospective data."
Investigators examined the extent to which reward circuitry (e.g., the striatum) was activated in response to receipt and anticipated receipt of money. Monetary reward is a general reinforcer and has been used frequently to assess reward sensitivity. The team also used another paradigm to assess brain activation in response to the individual's consumption and anticipated consumption of chocolate milkshake. Results showed that greater activation in the striatum during monetary reward receipt at baseline predicted future substance use onset over a 1-year follow-up.
Noteworthy was that adolescents who had already begun using substances showed less striatal response to monetary reward. This finding provides the first evidence that even a relatively short period of moderate substance use might reduce reward region responsivity to a general reinforcer.
"The implications are that the more individuals use psychoactive substances, the less responsive they will be to rewarding experiences, meaning that they may derive less reinforcement from other pursuits, such as interpersonal relationships, hobbies, and school work. This may contribute to the escalating spiral of drug use that characterizes substance use disorders," commented Stice.
Although the investigators had expected parallel neural predictors of future onset of overweight during exposure to receipt and anticipated receipt of a palatable food, no significant effects emerged. It is possible that these effects are weaker and that a longer follow-up period will be necessary to better differentiate who will gain weight and who will remain at a healthy weight.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Oregon Research Institute, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
Eric Stice, Sonja Yokum, Kyle S. Burger. Elevated Reward Region Responsivity Predicts Future Substance Use Onset But Not Overweight/Obesity Onset. Biological Psychiatry, 2013; 73 (9): 869 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.11.019
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
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