Haiti assist bid injured by delayed U.N. reply

Tom Brown PORT-AU-PRINCE Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:13pm EST Related News Haiti preserve puncture as sleet turns camps to mudThu, Feb eighteen 2010U.N. assist arch chides agencies on Haiti reliefThu, Feb eighteen 2010Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils vital assist packageWed, Feb seventeen 2010Tarps, toilets are priorities for quake-hit Haiti: U.N.Mon, Feb fifteen 2010One month after quake, Haitians stick on to weep deadFri, Feb twelve 2010 < 1 / 7 >

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Clutching involuntary attack rifles, truckloads of U.N. infantry patrolled the streets of Haiti"s cracked collateral on the day after the trembler strike last month, clearly preoccupied to the wretchedness around them.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

Cries for assistance from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the bark of heavy-duty engines as the infantry plowed by Port-au-Prince but interlude to stick on rescue efforts, majority less lead them.

A usual steer since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. infantry huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

There were about 9,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Haiti when the upheaval struck on Jan twelve and they were the judicious "first responders" to the mess in the bankrupt Caribbean country, whose notoriously diseased executive supervision was impressed by the scale of the tragedy.

Initially, however, nothing of the peacekeepers appeared to be concerned in hands-on charitable service in what puncture healing experts report as the vicious initial 72 hours after a harmful trembler strikes.

Their reply to the abominable pang was singular to you do security and seeking for looters after the bulk 7.0 upheaval intended majority of the collateral and took what Haitian President Rene Preval says could be as majority as 300,000 lives.

There was looting in the capital, but it paled in some-more aged with the astringency of the charitable crisis.

Horribly-injured patients flooded overstretched hospitals, forcing healing staff to confirm that patients to yield and that were already as well far left to try saving.

"Doctors played God," pronounced Tyler Marshall, a maestro former Los Angeles Times match operative with an general assist organisation that helped out in a tent city erected at the tallness of the destruction on the drift of Port-au-Prince"s University Hospital, the country"s largest.

Scores of U.N. crew died in the quake, together with Hedi Annabi, head of the U.N. mission that was set up in 2004. That helps insist what majority have criticized as a glacially delayed kickoff of service operations after one of history"s misfortune healthy disasters.

But in the days and weeks that followed it mostly seemed that lessons from alternative disasters were abandoned in Haiti as fears of rioting or anarchy overshadowed concerns about removing assist out quickly.

The U.N."s tip charitable assist official, John Holmes, is between those who have chided service agencies, together with the United Nations itself, for you do as well small to assistance Haiti.

"We cannot ... wait for for for the subsequent puncture for these lessons to be learned," Holmes wrote in a trusted email initial published on the website of the biography Foreign Policy.

"There is an obligatory need to progress significantly genius on the ground, to urge coordination, vital formulation and sustenance of aid," pronounced Holmes.

Edmond Mulet, behaving head of the U.N. mission, concurred in an talk that it played a singular charitable purpose in the initial couple of days after the trembler since the operations were effectively decapitated.

"At the unequivocally commencement it was unequivocally formidable since all the domicile was utterly broken and all the care of the mission was killed," Mulet told Reuters.

"CRIMINALS AND BANDITS"

Mulet gained prominence for wielding an iron fist during a prior army as head of the U.N. mission when he led mostly Brazilian "blue helmet" infantry in a successful crackdown on Haiti"s heavily armed gangs.

And he has finished no tip about sophistry the competing needs of service operations with law enforcement, in his bid to lane down the some-more than 3,000 inmates who took value of the trembler to shun from the main prison.

"We are here additionally to yield security," he pronounced when asked about the mess of convoys of rifle-wielding U.N. infantry to poke for people trapped in the rubble of the busted capital.

"I still have to patrol, I still have to go after all these criminals and bandits that transient from the inhabitant penitentiary, the squad leaders, the criminals, the killers, the kidnappers. I cannot unequivocally confuse myself from you do that."

The service mission shifted in to higher rigging after U.S. infantry deployed in large numbers and set up a supply sequence to get food and disinfectant in to areas great out for aid.

But there were still majority bottlenecks and setbacks, mostly involving U.N.-linked food distributions hobbled by unsound organization, reserve and throng control.

Unfortunately, U.N. infantry in Haiti have over the years gained a repute for toughness and abuse some-more than for easing pang in the lowest nation in the Americas.

"The usually time I"ve seen one of these U.N. infantry burst out of the behind of a lorry was to kick up on somebody or take a shot at them," pronounced a piece of the U.S. Army"s 82nd Airborne Division, as he worked security during a new assist handout.

"These guys have since all of us in unvaried a bad repute here," he said, asking not to be identified.

Haiti"s wrecked infrastructure and bad ride links finished it formidable to get assist out and keep it flowing, but that frequency finished the incident opposite from that in alternative new disasters around the globe.

"POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE"

"The lowest and the majority exposed people lend towards to live in the regions that are strike the majority by healthy disasters," pronounced Solomon Kuah, an puncture healing medicine formed in New York who outlayed 4 weeks in Port-au-Prince after the quake.

There are no arguable estimates for the series of survivors who died from injuries due to unsound healing supplies.

But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health Organization"s deputy in Haiti, pronounced all from staff shortages to bureaucracy and a miss of make-up lists embroiled the smoothness of containers full of medicines from Port-au-Prince"s airfield to doctors on the ground.

Port-au-Prince sits usually 700 miles off the seashore of Miami, that is home to a large Haitian-American community, and it seemed ludicrous that so couple of the U.S. infantry rushed there spoke French or were accompanied by translators.

One retaining picture of pell-mell food distributions came when U.S. helicopters offloaded boxes of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) at a site in the capital. Many Haitians non-stop them up usually to toss them afar in offend since no French or Creole-language instructions were enclosed with the assumingly invalid packets of dust, explaining that they indispensable to be churned with H2O as piece of their preparation.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has touted the Haiti service mission as "the largest and majority successful general poke and rescue bid ever fabricated in history."

But some-more than 6 weeks after the upheaval hit, the mission is still mostly in an puncture reply mode. The U.N."s World Food Program is tying the food rations to 55-pound (25 kg) bags of rice and the Haitian supervision estimates that a million upheaval survivors are still vital in the streets in temporary encampments with no using H2O or toilets.

Doctors are roughly finished traffic with dire injuries but reconstruction for a little 40,000 amputees and rebuilding Haiti"s health infrastructure are between long-term challenges.

"This is unequivocally a mess of Biblical proportions," pronounced Lewis Lucke, who was the USAID executive in Iraq prior to entrance to Haiti as U.S. ambassador.

U.N. and alternative officials have pronounced the tellurian reply to Haiti"s upheaval was quicker and some-more in effect than in alternative new disasters, together with the Asian tsunami that killed 226,000 people in thirteen countries in Dec 2004.

But experts contend the United Nations has a lot to sense from smaller, some-more nimble healing groups similar to International Medical Corps, or IMC, and Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, along with charities some-more experienced in distributing aid, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services.

Kuah, who concurrent service efforts for IMC, a California-based organisation that had rarely learned doctors treating patients in Haiti twenty-three hours after the trembler struck, stressed the "need for speed" when it comes to saving lives.

"When you ask yourself if there were ways you could have prevented some-more mortalities or discontinued additional mortality, with earthquakes, in particular, it"s some-more timing than anything else," pronounced Kuah.

(Additional stating by Catherine Bremer, Jackie Frank, Patricia Zengerle, Mica Rosenberg and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)

World Natural Disasters

Summit Church buys land space Real Estate

The Summit Church, a fast-growing Baptist assemblage in Durham, paid $9.5 million progressing this month for twenty-three acres nearby the intersection of Miami Boulevard and Alexander Drive in Durham.

The skill on Presidential Drive includes dual diagonally opposite buildings with a sum of 104,000 block feet of bureau space.

Summit had been leasing a 45,000-square-foot construction on the skill for the past dual years from the seller, BPG Properties of Yardley, Pa.

"It was roughly a required move," pronounced Tim Jackson, Summits arch monetary officer. "We"re reaching genius probably at each place where we are and if we"re going to go on to grow as we have been flourishing we had to emanate new space. This was a comparatively careful approach to do it and it was accessible to us."

Summit hosts 4,000 worshipers on a standard Sunday. The church schedules 10 services each week finish at 3 opposite sites in Durham.

Summit additionally owns skill on Cole Mill Road and leases, along with Journey Fellowship, space on West Club Boulevard.

Summit will action as property owner to the superfluous tenants at the Presidential Drive place until their leases run out. Jackson pronounced one of the largest tenants will move out at the finish of October, permitting the church to take up a large square of the second building.

The dual buildings take up about 10 of the twenty-three acres. The superfluous land will in the future be converted in to parking.

Jackson pronounced Summit financed the purchase, the largest ever, by the sale of bonds. The church hired a down payment financing association that specializes in church and propagandize holds to find buyers for the offering, he said.

Staff bard David Bracken

New U.N. battles dawn over Copenhagen meridian settle

Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn BONN/LONDON Mon April 12, 2010 1:34pm EDT

A United Nations dwindle is lifted at the United Nations multi-agency devalue nearby Herat Nov 5, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl

BONN/LONDON (Reuters) - Delegates from 175-nations concluded on dual additional sessions of U.N. meridian carry out talks this year at the finish of a curved assembly in Bonn that presaged big battles forward over the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

Green Business&&&&COP15

The Copenhagen Accord seeks to extent a climb in normal universe temperatures to next 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) over pre-industrial times but does not spell out how.

Reached at a querulous U.N. meridian limit in December, the settle was strongly corroborated by Washington and bitterly against by a little building nations, though it additionally binds out the awaiting of $100 billion meridian assist a year from 2020.

"This routine has big problems," pronounced Annie Petsonk of the U.S.-based Environmental Defense Fund, at the finish of the assembly in Bonn.

The event had been due to finish on Sunday, but representatives wrangled low in to the night over a two-page plan to guide negotiations, with multiform hours outlayed on the diction of what appeared to be uncontroversial phrases.

The last content skirted one of the greatest problems -- the predestine of the Copenhagen Accord. The Dec limit had unhappy most by unwell to come up with a contracting treaty.

"We have only about worked out the procedural kinks -- save the big one, that is what to do about the approach in that we will reply to the Copenhagen Accord," Dessima Williams of Grenada, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told Reuters.

The settle was not referred to by name in the Bonn workplan.

Margaret Mukahanana-Sangarwe of Zimbabwe, who chaired the U.N. talks and will pull up new breeze texts by May 17, pronounced the phrasing had a "constructive ambiguity...to me it seems to cover the work that was finished to furnish the Copenhagen Accord."

The Accord has subsidy from roughly 120 of 194 part of states, together with tip emitters China, the United States, the European Union, Russia and India.

It faces antithesis led by countries such as Bolivia, Cuba, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Some building nations complained that abounding countries affianced deficient movement underneath the Accord to stop mess for millions of people from floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

By contrast, Saudi Arabia fears a change from oil to renewable energies.

Bolivia pronounced that the Bonn assembly had ruled the Accord out of negotiations that will top in a ministerial assembly in Mexico in Nov and December.

"Despite redundant attempts by the U.S. to have the utterly unsuitable Copenhagen Accord the basement for destiny negotiations, I am blissful to contend they failed," pronounced Pablo Solon, Bolivia"s arch delegate.

The U.N."s tip meridian official, Yvo de Boer, pronounced he did not design a new thing to grasp a new covenant in Mexico.

For a $125 billion CO market, disaster to determine a tellurian legally contracting understanding would be "regrettable" but difficult inhabitant policies were some-more important, pronounced one expert.

"It is top and traffic that is pushing this market," pronounced Andrei Marcu, head of regulatory and process affairs at oil traffic organisation Mercuria.

Cap and traffic schemes carry out industrial CO emissions by forcing companies to buy from a bound share of emissions permits.

A European intrigue is at the core of a CO marketplace that could grow significantly if the United States passes a meridian check this year.

"I"m seeking really most to what the U.S. will do," pronounced Marcu, who was upbeat that the Bonn assembly had re-launched talks that "fell apart" in Copenhagen.

For Reuters ultimate sourroundings blogs, click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/

(Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Green Business COP15

Its not only the Lords that needs reforming William Rees-Mogg

William Rees-Mogg & ,}

The last Parliament, that unsuccessful in so majority things, quite unsuccessful to have swell towards the remodel of the House of Lords. That has been betrothed for the past hundred years, and has right away turn the routine of the 3 parties.

It will, however, need larger changes in the constitution of the United Kingdom than the parties have nonetheless recognised, changes in the attribute in in in in between the dual Houses of Parliament, in in in in between Westminster and the devolved parliaments and in in in in between England and the not as big nations of the UK. Yet I hold that a approved remodel of the House of Lords is no longer postponable, though the subsequent budding apportion will have alternative obligatory counts on his agenda.

In the past twenty years, in that I have been sitting in the House of Lords, there has already been good change. The old subdivision of parliamentary power, in that the Commons had idealisation shortcoming for financial but the Lords was obliged for the legal system, worked rather well; it no longer exists. The patrimonial peers were less desirous and less domestic than majority of the hold up peers who have transposed them; they additionally knew some-more than majority of us about counterclaim counts and the countryside; they were some-more of a loss than majority people realise.

This routine of modification has not finished a good disproportion to the impression or peculiarity of legislation itself. Laws are passed, right away as before, since governments wish them to be. The House of Commons itself is dominated by the senior manager and is an unsound reworking chamber; the Commons is mostly incompetent to give scold courtesy even to vital clauses in vital bills. By contrast, the Lords is an glorious reworking chamber, even though it is contingent on the decisions of alternative bodies, and has as well small energy of initiative.

The Lords stays a utilitarian and responsible residence for the role of reworking statutes. When the Lords has disagreed with the Commons, I have customarily felt that the Lords had the improved of the argument. Yet the Commons is the inaugurated chamber, and thus is decisive. In practice, majority governments at majority times can get their approach in the Commons; majority European legislation is supposed but majority question. No one could courtesy this as a acceptable multiplication of powers, since it is not. The Lords is at the bottom of the legislative pile, and Brussels is at the top.

Another big shift was the devolution of energy to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that was not delicately designed. In fac, far as well high a suit of new inherent reforms has been a greeting to events and to the domestic pressures of the time. We need a new inherent gathering and a created constitution.

The doyen in between British inherent scholars is Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford and once governing physique mentor to David Cameron at Brasenose College.

Allowing for all the hazards of hung Parliaments and so on, it is Mr Cameron who is majority expected to confirm the subsequent theatre of inherent reform, both in apply oneself of the House of Lords and on a broader scale in the United Kingdom. We are in a duration when serve inherent remodel is roughly unavoidable.

Professor Bogdanor has not long ago created an critical essay in the Government Gazette . He raises dual quite engaging points. The initial is that Britain stays surprising in between complicated democracies in carrying so slight a bent pool from that to select the domestic executives. He calculates, plausibly, that the bent pool accessible to a budding apportion combining a supervision is less than that accessible to a small company.

The second point is that inherent reforms stroke on each other. The House of Lords does not work in isolation, any some-more than the Commons or the judges. All 3 parties have right away committed themselves to a little form of choosing for a new House of Lords that will mystify roughly each attribute still further. The Lib Dems are penetrating on a sovereign constitution, Labour wants a unconditionally inaugurated second cover and the Conservatives are committed to remodel over a rather longer term.

Professor Bogdanor comments: Creating a new top residence cannot be seen as an removed reform. It will have us rethink the attribute in in in in between supervision and Parliament, in truth it will have in advance repercussions on the total complement of government. That is certainly correct.

What competence be indispensable is a new gathering to scrutinise in to the total physique of intensity reforms, on what competence be called Bogdanor principles. It is in truth fascinating to remodel the House of Lords, but we need initial to confirm what the House of Lords is for, how it should describe to the Commons, to Europe, to the Supreme Court, to alternative Courts, to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to the routine of law creation and so on. That would need that we reach decisions on the electoral systems used by alternative inhabitant bodies.

The inaugurated House of Lords competence enterprise to equivocate duplicating all the alternative UK systems of election. The remodel of the House of Lords that I await is one of those issues in which, unless one can compromise everything, one competence not be means to compromise anything. There is majority work to be done.

BG Group plan in �475m rapist probe

By Rowena Mason, City Reporter (Energy) 949PM GMT twenty-six March 2010

BG Group

It is the ultimate critical reversal in BG Group"s attribute with the Kazakh government, that has not done commercial operation easy for the path-finder and alternative consortium members ENI, Chevron and Russia"s Lukoil.

The partners constructed 136m barrels from Kazakhstan"s hulk Karachaganak gas margin in 2008, but progressing this month, the supervision indicted it of self-denial taxation income dating at the back of to 2004, grouping a full review of the operations.

Royal Mail bid taxation scam Stars might sue as Scotland Yard rejects phone daub inquiry MPs losses A remoteness law would be sparse and dangerous Net closes on the Pink Panther spoliation gang Blunder allows former Philippines initial woman to keep jewels BG held in third bid battel Down Under

Environmental insurance authorities additionally have a box tentative opposite the BG and ENI-led project.

In turn, the consortium - well known as KPO - launched a $1bn legal box opposite the Kazakh state in 2008 alleging that it was forced to overpay etiquette avocation and alternative fees. However, the consortium indicated last year that this has given been dropped.

The disputes are at large attributed to Kazakhstan"s enterprise to recover a little carry out over the second-largest producing margin - the usually one in 100pc unfamiliar ownership. It has prolonged been perplexing to pressurise the corner try to sell a interest to state-run KazMunaiGas.

The supervision claims in this ultimate brawl that the companies exported 1.1m some-more barrels of oil than authorised underneath their prolongation contracts, giving climb to an "illegal" distinction of 104bn Kazakh tenge.

"A rapist box has been launched," Rustam Ibraimov, emissary head of the Kazakh monetary police, told Reuters.

Francesca Ciardiello, a orator for KPO, denied any indiscretion by the company.

"KPO has acted in suitability with Kazakh law and the conditions of the last prolongation pity agreement relating to the Karachaganak field," she said. "KPO will investigate the item of any allegations presented to it, and if necessary, benefaction a strong counterclaim of the position."

BG Group declined to criticism but it is accepted to perspective the actions as piece of an incremental debate opposite the operation at the strategically critical Karachaganak field.

The feud mirrors problems suffered in Russia over the last decade by TNK-BP, the corner try in between BP and 4 oligarchs, with the state creation steady moves on the esteem Kovytka field.

Last month, one of the oligarchs at the back of the venture, Viktor Vekselberg, indicated that it would be sole to Rosneftegaz, a state holding company, for at slightest $700m.

for acne Zits, pimples, bumps and blemishes are a young persons worst nightmare

U.S. Mexico eye new proviso in drug fight

Andrew Quinn MEXICO CITY Wed Mar 24, 2010 7:41am EDT Related News Clinton calls Netanyahu over Israel allotment plansFri, Mar twelve 2010 Related Video Clinton in Mexico for drug quarrel talks Wed, Mar twenty-four 2010 < 1 / 6 >

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton betrothed on Tuesday to benefit Mexico enlarge a drug quarrel that has catastrophic to quell traffickers" increasingly lethal energy along the U.S.-Mexican border.

World&&&&Barack Obama&&&&Mexico

Clinton, heading a top-level U.S. commission in Mexico City for a day of talks, pronounced it was time to plunge into the deeper amicable issues that fuel the narcotics traffic as both nations conflict to outwit absolute bootlegging organizations.

"These narcotics cartels are waging quarrel on polite society," Clinton told a headlines conference, pledging that the corner U.S.-Mexican reply would not be firm by "borders or official divisions."

Clinton pronounced anti-drug efforts contingency move over efforts to interrupt trafficking organizations and find to make firm law coercion agencies, enlarge mercantile event and set up a "21st Century border" that can foster security, traffic and transformation in between the dual neighbors.

The weight of the commission -- together with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and troops Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Admiral Mike Mullen -- underscored Washington"s regard over the distracted drug assault to the south.

That regard sensory after the sharpened deaths this month of dual U.S. adults in the aroused Mexican limit city of Ciudad Juarez, an conflict that lifted the subject of what Washington could do to accelerate security but being seen as interfering in Mexico"s inner affairs.

The United States is already deeply concerned in Mexico"s onslaught with drug gangs and has affianced a little $1.4 billion over 3 years in a thus-far catastrophic bid to vanquish cartels who boat $40 billion value of bootleg drug north each year.

Mexican critics contend the United States has not finished sufficient to benefit and that assist already affianced has been behind to arrive.

Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa pronounced the U.S. group had betrothed to speed benefit and finalise "bottlenecks that have behind the smoothness of apparatus we need."

MORE WORK AHEAD

Mexico"s drug assault is a vital domestic exam for President Felipe Calderon and a be concerned for Washington, unfamiliar investors and tourists. A check in Mexican journal Milenio on Tuesday showed 59 percent of respondents think cartels are winning the drug war, whilst twenty-one percent contend the supervision is.

U.S. officials contend there is no justification the Americans were on purpose targeted in Ciudad Juarez, but the conflict highlighted the flourishing security hazard in the limit region, and U.S. officials vouch that probity will be served.

"There"s a genuine concentration on identifying the perpetrators of this crime. It is outrageous," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told reporters aboard Clinton"s plane.

Tuesday"s discussions focused on the subsequent stairs for Plan Merida, the $1.4 billion U.S. beginning launched in 2007 to benefit Mexico quarrel the cartels.

Clinton betrothed to step up U.S. efforts to forestall guns from issuing southwards -- a vital source of arms for traffickers -- and to work to residence bootleg drug direct in both countries, a key underlying means of the crisis.

Napolitano pronounced Mexico could design some-more U.S. drug enforcement, limit security teams, sniffer dogs, permit image readers and improved comprehension sharing, but pronounced Washington additionally wants to enlarge the essentially troops concentration of the effort.

Clinton pronounced importance on amicable programs was critical in the arise of the monetary predicament that left most on both sides of the limit with couple of mercantile options. "The new downturn in mercantile expansion and remittances has aided the drug traffickers in their recruitment of immature people," she said.

Calderon not long ago visited Ciudad Juarez, where drug squad assault has killed a little 4,600 people in dual years, and launched programs, together with new schools, nurseries and soccer pitches, directed at interesting youths afar from drug cartels.

(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Bill Trott)

World Barack Obama Mexico

Hamas leaders son spied for IsraelMiddle East World

The son of one of the founders of the Hamas belligerent organization was unprotected now as a tip Israeli adviser who helped forestall dozens of self-murder bombings and alternative attacks.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, codenamed the Green Prince by his handlers, was one of the Shin Bet security services majority profitable sources, Israels Haaretz journal said.

His reports led to the arrests of multiform high-ranking Palestinian total during the aroused overthrow that began in 2000, the journal said.

Yousefs father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, was a initial part of the Islamic belligerent organization Hamas in the 1980s. He is now portion a six-year judgment in an Israeli jail for his domestic activities.

The younger Yousef converted to Christianity and changed to California in 2007.

The explanation deals an additional reversal to Hamas, that is disorder from the gangland slaying of a heading part of in Dubai last month. There have been reports that an insider assisted the killers.

Yousefs memoir, Son of Hamas, is being published subsequent week in the US.

Yousef could not be contacted for comment, but an mention from the book on his Facebook page plugs it as a retaining comment of terror, betrayal, domestic intrigue, and inconceivable choices. It describes Yousefs tour as one that jeopardised Hamas, involved his family, and in jeopardy his life.

It additionally says Yousefs attribute with the Shin Bet helped frustrate an Israeli plan to murder his father.

Yousef told the paper Shin Bet agents initial approached him in jail in 1996 and due he penetrate the top echelons of Hamas. He did so successfully and is credited by Israel with saving hundreds of Israeli lives.

Yousef pronounced he hoped to send a summary of assent to Israelis, though he remained desperate about the prospects for finale the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He had quite pointy comments for Hamas, the Iranian-backed transformation that seized carry out of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and has been branded a militant organization by Israel and the West.

Hamas cannot have assent with the Israelis. That is opposite what their God tells them. It is unfit to have assent with infidels, he said.

New approach to carry out disease-spreading mosquitoes Make them hold their urine

The work might lead to the growth of new insecticides to interrupt the mosquitorenal system, that contributes to a mosquitosurvival after stuff oneself on blood.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes broadcast the pathogen that causes dengue fever, putting 40 percent of the worldpopulation at risk of catching the disease, and causing 50 million to 100 million infections (22,000 deaths) annually. They collect up diseases when stuff oneself on putrescent hosts and can afterwards taint new hosts when they feed again. Currently, no vaccine or diagnosis protects opposite dengue, so the usually approach to stop the widespread is by determining mosquitoes.

But now, a Cornell investigate published in the Mar 4, 2010 issue of the American Journal of Physiology -- Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology has identified a protein from the renal tubules of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that appears to be concerned in compelling urination as they feed on blood. When mosquitoes devour and routine red red red red red blood meals, they contingency urinate to forestall liquid and salt overloads that can kill them.

Also, they have to bear fast urination when feeding, or they can"t fly away, pronounced Peter Piermarini, the paperlead writer and a postdoctoral investigate join forces with in the lab of Klaus Beyenbach, a highbrow of biomedical sciences in CornellCollege of Veterinary Medicine and the papersenior author. Too most weight will deteriorate the mosquitoflight performance, identical to an aircraft with as well most payload. [If they get as well heavy,] they might turn some-more receptive to being swatted by their host or eaten by a predator, pronounced Piermarini.

The researchers detected a key protein voiced in the mosquitorenal complement that contributes to urination. In lab experiments, Piermarini, Beyenbach and colleagues demonstrated that restraint the proteinfunction in the renal tubules with a drug reverses the extended rates of urination that would start during red red red red red blood feeding.

Thus, restraint the duty of this protein in healthy populations of mosquitoes might extent their capability to tarry the physiological stresses of a red red red red red blood dish and to serve broadcast viruses, pronounced Piermarini.

The Aedes aegypti renal complement additionally serves as a profitable indication for tools of the mammalian kidney, with identical cells in each complement and presumably identical proteins, pronounced the authors.

Co-authors embody Laura Grogan, a member in the Leadership Program for Veterinary Scholars at Cornell in 2007; Kenneth Lau "08, a former investigate technician in the Department of Biomedical Sciences; and Li Wang "10, an honors tyro in physiology.

The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation saved the study.

George Daley to plead hurdles and opportunities confronting branch cell scientists ScienceBlog.com



The United States government"s preference last year to lift restrictions on federally-funded branch cell investigate has helped the nation"s stem-cell researchers combine on science, but stipulations sojourn -- even underneath the new policy, according to George Daley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute questioner at Children"s Hospital Boston.

Daley"s display at the AAAS Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., on Feb 20, 2010 will report the stream meridian confronting branch cell researchers in the United States. He will additionally plead his stream outlook on either prompted pluripotent branch cells (iPS) -- that are subsequent from adult cells -- will have the same intensity healing application as human rudimentary branch cells.

Human rudimentary branch cells have the conspicuous genius to grown up in to all of the 200 kinds of cells that have up the human body: skin, bone, nerve, blood, heart, and so on. By this nature, the cells hold good guarantee for treating harmful diseases similar to Alzheimer"s, Parkinson"s, cancer, and diabetes. However, a little cruise human rudimentary branch cell investigate argumentative because, in a little cases, the new branch cell lines are subsequent solidified human embryos that have been donated for research. New strategies have been not long ago grown that by-pass this issue by genetically reprogramming adult cells.

On Mar 9, 2009, President Obama carried the anathema that had formerly limited the have make use of of of sovereign supports for rudimentary branch cell investigate on cell lines that had been combined after Aug 9, 2001. "Over a thousand lines have been subsequent given Aug 9, 2001, majority with attributes profitable to healing research," says Daley, whose own lab has subsequent eighteen new branch cell lines. Until the shift in policy, these lines could usually be complicated with in isolation funds. Obama called on the National Institutes of Health to set up severe discipline to safeguard that new branch cells lines were subsequent by reliable practices.

Although less restrictive, the new process does have the own challenges. Only one of the "pre-April 9, 2001-lines" that had been authorized and used for federally-funded investigate during the last decade are now authorized underneath the new guidelines. That"s stopping research, says Daley. "Ten years of investigate are underneath a little disbelief since of the incapacity to go on to work on the Bush lines. We need the scientists who subsequent the comparison lines to step up and get their lines authorized underneath the new system."

Daley"s speak will additionally prominence the differences in between rudimentary branch cells and iPS cells, that were initial combined from adult human cells in 2007. The iPS plan is an critical apparatus since it can be used to emanate disease-specific branch cell lines that, similar to rudimentary branch cells, can rise in to majority cell types. Daley and alternative scientists are utilizing iPS record to reprogram cells from patients with diseases such as Lou Gehrig"s disease (amyotrophic parallel sclerosis), Huntington"s disease, and diabetes. With these "disease-specific" iPS cells in hand, researchers can sense some-more about how such diseases rise and hopefully brand new healing strategies.

Despite the guarantee of iPS cells, scientists are still struggling to assimilate either their developmental intensity is homogeneous to that of rudimentary branch cells. Some studies have referred to that iPS cells have some-more frail genomes or are some-more disposed to DNA abnormalities than rudimentary branch cells. This infirmity could have them vulnerable to have make use of of therapeutically. The bottom line, says Daley, is that investigate on both sorts of branch cells contingency continue, since it"s as well early to envision where the safest and majority in effect cell-based therapies will come from.

"It"s a in few instances fast paced and sparkling field," says Daley. "We"ve had a decade of diversions and distractions, and we as a systematic village are relieved to have a some-more receptive systematic policy, that allows us to concentration roughly to one side on the science."

"Rethinking the Science, Biology, and Importance of Stem Cells in Regenerative Medicine" Saturday, Feb 20, 2010 1:30 PM-4:30 PM Room 5A, San Diego Convention Center

In further to George Daley, speakers embody HHMI questioner Owen Witte, University of California, Los Angeles; Irving Weissman, Stanford University School of Medicine; Fred Gage, Salk Institute for Biological Studies; Rudolf Jaenisch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and R. Alta Charo, University of Wisconsin.

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http://www.hhmi.org

Economists trim 2011 U.S. expansion foresee

WASHINGTON Wed Mar 10, 2010 12:40am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. economists raised their forecast for economic growth in 2010 in March, the third straight monthly rise, while trimming their growth forecast for 2011, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

Economists surveyed earlier this month in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators newsletter said the economy is expected to grow by 3.0 percent in 2011, which is 0.1 percentage point lower than estimates made a month ago.

But economists raised their 2010 growth forecast for the third consecutive month to 3.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage point from February.

Still, the economists predicted the recovery would be mild given the depth of the recession.

The consensus also expects inventories to continue adding to GDP over the next several quarters but see the size of those contributions become increasingly smaller.

"By Q1 2011, the contribution to GDP from business inventories is expected to become trivial," the survey said.

The panelists said they also expect "a slower and less powerful than is typical improvement in labor market conditions that will cap gains in disposable personal income and personal consumption expenditures."

The panelists expressed concern that severe winter weather crimped economic activity in February and that upcoming monthly data on production, retail sales, housing starts and home sales could fall short of earlier consensus expectations.

However, they also pointed out any weather-induced softness should be recovered in the March data.

(Reporting by Nancy Waitz, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

IBM banks on China for expansion in appetite div

Sui-Lee Wee and Leonora Walet HONG KONG Thu Mar 4, 2010 10:01pm EST Related News Siemens aims for 1/5 of world smart grids businessMon, Feb 8 2010

HONG KONG (Reuters) - IBM sees strong market potential for "smart grids" power distribution systems in China as the country seeks ways to use energy more efficiently.

Technology giants including Google Inc, Cisco and Microsoft are investing heavily in smart grids, intelligent power-distribution systems designed to be more responsive and interactive than today"s traditional power grids.

In terms of countries, China, the world"s biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, is investing the most. Beijing plans to invest $7.3 billion in smart grid projects in 2010, more than the United States, according to Zpryme, a market research firm in Austin, Texas.

China is far behind the United States and Japan in terms of its smart grid development.

"China is pursuing smart grids as aggressively or more aggressively than any other country in the world right now," Brad Gammons, vice-president of IBM"s Global Energy Utilities Industry, told Reuters in an embargoed interview last week.

"They"re very focused and have a very strong commitment to move in that direction," he said.

IBM -- which counts State Grid Corp. of China, the nation"s leading power grid operator, as one of its customers -- unveiled its Energy Utilities Solutions Lab in Beijing this week.

Smart grids include computerized monitoring of the electricity flowing though a power grid and allow utilities to manage electricity usage automatically.

IBM"s products span the range of smart grid systems, including the automation of power stations and electricity distribution networks with the use of digital sensors and communication networks.

CHINA GROWTH

China"s smart grid could take five to 10 years to fully develop, said Wendy Wang, an analyst with Yuanta Securities, adding the nation is still trailing the United States and Japan.

"China offers huge growth opportunities for investors in smart grids given increased spending in the sector," she said.

"Investors will benefit from the transformation of the country"s grid infrastructure and we will see opportunities from the building of the ultra high-voltage grid down to the development of meters and software."

IBM expects the China revenues of its energy and utilities division to grow by $400 million from now until 2014 as Beijing banks on "smart grids" to make the country more energy-efficient, Gammons said.

While the company gave no detailed breakdown, a report from Macquarie Equities Research puts IBM"s China revenue at $2.6 billion in 2008. IBM saw total revenue of $95.76 billion for all of 2009.

"We"re looking at $400 million in incremental revenue over our base revenue in China over the next four years," he said. "We"re making investments in China based on the grid opportunities we see."

IBM is eyeing partnerships with local companies as it seeks to expand its business in China, Gammons added.

(Editing by Don Durfee and Valerie Lee)

10000000000 and counting: 10billionth balance downloaded from Apple iTunes

The 10 billionth song has been downloaded from Apple iTunes, just seven years after the online store shook up the flagging music industry.

The 10 billionth song - Johnny Cash"s "Guess Things Happen That Way" - was downloaded by 71-year-old Louie Sulcer in Woodstock, Georgia, U.S.

Apple has rewarded him with a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

An online counter of the popular music website read: "10 billion songs downloaded from iTunes. And counting" on Wednesday.

Tunes from The Black Eyed Peas came first and third in a list of the top songs on Apple iTunes. The list was released to mark the 10billionth download

ITUNES TOP 20 SONGS

1) I Gotta Feeling, Black Eyed Peas2) Poker Face, Lady GaGa3) Boom Boom Pow, Black Eyed Peas4) I"m Yours, Jason Mraz5) Viva la Vida, Coldplay6) Just Dance, Lady GaGa7) Low, Flo Rida8) Love Story, Taylor Swift9) Bleeding Love, Leona Lewis10) Tik Tok, Keisha11) Disturbia, Rihanna12) So What, Pink13) I Kissed a Girl, Katy Perry14) Single Ladies, Beyonce15) Hot N Cold, Katy Perry16) Stronger, Kanye West17) Live Your Life, T.I18) Hey There Delilah, Plain White T"s19) Right Round, Flo Rida20) Party in the USA, Miley Cyrus

The California company behind the iPhone, iPod and Macbook series have promised a $10,000 iTunes gift card to the lucky customer who downloaded the 10-billionth song.

Apple has also provided a list of the all-time top 20 songs on iTunes to mark the occasion.

"I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, which debuted in May 2009 topped the list, followed by Lady Gaga"s electronic-inspired "Poker Face."

The iTunes Music Store had dominated the music download industry ever since its launch in 2003. This is because of the enormous popularity of Apple music devices such as iPods that automatically synced with the iTunes store.

Many iPod owners still do not realise they can buy cheaper music on websitesother than iTunes, as most providers now don"t use DRM (Digital RightsManagement) to protect their tracks.

For instance Apple"s top download from the Black Eyed Peas is 99p in the UK, but can be bought for 65p from play.com and 50p from 7digital.

iTunes has expanded over theyears and now offers television shows, movies, audio books and podcasts.

Steve Jobs, at the UK launch of Apple"s iTunes back in 2004. It continues to dominate the download market