Selena Gomez’s Mother Mandy Is Pregnant
Singer Selena Gomez had lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, revealing her exciting news that her mother is pregnant! Justin Bieber’s girlfriend took to [...]
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? The "Twilight" vampire movie hovered at the top of box office charts for a second straight week, beating a revival of "The Muppets" and other family fare during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1" earned an estimated $42 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters from Friday through Sunday, according to studio estimates compiled by Reuters.
"The Muppets," a movie that returns Kermit, Miss Piggy and their puppet friends to the big screen for the first time in 12 years, finished in second place with $29.5 million over three days. Third place for the weekend belonged to 3D animated film "Happy Feet Two," which brought in $13.4 million.
Walt Disney Co released "The Muppets." Privately held Summit Entertainment distributed "Breaking Dawn: Part 1." "Happy Feet Two" was distributed by Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Bill Trott)
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BEIRUT (AP) ? A Syrian human rights activist says that the 25-year-old pregnant wife of a Syrian dissident has been kidnapped in Cairo.
Ammar Qurabi said in a statement that Mona al-Gharib was kidnapped Friday at noon. The Egypt-based Qurabi is head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria
An Egyptian police official says that the woman's husband Thaer al-Nashef has filed a complaint about the kidnapping. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Al-Nashef was informed of the kidnapping through an anonymous text message he received on his mobile phone, Qurabi's statement says.
The statement says that al-Nashef had been receiving threats for some time. It says the group believes that Syrian government agents carried out the abduction.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
BEIRUT (AP) ? Activists say Syrian military forces have clashed with army defectors using machine guns and heavy weaponry in the country's east.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 10 Syrian soldiers were killed in the clashes that took place late Friday in the town of Deir el-Zour.
The group said Saturday that there were also several casualties among the group of armed dissidents known as the Free Syrian Army.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network also reported fierce clashes, followed by house-to-house raids by troops searching for defectors.
Syria's 8-month uprising has grown increasingly militarized.
On Friday, the military blamed terrorists for an attack a day earlier in the central city of Homs, saying six pilots and four others were killed in an ambush.
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PHILADELPHIA ? Three American students arrested during a protest in Egypt were released Friday and planned to catch flights out of Cairo to begin their trips home, an attorney and family said.
An Egyptian court had ordered the release of American University in Cairo students Derrik Sweeney, Luke Gates and Gregory Porter a day earlier.
The three were arrested on the roof of a university building near Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square on Sunday. Officials accused them of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters.
Attorney Theodore Simon, who represents the 19-year-old Porter, a student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, said police escorted the students to the airport late Friday local time.
Simon said he and Porter's mother both spoke by phone with the student, who is from the Philadelphia suburb of Glenside, Pa.
"He clearly conveyed to me ... that he was OK," Simon told the AP.
Simon wouldn't immediately discuss his client's travel plans, but Sweeney's mother says the students were expected to fly from Cairo to Frankfurt, Germany.
Joy Sweeney told the AP her son, a 19-year-old Georgetown University student from Jefferson City, Mo., would fly from Frankfurt to Washington then on to St. Louis. She said family will meet him when he arrives late Saturday.
"I am ecstatic," Sweeney said Friday. "I can't wait for him to get home tomorrow night. I can't believe he's actually going to get on a plane. It is so wonderful."
The 21-year-old Gates is a student at Indiana University.
Messages seeking comment after word of the students' release for Gates' parents Friday. They had issued a statement through the school Thursday saying they were "extremely happy" he would be coming home soon.
Joy Sweeney said U.S. Embassy officials had earlier indicated it might be a few more days before the students were released because Egyptian courts typically are closed Fridays and Saturdays.
"But apparently the U.S. Embassy and the powers that be made it happen," she said. "Whoever needed to be there got there and got it done for the boys, and we are eternally grateful."
Sweeney said she had talked with her son Friday afternoon and "he seemed jubilant."
"He thought he was going to be able to go back to his dorm room and get his stuff," she said. "We said, `No, no, don't get your stuff, we just want you here.'"
She said American University will ship his belongings home.
Sweeney had earlier said she did not prepare a Thanksgiving celebration this week because the idea seemed "absolutely irrelevant" while her son still was being held.
"I'm getting ready to head out and buy turkey and stuffing and all the good fixings so that we can make a good Thanksgiving dinner," she said Friday.
___
Kozel reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia and Dana Fields in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.
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Pakistan's envoy to the US, Ambassador Husain Haqqani, explains why Pakistan cannot simply clear out militants from its mountainous regions, while Kenya marches into Somalia to try a similar task.
Pakistan?s ambassador to the United States dropped by for breakfast with The Christian Science Monitor yesterday, and explained why Pakistan simply can?t go into its mountainous regions and clear out terrorists the way that Macy?s, for instance, can clear out its fall collection to make way for the winter.
Skip to next paragraphThe reason, Ambassador Husain Haqqani told reporters at the weekly Monitor breakfast, is that launching the kinds of assaults that it previously conducted in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley tends to stir up local resentment against the government and support for Islamist militant groups like the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar?s Hizb-i Islami.
As Monitor correspondent Howard LaFranchi writes:
Haqqani said Wednesday that US officials now understand better Pakistan?s internal constraints in confronting some groups. He listed two red lines that Pakistan has laid down with the US concerning what it will and won?t do in the battle with terrorism: Pakistan won?t act in ways that involve ?taking risks with our own internal cohesion,? he said, or that would pose ?risks to our own national security.?
The downside of that approach for Pakistan is that it virtually guarantees that the strikes by unmanned US drones will continue and even increase.
And unfortunately, the downside of speaking too frankly to reporters is that sometimes you make your bosses upset. This may or may not have happened with Mr. Haqqani, who was summoned home to Islamabad just hours after speaking at the Monitor breakfast. Pakistani officials insist this is just a routine visit.
With the US seemingly unable to clear out antigovernment militants in Afghanistan ? and Pakistan apparently unwilling to do so in Pakistan ? one wonders why a government like Kenya would want to send its troops into Somalia to carry out a very similar mission. On Oct. 16, Kenya?s military moved into neighboring Somalia after a continuing string of pirate attacks and kidnappings began to take a toll on Kenya?s foreign trade and tourism business.
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___
EGYPT
Egypt's military rulers say parliamentary elections will start on schedule next week despite unrest, and they reject protesters' calls for them to immediately step down. Resigning now would amount to a "betrayal" of the people's trust after the military took over from ousted president Hosni Mubarak by popular demand, the ruling generals say. There is little violence through the day as protesters enforce a truce in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
___
LIBYA
Libya's transitional leaders swear on a Quran to uphold the ideals of the revolution that toppled Moammar Gadhafi as they take their oaths of office, another key step in the country's hoped-for march toward democracy. The lineup of relative unknowns, almost all of them older men, will confront daunting challenges, like establishing control over the fractured nation after the ousting of Gadhafi's 42-year regime, along with building up state institutions practically from scratch.
___
SYRIA
An Arab League committee gives Syria 24 hours to agree to allow an observer mission into the country, or it could face sanctions that include stopping financial dealings and freezing assets. The bloodshed in the country continues, with activists reporting at least 15 people killed, including civilians and security forces.
___
YEMEN
President Ali Abdullah Saleh's agreement to step down fails to halt anti-government demonstrations or prevent violence as regime supporters kill five protesters demanding that the ousted leader be put on trial for crimes ranging from corruption to bloodshed during the current uprising.
___
BAHRAIN
Bahrain suggests it has classified evidence that Iran was linked to Shiite-led protests in the Gulf kingdom, despite an independent commission that said it found nothing to back the claims. The allegations of Iranian involvement in the kingdom's 10-month-old unrest have been central to Gulf policies during the region's largest Arab Spring uprising, including the decision to send a Saudi-led military force to reinforce Bahrain's embattled Sunni monarchy.
___
TUNISIA
Violent demonstrations erupt in Tunisia's impoverished central region and are dispersed with tear gas, according to local officials and the state news agency. A peaceful demonstration in the town of Kasserine over the exclusion of local residents from a list of those killed in last year's uprising against the dictatorship turns violent, as protesters clash with police and military.
___
MOROCCO
Moroccans are choosing a parliament in elections prompted by the Arab Spring's clamor for freedom, but there are few signs that elections are even taking place. Posters and raucous rallies for candidates are absent in the cities, and instead there are just stark official banners urging citizens to "do their national duty" and "participate in the change the country is undergoing." The real challenge for these polls will be if many people come out to vote in the face of a strident boycott campaign by democracy campaigners.
___
KUWAIT
Kuwait media report that authorities have issued nearly 50 arrest warrants in connection with a protest mob that stormed parliament earlier this month. The Kuwait Times reports that defense lawyers expect even more arrests linked to the Nov. 16 storming by dozens of protesters, angered by allegations of high-level corruption against government officials.
___
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia's minority Shiite Muslims stage protests in an eastern city, and four are shot dead, the Interior Ministry says. The ministry statement does not say who fired the fatal shots in the city of Qatif, but a top official says security forces were fighting with demonstrators there.
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LG and PRADA today announced that they've renewed their partnership and that we can expect the PRADA phone by LG 3.0 early next year. The Korean electronics giant and the Italian fashion giant have worked together since 2006, release a pair of phones the next two years. The PRADA phone by LG 1.0 sold more than 1 million units, LG said in a press release, and is a fixture at New York's Museum of Modern Art as well as in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, China.
No word yet on how far out of your price range the PRADA phone by LG 3.0 will be. We've got the full presser after the break.
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DERBY, Conn. -- A typo has led to the election of the wrong man to a finance board in Derby, Conn.
James J. Butler was the highest vote-getter, winning 1,526 votes for the 10-member Board of Apportionment and Taxation, which monitors the town's finances.
However, his father, 72-year-old James R. Butler, was the candidate nominated by Democrats. The News Times of Danbury and New Haven Register report that he said he wants the job and that his son is not interested in public office.
James J. Butler, who is 46, would not comment on whether he wants the job. But he calls city officials incompetent for confusing him with his father.
Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state's office, says James J. Butler should be sworn in because he was elected.
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CAIRO (Reuters) ? Egyptian riot police and protesters observed a truce on Thursday after violence that has killed 39 people in five days and the army said parliamentary elections would start on time next week.
Demonstrations by thousands of Egyptians furious at the slow transfer of power by military leadership to civilian rule have led to violent clashes with police, in scenes similar to the popular uprising that toppled leader Hosni Mubarak in February.
Protesters have vowed not to leave Cairo's central Tahrir Square, which once again has become the cradle of public protest in the most populous Arab country, until army rule ends.
The demonstrations appear to have polarised Egyptians, many of whom worry that unrest will prolong economic stagnation.
In new blows to confidence, the Egyptian pound weakened to more than 6 to the dollar for the first time since January 2005, and Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on Egypt.
The agency cut Egypt's long-term, foreign- and local-currency sovereign credit ratings to B+ from BB-, saying a "weak political and economic profile" had worsened further.
Egypt's ruling army council said it was doing all it could to prevent more violence. In a statement, it apologised, offered condolences and compensation to families of the dead, and promised a swift investigation into who was behind the unrest.
NO ELECTION DELAY
A ruling council member, General Mamdouh Shaheen, told a news conference the parliamentary vote, whose first stage is due to begin on Monday, would go ahead on time. "We will not delay elections. This is the final word," he said.
Another council member, Major-General Mokhtar al-Mullah, took a swipe at the demonstrators. "If we look at those in Tahrir, regardless of their number, they do not represent the Egyptian people, but we must respect their opinion," he said.
Mullah said the army hoped to form a new government before Monday to replace Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's cabinet, which resigned during this week's violence without giving a reason.
Demonstrators in Tahrir said the truce had taken hold from midnight. Cranes hauled concrete barriers, later reinforced with barbed wire, across streets leading to the nearby Interior Ministry, flashpoint for much of the recent violence.
"Since about midnight or 1 a.m. there were no more clashes. We are standing here to ensure no one goes inside the cordon," said Mohamed Mustafa, 50, among a group barring a street nearby.
They were guarding a barricade made of a broken metal fence, a telephone booth laid on its side and part of a lamp post.
At the other end of the street, littered with shattered glass, lumps of concrete and heaps of rubbish, at least two army armoured personnel carriers blocked the route. Mustafa's group said police were on the front line, and behind them the army.
Lines of Tahrir protesters manned similar barriers to block access to Mohamed Mahmoud Street, scene of repeated fighting.
"We have created a space separating us from the police. We are standing here to make sure no one violates it," said Mahmoud Adly, 42, part of a human cordon four ranks deep.
The protests in Cairo and elsewhere pose the gravest challenge to Egypt's army rulers since they took over from Mubarak, overthrown on Feb. 11 after an 18-day uprising.
The thousands who thronged Tahrir Square were undeterred in their determination to rid Egypt of army rule. "He goes, we won't," declared a banner referring to the army commander, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
The United States and European nations, alarmed at the violence of the past few days, have urged Egypt to proceed with what has been billed as its first free vote in decades.
LACK OF TRUST
The army and the Muslim Brotherhood, which expects to do well in the polls, say it must go ahead, but many protesters do not trust the military to oversee a clean vote. Some scorn the Brotherhood for its focus on gaining seats in parliament.
The military council originally promised to return to barracks within six months, but then set a timetable for elections and drawing up a new constitution that would have left it in power until late next year or early 2013.
Tantawi pledged this week to hold a presidential vote in June that could pave the way for a transfer to civilian rule, but the demonstrators, angered by army attempts to shield itself legally from future civilian control, are unconvinced.
"The military council must leave and hand power to civilians. They don't want to leave so that their corruption isn't exposed," said 23-year-old student Ahmed Essam.
Before the truce, protesters had fought running battles with security forces around the Interior Ministry. The bloody chaos there contrasted with normal life in streets nearby.
(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair, Tom Perry and Tamim Elyan; Writing by Alistair Lyon)
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WASHINGTON ? A year from Election Day, Democrats are crafting a campaign strategy for Vice President Joe Biden that targets the big three political battlegrounds: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states where Biden might be more of an asset to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign than the president himself.
The Biden plan underscores an uncomfortable reality for the Obama team. A shaky economy and sagging enthusiasm among Democrats could shrink the electoral map for Obama in 2012, forcing his campaign to depend on carrying the 67 electoral votes up for grabs in the three swing states.
Obama won all three states in 2008. But this time he faces challenges in each, particularly in Ohio and Florida, where voters elected Republican governors in the 2010 midterm elections.
The president sometimes struggles to connect with Ohio and Pennsylvania's white working-class voters, and Jewish voters who make up a core constituency for Florida Democrats and view him with skepticism.
Biden has built deep ties to both groups during his four decades in national politics, connections that could make a difference.
As a long-serving member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden cemented his reputation as an unyielding supporter of Israel, winning the respect of many in the Jewish community. And Biden's upbringing in a working class, Catholic family from Scranton, Pa., gives him a valuable political intangible: He empathizes with the struggles of blue-collar Americans because his family lived those struggles.
"Talking to blue-collar voters is perhaps his greatest attribute," said Dan Schnur, a Republican political analyst. "Obama provides the speeches, and Biden provides the blue-collar subtitles."
While Biden's campaign travel won't kick into high gear until next year, he's already been making stops in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida this fall, speaking at events focused on education, public safety and small businesses and raising campaign cash. Behind the scenes, he's working the phones with prominent Jewish groups and Catholic organizations in those states, a Democratic official said.
Biden is also targeting organized labor, speaking frequently with union leaders in Ohio ahead of last week's vote on a state law that would have curbed collective bargaining rights for public workers. Voters struck down the measure, and Biden traveled to Cleveland Tuesday to celebrate the victory with union members.
The Democratic official said the vice president will also be a frequent visitor to Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming weeks, seeking to steal some of the spotlight from the Republican presidential candidates blanketing those states ahead of the January caucus and primary.
And while Obama may have declared that he won't be commenting on the Republican presidential field until there's a nominee, Biden is following no such rules. He's calling out GOP candidates by name, and in true Biden style, he appears to be relishing in doing so.
During a speech last month to the Florida Democratic Convention, Biden singled out "Romney and Rick", criticizing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for saying the government should let the foreclosure crisis hit rock bottom, and hammering Texas Gov. Rick Perry's assertion that he would send U.S. troops into Mexico.
And he took on the full GOP field during an October fundraiser in New Hampshire, saying "There is no fundamental difference among all the Republican candidates."
Democratic officials said Biden will follow in the long-standing tradition of vice presidents playing the role of attack dog, allowing Obama to stay out of the fray and appear more focused on governing than campaigning.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. The Obama campaign has been reluctant to publically define Biden's role in the re-election bid this early in the run, though campaign manager Jim Messina did say the vice president would deliver an economic message to appeal for support.
"You'll see him in communities across the country next year laying out the choice we face: restoring economic security for the middle class or returning to the same policies that led to our economic challenges," Messina said.
Democrats say Biden will campaign for House candidates in swing states as the party tries to recapture some of the seats in Congress lost during the 2010 midterms.
And here again, the vice president's efforts in politically crucial Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida could be most important. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 12 districts in those states that Obama and Biden carried in the 2008 presidential race but are represented by Republican representatives.
New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chairs the committee, said he believes Biden could be a "game-changer" in those districts.
"All he has to do is ask voters, has the Republican strategy of no worked for you?" Israel said.
Israel met with Obama and Biden at the White House earlier this month to discuss, among other things, their role in congressional campaigns. While Israel said he hopes Obama will actively campaign for Democratic House candidates, he said "the vice president has already volunteered."
___
Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.
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New research sifts through the entire genome of thousands of human subjects to look for genetic variation associated with height. The results of the study, published by Cell Press in the December issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggest that uncommon genetic deletions are associated with short stature.
Height is a highly heritable trait that is associated with variation in many different genes. "Despite tremendous recent progress in finding common genetic variants associated with height, thus far these variants only explain about 10% of the variation in adult height," explains senior study author, Dr. Joel N Hirschhorn, from Children's Hospital Boston and the Broad Institute. "It has been estimated that about half of height variation could eventually be accounted for by the sorts of variants we've been looking at, so it is possible that other types of genetic variants, such as copy number variants (CNVs), may also contribute to the genetic variation in stature."
Dr. Hirschhorn, co-authors Dr. Yiping Shen and Dr. Andrew Dauber, and their colleagues were interested in looking for associations of human stature with CNVs, something that has not been done before. A CNV is an excess (gain) in genetic material or an absence (deletion) of parts of the genome. Some CNVs are common, meaning that they are observed often in the human genome. Other CNVs are rare or occur with low frequency in the human population.
"To investigate whether CNVs play a role in short or tall stature, we conducted a genome-wide association study of copy number in a cohort of children who had comparative genomic hybridization microarray screening for clinical reasons and we observed an excess of rare deletions in children with short stature," says Dr. Shen. "We extended our findings to a large population-based cohort, and again observed an excess of low frequency deletions in shorter individuals." The findings were not due to known gene deletion syndromes and no significant associations were observed between CNV and tall stature.
Taken together, the results demonstrate that there is a correlation between low frequency genetic deletions and decreasing height. "Our findings strongly support the hypothesis that increasing burden of lower frequency deletions can lead to shorter stature, and suggest that this phenomenon extends to the general population," concludes Dr. Dauber.
###
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NEW YORK ? If you ever see Vince Gill shirtless at one of his concerts, you can likely place the blame on Sting.
Bare-chested singing is a regular affair for the rocker, and when Gill was asked if he'd go shirtless for the pair's CMT "Crossroads" special, Sting chimed in: "He will tonight. I'm going to encourage him."
"What a thought. You know I haven't eaten in six weeks preparing for this gig because of this yardstick over here," said Gill, looking at Sting before laughing: "Going to look like Laurel and Hardy up there."
"I've never been described as a yardstick. Is that a compliment?" asked Sting, joining in the laughter.
The good vibes between the two translate onstage during the special, which will air on Thanksgiving at 8 p.m. and was pre-taped in September. The rock and country veterans had worked together once before, at the 2004 Grammy Awards in tribute to the Beatles. Both said linking up musically was easy because they have "similar registers.
"That's always appealing ? to find guys with guts enough to sing like girls," said Gill, laughing again.
The "Crossroads" series has featured collaborations from James Taylor and the Dixie Chicks to John Mayer and Keith Urban. This one-hour concert will have Gill and Sting performing hits like "Shape of My Heart," "Every Breath You Take" and "Don't Let Our Love Start Slippin' Away."
While the singers ? who own a combined 36 Grammy Awards ? say the collaboration was a comfortable one, they admit there were some challenges, too, when it came to covering the other's songs.
"When you immerse yourself in somebody else's work and the more you get to know the song, you recognize these little inflections in the melody, which you hadn't noticed the first time," Sting said. "It demands a lot of respect, a lot of care and attention."
Gill knew it would be tough to cover Sting's material, and he told the rock singer he'd need him to step in during some moments.
"I'm meat and potatoes, you know, but once I ... went in there and spent the time, I started to understand how it all worked," he said. "There's like a couple lines that I've tried to learn and I just said, `Sting, you gotta sing these `cause they're so off-the-hook great I don't want to screw them up.'"
They also said their temporary duo was drama-free.
"We haven't had a fight yet. Not one," said Sting.
Gill chimed in with a laugh: "If we get into a fight, I'll choke you with heel dust (and) run away. I'm not much of a fighter."
___
Online:
http://www.cmt.com/shows/dyn/cmt_crossroads/series.jhtml
___
Mesfin Fekadu covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/musicmesfin
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2011) ? Guppies in the wild have evolved over at least half-a-million years -- long enough for the males' coloration to have changed dramatically. Yet a characteristic orange patch on male guppies has remained remarkably stable, though it could have become redder or more yellow. Why has it stayed the same hue of orange over such a long period of time?
Because that's the color female guppies prefer.
"Sometimes populations have to evolve just to stay the same," said Greg Grether, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and co-author of a study published Nov. 23 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, a major journal for research in evolutionary biology.
"In this case, the males have evolved back over and over again to the color that females prefer," said Grether, who noted that there are many examples in which there is less variation among populations of a species than life scientists would expect.
The new study, funded by the National Science Foundation, "provides a neat solution to a mystery that has puzzled me for years," he said.
The orange patches on male guppies are made up of two pigments: carotenoids (which they ingest in their diets and are yellow) and drosopterins (which are red and which their bodies produce). Carotenoids are the same pigments that provide color to vegetables and fruits. Plants produce carotenoids, but animals generally cannot; guppies obtain most of their carotenoids from algae.
UCLA's Kerry Deere, the lead author of the study, conducted experiments in which she presented female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) with a choice of males with low, medium and high levels of drosopterin to see which males they preferred. In her experiments, the females were given a wider range of pigment choices than they would find in the wild. Deere, who was a graduate student of ecology and evolutionary biology in Grether's laboratory at the time and is currently a UCLA postdoctoral scholar in human genetics, conducted more than 100 mate-choice trials.
The females strongly preferred the intermediate males, those whose patches, or spots, were the right hue of orange -- not too red and not too yellow.
"The females preferred the males with an intermediate drosopterin level by a highly significant margin," Deere said.
"Males that are closer to this preferred hue probably have more offspring," Grether said.
If guppies were dependent only on carotenoids for their orange coloration, one would expect to find large changes in the color of their orange patches because the availability of algae varies by location. Guppies are native to Trinidad and Venezuela; the ones in this study were from Trinidad.
(Unlike the colorful guppies sold in pet stores, female guppies in the wild do not have bright coloration like the orange patches. Males are not as ornate, or as large, as the pet-store variety either.)
"A pattern I discovered 10 years ago, which was mysterious at first, is that in locations where more carotenoids are available in their diet, guppies produce more of the drosopterins," Grether said. "There is a very strong pattern of the ratio of these two kinds of pigments staying about the same.
"To human eyes at least, as the proportion of carotenoids in the spots goes up, the spots look yellower, and as the proportion of drosopterins goes up, the spots look redder. By maintaining a very similar ratio of the two pigments across sites, the fish maintain a similar hue of orange from site to site. What is maintaining the similar pigment ratio across sites and across populations? The reason for the lack of variation is that genetic changes counteract environmental changes. The males have evolved differences in drosopterin production that keep the hue relatively constant across environments. As a result of Kerry's experiment, we now have good evidence that female mate choice is responsible for this pattern."
While there are many cases in nature in which genetic variation in a trait masks environmental variation, there are very few examples where the cause is known.
"I originally assumed if there was variation among populations in drosopterin production, it would be the populations where carotenoid availability was lowest that were producing more of these synthetic pigments to compensate for the lack of carotenoids in their diet. But we found the opposite pattern," Grether said. "They're not using drosopterins as a carotenoid substitute; they're matching carotenoid levels with drosopterins. Why they are doing that was a mystery. The answer appears to be that it enables them to maintain the hue that female guppies prefer."
Co-authors on the study were Janet Sinsheimer, a professor of biostatistics, biomathematics and human genetics at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, and former UCLA undergraduate Aida Sun.
Grether received funding from the National Science Foundation. Deere received fellowship funding from the National Institutes of Health.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111123190404.htm
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NEW YORK -- In the two months since its inception in a small park in lower Manhattan, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread from coast to coast, inspiring hundreds of like-minded encampments and demonstrations in city centers and college campuses.
But while the vast majority of demonstrators have hewed consistently to a non-violent ethos, the tactics of law enforcement have been anything but uniform. From jurisdiction to jurisdiction, official responses have varied from paramilitary style crackdowns to peaceful accommodation.
In Oakland, Calif., riot-gear clad police officers cleared demonstrators from their encampment using rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, gravely wounding an Iraq war veteran in the process. At the University of California at Davis, campus police doused the faces of seated protesters with pepper spray at close range, in an incident that quickly went viral after video of the event appeared online.
Other cities have taken a different approach. In Albany, N.Y., a planned move by the mayor -- with the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo -- to oust Occupy demonstrators from a city park near the capitol was quashed after the city's police chief and district attorney aired reservations.
"So long as we have no violence that is being perpetrated against law enforcement and no damage to state property, there's room for peaceful coexistence here," the district attorney, P. David Soares, said in a recent interview with the Associated Press. "I support the right of all parties to assemble peacefully and express their points of view."
Such an approach has been scorned in other cities, but not without consequences. In Oakland, the violent raid, authorized by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, was harshly criticized by Dan Siegel, the mayor's top legal adviser. He called the raid "tragically unnecessary" in a press conference announcing his resignation.
Siegel, a civil rights attorney, followed up the press conference with a sharply-worded Twitter post.
"Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1 percent and its government facilitators," Siegel wrote.
Norm Stamper, who resigned as Seattle's police chief after the city's chaotic globalization protests in 1999, which included the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators, said the behavior of officers in Oakland was symptomatic of the highly authoritarian style of policing common in U.S. cities. Stamper, an author, has become an advocate for policing reforms in the years since.
"These officers are brought up steeped in a tradition of authority and power," Stamper said. "They are taught that they can never back down, that you meet force with force, and too many of them have been taught that passively resisting demonstrators represent force."
Oakland's Mayor has vowed to avoid future violent police action against demonstrators, and so far protests in the city have been met with substantially reduced force.
The city's Occupy demonstrators, however, show no sign of backing down. In their latest provocation, they have called for a shutdown of all West Coast ports on Dec. 12.
As protests continue -- and possibly grow in size and ambition -- the potential for violence will remain, in Oakland and other cities, Stamper said.
"I just don't see police changing their tactics tomorrow," he said. "Unless and until the police recognize that there's a better way to deal with this we're going to see repeats."
In New York City, where the Occupy movement began, police tactics toward the demonstrators have shifted away from accommodation and toward confrontation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg initially gave protesters permission to stay in Zuccotti Park, but then authorized the police department to clear the encampment in an unannounced early morning raid.
The raid on Zuccotti was followed by a march on the New York Stock Exchange, which was met with harsh tactics by police officers, according to protesters who participated and attorneys representing demonstrators who were arrested that day.
"Multiple friends got the shit kicked out of them," said Katama Rose, 23, an Occupy demonstrator.
Martin Stoller, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, said that several demonstrators he represented after their arrest during the Nov. 17 marches had been injured by police officers throwing punches and swinging batons. The injuries were mostly "soft-tissue damage," he said.
"I arraigned a couple of people they pushed around and beat up pretty good," he said. "They were not resisting arrest."
"There's no necessity to use a baton on somebody who's essentially non-violent," he added.
Bloomberg, however, praised the officers for their handling of the demonstrators, saying that they exercised restraint. NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, meanwhile, accused the demonstrators of provoking the police.
"There is no question about it, there was a group of people bent on confronting the police," Kelly said in a press conference. "They were taunting them."
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.
But while harsh action against non-violent demonstrators may restore order to city streets, it can have both short and long-term political consequences, warned Timothy McCarthy, a professor of history and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
"I would be very cautious if I was the mayor of a city that was being occupied," McCarthy said. "When the state engages in forceful and violent acts of repression against folks engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, the state doesn't come out as the hero."
"The Birmingham police are not the hero of the civil rights story," he said.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored.
Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran, and so the new finding could help clear up this long-standing mystery.
The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, ?some actually being bleached white, even though fabrics from the period often have vivid colors. Altogether, researchers say these finds suggest that the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect, "penned" some of the scrolls.
Not everyone agrees with this interpretation. An archaeologist who has excavated at Qumran told LiveScience that the linen could have come from people fleeing the Roman army after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and that they are in fact responsible for putting the scrolls into caves.
Iconic scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of nearly 900 texts, the first batch of which were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. They date from before A.D. 70, and some may go back to as early as the third century B.C. The scrolls contain a wide variety of writings including early copies of the Hebrew Bible, along with hymns, calendars and psalms, among other works.
Nearly 200 textiles were found in the same caves, along with a few examples from Qumran, the archaeological site close to the caves where the scrolls were hidden.
Orit Shamir, curator of organic materials at the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Naama Sukenik, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University, compared the white-linen textiles found in the 11 caves to examples found elsewhere in ancient Israel, publishing their results in the most recent issue of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries.?
A breakthrough in studying these remains was made in 2007 when a team of archaeologists was able to ascertain that colorful wool textiles found at a site to the south of Qumran, known as the Christmas Cave, were not related to the inhabitants of the site. This meant that Shamir and Sukenik were able to focus on the 200 textiles found in the Dead Sea Scroll caves and at Qumran itself, knowing that these are the only surviving textiles related to the scrolls.
They discovered that every single one of these textiles was made of linen, even though wool was the most popular fabric at the time in Israel. They also found that most of the textiles would have originally been used as clothing, later being cut apart and reused for other purposes such as bandages and for packing the scrolls into jars.
Some of the textiles were bleached white and most of them lacked decoration, even though decoration is commonly seen in textiles from other sites in ancient Israel.
According to the researchers the finds suggest that the residents of Qumran dressed simply.
"They wanted to be different than the Roman world," Shamir told LiveScience in a telephone interview. "They were very humble, they didn't want to wear colorful textiles, they wanted to use very simple textiles."
The owners of the clothing likely were not poor, as only one of the textiles had a patch on it. "This is very, very, important," Shamir said. "Patching is connected with (the) economic situation of the site."
Shamir pointed out that textiles found at sites where people were under stress, such as at the Cave of Letters, which was used in a revolt against the Romans, were often patched. On the other hand "if the site is in a very good economic situation, if it is a very rich site, the textiles will not be patched," she said. With Qumran, "I think (economically) they were in the middle, but I'm sure they were not poor."
Robert Cargill, a professor at the University of Iowa, has written extensively about Qumran and has developed a virtual model of it. He said that archaeological evidence from the site, including coins and glassware, also suggests the inhabitants were not poor.
"Far from being poor monastics, I think there was wealth at Qumran, at least some form of wealth," Cargill said, arguing that trade was important at the site. "I think they made their own pottery and sold some of it, I think they bred animals and sold them, I think they made honey and sold it."
Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran. Some argue that the scrolls were written at the site itself while others say they were written in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Israel.
Qumran itself was first excavated by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s. He came to the conclusion that the site was inhabited by a religious sect called the Essenes who wrote the scrolls and stored them in caves. Among the finds he made were water pools, which he believed were used for ritual bathing, and multiple inkwells found in a room that became known as the "scriptorium." Based on his excavations, scholars have estimated the population of the site at as high as 200.
More recent archaeological work, conducted by Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, suggests that the site could not have supported more than a few dozen people and had nothing to do with the scrolls themselves. They believe that the scrolls were deposited in the caves by refugees fleeing the Roman army after Jerusalem was conquered in A.D. 70.
Magen and Peleg found that the site came into existence around 100 B.C. as a military outpost used by the Hasmoneans, a Jewish kingdom that flourished in the area. After the Romans took over Judaea in 63 B.C. the site was abandoned and eventually was taken over by civilians who used it for pottery production. They found that the pools de Vaux discovered include a fine layer of potters' clay.
There are other ideas as well. Cargill argues that while Qumran started out as a fort it was later occupied by a sectarian group whose members were deeply concerned with ritual purity. "Whether or not they are the Essenes, that's a different question," he said. This group, much smaller than earlier estimates of 200 people, would have written some of the scrolls, while collecting others, he argues.
Other groups, not part of the Qumran community, may also have been putting scrolls into the caves, Cargill said.
Can clothing solve the mystery?
The new clothing research may help to identify the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Shamir told LiveScience that it is unlikely the scrolls were deposited in the caves by Roman refugees. If that were the case, the more-popular textile in ancient Israel, wool, would have been found in the caves along with other garments.
"If people run away from Jerusalem they would take all sorts of textiles with them, not only linen textiles," she said. "The people who ran away to the Cave of Letters, they took wool textiles with them."
Peleg, the archaeologist who co-led the recent archaeological work at Qumran, told LiveScience he disagrees with that assessment. He said he stands by the idea that there is no connection between Qumran and the scrolls stored in the caves.
"We must remember that almost all the textiles were found in the caves and not at the site. The main question is the connection between the site and the scrolls," Peleg wrote in an email. "I can find alternative explanations for the fact that scrolls were found with linen."
For instance, linen could have been chosen as scroll wrapping for religious reasons or perhaps priests were responsible for storing the scrolls and they wore linen clothing. "The clothes of the priests were made from linen," Peleg wrote.
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In their paper, Shamir and Sukenik say that the clothing found in the Dead Sea Scroll caves is similar to historical descriptions of the clothing of the Essenes, suggesting that they in fact lived at Qumran. They point to an ancient Jewish writer, Flavius Josephus, who wrote that the Essenes "make a point of keeping a dry skin and always being dressed in white." (However, Josephus never said anything about the clothing being made of linen, Peleg points out.)
Josephusalso wrote that the Essenes were very frugal when it came to clothing and shared goods with each other.
"In their dress and deportment they resemble children under rigorous discipline. They do not change their garments or shoes until they are torn to shreds or worn threadbare with age. There is no buying or selling among themselves, but each gives what he has to any in need and receives from him in exchange something useful to himself."
(Translation from "Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans : Primary Readings," Louis Feldman and Meyer Reinhold, 1996.)
In their paper, Shamir and Sukenikalso point to another ancient writer, Philo of Alexandria, who wrote that the Essenes wore a common style of simple dress.
"And not only is their table in common but their clothes also. For in winter they have a stock of stout coats ready and in summer cheap vests, so that he who wishes may easily take any garment he likes, since what one has is held to belong to all and conversely what all have one has."
(Translation from the "Selected Writing of Philo of Alexandria," edited by Hans Lewy, 1965.)
Cargill said that the clothing is further evidence that there was a Jewish sectarian group living at Qumran.
"You do have evidence of a group that raised its own animals, pressed its own date honey, that appears to have worn distinctive clothes and made its own pottery, and followed its own calendar, at least a calendar different from the temple priesthood," he said. "Those are all signs of a sectarian group."
He also noted the presence of mikveh ( ritual baths ) at the site and the fact that the residents could make pottery that was ritually pure.
This group appears to have wanted to separate itself from the priests based at the temple in Jerusalem. "There is a congruency within many of the sectarian documents that appears to be consistent with a sectarian group that has separated itself from the temple priesthood in Jerusalem," Cargill said.?
According to Cargill's theory, the people of Qumran would have written some of the scrolls, while collecting others. "Obviously they didn't write all of the scrolls," Cargill said. Dating indicates some of the scrolls were written before Qumran even existed. One unusual scroll, made of copper, may have been deposited after Qumran was abandoned in A.D. 70.
Cargill says it's possible that some of the scrolls may have been put in caves from people outside the community. If that's true, some of the textiles could also be from people outside of Qumran.
"(If) not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls are the responsibility of sectarians at Qumran then it would follow that not all of the textiles that are discovered in the caves are (the) product of a sect at Qumran," Cargill said.
Were there women at Qumran?
The new research may also shed light on who created the textiles.
The textiles are of high quality and, based on the archaeological finds at Qumran itself, where there is little evidence of spindle whorls or loom weights, the team thinks it's unlikely they would have been made at the site.
"This is very, very important, because this is connected to gender," Shamir said, "spinning is connected with women."
She explained that the textiles were likely created at another site in Israel, with women playing a key role in their production. This suggests that there were few women living at Qumran itself. "Weaving is connected with men and women, but spinning was only a production of women, (and) we don't find this item at Qumran."
? 2011 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45404831/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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TRIPOLI (Reuters) ? Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) has appointed as new defense minister the local commander whose forces captured Muammar Gaddafi's son at the weekend, an NTC source told Reuters on Tuesday.
Osama Al-Juwali, head of the military council in Zintan, was given the defense job as part of a cabinet line-up in which secularist liberals were dominant and which had no key roles for the Islamists who have been making a bid for power since Gaddafi's fall.
Three months after an armed revolt ended Gaddafi's 42-year rule over the oil producing country, Libya's new rulers are dealing with the tricky task of balancing rival regional factions and ideological camps all jockeying for influence in the new Libya.
The new government line-up -- which will run the country until elections are held -- was agreed at a meeting late on Tuesday of the NTC, a source in the council who has seen the list of appointments told Reuters.
However, in an indication of the tensions around the cabinet composition, the source later said some NTC members, after agreeing the appointments, had re-opened the discussions.
"There are some people who do not accept some of the names," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. It was not clear which posts were the subject of debate.
In other appointments, Libya's deputy envoy to the United Nations was named as foreign minister, an oil company executive was made oil minister and the finance minister in the outgoing government was re-appointed, the source said.
LOCAL POWERBASE
Juwali is a former officer in the Libyan military whose forces from Zintan played a crucial role in the offensive on Tripoli which ended Gaddafi's rule in August. He has not previously been seen as a contender for the defense job.
But he appeared to have staked a claim to the post after forces under his command on Saturday captured Saif al-Islam, the son of the former Libyan leader who is wanted for prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
The defense minister's role had been coveted by Islamists, who after being persecuted for years under Gaddafi assumed powerful roles in the chaos which followed his fall.
The source said the NTC had agreed to appoint Ibrahim Dabbashi, the deputy UN envoy, as foreign minister. He came to prominence soon after Libya's revolt erupted in February, when he broke with Gaddafi and sided with the rebellion.
Ali Tarhouni, an academic in the United States who returned from exile to run the oil and finance portfolio in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, was made finance minister, the source said, while Hassan Ziglam, an executive in a Libyan oil company, was given the oil minister's portfolio.
The NTC is expected to officially announce the Cabinet line-up later on Tuesday.
Speaking on Monday, prime minister designate Abdurrahim El-Keib said he would pick the best people to steer the country toward democracy rather than those with the most political clout.
"We will use competence as a basic measure and this way we will be able to include all of Libya's regions. You will see," he told a news conference with the visiting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.
"We're working hard to ensure that what we have is something solid, cohesive, capable of doing the job," he said.
Libya's attempts to build new institutions have been overshadowed by tensions between military and regional factions who want to translate their role in ousting Gaddafi into a share of political power.
Those tensions were illustrated by the capture of Saif al-Islam deep in the Libyan desert.
The fighters from Zintan who seized him on Saturday flew him in a Soviet-built cargo plane to their hometown in Libya's Western mountains and are holding him there until the central government is formed.
They say it is to ensure his safety; his father was killed after he was caught by another militia in his hometown of Sirte last month.
(Additional reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Hisham El Dani in Tripoli, Oliver Holmes and Taha Zargoun in Zintan; Writing by Francois Murphy and Christian Lowe; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111122/wl_nm/us_libya
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. ? A Sacramento appeals court judge is voicing strong support for a landmark agreement on how Southern California gets its water.
Justice Ronald Robie defended the 2003 pact during nearly two hours of arguments Monday. He repeatedly interrupted an attorney who argues that the pact is flawed.
Two other judges on the panel were silent as Robie spoke.
The agreement created the nation's largest farm-to-city water transfer and set new rules among Southern California's warring water agencies on how to divide the state's share of the Colorado River.
Monday's hearing sets the stage for a ruling that may have consequences for six other Western states and Mexico, which also rely on the Colorado River. The judges are expected to rule within three months.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
A vanishing lake figures large in a court battle over how Southern California gets it water, a high-stakes dispute with consequences that could ripple throughout the western United States.
A California appeals court is considering whether to overturn a landmark 2003 agreement that created the nation's largest farm-to-city water transfer and set new rules for dividing the state's share of the Colorado River. A three-judge panel of the 3rd Appellate District in Sacramento will hear arguments Monday and is expected to rule within three months.
Farmers and environmentalists involved in the lawsuit argue the pact is deeply flawed, while California water agencies say it is critical to keeping an uneasy peace on the river. The court has given each side 45 minutes to make its case and asked lawyers to focus on whether the state of California violated its constitution by essentially writing a blank check to restore the shrinking Salton Sea.
California long used more of the Colorado River than it was granted under agreements with Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Mexico. Its overindulgence was never a big problem until Sunbelt cities like Phoenix witnessed explosive growth and other states clamored for their full share. Drought only exacerbated tensions.
The 2003 accord between California's warring water agencies reins the state to its limit established 80 years earlier of 4.4 million acre-feet of water a year ? enough to supply about 9 million homes. The centerpiece called for California's Imperial Valley ? a farming region of 175,000 residents that gets nearly 20 percent of the entire river ? to sell water to San Diego.
In January 2010, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Roland Candee gutted the pact in a sweeping, 52-page decision that faulted the state for its open-ended commitment to the Salton Sea. California's largest lake is more than 200 feet below sea level and relies on water that seeps down from nearby farms. The sale of water to San Diego further threatens the lake's future.
The judge ruled that a state law committing California to save the lake no matter the cost set an unacceptable precedent for the government to pledge money to other projects it couldn't afford. The administration of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pegged the cost of saving the Salton Sea at a whopping $9 billion.
The state's dire fiscal straits offer little hope for the lake, whose rapidly receding shores are layered with dead fish. Its waters ? about one-third saltier than the ocean ? continue to draw a tremendous variety of birds, but biologists say they will disappear without fish to prey upon. Imperial Valley residents worry that receding shores will blow dust, worsening air quality.
"It's the 800-pound gorilla in the closet," said Malissa McKeith, a lawyer for Imperial Valley landowners who are challenging the pact. "If we don't fix it now, you're just going to have so much of a bigger problem in 10 years."
The legal issues are highly complex, but the stakes and passions are high.
The water transfers have made the San Diego area less dependent on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a behemoth that serves nearly 19 million people and was virtually San Diego's only source of water in the early 1990s. It remains controversial in the Imperial Valley, eight years after the Imperial Irrigation District board approved it in a 3-2 vote under heavy state and federal pressure.
If the lower court ruling stands, consequences could ripple to other Western states and Mexico, which also rely on the 1,450-mile river that flows from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. The agreement remains in effect while the case is under appeal.
"A stable California is good for the river," said John Entsminger, senior deputy general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which supplies 2 million people in Las Vegas and surrounding areas.
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MONDAY, Nov. 21 (HealthDay News) -- A hand hygiene and cough etiquette program for elementary school children reduced cases of flu and the number of absences, a new study says.
The study included five Pittsburgh schools that received the training program and five schools that received no special hygiene training. Lessons taught to the children in the five-step "WHACK the Flu" program were:
During the academic year, schools that received the training program had 52 percent fewer confirmed illnesses caused by influenza A and 26 percent fewer student absences. However, there was no decrease in the number of illnesses caused by influenza B.
It's not clear why there was no decrease in influenza B, but the University of Pittsburgh researchers suggested it may be because of "basic differences in the biology or epidemiology" of influenza B, or because influenza B occurred later in the flu season and mainly in younger children.
The study, published in the November issue of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, also found that the flu program was successful in getting students to use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer regularly, an average of 2.4 times per day.
"Respiratory hygiene education and the regular use of hand sanitizer can be an important adjunct to influenza vaccination programs to reduce the number of influenza A infections among children," Dr. Samuel Stebbins and colleagues wrote in a journal news release.
More information
The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about flu prevention.
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