minaraju907: June 2013

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Rare giant catfish faces new threat in Southeast Asia's Mekong

Laos' controversial Xayaburi dam could bring the Giant Catfish to extinction, as well as devastate the Mekong River's other fisheries. The challenge: How to build a dam that allows a 600-pound fish to swim up stream?

By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 22, 2013

Two Thai fishermen show a 293-kilogram (646-pound) giant catfish they caught from the Mekong River in Chiang Khong district of Chiang Rai province, northern Thailand in 2005.

Suthep Kritsanavarin/AP

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The Giant Catfish is an enormous fish with thin, down-turned lips that give it a lonely look. And such a "mournful" visage is not unwarranted.

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Already one of the most endangered fish in the world, a new study has found that a dam underway in Laos could push it to extinction.?

So rare that it is nearly a legend of the Mekong River?s depths, the Giant Catfish belongs to the?shark catfish family and reach upwards of 600 pounds and some 10 feet in length. The brobdingnagian?fish has dwindled in number an estimated 90 percent over the past 20 years ???possibly to just a few hundred animals, though tracking the elusive fish is difficult. It is now found only in the lower Mekong, which runs like a mud-colored vein carrying the economic lifeblood of Southeast Asia through Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In recent years, though, progress had been made in rescuing Giant Catfish fish from extinction, as those five countries introduced new protections that banned fishing it.

Now, Laos's controversial Xayaburi dam threatens to undo that.

?The Giant Catfish is endangered, but there?s still a chance for it, and all the countries involved have gotten on board to restrict fishing ? but just when we solved one problem we?re now facing this new one,? says Zeb Hogan, the?study?s author and associate research professor at the University of Nevada,?in a telephone interview.

The Xayabari, the first dam in the lower Mekong, will if finished block the Giant Catfish from making its lifecycle migration from the floodplain rearing areas to upstream spawning sites in northern Laos and Thailand, the study said. The dam could also alter Mekong flows, disrupting the natural cues the fish needs to spawn.

This is not the first warning that the Xayabari project could mean the end for the Giant Catfish. Two years ago, the Mekong River Commission???an advisory body established in 1995 as part of an agreement between five Southeast Asian countries on the development of the Mekong ??convened a panel of experts who concluded that the dam would obstruct the migrations of some 23 to 100 species of fish, including the Great Catfish. The panel recommended a 10-year hold on the Xayaburi project, pending more information on how the dam would affect the river?s ecology.

"The gaps in knowledge on the number of migratory fish species, their biomass and their ability to successfully pass a dam and reservoir leads to considerable uncertainty about the scale of impact on fisheries and associated livelihoods, both locally and in a transboundary context," the report said.

But in November 2012, Laos officially began what is expected to be seven years of construction of the Xayabari dam, the first in several controversial dams planned for the lower Mekong.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/CCrYxnsRm6U/Rare-giant-catfish-faces-new-threat-in-Southeast-Asia-s-Mekong

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Reading DNA, backward and forward: Biologists reveal how cells control the direction in which the genome is read

June 24, 2013 ? MIT biologists have discovered a mechanism that allows cells to read their own DNA in the correct direction and prevents them from copying most of the so-called "junk DNA" that makes up long stretches of our genome.

Only about 15 percent of the human genome consists of protein-coding genes, but in recent years scientists have found that a surprising amount of the junk, or intergenic DNA, does get copied into RNA -- the molecule that carries DNA's messages to the rest of the cell.

Scientists have been trying to figure out just what this RNA might be doing, if anything. In 2008, MIT researchers led by Institute Professor Phillip Sharp discovered that much of this RNA is generated through a process called divergent expression, through which cells read their DNA in both directions moving away from a given starting point.

In a new paper appearing in Nature on June 23, Sharp and colleagues describe how cells initiate but then halt the copying of RNA in the upstream, or non-protein-coding direction, while allowing it to continue in the direction in which genes are correctly read. The finding helps to explain the existence of many recently discovered types of short strands of RNA whose function is unknown.

"This is part of an RNA revolution where we're seeing different RNAs and new RNAs that we hadn't suspected were present in cells, and trying to understand what role they have in the health of the cell or the viability of the cell," says Sharp, who is a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. "It gives us a whole new appreciation of the balance of the fundamental processes that allow cells to function."

Graduate students Albert Almada and Xuebing Wu are the lead authors of the paper. Christopher Burge, a professor of biology and biological engineering, and undergraduate Andrea Kriz are also authors.

Choosing direction

DNA, which is housed within the nucleus of cells, controls cellular activity by coding for the production of RNAs and proteins. To exert this control, the genetic information encoded by DNA must first be copied, or transcribed, into messenger RNA (mRNA).

When the DNA double helix unwinds to reveal its genetic messages, RNA transcription can proceed in either direction. To initiate this copying, an enzyme called RNA polymerase latches on to the DNA at a spot known as the promoter. The RNA polymerase then moves along the strand, building the mRNA chain as it goes.

When the RNA polymerase reaches a stop signal at the end of a gene, it halts transcription and adds to the mRNA a sequence of bases known as a poly-A tail, which consists of a long string of the genetic base adenine. This process, known as polyadenylation, helps to prepare the mRNA molecule to be exported from the cell's nucleus.

By sequencing the mRNA transcripts of mouse embryonic stem cells, the researchers discovered that polyadenylation also plays a major role in halting the transcription of upstream, noncoding DNA sequences. They found that these regions have a high density of signal sequences for polyadenylation, which prompts enzymes to chop up the RNA before it gets very long. Stretches of DNA that code for genes have a low density of these signal sequences.

The researchers also found another factor that influences whether transcription is allowed to continue. It has been recently shown that when a cellular factor known as U1 snRNP binds to RNA, polyadenylation is suppressed. The new MIT study found that genes have a higher concentration of binding sites for U1 snRNP than noncoding sequences, allowing gene transcription to continue uninterrupted.

A widespread phenomenon

The function of all of this upstream noncoding RNA is still a subject of much investigation. "That transcriptional process could produce an RNA that has some function, or it could be a product of the nature of the biochemical reaction. This will be debated for a long time," Sharp says.

His lab is now exploring the relationship between this transcription process and the observation of large numbers of so-called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). He plans to investigate the mechanisms that control the synthesis of such RNAs and try to determine their functions.

"Once you see some data like this, it raises many more questions to be investigated, which I'm hoping will lead us to deeper insights into how our cells carry out their normal functions and how they change in malignancy," Sharp says.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/vK48xKSPdxQ/130624141412.htm

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Five years of stereo imaging for NASA's TWINS

June 24, 2013 ? Surrounding Earth is a dynamic region called the magnetosphere. The region is governed by magnetic and electric forces, incoming energy and material from the sun, and a vast zoo of waves and processes unlike what is normally experienced in Earth-bound physics. Nestled inside this constantly changing magnetic bubble lies a donut of charged particles generally aligned with Earth's equator. Known as the ring current, its waxing and waning is a crucial part of the space weather surrounding our planet, able to induce magnetic fluctuations on the ground as well as to transmit disruptive surface charges onto spacecraft.

On June 15, 2008, a new set of instruments began stereoscopic imaging of this mysterious region. Called Two Wide-angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometers or TWINS, these satellites orbit in widely separated planes to provide the first and only stereo view of the ring current. TWINS maps the energetic neutral atoms that shoot away from the ring current when created by ion collisions.

In five years of operation, the TWINS maps have provided three-dimensional images and global characterization of this region. The observatories track how the magnetosphere responds to space weather storms, characterize global information such as temperature and shape of various structures within the magnetosphere, and improve models of the magnetosphere that can be used to simulate a vast array of events.

"With two satellites, with two sets of simultaneous images we can see things that are entirely new," said Mei-Ching Fok, the project scientist for TWINS at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the first ever stereoscopic energetic neutral atom mission, and it's changed the way we understand the ring current."

Each spacecraft is in a highly elliptical orbit called a Molniya orbit, during which the spacecraft spend most of their time around 20,000 miles above Earth, where they get a great view of the magnetosphere. Initially launched for a two-year mission, TWINS was formally extended in 2010 for three more years, with another multi-year extension pending. Over that time, TWINS has worked hand in hand with other NASA missions that provide information about Earth's magnetosphere.

"We've done some fantastic new research in the last five years," said David McComas, the principal investigator for TWINS at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "As a mission of opportunity, it is a very inexpensive mission and it continues to return incredible science."

TWINS science is based on two instruments that can track neutral atoms. The first is a neutral atom imager that records the atoms that naturally stream away when a neutral atom collides with an ion. This allows the instrument to map the original ions from far away -- as if it could see atoms the way we see light -- instead of only collecting data from the areas of space it passes through.

"Over the course of the last 20 years a completely new technique evolved so we can observe charged particles, such as those in the ring current, remotely," said McComas. "The charged particles sometimes collide with a slow-moving neutral particle, in this case from a population of neutrals from Earth's highly extended atmosphere, the geocorona."

When this happens, an electron hops from the slow neutral atom to the fast ion, so now the former becomes charged, and the latter neutral. That new neutral speeds off in a straight direction, unfazed by the magnetic field lines around Earth that guide and control the motion of charged particles. TWINS collects such fast neutral particles and from that data scientists can work backward to map out the location and movement of the original ions.

The other instrument on TWINS is a Lyman alpha detector, which can measure the density of hydrogen from afar, and in this case observes the hydrogen cloud around Earth, the geocorona.

Most importantly, these instruments exist on both of the TWINS spacecraft. Much of the successful research in the last five years relies on the ability to watch these neutrals from two viewpoints, allowing scientists to analyze not only speed and number of particles, but also to determine the angles at which the particles left their original collisions. The stereo vision contributed to the detailed perspectives on how the magnetosphere reacts to space weather storms: both those due to the impact of a coronal mass ejection that traveled from the sun toward Earth and due to an incoming twist in the solar wind known as a co-rotating interaction region. TWINS has also revealed that the pitch angle at which the ions travel around Earth is different on each side of the planet. Such information helps scientists determine whether the ions are more likely to escape from the ring current out into space or to ultimately funnel down toward Earth.

"TWINS is a stereo mission, providing the first observations of the neutral atoms from two vantage points, but two spacecraft give us another advantage," said Natalia Buzulukova, a magnetospheric scientist at Goddard who works with TWINS data. "Two spacecraft provide continuous coverage of the ring current, as one set of instruments always has a view."

Because the spacecraft orbits are not in sync they provide stereoscopic imaging for a few hours each day, but there is always at least one spacecraft keeping tabs on how events are unfolding. Prior to TWINS, a spacecraft might see a tantalizing process taking place in the ring current for only a short while before its orbit took it out of view. The event might well have finished before the spacecraft came back around for its second look.

Such continuity has proved useful to determine what governs whether particles in the ring current will precipitate downward toward Earth as well as to provide a global temperature map of the magnetic tail trailing behind Earth, the magnetotail. Such a map had only ever previously been inferred from models and statistical analysis, never from a comprehensive data set of what was actually observed.

The Lyman-alpha instrument has been used in two ways. For one thing, it quantifies the geocorona in order to better understand how it affects the collisions in the ring current. It also has taught us more about the geocorona itself. Previously, researchers believed it to be a fairly simple sphere around Earth. The two TWINS instruments have shown how asymmetric it is, changing with the solar cycle, seasons, and even the hours of the day.

A final important feature of this fire hose of TWINS data is how much it helps improve computer simulations of the ring current and the rest of the magnetosphere. With accurate computer models, scientists can better predict how the magnetosphere will react to any given space weather event.

"We get two really unique things with two spacecraft: stereo imaging and continuous coverage. Together the observations we get are fantastic," said McComas. "It's an incredibly powerful combination of tools."

TWINS is an Explorer Mission of Opportunity. Southwest Research Institute leads TWINS with teams of national and international partners. Goddard manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

For more information about TWINS science and mission, visit: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/twins/

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Xky6buFd45M/130624141606.htm

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Pelosi's defense of NSA surveillance draws boos (The Arizona Republic)

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Lebanon clashes rage near mosque; 16 soldiers dead

Lebanese army soldiers stand while black smoke rises from a burning house that was attacked during clashes that erupted between followers of a radical Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and Shiite gunmen in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, June 24, 2013. Lebanon's military forces battling followers of a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric closed in Monday on the mosque where they are taking cover in the southern coastal city, the national news agency said. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

An injured Lebanese army solder walks in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, June 24, 2013. Lebanon's military forces battling followers of a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric closed in Monday on the mosque where they are taking cover in the southern coastal city, the national news agency said. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A convoy of Lebanese army vehicles move toward the site of clashes between followers of a radical Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and Shiite gunmen in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, June 24, 2013. Lebanon's military forces battling followers of a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric closed in Monday on the mosque where they are taking cover in the southern coastal city, the national news agency said. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Lebanese Army soldiers monitor during clashes that erupted between followers of a radical Sunni cleric Sheik Ahmad al-Assir and Shiite gunmen in Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, June 24, 2013. Lebanon's military forces battling followers of a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric closed in Monday on the mosque where they are taking cover in the southern coastal city, the national news agency said. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

BEIRUT (AP) ? Lebanese troops battled heavily armed followers of a hard-line Sunni cleric holed up in a mosque complex in a southern port city on Monday, the second day of fighting that has left at least 16 soldiers dead, the military said.

The clashes in Sidon, Lebanon's third-largest city, are the latest bout of violence in Lebanon linked to the conflict in neighboring Syria.

They are the bloodiest yet involving the army and are seen as a test for the state in containing extremist armed groups that have taken up the cause of the warring sides in Syria. The civil war next door has been bleeding into Lebanon, following similar sectarian lines of Sunni and Shiite camps.

The fierce fight that the followers of Sheik Ahmad al-Assir were putting up showed how aggressive Sunni extremists have grown in Lebanon, building on anger not only at Syria's regime but also its Shiite allies in Lebanon, Hezbollah. The two days of fighting have transformed Sidon, which had been largely spared the violence plaguing border areas near Syria, into a combat zone.

The 45-year-old, bespectacled and long-bearded al-Assir is a virulent critic of Hezbollah. He has been agitating for months, demanding Hezbollah disarm and accusing the army of inaction in the face of the group's growing involvement in Syria on the side of President Bashar Assad.

The maverick cleric was little known until few years ago and his growing following was a symptom of the deep frustration among Sunnis who resent the Hezbollah-led Shiite ascendancy to power in Lebanon. Hezbollah and its allies dominate Lebanon's government.

The clashes in predominantly Sunni Sidon, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Beirut, left 50 wounded on Monday, the National News Agency said. At least two military officers were among those killed. Hospital officials said at least three of al-Assir's supporters died in the fighting.

Machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions caused panic among residents, who also reported power and water outages.

The city streets appeared largely deserted Monday. Local media reported many residents were asking for evacuation from the heavily populated neighborhood around the Bilal bin Rabbah Mosque where al-Assir preaches, and where the fighting has been concentrated.

The military in a statement said the gunmen were using the religious compound to fire on its troops and had taken civilians as shields. The clashes erupted Sunday in the predominantly Sunni city after troops arrested an al-Assir follower. The army says supporters of the cleric opened fire without provocation on an army checkpoint.

The local municipality said that the city is "a war zone," appealing for a cease-fire to evacuate the civilians and wounded in the area.

Many people living on upper floors moved downstairs for cover or fled to safer areas. Some were seen carrying children as they fled. Others remained locked in their homes or shops, fearing getting caught in the crossfire. Gray smoke billowed over parts of the city.

The military appealed to the gunmen to hand themselves in, vowing it will "continue to uproot the strife and will not stop its operations until security is totally restored."

Hezbollah appeared to be staying largely out of the ongoing clashes, though a few of its supporters in the city were briefly drawn into the fight Sunday, firing on al-Assir's supporters. At least one was killed, according to his relatives in the city who spoke anonymously out of concerns for their security.

Last week, al-Assir supporters fought with pro-Hezbollah gunmen, leaving two killed.

Hezbollah issued a statement condemning "the crimes committed by al-Assir and his gang" and declared its solidarity with the military institution, calling on all Lebanese to rally around the national army.

Early Monday, al-Assir on his Twitter account appealed to his supporters in other parts of Lebanon to rise to his help, threatening to widen the scale of clashes.

The tweets did not give a clear statement on how the battle began. It came after a series of incidents pitting the cleric's followers against other groups in the town, including Hezbollah supporters and the army.

The cleric is believed to have hundreds of armed supporters in Sidon involved in the fighting. Dozens of al-Assir's gunmen also partially shut down the main highway linking south Lebanon with Beirut. On Monday, they opened fire in other parts of the city, with local media reporting gunshots in the city's market.

Fighting also broke out in parts of Ein el-Hilweh, a teeming Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, where al-Assir has supporters. Islamist factions inside the camp lobbed mortars at military checkpoints around the camp.

Tension also spread to the north in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city. Masked gunmen roamed the city center, firing in the air and forcing shops and businesses to shut down in solidarity with al-Assir. Dozens of gunmen also set fire to tires, blocking roads. The city's main streets were emptying out. There was no unusual military or security deployment.

Sectarian clashes in Lebanon tied to the Syrian conflict have intensified in recent weeks, especially after Hezbollah sent fighters to support Assad's forces. Most of the rebels fighting to topple Assad are from Syria's Sunni majority, while the President Bashar Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, blamed the violence in Lebanon on the international decision to arm rebels, saying that it will only serve to prolong the fighting in Syria and will impact neighboring Lebanon.

"What is going in Sidon is very dangerous, very dangerous," he told reporters in Damascus. "We warned since the start that the impact of what happens in Syria on neighboring countries will be grave."

In Syria, activists reported fighting Monday between Syrian troops and rebels in the northern province of Aleppo as well as districts on the edge of the Syrian capital and its suburbs.

Clashes in Lebanon have also mostly pitted Sunni against Shiite. The most frequent outbreaks have involved rival neighborhoods in the northern port city of Tripoli, close to the Syrian border.

President Michel Suleiman called for an emergency security meeting later Monday.

Headlines of Lebanon's newspapers were all dominated by the violence in Sidon, with many seeing it as a test for the state to impose order. "An attempt to assassinate Sidon and the military," read the headline of the daily al-Safir. "Al-Assir crosses the red line," read another headline in al-Jomhouria daily. A third headline in al-Nahar read: "Yesterday war in Sidon. Today, decisiveness or settlement?"

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-24-Lebanon/id-3da9bc419bdc4599878c89a75d1cb639

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Egypt army says may act, urges political truce

By Shaimaa Fayed and Alastair Macdonald

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's army issued a sharp warning to rival political factions on Sunday that it may step in to impose order, as clashes ahead of major opposition rallies next weekend saw at least two men shot dead.

The statement by the head of the armed forces was a dramatic reminder of the independent power of the military in Egypt, a year after the generals handed authority to a civilian president - Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who won the country's first free elections following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

In a move aimed at both sides in Egypt's polarized politics, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is also defense minister, stressed that the army was acting to protect the "will of the people" and urged politicians to forge a new national consensus.

A military source said fighting and aggressive rhetoric and damage to property in recent days had prompted the intervention.

Sisi met Mursi for what an army spokesman described as a "routine" consultation on Sunday.

Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood turned their organizational strength into political power but have struggled to manage an economy in crisis or build a broad base of support that is accepted by liberal and other non-Islamist groups.

That polarization has driven a campaign to hold massive opposition demonstrations next Sunday, June 30, calling for Mursi to resign. In turn, his Islamist supporters have taken to the streets in shows of strength, calling the opposition bad losers determined to overturn the results of the elections.

General Sisi, who was promoted into his present post by Mursi last year, said: "There is a state of division in society and the continuation of it is a danger to the Egyptian state and there must be consensus among all.

"The will of the Egyptian nation is what governs us and we protect it with honor, and we are completely responsible for protecting it," said Sisi.

"We cannot permit a violation of the will of the people."

While Islamists point to the legitimacy of their electoral power, opponents accuse the Brotherhood of betraying the Arab Spring revolution by seeking to entrench its power.

OUT OF CONTROL

Sisi said the armed forces would not stand by while Egypt descended into conflict and urged politicians to use the week remaining before June 30 to narrow their differences.

"Those who think that we are divorced from the dangers that threaten the Egyptian state are wrong," he said. "We will not remain silent as the country slips into a struggle that is hard to control."

Gamal Soltan, a political analyst, said the army may have been moved to act by aggressive statements from Mursi supporters at a major rally on Friday: "This is ... the strongest and the most explicit statement coming from a military official ... This is explicitly saying ... the armed forces will intervene.

"By making this statement, he is stepping closer to the centre stage of politics."

A spokesman for the opposition National Salvation Front, Khaled Dawoud, said: "These are very reasonable statements, and what is expected from Egypt's army.

"We are facing direct threats from supporters of President Mursi to spill blood if we exercise ... our democratic right to demand peacefully early presidential elections."

A spokesman for the Brotherhood's political party said it was studying the statement before making public comment.

Army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali told Reuters: "This was a supportive message that the army is sending to its people after the army noticed that worries about violence and internal conflict had spread among the people recently.

"The army, which belongs to the people, cannot stand by if such fears are realized, so the statement was meant to set out the army position, which is rooted in its national role - it cannot ignore anything that might threaten national security."

CLASHES, DEATHS

Two men, both Islamists, died as a result of clashes.

One was shot dead in overnight in the industrial city of Mahalla, north of Cairo, security sources said. A second man, died of gunshot wounds sustained in clashes at Fayoum south of the capital some days before.

The Muslim Brotherhood described both dead men as "martyrs".

Highlighting mutual mistrust as Egypt struggles to establish democratic institutions after its 2011 revolution, the Brotherhood also denounced as a "political trial" a court judgment on Sunday that called for an investigation of its role in a mass jail-break during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

Liberals and secular activists in the "Tamarud - Rebel!" campaign, accuse Islamists of intimidation. They say they have gathered 15 million signatures on a petition calling for Mursi to resign - more than the 13 million votes that elected him.

The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies staged a massive rally in support of Mursi in Cairo on Friday, at which some speakers warned of a violent response to efforts to remove him.

The Muslim Brotherhood said on Facebook on Sunday that Karim Abdel Ghani, a member of the Islamist Nour party, was shot dead in Mahalla by the "Tamarud militia". Nour said its office in Mahalla was also attacked.

The Brotherhood's political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said it planned a funeral on Sunday for Mohamed Shalaqany, who it said was shot some days before by Tamarud "thugs" in Fayoum, a rural Islamist bastion south of Cairo.

"Their name is Tamarud but they are actually remnants of the old regime," Murad Ali, a senior FJP official, told Reuters.

Egyptian media gave extensive coverage on Sunday to a ruling by a judge in Ismailia who, in acquitting a man accused of fleeing a local jail during the 2011 uprising, asked the public prosecutor to investigate what he described as a "conspiracy" by the Brotherhood and foreign Islamists to open up the prison.

Among those freed was Mursi himself, who had been among hundreds of Brotherhood leaders rounded up as a precaution by Mubarak's security forces when the revolution began.

The freeing of Palestinian militants from Hamas and Lebanese members of the Shi'ite Hezbollah militia, among others, has prompted accusations from the Brotherhood's opponents that it connived with enemies of Egypt during the incident.

After the judgment, opponents of Mursi gathered outside the court, calling for his resignation.

(Additional reporting by Asma Alsharif, Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh and Maggie Fick in Cairo; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Tom Perry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/two-dead-egyptians-clash-ahead-rallies-142036312.html

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Jim Carrey Speaks Out Against His Film ?Kick-Ass 2??But Didn?t Mind Taking The Cash!

Jim Carrey Speaks Out Against His Film “Kick-Ass 2″…But Didn’t Mind Taking The Cash!

Jim Carrey not promoting latest film Jim Carrey appears to be losing his damn mind. The comedic actor, who starred in the film “Kick-Ass 2″ that will hit theaters this summer, now says he won’t be promoting the movie. The actor decided not to support the film, explaining he won’t support the violence following the Sandy Hook tragedy. Jim Carrey tweeted, ...

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Documents show IRS also screened liberal groups

FILE - In this June 6, 2013 file photo, acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Werfel unveils his plan to fix an agency besieged by scandal. President Barack Obama ordered Werfel to conduct a 30-day review of the IRS when he appointed him last month. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Internal Revenue Service's screening of groups seeking tax-exempt status was broader and lasted longer than has been previously disclosed, the new head of the agency acknowledged Monday. Terms including "Israel," ''Progressive" and "Occupy" were used by agency workers to help pick groups for closer examination, according to an internal IRS document obtained by The Associated Press.

The IRS has been under fire since last month after admitting it targeted tea party and other conservative groups that wanted the tax-exempt designation for tough examinations. While investigators have said that agency screening for those groups had stopped in May 2012, Monday's revelations made it clear that screening for other kinds of organizations continued until earlier this month, when the agency's new chief, Danny Werfel, says he discovered it and ordered it halted.

The IRS document said an investigation into why specific terms were included was still underway. It blamed the continued use of inappropriate criteria by screeners on "a lapse in judgment" by the agency's former top officials. The document did not name the officials, but many top leaders have been replaced.

Neither the IRS document obtained by the AP or a separate IRS list of terms that workers searched for, released by House Democrats, addressed how many progressive groups received close scrutiny or how the agency treated their requests. Dozens of conservative groups saw their applications experience lengthy delays, and they received unusually intrusive questions about their donors and other details that agency officials have conceded were inappropriate.

In a conference call with reporters, Werfel said that after becoming acting IRS chief last month, he discovered varied and improper terms on the lists and said screeners were still using them. He did not specify what terms were on the lists, but said he suspended the use of all such lists immediately.

"There was a wide-ranging set of categories and cases that spanned a broad spectrum" on the lists, Werfel said. He added that his aides found those lists contained "inappropriate criteria that was in use."

Werfel ordered a halt in the use of spreadsheets listing the terms ? called BOLO lists for "be on the lookout for? on June 12 and formalized their suspension with a June 20 written order, according to the IRS document the AP obtained. Investigators have previously said that the lists evolved over time as screeners found new names and phrases to help them identify groups to examine.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released one of the lists, dated November 2010, that the IRS has provided to congressional investigators. That 16-page document, with many parts blacked out, shows that the terms "Progressive" and "Tea Party" were both on that list, as well as "Medical Marijuana," ''occupied territory advocacy" and "Healthcare legislation."

Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the Ways and Means panel, said he was writing a letter to J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general whose audit in May detailed IRS targeting of conservatives, asking why his report did not mention other groups that were targeted.

"The audit served as the basis and impetus for a wide range of congressional investigations and this new information shows that the foundation of those investigations is flawed in a fundamental way," Levin said.

Republicans said there was a distinction. A statement by the GOP staff of House Ways and Means said, "It is one thing to flag a group, it is quite another to repeatedly target and abuse conservative groups."

George's report criticized the IRS for using "inappropriate criteria" to identify tea party and other conservative groups. It did not mention more liberal organizations, but in response to questions from lawmakers at congressional hearings, George said he had recently found other lists that raised concerns about other "political factors" he did not specify.

Democratic staff on Ways and Means said in a press release that they had verified that of the 298 groups seeking tax-exempt status that George's audit had examined, some were liberal organizations ? something George's report did not mention.

Many organizations seeking tax-exempt designation were applying for so-called 501(c)(4) status, named for its section of the federal revenue code. IRS regulations allow that status for groups mostly involved in "social welfare" and that don't engage in election campaigns for or against candidates as their "primary" activity, and it is up to the IRS to judge whether applicants meet those vaguely defined requirements.

Werfel's remarks came as he released an 83-page examination he has conducted of his embattled agency. The conclusions, which Werfel cautioned are preliminary, have so far found there was "insufficient action" by IRS managers to prevent and disclose the problem involving the screening of certain groups, but no specific clues of misconduct.

"We have not found evidence of intentional wrongdoing by anyone in the IRS or involvement in these matters by anyone outside the IRS," he told reporters.

The report found no indication so far of improper screening beyond the IRS offices, mostly in Cincinnati, that examine groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Werfel's report describes several new procedures the agency is installing to prevent unfair treatment of taxpayers in the future. They include a fast-track process for groups seeking tax-exempt status that have yet to get a response from the IRS within 120 days of applying. He is also creating an Accountability Review Board, which within 60 days is supposed to recommend any additional personnel moves "to hold accountable those responsible" for the targeting of conservative groups, Werfel's report said.

The top five people in the agency responsible for the tax-exempt status of organizations have already been removed, including the former acting commissioner, Steven Miller, whom President Barack Obama replaced with Werfel.

"The IRS is committed to correcting its mistakes, holding individuals accountable as appropriate" and establishing new controls to reduce potential future problems, Werfel told reporters.

IRS screening of conservative groups had sparked investigations by three congressional committees, the Justice Department and a Treasury Department inspector general.

Werfel's comments and report drew negative reviews from one of the IRS's chief critics in Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Issa said the review "fails to meaningfully answer the largest outstanding questions about inappropriate inquiries and indefensible delays. As investigations by Congress and the Justice Department are still ongoing, Mr. Werfel's assertion that he has found no evidence that anyone at IRS intentionally did anything wrong can only be called premature."

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., whose panel is also investigating the agency, said the IRS "still needs to provide clear answers to the most significant questions ? who started this practice, why was it allowed to continue for so long, and how widespread was it? This culture of political discrimination and intimidation goes far beyond basic management failure and personnel changes alone won't fix a broken IRS."

Werfel had promised to produce a report within a month of taking over the agency.

Werfel said he briefed Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew on the report earlier Monday.

Werfel, initially named the IRS's acting commissioner, is now the agency's deputy principal commissioner because federal law limits the time an agency can be led by an acting official.

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher and Henry C. Jackson contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-24-IRS-Political%20Groups/id-929bc76e707f4722b2956b6e3af3b6fe

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Vampire Weekend, Foster The People Steal Firefly Festival

Young bands' feel-good tunes bring smiles to rain-drenched crowd.
By Mary J. DiMeglio

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1709460/vampire-weekend-foster-people-firefly-festival.jhtml

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Monday, June 24, 2013

The New X-M1 Is Fujifilm's Cheapest Mirrorless Camera Yet

The rumored "entry-level" X-series interchangeable-lens camera from Fujifilm is real. The X-M1, features the same 16.3-megapixel APS-C sensor from the more-expensive X-Pro1 and X-E1 models.

Hillary Clinton says she wants America to have a woman president. Surprised?

'I really do hope that we have a woman president in my lifetime,'?Hillary Rodham Clinton?said this week.?Was that a hint about her own possible candidacy?

By Mark Trumbull,?Staff writer / June 22, 2013

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in Chicago last week. Her speech was a broad-brush address heralding the power of women and talking education and opportunity.

Scott Eisen/AP

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She didn?t say she?s going to run for the White House in 2016. But, to many listeners, the latest words of Hillary Rodham Clinton certainly hint that it?s a strong possibility.

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?Let me say this, hypothetically speaking,? she said, ?I really do hope that we have a woman president in my lifetime.?

Members of the audience, at a women?s lecture series in Toronto, cheered.

To get beyond the ?hypothetical," a quick follow-up question: Isn?t it possible that, when voters get the opportunity to see a woman on the presidential ballot as a major contender, the initials of that nominee might be H.R.C.?

Answer: Yes, it looks very possible.

Mrs. Clinton currently gets a ?favorable? rating from 6 in 10 Americans, is widely known, and has been making moves you might expect of someone positioning herself for a presidential run.

After being Secretary of State, she?s bowed out of public service for President Obama?s second term. She?s showing her interest in domestic affairs by engaging in an initiative for early childhood education. Having been a strong contender for the Democratic nomination back in 2008, she knows a lot about campaigning.

Some other major democracies have had female chief executives, including people like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and, currently, Angela Merkel in Germany. For more than two centuries, America hasn?t broken that gender barrier.

?I think it would send exactly the right historic signal to girls and women, as well as boys and men,? Clinton told the Thursday crowd in Toronto. Video?footage of the comments, captured by an audience member, was posted on YouTube.com by the Associated Press Friday.

?It really depends on women stepping up and subjecting themselves to the political process,? Clinton added.

Quoting another former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, Clinton said women need Rhinoceros-thick skins to be in politics.

She also said electing a woman would require a ?leap of faith? for US voters.

Some polls have found Americans saying they have no problem with the idea of a woman as president. A?Gallup poll?in 2006, for example, found 6 in 10 saying Americans are ?ready? for that.

Will Clinton herself ?step up? for the 2016 contest? We?ll see. Her popularity has ebbed and flowed over the years, but since early 2008 a majority of Americans have given her a favorable rating in Gallup polls.

She has lots of fans. But as she departed from her role as Secretary of State, Clinton?s aura of success in that job was tarnished by?controversy?over the State Department?s handling of events in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a terrorist attack.

And she has long been a magnet for conservative criticism. On Thursday, the Republican group America Rising launched a?StopHillary2016.org?website to raise funds in opposition to her potential candidacy.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/hHOOcfqaqcA/Hillary-Clinton-says-she-wants-America-to-have-a-woman-president.-Surprised

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, 8.0 and 7.0 Coming To The U.S. July 7 For $399, $299 And $199

Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 3 line has been official for a little while now, but U.S. availability and pricing was up in the air until today. The relatively cheap tablets are going to be $199, $299 and $399 for the Galaxy Tab 7.0, 8.0 and 10.1 respectively, and will be available from retailers including Best Buy, Fry's and Amazon beginning on July 7, with pre-orders starting tomorrow, June 25.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JR89J7njgW0/

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UFC Hall of Famer Tito Ortiz not so sure that Stephan Bonnar should be a fellow Hall of Famer

When Forrest Griffin retired just months after Stephan Bonnar, the UFC said the two fighters would enter the UFC Hall of Fame together. Bonnar's banned substance violation and lackluster career mattered less than his part in the groundbreaking bout on the first "The Ultimate Fighter" finale.

Tito Ortiz, a current member of the UFC Hall of Fame, isn't so sure that Bonnar deserves to have the same honor as him.

"As far as Stephan, I have nothing against the guy, but you've got to be a world champion, I think, to be in the Hall of Fame ... That's a big honor to be in the Hall of Fame," Ortiz said to MMA Junkie. "It means you had a significance in the sport at one time or another. You look at that, and the Forrest and Stephan fight was a big step for the UFC, so do they deserve it? Possibly. But can one fight get you in the Hall of Fame? I don't know. I guess that's Dana's decision."

Griffin won the UFC light heavyweight championship with a win over Quinton Jackson in 2008, but then lost it to Rashad Evans. He finished with a record of 19-7. Bonnar announced his retirement after losing a non-title bout to Anderson Silva at UFC 153. He tested positive for a banned substance for the fight. His final record was 15-8, and he never fought for a UFC title.

Ortiz's comments bring to the forefront to the problems with the UFC Hall of Fame. The UFC's Hall of Fame has no open criteria or voting process, and is limited to just UFC fighters. As Ortiz notes, the decision appears to rest in the hands of UFC president Dana White.

It's totally within the UFC's rights to run their Hall of Fame as they see it, but it shouldn't be compared to say, the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Football's Hall of Fame in Canton has a clear criteria and voting process, and isn't limited to just NFL members.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-hall-famer-tito-ortiz-not-sure-stephan-134400694.html

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Legal, political maneuvering let Snowden flee (Washington Post)

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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/314788370?client_source=feed&format=rss

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WikiLeaks: Snowden requested legal help to safety

LONDON (AP) ? Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks says it is providing legal help to wanted former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

It says Snowden is bound for an unnamed "democratic nation via a safe route for the purpose of asylum," and that he is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks said in its statement Sunday that Snowden requested the group "use its legal expertise and experience to secure his safety."

Hong Kong's government confirmed earlier that Snowden has left the territory, where he had been hiding for several weeks since he revealed information on highly classified spy programs.

Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency is citing an unidentified Aeroflot official as saying Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wikileaks-snowden-requested-legal-help-safety-122358140.html

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New understanding of why anti-cancer therapy stops working at a specific stage

Public release date: 23-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail |

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Contact: Jerry Barach
jerryb@savion.huni.ac.il
972-258-82904
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jerusalem, June 23, 2013 Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in California have achieved a breakthrough in understanding how and why a promising anti-cancer therapy has failed to achieve hoped-for success in killing tumor cells. Their work could lead to new insights into overcoming this impasse.

The problematic therapy investigated involves suppression of the protein mTOR (mammalian target Of Rapamycin). MTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in many solid cancers.

Drug-induced suppression of mTOR has until now shown success in causing the death of cancer cells in the outer layers of cancerous tumors, but has been disappointing in clinical trials in dealing with the core of those tumors.

Reduced oxygen supply -- hypoxia -- is a near-universal feature of solid tumors that can alter how tumors respond to therapies. It was known that the behavior of mTOR signaling is influenced and altered by the condition of hypoxia, but the mechanism to explain this was unknown.

A research team, which included Prof. Emeritus Raphael D. Levine of the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, investigated whether the influence of hypoxia on mTOR signaling in model brain cancer systems could explain the poor performance of mTOR drugs. Their work appeared in a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the US.

For their investigation, they employed a new microchip technology that allowed them to measure the mTOR protein signaling network in individual cancer cells, and they interpreted the results using a new set of theoretical tools derived from the physical sciences. The combined approach permitted the simplification of an otherwise complex biological system.

They found that at a particular level of oxygen starvation (hypoxia) that is common in solid tumors, the mTOR signaling network switches between two sets of properties. At the switching point, the theoretical models predicted that mTOR would be intrinsically unresponsive to drugging.

Furthermore, the combined experiment and theory results indicated that the switch could be interpreted as a type of phase transition, which has not been previously observed in biological systems.

This phase transition is the point of the switch between the two signaling networks and happens very abruptly. The change in signaling means that the body of cells studied no longer responds in the way it did before. In the case of the tumor, the "drugging" of the mTOR ceases, meaning that the tumor is no longer inhibited.

These results have several implications. First, they may explain the poor clinical performance of mTOR inhibitors. Second, they indicate that certain complex biological behaviors, which often confound scientists who are seeking to find effective therapies for human diseases, may be understood by the effective application of experimental and theoretical tools derived from the physical sciences.

###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

New understanding of why anti-cancer therapy stops working at a specific stage Public release date: 23-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jerry Barach
jerryb@savion.huni.ac.il
972-258-82904
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jerusalem, June 23, 2013 Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in California have achieved a breakthrough in understanding how and why a promising anti-cancer therapy has failed to achieve hoped-for success in killing tumor cells. Their work could lead to new insights into overcoming this impasse.

The problematic therapy investigated involves suppression of the protein mTOR (mammalian target Of Rapamycin). MTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in many solid cancers.

Drug-induced suppression of mTOR has until now shown success in causing the death of cancer cells in the outer layers of cancerous tumors, but has been disappointing in clinical trials in dealing with the core of those tumors.

Reduced oxygen supply -- hypoxia -- is a near-universal feature of solid tumors that can alter how tumors respond to therapies. It was known that the behavior of mTOR signaling is influenced and altered by the condition of hypoxia, but the mechanism to explain this was unknown.

A research team, which included Prof. Emeritus Raphael D. Levine of the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, investigated whether the influence of hypoxia on mTOR signaling in model brain cancer systems could explain the poor performance of mTOR drugs. Their work appeared in a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the US.

For their investigation, they employed a new microchip technology that allowed them to measure the mTOR protein signaling network in individual cancer cells, and they interpreted the results using a new set of theoretical tools derived from the physical sciences. The combined approach permitted the simplification of an otherwise complex biological system.

They found that at a particular level of oxygen starvation (hypoxia) that is common in solid tumors, the mTOR signaling network switches between two sets of properties. At the switching point, the theoretical models predicted that mTOR would be intrinsically unresponsive to drugging.

Furthermore, the combined experiment and theory results indicated that the switch could be interpreted as a type of phase transition, which has not been previously observed in biological systems.

This phase transition is the point of the switch between the two signaling networks and happens very abruptly. The change in signaling means that the body of cells studied no longer responds in the way it did before. In the case of the tumor, the "drugging" of the mTOR ceases, meaning that the tumor is no longer inhibited.

These results have several implications. First, they may explain the poor clinical performance of mTOR inhibitors. Second, they indicate that certain complex biological behaviors, which often confound scientists who are seeking to find effective therapies for human diseases, may be understood by the effective application of experimental and theoretical tools derived from the physical sciences.

###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/thuo-nuo062313.php
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The After Math: Samsung's big Premiere and Instagram's video debut

Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week's tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages.

This week's been arguably less hectic than the last, but both Samsung and Facebook decided to up the tempo on Thursday. The Korean hardware maker announced a stack of new hardware, from tablets to cameras to desktop PCs, while Facebook's Instagram went toe to toe with Twitter's Vine, announcing a new video-sharing feature. On the very same day, Tesla had something to show, deftly switching batteries on its Model S faster than you'd be able to fill a gas tank. There were, however, six other days to the week, and we've pored over all of them for this week's numeros.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Transportation, Samsung

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/c8rspHv6CgI/

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91% Frances Ha

All Critics (100) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (91) | Rotten (9)

It's a tribute to Gerwig's performance, somehow both clumsy and elegant, that she wins us over despite ourselves, that we come to appreciate her aimlessness in a goal-oriented society ...

This is an odd film (creepier than it knows), and even if you feel the atmospheric company of Dunham-ism, with a little of Whit Stillman, Henry Jaglom, and Woody Allen, the core influence on Noah Baumbach's film is fifty years older or more.

Baumbach usually builds his films around difficult protagonists, but Frances is entirely endearing, at once silly and deep, hopeless and promising.

The dialogue and editing are zippy and generally charming, combining with the tart observations of 20-something culture to create a nice frisson.

A black-and-white salute to the French New Wave (the score is borrowed from Georges Delerue, composer of many a Truffaut and Godard film) that manages to be very much of this moment ...

The movie's a love letter to an actress and her character, but by the end you may feel like an intervention is more in order.

As long as you remember to laugh, Frances Ha is a tolerable experience. Forget the "ha ha" and Frances Ha is beyond unbearable. I found this an odd and often frustrating truth, but it's what makes Noah Baumbach's new movie a success.

Gerwig keeps you on side and rooting for Frances to get her act together in what becomes an affectionate salute to messy lives, an endearing underachiever and a New York state of mind.

Don't be fooled by Frances with all her feigned insecurity and branding of herself as "undateable" and predicting she'll be a lonely spinster. She's a psychopath.

Gerwig's deft screwball timing turns every disaster into a grace note. This may be a comedy of awkwardness, but rather than curl, your toes will tap.

A refreshing amount of buoyancy to dance and charm its way through Quarter-Life Crisis territory. One of the best performances of Greta Gerwig's career to date

Frances Ha is a sympathetic but not uncritical depiction of a girl's gradual evolution into a woman; one that never condescends by forcing her to abandon all her quirks and impish qualities in the final act... An absolute delight, this is.

Indie darling Gerwig has a great deal to do with the picture's success: she's disarmingly likable...

There's a level of audacity beneath the lightweight whimsy in this unassuming low-budget comedy.

"Frances Ha makes a star out of Gerwig, and she's the kind of star we need: a goofy one we can feel tender about but never underestimate."

'I can't account for my own bruises,' Frances says, as if she were a clumsy kid with an adult's vocabulary. Does the remark refer to more than the abrasions on her skin?

A celebration of cinema, New York City and the distinctive charms of actress Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha was co-written by Gerwig and its director, Noah Baumbach, and it's the best film either has made.

There's a thin line between comedy and tragedy, and Greta Gerwig walks it remarkably well.

There's depth and realism in the way Frances Ha shows aspiration versus reality.

Gerwig, beyond a doubt, is immeasurably appealing, and Frances Ha is tailor-made to showcase her gifts better than anything she's ever been in.

...if you hold your nose and simply wallow through the stench of self-aggrandizement, you'll be rewarded with an experience that will actually tug on your emotions.

Frances Ha provides a sharp, fleet, and very funny look at female friendship and the acceptance of adult responsibilities.

This is very minimalist storytelling much of which feels improvised in front of the camera. The film is more of a character situation than a character story.

No quotes approved yet for Frances Ha. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/frances_ha_2013/

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Egypt opposition opens to former autocrat's party

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's largest opposition bloc on Saturday reached out to former members of the deposed president's party, ahead of mass protests on June 30 demanding the ouster of his successor.

The move came a day after some 100,000 supporters of current President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist and the country's first elected leader, packed a main square in Cairo to support him and challenge the largely liberal opposition that demands he step down.

Morsi won a four-year term as president with some 52 percent of the vote in a run-off last June against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister of now-ousted Hosni Mubarak. Shafiq is now contesting the election results.

"I can't isolate millions of Egyptian people because they were part of the National Democratic Party," said Mohamed ElBaradei, a top leader of the opposition National Salvation Front, referring to Mubarak's now-dissolved party. He said the invitation to Mubarak supporters did not extend to those who had been convicted of crimes under the old regime.

"The masses of Egyptian people are calling for change," he said, adding that the plan now was to discuss national reconciliation. He made his remarks during a two-day conference entitled "After Departure," which aims to draw up a road map in case Morsi resigns as the opposition demands.

Since the 2011 uprising that forced Mubarak from power, members of his NDP have been labeled "feloul," or "remnants," by both liberals and Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group.

Joining ranks with the "feloul" is seen as a major shift and painful choice by the opposition, the vast majority of whom voted for Morsi last year in order to block Shafiq from taking office because they did not want a Mubarak-man ruling after the uprising.

After Mubarak's fall, the NDP was dissolved and scores of top party officials were detained while on trial over various charges of corruption, along with former regime officials. The country's Supreme Administrative Court in 2011 ruled that party members can participate in elections.

The party has an estimated three million members. After it was disbanded, some joined newly established parties. A yet-untested "political isolation" clause in the new constitution may ban senior officials in the now-defunct party from top posts.

The June 30 call is rooted in a months-long petition drive called "Tamarod," or "Rebel," in Arabic, which helped galvanize an opposition that has been demoralized and in disarray. Organizers announced on Thursday that they have collected 15 million signatures supporting Morsi's ouster and early presidential elections.

The opposition accuses Morsi of monopolizing power and of failing to deliver on promises to create an inclusive system where the opposition is represented. Morsi and the Brotherhood accuse the opposition of being used by Mubarak-men aiming to topple Egypt's first democracy and bring back the old regime.

Meanwhile, the country's powerful military, widely suspected to be at odds with the president, said it will not intervene in political infighting.

"The men of the armed forces don't gamble with the present or the future of the nation," Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was quoted by official news agency MENA as saying during a graduation ceremony on Saturday. The military, he said, "are not biased to a certain faction against the other but their only bias is to the Egyptian people with all its sects and factions."

Ruling for nearly 18 months after Mubarak's ouster, the military came under sharp criticism by liberals and rights groups for what they called mismanagement of the country's transition, human rights violations and enabling an Islamists takeover.

In the year since Morsi took office, the military top brass have expressed unwillingness to return to power. Police, who have engaged in deadly clashes with street protesters over the past two years, have signaled they want to stay out of any violence it is feared may erupt on June 30.

Also on Saturday, MENA reported that the Presidential Election Commission sat Tuesday to look into Shafiq's complaints alleging irregularities and forgery in last year's vote. Shafiq is in self-exile in United Arab Emirates as he is being tried in absentia on corruption-related charges, which he says are politicized.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-opposition-opens-former-autocrats-party-161917220.html

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Games of the week - Doodle Jump, Minion Rush, Icebreaker and more!

As promised, we've started to split apart our app picks every week so that we highlight games separately to regular apps. Not everyone plays games on their iOS devices, and likewise some folks play them by the barrel full. So, here's a selection of what the iMore team has been playing this past seven days.

Doodle Jump - Ally Kazmucha

Out of all the games that I've played on my iPhone, Doodle Jump has always remained a staple from the very beginning. I don't even remember when exactly Doodle Jump was released but I know it was a very long time ago. The thing I love about it is that it never really has gotten old for me. I still have friends and family members that play it to this day.

The best part is that the developers still continuously update it and create new themes and crazy monsters. While the premise has always remained the same, it just hasn't seemed to grow old to me. I'm still trying to beat my high scores to this day and occasionally I still get a friend or family member telling me they finally bested my score.

It's an all around great game at just as great of a price.

$0.99 - Download Now

Knights of Pen and Paper - Joseph Keller

Some friends sit down at a table, write up character sheets, and their adventure begins. This is the premise of Knights of Pen and Paper, where you play the role of a group of tabletop roleplaying game players as the make their way through adventures in their favorite pen and paper game. Select a few players from a diverse group, each with their own unique ability that helps them play the game, then select a class for that player. All classic roleplaying archetypes such as Paladin, Mage, and Rouge, each class comes with a set of upgradable powers to help you battle the monsters your players will encounter. Their adventure will take your players' characters across a vast and varied continent, completing quests such as finding magical stones to battling beasts and saving townsfolk. If you enjoy RPGs and an 8-bit art style, then Knights of Pen and Paper is certainly worth a look.

$2.99 - Download Now

Icebreaker - Simon Sage

This week Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, acted as a publisher for a new game called Icebreaker. This is a first for them, but I guess when you've got more money than god, you can make transitions like that. Icebreaker was originally a flash game, and involves slicing through blocks of ice in order to get abandoned vikings to their longboats. Those blocks of ice can be smashed up if they get to the boat after sliding or swinging across the stage, since your main character is there at the ready with an oversized hammer. There are also bonus chests scattered around the level to earn extra coins, which can be used to unlock new branching stages. Icebreaker is actually an awful lot like Perfection, which I looked at last week, only with a bit more of a Cut the Rope vibe. What I like most about Icebreaker though are the chunky, low-fi graphics and the nuggets of funny dialog between each level.

$0.99 - Download now

Minion Rush - Chris Parsons

The lovable little minions are back for Despicable Me 2 and to help promote that they've got a pretty fun little movie tie in game as well from Gameloft. It's a classic swipe based game where you have to collect bananas and avoid whatever may pop up in your path. That all sounds a bit easy but it's really not. Trust me. I've wasted a good amount of time on this. If you're a Temple Run kid of fan, you'll like Minion Rush plus, it's got a lot of humor in it. The game is free to download but has the typical in-app purchases of "coins" to help you progress through the came which can add up.

Free - Download Now

MetalStorm: Online - Peter Cohen

It's one thing to fly jets in iOS games; it's another thing entirely to do it online with other players. MetalStorm: Online is a modern jet dogfighting game that's free to download (in-app purchases can be used to improve your jets). It's easy to control and play using a combination of gyroscopic support, swipe commands and clearly marked buttons on the HUD. Despite its name, MetalStorm: Online has plenty to do offline, too - single player missions that don't require other folks. Of course, the online games are where this one shines - chat with others using an in-game voice system and leverage Game Center to find other people to play. AirPlay support means you can stream games to your Apple TV.

Free - Download now

Real Racing 3 - Richard Devine

I know, I know, the in-app purchases in Real Racing 3 really haven't been handled that well. But truth be told, I haven't spent much more than the cost of its predecessor on it, and I'm still enjoying it immensely. In fact, it's about the only game I play on my iPad every single day. I love racing, and I love racing games, and Real Racing 3 (ignoring the IAP's) is about the best racing game I've ever played on a mobile device. The graphics are sublime, the control system is excellent, and you can get a decent amount of life out of it without handing over a penny. I'm not a fan of how they handled the IAP's on this one, but I'm also not letting it ruin my enjoyment of a truly fantastic game.

Free - Download Now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/zaLXLx8mvlM/story01.htm

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