Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/ghost-recon-movie-michael-bay-to-direct/
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Tuesday, 11 June 2013
To germinate, or not to germinate, that is the question?
June 10, 2013 ? Scientists at the University of York have uncovered new insights into the way seeds use gene networks to control when they germinate in response to environmental signals.
Timing of seed germination is crucial for survival of plants in the wild and is also important for commercial seed production where there is a need to ensure uniform growth.
A cold environment can signal an imminent winter so the mother plant produces dormant seeds that will not grow until the following spring.? A warmer environment can signal an early summer with the mother plant producing seeds that grow immediately allowing another generation to grow before winter.
Researchers at the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) in the Department of Biology at York have found that a regulator gene called SPATULA can control the expression of five other regulatory genes that are known to effect when a seed germinates.? The research, which was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Garfield Weston Foundation, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS).
The CNAP research group, led by Professor Ian Graham, used the model oilseed plant called Arabidopsis to gain new insights into how the gene networks operate. They found that different varieties of Arabidopsis respond differently when this network of regulatory genes is disturbed. Some become more dormant and others less reflecting the different environmental responses of varieties that have evolved in different parts of the world.
Professor Graham says: "Plants are clever in many ways. The complexity of the gene toolkit controlling seed germination is quite remarkable. During seed set, plants are able to respond to a variety of environmental signals from temperature to day-length, light quality and nutrient availability.
?Discoveries such as this should underpin the development of better quality seeds for farmers. Since seed dormancy is one of the first traits to be addressed when domesticating a crop, the work should also aid in the rapid domestication of wild species into novel crops for a range of different applications.?
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/rp1PAP0AsNI/130610152046.htm
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Contractor who leaked NSA files drops out of sight, faces legal battle
By John Whitesides
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contractor at the National Security Agency who leaked details of top-secret U.S. surveillance programs dropped out of sight in Hong Kong on Monday ahead of a likely push by the U.S. government to have him sent back to the United States to face charges.
Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA's broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by Britain's Guardian newspaper.
The disclosures by Snowden have sent shockwaves across Washington, where several lawmakers called on Monday for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee who was behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history.
There were some signs, however, that Snowden's stance against government surveillance and his defense of personal privacy was resonating with at least some Americans.
Supporters flocked to Snowden's aid on the Internet - more than 25,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to pardon Snowden even before he has been charged. A separate effort on Facebook to raise funds for Snowden's legal defense netted nearly $8,000 in just a few hours.
In Hong Kong, officials were cautious in discussing a spy drama that could entangle U.S.-China relations just a few days after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at a summit in California where cyber security was a prime topic.
Snowden told the Guardian that he went to Hong Kong in hopes it would be a place where he might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, although the former British colony has an extradition treaty with the United States.
On Monday, some local officials suggested that Snowden might have miscalculated.
"We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought," said Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary.
Snowden said he turned over the documents to The Washington Post and the Guardian in order to expose the NSA's vast surveillance of phone and Internet data.
The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he became disenchanted with Obama for continuing the surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama's predecessor.
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded," Snowden told the Guardian, which published the video interview with him, dated June 6, on its website.
In Washington, several members of Congress and intelligence officials showed little sympathy for Snowden's argument. The U.S. Justice Department already is in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.
"Anyone responsible for leaking classified information should be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
'A SACRED TRUST'
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told NBC that the leaks "violate a sacred trust for this country. The damage that these revelations incur are huge."
Some lawmakers were more cautious, however, saying the surveillance programs revealed by the Guardian and The Post raised concerns not just about citizens' privacy, but also whether the Obama administration had done enough to keep Congress informed about such surveillance, as required by law.
"The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing," said Ron Paul, a former House member and unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 2012 who has long said that the U.S. government is too intrusive into Americans' daily lives.
"We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden," Paul said.
At the White House on Monday, Obama spokesman Jay Carney sidestepped questions about Snowden. Responding to questions about the White House's efforts to brief Congress about the NSA's surveillance programs, a senior administration official released a list of 22 briefings that had been conducted for lawmakers over a 14-month span.
There will be more briefings on Tuesday, when a half-dozen national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials will meet with House members. The Senate will be briefed on Thursday.
Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, told the Guardian he had copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and had told his supervisor that he needed "a couple of weeks" off for epilepsy treatments. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.
Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said later in the day that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.
"He didn't have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he'd go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague," MacAskill said.
"I'd imagine there's now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future," MacAskill said. "He'd like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I'm not sure if that's possible or not."
HONG KONG ASYLUM POLICY 'IN LIMBO'
Legally speaking, where does Snowden go from here?
If Snowden is charged on criminal counts as many lawmakers and officials expect, the focus will turn to the extradition treaty that the United States and Hong Kong signed in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China.
The treaty, which allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that also may involve the Chinese government, went into effect in 1998.
It says that Hong Kong authorities can hold a U.S. suspect for up to 60 days after the United States submits a request indicating there is probable cause to believe the suspect violated U.S. law. In Snowden's case, such a request could lead Hong Kong authorities to hold him while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.
Snowden could try to stay in Hong Kong by seeking political asylum. Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under Hong Kong's extradition laws.
A decision this year by Hong Kong's High Court requires the government to create a new standard for reviewing asylum applications, putting the cases on hold until the new system is finished.
"He's come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo," Young said.
MORE REVELATIONS TO COME?
Snowden's revelations launched a broad national debate on privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
On Monday, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian's lead reporter on the Snowden case, used Twitter to chide Clapper for claiming that Snowden's disclosures harmed national security. Greenwald also suggested that there were more revelations to come.
"Clapper: leaks "literally gut-wrenching" - "huge, grave damage" - save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories. You'll need it," Greenwald tweeted.
Many members of Congress have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.
"In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today," Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.
Some officials said the U.S. government might need to reconsider how much it relies on outside defense contractors who are given top security clearances. As of October 2012, about 483,000 government contractors has top-secret security clearances, according to a report issued in January by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
"We do need to take another, closer look at how we control information and how good we are at identifying what people are doing with that information," said Stewart Baker, former general counsel at the NSA and former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, David Ingram, Mark Hosenball, Susan Heavey, Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Lindsey, Jim Loney and Mohammad Zargham)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/contractor-leaked-nsa-files-drops-sight-faces-legal-001212804.html
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Nigeria Islamists hide guns in coffin, kill 13: witnesses
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist insurgents who hid weapons inside a coffin have shot dead 13 people in an attack targeting informants in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, two witnesses said on Sunday.
Friday's attack came as Nigeria's military makes its most concerted effort yet to end a four-year insurgency by Boko Haram, a sect that has killed thousands in a campaign to create a state governed by Islamic law in Nigeria's northeast.
Fearing the northeast was turning into a de facto Islamist enclave similar to northern Mali before French military action in January, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency last month in three states.
The military claim to have driven Boko Haram fighters out of Maiduguri and from their camps near borders with Chad and Niger.
But around ten men pretending to be driving to a burial came to an area of Maiduguri late on Friday, pulled the guns from the coffin and opened fire on some houses where vigilantes who aid the military live, witnesses said.
"The Boko Haram killed 13 residents during their sporadic gunshots," said an eyewitness, Saleh Ibrahim. He said soldiers later shot dead six insurgents whose bodies were left by the road.
A spokesman for the military joint task force (JTF), Sagir Musa, declined to comment on the attack but said vigilante groups in the area of Maiduguri targeted by the gunmen had helped identify Boko Haram suspects.
"People have been assisting the JTF with information to arrest the Boko Haram, so they were not happy and they came to deal with people there," said another witness, Ali Musa.
Boko Haram and other Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru have become the biggest threat to stability in Africa's second-largest economy and top oil producer.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-islamists-hide-guns-coffin-kill-13-witnesses-064828978.html
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Manning trial resumes as new leak scandal unfolds
Army Capt. Alexander Von Elton, a member of the Army's prosecution team, exits the courthouse at Fort Meade, Md., on the fourth day of the court martial of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, Monday, June 10, 2013. Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by sending troves of classified material to WIkiLeaks. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Army Capt. Alexander Von Elton, a member of the Army's prosecution team, exits the courthouse at Fort Meade, Md., on the fourth day of the court martial of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, Monday, June 10, 2013. Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by sending troves of classified material to WIkiLeaks. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, right, is escorted into a courthouse at Fort Mead, Md., for the fourth day of his court martial. Monday, June 10, 2013. Manning is charged with indirectly aiding the enemy by sending troves of classified material to WikiLeaks. He faces up to life in prison. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) ? Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's court-martial for giving hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to WikiLeaks entered its second week Monday in a fresh spotlight cast by a brand-new leak by another low-level intelligence employee.
Like Manning, Edward Snowden could find himself hauled into court by the U.S. government after he unmasked himself Sunday as the leaker who exposed the nation's secret phone and Internet surveillance programs to reporters.
Legal experts closely following both cases said they were shocked to find out young, low-ranking people had such access to powerful government secrets. Manning was 22 when he turned over the military and diplomatic cables about three years ago; Snowden is 29.
"In that respect, these cases suggest we should be much more careful about who is given security clearances," said David J.R. Frakt, a former military prosecutor and defense lawyer who has taught at several law schools.
At the same time, legal experts saw differences between the two cases, namely that Manning's secret-spilling was more scattershot, while Snowden appeared more selective.
"I'm not awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom here," Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School, said of Snowden. "I'm just saying you could say it is something more akin to educating the American public about sensitive surveillance issues that have some level of First Amendment concern attached to them."
As for how Snowden's revelation will affect the Manning case, Fidell said it probably won't influence the military judge, who is hearing the case without a jury, but "it ratchets up the entire subject in the public eye." Fidell said it could spur outrage about government secrecy in general, but could also underscore the dangers of leaks ? and that, he said, won't help Manning.
"It's a reminder that if what Manning did and what Snowden did is OK, then it's basically every man for himself," Fidell said, adding that national security would end up with "more holes than cheese."
Manning is charged under federal espionage and computer fraud laws. The most serious charge against him is aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
As the trial opened last week, prosecutors said they would show that some of the secrets fell into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself. Manning's attorney said he was young and naive, but a good-intentioned soldier who wanted to make the world a better place by exposing the way the U.S. government was conducting itself.
Snowden said his motives were similar but told The Guardian newspaper of London: "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest."
Manning never publicly acknowledged his actions until more than two years after his arrest. He was seized only after an informant turned him in. Snowden is hiding out in Hong Kong, perhaps eventually hoping for asylum somewhere.
Testimony in the Manning case on Monday focused on when the soldier first started searching for the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks on his work computer in Iraq and when he downloaded some of the classified information he leaked, including more than 700 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment reports.
Inside the court-martial, Manning's supporters mostly cheered the Snowden leak.
"We're all complicit in the crimes that these wonderful, brave young people told us about," said Kathy Boylan, a charity worker in Washington.
___
Gresko reported from Washington.
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Are You Ready for Even More Katrinas and Sandys?
Climate change is not a particularly hot topic among residents of Midland Beach, a seaside enclave of middle-class families in New York?s politically conservative Staten Island.
Six months after Superstorm Sandy propelled a 10-foot wall of ocean over the low-lying community, most people are too busy reconstructing their shattered homes and lives to talk about greenhouse gases and extreme weather patterns.
But eventually, they know the subject must come up.
?Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it will bring up that conversation, and something good can come out of all this,? says Thomas Cunsolo, an 18-year resident of Midland Beach whose three-story home was totaled by Sandy.
Cunsolo, a 52-year-old retired carpenter, needs no convincing that human-caused climate change contributed to the lethal fury of Sandy. ?Any person who really thinks about it honestly has to know the proof is in the pudding,? he says. ?Katrina was the first big eye-opener.?
If Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime storm, Cunsolo asks, ?Then how do you explain Sandy? Something?s going on to get these storms to this magnitude.? Do we all believe in it yet? Publicly, people aren?t talking about reducing emissions?but they know it?s a big issue that we need to start talking about.?
Experts and scientists overwhelmingly agree.
?I don?t think anybody would try to correlate one event to global warming,? says Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. ?But it does make things worse. ?With Katrina, Gulf temperatures were the highest on record,? he notes. ?That?s what gave Katrina its kick.? Barnett also estimates that half of Sandy?s force can be attributed to global warming.
The probability of bigger storms, meanwhile, ?shifted in one direction: the 100-year storm is now a 20-year storm. There?s an increasing probability it will happen again.?
***
On the morning of October 29, 2012, Cunsolo, his wife Karen, his sister, two sons, daughter, and 18-month-old grandson were at home. And though Sandy loomed on the southern horizon amid talk of evacuations, they weren?t particularly concerned.
?We didn?t think Staten Island would be hit,? Cunsolo recalls. ?They cried wolf the year before with [Hurricane] Irene. Everybody evacuated and nothing happened. So with Sandy, we thought, ?This is baloney.? ?
By 7:30 that night, Cunsolo had changed his mind. As he frantically packed his family and dog into the car, power went out everywhere. Terrified, the Cunsolos fled, but two-foot-high floodwaters slowed their escape.
?Then I look back in the mirror and see an eight-foot wall of water coming at us,? Cunsolo says. ?Only by the Grace of God did we make it out.?
His neighbor was not so lucky: He was still home.
Cunsolo brought his family to a nephew?s house on higher ground. He hoped to rescue his neighbor, but wind, rain and darkness made it impossible. At dawn, he tried driving home, but Midland Beach was under water.
??Trees were down, houses were down, cars were piled up and sand and raw sewage were everywhere,? Cunsolo recalls. He spent the next several hours shuttling shell-shocked neighbors to safe ground. Both evacuation centers he tried had themselves been evacuated, so he opted to drop them at a BP station under construction. ?Kids were screaming, people were bloody,? Cunsolo says. Elderly couples were wrapped in blankets and rags.
There was still no sign of his neighbor. Crews checked the house and said nobody was there. Unconvinced, Cunsolo waded through freezing-cold muck to reach the home. His neighbor, hit by a floating refrigerator, had collapsed upstairs. Cunsolo rescued his friend and managed to reunite him with his wife, who was sheltering at their daughter?s house.
The last person Cunsolo saved was a man bleeding from his leg, one hand clasped under his shirt. ?He just had a liver transplant and his health aide never evacuated him. I brought him to the firehouse. It was the only thing I could think of. I don?t know who he was, and I don?t know if he made it.?
Human deaths, of course, were Sandy?s bitterest legacy. At least two dozen died on Staten Island, though Cunsolo believes the death toll to be much higher. Either way, the hell and high water unleashed on Midland Beach, like so many communities, affected everyone. It will take years to recover.
Housing was the first crisis. Many homes, now condemned, were buckled or pushed off their foundations. Boilers and electrical systems were corroded by saltwater. Cunsolo?s house was structurally twisted, its foundation footings compromised. Repairs will cost more than tearing it down and starting over. What?s worse, work is stalled due to zoning codes and ever-changing BFE?s, or base flood elevation: the height to which homes must be raised. ?Right now, mine is 15 feet,? Cunsolo says. ?I?d literally have to take an elevator to my first floor.?
Now, the Cunsolo family, unable to find a space big enough to accommodate everyone, is camped out in two apartments located about 25 minutes apart. Their plight isn?t uncommon: Sandy triggered unprecedented rental demand in New York, with some rents spiking 65 percent.
Some residents have managed to return, but many houses remain empty, some still plastered in synthetic spider webs for a Halloween that never came. Of the 71 businesses that lined Midland Avenue, ?maybe 20 are up and running,? says Cunsolo, who has since formed the Midland Beach Alliance to assist Sandy victims.
Midland Beach waits, and languishes, half-empty. Looting is a problem: Copper pipes are often ripped from gutted houses under renovation.
And summertime brings new horrors. ?Once it reaches around 80 degrees, the mold is going to spread,? Cunsolo warns. ?If one home that didn?t have mold remediation is next to one that did, that home will get infected again. Spores can travel.?
In one report, 420 of 690 households surveyed had visible mold; remediation attempts failed in more than a third.
***
It?s worth noting that while rising global temperatures warm the oceans, giving rise to more extreme weather events, they also cause the ocean levels themselves to rise, which adds to the destructive effects of storms like Sandy.
In April, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report stating that, ?Sea level is rising, and at an accelerating rate, especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.?
Average levels rose about eight inches from 1880 to 2009, with the rate increasing from 1993 to 2008, at 65 to 90 percent above 20th-century averages.
?Global warming is the primary cause of current sea level rise,? the UCS warns. ?Human activities, such as burning coal and oil and cutting down tropical forests, have increased atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases and caused the planet to warm by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.?
Global warming, of course, unleashes far more than superstorms and coastal devastation. The grueling impact of climate change has been well documented, and it will only get worse. Heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, rainstorms and blizzards seem to grow more severe each year.
***
The debate that hasn?t yet hit the shores of Staten Island continues to rage in the political and scientific community. Despite the evidence, a very small minority of scientists and their political allies argue that climate change is not caused by human activity.
Many such opponents balked when President Obama proclaimed in his 2013 State of the Union address that more needs to be done to combat climate change. ?We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence,? he said, ?Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science.?
Critics cite concerns that the government?s attempts to curb emissions will damage the economy and shrink the job market; Forbes columnist Peter Ferrara called Obama?s ?threats? a ?global warming regulatory jihad? and said his assertion of more severe weather was ?a fairy tale.?
Most scientists reject this rhetoric as self-interest masquerading as reason.
?People who make those arguments generally come from the energy industry,? says Barnett. ?They are not published in this area. They take facts and twist them, like the era of ?safe? cigarettes, when the industry?s men in white coats were just a bunch of yahoos off the street.?
Back on Staten Island, Cunsolo, a registered Democrat who has voted for both parties, insists, ?politics are out the window. This isn?t a Democratic or a Republican thing.?
The stormy weather is only projected to worsen.
?We expect that the overall intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin will continue to increase with higher sea surface temperature, but there is no strong consensus about how the warming atmosphere and ocean will affect the number of tropical storms,? says Dr. Virginia Van Sickle-Burkett, chief scientist for global change research at the U.S. Geological Survey.
She adds, ?There is presently no mechanism for humans to stop global warming, at least for the remainder of this century. Changes that have already been made in greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to warm the climate for decades to come.?
Scripps? Barnett is equally gloomy. ?Sandy destroyed the waterfront with a storm surge,? he says. ?Imagine if the normal level was a meter higher. Those beaches wouldn?t be there. At every high tide, the water would run everywhere.?
New York State has offered to buy out homes destroyed by Sandy, and Cunsolo says that option is becoming increasingly attractive. But most people want to stay.
Bad move, says Barnett. ?They can rebuild all they want, but it?s the dumbest thing in the world. As the ocean gets higher, it will win.?
Humans, he warns, ?are effectively creating another planet, whether we like it or not. And if your kids don?t like it 20, 30 years from now, there?s not a damn thing you can do. The problem is not unsolvable, but greed and power will be the downfall of the human race.?
It?s still too much for many Midland Beach residents to ponder. Even as they rebuild, they?re casting a wary eye on the Atlantic Ocean.
?Hurricane season is just a couple of weeks away,? Cunsolo says, who?s currently working on establishing evacuation routes. ?I got people calling me, saying what do we do if we get hit again??
Related stories on TakePart:
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ready-even-more-katrinas-sandys-042923722.html
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Lululemon Losses Its Head After See-Through Pants Scandal
Mad Men episode titles have been especially literal this season, haven't they? "Favors," last night's episode, falls in the same naming vein as the previous week's "A Tale of Two Cities," in which the allusions are evident from the start. Can people do things for other people without expectations in return? What's in a favor, anyway? (Plenty.)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lululemon-losses-head-see-pants-scandal-204923144.html
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