Limbaugh is to tired political cliches what McDonald’s is to morbid obesity. Look at the big fat white dude make other big fat white dudes feel a little better about not liking brown people. He’s a rodeo clown , it’s street theater transmitted through radio airwaves. Limbaugh: (On Obama) and the independents running away from Obama. He doesn’t care at the end of the day he’s focused on d -ependence. He needs and wants to create as many dependent on him, people as he can and that’s how he looks on Hispanics. It’s how he looks at every minority. It’s not that Obama is dependent on their votes, it’s that they are dependent on all those Obama dollars that the government is giving to them from Bill O’Reilly and his fellow rich Republicans.
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The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is likely to fall to Earth between 5pm on Friday and 5am on Saturday UK time A dead spacecraft that is tumbling to Earth will re-enter the atmosphere on Friday evening or Saturday morning UK time, according to Nasa’s latest analysis. Most of the bus-sized Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will burn up in the atmosphere, but more than half a tonne of debris is predicted to get through. The falling spacecraft is expected to begin its final descent to Earth sometime between the hours of noon and midnight US Eastern time on Friday (between 5pm Friday and 5am Saturday British Summer Time), according to an update released by the US space agency on Wednesday . The satellite will not be passing over North America at the time of re-entry, but Nasa said it was too early to predict the time and location with more certainty. Further updates will be released by Nasa later on Thursday, and then 12, six and two hours before re-entry. The space agency anticipates that 26 potentially hazardous parts , weighing a total of 532kg, could remain intact and hit the Earth. The debris will spread along an estimated 500-mile corridor of the Earth’s surface. Among the parts expected to survive the fiery re-entry are four titanium fuel tanks, four steel flywheel rims and an aluminium structure that alone weighs 158kg. Depending on their size and shape, the components will strike at speeds of between 55mph (90kph) and 240mph (385kph). Radar stations around the world, including RAF Fylingdales in north Yorkshire, are tracking the object, but there is little chance of predicting with any accuracy where the debris will fall. The spacecraft’s orbit puts a great swathe of the planet in its path between the latitudes of 57 degrees north and south. Mainland Britain lies between 50 and 60 degrees north. The satellite spends more time at higher latitudes, so there is a slightly higher risk in those regions. Most likely by far is that the remains of the satellite will drop into the ocean, or be strewn across one of the planet’s most desolate regions, such as Siberia, the Australian outback or the Canadian tundra. Nasa put the odds of anyone being struck by a falling part of the spacecraft at one in 3,200. The individual risk to a particular person is much less – one in 3,200 multiplied by the billions that live under the satellite’s flight path. There are no confirmed injuries from manmade space debris and no record of significant property damage from a falling satellite. An organisation of major space agencies known as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) takes a lead role in monitoring threats from falling space junk and is running back-to-back simulations to work out when, and roughly where, the spacecraft’s remains will impact. If the IADC or the Ministry of Defence, via RAF Fylingdales, found that the UK was at risk, they would inform the Cabinet Office civil contingencies committee, which is responsible for alerting the emergency services. When Nasa’s Skylab fell to Earth in 1979, the space agency put the risk of human injury at 1 in 152, because the odds of the defunct space station striking a city were much higher. The partially controlled Skylab missed its expected impact site in South Africa and crash-landed in Australia. Predicting where the debris will land is difficult for two main reasons. Unpredictable rises in the sun’s activity warm the atmosphere and make it expand, which causes the spacecraft to experience more drag and re-enter more quickly. Another problem comes from uncertainties in the tracking of how the spacecraft disintegrates, which means that even just a few hours before impact, the corridor of the Earth’s surface at risk will be several thousand kilometres long. Under an international treaty, governments are obliged to return any parts of a satellite that are found to the owner, in this case Nasa. The space agency urged anyone who suspected they had found debris from the spacecraft not to touch it and inform the local police. The satellite was launched in 1991 aboard the space shuttle Discovery and decommissioned in 2005. Satellites Space Nasa United States Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …First trial of embryonic stem cell treatment in Europe gets green light
September 22, 2011 No Comment
Patients with an eye disease that leads to blindness will take part in first human embryonic stem cell trial to be approved in Europe British surgeons are to take part in the first trial in patients of a human embryonic stem cell therapy to gain approval from regulators in Europe. Surgeons at Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London will inject cells into the eyes of 12 patients with an incurable eye disease called Stargardt’s macular dystrophy , one of the main causes of blindness in young people. The clinical trial, designed to investigate the safety and tolerance of the groundbreaking therapy, is due to begin in December having received approval from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on Thursday. It is the first trial in people of a stem cell therapy to receive the go ahead from regulators in any European country. Medical teams hope to slow, halt or even reverse the effects of the disease by injecting healthy retinal cells into the eye. The trial is controversial because the replacement retinal cells – known as RPE, or retinal pigment epithelial cells – are derived from human embryonic stem cells. The Massachusetts-based company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced the trial on Thursday. It will run alongside a similar study that began in July at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Only one patient has been treated so far in the US trial for Stargardt’s disease. The results from both studies are expected next year. Patients taking part in the UK trial will have between 50,000 and 200,000 cells injected behind the retina through a fine needle in an outpatient operation expected to take up to an hour. Only patients with advanced disease will be admitted to the trial. Stargardt’s disease is an inherited disorder that causes progressive vision loss through the thinning of retinal pigment epithelial cells at the centre of the retina, the region where the eye forms its sharpest images. The loss of RPE cells usually begins between the ages of 10 and 20 years and leads to light-sensitive rods and cones in the eye dying off. This ultimately causes vision loss and even blindness. If the treatment works, the replacement RPE cells will grow and eventually restore the retina to a healthy state that can support light-sensitive cells required for sight. “This is a safety and tolerability study, so we are dealing with patients with advanced stage disease. Where we expect to get the most significant results is in earlier patients, before they have lost their photoreceptors. We’re hoping to prevent the onset of blindness altogether in those patients,” Robert Lanza, ACT’s chief scientific officer , told the Guardian. “The UK has been at the forefront of stem cell research in the past, but I think this confirms it is the leader in stem cell work in Europe. This is the first time an embryonic stem cell therapy has been approved in Europe,” Lanza added. “There is real potential that people with blinding disorders of the retina, including Stargardt disease and age-related macular degeneration, might benefit in the future from transplantation of retinal cells,” said retinal surgeon James Bainbridge at Moorfields and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology . “The ability to regenerate retinal cells from stem cells in the laboratory has been a significant advance and the opportunity to help translate such technology into new treatments for patients is hugely exciting. Testing the safety of retinal cell transplantation in this clinical trial will be an important step towards achieving this aim,” he said. Last year, the US company Geron began a long-awaited trial of a stem-cell therapy to repair spinal cord injuries. Doctors hope that injecting stem cells directly into the spine will repair damaged nerve cells enough for paralysed people to regain some movement. Stem cells Embryos Medical research Biology Blindness and visual impairment Health Health & wellbeing Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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UBS trader charged with fraud relating to activities between 2008 and 2010, in addition to two allegations of false accounting and one of fraud in 2011 Kweku Adoboli , the 31-year-old charged with fraud and false accounting at UBS, was remanded in custody until 20 October on Thursday after learning he also faced a second fraud charge. Lawyers for Adoboli, who holds a Ghanaian passport, did not make an application for bail at the hearing in the City of London magistrates’ court that followed the three charges police brought against him on Friday . The alleged “unauthorised trading” announced by the Swiss bank has caused turmoil at the bank, which has raised the estimate of losses from the incident to $2.3bn from $2bn. The trader spoke only to confirm his name, birth date and address at the hearing. He did not enter a plea. He originally faced three charges. Two claim that Adoboli falsified records of exchange traded funds – complex financial instruments – between October 2008 and December 2009 and then in January 2010 and September 2011. The third charge alleges that he committed fraud between January 2011 and September 2011 while senior trader in global synthetic equities. The fourth charge, of fraud, was made on Thursday, relating to activity between 1 October 2008 and 31 December 2010. Adoboli is represented by the law firm Kingsley Napley, which also advised Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who brought down Barings in 1995. A committal hearing originally set for 22 October will now take place on 20 October. The Swiss bank is now under intense pressure to restore confidence in its investment banking arm. The Zurich-based bank’s board is meeting on Thursday and Friday in Singapore where chief executive Oswald Grübel, parachuted in to the bank in 2009 when UBS was on the brink of collapse, is determined to secure his future. The head of UBS’s investment banking arm, Carsten Kengeter, has urged staff to work hard to repair the “financial damage” caused by the alleged incident, which the bank has admitted will tip it to a loss in the third quarter. An update on the bank’s strategy is expected on 17 November at a previously arranged investor meeting in New York. Kweku Adoboli UBS Banking European banks Sam Jones Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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National Association of Head Teachers to hold ballot on whether to take industrial action over cuts to pensions Teachers stepped closer to mounting their biggest strike in a generation this autumn after a headteachers’ union decided it would ballot members to take industrial action over pension reforms. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) , which represents more than 28,000 heads and their deputies, will hold its first strike ballot of its 114-year history from 29 September. If members vote in favour of industrial action, a co-ordinated strike with several other classroom unions could take place on 30 November and would be likely to shut the majority of schools in England and Wales. The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have already voted to carry out rolling strikes, while another teachers’ union, the NASUWT, has proposed industrial action. The Public and Commercial Services Union has already said it is planning a strike in November. A government-commissioned report in March by the former Labour minister Lord Hutton called for final salary pension schemes to be scrapped and replaced with career averages for public sector workers. He recommended that public sector staff should pay higher monthly contributions and called for a rise in the retirement age to 68 – most headteachers now retire aged 60 to 65. The government has said changes are needed because the cost of teachers’ pensions will rise from about £5bn in 2005 to almost £10bn by 2015 as more staff retire and life expectancy increases. Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, said the decision to ballot members was taken with “great reluctance”. “Faced with a refusal by the government to negotiate on the basis of a proper valuation of the scheme, we feel we have no option but to demonstrate our anger at this attack on the teaching profession,” he said. “We fear for the future of a system with a demoralised and devalued profession. We fear that we will not be able to attract people to become heads at a time when targets and workloads are rising.” He said many headteachers believed an attack on pensions was a threat to the future of education itself. “Teaching is a vocation and no one entered the profession to get rich. However, we do need to ensure that teaching is an attractive career choice for the most talented graduates. Future pupils deserve nothing less.” In June, teachers staged the biggest school strikes since the 1980s over the pension reforms. More than 2 million pupils missed classes and thousands of parents were forced to take a day off work with nearly 6,000 schools closed and 5,000 partially closed. In total, half of schools were affected. A Cabinet Office spokesman said there was “genuine engagement” with trade unions over pensions. “We have a lot to talk about and there are proposals on the table for discussion.” Schools Public sector pay Teaching Trade unions Pensions Public sector cuts Public sector pensions Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Wednesday Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum attempted to illustrate the problem with Medicare by comparing it to “food insurance.” “How many people in this room can tell me what their latest health care procedure cost?” the candidate asked a group of supporters in Aiken, South Carolina. “How many can tell me what a gallon of milk costs? You all can, right? Why? Because you pay for it. But medical procedures you don’t pay for. Even going to the doctor, even basic ordinary care, you don’t pay for.” “Imagine if we had another necessity: food. Anybody believe that food is not as important as health care or even more important, right? What if we had food insurance? And then everybody instead of — because of course if you hear all these people, ‘Everybody should have a right to health care.’ Well, I’m going to stand up and say, ‘Everybody should have a right to food. We’re going to provide everybody food insurance because people shouldn’t have to make decisions about whether to feed themselves or have cable television. They should have food as a right.’” He continued: “So we’re going to have food insurance. So what’s going to happen? You’re going to go and you’re going to pay the grocery store 500 bucks. Then you go to the grocery story and there are no prices on anything, shelves are full, no prices on anything. You just go and get whatever you want. And you check out and they have a scanner and you check out and there’s prices on there but they’ll say, ‘Well, this bill is $435 and your bill is $42.10.’” “And you come home and you say, ‘Well, I’ve got a lot of food.’ But then tomorrow comes around and you say, ‘You know, maybe I’ll go shopping again.’ Right, because it’s pretty cheap. How many people think we’ll have an obesity problem in this country? How many think we’ll waste food? That’s what happens in health care, folks. We waste health care. Why? Because you don’t pay for it. And until you start paying for it and take responsibility for how you’re going to shop for health care, we will never change the problem that we have.”
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Lawyer acting for Hind Ahmas says full-face veil pair will appeal to France’s supreme court after fines by Meaux court A judge in Meaux has fined two French women for wearing the niqab – the first sanction since France banned Islamic full-face veils in April. Hind Ahmas , a 32-year-old single mother from a Paris suburb, and another 36-year-old woman who did not want to be named, were handed fines of €120 and €80 (£105 and £70) respectively. The judge is expected to hand out a full ruling on Thursday explaining his decision. The fines mark the first time a French court has pronounced on the niqab ban, the controversial law backed by Nicolas Sarkozy that bans women wearing full-face veils from all public places, including walking down the street, taking a bus, going to court or collecting children from school. More than 90 women have been stopped by police but until now, no one had been punished by a court for wearing a face-veil. The two women were stopped in the street on 5 May near the town hall in Meaux, east of Paris, where the mayor is Jean-François Copé – an architect of the ban and head of Sarkozy’s ruling rightwing UMP party. The date was Copé’s birthday and the women had arrived at the town hall wearing full-face coverings and carrying a birthday cake for him made of almonds. Their action was intended as a play on the word “almond” in French – amande, which is close to the word “fine” – amende. The women said they wanted to expose the absurdity of a law that discriminated against Muslims and made a mockery of the justice system. They were supported by the group Don’t Touch my Constitution, which has led protests at the ban. Gilles Devers, a lawyer for the women, said the pair would immediately appeal to France’s supreme court and to the European court of human rights if necessary. Devers argued the French niqab ban contravened European human rights legislation on personal liberties and freedom of religion. Ahmas was not allowed into court during the initial court hearing in June because she was wearing a niqab and refused to remove it at the request of a police officer, offering instead to lift it for an identity check. French burqa and niqab ban France Islam Women Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
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Scotland Yard gains hours of unbroadcast material of August riots after serving court orders The BBC, ITN and Sky News have handed hundreds of hours of unbroadcast footage of the August riots to police after being served with court orders by Scotland Yard. The broadcasters were forced to hand over raw footage of the riots after the Metropolitan police obtained a production order earlier this month under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The Daily Telegraph is also understood to have disclosed material to the police after being served with a production order. Scotland Yard has put sustained pressure on all media groups to reveal video and picture evidence of the riots since the disorder across England seven weeks ago. “It is very very rare that we are served with a court order to hand over footage like this,” said a senior insider at one of the broadcasters. “We don’t hand over material willy-nilly because it compromises the security of our journalists on the streets. Clearly we don’t want them being seen as an evidence-gathering arm of the police.” The major news broadcasters are in the process of handing over hundreds of hours of footage to the police. The BBC, ITN and Sky News were issued with a wide-ranging order that forced the disclosure of “any broadcast or unbroadcast video or still pictures of the recent unrest in London”. Police are understood to have temporarily halted attempts to obtain footage from newspapers, except the Daily Telegraph, which is understood to have complied with a court order in early September. “Police requests for BBC untransmitted material are dealt through our legal department, regardless of the subject matter,” said a spokeswoman for the BBC. “We require requests for untransmitted material to be made through the courts. A production order requiring footage of the riots was served on the BBC and a court agreed that the material should be supplied.” In deciding whether to grant a production order, judges are supposed to weigh the interest of the police in obtaining evidence with the public interest in a free press. An ITN spokesman said: “ITN’s policy is that we do not release unbroadcast material to police. On some occasions when the police apply to a judge for a court order to force the release of such material, we have challenged the police’s application.” Hundreds of police officers are working through about 40,000 hours of CCTV footage in stations across the country. In London, Met officers are believed to be studying more than 20,000 hours of video at 30 viewing facilities. A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan police said: “The police are identifying people through pictures, CCTV and through the media to ensure that people are brought to justice. We would ask the media to work with the police to ensure that happens.” Sky News had not returned a request for comment at the time of publication. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . TV news BBC ITN Television industry Daily Telegraph Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers UK riots Police Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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German MPs threaten to boycott Benedict XVI’s speech in parliament at start of four-day visit The pope has arrived in Berlin for his first state visit to his native Germany amid the now customary protests against his leadership of the Catholic church. Benedict XVI – born Joseph Ratzinger in Marktl, Bavaria, 84 years ago – was given the red carpet treatment at Berlin’s Tegel airport, where he was met by German chancellor Angela Merkel and president Christian Wulff at the start of his four-day visit. He will give a speech in parliament later, which around 100 MPs have vowed to boycott over what they consider a violation of Germany’s separation of church and state. Another 10,000 protesters are expected to demonstrate outside. The pope plans meetings with leaders of Germany’s Jewish and Muslim communities, three masses, an ecumenical service with Lutheran church members and possibly meetings with victims abused by priests. The Vatican’s views on contraception, the role of women, homosexuality and its handling of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked Germany last year are seen by many in Germany as outdated and out-of-touch. On the plane from Rome, the pope told reporters that he thought demonstrations were acceptable as long as they remained civil. They are “normal in a free society and in the secularised world,” he said. He said he believed there needs to be an examination of why people have been leaving the church recently, and the part that the abuse scandals played in the phenomenon. “I can understand that some people have been scandalised by the crimes that have been revealed in recent times,” he said. More than 250,000 people are registered to attend his masses, including about 70,000 who plan to be at the open-air service on Thursday night in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. Bild, Germany’s biggest tabloid, has shown its support for the pope by hanging an enormous poster on the side of its high-rise headquarters in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. “Wir sind Papst” is the slogan, meaning “We are pope”, the headline the newspaper chose for its front page the day after Joseph Ratzinger was chosen to succeed John Paul II in April 2005. The pontiff is expected to draw bigger crowds when he travels to Germany’s more Catholic south. Of the 3.4 million people who live in largely atheist Berlin, 660 000 are protestants, 210 000 are Muslim and just 90 000 are classed as “other Christians”. Pope Benedict XVI Germany Catholicism Religion Christianity Europe Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
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• Stockpile of mustard gas found in southern desert • Rebels say they have now taken most of Sebha • Gaddafi loyalists still holding out in Sirte Libyan rebel forces claim to have discovered banned chemical weapons stockpiles in southern desert areas captured from diehard Gaddafi regime loyalists in the last few days. Spokesmen for the National Transitional Council (NTC) said a depot had been found in the Jufra area, 435 miles (700km) south of Tripoli, part of an offensive against regime strongholds in the remote south of the country. The rebels also say they have now taken most of Sebha, the largest town in the area whose tribes were long seen as loyal to Gaddafi and is an important staging post for travel to Niger, where some former regime figures have fled. Libyan officials have confirmed that a senior intelligence officer was captured there two days ago. It had been thought that Gaddafi himself might have been hiding in Sebha along with his fugitive second son, Saif al-Islam, but NTC fighters found no trace of them. CNN reported from Sebha that Gaddafi’s Gaddadfa tribe in the town is ready to surrender its weapons and wants to negotiate an agreement with the NTC. Correspondent Ben Wedeman also described walking through Gaddafi’s palace in the town. Libya was supposed to have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons in early 2004 as part of a British-engineered rapprochement with the west. It also abandoned a rudimentary nuclear programme. But the international watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, had stated it believed that Libya had kept 9.5 tonnes of mustard gas at a secret location: it is that which appears to have now been captured and secured. In 2010 Libya destroyed nearly 15 tonnes of sulphur mustard, representing about half of its stockpile. It received an extension to eliminate the rest by 15 May. Twice-yearly inspections have found no evidence of Libya reviving the chemical weapons programme. The recent rebel advances in the south have not been matched by parallel progress on two other fronts. Loyalists are still holding out in Gaddafi’s birthplace of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, though there are signs a new offensive may be looming there. The capture of Sirte would clear the way for an unbroken link between Tripoli and Benghazi, where the Libyan uprising began in February. Little progress has been seen in Bani Walid, 100 miles south of Tripoli, with chaotic scenes amongst poorly disorganised and often squabbling rebels and worries about inflaming tribal tensions if there is large-scale bloodshed. The persistence of these significant pockets of Gaddafi resistance are delaying plans by the NTC to declare the whole country liberated – a necessary step before the start of ambitious reforms to create a free and democratic Libya. Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Africa Saif al-Islam Gaddafi Muammar Gaddafi Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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