KABUL (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron flew into Afghanistan on Saturday to try to inject momentum into stalled peace talks, but left empty-handed after the Afghan president said his country could break up if a deal was done with the Taliban.
Cameron, who hosted President Hamid Karzai for talks in February about Afghanistan's future, has cast himself as an honest broker able to use Britain's relations with Afghanistan's influential neighbour, Pakistan, to get the Taliban to talk peace.
Speaking at a joint news conference in Kabul after a visit to British troops in the southern province of Helmand, he said the moment to pursue peace had come.
"There is a window of opportunity and I would urge all those who renounce violence, who respect the constitution, who want to have a voice in the future prosperity of this country to seize it," he said.
His comments come barely a week after the United States revealed the Taliban were to open a long-anticipated office in Qatar, making a meeting with the Afghan state and the Taliban a possibility. Those talks collapsed within days after Karzai objected to the manner in which the office was opened, however, and Taliban militants later attacked central Kabul.
On Saturday, Karzai said he hoped peace talks could begin as soon as possible. But he complained about foreign peace plans, sounded a defiant note against the United States, and warned of the dangers of doing a deal with the Taliban.
SCEPTICAL OF PAKISTAN
He also made it clear he was sceptical of Pakistan's motives in the peace process.
"Any system that is imposed on us ... the Afghan people will reject," he told a news conference inside his palace. "Delivering a province or two to the Taliban will be seen by the Afghan people as an invasion of Afghanistan, as an effort from outside to weaken and splinter this country."
When a reporter asked Cameron why he was willing to talk to the Taliban at the same time as British soldiers were fighting the insurgents, Karzai praised the question.
A British source told Reuters Karzai remained "furious" about the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar this month replete with its own flag and plaque, symbols that he felt accorded the Taliban a degree of global legitimacy.
The Afghan leader suspended talks on a long-term security deal to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014 Washington said it was ready to talk to the Taliban and the Qatar flap. Karzai accused the Americans of duplicity.
On Saturday, he said he had held a video conference with President Barack Obama to discuss the matter, and that the U.S. leader had told him he hoped a deal could be struck by October.
Karzai's response was ambiguous. "I noted and reminded him (Obama) that Afghanistan continues to hold its unchangeable principles. If these conditions are met, the nation of Afghanistan will definitely be ready to agree to a security agreement with the U.S.," he said.
Karzai's stance underlines a dilemma for the West.
As it prepares to pull its troops out next year, it is caught between wanting to safeguard its legacy in Afghanistan - improved women's rights and access to education among other things - and allowing the Karzai government to roll back some changes to pave the way for talks with the insurgents.
SEEKING STABILITY
Britain is trying to magnify its diplomatic clout at the very moment it is reducing its contingent of some 7,000 troops.
Aides said Cameron was keen to boost political stability ahead of next year's presidential election, which he hopes will result in the first peaceful transition of power since 1901.
Karzai is not eligible to stand under the constitution and Cameron said he welcomed Karzai's "commitment to a democratic succession" after his second term expires.
Cameron flew on to Islamabad on Saturday evening for talks about Afghanistan with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Pakistan could play a major role in any peace process. Its security forces backed the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and continue to serve as gatekeepers to insurgent commanders living on its territory.
Cameron said he was working to try to persuade both countries they needed to cooperate, but said only "some" progress had been made.
Cameron also used his Afghan visit to reinforce the message that British troops really would be pulling out next year and that only limited financial and other aid would be made available to Afghan forces after that time.
Four hundred and forty-four British troops have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
A senior military source had said earlier that Western troops would have to undertake follow-on missions after 2014 that could last up to five years.
But Cameron suggested no British soldiers would be involved.
"There will be no (British) combat troops after the end of 2014. British troops are coming home," he said.
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Writing by Andrew Osborn and Dylan Welch; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Movies exist in their own world, with their own rules, with the characters having their own relationships. And though we may know every one of those characters, they might not all be connected together. These visualizations show how characters connect with each other in a beautiful constellation. You can almost gauge a movie by how its characters connect.
Take for example, Forrest Gump (a movie everyone knows but not everyone loves). Forrest is obviously the central character who is connected to everyone. Some of his connections, like Jenny and his mother have their own networks, while other lesser characters, like JFK, just exist on their own. The network, created by Movie Galaxies, clearly shows each character's relationship with each other.
The actual graphs in Movie Galaxies, which is the brainchild of Jermain Kaminski and Michael Schober, allows you to zoom in and out to see the character names for each node. The size of the node relates to how connected the character is which in turn shows how central the character is to the movie. You can see more of their fascinating work here. Try and find a pattern!
The best thing, perhaps, from these visualizations is to see how different movies explore relationships. Take the simplicity of 2001: A Space Odyssey:
Versus the extremely complicated but visually stunning Babette's Feast:
DETROIT (Reuters) - The battle in six-cylinder pickups takes an interesting twist this fall with the launch of the 2014 Ford F-150 Tremor and the 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel.
Both trucks feature turbocharged V6 engines, but take different approaches to reach different segments of the full-size pickup audience.
The new Ford and Ram entries - one built for speed, the other for high mileage and heavy loads - are hitting the U.S. market as General Motors Co's recently redesigned 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups are beginning to reach U.S. dealers in significant numbers.
Chrysler Group LLC hopes to divert some attention from the new GM trucks with its new 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel, the industry's first light-duty diesel-powered pickup.
Ford Motor Co is counterpunching with the 2014 Tremor, the industry's quickest and most powerful six-cylinder pickup.
The Ram 1500 EcoDiesel features a 3.0-liter turbocharged V6 diesel from Italy's VM Motori, a longtime supplier to Chrysler and an affiliate of the U.S. automaker's corporate parent Fiat SpA .
Fitted with an eight-speed automatic transmission, the EcoDiesel delivers 240 horsepower and 420 pounds-feet of torque. Chrysler said the diesel version of the Ram 1500 will deliver better than 25 miles per gallon in highway driving.
Ford's Tremor, a short-wheelbase version of the regular-cab F-150, gets the company's 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine, a turbocharged, direct-injection gasoline V6 rated at 365 horsepower and 420 pounds-feet. A special "performance" axle helps the Tremor accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in about 6.5 seconds. EPA highway fuel economy is 22 miles per gallon.
In comparison, GM's 2014 Silverado and Sierra get a standard 4.3-liter gasoline V6 that makes 285 horsepower and 305 pounds-feet, and has an EPA highway rating of 24 mpg.
The 2014 Ram 1500 with a standard 3.6-liter V6 gasoline engine will have a base price of $25,295, and the "EcoDiesel" option will be $2,850 more, Chrysler said Friday at the trucks' introduction.
Ford has not released prices on the 2014 F-150 trucks, but said Thursday the Tremor would be more expensive than the standard F-150 V6 model.
Chevrolet has not priced the regular-cab 2014 Silverado V6, which goes on sale later this summer.
The three Detroit-based automakers dominate the full-size pickup truck market, which continues to heat up and is easily outpacing sales for cars, crossovers and SUVs. While total U.S. industry sales were up 7.3 percent through May, sales of big trucks jumped 21.2 percent.
At all three of those automakers, the light-duty pickup trucks are the company's best sellers.
In May, sales of the Ford F-Series rose 31 percent, Chevrolet Silverado sales rose 25 percent and Chrysler's Ram truck sales rose 22 percent.
(Additional reporting by Deepa Seetharaman in Detroit; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- President Barack Obama's speech this week on climate change forcefully rejected some key arguments made by opponents of natural gas fracking, upsetting some environmental groups that otherwise back his climate goals.
Obama, in his address Tuesday calling for urgent action to address climate change, praised what he called "cleaner-burning natural gas" and its role in providing safe, cheap power that he said can also help reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Regulators in many states with heavy new drilling activity say fracking, a colloquial term for hydraulic fracturing, is being done safely and is essentially similar to the hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells that have been drilled all over the nation.
The drilling boom has reduced oil and gas imports and generated billions of dollars for companies and landowners. Many scientists and environmental groups also agree with Obama's main point: that while there are some negative effects from natural gas, burning coal is far worse for the environment and public health. There's no dispute that natural gas burns far cleaner than coal, but its main component, methane, is a potent heat-trapping gas.
Some environmental groups advocate a total rejection of all fossil fuels and an all-out effort to switch to renewables such as wind turbines and solar panels. They also say people living close to drilling operations have suffered from too much pollution.
"When it comes to natural gas, the president is taking the wrong path," Deb Nardone, the head of the Sierra Club's Beyond Natural Gas program, wrote in a blog post.
Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor who argues that methane leaks from drilling negate other climate benefits of gas, said in an email to The Associated Press that he is "extremely disappointed in the President's position" and said the support for natural gas "is very likely to do more to aggravate global change than to help solve it."
Not so, Obama said.
Advances in drilling, the president said, have "helped drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly 20 years," and "we'll keep working with the industry to make drilling safer and cleaner, to make sure that we're not seeing methane emissions."
"These critics seem to think that when we ask our businesses to innovate and reduce pollution and lead, they can't or they won't do it," Obama added, mentioning that taking lead out of gasoline and the phase-out of ozone-depleting gases were examples of the industry making needed changes.
The Sierra Club and some activists argue that fracking comes with unacceptable levels of air and water pollution and that "no state has adequate protections in place."
Obama disagreed.
"The old rules may say we can't protect our environment and promote economic growth at the same time," Obama said. "Don't tell folks that we have to choose between the health of our children or the health of our economy."
Critics have also claimed that the fracking boom just makes a few energy companies rich, and that average Americans get few benefits. But Obama responded by saying "The bottom line is natural gas is creating jobs. It's lowering many families' heat and power bills."
Some environmental groups agree with Obama's position that switching from coal-fired power to natural gas has helped reduce emissions and protect the environment.
The Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif., think tank, said in a report released Wednesday that despite problems and legitimate concerns over fracking, the gas industry has "a far smaller impact on mortality and disease, landscapes, waterways, air pollution, and local communities than coal mining and coal burning."
"Natural gas is a net environmental benefit at local, regional, national, and global levels," the Breakthrough report said.
One Pennsylvania Democrat jumped to endorse Obama's fracking plan. Gas from the Marcellus Shale formation there has led to a huge surge in drilling and production over the last five years.
Sen. Bob Casey said he plans to introduce legislation to place more natural gas fueling stations along Interstate highways. Casey said the plan could "help reduce emissions and create jobs."
But some other Democrats were silent. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trying to decide whether to allow fracking to begin in a small part of his state and is facing heavy opposition from some groups.
Cuomo had no immediate comment Thursday about the speech but said his decision will be based on New York state's own health report and data from Pennsylvania's experience.
Industry groups welcomed Obama's strong support for gas.
"We are pleased to see that President Obama's climate action plan recognizes natural gas as a key component of America's clean energy future," Don Santa, the president the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said in a statement.
At the core of Obama's plan are new controls on new and existing power plants that emit carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas blamed largely for global warming. Coal-fired power plants would be under the most pressure, since they emit far more pollution than ones that burn natural gas.
The program also will boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures. Obama called for the U.S. to be a global leader in the search for solutions to climate change.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has lashed out at Western governments, calling them hypocritical for spying on the internet while reproaching other oppressive nations for doing the same; adding that the revelations may change the way people use computers.
The British computer scientist, who invented the Web in 1989, accused the West of "insidious" online spying after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of the US National Security Agency?s (NSA) dragnet telephone and internet surveillance programs, implicating US and UK in a wave of international criticism.
"In the Middle East, people have been given access to the internet, but they have been snooped on and then they have been jailed," Berners-Lee told The Times newspaper in an interview.
"It can be easy for people in the West to say 'Oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy.' But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the internet," he added.
Berners-Lee believes that the new revelations about Western government spying could change the way people, especially teenagers, use the internet and their computers.
"Teenagers who are unsure about their sexuality, who need to contact others, or people being abused trying to find helplines... There are things that happen on the net that are very intimate, which people are going to be loath to do if they feel there is somebody looking over their shoulder."
Another concern that Berners-Lee raises is around the safety of the already collected information.
The web?s inventor spoke out before accepting a US$1.5 million joint engineering prize awarded by Queen Elizabeth to five men, who are considered to be the fathers of the internet, including Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen.
Berners-Lee argues that internet freedom must be safeguarded against companies or governments trying to take over control.
"When you make something universal ? it can be used for good things or nasty things ? we just have to make sure it's not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control," he said at the award ceremony.
One of the award recipients, Google Vice-President Vint Cerf, suggested companies should come up with ways to go around the surveillance, such as developing encrypted web communication.
Snowden blew the whistle on an NSA program called PRISM that collects correspondence and video conversations of foreigners using internet services like Google, Skype, Yahoo and Facebook.
He also provided documents showing the intelligence agency collects data on phone calls handled by the major US telephone companies.
On top of that the whistleblower exposed British spy agency GCHQ?s access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories, and revealed that it shares this data with the NSA.
Snowden was charged with espionage by US federal prosecutors on Friday and currently remains in an airport limbo in Russia?s transit zone after he flew to Moscow?s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.
Snowden?s stopover in the transit zone could be prolonged indefinitely, as his passport, which was annulled by the US on Saturday, leaves him without the necessary documentation with which to travel, a source reportedly connected with Snowden told Interfax.
June 26, 2013 ? Lemurs from species that hang out in big tribes are more likely to steal food behind your back instead of in front of your face.
This behavior suggests that primates who live in larger social groups tend to have more "social intelligence," a new study shows. The results appear June 27 in PLOS ONE.
A Duke University experiment tested whether living in larger social networks directly relates to higher social abilities in animals. Working with six different species of lemurs living at the Duke Lemur Center, a team of undergraduate researchers tested 60 individuals to see if they would be more likely to steal a piece of food if a human wasn't watching them.
In one test, a pair of human testers sat with two plates of food. One person faced the plate and the lemur entering the room, the other had his or her back turned. In a second, testers sat in profile, facing toward or away from the plate. In a third, they wore a black band either over their eyes or over their mouths and both faced the plates and lemurs.
As the lemurs jumped onto the table where the plates were and decided which bit of food to grab, the ones from large social groups, like the ringtailed lemur (Lemur catta), were evidently more sensitive to social cues that a person might be watching, said Evan MacLean, a research scientist in the Department Of Evolutionary Anthropology who led the research team. Lemurs from small-group species, like the mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz), were less sensitive to the humans' orientation.
Few of the lemurs apparently understood the significance of a blindfold.
The work is the first to test the relationship between group size and social intelligence across multiple species. The findings support the "social intelligence hypothesis," which suggests that living in large social networks drove the evolution of complex social cognition in primates, including humans, MacLean said.
Behavioral experiments are critical to test the idea because assumptions about intelligence based solely on brain size may not hold up, he said. Indeed, this study found that some lemur species had evolved more social smarts without increasing the size of their brains.
Yeah, but 11 years ago getting from NY to London in less than 4 hours was an everyday thing (if pricier than other flights). Now it's unheard of.
Yes but it was sort of like the pony express shutting down their rush service because the telegraph arrived, maybe that sucks if you wanted to send a package but for the 95% that wanted to send a letter the telegraph was faster and better. Not every aspect of every old service is going to be preserved by the new ones, there will always be some regressions in the overall picture. Even though we're making incremental improvements I doubt we'll see any revolutionary changes in things like jet propulsion, internal combustion, gas turbines and whatnot - it's just minor tweaks to squeeze more efficiency out of it.
The overwhelming number of changes I expect is for things to get smaller, smarter and for more and more things to go electronically rather than physically and applying brute force. Maybe you get another 5 mph on the interstate but the main difference is an AI that drives itself. My dream of "real technological development" would be things like having nanobots to destroy bacteria, viruses, toxins, cancer cells, cure genetic diseases and prevent aging on the cell level. In the future maybe we all have personal assistants like only the rich have today, only they're robotic. It couldn't be done today because to have servants somebody would have to be the servants, but we could all have a robot the way we all have cell phones.
I'm not going to bash the system we have today, I can go down to the grocery store and buy a finished meal, pop it in the microwave and put the dishes in the dishwasher but it certainly could be taken to the next level where I just tell a robot I'd like spaghetti bolognese today and it'd shop, cook like a professional chef, serve and clear the tables when I'm done. Having a washing machine and a dryer is also rather relaxed, but again being able to throw dirty clothes in the bin and have them sorted, washed, dried, ironed if applicable and put back in the closest by themselves would be even better. Roombas and electronic lawn mowers are just a shadow of what robot housekeepers and gardeners could be. In short, even if I don't see flying cars on the horizon I see plenty things that could make life in 2013 seem rather primitive compared to 100 years from now.
All Critics (78) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (75) | Rotten (3)
Stories We Tell is not just very moving; it is an exploration of truth and fiction that will stay with you long after repeated viewings.
Part of the movie's pleasure is how comfortable the "storytellers" are with their director; you get a sense of a complicated but tight-knit family, going along with Sarah's project because they love her.
Never sentimental, never cold and never completely sure of anything, Polley comes across as a woman caught in wonder.
After you see it, you'll be practically exploding with questions - and with awe.
Stories We Tell is just the latest reminder of nonfiction film's current, endlessly innovative state. That's a story worth savoring.
The films greatest achievement is in how deeply mesmerising one woman's story can be, regardless of whether she's famous or not.
Honestly, it's one of the best things you'll see this year.
Polley's fearless personal journey is a huge achievement, a genuine revelation - but the less detail you know beforehand, the better. Go in cold, come out warmed.
Sarah Polley is often referred to in Canada as a 'national treasure'. She's far more than that. She's a treasure to the world - period. And so, finally, is her film.
An absorbing exercise not only in documentary excavation but in narrative construction.
Sarah Polley's exploration of her tangled family history is a complex and thoroughly fascinating inquiry into the nature of truth and memory -- and, inevitably, into Polley herself.
This is simply a gorgeously realised and warmly compiled family album, which lingers with us not because its subjects are so unusual and alien, but because they feel so close to home. What a success.
Sarah Polley's personal "documentary" suffers from one additional emotional beat too many. Otherwise, it's mesmerizing.
Polley interviews her family and acquaintances with remarkable candor and intimacy, perhaps as a method of catharsis, but it never feels like a vanity project or a simple airing of dirty laundry.
The great conceit of Polley's theories of perspective and truth is that she, as director, ultimately controlled everyone's memories because she arranged them on film.
As with her other films, when Sarah Polley takes it upon herself to tell us a story, you can bet it's a tale well-told and one that you'll want to hear.
What Stories We Tell does so brilliantly is both tell the story and tell about how we tell our stories. The truth may not be out there.
This is a warm, brave and thought-provoking piece of autobiography.
Stories We Tell shows us that the truth and the way its told are two very different things. Polley's wonderful documentary honors both by preferring neither.
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Edward Snowden, who leaked information about top secret NSA surveillance programs, reportedly is headed to asylum in Ecuador. US officials still hope to prosecute Snowden on espionage charges, but that may be difficult given US relations with Ecuador.
By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / June 23, 2013
Journalists stand next to the Ecuador Ambassador's car while waiting for the arrival of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, at Sheremetyevo airport, just outside Moscow Sunday.
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr/AP
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The saga and travels of Edward Snowden took another turn Sunday with reports that he is headed for asylum in Ecuador.
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Why Ecuador?
Most obviously, the South American country is friendly to WikiLeaks. That?s the whistleblower organization whose founder Julian Assange has spent the past year holed up in Ecuador?s embassy in London, trying to avoid questioning about alleged sexual offenses in Sweden.
WikiLeaks has been instrumental in spiriting Mr. Snowden out of Hong Kong ? reportedly en route via Moscow and Havana to a place of more permanent refuge in Ecuador with a WikiLeaks official accompanying him.
Ecuador's ambassador to Russia said he expected to meet Snowden in Moscow on Sunday, Reuters reports. What?s more, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has good ties with WikiLeaks and is in a politically confident mood after his recent landslide re-election.
Along with Cuba and Venezuela (which had been thought to be Snowden?s ultimate destination) Ecuador is a member of ALBA ? the??Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America? ? an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
US officials had been scrambling to bring Mr. Snowden back to the United States for prosecution on charges of espionage following his leaking of details about top secret National Security Agency surveillance programs targeting telephone and Internet metadata, including some data on US citizens.
In a criminal complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Snowden was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person. The latter two offenses fall under the US Espionage Act and can bring up to 10 years in prison.
Microsoft really, really doesn't want your Xbox One's online services going offline. In a near $700 million investment ($677.6 million), the company's opening a new data center in Iowa specifically aimed at powering Xbox Live and Office 365. Microsoft's Christian Belady told Iowa's Des Moines Register that the data center "supports the growing demand for Microsoft's cloud services" -- a much lauded function of both the Xbox One and Office 365. Alongside the $700 million investment, the company's getting a $6 million tax rebate from the state to move in, effective for five years. As for Microsoft's cloud, we'll assuredly hear more about it -- for both Xbox One and Office 365 -- this week at Build.
HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - An aircraft believed to be carrying Edward Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday after Hong Kong let the fugitive former U.S. security contractor leave the territory, frustrating Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.
The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said Snowden was heading for a "democratic nation" which it did not name, although a source at the Russian airline Aeroflot said he would fly on within 24 hours to Cuba and then planned to go to Venezuela.
Snowden's departure from Hong Kong, a former British colony which returned to China in 1997, is likely to be highly embarrassing for the administration of President Barack Obama. U.S. authorities had said only on Saturday they were optimistic Hong Kong would cooperate over Snowden, who revealed extensive U.S. government surveillance in the United States and abroad.
Moscow airport officials said the flight from Hong Kong had landed but could not immediately confirm Snowden was on board. However, a source at Aeroflot said he had booked a seat on the service.
Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about the U.S. surveillance activities to news media.
In their statement announcing Snowden's departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.
The Obama administration has previously painted the United States as a victim of Chinese government computer hacking.
Earlier this month Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by "cyber-enabled espionage" against the United States and to investigate the problem when they met in California. Obama also met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Northern Ireland last week.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden - regarded by his supporters as a whistleblower and by his critics as a criminal and perhaps even a traitor - because the U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law.
In Washington, a Justice Department official said it would seek cooperation with countries Snowden may try to go to.
"It's a shocker," said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
OBAMA AGENDA SIDELINED
Obama has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that the surveillance violates privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained it has been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States, and the U.S. government filed espionage charges against Snowden on Friday.
A source at Aeroflot said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then planned to go on to Venezuela. Reporters at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport said there was no immediate sign of Snowden, but Russian media suggested he may have been whisked away by car to a foreign embassy in the capital.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper said earlier his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find "political asylum in a democratic country".
The group said he was accompanied by diplomats and was travelling via a safe route for the purposes of seeking asylum. Sarah Harrison, a legal researcher working for the WikiLeaks, was "accompanying Mr. Snowden in his passage to safety".
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group's founder Julian Assange, said in a statement.
"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."
Assange has taken sanctuary in the Ecuadorean embassy in London and said last week he would not leave even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
The United States had asked Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China, to send Snowden home.
"The U.S. government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden," the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
"Since the documents provided by the U.S. government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR government has requested the U.S. government to provide additional information ... As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."
It did not say what further information it needed.
The White House had no comment.
CHINA SAYS U.S. "BIGGEST VILLAIN"
Although Hong Kong has an independent legal system and its own extradition laws, China controls its foreign affairs. Some observers see Beijing's hand in Snowden's sudden departure.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden, a former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month that Russia would consider granting Snowden asylum if he were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.
The South China Morning Post earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about the United States' spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile telephone companies and targeting China's Tsinghua University.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
China's Xinhua news agency, referring to Snowden's accusations about the hacking of Chinese targets, said they were "clearly troubling signs".
It added: "They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age."
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America who pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
(Adds dropped word "the" in first paragraph)
(Additional reporting by Fayen Wong in Shanghai, Nishant Kumar in Hong Kong and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, and Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Felsenthal in Washington; Writing by Nick Macfie and David Stamp; Editing by Anna Willard)
Tawny crazy ants are invading ecosystems and homes in states including Texas and Florida, wiping out other ant species and overwhelming homeowners. Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon talks to Texas A&M research scientist Robert Puckett, who says the ants are "ecological steamrollers" that reproduce so fast they are nearly impossible to get rid of.
June 20, 2013 ? Men in relationships prefer women with more feminine faces for a fling.
This is one of the findings of Anthony Little from the University of Stirling and Benedict Jones from the University of Glasgow that will be published in the British Journal of Psychology today, Friday 21 June 2013.
The study investigated whether considering partners for long-term or short-term relationships would affect men's preference for different women's faces.
One of the experiments was conducted online with 393 heterosexual men. From this group 207 stated they had a current partner. Participants were shown 10 paired images of pictures of women and in each pair of composite images one had been further transformed to possess masculine traits and the other feminine traits.
The men were asked to rate which of each pair they found most attractive indicating the most attractive for short term relationships and long term relationships.
The results showed that men in relationships were more likely to find women with feminine faces most attractive when they were looking for a short-term relationship.
Anthony explained: "It's interesting that these findings are comparable to previous research that indicates women's preference for masculine male faces are higher if they were judging for short-term relationships. Our findings point to a similar preference in men. When they already have a partner, men find more feminine women more attractive for short-term relationships.
"There are several possible explanations; perhaps some men are inclined to take a long-term partner whilst still attempting to cheat with other, more feminine, women. Or maybe once a long-term partner is secured, the potential cost of being discovered may increase a man's choosiness regarding short-term partners relative to unpartnered men."
"In another part of the study we also showed that men who think themselves attractive have stronger preferences for femininity than those who think themselves less attractive. Again, this effect appears similar to an effect seen in women, whereby attractive women are choosier in their preferences for men. Across the two studies attractive men were found to be more discriminating in their preferences for a woman's facial femininity."
Men who can't produce sperm face increased cancer risk, Stanford-led study findsPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bruce Goldman goldmanb@stanford.edu 650-725-2106 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. Men who are diagnosed as azoospermic infertile because of an absence of sperm in their ejaculate are more prone to developing cancer than the general population, a study led by a Stanford University School of Medicine urologist has found. And a diagnosis of azoospermia before age 30 carries an eight-fold cancer risk, the study says.
"An azoospermic man's risk for developing cancer is similar to that for a typical man 10 years older," said Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology at the medical school and director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Eisenberg is lead author of the study, which will be published online June 20 in Fertility and Sterility.
Diagnoses of male infertility and azoospermia are surprisingly common in the United States. About 4 million American men 15 percent of those ages 15-45 are infertile. Of these, some 600,000 about 1 percent of those of reproductive age are azoospermic. "There is evidence that infertility may be a barometer for men's overall health," Eisenberg said, "and a few studies have found an association of male infertility with testicular cancer." The new study, he said, not only assigns the bulk of infertile men's increased cancer risk to those with azoospermia, but also suggests that this risk extends beyond testicular cancer.
Eisenberg conducted most of the analysis for the study at Stanford, using data gathered from the Texas Cancer Registry and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he completed his medical training. The study's senior authors are Larry Lipshultz, MD, and Dolores Lamb, PhD, professors of urology at Baylor.
The study population consisted of 2,238 infertile men who were seen at a Baylor andrology clinic from 1989 to 2009. Their median age was 35.7 when they were first evaluated for the cause of their infertility. Of those men, 451 had azoospermia, and 1,787 did not. There were otherwise no apparent initial differences between the two groups.
Azoospermia can arise for two reasons. Obstructive azoospermia is caused by a blockage that prevents otherwise plentiful, fit sperm produced in the testes from reaching the ejaculate. But a screen of about one-fourth of the azoospermic men in the study population indicated that the vast majority suffered from the non-obstructive variety: Their testes didn't produce enough sperm for any to reach their ejaculate, most likely because of genetic deficiencies of one sort or another. Fully one-fourth of all the genes in the human genome play some role in reproduction, Eisenberg noted, so there are a lot of ways for the capacity to sire offspring to go astray.
After undergoing a semen analysis, the men were followed for an average of 6.7 years to see which of them turned up in the Texas Cancer Registry. (Fortunately for the analysis, most people tend to stay in the state where they've grown up, said Eisenberg.) Their rates of diagnosed cancer incidence were then compared with age-adjusted cancer-diagnosis statistics of Texas men in general.
In all, a total of 29 of the 2,238 infertile men developed cancer over a 5.8-year average period from their semen analysis to their cancer diagnosis. This contrasted with an expected 16.7 cases, on an age-adjusted basis, for the male Texas population in general (which, Eisenberg said, closely reflects cancer incidence rates for the entire U.S. population). This meant that infertile men were 1.7 times as likely to develop cancer as men in the general population. This is considered a moderately increased risk.
But comparing the cancer risk of azoospermic and nonazoospermic infertile men revealed a major disparity: The azoospermic men were at a substantially elevated risk nearly three times as likely to receive a diagnosis of cancer as men in the overall population. Infertile men who weren't azoospermic, in contrast, exhibited a statistically insignificant increased cancer risk of only 1.4 times that of men in the overall population.
By excluding men whose cancer diagnosis came within two or three years of their infertility evaluation, the researchers were able to rule out the possibility that azoospermia caused by an undiagnosed cancer had affected the statistics.
While the study wasn't large enough to delineate which specific types of cancer pushed azoospermic men's incidence rates up, the diagnoses they received covered a wide range of cancers: brain, prostate and stomach tumors, as well as melanoma, lymphoma, testicular cancer and cancer of the small intestine. The findings suggest that genetic defects that result in azoospermia may also broadly increase a man's vulnerability to cancer, Eisenberg said, supporting the notion that azoospermia and cancer vulnerability may share common genetic causes.
The study, which was funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, is the first to examine the cancer risk of azoospermia in particular, or to link it to non-germ-cell cancers. Previous studies have failed to consistently identify any increased risk for nontesticular cancers in infertile men, whether azoospermic or otherwise. In those previous studies, however, azoospermic men couldn't be separately examined because sperm analyses weren't available.
Most striking of all, said Eisenberg, was the cancer risk among azoospermic men who first had their semen analyzed before age 30. They were more than eight times as likely to subsequently develop cancer than Texas males in the general population of the same age. In contrast, there was no relationship between age of semen analysis and risk of cancer for nonazoospermic men.
The good news, Eisenberg said, is that while the cancer risk among young azoospermic men was quite large compared to their same-age peers, their relative youth means that their absolute risk of contracting cancer during the follow-up period remained small. The bad news, he said, is that men in their 30s often don't have a primary health-care provider. He advised that young men who are diagnosed as azoospermic should be aware of their heightened risk and make sure to get periodic checkups with that in mind.
###
Information about Stanford's Department of Urology, which supported this work, is available at http://urology.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
Print media contact: Bruce Goldman (650) 725-2106 (goldmanb@stanford.edu)
Broadcast media contact: M.A. Malone at (650) 723-6912 (mamalone@stanford.edu)
[ | 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.
Men who can't produce sperm face increased cancer risk, Stanford-led study findsPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Bruce Goldman goldmanb@stanford.edu 650-725-2106 Stanford University Medical Center
STANFORD, Calif. Men who are diagnosed as azoospermic infertile because of an absence of sperm in their ejaculate are more prone to developing cancer than the general population, a study led by a Stanford University School of Medicine urologist has found. And a diagnosis of azoospermia before age 30 carries an eight-fold cancer risk, the study says.
"An azoospermic man's risk for developing cancer is similar to that for a typical man 10 years older," said Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology at the medical school and director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Eisenberg is lead author of the study, which will be published online June 20 in Fertility and Sterility.
Diagnoses of male infertility and azoospermia are surprisingly common in the United States. About 4 million American men 15 percent of those ages 15-45 are infertile. Of these, some 600,000 about 1 percent of those of reproductive age are azoospermic. "There is evidence that infertility may be a barometer for men's overall health," Eisenberg said, "and a few studies have found an association of male infertility with testicular cancer." The new study, he said, not only assigns the bulk of infertile men's increased cancer risk to those with azoospermia, but also suggests that this risk extends beyond testicular cancer.
Eisenberg conducted most of the analysis for the study at Stanford, using data gathered from the Texas Cancer Registry and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he completed his medical training. The study's senior authors are Larry Lipshultz, MD, and Dolores Lamb, PhD, professors of urology at Baylor.
The study population consisted of 2,238 infertile men who were seen at a Baylor andrology clinic from 1989 to 2009. Their median age was 35.7 when they were first evaluated for the cause of their infertility. Of those men, 451 had azoospermia, and 1,787 did not. There were otherwise no apparent initial differences between the two groups.
Azoospermia can arise for two reasons. Obstructive azoospermia is caused by a blockage that prevents otherwise plentiful, fit sperm produced in the testes from reaching the ejaculate. But a screen of about one-fourth of the azoospermic men in the study population indicated that the vast majority suffered from the non-obstructive variety: Their testes didn't produce enough sperm for any to reach their ejaculate, most likely because of genetic deficiencies of one sort or another. Fully one-fourth of all the genes in the human genome play some role in reproduction, Eisenberg noted, so there are a lot of ways for the capacity to sire offspring to go astray.
After undergoing a semen analysis, the men were followed for an average of 6.7 years to see which of them turned up in the Texas Cancer Registry. (Fortunately for the analysis, most people tend to stay in the state where they've grown up, said Eisenberg.) Their rates of diagnosed cancer incidence were then compared with age-adjusted cancer-diagnosis statistics of Texas men in general.
In all, a total of 29 of the 2,238 infertile men developed cancer over a 5.8-year average period from their semen analysis to their cancer diagnosis. This contrasted with an expected 16.7 cases, on an age-adjusted basis, for the male Texas population in general (which, Eisenberg said, closely reflects cancer incidence rates for the entire U.S. population). This meant that infertile men were 1.7 times as likely to develop cancer as men in the general population. This is considered a moderately increased risk.
But comparing the cancer risk of azoospermic and nonazoospermic infertile men revealed a major disparity: The azoospermic men were at a substantially elevated risk nearly three times as likely to receive a diagnosis of cancer as men in the overall population. Infertile men who weren't azoospermic, in contrast, exhibited a statistically insignificant increased cancer risk of only 1.4 times that of men in the overall population.
By excluding men whose cancer diagnosis came within two or three years of their infertility evaluation, the researchers were able to rule out the possibility that azoospermia caused by an undiagnosed cancer had affected the statistics.
While the study wasn't large enough to delineate which specific types of cancer pushed azoospermic men's incidence rates up, the diagnoses they received covered a wide range of cancers: brain, prostate and stomach tumors, as well as melanoma, lymphoma, testicular cancer and cancer of the small intestine. The findings suggest that genetic defects that result in azoospermia may also broadly increase a man's vulnerability to cancer, Eisenberg said, supporting the notion that azoospermia and cancer vulnerability may share common genetic causes.
The study, which was funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, is the first to examine the cancer risk of azoospermia in particular, or to link it to non-germ-cell cancers. Previous studies have failed to consistently identify any increased risk for nontesticular cancers in infertile men, whether azoospermic or otherwise. In those previous studies, however, azoospermic men couldn't be separately examined because sperm analyses weren't available.
Most striking of all, said Eisenberg, was the cancer risk among azoospermic men who first had their semen analyzed before age 30. They were more than eight times as likely to subsequently develop cancer than Texas males in the general population of the same age. In contrast, there was no relationship between age of semen analysis and risk of cancer for nonazoospermic men.
The good news, Eisenberg said, is that while the cancer risk among young azoospermic men was quite large compared to their same-age peers, their relative youth means that their absolute risk of contracting cancer during the follow-up period remained small. The bad news, he said, is that men in their 30s often don't have a primary health-care provider. He advised that young men who are diagnosed as azoospermic should be aware of their heightened risk and make sure to get periodic checkups with that in mind.
###
Information about Stanford's Department of Urology, which supported this work, is available at http://urology.stanford.edu.
The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
Print media contact: Bruce Goldman (650) 725-2106 (goldmanb@stanford.edu)
Broadcast media contact: M.A. Malone at (650) 723-6912 (mamalone@stanford.edu)
[ | 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.
BRUSSELS (AP) -- The United States sees no reason to keep the movie and television industry out of upcoming trans-Atlantic free-trade negotiations with the European Union, despite France insisting that sector should be excluded, a high-level U.S. official said Thursday.
U.S. Ambassador to the EU, William E. Kennard also said that his country has not tried to keep any sector out of the negotiations with the 27-nation EU, countering French claims that Washington would exclude financial services.
The talks are expected to kick off next month after President Barack Obama and EU leaders announced on Monday that they would seek a free trade deal between the world's two mightiest economic regions. Such a pact would create a market with common standards and regulations across countries that together account for nearly half the global economy.
For weeks, France has piled on pressure on the other EU nations to keep the cultural sector off limits and last week the EU agreed on a negotiating mandate that included France's demand ? but with the proviso that it could possibly come back as an issue later in the negotiations.
"No one is saying that you cannot talk about audiovisual," Kennard told a small group of reporters on Thursday. "I don't think it is completely accurate to say it is a complete carve-out. It is more of a constraint," he said.
For years now, Paris has sought to protect its cultural industries from the cultural clout of Hollywood through subsidies and quotas. Since the EU is a patchwork of often tiny countries with their own languages and cultures, such protection has become a fully acceptable practice in the bloc.
That is why France insisted that the issue be kept out of the negotiations. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who will negotiate on behalf of the 27 countries based on a unanimous mandate, had always argued that the mandate should be as open as possible since there always would be enough guarantees to protect EU culture.
The United States also wants as level a playing field as possible.
"Frankly, we are happy that we are only talking about audiovisual as a constraint right now and not lots of other things that are politically sensitive on both sides," Kennard said.
He denied the U.S. was trying to keep the financial services out of the talks.
"That is not accurate because we already have a separate track dealing with the whole array of financial services issues," Kennard said. The issues are being dealt with through the G-20 group of the world's 20 leading industrial and developing countries and through dialogue between financial regulators, he added.
He said those talks should move in parallel with the trans-Atlantic free trade talks.
An EU-commissioned study shows that a trade pact could boost the 27-country bloc's economic output by 119 billion euro ($159 billion) a year and the U.S. economy's by 95 billion euros ($127 billion). Another estimate showed eliminating tariffs alone would add $180 billion to U.S. and EU gross domestic product in five years' time while boosting exports on both sides by about 17 percent. That could add about 0.5 percent annually to the EU's GDP and 1 percent to the U.S.
____
Follow Raf Casert on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/rcasert
Marriage equality supporters take part in a march and rally ahead of Supreme Court arguments on legalizing same-sex marriage in New York on March 24, 2013.?
Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
It?s such an amazing pleasure and privilege to dive into this year?s Supreme Court rulings with you. This is a venerable Slate tradition, begun by the amazing Dahlia Lithwick with (of course) you, Walter. The rest of us late-comers will do our best to uphold it. Today, the court didn?t do anything blockbuster. So that gives us a chance to look back before we get to chew over the decisions on affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, and gay marriage next week.
I want to start by zooming back a whole year, to the end of the 2012 term. The climactic moment last June in which Chief Justice John Roberts swooped in to save Obamacare led to a lot of wondering about his intentions. Basically it came down to this: Had George W. Bush?s steely man of the right?his perfect choice for chief?gone soft? In casting the fifth vote to uphold Obamacare, was Roberts taking a first step down a sinister sinistra (leftward) path? Could he become the latest conservative to come down with the dreaded curse of late-blooming liberal-ish tendencies? My own feeling was and remains: no way. Much more evidence shows Roberts as a chief who is moving the court to the right in careful, deliberate increments. He is playing the long game. This term, so far, his most revealing moment came in City of Arlington v. FCC. It?s a kind of obscure case about the Federal Communications Commission?s power over the location of cellphone towers, but Roberts used it to rail against the size of the federal bureaucracy, ?poking into every nook and cranny of daily life,? and also to fight with Scalia over how best to dismantle it, as Doug Kendall explained in Slate. The two justices share the same end. Still, Is Roberts v. Scalia a real thing?a sign of a meaningful and potentially lasting conservative schism? Or is that just a lullaby actual liberals sing to themselves?
Speaking of Scalia, what did you make of his impassioned cry for civil liberties in Maryland v. King? In that one, five justices (the other conservatives plus Stephen Breyer) ruled that states can collect DNA from everyone who gets arrested for a serious crime. Scalia dissented, warning of worse to come: ?Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today?s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.? This is the kind of just-you-wait prediction he made 10 years ago to warn that preventing the states from criminalizing sodomy would one day lead to gay marriage. Next week, we will find out if he was right about that. Either way, what do you think of dire prediction as a rhetorical strategy?
And what about the court?s decision against gene patenting? I bought the distinction Justice Clarence Thomas made, for a unanimous court, between naturally occurring DNA (no patenting allowed) and synthetic DNA. But people who know much more about biotech than me said it?s meaningless and anachronistic. Did the court blow it, or does this argument reflect an inevitable gap in approach and understanding between law and science?
I also want to know what you make of this term?s business decisions. Dick, you and Lee Epstein and Bill Landes have crunched numbers that convinced me that the court is even more pro-business than I thought before. Which is saying something. How do this term?s rulings add to, or change, that picture?
Next week, we will of course talk about the court?s take on race in Ameica and whether it means life or death of the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action. Any predictions? I will say that as a gay-rights supporter, I?m feeling optimistic about both of the gay-marriage cases. I think the court will strike down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for purposes of receiving federal benefits. And I think it will also find a way to get rid of California?s gay marriage ban, without foisting gay marriage on the rest of the states that have yet to vote for it.
For me, the term?s braiding of race and sexuality raises deep questions about timing. Are we about to see the Voting Rights Act, and affirmative action, go down because the court?s conservatives are just tired of seeing race as a defining factor in American life?and think the country is, too? And are we about to see the court make a welcoming overture toward gay marriage because that is the civil rights issue whose time has come? I want to know what you all think, and I also want us to keep an eye on these questions: Which justice has or will surprise you this term, by doing what? Which decision will seem the most off base, when we look back on the year? What will we remember most vividly?
For me, the answer to that last one is the sea of gay marriage supporters on the court?s front steps. I saw opponents, too, yes, but mostly I stopped and marveled at a stand for equality the like of which I would never have imagined as a teenager, or even 20 years ago. It felt like history.
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Public release date: 20-Jun-2013
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Marriage equality supporters take part in a march and rally ahead of Supreme Court arguments on legalizing same-sex marriage in New York on March 24, 2013.?