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Friday, February 1, 2013
Oregon car-bomber found guilty of terrorism
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) ? Three hours before they handed down a sentence that could put an Oregon man in prison for life, deliberating jurors sent a note to a trial judge with a question.
Did the man whose fate they were deciding need to have envisioned the specific crime for which he was accused? Or did he merely need to be inclined toward some kind of terroristic act?
Their question more broadly reflects the central debate at the heart of the trial of Mohamed Mohamud, a 21-year-old Somali-American found guilty on Thursday of attempting to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting in November 2010.
Prosecutors were met by a claim of entrapment by Mohamud's defense team, and needed to convince jurors that he was predisposed to terrorism by the time an FBI informant began discussing radical jihad with him over emails.
The judge, Garr King, told jurors Thursday that Mohamud only had to be likely to commit the offense or one like it, and he did not specifically have to be thinking about a bomb at the specific time and place at which he and two undercover FBI agents decided to plant one.
The bomb was a fake, supplied by the agents posing as jihadis.
Jurors were given starkly different portraits of the man who was 17 when the FBI began to focus on him. In the prosecution's description, Mohamud was a powder keg in search of a spark, an angry teenager with the right combination of anti-Western sentiment and a plausible cover story as an Oregon college student.
In the defense's telling, he was confused, broke and suffering under the weight of parental expectations. Gullible and eager to please, he fell into a plot entirely of the FBI's making, following along with men he imagined were like family, Mohamud's attorneys said.
Mohamud sat still as King read the verdict in a slow, deliberate cadence. His parents, who attended every day of the trial, were absent, leaving the seating reserved for family entirely empty throughout the announcement of the verdict.
After the verdict, the FBI asserted again that Mohamud would indeed have found a way to commit a violent act had agents not intervened.
"Mr. Mohamud made a series of choices over a period of several years ? choices that were leading him down a path that would have ended in violence," said Greg Fowler, who leads the FBI office in Portland. "His actions showed little regard for the rights and responsibilities that come with being an American or respect for the lives that he was prepared to take."
Mohamud's attorney, Steve Sady, later said an appeal was being planned after the scheduled May 14 sentencing.
"We are disappointed with the verdict," Sady said. "We, obviously, thought he was entrapped."
Prosecutors argued that Mohamud was predisposed to terrorism as early as 15 years old. Mohamud traded emails with an al-Qaida lieutenant later killed in a drone strike. He also told undercover agents he would pose as a college student while preparing for violent jihad.
Mohamud was never called to testify. Instead, the jurors saw thousands of exhibits and heard hours of testimony from friends, parents, undercover FBI agents and experts in counterterrorism, teenage brain development and the psychology of the Muslim world.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight told the jury earlier this week that the decision would be easy. Mohamud pressed a keypad button on a black Nokia cellphone and intended to kill people. Whatever else they might think about the methods of undercover agents or the government's decision to investigate a teenager, the underlying decision was Mohamud's and the motivation was hatred of the West.
Sady had argued that Mohamud wasn't radicalized by online recruiters or friends with jihadist leanings, but rather by a Justice Department hungry for convictions that ignored every caution sign along the way. Sady said undercover agents manipulated Mohamud's faith and plied him with praise and the promise of a life leading other jihadis.
"This case has been a difficult case for the city of Portland. It's been a particularly difficult case for Mohamed Mohamud's community, for his family, for the Somali community," said Amanda Marshall, U.S. attorney for Oregon. "We are hopeful that this will bring closure and healing to all of us here in Portland."
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Associated Press writer Steven DuBois contributed to this report
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Reach reporter Nigel Duara on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/127q7aU
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jury-oregon-car-bomb-suspect-guilty-terrorism-231226058.html
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West Nile virus spreading due to mosquitoes in orchards and vineyards, experts warn
Jan. 30, 2013 ? Washington State University researchers have linked orchards and vineyards with a greater prevalence of West Nile virus in mosquitoes and the insects' ability to spread the virus to birds, horses and people.
The finding, reported in the latest issue of the journal PLOS ONE, is the most finely scaled look at the interplay between land use and the virus's activity in key hosts. By giving a more detailed description of how the disease moves across the landscape, the study opens the door to management efforts that might bring the disease under control, says David Crowder, a WSU entomologist and the paper's lead author.
Since it was first seen in New York in 1999, West Nile virus has reached across the country and shown few signs of abating. Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control had the highest number of reported cases -- 5,387, including 243 deaths -- since 2003.
Roughly one in five infected people experience a fever, headache, body aches and, in some cases, a skin rash and swollen lymph glands. One in 150 people can get a high fever, headache, neck stiffness, disorientation and neurological problems.
Most efforts to figure out the ecological workings of the virus have focused on reports of infected people, "a crude indicator at best," says Crowder. Almost all victims have no symptoms or are misdiagnosed, while others can be infected far from where they file a report, he says.
Agricultural areas have seen higher percentages of infected people, but that still does not get at the underlying mechanism.
"Is that because there are more birds there?" says Crowder. "Is that because there are more mosquitoes there? That hasn't really been linked together."
Crowder, working with fellow entomologist Jeb Owen, other WSU colleagues and the state Department of Health, merged data from a variety of sources, including West Nile infections in humans, horses and birds, surveys of virus-bearing mosquitoes, breeding bird surveys, and detailed land use maps and climate data from around the Northwest.
The researchers found that habitats with high instances of the disease in horses and birds also have significantly more mosquitoes -- as well as American robins and house sparrows, the two bird species implicated the most in the disease's transmission.
"These same habitats are also resulting in much higher rates of infection within mosquitoes themselves," said Crowder.
"We find that all three of these things -- abundances of house sparrows and American robins, abundance of mosquitoes and the actual prevalence of West Nile in mosquitoes -- are increasing in landscapes with a higher proportion of land in orchard habitats." These habitats, says Crowder, include both orchards and vineyards.
It's still unclear why the habitats would create such a perfect storm for the virus. The researchers speculate that mosquitoes are drawn to orchards for plant nectar during flowering, while robins and house sparrows use them for nesting and feeding. Together, the insects and birds become focal points for the disease.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington State University. The original article was written by Eric Sorensen.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- David W. Crowder, Elizabeth A. Dykstra, Jo Marie Brauner, Anne Duffy, Caitlin Reed, Emily Martin, Wade Peterson, Yves Carri?re, Pierre Dutilleul, Jeb P. Owen. West Nile Virus Prevalence across Landscapes Is Mediated by Local Effects of Agriculture on Vector and Host Communities. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (1): e55006 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055006
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/kVKjNpbbJ28/130130184318.htm
Insight: Revived search for a TB vaccine may be about to pay off
CHICAGO (Reuters) - After nearly 100 years, researchers could be on the verge of finding a vaccine that would eradicate tuberculosis infections, a scourge that kills 1.4 million people a year.
Global health experts are eagerly awaiting clinical trial results, expected early next week, of the first new vaccine in 90 years designed to prevent tuberculosis infections. While it might not prove effective, it will bring scientists much closer to creating a new generation of TB vaccines.
Known as MVA85A, the vaccine is the farthest along of more than a dozen candidates being developed globally to stop the transmission of mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is quickly outsmarting the best antibiotic weapons used against it.
"In my own personal view, I will consider this (trial) to be a landmark or a watershed," said Peggy Johnston, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle.
"If it is negative, it would be the first trial we can demonstrate that yes, we can conduct a clinical trial and get a solid answer. If it turns out to be at all positive, it will be a clear watershed for the field."
Although companies are making strides developing new drugs to fight TB, such as Johnson & Johnson's recently approved drug, bedaquiline, experts believe a vaccine ultimately will be the best tool to eradicate the ancient disease, which infects 9 million people a year.
"Drug development at the moment is lagging the rate at which drug resistance is emerging. We can't constantly be chasing after the next drug that becomes ineffective," said Christine Sizemore of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Ann Ginsberg of Rockville, Maryland-based Aeras, a non-profit biotech developing MVA85A said it is "the single tool that could have the greatest potential impact on the TB epidemic."
Ginsberg said better drugs will be useful to treat people who are already sick, but by the time a person with TB is diagnosed, they have already infected 10 to 15 people.
"A vaccine can stop transmission," she added.
NEW GENERATION OF TB VACCINES
A lot is riding on the trial's results, which will give the first solid clues about whether scientists are on the right track to create a new generation of TB vaccines.
MVA85A is being developed by researchers at Britain's Oxford University with support from Aeras, the Wellcome Trust, the European Commission and the Oxford-Emergent Tuberculosis Consortium, a joint venture between Oxford and Emergent Biosolutions Inc created to make the vaccine.
It is one of 16 vaccines being studied in human clinical trials and the study results will inform the design of more than 50 vaccines being tested in preclinical trials in animals.
Most of the development has occurred in the last decade with the emergence of drug-resistant TB, which could affect as many as 2 million people by 2015, according to the World Health Organization.
Treating typical TB is a long process, with patients needing to take a cocktail of antibiotics for six months. Many fail to complete treatment and that has given rise to drug resistance.
Multi-drug resistant TB withstands two standard drugs, but a more severe form known as extensively drug-resistant TB, which thwarts the most highly effective drugs, was reported in at least 77 countries in 2011, the WHO said.
And doctors in India have begun reporting cases of totally resistant TB, in which no effective drugs are available.
"This previously neglected disease has now come to the forefront," said Johnston of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides the bulk of the funding for Aeras.
"That has stimulated new investment not only in new drugs to treat those resistant strains, but also in vaccines to give us a longer-term solution."
Part of what makes TB so difficult to treat is that it has evolved along with humans and hides in human cells.
"Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a wily foe," Ginsberg said. "A third of the world is already infected with this bug and some 10 percent will get sick and pass it on to others."
It is that large reservoir of future TB cases that vaccine makers hope to protect, along with those who have never been exposed.
BUILDING BETTER VACCINES
First used in 1921, the current vaccine, known as Bacille Calmette-Gu?rin, or BCG, is given routinely to babies in countries with high rates of TB to prevent severe disease.
But protection wears off in just a few years and BCG does nothing to protect against the most common form of tuberculosis that invades the lungs of adults and adolescents, and can be transmitted through coughing and sneezing.
For the midstage study of MVA85A, researchers tested nearly 3,000 babies in South Africa already vaccinated with BCG. Half of the babies got the vaccine and half got a placebo.
The goal is to see if babies who got both vaccines were better protected than babies who just got the BCG jab.
South Africa offers a unique location for the study. About 1 percent of the population develops TB every year, compared with .01 percent in the United States, said Professor Willem Hanekom of the University of Cape Town and co-director of the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative.
"We are in a soup of TB basically in South Africa," said Hanekom, who led the vaccine's trial in the country.
The vaccine is a modified version of a smallpox virus that has had "its guts ripped out," making it harmless, but still capable of evoking an immune response.
Researchers then added a component of TB bacteria to train the immune system to fight infection. If the trial succeeds, a larger phase 3 study will be needed before it can be licensed.
Although the vaccine is the most advanced, two others - one backed by Aeras and GlaxoSmithKline Plc and the other by Aeras and J&J's Crucell vaccine unit - are close behind.
Of the two, the Crucell vaccine most resembles MVA85A, using a strategy in which the immune system is primed by the BCG vaccine and then boosted by the new vaccine.
Like MVA85A, Crucell uses a virus - in this case a cold virus - to transport bits of the TB bacteria or antigen into the body. But Crucell uses three TB antigens and a different virus.
The GSK vaccine, called M72, is different in that it relies on an adjuvant - a type of booster that revs up the immune system - coupled with proteins from the TB virus.
LOTS TO LEARN
Scientists are wary about predicting success for any of the late-stage candidates.
"At the moment, if you had to ask me which are the most promising and which are the least promising, we just don't know," Hanekom said.
That is because the basic science underlying TB is so poor, he said, noting that scientists are still unsure exactly what signals in animals will predict success in people.
TB vaccine makers also lack so-called immune correlates of protection, which are markers that a vaccine has worked, such as the production of antibodies after a person has been vaccinated.
Correlates of protection allow scientists to screen potential vaccine candidates in the lab. Without them, researchers are forced into big, costly clinical trials.
"The bottom line is one needs an effective vaccine," Hanekom said.
Short of that, Hanekom and others are trying to find correlates of protection by following groups of individuals and checking for changes in their blood as they develop TB.
All of this development has happened within the last 10 years, largely due to the efforts of various activist groups such as the Gates foundation through Aeras, the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust and others.
Steve Lockhart, senior vice president of vaccine development at Emergent, which has a joint venture with Oxford to manufacture the MVA85A vaccine, lauded the efforts of the Gates foundation and others for bringing the field along.
"No one could justify going to shareholders and having a company solely take the responsibility for developing this, knowing there is not much of a market at the end," he said.
He said the vaccine might have a modest market in middle income countries, such as India, China, South Africa and Brazil.
There are efforts to shed light on the market, but Kari Stoever of Aeras said it could be worth billions by 2027 or 2030, when there is an 84 percent chance of having a vaccine.
Sizemore of the NIH said that, even if the trial fails, it will represent a success.
"From a scientific perspective, we almost can't lose," she added.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Andre Grenon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-revived-search-tb-vaccine-may-pay-off-103208398--finance.html
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Israeli Jets Bomb Syrian Military Site | Zero Hedge
In what was the first clear instance of aggression by Israel toward Syria, overnight Israeli jets conducted a bombing run over a military site in Syria, targeting what according to Israel was a military convoy heading to Lebanon. As Al Arabiya reports: "Israeli jets bombed a convoy on Syria's border with Lebanon on Wednesday, sources told Reuters, apparently targeting weapons destined for Hezbollah in what some called a warning to Damascus not to arm Israel's Lebanese enemy. "The target was a truck loaded with weapons, heading from Syria to Lebanon," said one Western diplomat, adding that the consignment may well have included anti-aircraft missiles. The overnight attack, which several sources placed on the Syrian side of the border, followed warnings from Israel that it was ready to act to prevent the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad leading to Syria's chemical weapons and modern rockets reaching either his Hezbollah allies or his Islamist enemies."
More on the target and location of the attack:
A source among the Syrian rebels said an air strike around dawn (0430 GMT) blasted a convoy on a mountain track about 5 kilometres (3 miles) south of where the main Damascus-Beirut highway crosses the border. Its load probably included high-tech anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but not chemical weapons.
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"It attacked trucks carrying sophisticated weapons from the regime to Hezbollah," the source said, adding that it took place inside Syria, though the border is poorly defined in the area.
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A regional security source said the target was weaponry given by Assad's military to fellow Iranian ally Hezbollah:
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"This episode boils down to a warning by Israel to Syria and Hezbollah not to engage in the transfer of sensitive weapons," the source said. "Assad knows his survival depends on his military capabilities and he would not want those capabilities neutralised by Israel - so the message is this kind of transfer is simply not worth it, neither for him nor Hezbollah."
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With official secrecy shrouding the event, few details were corroborated by multiple sources. All those with knowledge of the event - from several countries - spoke anonymously.
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There was no comment from the Israeli or Syrian governments nor Hezbollah. Israel's ally the United States declined all comment. A Lebanese security source said its territory was not hit, though the army reported a heavy presence of Israeli jets through the night after days of unusually frequent incursions.
Iran has previously warned that any attack on Syria is the same as an attack on Iran. For now, however, Iran has not issued a statement:
There was no immediate comment on the incident from Tehran, which Israel views as its principal enemy and with which it is engaged in a bitter confrontation over Iran's nuclear programme.
Perhaps what is more interesting is how Russia and/or China which have made clear that Syria is a strategic geopolitical center for bnoth in the past will react, if at all.
Keep an eye on Brent as the middle east may be finally coming out of hibernation.
(18 votes)
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-30/israeli-jets-bomb-syrian-military-site
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49ers' Success With Read-Option Could Transform NFL
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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The San Francisco 49ers' success with athletic quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the read-option attack could lead other NFL teams to rethink their approach to the key position, according to the man who masterminded the scheme. ...
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