Obama's 'red line' may be giving Assad an opening

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama's chemical weapons position on Syria may have given Bashar Assad an unintended opening: The embattled Syrian leader appears willing to use other deadly tactics, including Scud missiles, without fear of U.S. retaliation.

The White House casts Assad's escalation against rebel forces as a sign of his growing desperation as his opposition gets stronger and enjoys more international support, including from the United States. But some human rights groups and Middle East experts say Obama's "red line" has given Assad a green light to launch attacks on his own people through other conventional means.

Obama has said Syria's use or movement of its chemical weapons stockpile would change his "calculus" about a conflict the U.S. has been loath to intervene in militarily.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former adviser to Republican presidential campaigns, said Obama publicly staking out a red line like that "has the unintended consequence of seeming to ratify anything short of the use of chemical weapons."

More than 40,000 people have died during Assad's two-year crackdown on rebels, according to activists. Opposition fighters have seized large swaths of territory in northern Syria along the border with Turkey and appear to be expanding their control outside Damascus, pushing the fight closer to Assad's seat of power in the capital.

As Assad has come under greater pressure, he has steadily escalated his methods for fighting insurgents. U.S. officials said the Syrian regime launched more than a half-dozen Scud missiles in recent days. It's the first time the Assad government has used such weapons.

Further testing Obama's red line, recent U.S. intelligence reports showed the Syrian regime may be readying its chemical weapons and could be desperate enough to use them. Those reports drew a sharp warning from Obama, but administration officials said the intelligence fell short of the president's threshold for more direct U.S. intervention in the conflict.

Despite Assad's escalating attacks, officials also say the president is not considering reevaluating his red line on Syria. He first articulated it in August, and officials say the U.S. defines movement as Assad handing over the weapons to a terrorist group like Hezbollah.

Obama has never publicly stated how the U.S. would respond if Assad does cross the red line and deploy or prepare to deploy its chemical weapons. Current and former U.S. officials who have been briefed on the matter say options being considered include aerial strikes or limited raids by regional forces to secure the stockpiles. They say the administration remains reluctant to dispatch U.S. forces to Syria, but a U.S. special operations training team is in neighboring Jordan, teaching troops there how to safely secure chemical weapons sites, together with other troops from the region.

"Our policy remains what it was," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday. "We believe that providing continued support to the Syrian people and non-lethal support to the opposition is the right approach."

Obama long has called for Assad to leave power, and the U.S. this week formally recognized the rebel-led Syrian Opposition Council as the country's sole legitimate representative. But the U.S., weary after years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, wants to avoid sending American troops into Syria to stem the violence and risk getting drawn into another protracted Middle East conflict.

Officials say Obama settled on the use or proliferation of chemical weapons as his red line because there would be international consensus that such a step would be unacceptable. But those assertions have only increased frustrations among many in the region who question why Assad's other actions have not generated similar promises of international action.

"We hear a lot from people on the ground who say, 'So we won't be killed by chemical weapons, but killing us with a machine gun is OK?" said Nadim Houry, a Beirut-based official with the international organization Human Rights Watch.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week "there is no doubt that there's a line between even the horrors that they've already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons."

The Assad government insists it would not use such weapons against Syrians, though it carefully does not admit to having them. The regime is party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical weapons in war.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-red-line-may-giving-assad-opening-225450253.html

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The Invention of an Illness

Foie gras.

Foie gras?essentially fatty liver?is delicious. Is it a disease?

Photo by Lilyana Vynogradova/iStockPhoto.

Diseases come and diseases go?which, when you think about it, they really shouldn't. Outside of diseases that have been eradicated, this inconstancy suggests a certain fallibility and fashion running through medicine, a discipline we'd prefer to be a reliable science. Take chlorosis. For hundreds of years doctors understood it perfectly. It afflicted young women, coloring their complexion with an unmistakeable trace of green. Unrequited love was the cause?or, to put it in the physical terms used more often, the lingering and harmful persistence of female virginity. In 1936, chlorosis was officially demolished as a condition. Unsatisfied physical longing as a cause of green-tinged skin disappeared from the medical world.

It's no surprise to find our ancestors getting things wrong?they were, after all, an ignorant and prejudiced lot. But could it be that our world has not yet reached a stage of mental and cultural perfection? Might we be making similar mistakes, inventing diseases that don't really exist? And if we are, does it matter?

Consider these questions in relation to something which, before 1980, wasn't described as a disease. You might call it the human version of foie gras. Or, if you felt diseases benefited from being described in Greek (a lingering medical conviction, and one I confess to sharing), you'd name it hepatic steatosis or even steatohepatitis. If you favored plain language, you'd call it fatty liver disease. Whatever name you chose, you'd be referring to a condition which has gone from unknown to pandemic within a few decades, all without any change in human hepatic physiology. Fatty liver disease affects up to a quarter of us. Its harms?a significantly increased risk of death among them?are taken seriously by hepatologists and other doctors. But it may not be a real disease at all.

Contemplate for a moment one of the ethical quirks of the debate about foie gras. Even if you accept that force-feeding geese is cruel, you can still produce foie gras as ethically sound as any meat product. One of the functions of the liver is the storage of energy, and birds that go on long migrations lay down fat in preparation. Slaughter a goose just before it's expecting to take off across the globe, and you can extract a foie with the gras a gourmand desires. Fatty livers in geese, then, aren't necessarily a disease?they can be a healthy consequence of the animal storing energy it's expecting to need.

Something similar happens in humans, with the key problem being that our tendency to lay down calories is out of proportion with our likelihood of using them up. We're good at storing up fat?padding out our bellies, our bottoms, our livers, and the rest of our generally overfed and under-exercised bodies. We're evolutionarily adapted for boom and bust, for periods of plenty and periods of want. Faced with a constant supply of food, we eat it. We put on weight and then we put on more. That's a real challenge, but just possibly I'm not the first to break this news. We know that obesity is unhealthy and that it's on the rise. It's something we're bad at dealing with, both emotionally and practically. We even agonize over it morally. Doctors and society tend to blame the overweight for their condition with a disapproval that we don't apply, say, to mountaineers who fall and break bones. As medics, we're also lousy at actually helping. A lot of research money goes into weight-loss drugs, which at best are minimally effective and tend to have nasty side effects. Relatively little goes into figuring out how to engineer societies to eat less and exercise more?and even when it does, we worry how much of that sort of societal engineering we should be doing. The appropriate boundary between invading individual freedom and promoting public health can be pretty unclear.

Those with fatty liver disease won't know for certain they have the disease without a scan, be it ultrasound or some other modality. Usually fatty liver disease causes no symptoms. Yet those who have it are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes, more likely to develop liver cirrhosis, more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes. Their health is improved from lowering their blood pressure and cholesterol levels, from dieting and exercising, and even (if they're particularly obese) from having a gastric bypass or similar surgery to help them lose weight. So why isn't it necessarily a real disease?

The problem comes into focus when you realise these same hazards and recommendations can be invoked for any other manifestation of being overweight. Take fatty elbow disease. As far as I'm aware, I'm the first to describe it, but I think it could take off. It's associated with being overweight and underactive and it carries with it the same range of real risks. Sufferers are often asymptomatic, unaware of their illness, although I admit that it can be picked up without much use of an MRI scanner. Shortly I'll be writing to the New England Journal of Medicine to expose the problem. I'll demand action to raise the profile of fatty elbow disease, with programs to screen elbows nationwide and make patients aware of their affliction. I'll accept lucrative posts advising drug companies and seek out a celebrity patient or two. I'll attend so many lavish conference dinners I may develop the disease myself.

Yet there's a problem. When you say that patients are unaware of their condition, you're suggesting, in a vital way, that maybe they're not actually patients. The word comes from pathos, meaning one who suffers. These people are not literally dis-eased, at least not until I disturb their ease by pointing out they suffer from FED. (I feel a flush of parental pride contemplating how technical and impressive it sounds as an acronym.) Do I do people a favor by revealing to them their unsuspected diagnosis? I'm not sure I do. Most people are aware that it's not ideal to be overweight, to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, to undertake too little physical exercise. Fatty elbow disease gives me another tool to beat them up with, to add to their sense of guilt. Who knows, they may turn out to have fatty liver disease also, and fatty hip disease, too?they could be suffering under the delusion of reasonable health, when all along they're a walking bag of medical problems. I worry, though, that I'm just dishing out disease labels for my own benefit, not for the good of the people I'm meant to be caring for. For the foreseeable future, the mortality rate for life is expected to remain at around 100 percent. Staying alive as long as possible is great, and worrying about illness is reasonable, but all life is limited and it's important to enjoy what we've got. Health, like beauty, is terrifically subjective. Tell someone who's feeling fine that they've got fatty liver disease, and you're subtracting from their sense of well-being. Maybe not much, but you're doing so all the same, and I'm not sure it's merited. Remember that shady border between intruding on freedom and promoting health? You may have just crossed it.

Fatty liver disease appears to be a manifestation of what could be called?with justification?Modern Life. We eat too much and we do too little, and one of the things that follows is that we put on weight. As a doctor, I know too little about how to help people deal with that. But banal advice doesn't cut it, nor does piling on the guilt. The existence of chlorosis said something about our ancestors? ambivalence toward female sexuality. Fatty liver disease, I suspect, comes from our mixed feelings over modern lifestyles and who to blame for them. It's not good for us to spend too much time eating and sitting and not enough fasting or running around, but is it really a disease? I think we're unsure and bad at facing up to our uncertainty. Moral ambivalence, more than calories, might be driving our contemporary pandemic of fatty liver disease.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=b8d151f0926d159c7c93ab7c5dd11c9e

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Reality check for DNA nanotechnology

Friday, December 14, 2012

Two major barriers to the advancement of DNA nanotechnology beyond the research lab have been knocked down. This emerging technology employs DNA as a programmable building material for self-assembled, nanometer-scale structures. Many practical applications have been envisioned, and researchers recently demonstrated a synthetic membrane channel made from DNA. Until now, however, design processes were hobbled by a lack of structural feedback. Assembly was slow and often of poor quality. Now researchers led by Prof. Hendrik Dietz of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) have removed these obstacles.

One barrier holding the field back was an unproven assumption. Researchers were able to design a wide variety of discrete objects and specify exactly how DNA strands should zip together and fold into the desired shapes. They could show that the resulting nanostructures closely matched the designs. Still lacking, though, was the validation of the assumed subnanometer-scale precise positional control. This has been confirmed for the first time through analysis of a test object designed specifically for the purpose. A technical breakthrough based on advances in fundamental understanding, this demonstration has provided a crucial reality check for DNA nanotechnology.

In a separate set of experiments, the researchers discovered that the time it takes to make a batch of complex DNA-based objects can be cut from a week to a matter of minutes, and that the yield can be nearly 100%. They showed for the first time that at a constant temperature, hundreds of DNA strands can fold cooperatively to form an object ? correctly, as designed ? within minutes. Surprisingly, they say, the process is similar to protein folding, despite significant chemical and structural differences. "Seeing this combination of rapid folding and high yield," Dietz says, "we have a stronger sense than ever that DNA nanotechnology could lead to a new kind of manufacturing, with a commercial, even industrial future." And there are immediate benefits, he adds: "Now we don't have to wait a week for feedback on an experimental design, and multi-step assembly processes have suddenly become so much more practical."

Atomically precise control

To test the assumption that discrete DNA objects could be assembled as designed with subnanometer precision, TUM biophysicists collaborated with scientists at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. They produced a relatively large, three-dimensional DNA-based structure, asymmetrical to help determine the orientation, and incorporating distinctive design motifs.

Subnanometer-resolution imaging with low-temperature electron microscopy enabled the researchers to map the object ? which comprises more than 460,000 atoms ? with subnanometer-scale detail. Because the object incorporates, in effect, a whole library of different design elements, it will also serve as a resource for further study. The results, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, not only demonstrate atomically precise assembly, but also show that such structures, formerly thought to be jelly-like and flexible, are rigid enough to be probed by electron microscopy.

Fast processing, near-100% yields

In contrast, DNA objects with 19 different designs ? including plate-like, gear-like, and brick-like shapes ? were used for a second series of experiments at TUM, reported in the latest issue of Science. Here the researchers' main focus was on the dynamics of DNA folding and unfolding. The usual self-assembly process is often described as a "one-pot reaction": Strands of DNA that will serve as the template, instructions, and building material for a designed object are placed together at a relatively high temperature where they will remain separate; the temperature is gradually lowered, and somewhere along the line the DNA strands zip together to form the desired structures.

Observing this process in unprecedented detail, the TUM researchers discovered that all of the action takes place within a specific and relatively narrow temperature range, which differs depending on the design of the object. One practical implication is that, once the optimal temperature for a given design has been determined, DNA self-assembly ? nanomanufacturing, in essence ? could be accomplished through fast processes at constant temperatures. Following up on this lead, the researchers found that they could "mass-produce" objects made from hundreds of DNA strands within minutes instead of days, with almost no defective objects or by-products in the resulting batch.

"Besides telling us that complex DNA objects are manufacturable," Dietz says, "these results suggest something we hardly dared to imagine before ? that it might be possible to assemble DNA nanodevices in a cell culture or even within a living cell."

From the viewpoint of fundamental biology, the most intriguing result of these experiments may be the discovery that DNA folding resembles protein folding more closely than anticipated. Chemically and structurally, the two families of biomolecules are quite different. But the researchers observed clearly defined "cooperative" steps in the folding of complex DNA objects, no different in principle from mechanisms at work in protein folding. They speculate that further experiments with self-assembly of designed DNA objects could help to unravel the mysteries of protein folding, which is more complex and less accessible to direct study.

###

Xiao-chen Bai, Thomas G. Martin, Sjors H. W. Scheres, Hendrik Dietz. Cryo-EM structure of a 3D DNA-origami object. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Dec. 4, 2012, 109 (49) 20012-20017; on-line in PNAS Early Edition, Nov. 19, 2012. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215713109

Jean-Philippe J. Sobczak, Thomas G. Martin, Thomas Gerling, Hendrik Dietz. Rapid folding of DNA into nanoscale shapes at constant temperature. Science, vol. 338, issue 6113, pp. 1458-1461. DOI: 10.1126/science.1229919

See also: Martin Langecker, Vera Arnaut, Thomas G. Martin, Jonathan List, Stephan Renner, Michael Mayer, Hendrik Dietz, and Friedrich C. Simmel. Synthetic lipid membrane channels formed by designed DNA nanostructures. Science, vol. 338, issue 6109, pp. 932-936. DOI: 10.1126/science.1225624

Technische Universitaet Muenchen: http://www.tum.de

Thanks to Technische Universitaet Muenchen for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/125935/Reality_check_for_DNA_nanotechnology

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Russian investigators suspect Navalny of fraud

MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian investigators have launched a probe against a prominent opposition leader on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.

Investigators said Friday they suspect Alexei Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, and his brother of defrauding a transportation company of 55 million rubles ($1.8 million).

The anti-corruption activist spearheaded a series of rallies in Moscow that drew up to 100,000 people to the streets ahead of the March vote that handed Putin a third presidential term.

The 36-year-old was charged with theft in July for allegedly organizing a plan to steal about $500,000 in assets from a state timber company. He denies the charges.

Russian opposition is gearing up for another major demonstration on Saturday although the Moscow City Hall has refused to authorize it.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-investigators-suspect-navalny-fraud-081721785.html

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Judge Derek Johnson's Rape Comment: If Sex Isn't Wanted, Body 'Will Not Permit That To Happen'

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- A Southern California judge is being publicly admonished for saying a rape victim "didn't put up a fight" during her assault and that if someone doesn't want sexual intercourse, the body "will not permit that to happen."

The California Commission on Judicial Performance voted 10-0 to impose a public admonishment Thursday, saying Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson's comments were inappropriate and a breach of judicial ethics.

"In the commission's view, the judge's remarks reflected outdated, biased and insensitive views about sexual assault victims who do not `put up a fight.' Such comments cannot help but diminish public confidence and trust in the impartiality of the judiciary," wrote Lawrence J. Simi, the commission's chairman.

Johnson made the comments in the case of a man who threatened to mutilate the face and genitals of his ex-girlfriend with a heated screwdriver, beat her with a metal baton and made other violent threats before committing rape, forced oral copulation, and other crimes.

Though the woman reported the criminal threats the next day, the woman did not report the rape until 17 days later.

Johnson, a former prosecutor in the Orange County district attorney's sex crimes unit, said during the man's 2008 sentencing that he had seen violent cases on that unit in which women's vaginas were "shredded" by rape.

"I'm not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn't want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case," Johnson said.

The commission found that Johnson's view that a victim must resist to be a real victim of sexual assault was his opinion, not the law. Since 1980, California law doesn't require rape victims to prove they resisted or were prevented from resisting because of threats.

In an apology to the commission, Johnson said his comments were inappropriate. He said his comments were the result of his frustration during an argument with a prosecutor over the defendant's sentence.

Johnson said he believed the prosecutor's request of a 16-year sentence was not authorized by law. Johnson sentenced the rapist to six years instead, saying that's what the case was "worth."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/judge-derek-johnsons-rape_n_2297379.html

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NKorea still years away from credible missiles

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? They don't call it rocket science for nothing.

North Korea's first successful launch of a three-stage, long-range rocket has outraged world leaders who consider it similar to a missile capable of attacking the United States, Europe and other far-away targets. But experts say Pyongyang is years away from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland.

A missile program is built on decades of systematic, intricate testing, something extremely difficult for economically struggling Pyongyang, which faces guaranteed sanctions and world disapprobation each time it stages an expensive launch.

"One success indicates progress, but not victory, and there is a huge gap between being able to make a system work once and having a system that is reliable enough to be militarily useful," said Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force Space Command officer and a technical adviser to the Secure World Foundation, a think tank on space policy.

North Korea's satellite launch Wednesday came only after 14 years of painstaking labor, repeated failures and hundreds of millions of dollars.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Thursday the satellite is orbiting normally at a speed of 7.6 kilometers (4.7 miles) per second, though it's not known what mission it is performing. North Korean space officials say the satellite would be used to study crops and weather patterns.

Though Pyongyang insists the project is peaceful, it also has conducted two nuclear tests and has defied demands that it give up its nuclear weapons program.

The U.N. Security Council said in a brief statement after closed consultations Wednesday that the launch violates council resolutions against the North's use of ballistic missile technology, and said it would urgently consider "an appropriate response."

"This launch is about a weapons program, not peaceful use of space," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Even the North's most important ally, China, expressed regret.

North Korea has long possessed the components needed to construct long-range rockets. Scientists in Pyongyang, however, have been trying and failing since 1998 to conduct a successful launch. Only this week, on the fifth try, did they do so, prompting dancing in the streets of the capital.

Making even a single long-range missile or rocket hit its target is mind-bogglingly complicated. But it pales in comparison to the task of building an arsenal of missiles that could be relied on in a war to strike the far-off places they're programmed to attack.

North Korea's far more advanced rival, South Korea, has failed twice since 2009 to launch a satellite on a rocket from its own territory, and postponed two attempts in recent weeks because of technical problems.

North Korea has trumpeted its long-range capabilities. Earlier this year, former North Korean military chief Ri Yong Ho bragged that the country was "armed with powerful modern weapons ... that can defeat the (U.S.) imperialists at a single blow."

Each advancement Pyongyang makes causes worry in Washington and among North Korea's neighbors. In 2010, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that within five years the North could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.

Wednesday's launch suggests the North is on track for that, said former U.S. defense official James Schoff, now an expert on East Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But he and other experts say the North must still surmount tough technical barriers to build the ultimate military threat: a sophisticated nuclear warhead small enough to mount on a long-range missile, something experts say will be the focus of future nuclear tests.

And despite Wednesday's launch, Pyongyang is also lacking the other key part of that equation: a credible long-range missile.

"If in the future they develop a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a rocket, they are not going to want to put that on a missile that has a high probability of exploding on the launch pad," David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists who has written extensively about North Korea's missile program, said in an email.

To create a credible missile program, experts say, North Korean technicians need to conduct many more tests that will allow them to iron out the wrinkles until they have a missile that works more often than it fails. Pyongyang's past tests have been somewhat scattershot, possibly because of the heavy international sanctions the rocket and nuclear tests have generated.

North Korea must build a larger missile than the one launched Wednesday if it wants to eventually carry nuclear weapons to distant targets, analysts said.

The satellite North Korea mounted on the rocket weighs only 100 kilograms (220 pounds), according to the office of South Korean lawmaker Jung Chung-rae, who was briefed by a senior South Korean intelligence official. A nuclear warhead would be about five times heavier.

Other missing parts of the puzzle include an accurate long-range missile guidance system and a re-entry vehicle able to survive coming back into the atmosphere at the high speeds ? 10,000 mph ? traveled by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Both are seen as being years off.

"Those are pretty serious tasks," Wright said.

History also shows that first-generation, long-range missiles need dozens of test flights before they are accurate enough to be deployed.

The world's "ICBM club" has just four countries: the United States, Russia, China and France, according to Markus Schiller, an analyst with Schmucker Technologie in Germany and a leading expert on North Korean missiles.

If North Korea "really intended to become a player in the ICBM game, they would have to develop a different kind of missile, with higher performance," Schiller said. "And if they do that seriously, we would have to see flight tests every other month, over several years."

Wright said the Unha-3 rocket launched Wednesday has a potential range of 8,000 to 10,000 kilometers (4,970 to 6,210 miles), which could put Hawaii and the northwest coast of the mainland United States within range.

But even if North Korea builds a ballistic missile based on a liquid-fueled rocket like the 32-meter (105-foot)-tall Unha-3, it would take days to assemble and hours to fuel. That would make it vulnerable to attack in a pre-emptive airstrike. Solid-fueled missiles developed by the U.S. and Soviet Union are more mobile, more easily concealed and ready to launch within minutes.

But Victor Cha, a former White House director for Asia policy, warned there has been an unspoken tendency in the United States to regard North Korea as a technologically backward and bizarre country, underestimating the strategic threat it poses.

"This is no longer acceptable," he wrote in a commentary.

Money, however, is another problem for Pyongyang. A weak economy, chronic food shortages and the sanctions make it difficult to sustain a program that can build and operate reliable missiles.

"I don't think the young leader (Kim Jong Un) has any confidence that the home economy could afford a credible deterrent capability," said Zhu Feng, deputy director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.

Zhu said Pyongyang's recent launch was a negotiating chip, not an immediate threat. He said it was intended to stoke tensions abroad in order to improve Pyongyang's position in future international negotiations.

Weeden said North Korea may want to create the perception that it poses a threat to the United States, but is not likely to go further than that.

"I expect North Korea to milk this situation for everything they can get," he said. "But I don't think that perception will be matched by the actual hard work and testing needed to develop and field a reliable, effective weapon system like the ICBMs deployed by the US, Russia and China."

North Korea already poses a major security threat to its East Asian neighbors. It has one of the world's largest standing armies and a formidable if aging arsenal of artillery that could target Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Nearly 30,000 U.S. forces are based in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice, not a formal peace treaty.

The North's short-range rockets could also potentially target another core U.S. ally, Japan.

Darryl Kimball, executive director of the nongovernmental Arms Control Association, said those capabilities, rather than the North's future ability to strike the U.S., still warrant the most attention.

___

Matthew Pennington reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Alexa Olesen in Beijing contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nkorea-still-years-away-credible-missiles-115038751.html

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Russia says Syrian rebels might win; car bomb kills 16

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia's deputy foreign minister said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad.

"One must look the facts in the face," Russia's state-run RIA quoted Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. "Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out."

Bogdanov, who is Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, said the Syrian government was "losing control of more and more territory" and that Moscow was preparing plans to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.

Advancing rebels now hold an almost continuous arc of territory from the east to the southeast of Damascus, despite fierce army bombardments designed to drive them back.

A car bomb killed at least 16 men, women and children in Qatana, a town about 25 km (15 miles) southwest of Damascus where many soldiers live, activists and state media said.

The explosion occurred in a residential area for soldiers in Qatana, which is near several army bases, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He put the death toll as 17, including seven children and two women. State news agency SANA said 16 people had died.

State television blamed the blast on "terrorists" - its term for rebels - and showed footage of soldiers walking by a partly collapsed building, with rubble and twisted metal on the road.

The attack follows three bombs at the Interior Ministry on Wednesday evening, in which state news agency SANA said five people were killed, including Abdullah Kayrouz, a member of parliament from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

Apart from gaining territory in the outskirts of Damascus in recent weeks, rebels have also made hit-and-run attacks or set off bombs within the capital, often targeting state security buildings or areas seen as loyal to Assad, such as Jaramana, where twin bombs killed 34 people in November.

BACK TO THE WALL

Insurgents launched an offensive on Damascus after a July 18 bombing that killed four of Assad's closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, but were later pushed back.

With his back to the wall, Assad is reported to be turning ever deadlier weapons on his adversaries.

U.S. NATO officials said on Wednesday that the Syrian military had fired Scud-style ballistic missiles, which are powerful but not very accurate, against rebels in recent days.

Human Rights Watch said some populated areas had been hit by incendiary bombs, containing flammable materials such as napalm, thermite or white phosphorous, which can set fire to buildings or cause severe burns and respiratory damage.

The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes were bombing rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.

The United States, European powers and Arab states bestowed their official blessing on Syria's newly-formed opposition coalition on Wednesday, despite increasing signs of Western unease at the rise of militant Islamists in the rebel ranks.

Western nations at "Friends of Syria" talks in Marrakech, Morocco rallied around a new opposition National Coalition formed last month under moderate Islamist cleric Mouaz Alkhatib.

Russia, which along with China has blocked any U.N. Security Council measures against Assad, criticized Washington's decision to grant the coalition formal recognition, saying it appeared to have abandoned any effort to reach a political solution.

Bogdanov's remarks were the clearest sign yet that Russia is preparing for the possible defeat of Assad's government.

"We are dealing with issues of preparations for an evacuation. We have mobilization plans and are clarifying where our citizens are located," Bogdanov said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-says-syrian-rebels-might-win-car-bomb-111631714.html

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Personal Finance Daily: 10 years of stupid investments - eWallstreeter

From: MarketWatch.com - Top Stories - 2:44pm - December 13, 2012

Columnist Chuck Jaffe has been writing his Stupid Investment of the Week column for nearly 10 years, and as the column ends its run he?s compiled a list of some of his favorite stupid investments. Read that and more in today?s Personal Finance Daily.

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Source: http://ewallstreeter.com/personal-finance-daily-years-of-stupid-investments-5048/

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How to get started with Passbook on your iPhone

How to get started with Passbook on your iPhone

Passbook is a great way to store loyalty cards, flight information, coupons, gift cards, and members cards right on your iPhone. Many participating merchants will even scan your iPhone in order to take payment or redeem points. As long as you've got iOS 6 or higher on your iPhone, you've got Passbook.

Follow along and we'll get you set up and utilizing Passbook in no time.

How to add cards and other items to Passbook

There are many apps in the App Store that already support Passbook. They aren't always loyalty cards or gift cards either. Airlines such as American Airlines and United allow you to store boarding passes in Passbook while Klout allows you to view your score in one place without ever having to open the actual app.

The process for adding cards may differ from app to app depending on how the developer chose to implement Passbook. For this example, we're going to use Starbucks app.

  1. Launch the Passbook supported app of your choice, in this case, Starbucks.
  2. Somewhere within the app there should be settings for Passbook. In this case, I can tap on the Manage button underneath the myCard tab.
  • Now tap the Manage button.
  • Tap on Add Card to Passbook.
  • The app should show you a preview of your card. In this instance, I tap Add in the top right corner.
  • That's it, I can open the Passbook app in order to confirm that the card is there and ready for use.
  • How to access your items in Passbook

    1. Launch the Passbook app from the Home screen of your iPhone.
  • Here you will see any card you've added to Passbook. Simply tap on the card you'd like to view or use.
  • Once you are done using that card you can either tap the Home button to exit out of Passbook, tap it again to return it to your Passbook stack or swipe downwards. Any of these gestures will return you to the main Passbook screen.
  • How to refresh items in your Passbook

    Every one in a while apps don't refresh as often as we'd like in Passbook so if you don't think your balance or point value is right, you can manually refresh that card on your own.

    1. Launch the Passbook app from the Home screen of your iPhone.
  • Tap into the card you'd like to refresh.
  • Tap the small info button in the bottom right hand corner of the card.
  • The card will turn over to reveal some information. This may vary from card to card but across all cards you can see the last time it was updated at the very top.
  • To refresh it manually just pull down and release on the screen in order to update the card yourself.
  • Tap the Done button in the upper right hand corner to flip the card back over.
  • The data on your card should now be updated.
  • How to delete items and cards from Passbook

    Things that expire such as coupons are probably something you'll want to delete on a regular basis so they don't clutter up your Passbook app. It's very simple to delete a card from inside Passbook itself.

    1. Launch the Passbook app from the Home screen of your iPhone.
  • Tap into the card you'd like to delete from the main screen.
  • Tap the small info button in the bottom right hand corner of the card.
  • Tap on the trash icon in the upper right hand corner.
  • Confirm that you want to delete the card by tapping on Delete.
  • Passbook will now run the card through a virtual shredder and delete it from Passbook.
  • Need help finding Passbook apps?

    We all know Apple's list of Passbook apps on the App Store is nowhere near complete. Our forum members have found quite a few Passbook compatible apps that you may want to check out. Hit the link below for some new ideas and as always, leave anything interesting you find either in the forums or in the comments below!

    Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/AtUggl5ksAk/story01.htm

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