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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Cyprus leader says EU bailout deal could come in 'next few hours'

Protesters in Cyprus gather outside parliament as government officials try to strike a bailout deal with the European Union. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

By Michele Kambas and Lidia Kelly, Reuters

A solution to Cyprus' bailout crisis within the framework set down by the European Union may be possible within "the next few hours," the deputy leader of the island's ruling Democratic Rally party said on Friday.

"There is cautious optimism that in the next few hours we may be able to reach an agreed platform so parliament can approve these specific measures which will be consistent with the approach, the framework and the targets agreed at the last Eurogroup," Averof Neophytou told reporters.?

The lines at bank cash machines in Cyprus are growing longer and in some cases angrier. The European Central Bank has given the island's government until Monday to find its six billion euro share of the bailout or - it says - it'll pull the plug on the rest of the cash and banks will face collapse. The banks themselves remain closed. Faisal Islam of Channel Four Europe reports.

The news came hours after the Cypriot finance minister left Moscow empty-handed when Russia turned down appeals for aid, leaving the island to strike a bailout deal with the EU before Tuesday or face the collapse of its financial system.

The rebuff left Cyprus looking increasingly isolated, with the deadline looming to find billions of euros demanded by the EU in return for a 10 billion euro ($12.93 billion) bailout.

Without it, the European Central Bank said on Wednesday it would cut off emergency funds to the country's teetering banks, potentially pushing Cyprus out of Europe's single currency.

"The talks have ended as far as the Russian side is concerned," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told reporters after two days of crisis talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Michael Sarris.

Having angrily rejected a proposed levy on tax deposits in exchange for the EU bailout, Nicosia had turned to the Kremlin to renegotiate a loan deal, win more financing and lure Russian investors to cut-price Cypriot banks and gas reserves.

Wealthy Russians have billions of euros at stake in Cyprus's outsized and now crippled banking sector.

Banks are closed on Cyprus but the ATM's are still dispensing cash as the government tries to avert a financial crisis. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

But Siluanov said Russian investors were not interested in Cypriot gas and that the talks had ended without result.

Sarris was due to fly home, where lawmakers were preparing to debate measures proposed by the government to raise at least some of the 5.8 billion euros ($7.48 billion) required to clinch the EU bailout.

They included a "solidarity fund" bundling state assets, including future gas revenues and nationalized pension funds, as the basis for an emergency bond issue and likened by JP Morgan to "a national fire sale".

They were also considering a bank restructuring bill that officials said would see the country's second largest lender, Cyprus Popular Bank, split into good and bad assets, and a government call for the power to impose capital controls to stem a flood of funds leaving the island when banks reopen on Tuesday after a week-long shutdown.

'Playing with fire'
There was no silver bullet, however, and Cyprus's partners in the 17-nation currency bloc were growing increasingly unimpressed.

To help pay for the $13 billion European bailout, the government plans to take up to 10 percent from all savings accounts, angering those who say they aren't responsible for the economic crisis. CNBC's Sue Herera reports.

"I still believe we will get a settlement, but Cyprus is playing with fire," Volker Kauder, a leading conservative ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told public television ARD.

There were long lines at ATMs on Thursday and angry scenes outside parliament, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered after rumors spread that Popular Bank would be closed down and its staff laid off.

"We have children studying abroad, and next month we need to send them money," protester Stalou Christodoulido said through tears. "We'll lose what money we had and saved for so many years if the bank goes down."

Cypriots have been stunned by the pace of the unfolding drama, having elected conservative President Nicos Anastasiades barely a month ago on a mandate to secure a bailout. News that the deal would involve a levy on bank deposits, even for smaller savers, outraged Cypriots, who raided cash machines last weekend.

Related:

EU to Cypriots: Let us raid your savings or no bailout

Cyprus bailout backlash poses little wider risk - for now

Full business coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:02 AM EDT

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/29dfd6f8/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C220C174126310Ecyprus0Eleader0Esays0Eeu0Ebailout0Edeal0Ecould0Ecome0Ein0Enext0Efew0Ehours0Dlite/story01.htm

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Himalayan Adventure Foretells Climate's Effects

NEW YORK ? The distribution of water in Asia's highest mountains and driest deserts tells an important story of climate change.

Almost half the world's population gets its water from glacier melt and rainfall in the Himalayas and other lofty peaks, yet little is understood about how climate change will affect these water sources. Now, using sophisticated technology and old-fashioned fieldwork, scientists are looking into the past to solve this mystery.

"We're trying to understand the relationships between climate and glaciers and Earth's water resources from the perspective of Earth's paleoclimate," geologist Aaron Putnam of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory said in a talk at the Columbic Club in New York on March 12. He described his recent expeditions along the Silk Road, from the Tien Shan Mountains to the Taklamakan Desert to the Bhutanese Himalayas.

Tien Shan Mountains

Putnam and colleagues set out in 2010 to the Tarim Basin in Northwest China, right in the center of Asia. Within the Tien Shan Mountains, a range that extends some 1,740 miles (2,800 kilometers), the scientists studied masses of soil and rock debris built up by glaciers, called moraines, which held clues to the past climate. [Stunning Scenes: From the Himalayas to the Taklamakan Desert]

To determine the ages of the moraines, the researchers used a technique known as beryllium-10 exposure dating. Cosmic radiation constantly bombards the Earth's surface, changing the form of some of the elements, like beryllium, in rocks. Based on these changes, the scientists could determine how long the moraines had been there, which allowed researchers to reconstruct the glaciers' past positions. "We can see what the ice looked like and know exactly when the ice was there," Putnam said.

Deep in the desert

Next, Putnam and colleagues ventured to the Taklamakan Desert. New roads have made the desert accessible, "so we were able to access lands people had died trying to visit even a decade ago," Putnam said. He described the area as a parched, desolate landscape with endless expanses of sand dunes.

As the researchers trekked through the desert, they noticed silts, mud cracks, remnants of trees, even shells ? all telltale signs of water. To find out when this wet period took place, the scientists used radiocarbon dating, a technique that measures the ratio of different forms of carbon to find an object's age. The scientists also used dendrochronology, a method of determining trees' ages based on their growth rings. The results suggested the wet period occurred from the mid-1100s to the late 1800s.

Putnam and his team then traveled to the easternmost part of the desert to an enormous dry lakebed called Lop Nor. They did radiocarbon dating of shells on the lake's shoreline, finding the shells' ages matched those of the other samples from formerly wet areas. That span of time, from the 12th century to the 19th century, was a cold period in North Atlantic regions. "When it got cold in the North Atlantic, it got wet in the mid-latitude desert regions," Putnam said.

The onset of wet conditions in the Taklamakan Desert corresponds with the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongols relied heavily on horses, which would have needed lots of grass to eat. Putnam and his team think the wetting of the desert allowed grasslands to expand, enabling the Mongols to spread throughout Asia. [10 Surprising Ways Weather Changed History]

Atop the Himalayas

Next, Putnam and his colleagues headed south to the Himalayas of Bhutan, an area swept by the monsoon. "We don't know how the monsoon will affect glacier behavior in the Himalayas," Putnam said, adding, "We just needed to go there and use good old-fashioned fieldwork to figure it out." The team made a six-day trek to their study site, a glacier-laden plateau.

The journey wasn't easy; it took 25 horses and mules to carry all of the supplies from the deep jungles up to the icy peaks. The team hiked over 15,400-foot-high (4,700 meters) mountain passes, home to creatures like the Himalayan blue sheep, or bharal.

Finally, the team crested Bhutan's Rinchen Zoe plateau. They ventured out onto the glaciers and took ice sample to measure the amount of melt. The scientists used the same beryllium dating method as before to determine the age of the glacial deposits, work that is currently in progress. The team had to leave before the snows came with the approaching winter.

Though the scientists haven't finished their analysis yet, it's clear that the glaciers have substantially receded over the last century, Putnam said, and this will have an impact on the many people who depend on the mountains for water.

With the current global warming trend, Putnam expects to see a northward expansion of the deserts. The insights gained on these expeditions were only possible through fieldwork, Putnam said. "In my opinion, there's no substitute for collecting fundamental data from the natural world," he said.

Follow Tanya Lewis @tanyalewis314. Follow us @livescience, Facebook or Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/himalayan-adventure-foretells-climates-effects-122414311.html

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Pain reliever shows anti-viral activity against flu

Friday, March 22, 2013

The over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drug naproxen may also exhibit antiviral activity against influenza A virus, according to a team of French scientists. The finding, the result of a structure-based investigation, is published online ahead of print in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

New influenza vaccines must be developed annually, because the surface proteins they target mutate rapidly, the way cars used to get a whole new look every year. The researchers, led by Anny Slama-Schwok of the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, Jouy en Josas, France, found a much more stable, reliable target for anti-influenza activity. The so-called ribonucleoprotein complexes are necessary for replication, and the researchers realized they could target the nucleoprotein, preventing assembly of the complexes. Because of its vital function, the nucleoprotein is highly conserved, making it a good potential target for antiviral drugs.

The nucleoprotein's three dimensional structure, solved in 2006, provided the basis for searching for new drugs that could interfere with its action. The researchers did a virtual screening within the Sigma-Aldrich online catalog of biochemicals. That screening identified Naproxen, better known as the over-the-counter pain reliever Aleve, and as expected, it bound to the nucleoprotein, and impeded RNA binding, says Slama-Schwok. In further testing, it reduced the viral load in cells infected with H1N1 and H3N2 influenza A virus, and in mice it demonstrated a therapeutic index against influenza A that was superior to that of any other anti-inflammatory drug.

Specifically, naproxen blocks the RNA binding groove of the nucleoprotein, preventing formation of the ribonucleoprotein complex, thus taking the vital nucleoproteins out of circulation. The researchers write that naproxen is a lead compound for drug development that could be improved by tweaking the molecule to boost its ability to bind to nucleoprotein.

As an already approved drug, naproxen could become a treatment against influenza relatively quickly, the researchers write. Its status as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), which inhibits the COX-2 pathway, as well as an antiviral would boost its efficacy.

###

N. Lejal, B. Tarus, E. Bouguyon, S. Chenavas, N. Bertho, B. Delmas, R.W.H. Ruigrok, C. Di Primo, A. Slama-Schwok, 2013. Structure-based discovery of the novel antibviral properties of Naproxen against the nucleoprotein of influenza A virus. Antim. Agents Chemother. Online ahead of print 4 March 2013 ,doi:10.1128/AAC.02335-12

American Society for Microbiology: http://www.asm.org

Thanks to American Society for Microbiology 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/127405/Pain_reliever_shows_anti_viral_activity_against_flu

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Friday, March 22, 2013

Pretty kitty contest raises money for humane society - Sedona Red ...

Written by Kellie Shelton ?? Thursday, 21 March 2013 15:50

You may have seen Joshua Snow as he stretches his neck so the wind can hit his face while riding through Sedona on the trolley, or maybe you have seen him strutting around art galleries indifferent to all the attention his loyal fans bestow upon him.

Sedona?s famous cat Joshua Snow poses Friday, March 15, in Sedona for the Humane Society of Sedona?s 2014 Woof N Purr Calendar. The Humane Society will have calenders for both cats and dogs. The deadline to submit photos of your pet is Sunday, June 30. Who is this local celebrity? None other than Joshua Snow, a 15-year-old Persian cat. Joshua has had his picture taken with more than 50 Sedona artists. In addition to his fame in Sedona, Joshua has also had experience working as a therapy cat in California at a state hospital one day each month.

?Joshua is such a well-behaved cat. He is even invited into the glass gallery,? his owner and Sedona resident Carol Gandolfo said. To say Gandolfo is a cat lover would be an understatement. This becomes apparent as one watches her feed her cat baby food with a silver spoon.? Five other Persian cats ranging in age and color meander around the Italian-style home curious as to why Joshua is getting so much recent attention.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, March 20, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.

Source: http://www.redrocknews.com/News/pretty-kitty-contest-raises-money-for-humane-society.html

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PFT: Chiefs want?2 picks for Albert? |? Scout Joeckel

Getty Images

Several weeks ago, we began to catch wind of a plan to delay the payment of so-called performance-based pay to NFL players. ?As it was initially explained, the move arises from efforts to pump up the salary cap.

Now, it?s being sold as a way to protect players from themselves, financially.

NFLPA spokesman George Atallah previously has acknowledged that the two-year delay will happen with the 2013 performance-based bay, for cap purposes. ?According to Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com, the performance-based pay of all players?will be held in escrow for two years ? in every remaining year of the CBA.

For clarity, the term ?performance-based pay? relates to one specific benefit, paid to players based on their playing time in relation to their compensation. ?A low-paid player who plays a lot, for example, gets a big check, like Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict, who went from undrafted to starting lineup. ?The term does not include incentives or contractual bonuses.

Freeman calls it a ?controversial and still hotly debated move? within the NFLPA, which resulted from an ?extremely close? vote of the union?s player representatives at their annual meeting earlier this month. ?The most surprising aspect of the move, from our perspective, is that it?s now apparently being characterized not as a shell game aimed at ensuring the salary cap will remain at desired levels while keeping earned money out of the players? hands for two years, but as a way to protect players from themselves.

It?s fitting, we suppose, given that the NFL has spent so much time over the past several years protecting players from themselves on the field. ?Now, the union can protect players from themselves off the field.

But that?s not fair to the guys who don?t take out $300,000 loans to throw birthday parties for themselves. ?That?s money that can be invested by the players who earned it. ?And if the players choose to make it rain or take it to the tables or light it all on fire and watch it burn, that?s their business.

The inalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness necessarily includes a right to squander life, liberty, and/or happiness. ?Freedom includes the freedom to screw up, and when a group of men are being treated like children, that?s not good for anybody.

Then again, it?s possible that it?s all just clumsy cover for an effort to prop up the salary cap by keeping player money from the players on a two-year rolling basis. ?Regardless of the real reason, no union should be taking its members? money and putting it in a jar for two years, two months, two weeks, two days, or even two minutes.

Especially if the members don?t want that to happen.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/22/chiefs-want-more-than-a-second-round-pick-for-branden-albert/related/

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Tree Obama Planted in Jerusalem May Be Uprooted for Inspection

It's an old gospel song: Just like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved. But if you're the magnolia tree the president of the United States planted today in Jerusalem, there's a chance you might be moved.

Obama planted a tree on Wednesday in Israeli President Shimon Peres's Jerusalem garden. It's a gift for a man Obama said has planted "the seeds of progress, the seeds of security, the seeds of peace - all the seeds that have helped not only Israel grow but also the relationship between our two nations grow."

The tree was meant to signify the strong roots of the relationship between the United States and Israel. But before these American roots can take hold, the Israeli government will inspect them.

An Israeli official tells ABC News that the magnolia tree will be tested and possibly removed in a week by the Israeli Agriculture Department. The roots of the tree were apparently kept in a plastic covering during the planting. As in the U.S., Israeli law forbids plants and trees from other countries from entering Israel. The White House and the Israeli government were aware of the limitations ahead of the visit.

A White House official confirms that the tree given to Peres was grown from a set of seeds from the original Jackson Magnolia alongside the Rose Garden on the South Lawn of the White House. It was planted in the 1830s by President Andrew Jackson. An official says it is the oldest known presidential tree on the grounds of the White House.

During remarks at Peres's official residence, Obama mentioned the story in the Talmud of Honi and the Carob Tree: A man sees an older man planting a carob tree and tells him that it will take 70 years before the tree grows fruit. Obama told the crowd the older man's reply: "When I came into the world, I found carob trees. As my forefathers planted for me, so will I plant for my children."

There's good news for Obama's magnolia tree: If removed for testing, it is expected to be replanted in the same spot. It's currently near a tree given by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI during his May 2009 trip to the Holy Land. An Israeli official says Benedict's tree didn't undergo any testing because it was purchased in Israel.