Thursday, April 25, 2013

WHO: New flu passes more easily from bird to human

BEIJING (AP) ? A new strain of bird flu that emerged in China over the past month is one of the "most lethal" flu viruses so far, worrying health officials because it can jump more easily from birds to humans than the one that started killing people a decade ago, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.

Scientists are watching the virus closely to see if it could spark a global pandemic but say there is little evidence so far that it can spread easily from human to human.

WHO's top influenza expert, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that people seem to catch the H7N9 virus from birds more easily than the H5N1 strain that began ravaging poultry across Asia in 2003. The H5N1 strain has since killed 360 people worldwide, mostly after contact with infected fowl.

Health experts are concerned about H7N9's ability to jump to humans, and about the strain's capacity to infect birds without causing noticeable symptoms, which makes it difficult to monitor its spread.

"This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses we have seen so far," Fukuda said. But he added that experts are still trying to understand the virus, and that there might be a large number of mild infections that are going undetected.

The H7N9 bird flu virus has infected more than 100 people in China, seriously sickening most of them and killing more than 20, mostly near the eastern coast around Shanghai. Taiwan on Wednesday confirmed its first case, a 53-year-old man who became sick after returning from a visit to the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu.

In comparison, the earlier bird flu strain, H5N1, is known to kill up to 60 of every 100 people it infects.

Wednesday's briefing came at the end of a weeklong joint investigation by WHO and Chinese authorities in Beijing and Shanghai.

Experts said they still aren't sure how people are getting infected but said evidence points to infections at live poultry markets, particularly through ducks and chickens. They said it was encouraging that reported infections appeared to slow down after the closure of live poultry markets in affected areas.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flu-passes-more-easily-bird-human-073635353.html

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U.S. had more tips on Boston suspect; Congress asks questions

By Patricia Zengerle, Samuel P. Jacobs and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON/CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence was alerted when one of the Boston bombing suspects traveled to a volatile region of Russia last year, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, raising new questions about the government's handling of the case and how well law enforcement agencies share information and cooperate with one another.

The trip by the suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to southern Russia has come under scrutiny over whether he became involved with or was influenced by Chechen separatists or Islamic militants there, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Russia, which tipped off the FBI in early 2011 with concerns that Tsarnaev may have been a radical Islamist, made a second, identical request to the CIA in late September of the same year, they said. The FBI interviewed Tsarnaev following the first tip and found no serious threat.

Police say the ethnic Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted and detonated two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police four days later, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was wounded and captured. He is hospitalized in fair condition and charged with two crimes that carry the possibility of the death penalty.

The disclosure of the second warning from the Russians raised questions about whether the CIA and the FBI failed to share the information, even after reforms enacted to prevent information-hoarding following the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks.

"That's something that we have to look at," said Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "That's one of the key things that we have learned and need to work on to make sure it doesn't happen again, and that is simultaneous communication to all the relevant agencies when a warning is posted."

The two bombs in Boston were detonated with the kind of remote device used to control a toy car, U.S. investigators said in a briefing to a House of Representatives panel on Wednesday.

The briefing by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that the two brothers apparently became radicalized by anti-U.S. information on the Internet, members of Congress said.

"It looks like they built their bomb based on Inspire magazine and the article said how to build a bomb in mom's kitchen," said Representative Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The online magazine Inspire, circulated by Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, publishes English-language exhortations to would-be Western jihadists to carry out attacks with whatever means they have at hand. It recently published detailed instructions on how to build homemade devices.

"The younger bomber in whatever type of communication he's using said that's where they got the instruction to build the bomb," Ruppersberger said.

NEW KIND OF THREAT

Authorities say attention has focused on the elder brother as the driving force behind the bombings. As part of the FBI's probe in 2011, his name had been entered into a U.S. Customs and Border Protection database known as TECS.

U.S. officials said that when he left the United States for a six-month stay in Russia in January 2012, the TECS database sent an alert to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, a multi-agency FBI-led body in Boston.

It remains unclear what investigators did with the information.

Ruppersberger said the FBI went back to the Russians repeatedly seeking more information but got no response.

"They followed through the protocols that were necessary once they got that information, but then they got no other information from the Russians," he said.

Adam Schiff, a California Democrat on the House committee, said he felt the inquiries from the Russians "were appropriately followed up upon."

"Our agencies get thousands and thousands of leads like we did from the Russians," he said, noting that some are efforts by foreign governments to go after political dissidents.

Schiff said the Boston bombings posed a new kind of threat to the United States, "where we're now facing more what Europe has faced, with an alienation of part of the immigration population and self-radicalization.

"That's a different challenge than those that are trained overseas or receive material support from overseas and come here to attack us, and I think that will cause us to do some things differently," he said.

WHO IS MISHA?

The briefing indicated that some of the elder brother's dissatisfaction may have stemmed from the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ruppersberger said.

A man who said he was the brothers' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said a man he knew only as Misha had influenced Tamerlan Tsarnaev's deepening interest in Islam.

Standing at the door of his home in Montgomery Village, Maryland, Tsarni said he first heard of Misha, whom he described as of Armenian descent, in 2009.

Misha was "working with Tamerlan, pulling him into Islam, introducing him into Islam in such a way that the guy in a short time quit what he was doing," he said. "He quit boxing, he quit music."

"It seems like, what we heard, Tamerlan had been quite occupied with him," Tsarni said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators that he and his brother acted without assistance from any foreign or domestic militant groups, according to members of Congress briefed by law enforcement.

"That basically seems to be the story, but I don't see how we can accept that," Representative Peter King, a New York Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, told CNN.

"It may end up being the truth but ... I don't see why he would be giving up any accomplices he may have or talking about any connections his brother may have had in Chechnya or Russia," King said on Wednesday.

Vice President Joe Biden and law enforcement agents from around the United States attended a memorial at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a university police officer who authorities say was shot dead by the Tsarnaev brothers on Thursday night.

Sean Collier, 26, was killed about five hours after the FBI released pictures of the two suspects, asking for the public's help in tracking them down.

Biden called the prestigious university a symbol of what Islamic extremists oppose.

"You are their worst nightmare," Biden said. "All of these things these perverted jihadis, self-made or organized, all the things they fear."

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Washington and Ian Simpson in Montgomery Village, Maryland; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-had-more-tips-boston-suspect-congress-asks-000005101.html

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Immigration Act: Dream Or Nightmare? (Powerlineblog)

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EV Grieve: Citi Bikes docking stations arrive at NYU

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Have a story idea or tip about something happening in the East Village? Or maybe a photo? Or several photos? Or video! We'd love to hear about it. Or see it. Or something. Please go here to submit a tip.

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Here, you'll find things that you may or may not be interested in about the East Village and other parts of New York City. Appreciating what's here while it's still here. Remembering what's no longer here. Wishing some things weren't here that are here.

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Source: http://evgrieve.com/2013/04/citi-bikes-docking-stations-arrive-at.html

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

ZTE licenses Microsoft's Android-related patents

ZTE licenses Microsoft's Android-related patents

Just last week Microsoft added Foxconn's parent company to its growing list of licensees for patents it asserts are key to Android, and now ZTE has inked a deal with Ballmer and Co. as well. Now that the pact is in place, Microsoft says it's struck patent accords with roughly 20 hardware makers, and that 60 percent of phones sold with Google's open source OS are covered by such licenses. With HTC and LG already paying Redmond royalties for devices using Android, that leaves the likes of Google, Motorola and Huawei as the odd manufacturers out. If Motorola has its way, however, that won't change.

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Source: Reuters

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/23/zte-licenses-microsofts-android-related-patents/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Cosmo is thinking inside the big box

Cosmo is thinking inside the big box

We love Angie!

Angie Bailey is a Minnesota writer, cat fancier, word game junkie, creative-project dabbler, music lover, food enthusiast, wife, and mother to two humans and three cats.?She is also the co-creator, co-writer, and performer in a sketch comedy web series called 82 South St.?http://www.82southst.com/.?She spends most of her days enjoying her family, scribbling for her cat humor blog,Catladyland, playing Scrabble, laughing at her cats? shenanigans, and finding the silliness in most everything.

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Rep. Hoyer: Boston attack has no relevance to immigration debate

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The Boston Marathon bombings allegedly carried out by legal immigrants from Eastern Europe do not have "any relevance" to the ongoing debate over how to overhaul the nation's immigration system, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland, said on Tuesday.

"Those that try to make a connection between the two are not right," Hoyer told reporters during a weekly briefing

After two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon last week, some Republicans called for delaying movement on the new federal immigration bill that a bipartisan group of senators unveiled on Wednesday morning.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently conducting a series of hearings about the bill to examine how it will affect the economy, border enforcement and immigrants living illegally in the United States. During one of those hearings on Monday, a discussion over whether the bombings should influence the immigration bill's progress became heated when New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer claimed some were using the attack as "an excuse" to derail the bill. Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the committee chairman, also suggested that it would be "cruel" to cite the bombings as a reason to vote against immigration reform.

Hoyer said Leahy was "absolutely right" in condemning those who use the bombings to delay the bill. He added that lawmakers, however, could examine how the alleged suspects entered the country and obtained citizenship for guidance on how to make the bill stronger.

"We can learn some lessons as we look at people for visas, for entry into the United States. If there are lessons to be learned, that's fine," he said. "But I don't think it has any relevance as it relates to the immigration reform that is critically necessary for our economy, for the welfare of our people."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/dem-whip-steny-hoyer-boston-bombing-no-relevance-184829918--politics.html

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