Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — A baby boy joined the ranks of Syria’s tens of thousands of war wounded when a missile fired by Bashar Assad‘s air force slammed into his family home and shrapnel pierced his skull.

Four-month-old Fahed Darwish suffered brain damage and, like thousands of others seriously hurt in the civil war, he will likely need care well after the fighting is over. That’s something doctors say a post-conflict Syria won’t be able to provide.

Making things worse, there has been a sharp spike in serious injuries since the summer, when the regime began bombing rebel-held areas from the air, and doctors say a majority of the wounded they now treat are civilians.

This week, Fahed was recovering from brain surgery in an intensive care unit, his head bandaged and his body under a heavy blanket, watched over by Mariam, his distraught 22-year-old mother.

She said that after her first-born is discharged from the hospital in Atmeh, a village in an area of relative safety near the Turkish border, they will have to return to their village in a war zone in central Syria.

“We have nowhere else to go,” she said.

Even for those who have escaped direct injury, the civil war is posing a mounting health threat. Half the country’s 88 public hospitals and nearly 200 clinics have been damaged or destroyed, the World Health Organization says, leaving many without access to health care. Diabetics can’t find insulin, kidney patients can’t reach dialysis centers. Towns are running out of water-purifying materials. Many of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting are exposed to the cold in tents or unheated public buildings.

“You are talking about a public health crisis on a grand scale,” said Dr. Abdalmajid Katranji, a hand and wrist surgeon from Lansing, Michigan, who regularly volunteers in Syria.

No one knows just how many people have been injured since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, starting out with peaceful protests that turned into an armed insurgency in response to a violent government crackdown.

More than 43,000 have been killed in the past 21 months, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, basing his count on names and details provided by activists in Syria. He said the number of wounded is so large he can only give a rough estimate, of more than 150,000.

Casualties began to rise dramatically at the start of the summer. At the time, the regime, its ground troops stretched thin, began bombing from the air to prevent opposition fighters from gaining more territory.

Seemingly random bombings have razed entire villages and neighborhoods, driving terrified civilians from their homes, with an estimated 3 million Syrians out of the country’s population of 23 million now displaced.

About 10 percent of the wounded suffer serious injuries and many of those will need long-term care and rehabilitation, said Dr. Omar Aswad of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, an umbrella for 14 aid groups.

This includes artificial limbs and follow-up surgery. “This is of course not available and will be one of the major (health) problems in the months right after the war,” said Mago Tarzian, emergency director for the Paris-based Doctors Without Borders.

For now, aid groups are struggling to provide even emergency treatment in under-equipped clinics.

The two dozen small hospitals and field clinics in rebel-run areas of Idlib province in the north only have a few Intensive Care Unit beds between them, said Aswad. None has a CT scanner, an important diagnostic tool.

“We need generators, we need medical supplies and the most pressing is medicine,” he said.

The challenge has been compounded by new types of injuries.

The regime has begun dropping incendiary bombs that can cause severe burns, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing amateur video and witness accounts.

Ole Solvang, a researcher for the group, said he saw remnants of such a bomb on a recent Syria trip. Aswad said doctors in Idlib and nearby Aleppo province reported seeing patients with burns from such weapons.

Doctors and hospitals have also been targeted. Aswad, who fled the city of Idlib in March after regime forces entered it, said five friends in a secret association of anti-regime physicians have been arrested. Hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been attacked, Solvang said, calling it “a worrying trend that makes the medical situation even worse.”

One of the bright spots is a 50-bed emergency care clinic set up six weeks ago in a former elementary school in Atmeh.

Largely funded by a wealthy Syrian expatriate, the Orient clinic, with five ICU beds, handles some of the most serious cases in a radius of some 150 kilometers (90 miles), said its director, orthopedic surgeon Abdel Hamid Dabbak.

In the past, seriously wounded patients had to go to Turkey, risking dangerous delays at the border, he said. Now, once patients are stabilized in Atmeh, they are sent to a sister clinic across the border for follow-up care.

In Orient’s ICU, a 24-year-old rebel fighter was breathing oxygen through a mask. He had been brought in a day earlier, bleeding heavily from stomach wounds and close to death, said Dr. Maen Martini, a volunteer physician from Joliet, Illinois. After surgery, he stabilized and was taken off a respirator. A delayed crossing into Turkey would have killed him, Martini said.

The fighter’s neighbor was little Fahed, whose house had been struck by a missile on Saturday in the village of Kafr Zeita in Hama province. “The roof collapsed on us,” his mother said of the attack. “We ran out … I saw him bleeding from his head, but it was just a small cut.”

The local clinic said the injury was more serious than it seemed and the family rushed to Atmeh, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north.

Since surgery, Fahed has been nursing and has moved his arms and legs, and the doctor is hoping for a near-complete recovery.

“Clinically, he has improved dramatically,” he said.

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Mission Impossible?: Can Tom Cruise Launch a Box-Office Franchise with ‘Jack Reacher’?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Paramount hopes it’s launching a franchise with “Jack Reacher,” the Tom Cruise action thriller that hits theaters Friday.

It will be tricky in a crowded holiday marketplace, and Cruise isn’t the box-office bonanza he once was. But one need only look back to last year’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” to see how it might work. That film opened to $ 12 million on December 16 and went on to make $ 209 million and nearly $ 700 million worldwide for Paramount.

“Jack Reacher” will be in about 3,200 theaters, and it will have plenty of competition. Universal’s Judd Apatow comedy “This Is 40″ opens wide Friday, and Paramount‘s ‘Guilt Trip” and Disney’s 3D re-release of “Monsters Inc.” opened Wednesday.

A slew of limited releases, led by Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” along with this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes “Amour,” and tsunami survival tale “The Impossible” are also competing for moviegoers’ attention, along with a number of holdover hits.

No movie, though, will come close to catching reigning box-office champ “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which remains in more than 4,000 theaters. Peter Jackson’s latest Middle-earth epic will take in north of $ 40 million, industry analysts say, with “Jack Reacher” and “This Is 40″ battling for second with less than half of that.

Warner Bros.’ “Hobbit” has rolled to $ 106 million in the U.S. since opening to $ 85 million last weekend. Its international total – $ 188 million as of Thursday – is even bigger.

In “Jack Reacher,” Cruise plays an ex-military investigator; the film is based on bestselling author Lee Child’s novel “One Shot” and written for the screen and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It’s from David Ellison’s Paramount-based Skydance Productions and was produced for about $ 60 million by Cruise, Don Granger, Paula Wagner and Gary Levinsohn.

Robert Duvall and Richard Jenkins co-star in the PG-13 crime thriller, which has a 53 percent positive rating at Movie Review Intelligence.

No is expecting “Jack Reacher” to match “MI:4″ at the box office. The Reacher novels have a following, but nowhere near that of the “Mission Impossible” franchise. Cruise’s recent box-office record has been uneven, and the film’s Facebook and Twitter activity is not particularly strong.

“Jack Reacher” could wind up playing more like Cruise’s “Knight and Day,” which opened to $ 20 million and went on to make $ 76 million for Fox in 2010, or “Valkyrie,” which did $ 83 million in 2008 after opening to $ 21 million. Cruise was critically lauded for his foray earlier this year as an aging rock icon in the musical “Rock of Ages,” but that was one of the year’s bigger box-office duds.

“Jack Reacher” should play strongly with action fans, but Cruise’s personal problems could limit its broader appeal.

“I can’t imagine his divorce from Katie Holmes and the custody battle hasn’t hurt him some with women,” BoxOffice.com vice president and chief analyst Phil Contrino told TheWrap Thursday. “Actions fans will come out, but going beyond that demographic is going to be tough for him.”

On the other hand, Universal says that it tracking suggests “This Is 40″ will do quite well with women — and women over 25 in particular.

“This Is 40,” is, as the marketing campaign points out, a “sort of sequel” to Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” which opened to $ 30 million and went on to make nearly $ 150 million five years ago. Like “This Is 40,” that one was written and directed by Apatow and starred Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann.

“40″ is the fourth film Apatow has directed, all for Universal (“Funny People” and “40-Year-Old Virgin” are the other two). The ensemble cast also features Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, Maude Apatow, Iris Apatow, Chris O’Dowd, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy and Lena Dunham.

It’s R-rated and has a 62 percent positive rating at Movie Review Intelligence. The production budget was $ 35 million.

“This looks like the strongest comedy of the season,” Jeff Bock, senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations told TheWrap, “but it’s still a bit of a wild card. It’s going to connect with the New York and L.A. crowds; the key will be whether the Heartland audiences embrace it or see it as a little too hip. It will take time to tell, because of the season.”

Films released at this time of year tend to open lower because the marketplace is so crowded – by Friday, 11 new films will have hit opened this week – and the fact that many potential moviegoers are districted by shopping and other holiday preps. On the other hand, they often show lasting power and make up what they don’t take in on the weekend with stronger showings on the weekdays.

“Things could well come in lower than people are expecting across the board this weekend,” Bock said, “but look for many of these movies to make it up over the holidays.”

Summit will be looking for that kind of slow build on “The Impossible,” the English-language film from Spain based on a true story about a family’s fight to survive the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, who received a Best Actress nomination from SAG recently, star.

Summit is releasing it Friday in 15 theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Toronto. The plan is to go nationwide early next year.

“The Impossible” already has taken in $ 52 million in Spain, the home of the real-life couple upon whom the story is based as well as director Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Orphanage”) and screenwriter Sergio Sanchez.

Other limited rollouts set for Friday include Paramount‘s 3D concert film “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away,” in 800 theaters; “On the Road,” IFC Films’ adaptation of the Jack Kerouac’s beat generation novel, in four theaters; and “Not Fade Away,” the Paramount Vantage tale of a group of 1960 New Jersey friends launching a rock band, written and directed by “Sopranos” creator David Chase, in three locations.

Sony’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, got off to a terrific start Wednesday. It racked up $ 124,848 from five theaters in its first day of release. That’s an average of $ 24,969, making it one of the biggest limited mid-week openings in history.

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New Whole Plant Therapy Shows Promise as an Effective and Economical Treatment for Malaria in Research Led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Research Published Today in PLOS ONE May Point the Way Toward a New Model for Malaria Treatment That Could Also Be a Socioeconomic Stimulus for Developing Nations.

Worcester, Mass. (PRWEB) December 20, 2012

In the worldwide battle to curtail malaria, one of the most prevalent and deadly infectious diseases of the developing world, drug after drug has fallen by the wayside as the malaria parasite has become resistant to it. Only artemisinin, derived from the sweet wormwood plant, Artemisia annua, remains as an effective treatment, but it is expensive to produce (particularly when combined with other antimalarial medications to make it less prone to resistance) and is frequently in short supply.

A new study by scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and the University of Massachusetts has shown that the powdered dried leaves from the Artemisia annua plant may be a far more effective antimalarial treatment than purified artemisinin, delivering 40 times more artemisinin to the blood and reducing the level of parasite infection more completely in mice. The effectiveness of the whole plant, versus the purified drug, may be due, in part, to the presence in Artemisia annua leaves of other compounds, including flavonoids also known to have antimalarial abilities, which may create a combination therapy that works synergistically to combat the parasite and ward off resistance.

These are some of the conclusions of a paper titled “Dried whole plant Artemisia annua as an antimalarial therapy,” published online today by the journal PLOS ONE (http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052746).

Using the dried whole plant, instead of purified artemisinin, could significantly lower the cost of treating malaria, since it would eliminate the need to extract the drug from the plant and purify it, and could greatly expand access to antimalarial therapy, according to Pamela Weathers, professor of biology and biotechnology at WPI and a co-author of the new study. “Artemisia can be grown readily in most climates,” she says. “It is a relatively simple process to harvest the leaves, pulverize them, test samples for their potency, measure out doses, and put them in capsules. This could become the basis for local businesses and be a wonderful socioeconomic stimulus in developing countries.”

Weathers has been studying the antimalarial abilities of Artemisia annua for more than two decades. She first described the efficacy of using of the whole plant as an antimalarial treatment in a 2011 paper published in Photochemistry Reviews. In the latest study, a high-yield cultivar of the plant developed in her lab was administered to mice by her team, led by Stephen Rich, a molecular parasitologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The effects of the whole plant therapy were compared to the effects of comparable doses of pure artemisinin.

The researchers found that mice receiving a dose of the dried leaves containing a low level of artemisinin showed a significantly greater reduction in blood-borne parasites over the course of 12 to 72 hours than mice receiving the same dose of the pure artemisinin drug. When plant material containing a high level of artemisinin was given to mice, the whole plant was as effective as a high dose of the drug in clearing parasites from the blood. Interestingly, plant material with a low level of artemisinin was as effective in killing parasites as a high dose of the drug, although its effects seemed to wane after 72 hours, suggesting that multiple doses would be necessary to fully treat a malarial infection.

Weathers says the effectiveness of the whole plant treatment seems to be due, in part, to the fact that artemisinin from the dried leaves enters the bloodstream far more readily than the pure drug. “In our 2011 study, we showed that it takes about 40 times less artemisinin to achieve a comparable blood serum level when the compound is administered in the form of the whole plant,” she says. “This is consistent with the results of earlier studies in which people consumed teas made from whole leaves from Artemisia annua.”

Weathers says the effectiveness of using the whole plant as a therapy is likely a product of the plant’s complex biochemistry. “The leaves of Artemisia contain a host of compounds that are of interest for their apparent but lesser antimalarial abilities,” she says. “These include at least six flavonoids that have been shown to work synergistically with artemisinin to kill malaria parasites. This makes the artemisia leaves a combination therapy all by themselves. In fact, we have referred to the whole plant as pACT (plant Artemisinin Combination Therapy), to distinguish it from the Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACT) that are now recommended for malaria treatment by the World Health Organization.

Artemisia annua is classified as a “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) herb that has been consumed by humans and used as an herbal therapy for thousands of years. Weathers says she has been actively working for several years to establish the foundation for a new model for using whole plant therapy to combat malaria. She said she envisions local operations where farmers would grow the high-producing cultivars of Artemisia she and others have developed as a supplemental crop and deliver the leaves to processing stations, where they would be dried, pulverized, and homogenized, and where the powder would be placed in capsules or compacted into tablets.

“By decentralizing the production of pACT, and giving local farmers and business people the opportunity to earn a living from producing it, we will not only make an effective therapy broadly available at an affordable price, we will help stimulate the economies of developing nations. It is exciting to be involved with a project that can be beneficial in so many ways.

“When you consider that artemisinin and some of the flavonoids in Artemisia annua have been to have a therapeutic effect against host of other diseases, including Leishmania, schistosomiasis, and other ailments that are serious health hazards in the developing world, the long-term possibilities of this research grow exponentially.”

This work was funded by the UMass Medical School Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

About Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Founded in 1865 in Worcester, Mass., WPI was one of the nation’s first engineering and technology universities. Its 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. WPI’s talented faculty work with students on interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to important and socially relevant problems in fields as diverse as the life sciences and bioengineering, energy, information security, materials processing, and robotics. Students also have the opportunity to make a difference to communities and organizations around the world through the university’s innovative Global Perspective Program. There are more than 30 WPI project centers throughout North America and Central America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

Contact:

Michael Dorsey, Director of Research Communications

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester, Massachusetts

508-831-5609, mwdorsey(at)wpi(dot)edu

# # #

Michael Dorsey
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
508-831-5609
Email Information

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Europe Needs Less Financial Integration, Not More

“More Europe” is always the solution when leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel talk about Europe’s slow-burning financial crisis. To qualify for emergency aid, they say, countries like Greece and Spain must surrender control of their banks and budgets to supra-national authorities. Another brick of the “more Europe” edifice was cemented into place on Dec. 13 when finance ministers of the 17-nation euro zone agreed to unified banking supervision under the European Central Bank. That’s a step toward a banking union, which is a step toward fiscal union, which is a step toward, someday, political union.

But it’s hard to see the way to a United States of Europe when every move in that direction has Europeans at each other’s throats. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Madrid and Barcelona on Dec. 17 in the latest demonstrations against austerity. Germans, meanwhile, complain that they’re being played for suckers by Spain and Greece. In a November poll, 46 percent of Germans favored letting Greece go bankrupt.

If ordinary Europeans balk at forming one happy family, must Europe disintegrate? Or is there a middle ground that would retain many of the advantages of unity while dodging the parts that make everybody mad? The coming year may answer the question of whether Euro Lite is a way out for the union or another false hope.

Some analysts argue that stopping short of full financial integration could make Europe more stable, not less. Avinash Persaud, chairman of Intelligence Capital Limited, a London-based financial adviser, says the real problem regulators need to address is controlling the booms rather than cleaning up after the busts. National regulators, he argues, might do a better job than a single, Europe-wide regulator of stopping excessive lending in one part of Europe. They weren’t vigilant enough in the last bubble, but Persaud is concerned that the European Central Bank will do worse. Its job is to promote commonality, making it “inherently averse” to enforcing tougher lending criteria in boom countries, he says. “Banks would pounce on rules limiting their lending in booming countries, accusing the regulator of fragmenting the single market,” Persaud said in an e-mail message. “The reins holding back the booms, already too loose, have just been loosened further” by the creation of a single banking supervisor, Persaud writes in an as-yet-unpublished article. “The euro,” Persaud says, “needs to be saved from the Europhiles.”

Another “less Europe” proposal would introduce national currencies alongside the euro. Mazen Skaf, a partner and managing director in the consulting firm Strategic Decisions Group, argues in a new white paper that nations such as Greece and Spain should have the option to issue new currencies for domestic transactions, including payment of salaries and benefits. Through a controlled depreciation, the nation’s labor and pension costs would fall. External debts would still be in euros. The plan would give countries “maneuvering space to drive monetary and fiscal policy on a local basis,” Skaf argues.

None of this is easy. Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies financial crises, says investors would regard the partial reintroduction of national currencies as a prelude to leaving the euro entirely—and yank their money out. He’s also skeptical of Persaud’s national-level regulation. He says a single bank supervisor would do a better job of spotting cross-border problems, such as the inflating of Spain’s and Greece’s bubbles by loans from German banks.

Finding the right balance between national sovereignty and a tighter union for Europe is the trick. Take banking regulation. Once the euro was introduced, a banking union with a lender of last resort became the logical next step: National central banks can’t bail out their economies once they don’t have their own currencies to lend. But Merkel and the Germans won’t go along with a bank bailout mechanism financed by euro-zone governments unless there’s fiscal union—i.e., shared budgets. Right now Europe is very far from sharing a budget. Spending by the European Union accounts for only 1 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product, vs. 23 percent for federal spending in the U.S. Eichengreen suggests the EU’s budget might expand to perhaps 4 percent of GDP—enough to shore up national unemployment insurance funds in times of severe recession or to fix or close banks as needed. Spending on that scale probably wouldn’t require approval by “a European Parliament that acquires all the powers of a full parliament,” he says.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, sees both sides. He says Europe’s monetary union is unstable without banking and fiscal union. He also says believers in more integration “shouldn’t use any opportunity to push for … building a federal Europe. You should look at what is necessary for the euro to work.” For Europe, that balancing act isn’t going away.

The bottom line: Economists on both sides of the Atlantic are searching for a middle ground that would save the euro without going all the way to full union.

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Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Aid workers warned Wednesday that armed groups are setting up new front lines in and around the city of Goma in eastern Congo, where the U.N. said it now has documented at least 126 rape cases last month.

Thousands of fighters from the M23 rebel group withdrew several weeks ago from Goma, and the fighters have since taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government.

However, residents in Goma say M23 and other armed fighters are now positioning themselves in an around the city — including inside camps for people displaced by the violence.

The arrival of several thousand fighters within the last week is prompting fear among civilians, who already have experienced years of fighting and rebellions, said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam’s humanitarian coordinator there.

“They are very concerned — people are seeing this and they don’t know what it means,” he said. “I think what everyone is scared about is that it seems like people are ramping up, ramping up but for what purpose?”

Oxfam warns that more than 1 million people could come under attack if violence again flares in Goma, where more than 100,000 people already have fled from elsewhere in the region.

“Goma is typically the last refuge safe haven and now it’s being directly called into question. If Goma falls in a big battle, where are people going to go?” Riebl said.

“This is very, very disconcerting because you have a population of over 1 million people and if war were to break out, we’re looking at a horrific situation.”

The M23 rebel group, which is believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April.

They took control of many villages and towns in the mineral-rich east over the last seven months, culminating in the seizure of Goma on Nov. 20. It took days of negotiations and intense international pressure, including from the U.N., for the thousands of fighters from M23 to finally withdraw from the regional capital.

The U.N. mission says it’s received allegations of serious rights violations, including killings and wounding of civilians, rape, looting, and forced recruitment of children, by elements of the M23 rebels in Goma and neighboring areas.

Congo’s armed forces are also blamed for a series of attacks as they fled Goma in retreat in late November.

The U.N. said Tuesday it now has been able to document at least 126 rapes during that period in the Minova area, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Goma.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said that two Congolese soldiers so far have been arrested in connection with the rapes, while seven others had been implicated in looting in the area.

“The Congolese Armed Forces have started investigating those human rights violations,” he said. “The U.N. Mission is supporting the military justice procedure in conducting thorough investigations into these allegations to ensure that the perpetrators are identified and held accountable.”

Rape has long been used as a brutal weapon of war in eastern Congo, where both soldiers and various armed groups use sexual violence to intimidate, punish and control the population.

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New Online Privacy Loophole Lets Facebook Advertise to Kids

Mark Zuckerberg‘s been eager to find a way to get more kids on Facebook for years, and on Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission handed it to him on a platter. That might be overstating it a little bit. It’s more like the FTC served it to him on a platter covered in plastic wrap with a note attached that says “Do not open.” Nevertheless, should Facebook decided to see what’s inside, experts in online privacy for children say the social network could legally start peddling everything from kids’ bicycles to that new gender-neutral Easy Bake Oven.

RELATED: German Official Urges Citizens to Stop Using Facebook

After months of deliberating and plenty of lobbying on both sides of the issue, the FTC updated the controversial Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) this week. The changes were absolutely designed to better protect children in the privacy-invading era of social media, especially from the data-hungry advertisers who want to sell them things. Websites like Facebook don’t allow kids to sign up without their parents permission, generally because COPPA has prohibited them from collecting the kinds of information they need to serve them ads. And why would they want a user to whom they couldn’t serve ads? Under the new FTC rules, parental permission is required for just about anything a kid would do on Facebook, including uploading photos, videos and geolocational information. Tracking tools like cookies are also verboten without a parent’s permission.

RELATED: What Police Learn About You When They Subpoena Your Facebook Account

But there’s a loophole. The new rules say very plainly that no parental permission is needed “for the sole purpose of supporting the website or online service’s internal operations, such as contextual advertising, frequency capping, legal compliance, site analysis, and network communications.” The key phrase there is “contextual advertising,” which is an ad product Facebook has been working on for a while. Facebook’s version basically reads your News Feed and shows you ads that are relevant, or contextual, to what you’re reading. As a few people have pointed out, this opens a door for Facebook to start exploring the idea of ad-supported profiles for kids. Alan Simpson, the vice president of child privacy advocacy group Common Sense, isn’t happy about this idea. “Common Sense doesn’t like this part, and the industry lobbyists probably do,” he told TechCrunch Monday evening.

RELATED: What Facebook Does to Kids’ Brains

Now, there are a lot of ifs in this scenario. Based on the magnitude and sensitivity of the issue, Facebook probably doesn’t want to go scaring a bunch of parents by sneaking through loopholes to show their kids Easy Bake Oven ads. It has been nearly a decade and a half since COPPA got an update, though, and Mark Zuckerberg isn’t really known for his patience. Of course, Facebook could do what they’ve been doing for ages, which is look over their shoulder while kids lie about having permission and sign up anyways.

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Miss USA Olivia Culpo is crowned Miss Universe

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A 20-year-old Boston University sophomore and a self-described “cellist-nerd” brought the Miss Universe crown back to the United States for the first time in more than a decade when she won the televised contest Wednesday.

Olivia Culpo beat out 88 other beauty queens to take the title from Leila Lopes of Angola during the two-hour competition at the Planet Hollywood casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Culpo wore a tight navy blue mini-dress with a sequined bodice as she walked on stage for the competition’s opening number. Later in the night, she strutted in a purple and blue bikini, and donned a wintery red velvet gown with a plunging neckline.

Culpo’s coronation ends a long losing spell for the U.S. in the competition co-owned by Donald Trump and NBC. An American had not won the right to be called Miss Universe since Brook Lee won the title in 1997.

Culpo was good enough during preliminary competitions to be chosen as one of 16 semifinalists who moved on to compete in the pageant’s finale. Her bid lasted through swimsuit, evening wear, and interview competitions that saw cuts after each round.

She won over the judges, even after tripping slightly during the evening gown competition. Telecasters pointed it out but also noted her poised recovery.

Minutes before the middle child of five was crowned, she was asked whether she had she had ever done something she regretted.

“I’d like to start off by saying that every experience no matter what it is, good or bad, you’ll learn from it. That’s just life,” she said. “But something I’ve done I’ve regretted is probably picking on my siblings growing up, because you appreciate them so much more as you grow older.”

Miss Philippines, Janine Tugonon, came in second, while Miss Venezuela, Irene Sofia Esser Quintero, placed third.

All the contestants spent the past two weeks in Sin City, where they posed in hardhats at a hotel groundbreaking, took a painting lesson, and pranked hotel guests by hiding in their rooms.

Culpo was the first Miss USA winner from Rhode Island when she took the national crown in Las Vegas in June.

She grew up in Cranston with two professional musicians for parents and has played the cello alongside world-renowned classical musician Yo-Yo Ma. On her Miss Universe page, she said she hopes to pursue a career in film or television, and cites Audrey Hepburn as a role model because of her “generosity, intelligence and grace.”

With Culpo’s promotion, Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether becomes the new Miss USA.

The Miss Universe pageant was back in Las Vegas this year after being held in Sao Paulo in 2011. It aired live on NBC and was streamed to more than 100 countries.

Organizers had considered holding the 61st annual Miss Universe in the popular Dominican Republic tourist city of Punta Cana, but Miss Universe Organization President Paula Shugart said that country’s financial crisis proved to be too much of an obstacle.

The panel of 10 judges included singer Cee Lo Green, “Iron Chef” star Masaharu Morimoto and Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants.

Asked on the red carpet whether he found playing in the World Series or judging the beauty pageant to be more difficult, Sandoval said both were hard.

Sharply dressed women and men, including a large contingent from South America, held banners and cheered on their favorite contestants.

The pageant started as a local revue in Long Beach, Calif., organized by Catalina Swimwear. It is not affiliated with the Miss America pageant and unlike that contest, does not include a talent section.

Contestants in the pageant cannot have been married or have children. They must be younger than 27 and older than 18 by Feb. 1 of the competition year.

As Miss Universe, Culpo will receive an undisclosed salary, a wardrobe fit for a queen, a limitless supply of beauty products, and a luxury apartment in New York City.

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Dr. Robbin Alston’s ‘The Art of Feeling Good’ Offers Something more to Women than the Usual Yoga Guides

New yoga guide offers healing to African American women

PHILADELPHIA (PRWEB) December 20, 2012

With the publication of her new book “The Art of Feeling Good: The Power of Àse Yoga” (published by iUniverse), Dr. Robbin Alston extends her yoga instruction beyond the studio and targets female African American readers.

As master of a yoga studio and a longtime practitioner, Alston’s experience with yoga is compelling and aids her mission to bring yoga to those who might otherwise bypass it. “The perception becomes I can’t do the poses, so I can’t do yoga,” she says. “The Art of Feeling Good” dispels that myth with emphasis on thought, communication, relating and activating readers’ vital energy centers.

Also of note is Alston’s emphasis on the uniquely African American and specifically female aspects of her book. “Women have endured a history of subjugation and limitation,” she says, “but African-American women endured a history of enslavement, rape, torture, lynching and dehumanization. It continues to affect how we see ourselves.” Alston’s intent is to introduce a “… healing practice that respects and responds to our diverse direct experiences in this world.”

Alston hopes that readers will discover in her book “… a feeling of authenticity, awareness and inner power to overcome their challenges in life through a daily practice of Àse Yoga. I want people to realize that yoga is just not about poses, but indeed a practice in healthy living. I want them to see that my personal life speaks to the power of Àse.”

“The Art of Feeling Good”

By Dr. Robbin Alston

Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 156 pages | ISBN 9781475962956

Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 156 pages | ISBN 9781475958775

E-Book | 156 pages | ISBN 9781475958799

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Dr. Robbin Alston earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from LaSalle University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Temple University. She is an adjunct professor at Lincoln University in Lincoln, Pa. With advanced training in classical yoga, her yoga practice extends well beyond the mat. She is the founder and owner of Àse Yoga Studios and Tea Room in Philadelphia. Alston teaches and lectures about Àse Yoga throughout the United States.

iUniverse, an Author Solutions, Inc. self-publishing imprint, is the leading book marketing, editorial services, and supported self-publishing provider. iUniverse has a strategic alliance with Indigo Books & Music, Inc. in Canada, and titles accepted into the iUniverse Rising Star program are featured in a special collection on BarnesandNoble.com. iUniverse recognizes excellence in book publishing through the Star, Reader’s Choice, Rising Star and Editor’s Choice designations – self-publishing’s only such awards program. Headquartered in Bloomington, Ind., iUniverse also operates offices in Indianapolis. For more information or to publish a book, please visit iuniverse.com or call 1-800-AUTHORS. For the latest, follow @iuniversebooks on Twitter.

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UBS traders charged, bank fined $1.5 billion in Libor scandal

ZURICH/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors charged two former UBS traders on with taking part in a multi-year scheme to manipulate Libor and other benchmark interest rates, making them the first individuals to be criminally accused in the international scandal.

The charges against the two traders, Tom Hayes and Roger Darin, resulted from a broad investigation into the activities of more than a dozen banks in the setting of prices for Libor and related rates.

A day after UBS agreed to pay $ 1.5 billion to regulators in the United States, UK and Switzerland, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) said the bank was being probed over its submissions of interbank rates there, raising the risk it could face more fines.

In settling with U.S., UK and Swiss authorities, UBS not only paid one of the largest fines ever imposed on a bank, its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to one U.S. criminal count of fraud relating to manipulation of benchmark rates, including the yen Libor.

The Japanese subsidiary is where authorities allege much of the manipulation of interest rates occurred, as employees of the bank looked to profit on derivatives trades linked to the rates.

The bank could have more trouble in store in Asia. HKMA, Hong Kong‘s de facto central bank, said in a statement early Thursday in Asia that it had received information from overseas regulatory authorities about possible misconduct by UBS involving submissions for the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor) and other reference rates in the region.

UBS is the second large international bank to reach a settlement with U.S. and UK authorities, and other settlements are expected to follow in the next few months. In June Barclays Plc agreed to pay $ 453 million in fines to settle allegations its employees attempted to manipulate Libor rates.

The investigation and it findings – that attempts to manipulate Libor were fairly widespread in the banking industry – have cast doubts on the reliability of Libor as a benchmark for setting interest rates. The probe has also raised questions about why bank regulators were slow to uncover the manipulation, which Reuters previously reported dated back to at least the late 1990s.

“The bank’s conduct was simply astonishing,” Lanny Breuer, who heads the U.S. Justice Department‘s criminal division, said in announcing the settlement.

“Make no mistake – for UBS traders, the manipulation of Libor was about getting rich.”

While the bank will hope that the $ 1.5 billion settlement with regulators in the U.S., UK and Switzerland will draw a line under its penalties for its role in Libor manipulation, it remains at risk of action from regulators elsewhere for possible rate rigging.

As well as Hong Kong, there is an ongoing investigation in Singapore into the possible manipulation of benchmark lending and foreign exchange rates.

“We continue to work closely with various regulatory authorities to resolve issues relating to the setting of certain global benchmark interest rates. As we are currently in active discussions with these authorities, we cannot comment further,” said a spokesman for UBS in Hong Kong.

CRIMINAL CHARGES

The Justice Department charged Hayes and Darin with conspiracy, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. district court in Manhattan on Wednesday. Hayes was also charged with wire fraud and an antitrust violation.

U.S. and UK investigators portrayed Hayes as a ringleader of sorts for UBS’ manipulation of rates.

The two men are both believed to be in Europe, according to a U.S. official. Last week, British police arrested Hayes and two other men in connection with the Libor probe. The two others were Terry Farr and James Gilmour, both of whom worked at interdealer broker RP Martin.

The $ 1.5 billion UBS penalty is the second largest ever imposed on a bank, exceeded only by the $ 1.9 billion that HSBC agreed to pay to settle U.S. charges in connection with the laundering of drug cartel money.

“We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm,” said UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti.

The criminal complaint against Hayes and Darin also detailed how some former UBS employees are cooperating in the probe, in exchange for a promise that they won’t be prosecuted.

The cooperation agreements forged in the UBS case could prove useful to U.S. and UK authorities as they move against other individuals and other big banks.

U.S. prosecutors, for instance, are continuing to investigate the activities of a number of former Barclays derivatives traders based in New York who were dismissed from the bank following an internal investigation into Libor manipulation. So far, none of those former Barclays employees in the United States have been charged with wrongdoing.

Libor and related benchmarks are used to set interest rates for trillions of dollars worth of loans around the world, ranging from home loans to credit cards to complex derivatives.

Authorities said traders could benefit on their derivatives positions by nudging the prices for Libor up just small amounts, as over time the payoffs added up. Already a number of civil lawsuits have been filed in the U.S. by institutional investors claiming they were harmed on trades because of the interest rate rigging.

‘NORMAL BUSINESS PRACTICE’

In legal filings, Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) said UBS staff made “corrupt” payments to reward brokers for helping to manipulate rates – expanding the scandal to include bribery.

It said attempts to manipulate Libor and Euribor, its European equivalent, were so widespread that every submission UBS made over a six-year period from 2005 to 2010 was suspect.

At least 45 people at UBS were involved in the rigging, which was discussed in internal chat forums and group emails but never detected by compliance staff, despite five audits.

The FSA said a wide pool of people within UBS considered the manipulation to be a “normal business practice.”

In addition to traders trying to move the Libor rate up or down to make money for themselves, senior managers at the Swiss bank directed dealers to keep Libor submissions low during the financial crisis to make the bank look stronger.

Documents filed by the FSA did not reveal the names of individual participants, but a source familiar with the matter identified Hayes as the FSA’s “Trader A,” who the regulator said “embarked on a coordinated campaign” to influence the yen Libor rate.

In 2006 Hayes told a junior submitter at UBS that he “generally coordinate” with Darin and “skew the libors a bit.”

In early 2007, Darin trained another junior submitter and told him the primary consideration for UBS’s yen Libor submissions was the requests from Hayes and other UBS traders.

The extent of the wrongdoing was highlighted in a series of emails released by the FSA. The exchanges may indicate how traders and brokers conspired to rig the rate while adopting nicknames such as “Captain Caos,” (sic) and calling each other “superman,” “hero” or “the three muscateers (sic).”

In one email, Trader A (Hayes) wrote to a broker, urging him to keep the six-month yen Libor rate unchanged on the day.

Traders paid brokers as much as 15,000 pounds ($ 24,000) a quarter for their help in rigging the rates.

It is the first time that brokers have been accused of taking bribes to aid the manipulation. ICAP, the world’s largest interdealer broker, and rival RP Martin have suspended employees in connection with the probe.

Until the rate-rigging scandal broke, Libor had been ignored by regulators and left to the banks to police. From next year, Britain’s FSA will oversee it as part of a major overhaul.

The steep fine for UBS comes even as the bank has cooperated with law-enforcement agencies. The bank said it received conditional immunity from some regulators.

The investigation into UBS’s trading shows that the manipulation of the benchmark rates and illicit trading took place over a much longer time period than previously thought with the improper requests extending into June 2010, according to the UBS settlement with the Justice Department.

‘UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR’

UBS will pay $ 1.2 billion to the Justice Department and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 160 million pounds to the FSA, and 59 million Swiss francs from its estimated profit to Swiss regulator Finma.

The UK penalty is the largest in the history of the FSA and more than double the 59 million pounds paid by Barclays.

UBS said the fines would widen its fourth-quarter net loss but that it would not need to raise new capital.

UBS shares fell 0.3 percent in trading on Wednesday after earlier hitting a 17-month high.

The reputational impact of the controversy may only emerge next year.

“The only thing shareholders can do is keep a very close eye on the money flows on the wealth management side,” said Neil Wilkinson, portfolio manager at Royal London Asset Management. ($ 1 = 0.9133 Swiss francs)

(Additional reporting by the Zurich bureau and London bureau and Carrick Mollenkamp in New York, Aruna Viswanatha in Washington,Vikram Subhedar in Hong Kong and Rachel Armstrong in SINGAPORE; writing by Carmel Crimmins, Alex Smith and Michael Erman; Editing by Anna Willard, Janet McBride, Jeffrey Benkoe, Matthew Goldstein and Simon Cameron-Moore)

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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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