Those found guilty of making offensive comments on Facebook or Twitter in the country of Grenada could be fined up to $37,000 or face three years in prison.
ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada ? Legislators in Grenada have approved a bill that makes it a crime to offend people through websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The measure was approved as part of an electronic crimes bill passed late Friday in the tiny eastern Caribbean island. The same bill also imposes penalties on other online activities including electronic stalking and identity theft.
"We have problems when some use the technology to engage in mischief," said Legal Affairs Minister Elvin Nimrod. "We have to put structures in place to ensure that persons and, in some cases, companies and characters are not tarnished."
According to the bill, which is the first of its kind in the Caribbean, complaints about offensive comments would be filed with police. A judge would then decide if the message was offensive.
Those found guilty could be fined up to $37,000 or face three years in prison.
"A person will be able to take that evidence of the posting and use it as evidence in the court," Nimrod said. "People have to act responsibly to others."
The bill also makes it a crime to distribute child pornography, imposing fines of up to $111,000 and a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
[Update: Xcode 5 beta 2 released as well] Apple has begun seeding a second beta of iOS 7 to developers. Because the release is so new, any feature additions or removals have yet to be discovered. The software should, however, concentrate mainly on improving the speed and stability of iOS 7, which only emerged in beta form two weeks ago, at WWDC 2013.
iOS 7 represents a major reworking of Apple's mobile operating system, including a new aesthetic focusing on "flat" icons and translucent layers. Several new features have been incorporated, such as AirDrop filesharing, iTunes Radio, and the Control Center, while others have been improved. Siri for example has gained new voices and commands, and Apple is deepening car integration beyond just hands-free use.
Update: In addition to the iOS 7 second beta, Apple has updated its beta of its software development kit Xcode 5 to beta 2 as well. The unreleased Xcode version is intended to maintain compatibility with the OS X 10.9 and iOS 7 betas, and can only be downloaded from the Mac App Store through a developer account.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry boards a Jordanian helicopter in Jerusalem en route to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, June 29, 2013. On his fifth trip to the Middle East, Kerry met with Abbas for the second time in two days as he continues a rushed round of shuttle diplomacy to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He plans to fly back to Jerusalem later in the day for more talks with Israeli officials. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry boards a Jordanian helicopter in Jerusalem en route to Amman, Jordan, to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, June 29, 2013. On his fifth trip to the Middle East, Kerry met with Abbas for the second time in two days as he continues a rushed round of shuttle diplomacy to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He plans to fly back to Jerusalem later in the day for more talks with Israeli officials. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is seen through tinted glass after boarding a Jordanian helicopter in Jerusalem, bound for a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday, June 29, 2013. On his fifth trip to the Middle East, Kerry met with Abbas for the second time in two days as he continues a rushed round of shuttle diplomacy to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. He plans to fly back to Jerusalem later in the day for more talks with Israeli officials. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, embraces Israeli President Shimon Peres before their meeting over dinner in Jerusalem on Friday, June 28, 2013. Kerry shuttled between Israelis and Palestinians Friday in his latest diplomatic mission to coax the two sides back to the negotiating table and revive the Mideast peace process. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan, on Friday, June 28, 2013. It is Kerry's fifth visit to the region since becoming secretary of state in February to try to restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, which broke down in 2008. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry invites Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sit at a table with him as they meet for the second time on Kerry's fifth Mideast trip in Jerusalem on Friday, June 28, 2013. Kerry shuttled between Israelis and Palestinians Friday in his latest diplomatic mission to coax the two sides back to the negotiating table and revive the Mideast peace process. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday for the second time in two days, continuing his rushed round of shuttle diplomacy to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Kerry is shuttling between meetings in Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, to find a way to coax both sides back into negotiations to craft a two-state solution to their long-running conflict.
U.S., Israeli and Palestinian officials have all declined to disclose details of the talks. "Working hard," is all Kerry would say when a reporter asked him, during a photo-op before the Abbas meeting, whether progress was being made.
For the past three days, Kerry, who is on a two-week swing through the Mideast and Asia, has been conducting meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials at a frenetic pace. A few days ago, Kerry added a stop in Abu Dhabi to his itinerary, but it was later canceled because of his ongoing discussions on the Mideast peace process.
He had a four-hour dinner meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday night in Jerusalem followed by a more than two-hour lunch with Abbas on Friday in Amman at the home of the Palestinian ambassador to Jordan. Then it was back to Jerusalem for another meeting with Netanyahu and dinner with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
On Saturday morning, he boarded a helicopter to fly back to Amman to meet again with Abbas, this time at the Palestinian president's residence there. Later Saturday, he was to return to Jerusalem to meet with Tzipi Livni, Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and Isaac Molho, a Netanyahu envoy.
Kerry is scheduled to leave Jerusalem on Sunday to head to Brunei for a Southeast Asia security conference.
There is deep skepticism that Kerry can get the two sides to agree on a two-state solution, something that has eluded presidents and diplomats for years. But the flurry of meetings has heightened expectations that the two sides can be convinced to at least restart talks, which broke down in 2008.
So far, there have been no public signs that the two sides are narrowing their differences.
In the past, Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.
Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions for talks.
Abbas made significant progress with Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, in talks in 2007 and 2008, but believes there is little point in negotiating with the current Israeli leader.
Netanyahu has adopted much tougher starting positions than Olmert, refusing to recognize Israel's pre-1967 frontier as a baseline for border talks and saying east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital, is off the table. Abbas and his aides suspect Netanyahu wants to resume talks for the sake of negotiating and creating a diplomatic shield for Israel, not in order to reach an agreement.
Abbas, in turn, has much to lose domestically if he drops his demands that Netanyahu either freeze settlement building or recognize the 1967 frontier as a starting point before talks can resume. Netanyahu has rejected both demands. A majority of Palestinians, disappointed after 20 years of fruitless negotiations with Israel, opposes a return to talks on Netanyahu's terms.
___
Associated Press writer Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
BEIJING (Reuters) - A former regional Communist Party official implicated in a sex scandal that has transfixed China was sentenced on Friday to 13 years in jail for bribery, government news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.
Lei Zhengfu, a portly, pop-eyed ex-secretary of a region in southwestern China's Chongqing, was caught on video having sex with an 18-year-old mistress, with the clip ricocheting around China's gossip-obsessed Internet when it surfaced last November.
The encounter turned out to be a sting operation by a property developer hoping to blackmail Lei, 55, into favorable commercial decisions, Chinese media reported.
Lei was fired, then charged last month with corruption, which carries a maximum penalty of death. At his sentencing he was also fined 300,000 yuan (about $48,000).
Also last month a Chongqing court charged six people with working together to blackmail government officials by recording videos of them having sex.
Chinese Communist Party officials are banned from having mistresses, and the video came to symbolize to many people the excesses and corruption of the ruling elite.
The government's swift pursuit of Lei's case indicates the party's growing attention to public anger over abuse of power and official impunity.
Sensitive to public outrage and warning that corruption threatens the Party's very survival, President Xi Jinping has pledged to crack down on corruption at all levels, though only a small number of senior officials have been fired or investigated for corruption since he came to power last year.
Ten government officials and heads of state-owned enterprises were fired in January for their involvement in sex videos, according to Xinhua.
(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
The Myth of the Komodo Dragon?s Dirty Mouth In 1969, an American biologist named Walter Auffenberg moved to the Indonesia island of Komodo to study its most famous resident?the Komodo dragon. This huge lizard?the largest in the world?grows to lengths of 3 metres, and can take down large prey like deer and water buffalo. Auffenberg watched the dragons for a year and eventually published a book on their behaviour in 1981. It won him an award. It also enshrined a myth that took almost three decades to refute, and is still prevalent today.
Source: National Geographic Posted on:
Thursday, Jun 27, 2013, 8:51am Views: 14
BEIJING (AP) ? An American boss detained nearly a week by his company's Chinese workers left the Beijing factory Thursday after he and a labor representative said the two sides reached agreement in a pay dispute.
Chip Starnes, who said he was "saddened" by the experience, told The Associated Press a deal was reached overnight to pay the scores of workers who had demanded severance packages similar to ones given to laid-off co-workers in a phased-out division, even though the company said the remaining workers weren't being laid off.
Remaining workers at the medical supply plant in Huairou district, on the outskirts of Beijing, had said they believed the entire factory was shutting down, that the company owed unpaid salary and that they saw equipment being packed and itemized for shipping to India.
Starnes said the workers' demands were unjustified. Neither he nor district labor official Chu Lixiang gave details of the agreed compensation. Chu said all the workers would be terminated, and Starnes said some of them would be rehired later.
"It has been resolved to each side's satisfaction," Chu told reporters at a conference room at the plant in late morning. She said they had been sorting out paperwork until 5 a.m. and that 97 workers had signed settlement agreements.
Starnes, a co-owner of Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, had quietly departed the factory grounds by the time Chu spoke, returning to his hotel in Beijing.
"Yes!! Out and back at hotel," Starnes wrote in a text message. "Showered... 9 pounds lost during the ordeal!!!!!!"
Police in Huairou district had made no moves to halt the labor action but guarded the plant and said they were guaranteeing Starnes' safety while local labor officials brokered negotiations.
It is not rare in China for managers to be held by workers demanding back pay or other benefits, often from their Chinese owners. Police are reluctant to intervene, as they consider it a business dispute, and local officials typically are eager to see the matter resolved in the way least likely to fuel unrest.
The labor action reflected growing uneasiness among workers about their jobs amid China's slowing economic growth and the sense that growing labor costs make the country less attractive for some foreign-owned factories.
About 80 workers had started blocking all exits starting last Friday, and Starnes had spoken to reporters in recent days through the barred window of his factory office.
Earlier Thursday, he said in a telephone interview that he had been forced to give in to what he considered unjustified demands. He summed up the past several days as "humiliating, embarrassing." At the beginning of his captivity, workers had deprived him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office, he said.
"We have transferred our funds from the U.S.," he said. "I am basically free to go when the funds hit the account here of the company."
Starnes told the AP he planned to get back to business, and even rehire some of the workers who had been holding him. "We're going to take Thursday off to let the dust settle, and we're going to be rehiring a lot of the previous workers on new contracts as of Friday," he said.
Starnes previously said the company had been winding down its plastics division, with plans to move it to Mumbai. When he arrived in Beijing last week to lay off the last 30 people, workers in other divisions started demanding similar severance packages.
Four days after hitting its Kickstarter goal, Agent Watches has released the SDK for its smartwatch. The watches won't ship until December, but all developers need to start working is the emulator and a Bluetooth-compatible device. Windows Phone 8 Developer Mike Hole posted a link to the tools on his blog, plus detailed notes with sample code and a how-to for the emulator. With all this info, maybe you'll write a few of the apps for the hip and sexy people from that Kickstarter video.
Caroline Kennedy helped Ireland celebrate the 50th anniversary of her father's visit to the country by lighting an eternal flame Saturday.
According to UPI, Kennedy lit the flame in New Ross, the County Wexford town her great-great-grandfather left in 1848.
A torch lit from the eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy's graveside arrived in Ireland on June 20.
The AP reports on the ceremony:
The flame had been carried Olympics-style from JFK's plot in Arlington Cemetery by aircraft to Dublin, then by Irish navy vessel up the River Barrow to the New Ross dockside. It was the first time the Kennedy eternal flame had been passed along in this fashion.
"May it be a symbol of the fire in the Irish heart, imagination and soul," Kenny told more than 10,000 who had gathered along the river bank.
Several members of Ireland's Special Olympics team helped carry the flame from the Irish naval vessel to the ceremony, a gesture to the memory of JFK's sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics movement. She died in 2009.
And in a symbolic passing of the family political torch, Caroline Kennedy asked her 20-year-old son, Jack, to handle the main Kennedy part of the ceremony. His polished and idealistic speech reflected his long-expressed hopes to follow his grandfather into U.S. national politics after graduating from Yale.
See pictures of Kennedy lighting the flame in Ireland below:
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? South Africans were torn on Wednesday between the desire not to lose a critically ill Nelson Mandela, who defined the aspirations of so many of his compatriots, and resignation that the beloved former prisoner and president is approaching the end of his life.
The sense of anticipation and foreboding about 94-year-old Mandela's fate has grown since late Sunday, when the South African government declared that the condition of the statesman, who was rushed to a hospital in Pretoria on June 8, had deteriorated.
A tide of emotional tributes has built on social media and in hand-written messages and flowers laid outside the hospital and Mandela's home. On Wednesday, about 20 children from a day care center posted a hand-made card outside the hospital and recited a poem.
"Hold on, old man," was one of the lines in the Zulu poem, according to the South African Press Association.
In recent days, international leaders, celebrities, athletes and others have praised Mandela, not just as the man who steered South Africa through its tense transition from white racist rule to democracy two decades ago, but as a universal symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation.
In South Africa's Eastern Cape province, where Mandela grew up, a traditional leader said the time was near for Mandela, who is also known by his clan name, Madiba.
"I am of the view that if Madiba is no longer enjoying life, and is on life support systems, and is not appreciating what is happening around him, I think the good Lord should take the decision to put him out of his suffering," said the tribal chief, Phathekile Holomisa.
"I did speak to two of his family members, and of course, they are in a lot of pain, and wish that a miracle might happen, that he recovers again, and he becomes his old self again," he said. "But at the same time they are aware there is a limit what miracles you can have."
For many South Africans, Mandela's decline is a far more personal matter, echoing the protracted and emotionally draining process of losing one of their own elderly relatives.
One nugget of wisdom about the arc of life and death came from Matthew Rusznyah, a 9-year-old boy who stopped outside Mandela's home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to show his appreciation.
"We came because we care about Mandela being sick, and we wish we could put a stop to it, like snap our fingers," he said. "But we can't. It's how life works."
His mother, Lee Rusznyah, said Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison under apartheid before becoming South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994, had made the world a better place.
"All of us will end," Thabo Makgoba, the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We just want him to be peacefully released, whatever he's feeling at this moment, and to be reunited with his Maker at the perfect time, when God so wills."
The archbishop said: "Ultimately, we are all mortal. At some stage or another, we all have to die, and we have to move on, we have to be recalled by our Maker and Redeemer. We have to create that space for Madiba, to come to terms within himself, with that journey."
On Tuesday, Makgoba visited Mandela and offered a prayer in which he wished for a "peaceful, perfect, end" for the anti-apartheid leader, who was taken to the Pretoria hospital to be treated for what the government said was a recurring lung infection.
In the prayer, he asked for courage to be granted to Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and others who love him "at this hard time of watching and waiting," and he appealed for divine help for the medical team treating Mandela.
Visitors to the hospital on Wednesday included Mandela's former wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The couple divorced in 1996.
"As he remains in a critical condition in hospital, we must keep him and the family in our thoughts and prayers every minute," President Jacob Zuma said Wednesday.
Mandela, whose 95th birthday is on July 18, served a single five-year term as president and afterward focused on charitable causes, but he withdrew from public life years ago and became increasingly frail in recent years. He last made a public appearance in 2010 at the World Cup soccer tournament, which was hosted by South Africa. At that time, he did not speak to the crowd and was bundled against the cold in a stadium full of fans.
On April 29, state television broadcast footage of a visit by Zuma and other leaders of the ruling party, the African National Congress, to Mandela's home. Zuma said at the time that Mandela was in good shape, but the footage ? the first public images of Mandela in nearly a year ? showed him silent and unresponsive, even when Zuma tried to hold his hand.
"Let's accept instead of crying," said Lucas Aedwaba, a security officer in Pretoria who described Mandela as a hero. "Let's celebrate that the old man lived and left his legacy."
Dan Lehman, an American academic, chose a jogging route on Wednesday morning that passed by the hospital where Mandela is being treated.
"I was just going out for my morning run down here and come to pay my respects to the greatest man in the world," Lehman said. Then he began to cry.
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Summer is the perfect time to perform simple payroll maintenance tasks. Here are some items you can check off your to-do list.
? Confirm that all monthly, quarterly and annual balances are accumulating properly; pay attention to adjustments.
? Scan the computer you use to make tax deposits for viruses and sweep them out. Review and winnow the number of employees who have access to this computer.
? Ask your corporate tax department whether payroll taxes are accumulating properly. Ask corporate to provide you with more timely information, if necessary.
? Review your communications? techniques with employees; if you?re still getting too many questions, it may be time to adapt your methods to the media employees actually use.
? Inquire whether the company paid off an employee?s child support obligation and tax that amount; you may treat the payment as supplemental wages.
? Work with Accounts Payable to create a system for processing employee payments made outside the payroll system (e.g., business expense or moving expense reimbursements).
? Reject and return to the sender child support withholding orders that aren?t on OMB-approved forms.
? Review cellphone reimbursement policies for reasonableness. If something seems out of kilter, ask to see several months of employees? bills and adjust your reimbursement accordingly.
? Ensure that the company?s policy regarding paying accrued vacation to terminating employees is enforced consistently and complies with state law.
? Check T&E policies for reimbursing em??ployees? local lodging expenses. Reminder: You may reimburse employees? local lodging expenses if there?s a bona fide reason to require them to stay overnight at a local hotel (e.g., to participate in training activities).
? Check that employees aren?t working through meal breaks, that employees who can?t take meal breaks notify their supervisors and pay employees who work through their meal breaks.
? Audit your lock-in letter procedure to ensure that employees receive their copies within 10 days, and that the payroll software postpones any increase in withholding for 45 days or the date indicated in the IRS? letter.
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A man walks by a gate at Cyber Terror Response Center of National Police Agency in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. South Korea said multiple government and private sector websites were hacked on Tuesday's anniversary of the start of the Korean War, and Seoul issued a cyberattack alert warning officials and citizens to take security measures. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A man walks by a gate at Cyber Terror Response Center of National Police Agency in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. South Korea said multiple government and private sector websites were hacked on Tuesday's anniversary of the start of the Korean War, and Seoul issued a cyberattack alert warning officials and citizens to take security measures. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A man walks by a gate at Cyber Terror Response Center of National Police Agency in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. South Korea said multiple government and private sector websites were hacked on Tuesday's anniversary of the start of the Korean War, and Seoul issued a cyberattack alert warning officials and citizens to take security measures. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A man walks by a gate at Cyber Terror Response Center of National Police Agency in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. South Korea said multiple government and private sector websites were hacked on Tuesday's anniversary of the start of the Korean War, and Seoul issued a cyberattack alert warning officials and citizens to take security measures. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Members of Korea Freedom Federation wave their national flags during a ceremony to mark the 63rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. The three-year Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, when Soviet tank-led North Koreans invaded South Korea. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
South Korean elementary school students participate in a ceremony to mark the 63rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, June 25, 2013. The three-year Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, when Soviet tank-led North Koreans invaded South Korea. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Major government and media websites in South and North Korea were shut down for hours Tuesday on the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Korean War, and Seoul said its sites were hacked and alerted people to take security measures against cyberattacks.
It was not immediately clear if the shutdown of North Korean websites, including those belong to Air Koryo and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, was due to those sites being hacked. Rodong Sinmun, Uriminzokkiri and Naenara websites were operational a few hours later.
South Korean National Intelligence Service officials said they were investigating what may have caused the shutdown of the North Korean websites, and North Korea didn't make any immediate comment.
Seoul said experts were also investigating attacks on the websites of the South Korean presidential Blue House and prime minister's office, and some media servers.
Tuesday's attacks in South Korea did not appear to be as serious as a March cyberattack that shut down tens of thousands of computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks. There were no initial reports Tuesday that banks had been hit or that sensitive military or other key infrastructure had been compromised.
It wasn't immediately clear who was responsible, and North and South Korea have traded accusations of cyberattacks in recent years.
Operators of several Twitter accounts who purported to be part of a global hackers' collective claimed that they attacked North Korean websites. The Associated Press received no answer to several requests to speak to the Twitter users. Shin Hong-soon, an official at South Korea's science ministry in charge of online security, said that the government was not able to confirm whether these hackers were linked to Tuesday's attack on South Korean websites.
South Korean officials blamed Pyongyang for the March attacks and said in April that an initial investigation pointed to a North Korean military-run spy agency as the culprit.
North Korea in recent weeks has pushed for diplomatic talks with Washington. But tensions ran high on the Korean Peninsula in March and April, with North Korea delivering regular threats over U.N. sanctions and U.S.-South Korean military drills.
Investigators detected similarities between the March cyberattack and past hacking attributed to the North Korean spy agency, including the recycling of 30 previously used malware programs ? out of a total of 76 used in the attack, South Korea's internet security agency said.
The March 20 cyberattack struck 48,000 computers and servers, hampering banks for two to five days. Officials have said that no bank records or personal data were compromised. Staffers at TV broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN were unable to log on to news systems for several days, although programming continued during that period. No government, military or infrastructure targets were affected.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service said North Korea was behind a denial of service attack in 2009 that crippled dozens of websites, including that of the presidential office. Seoul also believes the North was responsible for cyberattacks on servers of Nonghyup bank in 2011 and Joongang Ilbo, a national daily newspaper, in 2012.
North Korea also blamed South Korea and the United States for cyberattacks in March that temporarily disabled Internet access and websites in North Korea, where a small number of people can go online.
Experts believe North Korea trains large teams of cyber warriors and that the South and its allies should be prepared against possible attacks on key infrastructure and military systems. If the inter-Korean conflict were to move into cyberspace, South Korea's deeply wired society would have more to lose than North Korea's, which largely remains offline.
During Tank Johnson?s tumultuous tenure with the Bears, incidents with guns got him arrested, jailed and suspended, and his close friend was shot and killed in front of him after an altercation at a Chicago bar. All that has Johnson offering new NFL players a simple piece of advice: You don?t need a gun.
Johnson spoke today at the rookie symposium and said that there?s enough security in place, provided by teams and the league, that players don?t have to carry guns to protect themselves.
?While you?re playing in the NFL, you do not need a firearm for any reason,? Johnson said, via Tim Graham of the Buffalo News. ?The NFL does a great job of putting these resources around you where you don?t need a firearm. Having a gun is not going to help you when that moment comes if you?re not trained on how to use that gun.?
Johnson owned several guns before the Bears drafted him, and he now says he wishes he hadn?t brought them to Chicago with him.
?I?m just here to talk to you guys about firearms, guns, gats, straps, all that stuff that we keep seeing pop up in the media all the time with our young athletes,? Johnson told the rookies. ?The main thing that caused me those troubles, coming from Phoenix and moving to Chicago, was bringing a car full of my guns, thinking it was going to be sweet like it was in Phoenix, where you can buy an AK-47 at Circle K.?
Some NFL players think that being high-profile people with a lot of money means they need guns for protection. Johnson is there to tell the rookies that guns are a lot more likely to get them into trouble than to keep them out of trouble.
Adidas has another new running shoe, this one even more divergent than its Boost shoe and its new foam. It's a bunch of springs, basically, strapped to your foot. And it sort of makes a lot of sense.
Yes, you heard right. According to multiple sources, the name Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have gone with for their infant daughter is ... "North."
A signed birth certificate from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles reportedly revealed the information -- which would make the child's name North West (no middle name).
The baby was born five weeks early on June 15 and is the couple's first child.
But back to the name: It's the joke Jay Leno threw out as "rumored" when Kardashian visited "The Tonight Show" -- and which the reality TV star denied was on their list of names.
"I like Easton. Easton West. I think that's cute," she told Leno at the time.
E! sources say the child will be called "Nori" for short.
Well, at least it's not "Knorth." And thus far, no reported connection to the 1994 movie stinker "North."
Meanwhile, celebrities have wasted no time jumping on the joke bandwagon about the name; Jason Biggs tweeted: "I lost my office pool. I had Ratings Spike Kardashian-West," while "Modern Family" co-creator Steve Levitan also tweeted, "What a ridiculous name, said Wayne Dwop."
The front cover of a local magazine shows Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, in Hong Kong Saturday, June 22, 2013. Hong Kong was silent Saturday on whether the former National Security Agency contractor should be extradited to the United States now that he has been charged with espionage, but some legislators said the decision should be up to the Chinese government. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
The front cover of a local magazine shows Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, in Hong Kong Saturday, June 22, 2013. Hong Kong was silent Saturday on whether the former National Security Agency contractor should be extradited to the United States now that he has been charged with espionage, but some legislators said the decision should be up to the Chinese government. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, in Hong Kong, Sunday, June 9, 2013. The man who told the world about the U.S. government?s gigantic data grab also talked a lot about himself. Mostly through his own words, a picture of Edward Snowden is emerging: fresh-faced computer whiz, high school and Army dropout, independent thinker, trustee of official secrets. And leaker on the lam. (AP Photo/The Guardian) MANDATORY CREDIT
A security guard stands in front of the Police headquarters in Hong Kong Saturday, June 22, 2013. Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, believed to be holed up in Hong Kong, has admitted providing information to the news media about two highly classified NSA surveillance programs. It is not known if the U.S. government has made a formal extradition request to Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong government had no immediate reaction to the charges against Snowden. Police Commissioner Andy Tsang, when was asked about the development, told reporters only that the case would be dealt with according to the law. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
David Medine, chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, is seen in front of the White House in Washington, Friday, June 21, 2013. President Barack Obama held his first meeting Friday with the board in the White House Situation Room. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Obama administration on Saturday sharply warned Hong Kong against slow-walking the extradition of Edward Snowden, reflecting concerns over a prolonged legal battle before the government contractor ever appears in a U.S. courtroom to answer espionage charges for revealing two highly classified surveillance programs.
A formal extradition request to bring Snowden to the United States from Hong Kong could drag through appeal courts for years and would pit Beijing against Washington at a time China tries to deflect U.S. accusations that it carries out extensive surveillance on American government and commercial operations.
The U.S. has contacted authorities in Hong Kong to seek Snowden's extradition, the National Security Council said Saturday in a statement. The NSC advises the president on national security.
"Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters, and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case," White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said in an interview with CBS News. He said the U.S. presented Hong Kong with a "good case for extradition."
However, a senior administration official issued a pointed warning that if Hong Kong doesn't act soon, "it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law." The official was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and insisted on anonymity.
Hong Kong's government had no immediate reaction to the charges against Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who admitted providing information to the news media about the programs. Police Commissioner Andy Tsang told reporters only that the case would be dealt with according to the law. A police statement said it was "inappropriate" for the police to comment on the case.
A one-page criminal complaint against Snowden was unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., part of the Eastern District of Virginia where his former employer, government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered, in McLean. He is charged with unauthorized communication of national defense information, willful communication of classified communications intelligence information and theft of government property. The first two are under the Espionage Act and each of the three crimes carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on conviction.
The complaint is dated June 14, five days after Snowden's name first surfaced as the person who had leaked to the news media that the NSA, in two highly classified surveillance programs, gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out terror plots.
Snowden told the South China Morning Post in an interview published Saturday on its website that he hoped to stay in the autonomous region of China because he has faith in "the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate."
A prominent former politician in Hong Kong, Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the Democratic Party, said he doubted whether Beijing would intervene yet.
"Beijing would only intervene according to my understanding at the last stage. If the magistrate said there is enough to extradite, then Mr. Snowden can then appeal," he said.
Lee said Beijing could then decide at the end of the appeal process if it wanted Snowden extradited or not.
Snowden could contest extradition on grounds of political persecution.
Hong Kong lawyer Mark Sutherland said that the filing of a refugee, torture or inhuman punishment claim acts as an automatic bar on any extradition proceedings until those claims can be assessed.
"Some asylum seekers came to Hong Kong 10 years ago and still haven't had their protection claims assessed," Sutherland said.
Hong Kong lawmakers said that the Chinese government should make the final decision on whether Snowden should be extradited to the United States.
Outspoken legislator Leung Kwok-hung said Beijing should instruct Hong Kong to protect Snowden from extradition before his case gets dragged through the court system.
Leung urged the people of Hong Kong to "take to the streets to protect Snowden."
The Obama administration has now used the Espionage Act in seven criminal cases in an unprecedented effort to stem leaks. In one of them, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning acknowledged he sent more than 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and other materials to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. His military trial is underway.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, welcomed the charges against Snowden.
"I've always thought this was a treasonous act," he said in a statement. "I hope Hong Kong's government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S."
But the Government Accountability Project, a whistle-blower advocacy group, said Snowden should be shielded from prosecution by whistle-blower protection laws.
"He disclosed information about a secret program that he reasonably believed to be illegal, and his actions alone brought about the long-overdue national debate about the proper balance between privacy and civil liberties, on the one hand, and national security on the other," the group said in a statement.
Michael di Pretoro, a retired 30-year veteran with the FBI who served from 1990 to 1994 as the legal liaison officer at the American consulate in Hong Kong, said "relations between U.S. and Hong Kong law enforcement personnel are historically quite good."
"In my time, I felt the degree of cooperation was outstanding to the extent that I almost felt I was in an FBI field office," di Pretoro said.
The U.S. and Hong Kong have a standing agreement on the surrender of fugitives. However, Snowden's appeal rights could drag out any extradition proceeding.
The success or failure of any extradition proceeding depends on what the suspect is charged with under U.S. law and how it corresponds to Hong Kong law under the treaty. In order for Hong Kong officials to honor the extradition request, they have to have some applicable statute under their law that corresponds with a violation of U.S. law.
Disclosure of the criminal complaint came as President Barack Obama held his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board and as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about sweeping government surveillance efforts exposed by Snowden.
The five members of the little-known Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board met with Obama for an hour in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on the two NSA programs that have stoked controversy.
One program collects billions of U.S. phone records. The second gathers audio, video, email, photographic and Internet search usage of foreign nationals overseas, and probably some Americans in the process, who use major Internet service providers, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? An agreement to vastly increase fencing, patrols and high-tech monitoring along the U.S.-Mexico border was formally unveiled in the Senate Friday, providing powerful momentum to a far-reaching immigration bill backed by the White House.
With the border securityamendment finalized, the immigration legislation immediately picked up an additional likely Republican supporter: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who signed on as a co-sponsor of the amendment.
"This amendment will put to rest any remaining credible concerns about the border, about border security," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the Senate floor as he filed the measure and announced procedural steps to bring it to a vote early next week. "The opposition of a small group is not going to stop this bill from moving forward," Reid said.
The deal doubling Border Patrol agents and adding hundreds of miles of fencing along the Southwest border had already won support from four other undecided Republican senators who are now likely to back the immigration bill when it comes to a final vote next week. The legislation opening the door to citizenship for millions now appears within reach of securing the broad bipartisan majority that its authors say is needed to ensure serious consideration by the GOP-controlled House.
However, the outcome there remains far from certain because many conservatives are opposed to offering citizenship to people who came to this country illegally.
"We really have tried to secure the border in a way that we hope can get bipartisan support and that Americans want," Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., an author of the amendment, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday. "We're hopeful to have a good bipartisan majority."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on Fox News Channel Friday that "if there's anyone who still will argue that the border is not secure after this, then border security is not their reason for opposing a path to citizenship for the people who are in this country illegally."
"Is it more than I would have recommended? Honestly, yes," McCain said. "But we've got to give people confidence."
Hoeven developed the amendment along with Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, in consultation with McCain, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other members of the so-called Gang of Eight senators who wrote the immigration bill. It prevents immigrants now here illegally from attaining permanent resident status until a series of steps have been taken to secure the border.
These include doubling the Border Patrol with 20,000 new agents, 18 new unmanned surveillance drones, 350 miles of new pedestrian fencing to add to 350 miles already in place and an array of fixed and mobile devices to maintain vigilance, including high-tech tools such as infrared ground sensors and airborne radar.
The new provisions would be put in place over a decade, in line with the 10-year path to a permanent resident green card that the bill sets out for immigrants here illegally. During that time, the immigrants could live and work legally in a provisional status.
Hoeven said the 10-year cost of the border security amendment included $25 billion for the additional Border Patrol agents, $3 billion for fencing and $3.2 billion for other measures.
It's "border security on steroids," said Corker, who along with Hoeven had been uncommitted on the immigration bill. Both are now prepared to support it, assuming their amendment is adopted. Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., also announced their support for the deal Thursday.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the border deal "would constitute a breakthrough" on immigration. "We're pleased that Republicans and Democrats continue to work together toward comprehensive immigration reform," he said.
The deal on border security came together quickly over the past several days after talks had bogged down over Republicans' insistence that green cards be made conditional on catching or turning back 90 percent of would-be border crossers. Schumer, other Democrats and Obama himself rejected this trigger, which they feared could delay the path to citizenship for years. Obama made his objections known in a phone call to Schumer from Air Force One during his trip to Europe for the Group of Eight summit earlier in the week, according to a Senate aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The breakthrough came when the Congressional Budget Office released a report Tuesday finding that the bill would cut billions of dollars from the deficit. Schumer's top immigration aide, Leon Fresco, had the idea of devoting some of those billions to a dramatic border buildup.
Graham, who helped run interference between Corker and Hoeven and Democrats in the group, said that with the budget office finding in hand, he sat down with Schumer and Corker and said, "OK, let's go big."
The idea immediately appealed to the left and the right.
For Republicans, it provided concrete assurances that the bill would aim to achieve a secure border. For Democrats, it offered goals that, if dramatic, were achievable and measurable.
Still, not everyone was won over.
Shortly before Corker and Hoeven went to the Senate floor to announce their agreement Thursday afternoon, five leading Republican opponents of the bill held a news conference to denounce the deal as little more than an empty promise.
"In short, I think this amendment is designed to pass the bill but not to fix the bill," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said.
About 10 Republicans have indicated they will vote for the bill, far more than enough to ensure it will have the 60 votes required to overcome any attempted filibuster by last-ditch opponents. Democrats control 54 seats, and party aides have said they do not expect any defections.
In addition to the border security components and eventual citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living here illegally, the immigration bill would create new work visa programs and expand existing ones to allow tens of thousands of workers into the country to work in high- and low-skilled jobs.
As far as massive sales go, GOG's Longest Day of Gaming event has about the same discount density as a white dwarf made out of Payless BOGO coupons. For the next 24ish hours, over 150 games have been discounted by up to 85 percent, covering everything from classic PC games, modern indies, big-budget AAA releases and sizable bundles of similar titles.
There's too much going on in this sale for us to list every single hot deal here, but we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention that you can snag Fez, Dyad, Hotline Miami, The Witcher 2, Retro City Rampage, FTL, Waking Mars, Slender: The Arrival and every game in the Myst series for less than $10 each. The sale even includes Mac games ? get up on this.
Should you skip the bedtime stories and do math problems instead? Laura Overdeck, the founder of "Bedtime Math," thinks so. Overdeck discusses her program for tucking kids in with equations, and tells why she thinks it helps kids keep up their math skills over summer vacation.
June 21, 2013 ? A crucial step toward skin cancer may be changes in the genes that control cell shape, report a team of scientists from The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Harvard Medical School in an upcoming issue of Nature Cell Biology (now online).
Using automated high content screening and sophisticated computational modeling, the researchers' screening and analysis of tens of millions of genetically manipulated cells helped them identify more than a dozen genes that influence cell shape. Their work could lead to a better understanding of how cells become metastatic and, eventually, pinpoint new gene therapy targets for cancer treatment.
"We found that by altering the way the cells are grown to better mimic conditions in a living organism, gene expression could have a profound impact on cell shape," said Zheng Yin, the paper's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering of The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI). "This matters because many cancer biologists believe metastasis depends in part on the ability of cells to take on different shapes to escape their confines and spread to healthy tissue. We developed a method of identifying and analyzing the shapes of fruit fly cells, then validated and expanded the discoveries in mammal cancer cells.."
The scientists began their study in fruit fly immune cells called hemocytes. Under normal conditions, each hemocyte was found to take on just one of five distinct shapes about 98 percent of the time. In contrast to conventional wisdom, other shapes and "intermediate" forms were rare, suggesting genes that control cell shape behave more like light switches than teakettles coming to a slow boil. Genetic manipulation of these cells in a lab setting supported that view as well.
Next the group examined human and mouse melanoma cells, which also take on a variety of forms. The researchers identified seven genes that cause cells to take on an especially rounded form, or else an elongated form. One of these genes, PTEN, had a particularly strong impact. When turned off, virtually all cells became elongated or large and rounded, two shapes that can help cancerous cells escape confinement, travel blood vessels, and infiltrate healthy tissues. This information about PTEN is new, even though the gene was previously known to scientists as a tumor suppressor.
"By increasing the frequency of rounded and elongated cells this would provide metastatic cells with a survival advantage that is otherwise not gained by adopting only a single shape, or being highly plastic," said TMHRI Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering Chair Stephen T.C. Wong, Ph.D., P.E., who with Institute of Cancer Research, London, Fellow Chris Bakal, Ph.D., are the corresponding authors who oversaw the research.
Bakal added, "The cells have to become rounded to travel through the bloodstream or invade soft tissues such as the brain, but they take on an elongated shape to travel through harder tissues like bone. But until now, we knew hardly anything about how the cells assume either of these shapes and how they switch between the two."
Yin said he hopes data from the study will be useful to cell and developmental biologists who are interested in how and why many different kinds of animal cells change their shapes.
"I believe this dataset has great potential," he said. "We still saw three distinct shapes other than rounded and elongated, and a handful of cell populations enriched with intermediate shapes -- a lot of possibilities for hypothesis generation."
Herding cancer cells to their deathPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Steinhardt rsteinhardt@licr.org 212-450-1582 Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
Researchers report a therapeutic strategy that appears to destroy drug resistant melanomas and suppress metastasis
June 20, 2013, New York, NY and Oxford, UK An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat. Publishing their findings in today's online issue of Cancer Cell, an international team of scientists led jointly by Professors Colin Goding from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford and Jos Neptuno Rodriguez-Lpez from the University of Murcia, Spain describe a therapeutic strategy that manipulates a mechanism driving that heterogeneity to treat advanced melanoma. Their preclinical studies show that the strategy, which employs a new drug-like molecule in combination with an existing chemotherapy, is highly specific to melanoma cells and effective against tumors that resist all other therapies.
If caught early, melanoma is relatively easy to treat. But in its late stages, it is a stubborn and deadly cancer. Until about a decade ago, patients survived only about seven months after starting treatment. Since then, therapies, such as vemurafenib, that specifically target signaling proteins essential to the proliferation and survival of melanoma cells have extended the lives of some patients. But only about half respond to these targeted therapies, and even in those patients the cancer begins to resist the targeted therapy within six to nine months.
To bypass such resistance, the researchers developed a strategy that essentially pushes subtypes of melanoma cells that are not dividingand are therefore not susceptible to chemotherapyto become vulnerable to a shrewdly targeted drug.
To develop their therapy, the scientists first screened a variety of molecules to find one that boosts the expression of MITF, a master gene that, at high levels, pushes melanoma cells to proliferate and to express a protein known as Tyrosinase that fuels pigment production. The scientists found that methotrexatea drug currently used to treat autoimmune diseases and some other cancers, though not melanomahad precisely that effect. The Spanish team then synthesized a novel molecule called TMECG that is lethal only when it is chemically modified by Tyrosinase. When activated by Tyrosinase, TMECG disrupts the protein machinery of cell division and so poisons cells that are multiplying rapidly.
"The beauty of the therapy," says Professor Jos Neptuno Rodriguez-Lpez, PhD, leader of the Spanish team at the University of Murcia, is that "TMECG is activated by a process that is specific to pigmented cells but not other cells. So, first the methotrexate sensitizes melanoma cells to the effects of TMECG. Then that molecule gets processed and activated by Tyrosinase to form an active compound that kills rapidly dividing cells. Even better, the methotrexate then delivers a second blow to melanoma cells by prompting them to commit suicide through a very specific mechanism."
The researchers found that the combined treatment efficiently destroyed melanoma cells in culture, even those derived from patient tumors resistant to vemurafenib and other targeted melanoma therapies. It also significantly suppressed tumors in one mouse model and diminished metastases in another.
In mice, the treatment combination does not appear to injure other pigmented cells, such as healthy cells of the skin, or those of the iris or the retina, probably because those cells are not rapidly proliferating. The researchers are now refining their new drug to improve its pharmacologic profile and figure out how to deliver it to the right places in the body.
"Think about what you ideally want from a cancer therapy," says Professor Colin Goding, PhD, Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford. "You want a therapy that addresses cancer cell heterogeneity, that eradicates the tendency of cancer cells to become invasive, that works on cells that are resistant to other therapies and that targets only the cancer cells and not any others. I think we've ticked all those boxes."
"By inducing melanoma to differentiate using an old chemotherapy drug, Saez-Ayala and colleagues took advantage of a protein expressed at high levels as a consequence of that differentiation to turn a molecule they have designed into a prolific melanoma killer," said Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. "Based on their preclinical data, I believe that this two-step approach may have promise for treating melanoma."
Still, Goding notes, cancer cells are so mutable that some melanoma cells will inevitably develop resistance to the novel therapy. So he expects that, aside from showing that the strategy works in patients, future research will have to show that it can be combined with other cancer therapies to get around such resistance. "That's how we should be thinking about cancer therapy," he says. "The complexity of the disease is such that any one therapy probably won't work on its own. But if you give complementary therapies that work in completely different ways, then I think you have a chance against this disease."
###
The work, supported also by scientists and clinicians from the Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca in Murcia and the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, was funded by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin; Fundacin Sneca, Regin de Murcia; and the Fundacin de le Asociacin Espanola contra el Cncer (AECC).
About The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research is an international non-profit organization committed to improving the understanding and control of cancer through integrated laboratory and clinical discovery. Leveraging its worldwide network of investigators and the ability to sponsor and conduct its own clinical trials, Ludwig is actively engaged in translating its discoveries into applications for patient benefit. Since its establishment in 1971, the Ludwig Institute has expended more than $1.5 billion on cancer research.
For further information please contact Rachel Steinhardt, rsteinhardt@licr.org or +1 212-450-1582.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Herding cancer cells to their deathPublic release date: 20-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Steinhardt rsteinhardt@licr.org 212-450-1582 Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
Researchers report a therapeutic strategy that appears to destroy drug resistant melanomas and suppress metastasis
June 20, 2013, New York, NY and Oxford, UK An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat. Publishing their findings in today's online issue of Cancer Cell, an international team of scientists led jointly by Professors Colin Goding from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford and Jos Neptuno Rodriguez-Lpez from the University of Murcia, Spain describe a therapeutic strategy that manipulates a mechanism driving that heterogeneity to treat advanced melanoma. Their preclinical studies show that the strategy, which employs a new drug-like molecule in combination with an existing chemotherapy, is highly specific to melanoma cells and effective against tumors that resist all other therapies.
If caught early, melanoma is relatively easy to treat. But in its late stages, it is a stubborn and deadly cancer. Until about a decade ago, patients survived only about seven months after starting treatment. Since then, therapies, such as vemurafenib, that specifically target signaling proteins essential to the proliferation and survival of melanoma cells have extended the lives of some patients. But only about half respond to these targeted therapies, and even in those patients the cancer begins to resist the targeted therapy within six to nine months.
To bypass such resistance, the researchers developed a strategy that essentially pushes subtypes of melanoma cells that are not dividingand are therefore not susceptible to chemotherapyto become vulnerable to a shrewdly targeted drug.
To develop their therapy, the scientists first screened a variety of molecules to find one that boosts the expression of MITF, a master gene that, at high levels, pushes melanoma cells to proliferate and to express a protein known as Tyrosinase that fuels pigment production. The scientists found that methotrexatea drug currently used to treat autoimmune diseases and some other cancers, though not melanomahad precisely that effect. The Spanish team then synthesized a novel molecule called TMECG that is lethal only when it is chemically modified by Tyrosinase. When activated by Tyrosinase, TMECG disrupts the protein machinery of cell division and so poisons cells that are multiplying rapidly.
"The beauty of the therapy," says Professor Jos Neptuno Rodriguez-Lpez, PhD, leader of the Spanish team at the University of Murcia, is that "TMECG is activated by a process that is specific to pigmented cells but not other cells. So, first the methotrexate sensitizes melanoma cells to the effects of TMECG. Then that molecule gets processed and activated by Tyrosinase to form an active compound that kills rapidly dividing cells. Even better, the methotrexate then delivers a second blow to melanoma cells by prompting them to commit suicide through a very specific mechanism."
The researchers found that the combined treatment efficiently destroyed melanoma cells in culture, even those derived from patient tumors resistant to vemurafenib and other targeted melanoma therapies. It also significantly suppressed tumors in one mouse model and diminished metastases in another.
In mice, the treatment combination does not appear to injure other pigmented cells, such as healthy cells of the skin, or those of the iris or the retina, probably because those cells are not rapidly proliferating. The researchers are now refining their new drug to improve its pharmacologic profile and figure out how to deliver it to the right places in the body.
"Think about what you ideally want from a cancer therapy," says Professor Colin Goding, PhD, Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford. "You want a therapy that addresses cancer cell heterogeneity, that eradicates the tendency of cancer cells to become invasive, that works on cells that are resistant to other therapies and that targets only the cancer cells and not any others. I think we've ticked all those boxes."
"By inducing melanoma to differentiate using an old chemotherapy drug, Saez-Ayala and colleagues took advantage of a protein expressed at high levels as a consequence of that differentiation to turn a molecule they have designed into a prolific melanoma killer," said Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. "Based on their preclinical data, I believe that this two-step approach may have promise for treating melanoma."
Still, Goding notes, cancer cells are so mutable that some melanoma cells will inevitably develop resistance to the novel therapy. So he expects that, aside from showing that the strategy works in patients, future research will have to show that it can be combined with other cancer therapies to get around such resistance. "That's how we should be thinking about cancer therapy," he says. "The complexity of the disease is such that any one therapy probably won't work on its own. But if you give complementary therapies that work in completely different ways, then I think you have a chance against this disease."
###
The work, supported also by scientists and clinicians from the Hospital Virgen de la Arrixaca in Murcia and the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, was funded by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacin; Fundacin Sneca, Regin de Murcia; and the Fundacin de le Asociacin Espanola contra el Cncer (AECC).
About The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research is an international non-profit organization committed to improving the understanding and control of cancer through integrated laboratory and clinical discovery. Leveraging its worldwide network of investigators and the ability to sponsor and conduct its own clinical trials, Ludwig is actively engaged in translating its discoveries into applications for patient benefit. Since its establishment in 1971, the Ludwig Institute has expended more than $1.5 billion on cancer research.
For further information please contact Rachel Steinhardt, rsteinhardt@licr.org or +1 212-450-1582.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 20-Jun-2013
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