IGIHE

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  • Sierra Leone Shuts Borders to Fight Ebola

    Sierra Leone Shuts Borders to Fight Ebola

    {{Sierra Leone shut its borders to trade with Guinea and Liberia on Wednesday and closed schools, cinemas and nightclubs in a frontier region in a bid to halt the spread of the Ebola virus.}}

    Sixteen people have died of Ebola in Sierra Leone, a figure that has doubled in the last week, Ministry of Health figures showed.

    Authorities will also mount health checkpoints in the eastern Kailahun district and mandated that all deaths there be reported before burial. Anyone who dies of the virus must be buried under the supervision of health personnel, the Information Ministry said.

    The decision to close district schools came after a nine-year-old whose parents died of Ebola tested positive for the virus, Deputy Minister of Information Theo Nicol told Reuters.

    “There is more contacts between school-going kids than adults hence the closure of schools in the most affected district,” he said. The ban exempted churches and mosques but religious leaders should urge anyone with a fever to go to a clinic, he said.

    Local groups welcomed the measures given public concern over the virus, which can be transmitted by touching victims or their body fluids.

    The virus initially causes a raging fever, headaches, muscle pain and conjunctivitis, before moving to severe phases that bring on vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding.

    Some 328 cases and 208 deaths are linked to Ebola in Guinea, according to the World Health Organization, making the outbreak one of the deadliest for years.

    More than half of new deaths in Guinea were in the southern region of Gueckedou, epicentre of the outbreak which began in February, near the Sierra Leone and Liberian borders. The town is known for its weekly market which attracts traders from neighbouring countries.

    agencies

  • FIFA Chief Wants Another Term Despite Opposition

    FIFA Chief Wants Another Term Despite Opposition

    {{FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Wednesday all but confirmed he would run for re-election despite criticism the game and organisation have been tarnished by accusations of corruption during his long reign.}}

    World soccer’s governing body is reeling after allegations in Britain’s Sunday Times that a former top FIFA representative made payments to officials as part of a campaign to win support for Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.

    Yet Blatter, who has led FIFA for 16 years, made no direct reference to the scandal throughout Wednesday’s annual Congress, and instead pressed his case to extend his tenure.

    “My mission is not finished,” he told officials from FIFA’s 209 member associations at the close of Congress, held in Sao Paulo on the eve of the opening game of Brazil’s 2014 World Cup.

    “Congress, you will decide who will take this great institution forward, but I can tell you I am ready to accompany you in the future,” he added.

    Blatter, who ignored calls made this week by European countries not to run again in next year’s FIFA election, enjoys the support of enough delegates to have his way even if he will not be unopposed.

    Former FIFA Deputy Secretary General Jerome Champagne, who announced his candidacy for the top job last year, later said in a statement he was looking forward to an open debate about the issues facing the game ahead of the vote.

    “No one should fear this open discussion in front of the people of football, which would honour those organising and conducting it,” it read.

    reuters

  • Kanombe Residents Urged to Strengthen Campaign Against Crimes

    Kanombe Residents Urged to Strengthen Campaign Against Crimes

    Local authorities and security organs in Kicukiro district held a meeting with residents of Karama cell in Kanombe sector on Tuesday and urged them identify anything that can cause insecurity in the area as a preventive measure.

    The meeting was convened to assess the security status and to lay strategies to deal with security challenges that still exist in the area.

    The district Mayor, Paul Jules Ndamage challenged them to sustain what has been achieved and strengthen cooperation with security organs to fight and prevent the few challenges that still exist.

    Karama is one of the areas in the district with the lowest rate of crimes.

    Ndamage thanked them for the positive-focused partnership with Police and other security organs in ensuring security and fighting crimes like drug abuse, domestic and gender violence.

    Inspector of Police Hamdun Twizeyimana, District Community Liaison Officer explained to residents that security should be given priority since it is the foundation to their development.

    He also warned of entertainment spots, bar owners and parents against giving alcoholic drinks to minors and allowing them is such spots, which is criminalized in Rwanda.

    Residents also praised government poverty eradication programmes like Gir’inka, Ubudehe saying that they have lifted many out of poverty in the area.

    RNP

  • British Artist to Be First To Sing From Space

    British Artist to Be First To Sing From Space

    {{British singer Sarah Brightman is scheduled to begin training this year for a 2015 flight to the International Space Station where she hopes to become the first professional musician to sing from space, the company arranging the trip said.}}

    Brightman, a famed soprano who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera,” will pay about $52 million for a 10-day stay aboard the orbital outpost, Tom Shelley, president of privately owned Space Adventures, said.

    “She’s absolutely 100 percent committed,” Shelley said during a National Space Club Florida Committee meeting. “She’s putting together her mission plan now.”

    Brightman, who would become the eighth privately funded space tourist, is slated to fly in September 2015. Her training to fly on a Russian Soyuz capsule is scheduled to begin as early as this fall, Shelley said.

    He said she planned to be the first professional musician to sing from space.

    But she faces competition from Lady Gaga, who according to media reports late last year intends to be the first when she performs one song in space in early 2015 on a Virgin Galactic flight. Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, plans to offer suborbital space flights.

    Brightman said in 2012 that she would travel to the space station, but her plans were not confirmed until now.

    So far, Space Adventures has arranged for nine private missions to the space station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about that flies about 418 kilometers above Earth. Microsoft co-founder Charles Simonyi made two trips.

    Brightman will be the first private citizen to visit the station since Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Lalibarte paid about $35 million for an 11-day stay in September 2009.

    Google co-founder Sergei Brin has an option to fly on the next available Soyuz seat after Brightman, which most likely will be in 2017, Shelley said.

    “He paid us a deposit and whenever we have a seat available, he has the right of first refusal,” Shelley added.

    {themoscowtimes}

  • European Filmmakers Call On Putin After Crimean Jailed for Terrorism

    European Filmmakers Call On Putin After Crimean Jailed for Terrorism

    {{About 20 European filmmakers have penned an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin demanding clarity on the fate of Crimean director Oleg Sentsov, who is being held in Moscow on charges of terrorism.}}

    “Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation [FSB] at his home in Simferopol on May 11 and taken to Moscow, where he is detained and awaiting trial,” said the text of the letter, which was published in full by movie website screendaily.com.

    In the letter addressed to State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, among others, the manifest’s signatories said little was known about the condition of Sentsov.

    “We urge you to ensure the safety of Oleg Sentsov; to make public the whereabouts of the detained; to have the detained charged with a recognizable offense or released; to instigate a full, prompt and impartial investigation into the apparently arbitrary detention by the FSB,” the authors of the text, including British director Ken Loach and Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, added in the letter.

    An ethnic Russian, Sentsov stands accused by authorities of organizing a terrorist attack — a charge his supporters say is politically motivated.

    Sentsov was a supporter of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protesters, whose demonstrations led to the ouster of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych in February, and he also helped Ukrainian military officers who did not support Russia’s annexation of Crimea to leave the Black Sea peninsula, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

    “Sentsov is one many people arrested in Crimea and carted off to Moscow on trumped-up charges. I would hope that we can use his position as a public figure to draw attention to this. I urge our brave friends and colleagues in the Russian industry to speak out,” British producer Mike Downey, a signatory of the letter, was quoted as saying.

    If found guilty, Sentsov faces up to 10 years in prison under Russian law — the minimum term available for those convicted of terrorism-related charges.

    {{ {Crimean director Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation at his home in Simferopol.}
    }}

    {themoscowtimes}

  • Cancer Patients May Get Treatment With Single Gene Test

    Cancer Patients May Get Treatment With Single Gene Test

    {{A new way of evaluating tumors may soon help cancer patients identify the underlying genetic link to their disease – and the best possible treatment – all in a single test.}}

    Researchers are set to begin clinical trials using a more comprehensive testing method that looks for all of the known genes that may be active in a tumor.

    The new method could guide patients to the right drug earlier, potentially replacing current tests known as companion diagnostics that only look for a specific biological trait or “biomarker.” The presence of a biomarker can predict whether a new class of drugs called targeted therapies will work on particular tumors.

    Results of these broader tests could even be used to quickly identify which patients might benefit from experimental drugs being tested in clinical trials. U.S. health officials see it as the future direction of cancer diagnostics.

    “We really are moving away from this one drug, one biomarker, one companion diagnostic,” said Dr Richard Pazdur, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s oncology chief.

    In advanced melanoma, for example, about half of patients’ tumors have a mutation in the BRAF gene. Roche makes a drug called Zelboraf that blocks that pathway, at least for a time. To get Roche’s drug, patients need to be evaluated with an FDA-approved companion diagnostic test. One of the tests is also made by Roche.

    In many cases, the FDA requires single-biomarker companion diagnostics as part of the drug approval process, but the broader testing model opens the door to additional players in the diagnostics space, including U.S.-based Foundation Medicine Inc and Thermo Fisher’s Life Technologies.

    In a trial starting later this month, for example, patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the lung could be recommended for one of five experimental treatments based on which genes are active. Foundation Medicine’s next-generation sequencing platform will be used to screen some 6,000 lung cancer patients over five years.

    The Lung Master Protocol trial, also known as Lung-MAP, will take place in some 400 research centers. It is a public-private partnership between the National Cancer Institute, Amgen Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and its U.S.-based biotech arm MedImmune, Roche’s Genentech unit and Pfizer Inc.

    A similar effort called the National Lung Matrix trial being organized in Britain by AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Cancer Research UK is set to start taking patients in July or August.[ID:nL6N0N63N5] Pazdur said a conference this fall will also discuss plans for a trial in metastatic breast cancer.

    “This is a new paradigm in many, many ways,” said Ellen Sigal, chairperson and founder of Friends of Cancer Research, which is organizing the U.S. lung cancer trial. “We’re revolutionizing not only the genetic testing but how patients get into a trial.”

    {{One tissue , Many Tests}}

    Dr Mace Rothenberg, senior vice president of clinical development for Pfizer’s cancer business, said having a single test looking for a single biological marker made sense when there were only a few targeted cancer drugs, which exploit specific weaknesses in patients’ tumors.

    “In the past 10 years, we’ve now identified many more potential targets of drugs, and these molecules are involved in critical functions of a cancer cell,” he said. “Now it becomes very relevant that we be able to go beyond that one tissue, one test to one tissue, many tests.”

    In non-small cell lung cancer, for example, there are more than a dozen different molecular abnormalities that are known to influence tumor growth.

    Dr Vince Miller, Foundation Medicine’s chief medical officer, said as more of the drugs win approval, doctors might need to run five to eight tests, all from a tiny scrap of tumor.

    “Tissue scarcity was becoming a very real issue,” he said.

    It’s an issue that Dr. Tadd Lazarus, chief medical officer at Germany’s Qiagen NV, knows about personally.

    Lazarus’ father is battling his second round of lung cancer, and biopsies must be done using a long needle, a process that produces only a tiny tissue sample. “You get a fixed amount of tissue and you have to maximize it,” he said.

    The German diagnostics company has three companion diagnostic tests on the U.S. market, including one recently approved for Amgen’s colorectal cancer drug Vectibix.

    Qiagen has also invested in a new testing platform from PrimeraDx, a privately held Boston-area company. Under an expanded partnership with Eli Lilly and Co, the companies plan to use the new platform to analyze both DNA and RNA biomarkers, targeting multiple molecular pathways active in common cancers.

    Roche’s Genentech is developing companion tests for about half of the experimental medicines in its pipeline, and is evaluating tests that can look at more than one target at a time, said spokeswoman Holli Dickson.

    wirestory

  • U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks to $130 billion in May

    U.S. Budget Deficit Shrinks to $130 billion in May

    The U.S. budget deficit shrank more than six percent from a year earlier to $130 billion in May, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday.

    Analysts polled by Reuters expected a $131 billion deficit last month. The gap was $139 billion in May 2013.

    May’s results brought the year-to-date deficit to $436 billion, compared with $626 billion in the same period last year.

    Last month’s budget results were affected by differences in the calendar. If adjusted for timing-related transactions, the U.S. would have ended the month of May with a deficit of $87 billion, down from last year’s adjusted $106 billion deficit.

    Receipts totaled $200 billion, up 1 percent from a year ago, the monthly budget statement said, bringing the year-to-date total to $1.93 trillion.

    Outlays were at $330 billion, down 2 percent from last year, for a year-to-date total of $2.37 trillion.

    A Treasury Department official said that it is typical for the government to run into the red in May because there are no significant tax due dates that month.

    This was the 59th deficit in the last 60 months of May.

    econnews

  • Another Indian Woman Found Hanging From Tree

    Another Indian Woman Found Hanging From Tree

    {{A 19-year-old woman has been found hanging from a tree in a village in northern India, the third such case in weeks in Uttar Pradesh state.}}

    The body was found in the Moradabad area, three hours’ drive from Delhi. Her family told police she was raped. A post mortem examination is under way.

    Another woman was found hanged from a tree in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday.

    Last month the gang rape and murder of two girls found in similar circumstances sparked outrage in India.

    On Wednesday, a 44-year-old woman was found hanging from a tree in the Bahraich area.

    Police said she had been threatened by locals for selling liquor in the area and her family filed a case naming five people connected to her death.

    Her family alleged she was gang raped, but her post mortem proved inconclusive.

    But it was the case on 29 May of two teenage girls gang raped and hanged in Badaun district that renewed a countrywide outcry over sexual violence.

    Three suspected attackers have been held in that case, along with two policemen accused of dereliction of duty and criminal conspiracy.

    Uttar Pradesh is home to 200 million people, which has led some here to describe it as the world’s largest failing state, reports the BBC’s Andrew North in Delhi.

    India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said protecting women should be a priority.

    Scrutiny of sexual violence in India has grown since the 2012 gang-rape and murder of a student on a Delhi bus.

    The government tightened laws on sexual violence last year after widespread protests following the attack.

    BBC

  • Thai Coup Leader Order Free World Cup TV

    Thai Coup Leader Order Free World Cup TV

    {{Thailand’s ruling junta has ordered TV regulators to ensure that football fans will not have to pay to watch any matches at the World Cup.}}

    The military said it was part of its “happiness campaign”, which has seen a number of policy gimmicks, such as free haircuts and concerts.

    The broadcaster that bought the rights to show the World Cup is reportedly claiming $21.5m (£13m) in compensation.

    The junta overthrew the government last month promising to restore order.

    It has since cracked down on dissent, detaining hundreds of potential opponents and releasing them with warnings about their future behaviour.

    Bangkok and some other parts of the country remain under curfew.

    In an attempt to subdue opposition to the coup, the military has been running a charm offensive alongside its repression.

    The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok says ensuring the World Cup can be watched by everyone is central to this so-called happiness campaign.

    The RS broadcaster had already bought the rights to the matches and planned to allow only a third to be shown on free-to-air channels.

    To see all of them viewers would have to buy a decoder, at a cost beyond many poorer Thais.

    So the military has ordered the national broadcasting regulator to negotiate a deal for all the matches to be shown at no cost, despite the potentially hefty compensation claims.

    Our correspondent says the military seems willing to spend generously to win hearts and minds.

    It is already promising to subsidise farmers, to revive ambitious infrastructure spending plans and to cap the costs of basic foods.

    The initiatives are borrowed from the government that the junta overthrew after months protests often directed at those same policies.

    {A football match with elephants representing World Cup nations was a big hit with students}

  • Brazil ‘Ready’ For World Cup

    Brazil ‘Ready’ For World Cup

    {{Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff says her country is ready, on and off the pitch, for the football World Cup which starts on Thursday.}}

    In a TV address, she said “the pessimists” had been defeated by the determination of the Brazilian people.

    She rejected criticism of overspending, saying that the tournament would leave a lasting legacy of infrastructure.

    Brazil has seen a year of protests against bad governance and perceived excessive spending on the World Cup.

    Metro strikes are also threatening to disrupt the opening game in Sao Paulo.

    The head of the World Cup local organising committee, Ricardo Trade, told media that while a strike would be “a nightmare”, the authorities were prepared and “inside the stadium, it will be a show”.

    He insisted that Brazil would deliver.

    {{‘False dilemma’}}

    Speaking less than 48 hours before the start of the tournament, President Rousseff said that visitors would not be taking away infrastructure projects “in their suitcases”, which would instead remain in the country as a benefit for everyone.

    She defended the $11bn expenditure on the tournament, calling it a “false dilemma” that World Cup spending somehow diminished investments in health and education.

    wirestory