Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/barbara-walters-retirement-coming-in-2014/
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Iran's support for Syria still appears strong - but is it hedging its bets?
Even as it continues to provide military support to the Syrian regime, staunch ally Iran is making preparations for life after President Assad.?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, welcomes Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, for their meeting, in Tehran, Iran, March 2.
Mahdi Marizad, Fars News Agency/AP
EnlargeWhen the Arab League handed Syria?s long-vacant seat to the Syrian opposition on March 26 and endorsed military aid for anti-regime rebels, the first and loudest complaints came from Iran.?
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Despite a two-year rebellion that has seen 70,000 deaths and 1 million refugees, Iran has not veered from its staunch support for Syria?s embattled President Bashar al-Assad, whose?regime it considers a critical piece of its anti-US, anti-Israel "axis of resistance."
The Arab League's decision set a ?dangerous precedent? that would only ?add to the problems,? warned Iran?s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. It would even ?bring an end to the [Arab League?s] role in the region,? asserted his deputy, Hossein Amir?Abdollahian.
The Iranian complaints are the diplomatic side of an on-the-battlefield proxy war in Syria, with both sides reportedly receiving a surge of weapons from outside powers in recent months.?Iranian military and financial support for Mr. Assad has been stepped up with near-weekly flights?(and Russia still continues normal sales to its ally). Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, meanwhile, have ferried fresh weaponry to the rebels, with CIA support.
United Nations envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi says the Syrian conflict is becoming a ?playground for competing regional forces.?
As the mish-mash of rebel forces capture more ground, more regime military bases and hardware, and key civilian targets, few analysts predict that Assad?s regime will survive in its current form, or that Syria?s longstanding ruler will be alive when it is over. Even Iran, despite its unbending public support for Assad, appears?to be preparing for a post-Assad world.
"Iran so far was successful; without Iran's money and strategic help, Assad would have fallen much earlier," says Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But in terms of policy, they have a Plan B?. So even if Assad falls, to some extent Iran would be able to protect its interests."
'Plan B'?
That plan may hinge on a pro-regime militia Iran helped to create called Jaysh al-Shabi. The militia could protect Syria's Alawites ? the Shiite Muslim offshoot to which Assad and much of his regime belong ? if they are relegated to only a portion of the country?in northwest Syria, along the coast to the border with Lebanon.?
It's possible that no side will gain a decisive advantage and, with all sides backed by powerful international friends, the country will break along sectarian and ethnic fault lines, with Alawite and Kurdish sections, and a larger Sunni portion.?
Since its 1979 Islamic revolution,?Iran has used Syria as a conduit for weapons, cash, and support for the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah,?and later?Hamas and Islamic Jihad,?all of which form a frontline against Israel. If Assad falls, Iran could lose that channel.?
Iran?s Revolutionary Guard commander has been quoted as saying that the?Jaysh al-Shabi, a mix of Shiite and Alawite groups, is modeled after Iran?s ideological Basij militia,?a large volunteer force that has been used to quell street unrest. Senior US officials, who added Jaysh al-Shabi to its list of sanctioned groups last December,?have described it as ?an Iran-Hezbollah joint venture.?
?In terms of propaganda, no, I think the Iranians in the near future would not admit this possibility [of Assad falling],? says Mr. Khalaji.
But Iran's Plan B with the pro-regime militia means that even if Assad is removed, as long as an Alawite enclave continues to exist in Syria, Iran may still manage to maintain direct links with militant groups. "By helping them, [Iran would] make sure that some part of Syria can be used as a bridge to reach Lebanon and the Palestinian territories," adds Khalaji."
Gulf, West come together
At the Arab League meeting in Doha, Qatar, countering any Iranian support for the Assad regime may have been behind the readiness to recognize the anti-government coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
?We demand ? all forms of support from our friends and brothers, including our full right for self-defense,? said Syrian opposition chief Moaz al-Khatib after taking Syria's seat at the Arab League meeting.?
That has reportedly?been happening already. The airlifting of military aid?by?Arab governments and Turkey to Syrian rebels?with CIA help??expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year,? The New York Times reported on March 24. According to the Times, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar ??Sunni Muslim nations wary of Iranian influence in the region ? have carried out?160 military-style cargo flights?bringing weaponry to Turkey and Jordan, from which the weapons are smuggled into Syria.?
?The intensity and frequency of these [weapons] flights are suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation,? Hugh Griffiths of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute told the Times.?
Not enough
Likewise, Iran has ?significantly stepped up? military support for Assad, according to a mid-March report by Reuters.?
The Iranian effort ?suggests the Syrian war is entering a new phase in which Iran may be trying to end the battlefield stalemate by redoubling its commitment to Assad? and giving the regime a ?crucial lifeline,? Reuters reported, citing Western diplomats and a Western intelligence report from last September.
The intelligence report described shipments, primarily through Iraqi airspace, ranging from communications gear and drone parts to ?advanced strategic weapons? such as shore-to-sea missiles and ballistic missiles.
?None of this will be decisive; Assad will lose,? says Kenneth Katzman, an analyst for the Congressional Research Service in Washington. ?You?re not going to change the outcome unless you are shipping big-ticket items, which I don?t think anybody is.?
Assad?s military stores are slowly being eroded: Helicopters and planes have been shot down, and many tanks have been taken out?and some captured by rebels and turned against government forces.?
The Iranians "can?t do much more, because to do more would risk getting things captured and exposed," says Mr. Katzman.??To some extent the [Iranian] mentality is the same as Assad?s mentality: Just be tough, show as much strength as possible, and you?re going to be able to?power through it. I think they?ve?overestimated their ability to save Assad.?
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Can I Use My Car As Collateral For A Loan? | Bankrate.com
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Dear Shane, To find out, estimate your car's value at one of the car pricing sites such as Edmunds.com, and compare it to the payoff amount of your car. If you have the enough equity, you may be able to use your car as collateral to get the loan you want, though you should check with your lender to make sure the loan terms will allow it. Keep in mind that if you do use your car to secure a loan, the lender could end up repossessing your car if you default on the payments, which could leave you without transportation.
I need a loan. Is it possible to get a loan by borrowing against my car to get the money I need?
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Source: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/use-car-as-collateral-for-loan.aspx
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Multi-toxin biotech crops not silver bullets, scientists warn
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Public release date: 29-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Daniel Stolte
stolte@email.arizona.edu
520-626-4402
University of Arizona
Crucial assumptions underlying multi-toxin crops don't always apply, a University of Arizona study shows. The results help explain why one major pest is evolving resistance faster than predicted and offer ideas for more sustainable pest control
A strategy widely used to prevent pests from quickly adapting to crop-protecting toxins may fail in some cases unless better preventive actions are taken, suggests new research by University of Arizona entomologists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Corn and cotton have been genetically modified to produce pest-killing proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short. Compared with typical insecticide sprays, the Bt toxins produced by genetically engineered crops are much safer for people and the environment, explained Yves Carrire, a professor of entomology in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who led the study.
Although Bt crops have helped to reduce insecticide sprays, boost crop yields and increase farmer profits, their benefits will be short-lived if pests adapt rapidly, said Bruce Tabashnik, a co-author of the study and head of the UA department of entomology. "Our goal is to understand how insects evolve resistance so we can develop and implement more sustainable, environmentally friendly pest management," he said.
Bt crops were first grown widely in 1996, and several pests have already become resistant to plants that produce a single Bt toxin. To thwart further evolution of pest resistance to Bt crops, farmers have recently shifted to the "pyramid" strategy: each plant produces two or more toxins that kill the same pest. As reported in the study, the pyramid strategy has been adopted extensively, with two-toxin Bt cotton completely replacing one-toxin Bt cotton since 2011 in the U.S.
Most scientists agree that two-toxin plants will be more durable than one-toxin plants. The extent of the advantage of the pyramid strategy, however, rests on assumptions that are not always met, the study reports. Using lab experiments, computer simulations and analysis of published experimental data, the new results help explain why one major pest has started to become resistant faster than anticipated.
"The pyramid strategy has been touted mostly on the basis of simulation models," said Carrire. "We tested the underlying assumptions of the models in lab experiments with a major pest of corn and cotton. The results provide empirical data that can help to improve the models and make the crops more durable."
One critical assumption of the pyramid strategy is that the crops provide redundant killing, Carrire explained. "Redundant killing can be achieved by plants producing two toxins that act in different ways to kill the same pest," he said, "so, if an individual pest has resistance to one toxin, the other toxin will kill it."
In the real world, things are a bit more complicated, Carrire's team found out. Thierry Brvault, a visiting scientist from France, led the lab experiments at the UA. His home institution, the Center for Agricultural Research for Development, or CIRAD, is keenly interested in factors that could affect pest resistance to Bt crops in Africa.
"We obviously can't release resistant insects into the field, so we breed them in the lab and bring in the crop plants to do feeding experiments," Carrire said. For their experiments, the group collected cotton bollworm also known as corn earworm or Helicoverpa zea , a species of moth that is a major agricultural pest, and selected it for resistance against one of the Bt toxins, Cry1Ac.
As expected, the resistant caterpillars survived after munching on cotton plants producing only that toxin. The surprise came when Carrire's team put them on pyramided Bt cotton containing Cry2Ab in addition to Cry1Ac.
If the assumption of redundant killing is correct, caterpillars resistant to the first toxin should survive on one-toxin plants, but not on two-toxin plants, because the second toxin should kill them, Carrire explained.
"But on the two-toxin plants, the caterpillars selected for resistance to one toxin survived significantly better than caterpillars from a susceptible strain."
These findings show that the crucial assumption of redundant killing does not apply in this case and may also explain the reports indicating some field populations of cotton bollworm rapidly evolved resistance to both toxins.
Moreover, the team's analysis of published data from eight species of pests reveals that some degree of cross-resistance between Cry1 and Cry2 toxins occurred in 19 of 21 experiments. Contradicting the concept of redundant killing, cross-resistance means that selection with one toxin increases resistance to the other toxin.
According to the study's authors, even low levels of cross-resistance can reduce redundant killing and undermine the pyramid strategy. Carrire explained that this is especially problematic with cotton bollworm and some other pests that are not highly susceptible to Bt toxins to begin with.
The team found violations of other assumptions required for optimal success of the pyramid strategy. In particular, inheritance of resistance to plants producing only Bt toxin Cry1Ac was not recessive, which is expected to reduce the ability of refuges to delay resistance.
Insects can carry two forms of the same gene for resistance to Bt one confers susceptibility and the other resistance. When resistance to a toxin is recessive, one resistance allele is not sufficient to increase survival. In other words, offspring that inherit one allele of each type will not be resistant, while offspring that inherit two resistance alleles will be resistant.
Refuges consist of standard plants that do not make Bt toxins and thus allow survival of susceptible pests. Under ideal conditions, inheritance of resistance is recessive and the susceptible pests emerging from refuges greatly outnumber the resistant pests. If so, the matings between two resistant pests needed to produce resistant offspring are unlikely. But if inheritance of resistance is dominant instead of recessive, as seen with cotton bollworm, matings between a resistant moth and a susceptible moth can produce resistant offspring, which hastens resistance.
According to Tabashnik, overly optimistic assumptions have led the EPA to greatly reduce requirements for planting refuges to slow evolution of pest resistance to two-toxin Bt crops.
The new results should come as a wakeup call to consider larger refuges to push resistance further into the future, Carrire pointed out. "Our simulations tell us that with 10 percent of acreage set aside for refuges, resistance evolves quite fast, but if you put 30 or 40 percent aside, you can substantially delay it."
"Our main message is to be more cautious, especially with a pest like the cotton bollworm," Carrire said. "We need more empirical data to refine our simulation models, optimize our strategies and really know how much refuge area is required. Meanwhile, let's not assume that the pyramid strategy is a silver bullet."
###
[ | 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.
Public release date: 29-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Daniel Stolte
stolte@email.arizona.edu
520-626-4402
University of Arizona
Crucial assumptions underlying multi-toxin crops don't always apply, a University of Arizona study shows. The results help explain why one major pest is evolving resistance faster than predicted and offer ideas for more sustainable pest control
A strategy widely used to prevent pests from quickly adapting to crop-protecting toxins may fail in some cases unless better preventive actions are taken, suggests new research by University of Arizona entomologists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Corn and cotton have been genetically modified to produce pest-killing proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt for short. Compared with typical insecticide sprays, the Bt toxins produced by genetically engineered crops are much safer for people and the environment, explained Yves Carrire, a professor of entomology in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who led the study.
Although Bt crops have helped to reduce insecticide sprays, boost crop yields and increase farmer profits, their benefits will be short-lived if pests adapt rapidly, said Bruce Tabashnik, a co-author of the study and head of the UA department of entomology. "Our goal is to understand how insects evolve resistance so we can develop and implement more sustainable, environmentally friendly pest management," he said.
Bt crops were first grown widely in 1996, and several pests have already become resistant to plants that produce a single Bt toxin. To thwart further evolution of pest resistance to Bt crops, farmers have recently shifted to the "pyramid" strategy: each plant produces two or more toxins that kill the same pest. As reported in the study, the pyramid strategy has been adopted extensively, with two-toxin Bt cotton completely replacing one-toxin Bt cotton since 2011 in the U.S.
Most scientists agree that two-toxin plants will be more durable than one-toxin plants. The extent of the advantage of the pyramid strategy, however, rests on assumptions that are not always met, the study reports. Using lab experiments, computer simulations and analysis of published experimental data, the new results help explain why one major pest has started to become resistant faster than anticipated.
"The pyramid strategy has been touted mostly on the basis of simulation models," said Carrire. "We tested the underlying assumptions of the models in lab experiments with a major pest of corn and cotton. The results provide empirical data that can help to improve the models and make the crops more durable."
One critical assumption of the pyramid strategy is that the crops provide redundant killing, Carrire explained. "Redundant killing can be achieved by plants producing two toxins that act in different ways to kill the same pest," he said, "so, if an individual pest has resistance to one toxin, the other toxin will kill it."
In the real world, things are a bit more complicated, Carrire's team found out. Thierry Brvault, a visiting scientist from France, led the lab experiments at the UA. His home institution, the Center for Agricultural Research for Development, or CIRAD, is keenly interested in factors that could affect pest resistance to Bt crops in Africa.
"We obviously can't release resistant insects into the field, so we breed them in the lab and bring in the crop plants to do feeding experiments," Carrire said. For their experiments, the group collected cotton bollworm also known as corn earworm or Helicoverpa zea , a species of moth that is a major agricultural pest, and selected it for resistance against one of the Bt toxins, Cry1Ac.
As expected, the resistant caterpillars survived after munching on cotton plants producing only that toxin. The surprise came when Carrire's team put them on pyramided Bt cotton containing Cry2Ab in addition to Cry1Ac.
If the assumption of redundant killing is correct, caterpillars resistant to the first toxin should survive on one-toxin plants, but not on two-toxin plants, because the second toxin should kill them, Carrire explained.
"But on the two-toxin plants, the caterpillars selected for resistance to one toxin survived significantly better than caterpillars from a susceptible strain."
These findings show that the crucial assumption of redundant killing does not apply in this case and may also explain the reports indicating some field populations of cotton bollworm rapidly evolved resistance to both toxins.
Moreover, the team's analysis of published data from eight species of pests reveals that some degree of cross-resistance between Cry1 and Cry2 toxins occurred in 19 of 21 experiments. Contradicting the concept of redundant killing, cross-resistance means that selection with one toxin increases resistance to the other toxin.
According to the study's authors, even low levels of cross-resistance can reduce redundant killing and undermine the pyramid strategy. Carrire explained that this is especially problematic with cotton bollworm and some other pests that are not highly susceptible to Bt toxins to begin with.
The team found violations of other assumptions required for optimal success of the pyramid strategy. In particular, inheritance of resistance to plants producing only Bt toxin Cry1Ac was not recessive, which is expected to reduce the ability of refuges to delay resistance.
Insects can carry two forms of the same gene for resistance to Bt one confers susceptibility and the other resistance. When resistance to a toxin is recessive, one resistance allele is not sufficient to increase survival. In other words, offspring that inherit one allele of each type will not be resistant, while offspring that inherit two resistance alleles will be resistant.
Refuges consist of standard plants that do not make Bt toxins and thus allow survival of susceptible pests. Under ideal conditions, inheritance of resistance is recessive and the susceptible pests emerging from refuges greatly outnumber the resistant pests. If so, the matings between two resistant pests needed to produce resistant offspring are unlikely. But if inheritance of resistance is dominant instead of recessive, as seen with cotton bollworm, matings between a resistant moth and a susceptible moth can produce resistant offspring, which hastens resistance.
According to Tabashnik, overly optimistic assumptions have led the EPA to greatly reduce requirements for planting refuges to slow evolution of pest resistance to two-toxin Bt crops.
The new results should come as a wakeup call to consider larger refuges to push resistance further into the future, Carrire pointed out. "Our simulations tell us that with 10 percent of acreage set aside for refuges, resistance evolves quite fast, but if you put 30 or 40 percent aside, you can substantially delay it."
"Our main message is to be more cautious, especially with a pest like the cotton bollworm," Carrire said. "We need more empirical data to refine our simulation models, optimize our strategies and really know how much refuge area is required. Meanwhile, let's not assume that the pyramid strategy is a silver bullet."
###
[ | 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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoa-mbc032913.php
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Pope leads traditional Good Friday rite at Rome Colosseum
By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) - Thousands of people holding candles turned out at Rome's Colosseum to see Pope Francis mark the first Good Friday of his pontificate with a traditional "Way of the Cross" procession around the ancient amphitheatre.
Francis, who was elected on March 13, sat under a red canopy on Rome's Palatine Hill as representatives of the faithful from around the world alternated carrying a wooden cross on the day Christians commemorated Jesus's death by crucifixion.
"Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent," the Argentine pope said, speaking slowly in Italian and in a somber voice at the end of the evening service.
"And yet, God has spoken, he has replied, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness. It is also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us," he said.
"Christians must respond to evil with good," he said, urging them to beware "the evil that continues to work in us and around us".
The meditations for the 14 "stations of the cross" which commemorate events in the last hours of Jesus's life - from when Pontius Pilate condemned him to death to his burial in a rock tomb - were written by young people from Lebanon.
The wooden cross was passed from one group and person to another - including a person in a wheelchair. Those who carried it came from Italy, India, China, Nigeria, Syria, Lebanon and Brazil.
Several of the meditations, read by actors, referred to conflict in the Middle East and the suffering of its people.
One meditation called the Middle East "a land lacerated by injustice and violence".
Francis praised those Lebanese Christians and Muslims who tried to live together and who, he said, in doing so gave a sign of hope to the world.
Prayers were read out for exploited and abused children, refugees, the homeless and victims of religious intolerance, war, violence, terrorism, poverty, injustice and drug addiction.
There were also prayers against abortion and euthanasia.
Good Friday is the second of four hectic days leading up to Easter Sunday, the most important day in the Christian liturgical calendar.
On Holy Thursday, two young women were among 12 people whose feet the pope washed and kissed at a traditional ceremony in a Rome youth prison, the first time a pontiff has included females in the rite.
After celebrating an Easter eve service, on Easter Sunday he will deliver his first "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message in St. Peter's Square.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-leads-traditional-good-friday-rite-rome-colosseum-005958820.html
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iPhone 5S announcement rumored for June 20th, launch in July
By Simon Evans March 28 (Reuters) - United States forward Landon Donovan, returning to soccer after a three-month break from the game, said on Thursday he hopes to be back with the national team for June's World Cup qualifiers. Donovan announced last December that he needed a break from the game, saying he had lost his passion and enjoyment for the sport, raising the question as to whether he would play at next year's World Cup finals in Brazil should the U.S. qualify. But after returning to training with his Major League Soccer club L.A. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iphone-5s-announcement-rumored-june-20th-launch-july-145826634.html
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