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U.S. Senate OKs immigration bill which faces uncertain future


The U.S. Senate has approved a landmark overhaul of immigration laws by a 68 to 32 vote. The bill is a top item on President Barack Obama’s agenda, but faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.
 
The Senate’s comprehensive reform bill provides a long and arduous path to residency and eventual U.S. citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. 
 
Democrat Richard Durbin helped craft the bill and explains the provisions.
 
“To have 11 million people come forward, identify themselves, register with our government, pay their taxes, pay a fine, submit themselves to a criminal background check before we allow them to stay in this country," he said.
 
The bill also seeks to streamline legal immigration, with an emphasis on attracting high-skilled workers.  And it mandates a surge in U.S. border security, as noted by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican.
 
“This proposal mandates the most border and interior security measures in our nation’s history.  For example, it requires and funds the completion of 700 miles of real border fence.  It adds 20,000 new border agents.  It details a specific technology plan for each sector of the border," he said.
 
All Democratic senators backed the bill, joined by about one-third of Republicans.  Opponents, like Sen. David Vitter, doubt it will achieve its security goals.
 
“The amnesty is first, virtually immediately.  The enforcement is later, maybe," he said.
 
Other Republicans argued adding millions of undocumented immigrants to America’s legal workforce would depress wages and add to unemployment.
 
But according to a non-partisan congressional analysis, the Senate bill would boost U.S. economic growth and reduce federal deficits, a projection highlighted by Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat.
 
“Fewer illegal immigrants, higher GDP, more jobs, reduced deficit," he said. "Who could oppose that?”
 
Republican Bob Corker was one of many senators who noted the vast contributions immigrants make to America, regardless of their legal status.
 
"They are walking across our border to work hard, to do all kinds of things.  They create companies and they are entrepreneurs.  They also raise our kids, they serve us meals, they bring our crops in, they build our homes, they build our buildings.  They want to participate in the American dream," he said.
 
But opposition to the Senate’s vision for immigration reform runs high among Republicans who control the House of Representatives.  House Speaker John Boehner has ruled out a vote on the Senate bill.
 
Instead, the House could pass border security measures mirroring Senate provisions, but skip legalization of the undocumented.  An enforcement-only approach would be unacceptable to Democrats, including President Obama.

On Twitter, the reaction to the bill's Senate passage hinted at the divisive debate expected in the lower house of Congress.


Words of dying woman
will be heard at terror trial


The judge in the trial of a U.S. Army major accused of the terrorist killing of 13 people has ruled that an emotional recording of a dying victim can be used as evidence.  The judge also set the date for Nidal Hasan's formal plea for Tuesday.  Legal experts, however, say Hasan could still cause another delay in the proceedings.

Col. Tara Osborn ruled Thursday that military prosecutors can use a recording from the cell phone of Pvt. Francheska Velez after she was shot.  She was pregnant at the time and cried out, "My baby, my baby!"  Pvt. Velez died soon afterward.

Such dramatic material is often ruled inadmissible in trials, but military law expert Geoffrey Corn at South Texas College of Law in Houston says statements from dying victims are an exception.

"It will have an emotional impact on the jury, but there is nothing unfair about that.  That is the key; you only get to keep relevant evidence out when the prejudicial effect is unfair and there is nothing unfair in allowing the jury to hear the dying declaration of a murder victim," Corn said.

Military prosecutors say Pvt. Velez was one of 13 people killed Nov. 5, 2009, when Hasan fired on a gathering at Fort Hood, an army base in Texas.

The judge also cleared the way for jury selection to begin July 9.  Osborn set a July 2 hearing for Hasan to make his formal plea.

Since this is a capital case, in which the death penalty could be imposed, military law prohibits him from pleading guilty to first-degree murder.  Corn, however, says Hasan could cause another delay by trying to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

"He would do that to try to get some clemency value out of it. In other words, he could argue to the jury, 'Look, I am trying to accept responsibility without a deal, without any benefit, I am pleading guilty to non-capital murder.  I would have pled guilty to the capital offense, but I am not allowed to,'" Corn said.

Corn says that if Hasan tries this tactic, it could complicate the case and even result in two sets of accusations being considered separately.

Victims' families have expressed frustration over the delays in starting the trial.  Last year, there were several hearings over whether Hasan would be allowed to wear a beard, which he says is an expression of his Islamic faith.

The judge presiding over the case at that time ordered him to shave or be forcibly shaved to meet Army regulations.  But that judge was eventually replaced and Judge Osborn has allowed Hasan to keep the beard. She also has allowed him to serve as his own lawyer, but kept appointed defense attorneys on hand so that they can step in if needed.


Another year of Glastonbury
opens beneath cloudy skies


Britain's largest music festival got off to a traditionally muddy start Thursday as thousands of campers arrived at Glastonbury in pouring rain for three days of music headlined by veteran rockers the Rolling Stones.
 
The event that started as a retreat for about 1,500 hippies on a dairy farm in rural Somerset in 1970 has grown into the world's largest music festival, featuring about 2,000 acts on 58 stages and attended by more than 135,000 people.
 
Gates opened early Wednesday and by late Thursday nearly 120,000 people had flooded into the 900-acre site about 130 miles southwest of London, turning the working farm of festival founder Michael Eavis into a tent city.
 
But while Glastonbury is known for megastars performing alongside eclectic acts, it also has a reputation for falling afoul of Britain's fickle summer weather, and this year was no exception, despite forecasts for dry weather.
 
By mid-afternoon Thursday the rain was falling heavily, continuing into the night, with revelers in raincoats and rubber boots — known as wellies — negotiating muddy tracks.
 
"The forecast was fine so I am glad I did bring clothes for all weather," said Grace Murphy, 23, an Irish social work student, dressed in a bright pink raincoat and black wellies. "We'll still have fun. It's a great atmosphere and there's no other festival as awesome as Glastonbury."
 
Meteorologists from Britain's national weather service, the Met Office, had forecast largely dry weather, but even in the rain the music fans descending on Glastonbury were determined to have fun, having paid 205 pounds ($315) each for tickets.
 
"You've got to expect some rain at Glastonbury. It's part of the experience," said Amanda Delve, a retailer aged in her 40's, browsing some of the 350 food stalls on the site.

The resources needed at Glastonbury are staggering, with 13 miles (20 kms) of fences ringing the site where there are about 198 pubs and bars, and 4,500 toilets. The festival was not held in 2012 as the London Olympics needed so much of the equipment.
 
An army of workers spends weeks preparing the site where the Rolling Stones play Saturday, their first performance at Glastonbury, marking their 50 years in the music business.
 
The headline act on Friday is Britain's Arctic Monkeys and on Sunday it is British folk band Mumford & Sons who confirmed this week that bassist Ted Dwane was well enough to perform after undergoing surgery for a blood clot on the brain.
 
While the big names grab the spotlight, Eavis has ensured the event stays true to its alternative roots with music of all genres as well as dance, circus, and workshops in meditation, willow sculptures, and shamanic drum-making.
 
Thursday the Gyuto Monks, a group of Tibetan monks, chanted from a stage in the pouring rain. The Grammy-nominated group live in Dharamsala, north India, with the Dalai Lama who they followed when he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
 
Over the years the festival has not only grown in size but it has also started to attract a different crowd, with research showing the average age of revelers at Glastonbury is now 36 and it does not have to be too rough an experience.
 
Campers can opt for a more glamorous stay known as glamping with companies offering ready-pitched tents, golf carts to get around, champagne, private toilets and showers.
 
"The type of people here this year are totally different from when I first came in 1995, much older, but I guess at 205 pounds a ticket that's to be expected," said Mark Bignell, 45.


Voyager probe encounters
strange area in deep space


Reports last summer that NASA's long-lived Voyager 1 space probe had finally left the solar system turned out to be a bit premature, scientists said Thursday.
 
Rather, the spacecraft, which was launched in 1977 for a five-year mission to study Jupiter and Saturn, has found itself in a previously unknown region between the outermost part of the solar system and interstellar space.
 
It is an unusual and unexpected thoroughfare, a place where charged particles from the sun have virtually disappeared and those coming from galactic cosmic rays beyond the solar system are plentiful.
 
By that measure alone, scientists initially thought Voyager 1 did indeed finally reach interstellar space on Aug. 25, 2012, becoming the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
 
But one key measurement killed that theory. The magnetic field in which Voyager 1 traveled was still aligned like the sun's. If the probe were truly in interstellar space, scientists expect that the direction of the magnetic field would be different.
 
“You can never exclude a really peculiar coincidence, but this was very strong evidence that we're still in the heliosheath,”  the bubble of plasma from the sun that surrounds the solar system, said Voyager scientist Leonard Burlaga, with NASA's Goddard Space Fight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
 
Additional measurements later turned up a second odd reading. The cosmic ray particles were not uniformly distributed around Voyager 1 like scientists expected them to be in interstellar space. Instead, the charged particles, which stem from distant supernova explosions, were oriented in particular directions.
 
That led scientists to conclude that Voyager 1 was in some sort of magnetic boundary zone, where particles from inside and outside the solar system could easily swap places, but where the sun's influence still reigns supreme.
 
“We have no explanation for why we even found this new region,” Burlaga said.
 
So far, Voyager's sister probe, Voyager 2, which is exiting the solar system in a different direction, has not encountered the same phenomena nor may it ever.
 
“Voyager 2 has seen exactly what the models predicted we would see, unlike Voyager 1, which didn't,” said lead scientist Ed Stone, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
 
Voyager 1 may be in an unusual place where the heliosheath and interstellar space connect, he added.
 
Voyager 1 is now about 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth. At that distance, it takes radio signals, which move at the speed of light, 17 hours to make a one-way trip to Earth.
 
Scientists do not know how much farther Voyager has to travel to reach interstellar space. The spacecraft, which is powered by the slow decay of radioactive plutonium, will begin running out of energy for its science instruments in 2020. By 2025, it will be completely out of power.
 

New evidence discovered
in Alzheimer research


Researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center have identified a brain protein that may have a role in causing the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease.

The finding could allow scientists to develop more effective treatments.

Neurons are the wiring through which information, in the form of electricity, travels through the brain. For these electrical impulses to get where they’re going, they have to jump across the spaces between neurons. These spaces are called synapses, and a protein called caspase-2 usually maintains them. One of the early effects of Alzheimer’s, however, is a disruption of normal synapse function, which can lead to neuron death. Columbia researchers thought caspase-2 might play a role in that degeneration of synapses.

They tested that idea by specially breeding mice who had amyloid-beta plaques in their brains and lacked the caspase-2 brain protein. Buildups of amyloid-beta appear to be one of the main causes of Alzheimer’s symptoms, and mice with amyloid-beta plaques suffer memory losses like that of human Alzheimer’s sufferers.

The new mice, however, did not lose memory as they aged. In fact, it stayed the same as normal mice. This seems to indicate that when brains have amyloid-beta plaques, as they do in Alzheimer’s cases, the normal caspace-2 protein somehow causes memory loss.

The researchers think the amyloid-beta plaques in Alzheimer’s patients make caspace-2 and a few other proteins more active, damaging the way electrical signals travel through the brain.

This new knowledge about the activities of the caspace-2 protein may allow researchers to develop new medical therapies to treat Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer's is a degenerative brain disorder that usually strikes older adults. As it progresses, the disease causes memory loss and behavior changes. It also affects thinking and language skills. Patients usually need extensive care from relatives or medical professionals for years.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says around the world about 18 million people now have Alzheimer's and the number is expected to rise to 34 million by 2025.


Smithsonian features genes
in new Washington exhibit


A genomic revolution is changing people’s lives.  A new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington explores the extraordinary impact it is having on science, medicine and nature. 

"Genome: Unlocking Life’s Code" opened to large crowds seeking to learn more about the field. The exhibit marks two scientific milestones: The 10th anniversary of the completion of the human genome project, the first blueprint of the human body, and the 60th anniversary of the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure which laid the foundation for understanding how our genetic information is encoded and copied.

"I have always found it really intriguing that everything about who we are and what we look like is controlled by these tiny molecules called DNA," said Ben Thomas, 12, who came with his family from Dayton, Ohio excited to embark on a genomic journey. "This exhibit is like cake to me.  I love this stuff."

The four chemicals that make up the fabric of humanity are on display in a mesmerizing variety of ways throughout the exhibit: from photographs of faces highlighting genetic differences to an endless scroll of the letters representing them in our genome - A,G,C and T - on a huge TV screen.  Those same letters are projected in eye-popping orange on a mannequin nicknamed Gigi, says exhibit developer Meg Rivers.

“She has on her the human genetic code and she is meant really to engage visitors and get them to think about having their own code and what does it means to them,” she said.

Rivers says visitors get that chance thanks to 3D models, animated videos, personal stories, touch screen panels, interactive games and genetic sequencing equipment. 

“You are able to go into these different alcoves, looking at personalized medicine, exploring medical mysteries," she said. "What does it mean to your health, the ethnical, legal and social implications that people are now starting to come across in the media, looking at our ancient ancestry up to today and what genomic science means to our natural world, our understanding it, our environment.”

But genomic science is not static. A scrolling news line keeps visitors up-to-date on the latest medical breakthroughs.

Eric Green is director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which collaborated with the Smithsonian to create the exhibit.  He says the overall aim is to raise genomic literacy.

“By the end of this decade, genomics will become very much part of medical care in areas like cancer, in areas like infectious disease, in areas like deciding which medications to give people, in areas related to rare diseases that have genetic cause," he said. "This is going to become part of the language of medical care and people are going to need to become familiar with it.” 

For 12-year-old Kellen Alfaro that immersion starts immediately as she joins her classmates from Meridian Public Charter School in Washington in a hands-on activity to capture DNA from cheek cells.  Those cells are transferred from her saliva into a tube that has a solution that makes DNA visible.   The tiny white threads are Kellen’s DNA, which she pours into a tiny bottle that becomes a pendant for a necklace.

She says she’ll wear her DNA all the time.

“It defines me. And it tells me who I am and where I come from,” she said.

Her teacher, Andrea Conway, says the outing makes the science real.

“This helps us in the classroom because it not only gives students an opportunity to be excited about what we’re learning, but it helps us to actually make connections to different things that we learned about before in terms of human life, plants and animals,” she said.

Seven-and-a-half million people visit the National Museum of Natural History each year. They will have a chance to unlock life’s code for themselves through September.

   
Snowden still in Moscow
perhaps waiting for Maduro


Edward Snowden, the fugitive American intelligence leaker, missed another plane to Havana Thursday.  As an overnight stopover in Moscow drags on, Snowden’s stay is taking a toll on the U.S.-Russia relationship.

President Obama took time out on a trip to Africa to prod the Kremlin to turn over Snowden.

“My continued expectation is that Russia or other countries that have talked about potentially providing Mr. Snowden asylum recognize that they are part of an international community, and that they should be abiding by international law," Obama told reporters in Senegal. 

Separately, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters in Washington: “I would hope that the Russians do the right thing here and turn Snowden over to the United States. He has broken laws and I think, as far as I know, the decision of the Russian Government, at least a final decision, hasn't been made yet.”

American congressmen have come out with a series of statements sharply critical of the Kremlin.

“Snowden has overstayed his welcome at the Moscow airport,” Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, said Thursday. “I call on the Russian government, in the interest of justice, as well as U.S.-Russian relations, to release him into the custody of the U.S. government today.”
 
“For political reasons it is impossible for both China and Russia to extradite him to the United States,” said Fyodor Lyukanov, who edits Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “That will make enormous damage to their reputations because at least half of the world believes Snowden is a hero because he revealed this big brother practice of the state.”

American intelligence experts worry that Russian officials have copied the memories of the four laptops that Snowden brought with him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejects U.S. pressure over Snowden.

“He's in the transit hall as a transit passenger now,” President Putin said on a visit to Finland Wednesday. “Our special services have never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren't working today."

In Hong Kong, Snowden told journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras with The Guardian newspaper he rejects accusations that he leaked America’s secrets to help foreign powers.

“Anyone in the position of access with the technical capability that I had could suck out secrets and pass them on the open market to Russia,” Snowden said in a videotaped interview. “They always have an open door, as we do.”

The longer Snowden stays in Russia, the more he is winning conservative support in the country. Russian lawmakers and some human rights leaders now want the Kremlin to grant Snowden asylum. One Russian senator, Ruslan Gattarov, invited Snowden to address a parliamentary working group set up to explore allegations of American wiretapping of Russian citizens.

President Putin says he will not extradite Snowden to the United States. But he wants the fugitive to keep moving. "Mr. Snowden is a free man,” he said in Finland. “The sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it would be for us and for himself."

If Snowden keeps missing flights to Havana, a new solution could be on the horizon.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that he is considering granting Snowden asylum. Next week, President Maduro is to fly to Moscow in Venezuela’s presidential jet, an Airbus, to attend a conference of gas-producing nations.

In the roomy jet, he could bring along two other left-leaning leaders of South American gas-producing nations, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. Ecuador has said it is reviewing an asylum request from Snowden.

Conceivably, Snowden could fly directly from Moscow to Caracas with this high level entourage. Perhaps aware of this possibility, President Obama promised not to take extraordinary measures. 

“No, I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” he said, referring to Snowden who turned 30 last week in Hong Kong..