San Francisco Boys Chorus photo

From a U.S. Coast Guard video/Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael De Nyse.

British Television channel
will air Muslim prayer call


One of Britain's main broadcasters is set to air the Muslim call to prayer live every morning during the month of Ramadan.  Channel 4 says it is an act of deliberate provocation aimed at viewers who might associate Islam with extremism.  The move is proving controversial.

Channel 4 is set to broadcast the three-minute call to prayer at about 3 a.m. on each of the 30 days of Ramadan.  The other four daily prayers will be broadcast on its Web site.

Programmers say it is a way to challenge conceptions of Islam in Britain and provide a voice for the underrepresented.  The move, it says, will force non-Muslims to sit up and notice that Ramadan is taking place.

Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic studies at the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based research group, says the news is creating a stir among British Muslims.

“I'm looking at Muslim discussion forums online and blogs and things," he said.  "There has been a lot of buzz about Channel 4's Ramadan season.  So people will know about it.  And whereas in previous years they would have automatically switched on Muslim satellite channels at dawn time, now many will also see Channel 4 as a watchable alternative.”

Hasan says the move is especially important for young Muslims.  A recent census carried out in Britain found that one in 10 people under the age of 25 is Muslim.  Channel 4 says that age group is its target audience and a big part of why it decided to broadcast the prayer.

Young Muslims in Britain, Hasan says, have grown up in an environment formed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attack in the United States and a subsequent terror attack in Britain in 2005.

Hasan says for young Muslims, signs of inclusion in mainstream British society are significant.

“They have lived through their formative years with that whole, rather negative atmosphere.  And it is very important for them to feel more positively accepted in British society and this will be one welcome step,” he said.

The move by Channel 4 has been controversial.  Right-wing political groups and some media outlets have at times reacted with dismay and outrage.

Andrew McBride is deputy chairman of a far-right pressure group called Britain First.  His group has launched a campaign to stop the broadcast, which it calls Islamic propaganda.  So far the complaint has garnered some 5,000 signatures.

“Getting from the broadcasting airwaves the call to prayer in Arabic in Britain, it annoys people, it annoys me,” he said.

Some from the Muslim community in Britain have voiced concern that Channel 4 is using Ramadan to spur ratings and create controversy.

But Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, says representing Muslim culture in mainstream broadcasts makes Muslims feel more integrated into British society.

“I think this will certainly help.  It is not going to dispel all the myths and misconceptions about Islam in one go.  But every effort helps,” he said.

Channel 4 also is set to launch a series about Ramadan this month, including documentaries about leading Muslims in Britain.


Pakistani report cite failure
in letting Osama live there


A leaked Pakistani government report says collective failure by that country's military and civilian leaders allowed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to live there undetected for years.

The 336-page report was published Monday on the Web site of Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera.  It was written by a commission formed by the government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the covert U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in May 2011.

As reported by Al Jazeera, the report said "negligence and incompetence to a greater or lesser degree at almost all levels of government" allowed bin Laden to live in Pakistan for nine years.

It said no evidence was found that current or former Pakistani officials helped bin Laden hide, although that could not be ruled out completely.

The fact that the compound where bin Laden was hiding was located only about one kilometer from an elite Pakistani military academy led many in the U.S. to suspect Pakistani officials of aiding the al-Qaida chief, although Washington never found evidence to back that up.

The report also revealed details of the terrorist leader's daily life. It said bin Laden was so concerned about surveillance that he wore a cowboy hat when he was outside, to avoid detection from above.

The widow of one of bin Laden's key aides told the commission that bin Laden and his entourage once were stopped for speeding in Swat region.  But she said her husband "very quickly settled the matter with the policeman" before he could recognize the al-Qaida leader.

Pakistani officials said for years they did not know the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man or even if he was alive.

In the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden, it emerged that Pakistani authorities were kept in the dark about the U.S. operation.


Air pollution from coal fuel
reported caused early deaths


Air pollution is shortening the lives of people in northern China by about 5.5 years compared to those living in the south, a disastrous legacy of a policy that provided free coal for heating in the north, an international study shows.

Environmental problems are a source of rising social discontent in China. Last month Beijing promised new measures to crack down on air pollution, partly by hastening a shift to renewable energy from fossil fuels.

The report, by experts in China, the United States and Israel, said a Communist policy of giving out free coal everywhere north of the Huai River in central China between 1950 and 1980 meant more heart and lung disease among 500 million people living in the area.

“Life expectancies are about 5.5 years lower in the north owing to an increased incidence of cardio-respiratory mortality,” the researchers wrote in Tuesday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Studying pollution and deaths in 90 cities, the experts found that life expectancy tumbled just north of the Huai River, where air pollution from burning coal was 55 percent higher than to the south between 1981 and 2000.

“The analysis suggests that the Huai River policy, which had the laudable goal of providing indoor heat, had disastrous consequences for health,” according to the study. It did not estimate how many lives the policy may have saved from winter cold.

“The legacy of the policy continues today,” said Michael Greenstone, a professor of environmental economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the four authors. He noted that many buildings still had the coal-fired boilers that were installed for heating when coal was free, often with few filters.

The scientists said the findings, which firmly link air pollution to life expectancy, might help emerging economies such as China, India or Brazil to find better ways to combine a drive for economic growth with environmental controls.

“These are very powerful results,” said Barbara Finamore, a China expert at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council who was not involved in the study. “It provides new reason for concern among the population in northern China about the effect of coal on health.”

China's cabinet last month promised measures such as accelerating the installation of pollution control equipment on small, coal-fueled refineries and curbing the growth of industries, such as steel and cement that consume large amounts of energy.

The World Health Organization says that about 2 million people annually die from air pollution, mostly in developing countries. Cities such as Karachi, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Beijing, Lima and Cairo are among the most polluted, it says.

Even in Europe, for instance, air pollution shortens average life expectancy by eight months, said Anke Luekewille, an expert at the European Environment Agency in Denmark, although pollution levels have fallen considerably in recent decades.


China and U.S. diplomats
begin cybersecurity talks


The United States and China have opened the first meeting of a committee aimed at easing cybersecurity disputes that have become a major irritant in relations between the two world powers.

U.S. and Chinese officials of the cybersecurity working group met in Washington Monday. They hope to make progress before senior ministers of the two sides hold security and economic talks in the U.S. capital Wednesday and Thursday.

Washington and Beijing agreed in April to start this cybersecurity dialogue.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Monday said the meeting has several goals.

"We are hopeful it will enable the two sides to share perspectives on international laws and norms in cyberspace, raise concerns as needed, develop processes for future cooperation, and set the tone for future constructive and cooperative bilateral dialogues," said Ms. Psaki.

The Obama administration has accused China of involvement in a broad Internet hacking campaign to steal secrets from U.S. government institutions and businesses for economic gain.

China long has complained that it is a victim of cyber attacks from the United States and elsewhere. Chinese officials have highlighted recent leaks by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden to bolster their case.

Snowden told several newspapers last month that the United States has hacked Internet traffic in China and its autonomous region of Hong Kong for years to gather intelligence.

U.S. President Barack Obama has insisted there is a distinction between intelligence gathering activities that many nations conduct and stealing trade secrets for commercial advantage.


Legend of Roswell saucer
remembered in Google doodle


There was a curious interactive doodle on the Google search engine page Monday.

According to Google, doodles are “the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists.”

Monday’s doodle, a point and click game, celebrates the 66th anniversary of one of the most enduring legends in the United States. The story goes that on this day in 1947, an alien spacecraft crashed near Roswell, New Mexico.

“We wanted to do something special for the 66th anniversary of the Roswell incident. So we thought, what if we imagined the story from the alien's point of the view?" said Kevin Laughlin who worked on the Doodle.

"We came up with this interactive game where you play as the alien. It was sort of inspired by those point-and-click adventures from when we were kids, like Monkey Island and King's Quest," he said. "We had fun designing a 40's-era New Mexico landscape, and it's all from the alien's point of view, so horseshoes and feed sacks get treated as serious artifacts, and chatting with a cow or chicken is just as novel as meeting a human for the first time.”

Conspiracy theorists say the U.S. government covered up signs of the crash landing and has been hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life ever since. The government says the only thing found near Roswell that day were the remnants of a weather balloon and there was no evidence of extraterrestrial life.

In the Google game, users guide an alien through a Roswell-like landscape to try to help it reassemble a crashed flying saucer.


Defense begins presentation
in Manning court martial


Defense attorneys in the court martial of U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning, accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, have opened their case. Manning's court-martial is in its sixth week.
 
It is his lawyers' chance to try to convince a panel of military jurors that Bradley Manning is a whistleblower, not a traitor.
 
The defense opened its case Monday with a combat video leaked by Manning of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed civilians including two employees of the Reuters news agency.
 
Manning has admitted leaking information. His lawyers want some charges dismissed, arguing Manning was a naïve young man who acted out of an interest to help, not hurt, the United States by exposing what he believed was wrongdoing by U.S. forces in Iraq.
 
The prosecution rested its case last week, saying Manning committed espionage and aided the enemy.   Despite much anticipation, observers note prosecutors did not present evidence showing the material he leaked caused major damage to U.S. national security.
 
Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, is among a long list of witnesses called by the defense.  Davis spoke to reporters earlier.
 
“Certainly, there's been embarrassment. But there's a big difference in being embarrassed and being harmed, and I just haven't seen much evidence of there being any harm.  So I think he ought to be held accountable but it ought to be a punishment that fits the crime and not what the government thought the impact was going to be," he said.
 
More details of the damage Manning may have caused could emerge in the sentencing phase, when the judge weighs the punishment with the amount of harm done.
 
Manning's leaks appear indiscriminate. They included 700,000 classified documents, diplomatic cables, and government-owned videos of U.S. troops in combat.
 
That's unlike the case of former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, who released smaller amounts of specific information about U.S. overseas cyber offensive  activities as well as domestic surveillance operations.
 
The two men had some things in common:   They were tech-savvy individuals in their 20s who operated in low-level but sensitive positions.
 
Manning's supporters hope the young private has started a trend.
 
“I think that the base of support that we've created around and for Bradley Manning might have helped Edward Snowden feel more comfortable leaking or feel it's more important. I think we've created a culture that while the government doesn't like it, we laud whistleblowers and realize their importance," said Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network
 
The case raises questions of how the U.S. military and intelligence agencies will deal with potential security risks among individuals who, like Manning, show clear signs of emotional troubles or at the very least unease about their assigned missions.
 
In Monday's testimony, a chief warrant officer who worked with Manning described him as the best and most productive analyst on his team, albeit weak in his ability to assess information.
 
Manning's trial is due to continue through next month.


Judge says Obama must act
on Guantanamo force feeding


A U.S. federal judge has urged President Barack Obama to directly address the issue of feeding hunger strikers against their will at the Guantanamo Bay prison, where more than 100 men are refusing food to protest their indefinite detention.

District Judge Gladys Kessler said Monday that “force-feedings are a painful, humiliating and degrading process.” The stinging critique of the practice came in a four-page opinion dismissing the petition of Syrian detainee Jihad Dhiab to stop his forced feeding.

Kessler asserted she did not have the jurisdiction to respond to Dhiab’s request, but said Obama, as commander-in-chief, has the authority and power to do so.

The White House has not commented on the federal judge's suggestion that Obama address what's happening at Guantanamo.

In a May national security speech, the president discussed the situation of feeding hunger-striking detainees against their will. “Is that the America we want to leave our children?” Obama asked. “Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

Dhiab has been detained at Guantanamo Bay for 11 years, despite having been cleared for release to a third country in 2009. He asked for expedited consideration of his petition out of concern for his ability to observe Ramadan, which requires observers to fast from sunup to sundown. The Muslim holy month begins Monday evening.

Kessler’s rebuke came as the British human rights group Reprieve released a video protesting the detainees' treatment. It shows rapper Yasiin Bey, known as Mos Def, undergoing the standard operating procedures for feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo.

Of the 166 prisoners held at the U.S. naval base, 106 are refusing to eat. Forty-five of them are being fed a liquid meal replacement through a tube that snakes up their nasal cavity, into their throat, through the esophagus and into their stomach, according to the Defense Department.

In the video showing the practice, Bey, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, sits in a medical chair, his arms, legs and head restrained with straps and chains. Guards hold him down as he yells and squirms while a tube is inserted into his nose. White liquid drips from his nostrils as he pleads for the procedure to stop.

Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale would not comment on what he called a theatrical performance, but said the Pentagon’s procedures match those practiced by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

He said the Guantanamo team is respectful of detainees’ Ramadan observances.

“We intend to only feed detainees outside of daylight hours, which we believe is a reasonable religious accommodation,” Breasseale said, adding that if there is an emergency situation, the prisoners would be fed during the day.

“The position of the government is that we will not allow detainees in our charge to commit suicide and that includes attempts to starve themselves to death,” he said.

Attorney David Remes, who has five clients being tube-fed at the U.S. detention center, says suicide isn’t the intention.

“They don’t want to die. They want to be released,” he said by telephone from Yemen, where he’s meeting a client's family.

Hunger strikes are not uncommon at Guantanamo, and Remes said in the past they’ve ended relatively quickly after guards addressed detainees’ concerns. This strike is different, he said. It began in February when prisoners got upset at the way guards were handling their Qurans, and has turned into something much bigger.

“I think it has become a more general cause focusing on, ‘This can’t go on forever. It just can’t go on forever,’” Remes said.

When President Obama took office in 2009, he signed an executive order to close Guantanamo, the world’s most expensive prison, within a year. Four and half years later, and 11 years since it first opened, the detention center remains fully operational with no end in sight.

The Senate has voted against funding the prison’s closure. Discussions about where to house and try terrorism suspects are unresolved. And security and political obstacles are standing in the way of the 86 detainees who have been cleared for release or transfer to other countries.

Breasseale said the Defense Department is in a difficult situation. It didn’t solicit the mission to oversee Guantanamo, but it has to carry it out.

“We do not believe it’s in our best security interest. We believe it’s inefficient, as evidence by the cost," he said. "But until such time that we can close it, we will continue to care for the detainees in a way that’s humane and that matches our core values.”

How humane the care is may be debatable.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and several United Nations authorities have called for a stop to the forced feedings. And the American Medical Association has told Defense Department officials that physicians participating in the forced feeding of people against their will is a violation of the core ethical values of the medical profession. The Code of Medical Ethics outlines the right of every competent patient to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions. 


Mechanical device can smell
if person has bladder cancer


Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world, with an estimated 12 million new cases diagnosed annually.  Now, researchers have developed a scent device that accurately diagnoses the disease in virtually all people with bladder cancer. 

The device, called OdoReader, contains a sensor that detects chemicals in the gases emitted by urine.
 
In about half an hour, the device can analyze the odors in a urine sample, telling researchers whether the patient has bladder cancer.

Chris Probert is with Britain's University of Liverpool.  He was part of a team that tested OdoReader, developed by the University of the West of England’s Institute of Biosensor Technology in Bristol.

Probert says the device’s results, read by a computer, are highly accurate.

“This data set is very strong: 96-100 percent accuracy.  We think we are right for the next study to show that it is reproducible and then, hopefully, we can talk to industry about making a box that people can buy for use in surgeries and hospitals," said Probert.

Researchers tested OdoReader on 98 urine samples.  Two dozen were from patients with known bladder cancer, and 74 came from those who had bladder infections, but no cancer.  The device correctly identified all of the bladder cancer patients.

Probert says researchers in other labs are developing sniffing devices to diagnose stomach cancer, another extremely common disease worldwide.

Investigators liken OdoReader to a dog's nose.  An earlier study showed that dogs could be trained to detect bladder cancer based on odor in urine.  However, their accuracy was not nearly as reliable as the new device.

Probert foresees a time when the scent device could be used to monitor the health of workers in certain industries, such as rubber and insulation manufacturing.

“There’s quite a burden of cancer in those employees.  And so, occupational health in those places of work could help their employees by taking a urine sample, much as they are doing now but with much more accuracy with our machine," he said.

Currently, bladder cancer is detected by looking for the presence of blood in the urine. 

Probert says investigators have not yet identified which gases in urine make the scent unique to bladder cancer.  But he says that work is coming, along with other odor reading devices that use unique scent signatures to diagnose a variety of cancers, including those of the uterus and colon. 

An article by Probert and colleagues on the OdoReader in the detection of bladder cancer is published in PLoS ONE.