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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
'Piracy' at sea: Has definition changed? Supreme Court declines to enter fray.
The Supreme Court rejected the appeals of two groups of captured Somalis. Federal prosecutors had argued that the definition of piracy has broadened since the early 1800s.
In this court room sketch, suspected Somali pirates, from left, Mohammed Modin Hasan, Abdi Mohammed Gurewardher, Abdi Mohammed Umar, Gabul Abdullahi Ali, and Abdi Wali Dire listen to the judge during jury selection at the the federal courthouse in Norfolk, Va., November 2010. The Supreme court turned aside an appeal by five Somali nationals convicted of firing shots from a small skiff at the USS Nicholas, a Norfolk-based frigate, off the coast of Africa.
Alba Bragoli/AP
EnlargeThe US Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a series of lower-court opinions endorsing a broad view of what constitutes the crime of piracy ? a move that will make it significantly easier for the government to prosecute and convict suspected Somali pirates in federal court.
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The high court turned aside an appeal by five Somali nationals convicted of firing shots from a small skiff at a US Navy frigate on patrol 600 miles off the coast of Somalia on April 1, 2010.
The warship, the USS Nicholas, returned fire and sank the boat. Three men were taken prisoner. Two others were captured on another small boat nearby.
The action was part of an international response to widespread violence against cargo ships off the coast of Somalia. The alleged pirates would fire upon and board civilian ships and then hold the ship, cargo, and crew hostage until hefty ransoms were paid.
The Somalis are said to have mistaken the warship for a commercial vessel.
All five prisoners were brought to the United States and charged with piracy. They were subsequently convicted and sentenced to mandatory terms of life in prison on the piracy charge, plus 80 years for firearms and other violations.
On appeal, defense lawyers argued that their clients? encounter with the US warship did not amount to piracy. The historic definition of piracy was robbery at sea, they said. Since their clients never forcibly boarded the warship or removed anything of value from it, they could not be prosecuted for robbery at sea.
Federal prosecutors countered that the definition of piracy had broadened since Congress passed the piracy statute in 1819. Under international law, they said, piracy includes a wider range of hostile acts.
A federal judge agreed, and that ruling was upheld by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
A second group of five Somali nationals raised the same issue before their federal trial on piracy charges.
The second group allegedly fired a shot from a skiff at the USS Ashland on April 10, 2010, while the warship was on patrol in the Gulf of Aden.
The US warship returned fire, sank the skiff, and took all five Somali nationals into custody. Like the others, they were taken to the US to stand trial on piracy charges.
The federal judge presiding over that case ruled in the Somalis? favor, dismissing the piracy charge against the men.
On appeal, the Fourth Circuit overturned the federal judge, citing its ruling in the USS Nicholas case.
Lawyers for both groups of Somalis urged the Supreme Court to consider whether the Fourth Circuit was correct in permitting judges to embrace a broad definition of ?piracy? that exceeds Congress?s 1819 definition of ?robbery at sea.?
The justices rejected both appeals without comment.
?Mere firing of a weapon at a ship does not constitute piracy for purposes of the Piracy Statute,? lawyers for the Somalis argued in their brief to the court.
Government prosecutors countered that the piracy statute was not limited to robbery at sea, but embraced a wide range of modern developments in international law.
Geremy Kamens, assistant federal public defender, said his clients face a draconian punishment of mandatory life in prison if convicted of piracy. But, he added, the case raised a more fundamental issue: whether US judges have the power to define elements of a federal crime based on their view of the state of modern international law.
?Under the Constitution?s separation of powers, federal courts lack authority to make laws,? Mr. Kamens wrote.
If the justices allowed the Fourth Circuit opinion to stand, he warned, it would ?pave the way for judges to legislate based on evolving standards ? even if those standards did not exist at the time the criminal offense was enacted.?
James Theuer, a Norfolk, Va., lawyer representing the group of Somalis already convicted, wrote in his brief that the Fourth Circuit decision undercuts nearly 200 years of jurisprudence supporting a narrow reading of the piracy statute.
The cases are Dire v. US (12-6529) and Said v. US (12-6576).
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Monday, January 21, 2013
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North ...
The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970 (Touchstone Books)
Selected from a survey of more than five hundred English professors, short story writers, and novelists, this revised and updated second edition features fifty remarkable stories written by a wide spectrum of stylistically and culturally diverse authors. Russell Banks - Donald Barthelme - Rick Bass - Richard Bausch - Charles Baxter - Amy Bloom - T. C. Boyle - Kevin Brockmeier - Robert Olen Butler - Sandra Cisneros - Peter Ho Davies - Janet Desaulniers - Junot Diaz - Anthony Doerr - Stuart Dybek - Deborah Eisenberg - Richard Ford - Mary Gaitskill - Dagoberto Gilb - Ron Hansen - A. M. Homes - Mary Hood - Denis Johnson - Edward P. Jones - Thom Jones - Jamaica Kincaid - Jhumpa Lahiri - David Leavitt - Kelly Link - Reginald McKnight - David Means - Susan Minot - Rick Moody - Bharati Mukherjee - Antonya Nelson - Joyce Carol Oates - Tim O'Brien - Daniel Orozco - Julie Orringer - ZZ Packer - E. Annie Proulx - Stacey Richter - George Saunders - Joan Silber - Leslie Marmon Silko - Susan Sontag - Amy Tan - Melanie Rae Thon - Alice Walker - Steve Yarbrough
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Saturday, January 19, 2013
Why does Michelle Obama need two Twitter accounts?
Now she's got @FLOTUS, as well as @MichelleObama. How many Twitter accounts does one first lady need? Well, there's a reason for Michelle Obama's double-tweeting, and it has to do with the law.
In this image, first lady Michelle Obama greets David Hall, one of eight citizen co-chairs for the Inauguration, in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a second Twitter account, @FLOTUS, on Thursday.
Lawrence Jackson, The White House/AP
EnlargeMichelle Obama is on Twitter! That was big news on Thursday, the first lady?s birthday. The White House announced that Mrs. Obama had launched a new Twitter account, @FLOTUS, and lots of folks chimed in with messages welcoming her to the world of micro-blogging social media.
Skip to next paragraph Peter GrierWashington Editor
Peter Grier is The Christian Science Monitor's Washington editor. In this capacity, he helps direct coverage for the paper on most news events in the nation's capital.
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But hold it ? wasn?t she already on Twitter? We?ve been following @MichelleObama since the beginning of the 2012 presidential campaign. Is this a reboot, a dual account, or what? Is it the equivalent of the grand opening of a store that?s been in business for months?
Sort of, yes. Except it?s a retail establishment that has two branches kept separate for legal reasons.
The invaluable Mashable has the full story here. The @MichelleObama feed is paid for and run by the Obama/Biden political campaign machinery. That?s why it was so active during the summer and fall, as it exhorted everybody to get out and vote, and in general pushed the fortunes of the incumbent presidential ticket. It?s an overtly political use of social media.
The first lady?s Pinterest site is run the same way. Most of those photos of her and her family, and favorite recipes (grilled peaches with yogurt and pistachios?), and exhortations about ?why we vote? were put up by campaign staff.
Mrs. Obama?s new @FLOTUS handle reflects her official White House duties, however. It?s run by people from her office who are executive branch (and hence official US government) employees.
Legally speaking, @FLOTUS tweets will have to be stuff that deals with her official duties and the nation as a whole, as opposed to President Obama?s political fortunes. Thus on Thursday she tweeted ?Join me and Barack for #MLK Day of Service? after thanking everyone for sending birthday wishes.
Hmm. @FLOTUS has sent three tweets, and it?s got more than 78,000 followers. That?s a pretty good tweet-to-listener ratio.
Most of this social media stuff is done by staff, of course. The few that she sends herself are supposed to be signed ?-mo.?
Is the White House actually good at social media? We think that question can be answered definitively only by someone more versed in the dark electronic arts than we are. But from our point of view, it's a pretty shrewd operator. Take the White House petition site. You can put up a petition on anything, and if it reaches a certain signature level in a certain period of time, the White House will respond with its point of view.
Most of the coverage of this ?We the People? effort has focused on the weird stuff: petitions for Texas to secede, to deport CNN's Piers Morgan, and so forth. And responding to them has to be a pain for staff. Mother Jones has a piece on Friday in which anonymous staffers gripe about having to spend time actually writing about why the US won?t build a Death Star, and things like that.
But to us, ?We the People? really is a clever technique for harvesting e-mail addresses. When creating an account to sign stuff, you can check whether you want to receive missives from the White House. Most of the petitions are in fact about real policy ? the need for more or less gun control, for instance. What the White House may get out of this is a continually growing list of voter contact information segmented by policy interest. To push the president?s new gun policies, for instance, they may send targeted e-mails to pro-control addresses, urging them to contact Congress.
We think this because media organizations do the same thing with interactive questionnaires and quizzes. We figure out who?s interested in what kind of stories and we direct those subjects their way.
Surprised? Don?t be. Building brand loyalty ? everybody?s got whole new ways of approaching this old problem in today?s Internet age.
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Friday, January 18, 2013
Gene in eye melanomas linked to good prognosis
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Melanomas that develop in the eye often are fatal. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report they have identified a mutated gene in melanoma tumors of the eye that appears to predict a good outcome.
The research is published in the advance online edition of Nature Genetics.
"We found mutations in a gene called SF3B1," says senior author Anne Bowcock, PhD, professor of genetics. "The good news is that these mutations develop in a distinct subtype of melanomas in the eye that are unlikely to spread and become deadly."
Eye tumors called uveal melanomas occur in about 2,000 patients a year, making up about 5 percent of all melanomas. In many patients, there are no symptoms, and the tumors become fatal when they spread to the liver.
Several years ago, Bowcock and the study's lead author, J. William Harbour, MD, a former Washington University eye surgeon who is now at the University of Miami, identified a commonly mutated gene, BAP1, in patients with uveal melanomas.
They found BAP1 alterations in about 80 percent of uveal melanomas with a poor prognosis, called class II tumors. About 75 percent of patients with these tumors die within five years, a sharp contrast to the generally favorable outcomes of patients whose tumors don't have BAP1 mutations, called class I.
For the new study, Bowcock and her colleagues initially sequenced the DNA of uveal melanomas from 18 patients whose BAP1 status was already known. Seven had no BAP1 mutations (class I tumors), and 11 had BAP1 mutations (class II tumors).
The researchers' analysis uncovered alterations in the SF3B1 gene in three of the patients.
"This is the first time mutations in this gene have been found in uveal melanoma," says Bowcock, who also is a professor of pediatrics and of medicine.
As part of the current study, the researchers also looked for SF3B1 mutations in uveal melanoma tumors from 102 patients, finding it in nearly 20 percent of them. Mutations in the gene were linked to favorable features, including a younger age at diagnosis and a far lower metastasis rate.
Interestingly, SF3B1 mutations always occurred at the same site of the gene. And the SF3B1 and BAP1 mutations were found to be almost mutually exclusive, meaning that if patients had a mutation in one of the genes, they were unlikely to have a mutation in the other.
"This suggests mutations in these genes may represent alternative pathways in tumor progression," Bowcock says.
The SF3B1 gene also has been reported recently by other researchers to be mutated in a pre-leukemia illness called myelodysplastic syndrome. For these patients, SF3B1 mutations mean the condition is less likely to develop into a full-blown leukemia. Changes in the SF3B1 gene also have been found in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and less frequently in breast cancer and other solid tumors. The gene's link to prognosis is unclear for these cancers.
Normally, the SF3B1 gene is involved in converting DNA's chemical cousin, RNA, into messenger RNA. This messenger molecule carries DNA's code and serves as a template for making proteins. The researchers don't yet understand how mutations in this gene are involved in cancer but it's the next step of their research.
"We want to understand the functional consequences of mutations in SF3B1," Bowcock says. "How are changes in this gene linked to cancer development? This is the fourth gene known to be mutated in uveal melanoma along with BAP1 and the genes GNAQ and GNA11. A complete understanding of the molecular basis of this tumor will be invaluable in predicting prognosis and in the identification and development of novel treatments for this cancer."
###
Washington University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.wustl.edu
Thanks to Washington University School of Medicine for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126323/Gene_in_eye_melanomas_linked_to_good_prognosis_
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Town 90 miles from Mali capital on alert
Town 90 miles from Mali capital on alert
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI AND BABA AHMED?
?By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI AND BABA AHMEDFrench troops stand guard along the road leading from Markala to Niono, in Markala, approximately 40 km outside Segou, in central Mali, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013. French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours." Residents of Niono, a city in the center of Mali which is just south of a town that was overrun by the jihadists earlier this week, said they saw trucks of French soldiers arrive overnight. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore)
French troops stand guard along the road leading from Markala to Niono, in Markala, approximately 40 km outside Segou, in central Mali, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013. French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours." Residents of Niono, a city in the center of Mali which is just south of a town that was overrun by the jihadists earlier this week, said they saw trucks of French soldiers arrive overnight. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore)
Mali army cadets secure a perimeter on the military side of Bamako's airport Wednesday Jan. 16, 2013, during a joined visit to French and Malian troops by Mali's President Dioncounda Traore and French Ambassador to Mali Christian Rouyer. French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours." (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
In this picture released by the French Army Communication Audiovisual office (ECPAD) French armored vehicules drive to the north of Mali, outside Bamako, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013. French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours." (AP Photo/Arnaud Roine, ECPAD)
Young men play football in Bamako, Mali, Tuesday Jan. 15 2013. French forces led an all-night aerial bombing campaign Tuesday to wrest control of a small Malian town from armed Islamist extremists who seized the area, including its strategic military camp. A a convoy of 40 to 50 trucks carrying French troops crossed into Mali from Ivory Coast as France prepares for a possible land assault. Several thousand soldiers from the nations neighboring Mali are also expected to begin arriving in coming days. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Mali National Guard soldiers stand guard on the military side of Bamako's airport Wednesday Jan. 16, 2013, as a commercial jet takes off during a joined visit to French and Malian troops by Mali's President Dioncounda Traore and French Ambassador to Mali Christian Rouyer. French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours."(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? A town 90 miles (144 kilometers) from Mali's capital was put on alert Wednesday, and roughly 100 Malian soldiers sped there after a reported sighting of jihadists in the vicinity.
Banamba is connected by a secondary road to the garrison town of Diabaly, which was taken by Islamic extremists and has been the scene of intense fighting with French special forces.
A county official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly said they had received reports that a rebel convoy had left Diabaly on the road connecting it to Banamba.
"We don't have a garrison here, we have no defenses. So the military has come to secure the town," he said. "But from Monday to today, no jihadists have entered our town."
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Web Publishers Accuse Ad Agencies Of Taking Bribes - Business ...
Ad agencies who buy media on web sites routinely ask for unwarranted gifts, according to an anonymous publisher interviewed by Digiday.
Bribes, kickbacks, gift-giving, rebates and volume discount schemes are a common part of how deals in advertising get done. Yet few in the business are willing to admit it on the record. We've covered a number of cases -- at Aegis's Posterscope unit and at Walmart, to name two -- but the media is usually disinterested in the issue.
Digiday's source, however,is plainly sick of the way ad buyers ask publishers to sprinkle a little sugar on their offers. Here's what he or she said:
It might be because they are lazy or ill-informed about the client?s business or mistreated by the client or all of the above, but it happens more than it should, and it?s a huge shame. ... the willingness to be bought (jeans parties, Southampton parties, concert tickets, whatever),
[Agency staff] don?t return calls, don?t give meaningful feedback, [arrive] late to meetings, [act] unprofessional, abuse relationships by asking for stuff that far exceeds reasonable T&E spending.
Here's some of our previous coverage of ad agency shenanigans:
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/web-publishers-accuse-ad-agencies-of-taking-bribes-2013-1
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