Facebook's known for testing new features with a limited group before a broader rollout, and it's latest one could have some real implications for both businesses and individual users of the social network alike. As TechCrunch reports, Facebook is now testing a new five star rating system that's ...
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Lisa M.P. Munoz
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
November 7, 2013 - From Cal Ripkin, Jr., to MLK to Robert Downey, Jr., finding men named after their fathers is easy. Children named after men in the family with so-called patronyms are common around the world. But what about matronymns names for a mother or grandmother? New research shows that matronymns are rare and that family naming trends follow a regional pattern in the United States: People in states with a relatively high emphasis on honor are more likely to use patronyms, especially in the face of a terrorist threat.
"Studying naming trends can be a subtle means of peering into a society's beliefs and values without ever having to ask people to report directly about their beliefs and values," says Ryan Brown of the University of Oklahoma. Brown is not an expert in baby names but rather studies cultural values and trends. He became interested in the connection between names and cultural values when his collaborator, Mauricio Carvallo, was researching names for his new baby girl. They started to wonder whether values associated with honor and reputation affected whether people named their children after men or women in the family.
Social scientists define "cultures of honor" as places where the defense of reputation plays an unusually important role in social life. "For men in a typical honor culture, the kind of reputation that is highly prized is a reputation for toughness and bravery," Ryan says. "For women in a typical honor culture, the most valued reputation is a reputation for loyalty and sexual purity." Two decades of research has shown that people in the Southern and Western regions of the United States tend to embrace honor cultures more than in the North.
To see how those values translate into children's names, Ryan and colleagues designed several studies to look at naming trends. The studies included surveying people about their beliefs and their likelihood of naming their children after men or women in the family and included a novel, indirect method to look at actual U.S. baby name trends. In all the studies, published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they found that people who endorse honor ideology were most likely to use patronyms.
In the study of U.S. name trends, the researchers used Social Security Administration data to identify the 10 most popular boy and girl names in each state in 1960, 1984, and 2008. The idea was to look at 24-year cycles to see how frequently the same names popped up one and two generations later and then to compare it to regional trends of honor beliefs, controlling for a variety of other regional differences and demographics.
"Each state was given a patronym score and a matronym score by tallying how many of the 10 most popular names in one generation showed up again among the most popular names given to the next generation, or in the generation after that," Ryan says. "Higher scores show that baby names were being recycled from one generation to the next, and these scores showed a regional pattern to them similar to the patterns we see with other behaviors connected to honor ideology around the United States."
States in the South and West tended to have higher patronym scores than did states in the North. And those same states ranked higher in indicators of honor ideology such as execution rates, Army recruitment levels, and suicide rates among White men and women. They also found that after 9/11, the use of patronyms increased in culture-of-honor states. And similarly, people who were asked to think about a fictitious terrorist attack were more likely to say they'd use patronyms if they also strongly endorsed honor ideology.
"The same pattern was not observed, however, when it came to matronyms, which is exactly what we expected," Ryan says. "Matronyms, unlike patronyms, are not any more popular in the South and West compared to the North, and they do not predict any statewide variables to a significant degree."
Indeed, matronyms are very rare in Western culture. "Everyone probably knows a guy who is a 'junior,' given the exact same name as his father, and many know someone who is 'such-and-such the third,' having the same name as both his father and his grandfather," Ryan says. "But when was the last time you met a woman who had the same name as her mother, much less the same first and middle names as her mother, like Sally Anne Jones, Jr.?" Some famous female juniors include former First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Jr., Carolina Herrara, Jr. (daughter of the clothing designer), and Rory (aka Lorelai) from the TV show Gilmore Girls.
In the new analysis, Elizabeth was the only female name that showed up frequently across generations as a possible matronym. "Perhaps one of the reasons for this name's greater intergenerational use is that there are so many nicknames based on the name Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Eliza, Lisa, Betty, etc.," Ryan says. "So, a girl named Elizabeth could be given her mother's name and most people might not even realize it."
Ryan says that this naming trend is one of the most pronounced gender differences we still see in society. "Women who once could only strive to work as nurses, teachers, or librarians can now aspire to be astronauts, brain surgeons, or senators," he says. "But don't expect anyone to give a girl her mother's name."
"The greater use of patronyms in these cultures reflects and transmits the value of masculinity and the male name," Ryan says. "A person's name, after all, is what people call that person, but it also represents that person's reputation how he or she is known in a community and all of the respect, status, or infamy that goes along with that reputation."
Ryan hopes that the current work shows how cultural values and events shape important personal decisions, such as naming children. "Our baby naming practices can shed light on what we care about, in a subtle way, and they might also serve as a mechanism for transmitting our cultural values from one generation to the next."
###
The study, "Naming Patterns Reveal Cultural Values: Patronyms, Matronyms, and the US Culture of Honor," Ryan P. Brown, Mauricio Carvallo, Mikiko Imura, was published online on November 7, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in February 2014 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
Most common patronyms*:
Michael
James
William
Robert
Christopher
*From the Social Security Administration database developed for Brown et al., study
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
Science stories are bigger in Texas... Get your next big story at the SPSP annual meeting in Austin, TX, Feb. 13-15, 2014! Press registration is now open. http://www.spspmeeting.org
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:
7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Lisa M.P. Munoz
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
November 7, 2013 - From Cal Ripkin, Jr., to MLK to Robert Downey, Jr., finding men named after their fathers is easy. Children named after men in the family with so-called patronyms are common around the world. But what about matronymns names for a mother or grandmother? New research shows that matronymns are rare and that family naming trends follow a regional pattern in the United States: People in states with a relatively high emphasis on honor are more likely to use patronyms, especially in the face of a terrorist threat.
"Studying naming trends can be a subtle means of peering into a society's beliefs and values without ever having to ask people to report directly about their beliefs and values," says Ryan Brown of the University of Oklahoma. Brown is not an expert in baby names but rather studies cultural values and trends. He became interested in the connection between names and cultural values when his collaborator, Mauricio Carvallo, was researching names for his new baby girl. They started to wonder whether values associated with honor and reputation affected whether people named their children after men or women in the family.
Social scientists define "cultures of honor" as places where the defense of reputation plays an unusually important role in social life. "For men in a typical honor culture, the kind of reputation that is highly prized is a reputation for toughness and bravery," Ryan says. "For women in a typical honor culture, the most valued reputation is a reputation for loyalty and sexual purity." Two decades of research has shown that people in the Southern and Western regions of the United States tend to embrace honor cultures more than in the North.
To see how those values translate into children's names, Ryan and colleagues designed several studies to look at naming trends. The studies included surveying people about their beliefs and their likelihood of naming their children after men or women in the family and included a novel, indirect method to look at actual U.S. baby name trends. In all the studies, published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they found that people who endorse honor ideology were most likely to use patronyms.
In the study of U.S. name trends, the researchers used Social Security Administration data to identify the 10 most popular boy and girl names in each state in 1960, 1984, and 2008. The idea was to look at 24-year cycles to see how frequently the same names popped up one and two generations later and then to compare it to regional trends of honor beliefs, controlling for a variety of other regional differences and demographics.
"Each state was given a patronym score and a matronym score by tallying how many of the 10 most popular names in one generation showed up again among the most popular names given to the next generation, or in the generation after that," Ryan says. "Higher scores show that baby names were being recycled from one generation to the next, and these scores showed a regional pattern to them similar to the patterns we see with other behaviors connected to honor ideology around the United States."
States in the South and West tended to have higher patronym scores than did states in the North. And those same states ranked higher in indicators of honor ideology such as execution rates, Army recruitment levels, and suicide rates among White men and women. They also found that after 9/11, the use of patronyms increased in culture-of-honor states. And similarly, people who were asked to think about a fictitious terrorist attack were more likely to say they'd use patronyms if they also strongly endorsed honor ideology.
"The same pattern was not observed, however, when it came to matronyms, which is exactly what we expected," Ryan says. "Matronyms, unlike patronyms, are not any more popular in the South and West compared to the North, and they do not predict any statewide variables to a significant degree."
Indeed, matronyms are very rare in Western culture. "Everyone probably knows a guy who is a 'junior,' given the exact same name as his father, and many know someone who is 'such-and-such the third,' having the same name as both his father and his grandfather," Ryan says. "But when was the last time you met a woman who had the same name as her mother, much less the same first and middle names as her mother, like Sally Anne Jones, Jr.?" Some famous female juniors include former First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Jr., Carolina Herrara, Jr. (daughter of the clothing designer), and Rory (aka Lorelai) from the TV show Gilmore Girls.
In the new analysis, Elizabeth was the only female name that showed up frequently across generations as a possible matronym. "Perhaps one of the reasons for this name's greater intergenerational use is that there are so many nicknames based on the name Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Eliza, Lisa, Betty, etc.," Ryan says. "So, a girl named Elizabeth could be given her mother's name and most people might not even realize it."
Ryan says that this naming trend is one of the most pronounced gender differences we still see in society. "Women who once could only strive to work as nurses, teachers, or librarians can now aspire to be astronauts, brain surgeons, or senators," he says. "But don't expect anyone to give a girl her mother's name."
"The greater use of patronyms in these cultures reflects and transmits the value of masculinity and the male name," Ryan says. "A person's name, after all, is what people call that person, but it also represents that person's reputation how he or she is known in a community and all of the respect, status, or infamy that goes along with that reputation."
Ryan hopes that the current work shows how cultural values and events shape important personal decisions, such as naming children. "Our baby naming practices can shed light on what we care about, in a subtle way, and they might also serve as a mechanism for transmitting our cultural values from one generation to the next."
###
The study, "Naming Patterns Reveal Cultural Values: Patronyms, Matronyms, and the US Culture of Honor," Ryan P. Brown, Mauricio Carvallo, Mikiko Imura, was published online on November 7, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in February 2014 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
Most common patronyms*:
Michael
James
William
Robert
Christopher
*From the Social Security Administration database developed for Brown et al., study
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
Science stories are bigger in Texas... Get your next big story at the SPSP annual meeting in Austin, TX, Feb. 13-15, 2014! Press registration is now open. http://www.spspmeeting.org
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.
FILE - This Sept. 7, 2012 file photo shows Kanye West at the Alexander Wang collection during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. West pleaded not guilty through his attorney to misdemeanor battery and attempted grand theft charges in a Los Angeles court on Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. (Photo by Dario Cantatore/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kanye West has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor battery and attempted grand theft in a case filed over a scuffle with a celebrity photographer earlier this year.
Attorney Blair Berk entered the plea on the rapper's behalf Thursday in a Los Angeles court. West was charged with two misdemeanors in September over a July altercation with paparazzo Daniel Ramos at Los Angeles International Airport.
Prosecutors declined to file felony charges against West, but decided to pursue the misdemeanors. Each carries a penalty of up to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.
Ramos claims West punched him in an unprovoked attack and wrestled his camera to the ground on July 19.
West's case is due back in court on Jan. 23.
Changing out of his suit and into some scrubs, Prince William visited the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Greater London on Thursday (November 7).
The proud papa of baby Georgie looked at ease in the hospital get-up as he checked out medical equipment with staff.
Hopefully getting some sort of waiver signed beforehand, the Duke of Cambridge witnessed surgery to remove a patient's bladder tumor in his role as President of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Previously, William's mother, Princess Diana held the same position from 1989 until her death in 1997. Speaking about the royal's visit, urological surgeon Dr. Kumar shared, "He really had an insight into the kind of work we do. He really understood. The questions he asked were really on the money and were very insightful. For want of a better word, he did enjoy himself."
A moderate Republican group that is fed up with the recent onslaught of uncompromising GOP lawmakers and candidates is preparing a multimillion dollar campaign against hardline conservative forces during the 2014 midterm elections.
The Main Street Partnership, a center-right activist group led by Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican who left Congress earlier this year to join a lobbying firm, aims to spend as much as $8 million to defend sitting Republican lawmakers facing threats from conservative primary challengers.
Through a combination of direct mail, online ads and support for grassroots organizing, the Partnership plans to defend several moderate Republican incumbents next year. The group also plans to launch a direct strike on the Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy network that supports conservative challengers to incumbent GOP lawmakers.
“To this moment in time we’ve never really fought back, and it’s time to take our party back from these guys,” LaTourette, who left Congress earlier this year, told Yahoo News in an interview. “The center-right of the party has really been out-manned and out-maneuvered by the very conservative wing of the party when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to the ability to put boots on the ground and deliver a message in Republican primaries.”
To date, groups like the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund have already formally endorsed a number of conservative challengers to sitting Republicans with records they deem as insufficiently conservative.
Some Republicans see these efforts as counterproductive because it forces the incumbents to devote resources to a primary fight that they could be spending on defeating Democrats in the general election.
They point to cases in the last two election cycles when tea party candidates defeated more centrist primary opponents only to go on to embarrassing defeats in the general election. The Partnership on Wednesday released a video that pointed to some of those failed candidates — particularly Christine “I am not a witch” O'Donnell in Delaware and Todd “legitimate rape” Akin in Missouri. (The Club for Growth did not endorse either of those candidates.)
LaTourette also said inaction in Congress had reached a point of frustration, particularly the failure of House Republicans to find a compromise deal to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” last year and the debate over the government shutdown and debt ceiling last month.
The Partnership also hopes it can ward off some of the new conservative challengers next year by targeting the groups that support them. To accomplish this, LaTourette intends to launch a website called “The Club for Democratic Growth” in an attempt to undermine the Club for Growth, he told Yahoo News.
“We are going to spend some time educating people as to exactly who they are, and who they are is a small collection of very, very wealthy people who have been able to gain a disproportionate voice in Republican politics,” LaTourette said. “We will be profiling one of their board members or champions on a regular basis with their own words. … We’re going to use their words against them.”
Going up against the Club would be a tall order for the Partnership. While LaTourette’s goal is to spend about $8 million for the campaign, the group has only raised about $2 million so far. In 2012, the group’s political action committee spent just $1.1 million.
When reached by phone Thursday, a spokesman for the Club said the group was not concerned about the Partnership’s plans for next year.
“We don’t really care what some lobbyist has to say about us,” Club spokesman Barney Keller told Yahoo News.
“What groups like this don’t understand is that all that matters to the voters are the candidates and the policies that the candidates support," Keller said. "If being a big government liberal was a ticket to winning a Republican primary then more big government liberals would win Republican primaries. All we do is provide candidates with the resources they need to get the message out and then the voters are the ones picking the candidates.”
Sure to bring tears to your eyes, the trailer for “Winter’s Tale” hit the web on Thursday (November 7).
Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown star in the flick as unlikely lovers, battling to stay together through a number of obstacles.
Based on the imaginative novel by Mark Helprin, the flick also stars Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt and Russell Crowe.
It is slated to hit theaters on Valentine’s Day 2014. Check out the trailer below!
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: David Salisbury
david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu
615-343-6803
Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
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:
7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: David Salisbury
david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu
615-343-6803
Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
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.
AT&T supplies information on international calls that travel over its network, including ones that start or end in the U.S., under a voluntary contract with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The CIA pays the carrier more than $10 million annually for the data, including the date, duration, and numbers involved in a call, the Times said, citing unnamed government officials. The calls include ones that are made by customers of other carriers but travel partly on AT&T's network. For calls with a U.S. participant, AT&T doesn't tell the CIA the identity of the U.S. caller and masks several digits of the domestic number, the report said.
[ Learn how to protect your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
The CIA isn't allowed to conduct domestic spying. However, the agency can hand over the masked numbers to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which can subpoena AT&T for the uncensored data, the Times said. The FBI, in turn, sometimes shares information with the CIA about the U.S. participant in a call.
The latest report is likely to heighten concerns about the U.S. government's surveillance of voice and data communications around the world. Disclosures made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden starting earlier this year have helped to spark calls for reform of surveillance practices and rankled several U.S. allies.
In an emailed statement, the CIA said it doesn't comment on alleged intelligence sources or methods.
"The CIA protects the nation and upholds the privacy rights of Americans by ensuring that its intelligence collection activities are focused on acquiring foreign intelligence and counterintelligence in accordance with U.S. laws," said Dean Boyd, director of the CIA Office of Public Affairs. The agency is subject to oversight from multiple entities, he said.
AT&T does not comment on questions concerning national security, spokesman Mark Siegel said in a statement emailed to IDG News Service.
"In all cases, whenever any governmental entity anywhere seeks information from us, we ensure that the request and our response are completely lawful and proper," Siegel wrote. "We ensure that we maintain customer information in compliance with the laws of the United States and other countries where information may be maintained. Like all telecom providers, we routinely charge governments for producing the information provided."
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com
She has no problem sharing her thoughts on Twitter, but Kylie Jenner may have stepped over the line with her recent comments about a specific mental illness.
On Wednesday (November 6), the "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" star posted an old pic donning her darker locks and added the caption, "I miss my black hair I'm so bipolar :(."
Unfortunately, the politically incorrect comment didn't sit too well with other Twitter users. One observer fired back with, "Kylie Jenner just tweeted 'I miss my black I'm so Bipolar :(' . No, you're not 'so Bipolar', you're indecisive... and a moron."
Another wrote, "That was 100% the dumbest and most ignorant use of the word bipolar."
Miss Jenner has yet to respond to the negative tweets at this time.
Griffin isn't the first out the door with an RC toy that uses your iPhone as a remote control. But it is the first company to come up with some compelling ways to use the iPhone's touchscreen for more than just steering. Its new Moto TC Rally car is packed with sensors that detect crashes and impacts affecting how the vehicle drives, while on-screen weapons and power-ups let you mess with your opponents. In other words, it's as close to a real-life version of Mario Kart as you can get.
     |
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/UAOs-5ZFxok/power-ups-and-crash-damage-make-these-rc-cars-a-real-li-1460296565FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2011 file photo, a Predator B unmanned aircraft taxis at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday as they released a long-term roadmap for drone integration. For the next several years, domestic use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2011 file photo, a Predator B unmanned aircraft taxis at the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas. Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday as they released a long-term roadmap for drone integration. For the next several years, domestic use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Widespread drone access to U.S. skies faces significant hurdles and will take longer than Congress had anticipated, federal officials acknowledged Thursday in releasing a long-term roadmap for domestic use of drones.
For the next several years, use of drones will be limited to permits granted by the Federal Aviation Administration on a case-by-case basis to operators who agree to procedures to reduce safety risks, the agency said.
Last year, Congress directed the FAA to grant drones widespread access by September 2015. But the agency has missed several deadlines for steps necessary to make that happen.
Among the concerns are whether remotely controlled drones will be able to detect and avoid other aircraft as well as do planes with pilots on board. There are also security concerns, including whether drones' navigation controls can be hacked or disrupted.
"Government and industry face significant challenges as unmanned aircraft move into the aviation mainstream," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
The roadmap has one big gap: privacy, one of the most widespread concerns associated with drones. It addresses only the use of drones at six initial test sites, which have not yet been selected. Test site operators must have a publicly available privacy plan and abide by state and federal privacy laws. The plan must be reviewed annually with opportunity for public comment.
Beyond that, the agency said, privacy isn't within its purview. "The FAA's mission does not extend to regulating privacy, but we have taken steps to address privacy as it relates to the six ... test sites," the agency said in response to questions from The Associated Press.
"The FAA is also actively engaged in interagency efforts to develop privacy safeguards as (drones) are integrated into the national airspace," the statement said.
FAA officials have long contended that, as a safety agency steeped in technology, they have little expertise on addressing broad public privacy worries.
The FAA estimates that within five years of being granted widespread access, roughly 7,500 commercial drones, many of them smaller than a backpack, will be buzzing across U.S. skies.
Industry-local government consortiums around the country are competing fiercely to be selected for one of the test sites. The Teal Group, an industry forecaster in Fairfax, Va., estimates worldwide annual spending on drone research, development, testing, and evaluation procurement will increase from $6.6 billion in 2013 to $11.4 billion in 2022.
The roadmap addresses current and future policies, regulations, technologies and procedures that will be required as demand for drones grows.
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Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-11-07-US-Drones-at-Home/id-67cf30a12d8c4189b0f4111247e09b34WASHINGTON (AP) — Insurance cancellations are fueling a political backlash against President Barack Obama and Democrats supporting his health care overhaul.
The president apologized Thursday for the turmoil some consumers are going through, but there may yet be a silver lining as far as the law itself.
It's Economics 101, a little-noticed consequence of a controversial policy decision. And there are winners and losers.
Millions of people who currently buy their own health insurance coverage are losing it next year because their plans don't meet requirements of the health care law. But experts say the resulting shift of those people into the new health insurance markets under Obama's law would bring in customers already known to insurers, reducing the overall financial risks for each state's insurance pool.
That's painful for those who end up paying higher premiums for upgraded policies. But it could save money for the taxpayers who are subsidizing the new coverage.
"Already-insured people who do roll over will improve the risk pool, not hurt it," said David Axene, a California-based actuarial consultant for health plans, hospitals, government programs and employers.
Compared to the uninsured, people with coverage are less likely to have a pent-up need for medical services, he explained. They may have already had that knee replacement instead of hobbling around on a cane. They're also more likely to have seen a doctor regularly.
"The current individual market enrollees are definitely a good addition to the risk pool," concurred Larry Levitt, an insurance expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
At some point, all these customers had to pass extensive medical screening that insurers traditionally use to screen out people with health problems. Such filtering will no longer be allowed starting next year, and a sizable share of the uninsured people expected to gain coverage under Obama's law have health problems that has kept them from getting coverage. They'll be the costly cases.
Obama had sold his health care overhaul as a win all around. Uninsured Americans would get coverage and people with insurance could keep their plans if they liked them, he said. In hindsight, the president might have wanted to say that you could keep your plan as long as your insurer or your employer did not change it beyond certain limits prescribed by the government.
That test proved too hard for many plans purchased directly by individuals, leading to a wave of cancellations affecting at least 3.5 million people, based on an AP survey in which about half the states reported data.
"I am sorry that they ... are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me," Obama said in an NBC interview, adding that the administration will do "everything we can" to help.
The new plans under Obama's law generally guarantee a broader set of basic benefits and provide stronger financial protection in cases of catastrophic illness.
"There is change coming to the individual marketplace with consumer protections that many people have never enjoyed or experienced," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told senators this week.
But better coverage also costs more.
"The loser is the consumer who is paying higher premiums to subsidize Obamacare, and who was paying lower premiums because they were in another plan before," said Bob Laszewski, a health care industry consultant critical of the law.
Ian Hodge of Lancaster, Pa., fears he'll lose out financially. He and his wife are in their early 60s, so Hodge said "we really don't worry about maternal care," one of the guaranteed benefits in the new plans. The Hodges recently got a cancellation notice and they're concerned a new plan may costs them hundreds of dollars more than they are paying now.
"We are the persons who President Obama wants to pay more in health care so we can subsidize some of the people who will pay less," said Hodge.
A new analysis backs up his instinct. The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that people who already have individual coverage, like the Hodges, are less likely to qualify for the tax credits that will make coverage more affordable through the health law's insurance markets.
According to the findings, 73 percent of potential customers who are uninsured will be eligible for tax credits that limit their premiums to a fixed percentage of their income. However, fewer than 40 percent of those who currently have individual health insurance will qualify.
In Congress, the Republican-controlled House is expected to vote next week on legislation permitting insurance companies to continue selling individual policies already in existence, even if they fall short of the law. The vote could pose a difficult choice to Democrats, who favor the law but also have been critical that it does not live up to Obama's pledge.
Separately, Senate legislation would provide for a one-year delay in the law's requirement for individuals to purchase insurance or pay a penalty. Under the measure, backed by Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., that requirement would take effect on Jan. 1, 2015.
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Associated Press writers David Espo in Washington and Michael Rubinkam in Allentown, Pa., contributed to this report.
There's something verging on unseemly in the glee so many journalists have taken in the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act and in the incontrovertible fact that the Obama administration knowingly misled the American people about "keeping your plan". Magazine covers! Feuds! Late night comedians! Pursed-lipped statements of disappointment!
The "breakdown" of the ACA has made analysts bold: "The Collapse of the Obama Presidency","Why Obama's 'iPod Presidency' Was Doomed", "the entire presidency is riding" on the exchanges, the promise that "you can keep your plan" is (quoting Rush Limbaugh here) "the biggest lie ever told by a siting president."
By Allison Martell
TORONTO (Reuters) - Just days after Toronto Mayor Rob Ford apologized for smoking crack cocaine, he admitted on Thursday he was "extremely, extremely inebriated" in a short expletive-laden video posted online.
The news hit as a campaign by some city councillors to ask the provincial government to remove Ford gathered steam.
The blurry, 80-second clip, posted on the Toronto Star's website and shown on Canadian television, shows a clearly agitated Ford ranting and pounding his hands together, while at least one other person seems to goad him on.
The Toronto Star said it had paid for the video, and said the context of the video was not clear.
"He dies or I die," Ford says in the clip, which also refers to something happening "in that ring." He adds: "I need fucking 10 minutes to make sure he's dead. It'll be over in 5 minutes."
Minutes after the video was posted, Ford emerged from his City Hall office to apologize.
"All I can say is - again - I've made mistakes. All I can do is reassure the people that ... I just wanted to come out and tell you I saw the video, it's extremely embarrassing," Ford said. "Obviously, I was extremely, extremely inebriated."
The mayor did not say who he was talking about in the video.
On Tuesday, Ford made international headlines when he admitted he had smoked crack cocaine, "probably in one of my drunken stupors." He apologized and promised it would never happen again.
For months, the mayor had been dodging questions about reports by media blog Gawker and the Toronto Star that he had been caught on tape using the drug.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said last week the force had obtained a video "consistent" with those reports, without describing its contents in detail.
Ford has refused to resign, and vowed to run for re-election next October. It is difficult to force the mayor of Toronto out of office, unless he or she violates election or conflict of interest rules, or goes to prison. There are no recall elections of the sort that take place in the United States.
But Toronto's city council may vote next week to ask the provincial government to remove Ford from his job.
Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, a former Ford supporter, drafted that motion. He told local media on Thursday that he does not believe the province would act without the support of a "large majority" of council.
Even some who want Ford ousted may balk. Councillor James Pasternak warned that the motion could set a "dangerous and risky precedent," but did not rule out supporting it.
"I'm hoping for a dignified exit before then, and that way we can spare any more harm to the city," he told reporters on Thursday.
At one point in the video posted on Thursday, an unknown voice says "Mike Tyson," presumably referring to the boxer. Earlier this year Ford arm-wrestled Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler, at a media event.
The Toronto Sun, which posted a few seconds from the video, said a source close to the mayor had confirmed it showed Ford, but said it "looks a lot worse than it really is" because the mayor "sometimes goes off on tangents. (Reporting by Allison Martell; editing by Janet Guttsman and Jackie Frank)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/video-emerges-extremely-inebriated-toronto-mayor-201354135.htmlGENEVA (AP) — Iran's chief nuclear negotiator signaled progress at talks with six powers Thursday on a deal to cap some of his country's atomic programs in exchange for limited relief from sanctions stifling Iran's economy, saying the six had accepted Tehran's proposals on how to proceed.
U.S. officials said Secretary of State John Kerry will fly to Geneva on Friday to participate in the nuclear negotiations — a last minute decision that suggests a deal could be imminent.
Any such agreement would only be the start of a long process to reduce Iran's potential nuclear threat with no guarantee of ultimate success.
Yet even a limited accord would mark a breakthrough after nearly a decade of mostly inconclusive talks focused on limiting, if not eliminating, Iranian atomic programs that could be turned from producing energy into making weapons.
Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, Abbas Araghchi, told Iranian state TV that the six — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — "clearly said that they accept the proposed framework by Iran." He later told CNN that he thinks negotiators at the table are now "ready to start drafting" an accord that outlines specific steps to be taken.
Though Araghchi described the negotiations as "very difficult," he told Iranian state TV that he expected agreement on details by Friday, the last scheduled round of the current talks.
The upbeat comments suggested that negotiators in Geneva were moving from broad discussions over a nuclear deal to details meant to limit Tehran's ability to make atomic weapons. In return, Iran would start getting relief from sanctions that have hit its economy hard.
The U.S. officials said Kerry will travel to the Geneva talks after a brief stop in Israel, where he will hold a third meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Kerry has not been formally invited by the Europeans to join the talks.
The talks are primarily focused on the size and output of Iran's enrichment program, which can create both reactor fuel and weapons-grade material suitable for a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it is pursuing only nuclear energy, medical treatments and research.
International negotiators representing the six powers declined to comment on Araghchi's statement. Bur White House spokesman Jay Carney elaborated on what the U.S. calls a "first step" of a strategy meant to ultimately contain Iran's ability to use its nuclear program to make weapons.
An initial agreement would "address Iran's most advanced nuclear activities; increase transparency so Iran will not be able to use the cover of talks to advance its program; and create time and space as we negotiate a comprehensive agreement," Carney told reporters in Washington.
The six would consider "limited, targeted and reversible relief that does not affect our core sanctions," he said, alluding to penalties crippling Tehran's oil exports. If Iran reneges, said Carney, "the temporary, modest relief would be terminated, and we would be in a position to ratchet up the pressure even further by adding new sanctions."
He described any temporary, initial relief of sanctions as likely "more financial rather than technical." Diplomats have previously said initial sanction rollbacks could free Iranian funds in overseas accounts and allow trade in gold and petrochemicals.
Warily watching from the sidelines, Israel warned against a partial agreement that foresees lifting sanctions now instead of waiting for a rigorous final accord that eliminates any possibility of Iran making nuclear weapons.
At a meeting with U.S. legislators in Jerusalem, Netanyahu spoke of "the deal of the century for Iran." While divulging no details, he said the proposed first step at Geneva "will relieve all the (sanctions) pressure inside Iran."
The last round of talks three weeks ago reached agreement on a framework of possible discussion points, and the two sides kicked off Thursday's round focused on getting to that first step.
The talks concern the size and output of Iran's enrichment program, which can create both reactor fuel and weapons-grade material suitable for a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it is pursuing only nuclear energy, medical treatments and research, but the United States and its allies fear that Iran could turn this material into the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
Thursday's meeting ended about an hour after it began, followed by bilateral meetings, including one between the U.S and Iranian delegations. European Union spokesman Michael Mann said the talks were "making progress."
Before the morning round, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met with top EU diplomat Catherine Ashton, who is convening the meeting. Asked afterward about the chances of agreement on initial steps this week, Zarif told reporters: "If everyone tries their best, we may have one."
After nearly a decade of deadlock, Iran seems more amenable to making concessions to the six countries. Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, has indicated he could cut back on the nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
Despite the seemingly calmer political backdrop, issues remain.
Iranian hardliners, want a meaningful — and quick — reduction of the sanctions in exchange for any concessions, while some U.S. lawmakers want significant rollbacks in Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for any loosening of actions.
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Associated Press Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report. AP writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran also contributed.
The global market for PaaS (platform as a service) is set to leap from $3.8 billion last year to more than $14 billion in 2017 as companies look to cut infrastructure costs and speed up application development, according to newly released research from analyst firm IDC.
Overall, the compound annual growth rate for PaaS during this period will be roughly 30 percent, compared to the 4 percent growth rate this year for IT spending overall, according to IDC.
The expected rise in PaaS spending is due to "indications of faster acceptance of the competitive PaaS buying proposition and new information concerning past years, particularly related to the acceptance of and market penetration of Microsoft Azure," the report states.
IDC breaks PaaS into a number of sub-segments, including APaaS (application platform as a service), DPaaS (database platform as a service), cloud-based test and IPaaS (integration platform as a service).
There's also been an emergence of PaaS providers focusing on specific industries, but these companies are "hedging their risks" by linking up with generalized PaaS players such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft and IBM, IDC said. "By doing so, they don't have to reinvent the most common platform services and can focus on developing their own value-add," the report states.
In general, companies are flocking to public PaaS because doing so can lower IT infrastructure spending while providing high availability and scale, IDC said.
It's also possible to create applications more quickly because PaaS makes it easier to perform functional and load testing, as well as to deploy software, according to the report.
This in turn is creating a murky picture of sorts for programmers. "One of the biggest unknowns related to public PaaS is its potential impact on IT staff," the report states. "Because public PaaS improves developer productivity by a factor of two or more, what happens to the developer workforce? Do enterprises make more use of IT or elect to take some or all of the benefit in terms of reducing the developer workforce? The answer lies somewhere in the middle."
On a geographic basis, 65.2 percent of PaaS revenue was derived from the Americas in 2012, and that's not expected to change much by 2017, dropping only to 62.3 percent. This is because many of the initial PaaS startups have their roots in the Americas, resulting in a "revenue bias," IDC said.
But PaaS revenue growth in Asia-Pacific including Japan "continues to boom," with 14.1 percent market share in 2012 and an expected 19.0 percent in 2017.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa accounted for 20.7 percent of PaaS revenue in 2012, but that total is expected to drop slightly, to 18.7 percent, by 2017.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
On Sept. 23, 1987, opening night of a Sweet Charity revival in Washington, D.C., Bob Fosse and his ex-wife and collaborator Gwen Verdon gave the cast a final pep talk, then left the National Theater to get a bite to eat. They turned right, and about a block away, unknown to the gathering audience, or the cast, Fosse collapsed on the sidewalk. Newspapers the next morning said he died at 7:23 p.m.
I was inside that theater. I later calculated what was happening at 7:23. It was a quintessential Fosse moment: a stagewide bar rising from the floor, a line of dance hall hostesses draping themselves over it, bait for big spenders. Here you can listen to him stage the movie version a few years later.
I had seen a lot of Fosse shows by that time — Damn Yankees, Pippin, Dancin', Chicago — and I had read enough about him to know what was autobiographical in his movie All That Jazz.
So I cracked open Sam Wasson's 700-page biography figuring I knew the score. Hell, knew the score and the steps: those artfully slumped shoulders, knocked knees and pigeon-toes. The bowler hats and black vests worn without shirts, like the one Liza Minnelli sported in the number that introduced her in Cabaret on-screen, leading a chorus that knelt and stomped and sprawled, and used hard-backed chairs for everything but sitting.
But I didn't know the details Wasson gets at about how Fosse taught choreography that often made dancers seem all elbows and knees. First to Verdon, who was his muse before she was his wife, and then, with her help, to the dancers in all his shows.
In one dance the chorus girls all had to extend a foot while leaning back and shooting their arms down at their sides. Fosse gave them an image to help them see exactly how he wanted it: "Ladies," he said, "it's like a man is holding out a fur coat for you and you have to drop your arms in."
"Other directors," writes Wasson, "might give their dancers images for every scene. Bob ... had one for just about every step. These were the lines the dancers' bodies had to speak."
That, I submit, is lovely writing, as is his description of Cabaret as a film "about the bejeweling of horror [that] coruscated with Fosse's private sequins." You can lift samples just like those from virtually every page of this book.
You'll also learn how the director's dark stage imagery mirrored his own life — the wife and girlfriends he cheated on, the down-and-dirty burlesque houses he grew up in, the amphetamines that kept him going, and the barbiturates that calmed him when he lost confidence in his own "razzle-dazzle."
Wasson pictures him as harder on himself than he was on his dancers. In one year, he won a directing triple crown for which no one else had ever even been nominated — An Emmy for Liza With A Z, an Oscar for Cabaret and a Tony for Pippin. And his reaction was utter depression. But out of that depression came Chicago ... a musical vaudeville that looked great at the Tony Awards in 1976.
The revival is about to enter its 14th year on Broadway.
Fosse is filled with the kind of inside detail that comes of substantial research, and vivid descriptions that turn the research into a sort of movie in your head. All the way from little Bobby Fosse's elementary school disappointment when the spotlight faded on him, right through to the moment when Gwen Verdon, the love of his life, cradled Fosse's head on her lap on a D.C. sidewalk, just blocks from an audience he was at that very moment razzle-dazzling to beat the band.
Palestinians walk past a mural depicting late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Shati Refugee Camp, in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Swiss scientists have found evidence suggesting Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned with a radioactive substance, a TV station reported on Wednesday, prompting new allegations by his widow that the Palestinian leader was the victim of a "shocking" crime. Arabic reads, "the leader Abu Ammar, you are in our hearts, your sun will not go down." (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Palestinians walk past a mural depicting late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Shati Refugee Camp, in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Swiss scientists have found evidence suggesting Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned with a radioactive substance, a TV station reported on Wednesday, prompting new allegations by his widow that the Palestinian leader was the victim of a "shocking" crime. Arabic reads, "the leader Abu Ammar, you are in our hearts, your sun will not go down." (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
Palestinian Hanadi Kharma, paints a mural depicting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Nablus, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Swiss scientists have found evidence suggesting Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned with a radioactive substance, a TV station reported on Wednesday, prompting new allegations by his widow that the Palestinian leader was the victim of a "shocking" crime. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)
FILE - In this May 31, 2002 file photo, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat pauses during the weekly Muslim Friday prayers in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Al-Jazeera is reporting that a team of Swiss scientists has found moderate evidence that longtime Palestinian leader Arafat died of poisoning. The Arab satellite channel published a copy of what it said was the scientists' report on its website on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013.(AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
Swiss professor Francois Bochud, left, director of the Chuv Radiophysics Institute, IRA, and Swiss professor Patrice Mangin, right, director of the University Center of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, CURML, speak on a forensics report concerning the late President Yasser Arafat during a press conference at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, CHUV, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Thurday, Nov. 7, 2013. Swiss, French and Russian teams took samples of the remains after exhuming Arafat's body in Ramallah, and submitted results to the Palestinian Authority on Nov. 5. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)
Swiss professor Francois Bochud, left, director of the Chuv Radiophysics Institute, IRA, and Swiss professor Patrice Mangin, right, director of the University Center of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, CURML, pose with a forensics report concerning the late President Yasser Arafat during a press conference on of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois, CHUV, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Thurday, Nov. 7, 2013. Swiss, French and Russian teams took samples of the remains after exhuming Arafat's body in Ramallah, and submitted results to the Palestinian Authority on Nov. 5. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Yasser Arafat's mysterious 2004 death turned into a whodunit Thursday after Swiss scientists who examined his remains said the Palestinian leader was probably poisoned with radioactive polonium.
Yet hard proof remains elusive, and nine years on, tracking down anyone who might have slipped minuscule amounts of the lethal substance into Arafat's food or drink could be difficult.
A new investigation could also prove embarrassing — and not just for Israel, which the Palestinians have long accused of poisoning their leader and which has denied any role.
The Palestinians themselves could come under renewed scrutiny, since Arafat was holed up in his Israeli-besieged West Bank compound in the months before his death, surrounded by advisers, staff and bodyguards.
Arafat died at a French military hospital on Nov. 11, 2004, at age 75, a month after suddenly falling violently ill at his compound. At the time, French doctors said he died of a stroke and had a blood-clotting problem, but records were inconclusive about what caused that condition.
The Swiss scientists said that they found elevated traces of polonium-210 and lead in Arafat's remains that could not have occurred naturally, and that the timeframe of Arafat's illness and death was consistent with poisoning from ingesting polonium.
"Our results reasonably support the poisoning theory," Francois Bochud, director of Switzerland's Institute of Radiation Physics, which carried out the investigation, said at a news conference.
Bochud and Patrice Mangin, director of the Lausanne University Hospital's forensics center, said they tested and ruled out innocent explanations, such as accidental poisoning.
"I think we can eliminate this possibility because, as you can imagine, you cannot find polonium everywhere. It's a very rare toxic substance," Mangin told The Associated Press.
Palestinian officials, including Arafat's successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, had no comment on the substance of the report but promised a continued investigation.
The findings are certain to revive Palestinian allegations against Israel, a nuclear power. Polonium can be a byproduct of the chemical processing of uranium, but usually is made artificially in a nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator.
Arafat's widow, Suha, called on the Palestinian leadership to seek justice for her husband, saying, "It's clear this is a crime."
Speaking by phone from the Qatari capital Doha, she did not mention Israel but argued that only countries with nuclear capabilities have access to polonium.
In another interview later Thursday, she described her husband's death as a "political assassination" and "the crime of the century" and called the new testing conclusive for poisoning. She said she couldn't predict who was behind the death, but she added, "Whoever did this crime is a coward."
Israel has repeatedly denied a role in Arafat's death and did so again Thursday. Paul Hirschson, a Foreign Ministry official, dismissed the claim as "hogwash."
"We couldn't be bothered to" kill him, Hirschson said. "If anyone remembers the political reality at the time, Arafat was completely isolated. His own people were barely speaking to him. There's no logical reason for Israel to have wanted to do something like this."
In his final years, Arafat was being accused by Israel and the U.S. of condoning and even encouraging Palestinian attacks against Israelis instead of working for a peace deal. In late 2004, Israeli tanks no longer surrounded his compound, but Arafat was afraid to leave for fear of not being allowed to return.
Shortly after his death, the Palestinians launched their own investigation, questioning dozens of people in Arafat's compound, including staff, bodyguards and officials, but no suspects emerged.
Security around Arafat was easily breached toward the end of his life. Aides have described him as impulsive, unable to resist tasting gifts of chocolate or trying out medicines brought by visitors from abroad.
The investigation was dormant until the satellite TV station Al-Jazeera persuaded Arafat's widow last year to hand over a bag with her husband's underwear, headscarves and other belongings. After finding traces of polonium in biological stains on the clothing, investigators dug up his grave in his Ramallah compound earlier this year to take bone and soil samples.
Investigators noted Thursday that they could not account for the chain of custody of the items that were in the bag, leaving open the possibility of tampering.
However, the latest findings are largely based on Arafat's remains and burial soil, and in this case, tampering appears highly improbable, Bochud said.
"I think this can really be ruled out because it was really difficult to access the body," he said. "When we opened the tomb, we were all together."
Polonium-210 is the same substance that killed KGB agent-turned-Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
"It's quite difficult to understand why (Arafat) might have had any polonium, if he was just in his headquarters in Ramallah," said Alastair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds who was not involved in the investigation.
"He wasn't somebody who was moving in and out of atomic energy plants or dealing with radioactive isotopes."
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John Heilprin reported from Lausanne, Switzerland. Associated Press writers Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem and Lori Hinnant in Paris and AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-11-07-Arafat's%20Death/id-5ecc40cb24d74fb3b6aede7b901bc40b
