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Sunday, May 5, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Disney pulls out of Bangladesh in wake of factory tragedy
The Walt Disney Co. is pulling out of Bangladesh and several other developing countries, in part because of fatal accidents in factories that produced branded merchandise for Western firms.
Announcement of the move follows last week?s collapse of a Bangladesh garment factory building, a tragedy that may be the worst such accident in world history. The official death toll is now more that 500 and keeps climbing as rescue workers continue the slow process of working through building rubble.
Disney officials said their pull-out decision was actually made in March, after a fire in a Bangladesh factory last November that killed more than 100. The company has told licensees that it wants to phase out production of Disney-brand items made in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Belarus, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
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Disney said it relied on World Bank Governing Indicators, which measure rule of law, corruption, and other national characteristics, to help make its decision.
?After much thought and discussion we felt this was the most responsible way to manage the challenges associated with our supply chain,? said Bob Chapek, president of Disney Consumer Products, according to a CNN report.
Are Western firms such as Disney, the Gap, and Benetton in part responsible for the conditions that lead to these tragedies in low-wage nations? Disney?s move shows that some feel their reputations are at risk, at the least, if they are tied too closely to foreign workplace tragedies.
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Customers may avoid brands they suspect of abetting worker abuse. And a number of international nongovernment organizations today stand ready to publicize poor conditions found in factories linked to major nation retail brands.
But these NGOs don?t necessarily want their pressure to result in pull-outs. They want corporations to use their economic muscle to improve conditions.
The Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium, for instance, says it works with big companies and their foreign licenses to try to remedy problems before issuing public reports.
?The WRC views ?cutting and running? from a factory as a serious abrogation of a licensee?s responsibilities,? says the group in a statement.
Worker groups often want foreign firms to stay to preserve jobs and economic development. Some experts say the blame for tragedies such as the Bangladesh building collapse should be directed at local and national authorities who have the responsibility to protect their workers.
?By misassigning the responsibility for the recent tragedies to global retailers, western media and consumer movements allow the real culprits to get away scot-free and further diminish the likelihood of governance reform in poor countries,? wrote Jagdish Bhagwati, senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Amrita Narlikar, director of the Center for Rising Powers at the University of Cambridge, last month in the British magazine Prospect.
Other experts put the problem in a larger political frame. The real problem in Bangladesh has been the complex trade apparatus erected by the US, which consumes most of the cheap clothing produced in developing nations, wrote Mallika Shakya, an assistant professor of sociology at South Asian University in Delhi, in the Indian newspaper The Hindu.
Between 1974 and 2004, the US Multi-Fiber Arrangement virtually dictated, item by item, the amount of clothing that third-world countries could export to the US, according to Ms. Shakya. Potential rivals to America such as China got small quotas, while Bangladesh and other unprepared nations got large ones.
The result was that Bangladeshi authorities could not keep up with the explosive growth of their country's garment industry.
?That is a reason why most factory buildings are found to be built haphazardly, without acquiring the necessary clearance from state agencies,? wrote Ms. Shakya.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/disney-pulls-bangladesh-workers-safer-152340191.html
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What Is the Prettiest Gadget You Own?
Even the prettiest gadgets can still suck. But that said, there's something to be said for devices that are just easy on the eyes, and if they're good too, that's a bonus. Show us the prettiest gadget you've got hanging around. Or, if you're living in a trash-heap or something, what's the prettiest one you aspire to someday own?
Source: http://gizmodo.com/what-is-the-prettiest-gadget-you-own-491022320
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Gadget Lab Show: Kobo Ups Its E-Reader Game and Vine Goes Full Frontal
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/W6wwPDHHF5I/
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Jury in Philadelphia abortion doctor case deliberates for fourth day
By Dave Warner
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Philadelphia jury began a fourth day of deliberations on Friday in the murder trial of a doctor accused of killing babies and a patient during late-term abortions at a clinic serving low-income women.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, who ran the now-shuttered Women's Medical Society Clinic, could face the death penalty if convicted by the jury, in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia.
The case focuses on whether the infants were born alive and then killed.
The seven-woman, five-man jury heard five weeks of testimony before starting the deliberation process on Tuesday.
Gosnell is charged with four counts of first-degree murder for delivering live babies during late-term abortions and then deliberately severing their spinal cords, prosecutors said.
The charges have fueled the debate in the United States about late-term abortions.
It is legal in Pennsylvania to abort a fetus up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Gosnell also faces charges that he performed 24 abortions beyond 24 weeks.
Nine states ban abortions after 20 weeks, according to the abortion rights group NARAL. Other states recently put new restrictions on abortions, with Arkansas banning them at 12 weeks and North Dakota at six weeks.
Most abortions, 92 percent, are performed before 14 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1.3 percent are performed beyond 20 weeks.
Judge Jeffrey Minehart told the jury that state law defines a live baby as one that is fully expelled from the mother and showing signs of life such as breathing, heart beat or movement.
If a baby shows those signs, he said, "That baby is a human being."
Gosnell's defense contends there is no evidence the babies were alive after they were aborted. In his closing argument, defense lawyer Jack McMahon cited the medical examiner's testimony that none of the 47 fetuses tested randomly from the clinic had been born alive.
Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron said in his closing argument that witnesses testified that one of the aborted babies was breathing before its neck was cut, another made a whining sound and another moved its arms and legs.
Testimony depicted a filthy clinic serving mostly low-income women in a largely black community. McMahon said Gosnell wanted to help the under-privileged community.
Gosnell is also charged with murdering Karnamaya Mongar, 41, of Virginia, who died from a drug overdose after going to him for an abortion, prosecutors said.
Gosnell, who has been in jail since his January 2011 arrest, is on trial with Eileen O'Neill, a medical school graduate accused of billing patients and insurance companies for clinic services as if she were a licensed doctor.
Eight other defendants have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and are awaiting sentencing. They include Gosnell's wife, Pearl, a cosmetologist who helped perform abortions.
(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jury-philadelphia-abortion-doctor-case-deliberates-fourth-day-135932811.html
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'Dark genome' is involved in Rett Syndrome
Friday, May 3, 2013
Researchers at the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Program at IDIBELL led by Manel Esteller, ICREA researcher and professor of genetics at the University of Barcelona, have described alterations in noncoding long chain RNA sequences (lncRNA) in Rett syndrome.
These molecules act as supervisor agents responsible of 'switch on' or 'switch off' other genes in our genome that regulate the activity of neurons. The work has been published in the last issue of the journal RNA Biology.
Dark genome
Only 5% of our genetic material are genes that encode proteins. The remaining 95% is known as dark genome or non-coding DNA and its function is still unknown. Part of this DNA produces RNA molecules called noncoding long chain RNA (lncRNAs).
Rett Syndrome
Rett syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disease and it is the second most common cause of mental retardation in females after Down syndrome. Clinical symptoms occur between 6 and 18 months after birth and consist of a loss of cognitive, social and motor capacities accompanied by autistic behaviors, eg, stereotypic hand movements.
Today there is no effective treatment of the disease but the control of their symptoms. The syndrome is usually due to the presence of a mutation in MeCP2 epigenetic gene that, as a magnet, regulates the expression of many other genes of the cell.
Esteller's team works with a mouse model that faithfully reproduces the characteristics of the human Rett syndrome. In this study, researchers compared the expression of long chains of RNA in healthy and diseased animals and found that the presence of mutations in the Mecp2 gene causes alterations in the activity of lncRNA.
One such altered lncARN regulates the function of a key neurotransmitter in the nervous system in all vertebrates brain (GABA receptor). "Its alteration", says Esteller, "could explain the defects of communication between neurons in girls affected by Rett Syndrome."
According to Manel Esteller "this finding, in addition to increasing knowledge about the causes of the disease, could open the door to new therapeutic strategies that target lncRNA molecules or GABA receptor."
###
IDIBELL-Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute: http://www.idibell.cat
Thanks to IDIBELL-Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute 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/128117/_Dark_genome__is_involved_in_Rett_Syndrome
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New Zealand's internet bad boy wants to see top U.S. lawman
By David Ingram and Naomi Tajitsu
WASHINGTON/WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A trip to New Zealand will put America's chief prosecutor on the same soil as a flashy internet mogul who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges he assisted massive piracy of copyrighted movies and music.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visits New Zealand next week for an annual meeting of a "quintet" of attorneys general from mostly English-speaking countries - and not to meet up with the entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.
The founder of defunct file-sharing service Megaupload, Dotcom has oscillated between assailing Holder's trip and wanting to hear what he has to say in person.
It was unclear on Thursday whether Holder would appear in public. His speech at the University of Auckland is planned primarily for students and will be closed to the public and the media, although his U.S. speeches are usually open to the media.
In Twitter posts, Dotcom requested a ticket to the speech, offered to send T-shirts and an ethics manual to wherever Holder is staying and challenged his followers to film Holder while a Megaupload theme song plays for a $500 prize.
Dotcom tweeted that he would like to understand Holder's definition of cybercrime, one issue the quintet works on.
An extradition hearing for Dotcom is scheduled for August, although appeals could further delay it, said Ira Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload. He told Reuters by phone he had no reason to expect a meeting between Holder and Dotcom.
Holder declined an interview through a spokeswoman on Thursday. Federal prosecutors in Virginia who are handling the case declined to comment on how it is proceeding.
Dotcom got rich from founding Megaupload, which allowed users to upload and download movies, music, television shows, e-books and software. The site once commanded 4 percent of global online traffic before U.S. prosecutors shut it down.
The United States began a criminal copyright case against Dotcom in January 2012. At Washington's request, New Zealand law enforcement officers conducted a dramatic raid on his mansion outside Auckland.
Attempts to have him sent to the United States for trial were delayed after a New Zealand court last year found that New Zealand used unlawful warrants in his arrest and illegally spied on him in the lead-up to the raid.
PRECEDENT SETTER?
Dotcom and six associates face U.S. charges that they conspired to infringe copyrights, launder money and commit racketeering and fraud.
The copyright case could set a precedent for internet liability laws and, depending on its outcome, may force entertainment companies to rethink their distribution methods.
Dotcom maintains that Megaupload, which housed everything from family photos to Hollywood blockbusters, was merely a storage facility for online files, and should not be held accountable if content stored on the site was obtained illegally.
The Justice Department counters that Megaupload encouraged piracy by paying money to users who uploaded popular content and by deleting content that was not regularly downloaded.
It said Megaupload cost copyright holders such as movie studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds. It called the case among the largest ever involving criminal copyright.
Dotcom launched a new file-sharing service, Mega, in January.
Many New Zealanders view Dotcom, born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, as a folk hero fighting for online freedom and willing to stand up to the U.S. and New Zealand governments.
Dotcom, who has been released on bail and is suing the New Zealand government for illegal surveillance, predicted Holder would keep a low profile during his visit.
"It's probably risk management and avoidance of bad PR because the story has not yet arrived in any big way in the U.S. media," he wrote in an email to Reuters. "Any bad coverage here might spill over to the U.S."
Holder's visit to Dotcom's country of residence is not his choice. The attorneys general of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States began meeting as a quintet in 2009 to discuss legal matters including cybercrime.
After a gathering in Ottawa last year, it was New Zealand's turn to host.
(Reporting by David Ingram in Washington and Naomi Tajitsu in Wellington; Editing by Howard Goller and Xavier Briand)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zealands-internet-bad-boy-wants-see-top-lawman-003444980.html
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