MIT and Wilson Center receive NSF grant to develop synthetic biology research agenda

Public release date: 10-Jun-2013
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Contact: Aaron Lovell
aaron.lovell@wilsoncenter.org
202-691-4320
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/Science and Technology Innovation Program

Project aims to address ecological effects before problems materialize

WASHINGTON The MIT Center for International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars are collaborating on a $233,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help realize potential benefits and to address potential ecological effects of synthetic biology.

The grant is supported jointly by three units within NSF, the Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, the Division of Environmental Biology, and the Engineering Directorate. The grant will fund development of an interdisciplinary research agenda to improve understanding of potential ecological effects of commercial uses of synthetic biology. The research agenda will be developed through consultations among synthetic biologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists. It will be based on workshops that focus on near- and medium-term applications of synthetic biology, with scenarios based on the intentional and unintentional release of engineered organisms.

This project will be conducted jointly by the Program on Emerging Technologies of the MIT Center for International Studies and the Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center. It will build on four previous workshops that brought together a wide range of scientists, regulators, NGOs, companies, and other stakeholders to discuss possible ecological risks associated with synthetic biology products and to identify sources of uncertainty over risks. These workshops were funded jointly by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. The project is expected to be completed in one year. A small board of advisors has been created to guide the design and execution of the workshops.

###

About the MIT Center for International Studies and the Program on Emerging Technologies

The Center for International Studies (CIS) aims to support and promote international research and education at MIT. The CIS Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET) seeks to improve responses to implications of emerging technologies. PoET was created with support of an NSF IGERT. Research has included retrospective studies on past emerging technologies led by Merritt Roe Smith, Larry McCray, and Daniel Hastings; and prospective studies on next generation internet (led by David D. Clark) and synthetic biology (led by Kenneth A. Oye).

For more information, visit: http://web.mit.edu/cis/

About the Synthetic Biology Project

The Synthetic Biology Project is an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Project aims to foster informed public and policy discourse concerning the advancement of synthetic biology.

For more information, visit: http://www.synbioproject.org

About The Wilson Center

The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world.

For more information, visit: http://www.wilsoncenter.org

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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: 10-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Aaron Lovell
aaron.lovell@wilsoncenter.org
202-691-4320
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/Science and Technology Innovation Program

Project aims to address ecological effects before problems materialize

WASHINGTON The MIT Center for International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars are collaborating on a $233,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help realize potential benefits and to address potential ecological effects of synthetic biology.

The grant is supported jointly by three units within NSF, the Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology, the Division of Environmental Biology, and the Engineering Directorate. The grant will fund development of an interdisciplinary research agenda to improve understanding of potential ecological effects of commercial uses of synthetic biology. The research agenda will be developed through consultations among synthetic biologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists. It will be based on workshops that focus on near- and medium-term applications of synthetic biology, with scenarios based on the intentional and unintentional release of engineered organisms.

This project will be conducted jointly by the Program on Emerging Technologies of the MIT Center for International Studies and the Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center. It will build on four previous workshops that brought together a wide range of scientists, regulators, NGOs, companies, and other stakeholders to discuss possible ecological risks associated with synthetic biology products and to identify sources of uncertainty over risks. These workshops were funded jointly by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. The project is expected to be completed in one year. A small board of advisors has been created to guide the design and execution of the workshops.

###

About the MIT Center for International Studies and the Program on Emerging Technologies

The Center for International Studies (CIS) aims to support and promote international research and education at MIT. The CIS Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET) seeks to improve responses to implications of emerging technologies. PoET was created with support of an NSF IGERT. Research has included retrospective studies on past emerging technologies led by Merritt Roe Smith, Larry McCray, and Daniel Hastings; and prospective studies on next generation internet (led by David D. Clark) and synthetic biology (led by Kenneth A. Oye).

For more information, visit: http://web.mit.edu/cis/

About the Synthetic Biology Project

The Synthetic Biology Project is an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Project aims to foster informed public and policy discourse concerning the advancement of synthetic biology.

For more information, visit: http://www.synbioproject.org

About The Wilson Center

The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world.

For more information, visit: http://www.wilsoncenter.org

---

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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/wwic-maw061013.php

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Ex-Journey singer Perry treated for melanoma

Music

Randee Dawn TODAY contributor

3 hours ago

Onetime Journey frontman Steve Perry has revealed that he recently was diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer, and that he has undergone two surgeries to remove the cancer cells.

"They think they got it all," wrote the "Don't Stop Believin'" singer, who fronted Journey from 1977-87 and 1995-98, on his Fan Asylum personal blog last Thursday.

Perry, who included with the post a photo of himself and former MTV DJ Martha Quinn taken after the surgery (Quinn also tweeted a similar photo, below), said that the diagnosis came after a "routine mole" was removed from his face.

He said he believed "no other treatments were required."

But there was a second, more tragic aspect to the birthday post he sent to his fans.

Perry, 64, wrote of how he fell for a woman named Kellie Nash after seeing her during a 2011 edit session of Lifetime's breast cancer special "Five." Nash a psychologist who was undergoing cancer treatment, caught his eye with her smile and he asked his friend if she could connect the two of them.

But his friend warned Perry that Nash might not have long to live; she was in Stage 4 of the cancer. He emailed her anyway, and the two became a couple. "I never felt like this before," he wrote. "I had finally found her."

Nash died of her cancer in December 2012. "She helped me in so many ways," wrote Perry.

"She was so strong, so courageous and we really loved each other so very much," he wrote. "I've been trying to grieve and not run from this loss so for the last 5 months that's what I've been doing along with recalling everything being in Love with Kellie taught me."

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/ex-journey-frontman-steve-perry-recovering-melanoma-surgery-6C10272295

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A potential new target to thwart antibiotic resistance

Public release date: 10-Jun-2013
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Contact: Dan Ferber
Dan.ferber@wyss.harvard.edu
617-432-8517
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard

Viruses in gut confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria

Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug.

What's more, the gut viruses, called bacteriophage or simply phage, deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well, the scientists reported online June 9 in Nature. That suggests that phages in the gut may be partly responsible for the emergence of dangerous superbugs that withstand multiple antibiotics, and that drug targeting of phages could offer a potential new path to mitigate development of antibiotic resistance.

"The results mean that the antibiotic-resistance situation is even more troubling than we thought," said senior author Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology and Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center of Synthetic Biology.

Today disease-causing bacteria have adapted to antibiotics faster than scientists can generate new drugs to kill them, creating a serious global public-health threat. Patients who are hospitalized with serious bacterial infections tend to have longer, more expensive hospital stays, and they are twice as likely to die as those infected with antibiotic-susceptible bacteria, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, because first-line drugs fail more often than before, more expensive therapies must be used, raising health-care costs.

In the past, Collins and other scientists have probed the ways gut bacteria adapt to antibiotics, but they've focused on the bacteria themselves. But Collins and Sheetal Modi, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Collins' laboratory and at the Wyss Institute, knew that phage were also abundant in the gut, and that they were adept at ferrying genes from one bacterium to another.

The researchers wondered whether treating mice with antibiotics led phage in the gut to pick up more drug-resistance genes, and if so, whether that made gut bacteria stronger.

They gave mice either ciprofloxacin or ampicillin two commonly prescribed antibiotics. After eight weeks, they harvested all the viruses in the mice's feces, and identified the viral genes present by comparing them with a large database of known genes.

They found that the phages from antibiotic-treated mice carried significantly higher numbers of bacterial drug-resistance genes than they would have carried by chance. What's more, phage from ampicillin-treated mice carried more genes that help bacteria fight off ampicillin and related penicillin-like drugs, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice carried more genes that help them fight off ciprofloxacin and related drugs.

"When we treat mice with certain classes of drugs, we see enrichment of resistance genes to those drug classes," Modi said.

The phage did more than harbor drug-resistance genes. They could also transfer them back to gut bacteria a necessary step in conferring drug resistance. The researchers demonstrated this by isolating phage from either antibiotic-treated mice or untreated mice, then adding those phage to gut bacteria from untreated mice. Phage from ampicillin-treated mice tripled the amount of ampicillin resistance, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice doubled the amount of ciprofloxacin resistance.

That was bad enough, but the scientists also found signs that the phage could do yet more to foster antibiotic resistance. That's because gut phage from mice treated with one drug carried high levels of genes that confer resistance to different drugs, which means that the phage could serve as backup when bacteria must find ways to withstand a variety of antibiotics.

"With antibiotic treatment, the microbiome has a means to protect itself by expanding the antibiotic resistance reservoir, enabling bugs to come back to be potentially stronger and more resistant than before," Collins said.

"Antibiotic resistance is as pressing a global health problem as they come, and to fight it, it's critical to understand it," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Institute Founding Director. "Jim's novel findings offer a previously unknown way to approach this problem by targeting the phage that live in our intestine, rather than the pathogens themselves."

###

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In addition to Collins and Modi, the research team included: Henry H. Lee, Ph.D., a former graduate student at Boston University who's currently at Harvard Medical School, and Catherine S. Spina, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Boston University and researcher at the Wyss Institute.

About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups.

---

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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: 10-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Dan Ferber
Dan.ferber@wyss.harvard.edu
617-432-8517
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard

Viruses in gut confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria

Bacteria in the gut that are under attack by antibiotics have allies no one had anticipated, a team of Wyss Institute scientists has found. Gut viruses that usually commandeer the bacteria, it turns out, enable them to survive the antibiotic onslaught, most likely by handing them genes that help them withstand the drug.

What's more, the gut viruses, called bacteriophage or simply phage, deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well, the scientists reported online June 9 in Nature. That suggests that phages in the gut may be partly responsible for the emergence of dangerous superbugs that withstand multiple antibiotics, and that drug targeting of phages could offer a potential new path to mitigate development of antibiotic resistance.

"The results mean that the antibiotic-resistance situation is even more troubling than we thought," said senior author Jim Collins, Ph.D., a pioneer of synthetic biology and Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, who is also the William F. Warren Distinguished Professor at Boston University, where he leads the Center of Synthetic Biology.

Today disease-causing bacteria have adapted to antibiotics faster than scientists can generate new drugs to kill them, creating a serious global public-health threat. Patients who are hospitalized with serious bacterial infections tend to have longer, more expensive hospital stays, and they are twice as likely to die as those infected with antibiotic-susceptible bacteria, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, because first-line drugs fail more often than before, more expensive therapies must be used, raising health-care costs.

In the past, Collins and other scientists have probed the ways gut bacteria adapt to antibiotics, but they've focused on the bacteria themselves. But Collins and Sheetal Modi, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Collins' laboratory and at the Wyss Institute, knew that phage were also abundant in the gut, and that they were adept at ferrying genes from one bacterium to another.

The researchers wondered whether treating mice with antibiotics led phage in the gut to pick up more drug-resistance genes, and if so, whether that made gut bacteria stronger.

They gave mice either ciprofloxacin or ampicillin two commonly prescribed antibiotics. After eight weeks, they harvested all the viruses in the mice's feces, and identified the viral genes present by comparing them with a large database of known genes.

They found that the phages from antibiotic-treated mice carried significantly higher numbers of bacterial drug-resistance genes than they would have carried by chance. What's more, phage from ampicillin-treated mice carried more genes that help bacteria fight off ampicillin and related penicillin-like drugs, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice carried more genes that help them fight off ciprofloxacin and related drugs.

"When we treat mice with certain classes of drugs, we see enrichment of resistance genes to those drug classes," Modi said.

The phage did more than harbor drug-resistance genes. They could also transfer them back to gut bacteria a necessary step in conferring drug resistance. The researchers demonstrated this by isolating phage from either antibiotic-treated mice or untreated mice, then adding those phage to gut bacteria from untreated mice. Phage from ampicillin-treated mice tripled the amount of ampicillin resistance, while phage from ciprofloxacin-treated mice doubled the amount of ciprofloxacin resistance.

That was bad enough, but the scientists also found signs that the phage could do yet more to foster antibiotic resistance. That's because gut phage from mice treated with one drug carried high levels of genes that confer resistance to different drugs, which means that the phage could serve as backup when bacteria must find ways to withstand a variety of antibiotics.

"With antibiotic treatment, the microbiome has a means to protect itself by expanding the antibiotic resistance reservoir, enabling bugs to come back to be potentially stronger and more resistant than before," Collins said.

"Antibiotic resistance is as pressing a global health problem as they come, and to fight it, it's critical to understand it," said Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Wyss Institute Founding Director. "Jim's novel findings offer a previously unknown way to approach this problem by targeting the phage that live in our intestine, rather than the pathogens themselves."

###

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. In addition to Collins and Modi, the research team included: Henry H. Lee, Ph.D., a former graduate student at Boston University who's currently at Harvard Medical School, and Catherine S. Spina, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at Boston University and researcher at the Wyss Institute.

About the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University uses Nature's design principles to develop bioinspired materials and devices that will transform medicine and create a more sustainable world. Working as an alliance among Harvard's Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Arts & Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston University, and Tufts University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk research that leads to transformative technological breakthroughs. By emulating Nature's principles for self-organizing and self-regulating, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, energy, architecture, robotics, and manufacturing. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances, and new start-ups.

---

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?

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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/wifb-apn061013.php

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$14 billion dollars later, BP's oil spill is cleaned from 3 of 4 affected states

BP said the Coast Guard has concluded 'active cleanup operations' in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, but the work continues along 84 miles of Louisiana's shoreline.

By Associated Press / June 10, 2013

Cars drive past a BP gas station in Manchester, England, May 15. BP has spent more than $14 billion to clean up the massive oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon offshore tanker in 2010. Cleanup efforts are now concluded in three states, BP says, but environmental protection groups say oil residue is still a problem.

Jon Super/AP

Enlarge

Cleanup work has ended in three of the states affected by BP PLC's massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company said Monday.

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The London-based oil giant said the Coast Guard has concluded "active cleanup operations" in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, but the work continues along 84 miles of Louisiana's shoreline.

The cleanup by BP contractors ended last Friday in Alabama, on June 1 in Florida and on May 1 in Mississippi, according to company spokesman Jason Ryan.

The Coast Guard will continue responding to reports of oil washing up anywhere along the Gulf Coast. BP said it will take responsibility for removing any oil that came from its blown-out Macondo well.

"This is another important step towards meeting our goal of returning the shoreline to as close to pre-spill conditions as possible while managing the scale of the response to meet conditions on the ground," Coast Guard Capt. Duke Walker said in a statement.

The director of the National Wildlife Federation's Gulf of Mexico Restoration Campaign said there is still much work to be done including rapid shoreline assessment and cleanup after storms.

"As much as one million barrels of oil from the disaster remains unaccounted for, and tar mats and tar balls from the spill continue to wash up on the coast," said David White. "Regardless of how our shorelines are monitored, BP must be held accountable for the cleanup. We cannot just accept oiled material on our beaches and in our marshes as the 'new normal.'"

BP said it has spent more than $14 billion on response and cleanup activities, with more than 48,000 people involved in those efforts at the height of the spill's aftermath.

"The transition is a significant milestone toward fulfilling our commitment to clean the Gulf shoreline and ensuring that the region's residents and visitors can fully enjoy this majestic environment," Laura Folse, BP's executive vice president for response and environmental restoration, said in a statement.

BP said teams surveyed nearly 4,000 miles of shoreline after the spill, identifying roughly 1,100 miles affected by oil and 778 miles that needed to be cleaned.

The April 2010 well blowout triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Ip5ngtUvmJU/14-billion-dollars-later-BP-s-oil-spill-is-cleaned-from-3-of-4-affected-states

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AP Interview: Wieseltier fears for Israel's future

In this Sunday, June 9, 2013 photo, Leon Wieseltier,.intellectual and philosopher who has been the literary editor of The New Republic for more than three decades, poses for a photograph in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wieseltier has been a leading supporter of Israel in Jewish American intellectual circles. But the U.S.-based author now fears the country?s survival may be in jeopardy and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Sunday, June 9, 2013 photo, Leon Wieseltier,.intellectual and philosopher who has been the literary editor of The New Republic for more than three decades, poses for a photograph in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wieseltier has been a leading supporter of Israel in Jewish American intellectual circles. But the U.S.-based author now fears the country?s survival may be in jeopardy and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

In this Sunday, June 9, 2013 photo, Leon Wieseltier,.intellectual and philosopher who has been the literary editor of The New Republic for more than three decades, poses for a photograph in Tel Aviv, Israel. Wieseltier has been a leading supporter of Israel in Jewish American intellectual circles. But the U.S.-based author now fears the country?s survival may be in jeopardy and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) ? Leon Wieseltier has long maintained a close relationship with the state of Israel. But the Jewish-American author now fears the country's survival may be in jeopardy ? and says much of the blame lies with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Wieseltier, in Israel this week to collect a prestigious award, joins a list of prominent American Jews to criticize Israel in recent years. While Israel has many critics, it has become troubling for Israelis to hear the tough words coming from people, particularly intellectuals, who were once considered a bedrock of support.

Wieseltier, 60, the child of Holocaust survivors and a fluent Hebrew speaker, is a widely respected, if contentious, intellectual and philosopher. He has been the literary editor of The New Republic for three decades, where his essays contribute to national conversations on current affairs. He is also the winner of the 1998 National Jewish Book Award for "Kaddish," his meditation on the ancient Jewish prayer of mourning.

"Unless there is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there will not be a Jewish state for very long," Wieseltier said in an interview at Tel Aviv University after accepting the $1 million Dan David Prize late Sunday for his contributions to ideas and contemporary philosophy. The international prize is awarded every year for contributions to humanity through science, art, public service, humanities and entrepreneurship.

Wieseltier's argument echoes that of Israel's political left and center, that time is working against Israel, and if it doesn't withdraw from the Palestinian territories, it will either become an undemocratic Jewish state, or a non-Jewish democratic state.

In the next few decades, the number of Palestinians is expected to exceed the number of Jews living in areas now under Israeli control. Those who agree with Wieseltier insist that if Israel maintains the status quo, where Palestinians in the West Bank can't vote, but Israeli Jews can, it will end the country's democracy but maintain its Jewish character. Or it could grant Palestinians equal rights, including voting rights, threatening the country's Jewish majority.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories claimed by the Palestinians for their state, in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Proponents of Palestinian independence say a Palestinian state is the only way to prevent a demographic catastrophe for Israel. But negotiations to carve out a Palestinian state have repeatedly faltered, with Israel and the Palestinians blaming each other for failure. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been trying to revive talks in recent weeks.

Netanyahu says he favors the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Wieseltier said the Israeli leader has done little to advance this goal. Netanyahu has resisted Palestinian calls to halt settlement construction in the West Bank and refused to commit to the broad territorial concessions demanded by the Palestinians and backed by the international community. Netanyahu says negotiations should resume with no preconditions.

"One of the most shameful aspects of the Netanyahu government has been to succeed in taking the Palestinian question off the table," said Wieseltier, identifiable by his tall frame and white, unruly mane of hair.

Wieseltier spelled out his views in an essay in The New Republic in December, saying that he no longer believed that Mideast peace would occur in his lifetime. A number of prominent Jewish Americans have begun to express similar concerns about Israel's future, most prominently Wieseltier's former colleague at The New Republic, author Peter Beinart.

In contrast, many mainstream American Jewish groups and leaders back Israeli government policy or defer to Israel to handle its own affairs. Some openly and vocally support Israel's hard-liners.

Wieseltier said he also blamed Palestinian leaders for the stalemate, particularly for allowing the resignation of the respected Palestinian economist Salam Fayyad from his position as prime minister.

Fayyad helped build government institutions and clean up finances in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. He resigned in April after a six-year term after repeatedly clashing with the President Mahmoud Abbas.

"Nobody lifted a finger to help Salam Fayyad, who was the Palestinian leader we were all waiting for. No Palestinians and no Israelis. He came and went. It's a historical scandal of the first magnitude," Wieseltier said.

He said he would try visit the Palestinian territories. In the meantime, Wieseltier said he was enjoying Israel, despite its many flaws.

"I feel perfectly at home here," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-10-Israel-Wieseltier/id-0a7437bcbcca4441acd29fbf39bf6c7a

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Facebook Messenger update adds cute stickers and brings back swipe to delete

Facebook has pushed out an update to their Messenger application for iPhone and iPod Touch, that adds some new cuteness and brings back functionality that once was lost.

The latest version of Messenger has the popular -- and sometimes very cute looking -- stickers included, as they are in the main Facebook application. Facebook does say though, that the stickers will be available to everyone over the next few weeks. So, if you don't see them just yet, there's no need to panic.

Also included in this update is the re-appearance of the popular, and incredibly useful, swipe-to-delete feature. This is back 'by popular request' and rightly so. Most would question why something such as this would be taken away in the first place.

The update is live now in the App Store, so go grab it and start sending all your friends those adorable little kitty stickers!

• Free - Download Now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/wSdomAjbhsg/story01.htm

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Israeli airstrike in Syria brings Iran onstage, raising risk of proxy war

Iran dismissed Israeli claims that yesterday's airstrike in Syria targeted Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah, accusing Israel of looking for an excuse to hammer the 'Axis of Resistance.'

By Scott Peterson,?Staff writer / May 6, 2013

An Iranian demonstrator holds a picture of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during an anti-Israel demonstration in front of the UN office in Tehran, Iran, Monday. Iran condemns Israeli air strikes on Syria and urged countries in the region to stand against the attack.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

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Iran has dismissed reports that Israel?s attack in Syria early yesterday targeted advanced Iranian-made missiles on their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon, calling?them??psychological operations??aimed at undermining the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.??

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By inserting itself into the furor following the attack, Iran highlights how Syria's local civil war has been sucking in every key actor in a volatile region, and turning it increasingly toward a full-blown a proxy war. Between Israel's strikes and Iran's overshadowing presence in the analysis after the attack, there is little doubt that the risk of spillover now looms larger.

Western and Israeli news reports quoted intelligence officials stating that Israel targeted a consignment of Fateh-110 missiles?intended?for Hezbollah, which would have bolstered the Lebanese militant group's already-extensive missile arsenal, enabling it to reach Tel Aviv and much of Israel from southern Lebanon.

Comments by Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today also underscored the increasing sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict. He warned that the recent desecration of a Shiite shrine near Damascus by rebel Sunni extremists with an ?evil mindset? risked fanning Shiite-Sunni hostility.

Iran: Syria, Hezbollah don't need us

Hezbollah?reportedly already has such missiles, as well as a Syrian-made version. For decades, Iran has used Syria as a conduit to provide such weaponry to Hezbollah in its fight against Israel.

?Iran's top brass were careful with their choice of words, claiming that Syria had no reason to have any Iranian-made weapons that Israel might want to target ? and that Hezbollah no longer needed such Iranian hardware, either. ?

?Basically speaking, the Syrian government does not need Iran?s weapon assistance. These types of reports mostly serve [a] psychological and propaganda campaign,? Iran?s deputy armed forces commander, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, told the Al Alam TV network.

?Fortunately, the Resistance movement has become mature enough to defend itself very well against any kind of aggression,? said Jazayeri, according to Fars News Agency. ?What [Palestinian] Hamas employed to defend itself [and] Hezbollah military capabilities are totally homemade.?

The strike was Israel's second in recent days against Syrian government targets. Damascus's?allies ? Iran, Hezbollah, and?to a lesser degree?Russia ? have lined up against what?has become?a proxy fight with the US and Sunni nations like Qatar and Turkey.?

Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the attacks, which Syria?s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad called a ?declaration of war.?

Israel has insisted it is not seeking to take sides in Syria's civil war,?but it will take action to prevent Syria and Iran from supplying "game-changing" weapons to arch-foe Hezbollah.?

Iran's stake

Israel?s attack could affect Iranian calculations. Last January, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iran?s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a possible presidential candidate in June 14 elections, warned that an attack against Syria would be considered an attack on Iran itself.

Rebel fighters and Syrian civilians in rebel-held territory have often reported seeing Iranian fighters and even snipers during clashes, but have produced little evidence.?Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers last year confirmed they had a presence on the ground in?Syria.

Iran has tread a fine line since the Syrian uprising first erupted in March 2011, in the course of the Arab Spring rebellions that toppled Arab dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and eventually Libya.

Officially, Iran has cheered the other successful uprisings as part of a desirable people-power ?Islamic Awakening.? But when it comes to close ally Syria ? the only Arab nation that?supported Iran?in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war ??Iran has sided with the regime, calling those who took to the streets to change it ?terrorists.?

Syria has provided strategic depth in the Arab world for Iran?s pan-Islamic message of revolutionary resistance against Western hegemony, and provided direct access to the frontline fight against US-ally Israel.

?As a Muslim nation, we back Syria, and if there is need for training we will provide them with the training, but we won?t have any active involvement in the operations,? official Iranian media quoted Iran?s armed forces commander Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan as saying on Sunday.

?The Syrian Army has accumulated experience during years of conflict with the Zionist regime [Israel] and is able to defend itself and doesn?t need foreign assistance,? said Gen. Pourdastan.

Sectarian tensions

Speaking to Iranian officials today, Khamenei condemned the rebel attack on the mausoleum of Hujr Ibn Adi, a close companion of the Muslim prophet Mohammad who was also close to Imam Ali, the 7th-century figure revered by Shiites as the first Imam. The remains were reportedly exhumed and taken away by Islamist rebels of the Nusra Front; pictures posted online showed an empty grave and its ornate covering destroyed at the site near Damascus.

?Muslims? reaction to this bitter [incident] and condemnation of this move should continue [or] conspiracies will not stop at this limit,? Khamenei said, according to Fars News. The news agency also paraphrased Khamenei saying ?the clear footprints of enemies [were] revealed in such sacrilegious moves.??

Iran?s Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani called the desecration ?the Syrian terrorists? new crime,? using the term used by the Syrian government to describe the rebels arrayed against it.

Condemnation of the shrine attack even came from Yemen, where Yemeni?media reported the leader of?the rebellious Shiite Houthi community?saying, "This action which has been done in line with the Zionists? criminal plots seeks to increase religious intolerances.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/8xwI4zBwL9E/Israeli-airstrike-in-Syria-brings-Iran-onstage-raising-risk-of-proxy-war

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