BEIJING ? China's government is prohibiting television stations from placing advertisements in the middle of TV dramas in a move meant to attract viewers and boost program quality.
The ban, which was published Monday and takes effect January 1, says no ads may appear in any drama series, whose episodes typically run 45 minutes.
The order is the latest in a series since the ruling Communist Party last month endorsed a program to raise the entertainment and ideological value of cultural offerings to better hold the attention of Chinese increasingly turning to the Internet for alternate viewpoints.
Broadcasting executives and analysts quoted by state media say the ban is likely to shrink ad revenues but will force TV stations to air higher quality series to keep viewers from switching stations.
The secretive X-37B robotic space plane is about to set its own space-endurance record on a hush-hush project operated by the U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.
The craft, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle-2, was boosted into Earth orbit atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 5. Tomorrow (Nov. 30), the X-37B spacecraft will mark its 270th day of flight ? a lifetime in space that was heralded in the past as the vehicle's upper limit for spaceflight by project officials.
"It's still up there," U.S. Air Force Maj. Tracy Bunko of the Air Force Press Desk at the Pentagon, told SPACE.com, noting that project officials planned for a 9- month-plus mission, "so we're close to that now."
The X-37B's staying power is made feasible by its deployable solar array power system, unfurled from the vehicle's cargo bay. [Photos: Air Force's 2nd Secret X-37B Mission]
Built by Boeing's Phantom Works, the X-37B spacecraft is about 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 15 feet (4.5 meters) wide. It has a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed.
The X-37B resembles a miniature version of NASA's space shuttle. Two X-37Bs could fit inside the 60-foot (18-meter) cargo bay of a space shuttle.
The U.S. Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office "expedites development and fielding of select Department of Defense combat support and weapon systems by leveraging defense-wide technology development efforts and existing operational capabilities," according to an office fact sheet.
"Currently, RCO is working on the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle to demonstrate a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform for the United States Air Force," the fact sheet explains.
Extended flight
As first reported by SPACE.com in early October, the extended flight of the craft was in the cards from the beginning, said Air Force Lt. Col. Tom McIntyre, the X-37 systems program director.
McIntyre said that X-37B controllers initially planned a 9-month mission but would try to extend it "as circumstances allow." He added that more flight time ?would give program officials additional experimentation opportunities and permit its operators to extract the maximum value out of the mission, he said.
The maiden voyage of the first winged X-37B took place in 2010, a mission that lasted 225 days. That inaugural trek started on April 22, and ended with a Dec. 3 touchdown at a specially prepared landing strip at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The vehicle now orbiting is the second craft of this type to be built by Boeing.
The X-37B is operated under the direction of Air Force Space Command's 3rd Space Experimentation Squadron, a space control unit located at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.
The payload inside the vehicle flying in space is classified.
Future uses
When this second X-37B flight does end, it is designed to carry out an automatic guided-entry-and-wheels-down runway landing, likely at Vandenberg Air Force Base, with neighboring Edwards Air Force Base serving as a backup.
If the incoming space plane strays off its auto-pilot trajectory as it zooms over the Pacific Ocean, the craft has a self-destruct mechanism.
As for the future of the X-37B series, derivatives of the vehicle have been proposed as possibilities to fly cargo and even crew to the International Space Station.
Arthur Grantz of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems sketched out a host of future uses for the space plane design at a recent meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Grantz said, for one, the X-37B as designed now can be flown to the space station and supply cargo services by docking to the facility's common berthing mechanism. A Boeing roadmap, he added, includes an X-37C winged vehicle, as well as a version able to carry up to seven astronauts into Earth orbit.
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
ANKARA, Turkey ? A senior U.S. official has dismissed Iran's threats against NATO missile defense installations in Turkey ahead of a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to the key U.S. ally and linchpin of NATO's southern flank.
An Iranian general said Saturday that Tehran would target NATO's early warning radar in Turkey if the U.S. or Israel attacks the Islamic Republic after an International Atomic Energy Agency report said for the first time that Tehran was suspected of conducting secret experiments whose sole purpose was the development of nuclear arms.
Antony Blinken, national security adviser to Biden, told a teleconference briefing from Washington on Monday that "making threatening statements doesn't serve anyone's purpose, least of all the Iranians."
"Turkey shares our goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran," Blinken added, according to a transcript posted on the U.S. embassy website.
Ankara agreed to host the radar in September as part of NATO's missile defense system, which is capable of countering ballistic missile threats from its neighbor, Iran. Turkey insists the shield doesn't target a specific country but Tehran says the radar is meant to protect Israel from Iranian missile attacks if a war breaks out with the Jewish state.
The U.S. and its Western allies suspect Iran of trying to produce atomic weapons, and Israel, which views Tehran as an existential threat, has warned of a possible strike on Iran's nuclear program. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.
"Should we be threatened, we will target NATO's missile defense shield in Turkey and then hit the next targets," Iran's semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard as saying on Saturday.
A military installation in the Turkish town of Kurecik, some 370 miles (600 kilometers) west of the Iranian border, has been designated as the radar site, according to Turkish government officials. The deployment in Turkey, the biggest Muslim voice in NATO, signals improving ties with Washington since the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Turkey also closely works with U.S. forces in NATO operations in Afghanistan and Libya, though it is not directly involved in combat.
The deployment of the NATO radar in Turkey was "very important to the defense of all NATO countries against the growing missile threat that is emerging in the world," Blinken said. "We're very pleased that Turkey is standing up as a NATO ally to do that."
Under the NATO plans, a limited system of U.S. anti-missile interceptors and radars already planned for Europe ? to include interceptors in Romania and Poland as well as the radar in Turkey ? would be linked to expanded European-owned missile defenses. That would create a broad system that protects every NATO country against medium-range missile attack
Russia sees the U.S. missile defense plans in Europe as a security challenge, even though Washington says they are aimed against a potential Iranian missile threat and can't pose a threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Biden was scheduled to meet Turkish leaders in Ankara on Friday, before traveling to Istanbul to attend the second Global Entrepreneurship Summit aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and facilitate innovation and private enterprise.
The summit continues the work of the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship hosted by President Barack Obama in Washington in April 2010, the U.S. embassy said on its website.
Biden will later travel to Greece to meet with new Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, who took office earlier this month.
BOISE, Idaho ? When lightning ignited a wildfire near Idaho's Sun Valley in 2007, environmental regulators used monitoring gear to gauge the health effects for those breathing in the Sawtooth Mountains' smoky, mile-high air.
That equipment sits idle today after the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality was hit by $4 million in spending cuts, a quarter of its budget, since the recession began. Water testing on selenium-laced streams in Idaho's phosphate mining country also has been cut back, as have mercury monitoring and hazardous waste inspections.
The cuts to environmental programs in Idaho provide a snapshot of a national trend. Conservation programs and environmental regulations have been pared back significantly in many states that have grappled with budget deficits in recent years.
Because environmental programs are just a sliver of most state budgets, the cuts often go without much public notice. More attention is focused on larger reductions in Medicaid, public education or prisons.
A 24-state survey by the Environmental Council of States, the national association of state environmental agency leaders, showed agency budgets decreasing by an average of $12 million in 2011. The Washington, D.C.-based group also says federal grants to help states administer new federal Environmental Protection Agency rules regarding air and water quality also have waned, falling by 5.1 percent since 2004.
Regulators in many states say they are trying to maintain fundamental environmental protections required by the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and other federal laws.
"Hopefully, even with all the cuts in place, we're still doing a good job of protecting that," said Martin Bauer, Idaho's air quality administrator.
Yet environmentalists and some state regulators are concerned that the budget cuts imperil programs designed to safeguard public health and safety.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate, signed a budget that cut funding for the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality more than 30 percent, from $833 million to $565 million. That included reducing air quality inspections and assessments.
Colin Meehan, of the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, worries that Texas will struggle to meet Clean Air Act obligations.
"We see this as not just a problem from a regulatory standpoint," he said. "It's a public health issue."
While the Texas agency reduced state incentive programs to cut pollutants, those were not required by federal law, agency spokeswoman Andrea Morrow said. The reductions "are only one part of the state's overall approach" to paring emissions, she said.
In some states where conservatives control the Legislature and the governor's office, environmentalists have been critical of deep cutbacks to the programs they had fought to implement. Some suggest the severity of the cuts is due as much to a political agenda to reduce government regulations as it is to cope with state budget deficits.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott's first budget included his veto of a $500,000 water quality study on Lake Okeechobee and some $20 million in cuts to Everglades' restoration. Scott, a Republican, said the steps were necessary to balance a state budget hard hit by home foreclosures and real estate losses.
But the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature also cut $210 million from property tax revenue intended for local water-management districts that protect Florida's swamplands. Environmentalists blasted those cuts, complaining they were meant to help Scott fulfill pledge to cut taxes.
"It would have been appropriate for there to have been some level of budget reductions," Audubon of Florida advocacy director Charles Lee said. "But it's clear what happened in Tallahassee in 2011 was targeted, ideologically driven, and I would add, mean-spirited."
Scott insists his administration uncovered overly generous pension payments and questionable purchases by the local water districts. He said water resources deserve protecting, but the agencies that oversee them also must be fiscally responsible.
Budget cuts have affected high-profile programs in several other states, as well.
In South Carolina, they mean health officials will not perform a statewide study of how mercury-tainted fish affect those who eat them. Contaminated fish have been found in some 1,700 miles of the state's rivers. That state's Department of Natural Resources' budget was cut more than 50 percent, dropping to $14 million from $32 million.
The state Department of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania has seen general fund support slip from $217 million in 2009 to $140 million, levels last seen in 1994.
"This is a silent train wreck that's happening," said David Hess, the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. "What these cuts do is cut the capacity and the ability of environmental agencies to do their jobs."
At best, states will know less about how their air and water quality are faring. At worst, they could become dirtier and more dangerous places to live, Hess said.
Oregon, for example, reduced air pollution monitoring, as the Department of Environmental Quality faces budget cuts through 2013. In North Carolina, lawmakers eliminated a $480,000 mapping program created after a landslide killed five people in 2004, jettisoning the jobs of six geologists who said more maps were needed to help protect Appalachian mountain residents by helping them decide where it is safe to build.
"It's very shortsighted," said DJ Gerken, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Ashville, N.C. "We've had 48 landslide deaths since 1916. What's changed is the appetite for building in these areas where risks are most abundant."
In some cases, it's difficult to know what effect the spending cuts will have over the long term because environmental problems often evolve over time.
When Washington's Legislature trimmed $30 million, or 27 percent, from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife's budget, three employees who had been diving in the Puget Sound to hunt down invasive sea squirts lost their jobs.
The gelatinous invaders, known as tunicates, form a goopy mat on the sea floor, raising fears that they will hurt the shellfish industry, as they have in eastern Canada.
"We are basically addressing tunicates on an emergency basis only," said Allen Pleus, Washington state's aquatic invasive species coordinator.
While the state's oyster growers will not rule out the potential for future problems caused by the sea squirts, they say they do not see an immediate threat to their livelihoods.
"There isn't any place I'm aware of that the tunicates are causing harm on the shellfish farms," said Bill Dewey, of Taylor Shellfish Farms in Shelton, Wash.
Elsewhere, budget cuts to invasive species programs have caused more alarm.
The Hawaii Invasive Species Council, a main player in that state's fight against non-native plants and animals, saw its budget cut by more than half to $1.8 million.
Fearing "a collapse of our inspection capacity," spokeswoman Deborah Ward said her agency redirected 40 percent of its remaining money to preserve inspections that help keep invasive pests such as brown tree snakes from hitchhiking their way into the islands from Guam. Hawaii has no native snakes, so experts fears their arrival could decimate native bird species.
As the money was shifted, however, the state cut back on field crews who targeted invasive species already on the islands. Those include pigs, wild goats and sheep that can decimate an ecosystem full of plants that evolved without natural protections, like thorns.
"They're like bonbons for pigs," Christy Martin, a spokeswoman for the Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species in Honolulu, said of the state's native plants. "If there's nobody out there actually doing the work, you get astronomical reproduction. We have a year-round breeding season here, so everything goes crazy, and you lose ground."
___
Associated Press writers Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh, N.C.; Jim Davenport in Columbia, S.C.; Bill Kaczor in Tallahassee, Fla.; Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; Philip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.; and Chris Tomlinson in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.
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When we first reviewed the Snapfon ez ONE (3.5 stars), we thought it was a great simple cell phone, held back by a few issues. Now, with the Snapfon ez ONE-c, some of those issues have been addressed, along with a number of other improvements and a lower price. Sure, the earpiece volume could be higher and it would be nice if the time and date set automatically, but this is still as simple as cell phones get. It's so easy to use that it's our new Editors' Choice for simple phones.
Pricing and Design Snapfon offers the ez ONE-c direct from its Web site with several decent no-contract service plans through PureTalk USA, which uses AT&T's physical network. Plans start at $10/month. The phone costs $29.99 when purchased with a plan or $59.99 without. Because it is a GSM phone, it will also work with any AT&T or T-Mobile plan.
Setting up your Snapfon is simple right out of the box. There's a fold-out user manual, filled with straightforward, easy to understand directions in a very large font.
The ez ONE-c is made almost entirely of dark grey, shiny plastic with a red SOS button on the back. It measures 4 by 2 by .5 inches (HWD) and weighs just 2.7 ounces. It looks a lot like a calculator, and it should fit into your pocket without a problem. The screen is a 1.6-inch amber LCD with 128x48 resolution, and shows the battery life, date, signal strength, and time.
The keys are extremely large?each one is about the size of a dime. They're made of matte plastic and are easy to press without making a mistake. They're also easy to read, though you can also set the phone to say them out loud as you press them. At the top of the keypad, in between the?Send?and?End?buttons, is a single function key used to navigate the phone's uncomplicated menu. Battery life was excellent at 11 hours 27 minutes of talk time.
Performance and Conclusions The ez ONE-c is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM world phone, which means you can take it with you on trips abroad. There is no Bluetooth, camera, Internet, or any of the other features that often come standard in most phones. But this is a simple phone, so that's understandable. The only downside is the lack of Bluetooth, since many states have laws requiring hands-free use while driving.
I tested the Snapfon on T-Mobile's network. Reception was good, and call quality was decent overall. Voices sound clear in the earpiece, but extremely thin?there's no depth at all. Although the earpiece sounds a bit louder this time around, I still wish it had a louder maximum volume. Pressed firmly against my ear the volume level was good, but holding the phone like I regularly do caused it to drop off a bit. It would've been nice to see a higher maximum volume for users that are hard of hearing. The speakerphone, on the other hand, gets very loud. On the other end, calls made with the phone sound clear enough, although noise cancellation is lacking. The vibrate function is decent, but like the earpiece, it could stand to be a bit stronger.
There is a button on the left side of the phone for volume control, and another one for an FM radio. The FM radio has good reception, but it sounds tinny over the phone's speaker. It's much better over a standard pair of 3.5mm wired headphones.
There is a button on the right side of the phone for a LED flashlight, which Snapfon claims can produce a beam of light for up to 20 feet. There is also a lock button on the right side to prevent the phone from pocket dialing.
Text messaging was simple due to the large size of the phone's keys, but there is no predictive text, so you're going to need to triple tap out all your messages. The phone can only hold up to 100 messages and 200 contacts at once due to a lack of any significant internal memory. Unfortunately, it still doesn't set the time and date automatically, which is a needless hassle.
A big, red SOS button is located on the back of the phone, which is a great feature to have in case of an emergency. By pressing and holding the button down for 5 seconds, the phone will sound a high-pitched alert and proceed to automatically call 4 programmable numbers until a call connects. It will even send a text message to these numbers that says, "Emergency, please help!" Upon initial activation of the phone, the SOS button is programmed to dial the user's nearest emergency response center until 4 SOS numbers are entered.
There are other good simple phones out there, such as GreatCall's?Samsung Jitterbug J SPH-A310?($99, 4 stars) and the Just5 J509?($89.99, 4 stars). While the Snapfon lacks Jitterbug's live operator, on-call nurse, and personal security service, it still manages to provide a sense of security with the SOS feature, and it's even easier to use and less expensive than the Jitterbug. The J509, meanwhile, lacks a standard headphone jack and isn't a world phone. That leaves the ez ONE-c as the easiest choice, and our Editors' Choice, for a simple phone.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. ? All week long, the chatter about Virginia being on the rise left out an important fact in the mind of Virginia Tech's players: They were still the best in the commonwealth until proven otherwise.
The No. 6 Hokies showed they were tops Saturday night, blanking the No. 24 Cavaliers 38-0, their first shutout loss at home in 172 games ? since a 55-0 defeat to Clemson on Sept. 8, 1984.
"The guys definitely took it as a slap in the face. It's kind of been our way, the rivalry, for the past couple years and nobody was talking about us," Hokies quarterback Logan Thomas said after throwing for two touchdowns and running for another. "They were all talking about Virginia and how good Virginia was going to play against us and how they were going to do."
David Wilson added two second-half touchdown runs for the Hokies, who led 14-0 at the break and drove 79 yards with the opening series of the third quarter, and then let their defense do the rest.
Virginia, which came in averaging better than 177 rushing yards, finished with 30 on 26 carries. They had just 241 yards overall, and quarterback Michael Rocco was sacked four times and intercepted twice.
"I felt like we didn't receive any respect in our home state after all we've done, and we went out there and made a statement," defensive end James Gayle said after registering two of the sacks.
"We weren't getting respect, so we went out there and took it."
And the Hokies (11-1, 7-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) earned the league's Coastal Division title and a rematch with No. 18 Clemson in next weekend's ACC championship game in Charlotte. They suffered their only loss, 23-3 against the Tigers on Oct. 1, and were eager for a rematch.
"Everybody wants it," Thomas said. "We know that we didn't play our best ball that day."
Nope, they saved that for their state rivals, and beat them for the eighth time in a row and 12th time in the last 13 meetings. They will be seeking their fourth league championship in five years.
Virginia defensive coordinator Jim Reid likes their chances. He prepared all week to try and stop Thomas and Wilson in the running game, and said film didn't do them justice.
"When you see those two characters up front, let me tell you, David Wilson is excellent on tape, but he is really dynamic and magnificent in person," Reid said, adding that when he saw Wilson running by him on the sidelines, the only thing he could think to say was "Whoa!"
The Cavaliers (8-4, 5-3) had won four straight and seemed ready to finally challenge their state rival, but without a running game, Rocco was under steady pressure. He also fumbled on a sack.
"We just couldn't finish," he said. "We got down to the red zone a bunch of times, but it was just little things. Either we had a penalty or a dropped ball or a bad pass ? we didn't finish. We talk about being finishers all year and didn't finish in the red zone today. It hurts. It doesn't feel good."
The tone was set very early.
Thomas hit Marcus Davis for 36 yards on the Hokies' first play from scrimmage, and Wilson broke off a 17-yard run on the next play. A 5-yard run by Wilson and 15-yard facemasking penalty on Chase Minnifield moved the Hokies to Virginia's 14, and Thomas ran it in from there.
It was his 10th rushing touchdown, a regular-season record for a quarterback in the 25 years Frank Beamer has been the coach, and Beamer once had Michael Vick as his QB.
Virginia tried to answer, driving to the Hokies' 6, but on fourth-and-2, the Cavaliers elected to go for it, and Kevin Parks was tripped up by Jack Tyler after gaining only a yard.
"We made a stop right there, made a statement right there," Beamer said.
The Cavaliers were trying to do the same thing, second-year coach Mike London said.
"It was the opportunity to send a message to our guys up front that if you're going to win championships, if you're going to win games, you've got to be able to knock people off the ball and gain a yard, particularly when you're favored in run-play," London said. "They did a good job of defending it, and we didn't get it. It set the tone for them to go the other way."
Virginia had no answer for Thomas early or Wilson late, and when the Hokies drove 79 yards for a touchdown to open the third quarter, extending their lead to 21-0, the largest crowd of the season at Scott Stadium (61,124) grew quiet ? except for the Hokies fans.
Wilson capped the drive with a 27-yard burst off the left side. He added a 38-yard run up the middle for another touchdown early in the fourth quarter, and fans headed for the exits.
"It was visible on the field and you could see it in the stands" that the Cavaliers were deflated, Wilson said. "When we first came out for warmups, we couldn't get (the fans) to shut up."
Wilson finished with 153 yards on 24 carries and tied the ACC record with his 10th 100-yard game of the season. Thomas was 13 for 21 for 187 yards and ran for 27 yards on seven tries.
Following an exchange of punts, which found the Hokies starting at their own 4, Thomas twice converted third down plays with first-down runs, then hit Davis again, this time for 52 yards.
On third-and-8 from the Virginia 16, he hit Jarrett Boykin over the middle for the TD.
Minnifield, one of 31 fourth- or fifth-year players honored by Virginia before the game, had three 15-yard penalties in the first half, but one was waved off because Davis beat him for the 36-yard catch, and another on a deep ball was negated by a holding call against the Hokies.
J.R. Collins' interception of Rocco and return to the Cavaliers' 6 set up the last touchdown, Thomas' 7-yard pass to Davis. He finished with five catches for 119 yards.
___
Follow Hank Kurz on Twitter at http://twitter.com/hankkurzjr
A small aircraft carrying six people, including three children, slammed into the rugged peaks of the Superstition Mountain in Arizona. All aboard are believed to be dead. NBC's Jeff Rossen has more details.
By Msnbc.com staff, NBC News and The Associated Press
?
Updated at?12.51 p.m. ET
A small airplane with three men and three young children onboard slammed into a sheer cliff in the mile-high Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix while going around 200 mph, killing all aboard, the Pinal County sheriff said.
The body of one child was recovered and dozens of sheriff's search and rescue personnel worked Thursday to recover the remains of the other victims, said Sheriff Paul Babeu.
A search and rescue team was in the rugged mountains searching for three missing teenagers Wednesday evening and saw the explosion as the twin-engine plane hit the cliff, Babeu said. The searchers found the teens, then went up the mountain to try to reach the crash site.
Ten deputies who spent the night on the mountain were relieved by 10 more early Thursday. They and dozens of volunteers began searching the crash site at first light. Video from news helicopters Thursday morning showed the wreckage strewn at the bottom of a blackened cliff.
The dead included the pilot and his three children, two boys and a girl ages 5 to 9, Babeu said. The father lives in Safford in southeastern Arizona and owned a small aviation business there.
He had flown to the Phoenix suburb of Mesa with another pilot who co-owned the company and a company mechanic to pick up his children for Thanksgiving. The plane was headed back to Safford when it crashed.
Babeu said he personally notified the mother late Wednesday. The woman, who is divorced from the children's father, lives in Mesa and also is a pilot.
Some immediate family members are out of the country, so the names of those involved can't yet be released, Babeu said.
"This is their entire family ? it's terrible," Babeu said. "Our hearts go out to the mom and the (families) of all the crash victims. We have has so many people that are working this day, and we just want to support them and embrace them and try to bring closure to this tragedy."
There was no indication the plane was in distress or that the pilot had radioed controllers about any problem, he said.??
?
Tim Hacker / AP
A helicopter searchlight shines over the crash scene in Arizona's Superstition Mountains on Wednesday.
Authorities?received calls reporting a mushroom-like explosion near the peak of a mountain, 40 miles east of downtown Phoenix, at about 6:30 p.m. MST (8:30 p.m. ET).
Some witnesses told Phoenix-area television stations they heard a plane trying to rev its engines to climb higher before apparently hitting the mountains. The elevation is about 5,000 feet at the Superstition Mountains' highest point.
'All of a sudden, it hit' A joint report by NBC station KPNX and the Arizona Republic quoted Carla Machajewski, of Apache Junction, as saying that she saw two small planes flying around the mountains.
"The one little plane kept going straight and the other one turned and came back and disappeared for a minute. All of a sudden, it hit," she added.
KPHO-TV in Phoenix reported thatit was a Rockwell AC-69 twin engine aircraft Ponderosa Aviation in Safford, according to FAA sources.
The crash was captured on a webcam and posted to the Internet by a YouTube userin Fountain Hills, Az.
The region near Lost Dutchman State Park and the Superstition Wilderness is filled with steep canyons, soaring rocky outcroppings and cactus. Treasure hunters who frequent the area have been looking for the legendary Lost Dutchman mine for more than a century.
Video showed several fires burning on the mountainside, where heavy brush is common.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? CIA officers are asking people to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the first American killed in the Afghan war by donating to help the children of their fellow fallen.
Since the death in 2001 of CIA officer Mike Spann, a total of 23 stars have been added to the wall at the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters that honors CIA operatives lost. Many were killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The clandestine world rarely breaks its silence, especially when it comes to family, but the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation notes about 56 children of those killed in the line of duty will need educational support over the next 17 years.
Spann was part of a small group of CIA paramilitary officers who went into Afghanistan just 16 days after the al-Qaida attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Less than two months later, the CIA along with U.S. Special Forces Green Berets and a massive aerial bombing campaign helped Afghan militias drive out the ruling Taliban.
Spann was killed when hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners, guarded by just a handful of Afghans, tried to escape from a fortress jail in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.
Spann is survived by his wife, Shannon, a retired CIA officer, and three children.
Tuna has been on the menu for a lot longer than we thought. Even 42,000 years ago, the deep-sea dweller wasn't safe from fishing tackle according to new finds in southeast Asia.
We know that open water was no barrier to travel in the Pleistocene ? humans must have crossed hundreds of kilometres of ocean to reach Australia by 50,000 years ago. But while humans had already been pulling shellfish out of the shallows for 100,000 years by that point, the first good evidence of fishing with hooks or spears comes much later ? around 12,000 years ago.
The new finds blow that record out of the water. Sue O'Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues dug through deposits at the Jerimalai shelter in East Timor. They discovered 38,000 fish bones from 23 different taxa, including tuna and parrotfish that are found only in deep water. Radiocarbon dating revealed the earliest bones were 42,000 years old.
Amidst the fishy debris was a broken fish hook fashioned from shell, which the team dated to between 16,000 and 23,000 years. "This is the earliest known example of a fish hook," says O'Connor. Another hook, made around 11,000 years ago, was also found.
Sandra Bowdler at the University of Western Australia in Perth, who was not involved in the study, is convinced that those colonising East Timor 42,000 years ago had "fully formed" fishing skills. "By this time, modern humans are assumed to have the same mental capacities as today," she says.
"There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world," says Ian McNiven of Monash University in Melbourne, who was not a member of O'Connor's team. "Maybe this is the crucible for fishing."
East Timor hosts few large land animals, so early occupants would have needed highly developed fishing skills to survive. "Necessity is the mother of invention," says O'Connor. "Apart from bats and rats, there's nothing to eat here."
But that doesn't necessarily mean that fishing began in the region. At the time, sea-levels were around 60 to 70 metres lower than today. Any sites of former human occupation that were located on the Pleistocene shore ? rather than in coastal cliffs like the Jerimalai shelter ? are now submerged.
Broader patterns of human migration suggest that more evidence of fishing would be found through examining those submerged sites. After leaving Africa around 70,000 years ago, it took modern humans only 20,000 years to skirt around Asia and reach Australia. The journey over land into Europe, although much shorter, took 30,000 years. "Humans appeared to move quite quickly along the coasts," says McNiven. "Developed fishing skills could have kept them moving."
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JERUSALEM?? Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday.
The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.
But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall ? part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site ? and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.
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"The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought," said the dig's co-director, Eli Shukron.
The four bronze coins were stamped around 17 A.D. by the Roman official Valerius Gratus. He preceded Pontius Pilate of the New Testament story as Rome's representative in Jerusalem, according to Ronny Reich of Haifa University, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the dig.
The coins were found inside a ritual bath that predated construction of the renovated Temple Mount complex and which was filled in to support the new walls, Reich said.
They show that construction of the Western Wall had not even begun at the time of Herod's death. Instead, it was likely completed only generations later by one of his descendants.
The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed.
Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus' account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the "first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.
Josephus also wrote that the end of construction left 18,000 workmen unemployed in Jerusalem. Some historians have linked this to discontent that eventually erupted in the Jewish revolt.
The compound, controlled since 1967 by Israel, now houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-capped Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. The fact that the compound is holy both to Jews and Muslims makes it one of the world's most sensitive religious sites.
The dig in which the coins were discovered cleared a Roman-era drainage tunnel that begins at the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city's original water sources, and terminates with a climb up a ladder out onto a 2,000-year-old street inside Jerusalem's Old City. The tunnel runs by the foundation stones of the compound's western wall, where the coins were found.
The drainage tunnel was excavated as part of the dig at the City of David, which is perhaps Israel's richest archaeological excavation and its most contentious.
The dig is being carried out inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and is funded by a group associated with the Israeli settlement movement that opposes any division of the city as part of a future peace deal.
The excavation of the tunnel has also yielded a Roman sword, oil lamps, pots and coins that scholars believe are likely debris from an attempt by Jewish rebels to hide in the underground passage as they fled from the Roman soldiers.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Contact: David Cameron david_cameron@hms.harvard.edu 617-960-7221 Harvard Medical School
Carefully selected young, healthy neurons can functionally integrate into diseased brain circuitry
BOSTON, MA -- Neuron transplants have repaired brain circuitry and substantially normalized function in mice with a brain disorder, an advance indicating that key areas of the mammalian brain are more reparable than was widely believed.
Collaborators from Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) transplanted normally functioning embryonic neurons at a carefully selected stage of their development into the hypothalamus of mice unable to respond to leptin, a hormone that regulates metabolism and controls body weight. These mutant mice usually become morbidly obese, but the neuron transplants repaired defective brain circuits, enabling them to respond to leptin and thus experience substantially less weight gain.
Repair at the cellular-level of the hypothalamus -- a critical and complex region of the brain that regulates phenomena such as hunger, metabolism, body temperature, and basic behaviors such as sex and aggression -- indicates the possibility of new therapeutic approaches to even higher level conditions such as spinal cord injury, autism, epilepsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease.
"There are only two areas of the brain that are known to normally undergo ongoing large-scale neuronal replacement during adulthood on a cellular level -- so-called 'neurogenesis,' or the birth of new neurons -- the olfactory bulb and the subregion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, with emerging evidence of lower level ongoing neurogenesis in the hypothalamus," said Jeffrey Macklis, Harvard University professor of stem cell and regenerative biology and HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and one of three corresponding authors on the paper. "The neurons that are added during adulthood in both regions are generally smallish and are thought to act a bit like volume controls over specific signaling. Here we've rewired a high-level system of brain circuitry that does not naturally experience neurogenesis, and this restored substantially normal function."
The two other senior authors on the paper are Jeffrey Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School, and Matthew Anderson, HMS professor of pathology at BIDMC.
The findings are to appear Nov. 25 in Science.
In 2005, Jeffrey Flier, then the George C. Reisman professor of medicine at BIDMC, published a landmark study, also in Science, showing that an experimental drug spurred the addition of new neurons in the hypothalamus and offered a potential treatment for obesity. But while the finding was striking, the researchers were unsure whether the new cells functioned like natural neurons.
Macklis's laboratory had for several years developed approaches to successfully transplanting developing neurons into circuitry of the cerebral cortex of mice with neurodegeneration or neuronal injury. In a landmark 2000 Nature study, the researchers demonstrated induction of neurogenesis in the cerebral cortex of adult mice, where it does not normally occur. While these and follow-up experiments appeared to rebuild brain circuitry anatomically, the new neurons' level of function remained uncertain.
To learn more, Flier, an expert in the biology of obesity, teamed up with Macklis, an expert in central nervous system development and repair, and Anderson, an expert in neuronal circuitries and mouse neurological disease models.
The groups used a mouse model in which the brain lacks the ability to respond to leptin. Flier and his lab have long studied this hormone, which is mediated by the hypothalamus. Deaf to leptin's signaling, these mice become dangerously overweight.
Prior research had suggested that four main classes of neurons enabled the brain to process leptin signaling. Postdocs Artur Czupryn and Maggie Chen, from Macklis's and Flier's labs, respectively, transplanted and studied the cellular development and integration of progenitor cells and very immature neurons from normal embryos into the hypothalamus of the mutant mice using multiple types of cellular and molecular analysis. To place the transplanted cells in exactly the correct and microscopic region of the recipient hypothalamus, they used a technique called high-resolution ultrasound microscopy, creating what Macklis called a "chimeric hypothalamus" -- like the animals with mixed features from Greek mythology.
Postdoc Yu-Dong Zhou, from Anderson's lab, performed in-depth electrophysiological analysis of the transplanted neurons and their function in the recipient circuitry, taking advantage of the neurons' glowing green from a fluorescent jellyfish protein carried as a marker.
These nascent neurons survived the transplantation process and developed structurally, molecularly, and electrophysiologically into the four cardinal types of neurons central to leptin signaling. The new neurons integrated functionally into the circuitry, responding to leptin, insulin, and glucose. Treated mice matured and weighed approximately 30 percent less than their untreated siblings or siblings treated in multiple alternate ways.
The researchers then investigated the precise extent to which these new neurons had become wired into the brain's circuitry using molecular assays, electron microscopy for visualizing the finest details of circuits, and patch-clamp electrophysiology, a technique in which researchers use small electrodes to investigate the characteristics of individual neurons and pairs of neurons in fine detail. Because the new cells were labeled with fluorescent tags, postdocs Czupryn, Zhou, and Chen could easily locate them.
The Zhou and Anderson team found that the newly developed neurons communicated to recipient neurons through normal synaptic contacts, and that the brain, in turn, signaled back. Responding to leptin, insulin and glucose, these neurons had effectively joined the brain's network and rewired the damaged circuitry.
"It's interesting to note that these embryonic neurons were wired in with less precision than one might think," Flier said. "But that didn't seem to matter. In a sense, these neurons are like antennas that were immediately able to pick up the leptin signal. From an energy-balance perspective, I'm struck that a relatively small number of genetically normal neurons can so efficiently repair the circuitry."
"The finding that these embryonic cells are so efficient at integrating with the native neuronal circuitry makes us quite excited about the possibility of applying similar techniques to other neurological and psychiatric diseases of particular interest to our laboratory," said Anderson.
The researchers call their findings a proof of concept for the broader idea that new neurons can integrate specifically to modify complex circuits that are defective in a mammalian brain.
The researchers are interested in further investigating controlled neurogenesis -- directing growth of new neurons in the brain from within -- the subject of much of Macklis's research as well as Flier's 2005 paper, and a potential route to new therapies.
"The next step for us is to ask parallel questions of other parts of the brain and spinal cord, those involved in ALS and with spinal cord injuries," Macklis said. "In these cases, can we rebuild circuitry in the mammalian brain? I suspect that we can."
###
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Jane and Lee Seidman Fund for Central Nervous System Research, the Emily and Robert Pearlstein Fund for Nervous System Repair, the Picower Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Autism Speaks, and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation.
David Cameron
Citation:
Science, Vol. 334 (6059), November 25, 2011
"Transplanted Hypothalamic Neurons Restore Leptin Signaling and
Ameliorate Obesity in db/db Mice" by Czupryn et al.
Harvard Medical School (http://hms.harvard.edu) has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 17 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those affiliates include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Childrens Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Forsyth Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Childrens Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and VA Boston Healthcare System.
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital (http://www.massgeneral.org) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of nearly $700 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks in the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is a clinical partner of the Joslin Diabetes Center and a research partner of the Harvard/Dana-Farber Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit http://www.bidmc.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.
Contact: David Cameron david_cameron@hms.harvard.edu 617-960-7221 Harvard Medical School
Carefully selected young, healthy neurons can functionally integrate into diseased brain circuitry
BOSTON, MA -- Neuron transplants have repaired brain circuitry and substantially normalized function in mice with a brain disorder, an advance indicating that key areas of the mammalian brain are more reparable than was widely believed.
Collaborators from Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) transplanted normally functioning embryonic neurons at a carefully selected stage of their development into the hypothalamus of mice unable to respond to leptin, a hormone that regulates metabolism and controls body weight. These mutant mice usually become morbidly obese, but the neuron transplants repaired defective brain circuits, enabling them to respond to leptin and thus experience substantially less weight gain.
Repair at the cellular-level of the hypothalamus -- a critical and complex region of the brain that regulates phenomena such as hunger, metabolism, body temperature, and basic behaviors such as sex and aggression -- indicates the possibility of new therapeutic approaches to even higher level conditions such as spinal cord injury, autism, epilepsy, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease.
"There are only two areas of the brain that are known to normally undergo ongoing large-scale neuronal replacement during adulthood on a cellular level -- so-called 'neurogenesis,' or the birth of new neurons -- the olfactory bulb and the subregion of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, with emerging evidence of lower level ongoing neurogenesis in the hypothalamus," said Jeffrey Macklis, Harvard University professor of stem cell and regenerative biology and HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and one of three corresponding authors on the paper. "The neurons that are added during adulthood in both regions are generally smallish and are thought to act a bit like volume controls over specific signaling. Here we've rewired a high-level system of brain circuitry that does not naturally experience neurogenesis, and this restored substantially normal function."
The two other senior authors on the paper are Jeffrey Flier, dean of Harvard Medical School, and Matthew Anderson, HMS professor of pathology at BIDMC.
The findings are to appear Nov. 25 in Science.
In 2005, Jeffrey Flier, then the George C. Reisman professor of medicine at BIDMC, published a landmark study, also in Science, showing that an experimental drug spurred the addition of new neurons in the hypothalamus and offered a potential treatment for obesity. But while the finding was striking, the researchers were unsure whether the new cells functioned like natural neurons.
Macklis's laboratory had for several years developed approaches to successfully transplanting developing neurons into circuitry of the cerebral cortex of mice with neurodegeneration or neuronal injury. In a landmark 2000 Nature study, the researchers demonstrated induction of neurogenesis in the cerebral cortex of adult mice, where it does not normally occur. While these and follow-up experiments appeared to rebuild brain circuitry anatomically, the new neurons' level of function remained uncertain.
To learn more, Flier, an expert in the biology of obesity, teamed up with Macklis, an expert in central nervous system development and repair, and Anderson, an expert in neuronal circuitries and mouse neurological disease models.
The groups used a mouse model in which the brain lacks the ability to respond to leptin. Flier and his lab have long studied this hormone, which is mediated by the hypothalamus. Deaf to leptin's signaling, these mice become dangerously overweight.
Prior research had suggested that four main classes of neurons enabled the brain to process leptin signaling. Postdocs Artur Czupryn and Maggie Chen, from Macklis's and Flier's labs, respectively, transplanted and studied the cellular development and integration of progenitor cells and very immature neurons from normal embryos into the hypothalamus of the mutant mice using multiple types of cellular and molecular analysis. To place the transplanted cells in exactly the correct and microscopic region of the recipient hypothalamus, they used a technique called high-resolution ultrasound microscopy, creating what Macklis called a "chimeric hypothalamus" -- like the animals with mixed features from Greek mythology.
Postdoc Yu-Dong Zhou, from Anderson's lab, performed in-depth electrophysiological analysis of the transplanted neurons and their function in the recipient circuitry, taking advantage of the neurons' glowing green from a fluorescent jellyfish protein carried as a marker.
These nascent neurons survived the transplantation process and developed structurally, molecularly, and electrophysiologically into the four cardinal types of neurons central to leptin signaling. The new neurons integrated functionally into the circuitry, responding to leptin, insulin, and glucose. Treated mice matured and weighed approximately 30 percent less than their untreated siblings or siblings treated in multiple alternate ways.
The researchers then investigated the precise extent to which these new neurons had become wired into the brain's circuitry using molecular assays, electron microscopy for visualizing the finest details of circuits, and patch-clamp electrophysiology, a technique in which researchers use small electrodes to investigate the characteristics of individual neurons and pairs of neurons in fine detail. Because the new cells were labeled with fluorescent tags, postdocs Czupryn, Zhou, and Chen could easily locate them.
The Zhou and Anderson team found that the newly developed neurons communicated to recipient neurons through normal synaptic contacts, and that the brain, in turn, signaled back. Responding to leptin, insulin and glucose, these neurons had effectively joined the brain's network and rewired the damaged circuitry.
"It's interesting to note that these embryonic neurons were wired in with less precision than one might think," Flier said. "But that didn't seem to matter. In a sense, these neurons are like antennas that were immediately able to pick up the leptin signal. From an energy-balance perspective, I'm struck that a relatively small number of genetically normal neurons can so efficiently repair the circuitry."
"The finding that these embryonic cells are so efficient at integrating with the native neuronal circuitry makes us quite excited about the possibility of applying similar techniques to other neurological and psychiatric diseases of particular interest to our laboratory," said Anderson.
The researchers call their findings a proof of concept for the broader idea that new neurons can integrate specifically to modify complex circuits that are defective in a mammalian brain.
The researchers are interested in further investigating controlled neurogenesis -- directing growth of new neurons in the brain from within -- the subject of much of Macklis's research as well as Flier's 2005 paper, and a potential route to new therapies.
"The next step for us is to ask parallel questions of other parts of the brain and spinal cord, those involved in ALS and with spinal cord injuries," Macklis said. "In these cases, can we rebuild circuitry in the mammalian brain? I suspect that we can."
###
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Jane and Lee Seidman Fund for Central Nervous System Research, the Emily and Robert Pearlstein Fund for Nervous System Repair, the Picower Foundation, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Autism Speaks, and the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation.
David Cameron
Citation:
Science, Vol. 334 (6059), November 25, 2011
"Transplanted Hypothalamic Neurons Restore Leptin Signaling and
Ameliorate Obesity in db/db Mice" by Czupryn et al.
Harvard Medical School (http://hms.harvard.edu) has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 17 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those affiliates include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Childrens Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Forsyth Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Childrens Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and VA Boston Healthcare System.
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital (http://www.massgeneral.org) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of nearly $700 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks in the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is a clinical partner of the Joslin Diabetes Center and a research partner of the Harvard/Dana-Farber Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit http://www.bidmc.org.
[ | E-mail | 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.
MOSCOW (Reuters) ? A famous Russian TV anchor has been taken off the air for making an obscene gesture after mentioning U.S. President Barack Obama in a live newscast, the channel said on Thursday.
Tatiana Limanova, an award-winning journalist and host of a news show on the REN-TV private channel, waved her middle finger when presenting a story about the APEC summit in the United States, a moment after mentioning Obama.
The video went viral on the internet, with many viewers speculating the gesture had been meant to insult the U.S. president, who met his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit.
"The gesture was addressed to the members of the editing crew, there was no implication of any kind and it had no reference to the information delivered by Tatiana Limanova," a spokesman for the TV station told Interfax.
Limanova thought she was reading the news off-screen by the time she raised a finger, the spokesman said. There were no details on how Limanova's duties would change after the incident.
Relations between Russia and the United States have been strained recently over U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Europe.
REN-TV is broadcast across Russia and the former Soviet Union. It is owned by tycoon Yuri Kovalchuk, believed to be close to Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
But the channel is widely regarded as a relatively free and unbiased one in a country where the government has a tight grip on much of the media.
(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; editing by Andrew Roche)
CAIRO?? A court in Egypt has ordered the release of three American students arrested during the unrest in Cairo, NBC News has confirmed.
Derrik Sweeney, a 19-year-old Georgetown University student, Luke Gates, a 21-year-old Indiana University student, and Gregory Porter, a 19-year-old Drexel University student, were arrested on Sunday on the roof of the American University near Tahrir Square where they were allegedly throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters.
Their release, announced by their lawyer, came as protesters demanding the removal of Egypt's ruling military council observed a truce after five days of deadly street battles in which at least 40 people have died.
Egypt's military also issued a statement on Thursday apologizing for the loss of life and vowing to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of protesters in Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the country.
Army troops have used metal bars and barbed wire to build barricades to separate the protesters and the police on side streets leading from Tahrir to the nearby Interior Ministry. Most of the fighting has been taking place on those side streets.
The truce came into force around 6 a.m. and was still holding by late morning.
Joy Sweeney said the consul general confirmed around 6 a.m. Thursday that Derrik will be released.
"I was elated, I was absolutely elated," Sweeney told The Associated Press. "I can't wait to give him a huge hug and tell him how much I love him."
She said she hoped her son will head home to Jefferson City, Mo., on Friday.
Sweeney called home late on Wednesday and said he was being treated relatively well under the circumstances but denied doing anything wrong during a protest in Cairo, she said earlier.
She had a 90-second conversation with Derrik at about 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday while he was using the phone of the consul general. She said he told her he had been fed and wasn't being tortured, and that he insisted that he hadn't done anything wrong.
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"That was just a blessing to hear his voice," she said.
"I said, 'Did you throw anything off a roof?' And he said 'No, I didn't.' And then I said, 'Did you do anything else?' He said, 'No, none of us did.'"
The parents of Sweeney and Gates said that they have been in Cairo since August, studying Arabic at the American University.
Meanwhile an American film maker and journalist was arrested by Egyptian police while documenting clashes in Tahrir Square, she told a colleague by phone.
Video: Protesters throw stones, conflict grows in Cairo (on this page)
Karim Amer, the producer for Jehane Nojaim ? an award-winning film maker of Egyptian ancestry who is best-known for her al-Jazeera TV documentary "Control Room" ? said Nojaim was detained and her camera was confiscated.
Amer said he was separated from her after they both fled from tear gas.
Egyptian-American columnist and activist Mona Eltahawy, who regularly appears on news channels as a self-described "speaker on Arab and Muslim issues" was also reportedly arrested in Cairo.
"Beaten arrested in interior ministry," she posted on her Twitter account overnight.
She tweeted "I AM FREE" at about 5:30 a.m. ET, and then sent several messages saying she had been beaten and sexually assaulted, using strong language to condemn the Egyptian police.
She also said her right hand was "so swollen I can't close it." She posted a picture of her hand. She tweeted she was being taken to hospital.
The U.S. Department of State tweeted early Thursday that it was aware of the reports that Nojaim and Elthawy had been arrested and said the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was "engaging authorities."
First free election in decades
In the first significant pause in violence since Saturday, clashes stopped at midnight in Tahrir Square and elsewhere after protesters agreed with police to stay put.
But the thousands who thronged the square were undeterred in their determination to protest at the deaths of more than 30 people in the violence and reject the army's offer of a referendum on its rule.
"He goes, we won't," declared one banner in a reference to the head of the military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
In light of the violence, Interior Minister Mansour el-Essawy presented a report to the military council proposing a postponement of the parliamentary election planned for November 28, al-Jazeera television said on Thursday, quoting unnamed sources. It was not immediately possible to verify the report.
Slideshow: Violent clashes in Egypt (on this page)
The election, due to begin on Monday, has been billed as Egypt's first free vote in decades.
The army and the Muslim Brotherhood, which expects to do well in the election, says it must go ahead but many protesters are unwilling to trust the army to oversee a clean vote and hand real control of the country to the winner.
The generals' popularity has waned in the nine months since they nudged President Hosni Mubarak from office and swore to steer the country toward civilian democracy, as suspicion grew that they were maneuvering to stay in power beyond elections.
Tantawi has pledged to bring forward a presidential vote and offered a new interim government but the demonstrators are unconvinced.
"The military council must leave and hand power to civilians. They don't want to leave so that their corruption isn't exposed," said 23-year-old student Ahmed Essam.
He said he joined the protests when he saw riot police raining blows on peaceful demonstrators on Saturday. "Everything is like in Mubarak's time," he said.
The Associated Press, Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.
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