Worker ban stays in Iraq, Afghanistan

Thursday 29 August 2013

Washington, Aug 30 (Newswire): The deployment of Filipino workers to Iraq and Afghanistan will stay but will exclude those employed in the US military bases in those countries, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. said.

The Aquino administration reached the decision after Washington's Central Command ordered all contractors last year not to hire third-country nationals whose domestic laws prohibited their citizens from traveling and working in Iraq and Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

That ruling would allow some 7,000 Filipino workers in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep their jobs, he said.

"The deployment ban to Afghanistan and Iraq stays, but the Filipinos currently employed in military bases and facilities of the United States are excluded and will be allowed to continue working in those countries," Ochoa said.

But no new workers would be allowed to travel to those countries for work, he said.

The deployment ban in Iraq has been in place since 2004. A similar restriction on Filipinos wanting to enter Afghanistan was put in place in 2007.

Meanwhile, the Interior Department urged village chairmen to help identify and locate the 17,000 Filipinos working in war-torn Syria so they could be sent home.

In Geneva, media quoted the International Organization for Migration as saying a large ferry docked in Tripoli's harbor departed the Libyan capital carrying at least 1,000 stranded foreigners.

A first ship left the city for Benghazi and then Egypt carrying 263 foreigners from 15 countries including Egypt, the Philippines and the United States, the group said.

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Afghan Taliban say want to develop mining sector

Kabul, Aug 30 (Newswire): The leader of the Afghan Taliban said his group wanted to boost the country's mining and energy sectors once it regained strength after the Nato-led force fighting them pulled out in 2014.

Interest in economic stability and investment in mining marks a new approach for the resurgent Islamist group, ousted from power by US-backed Afghan forces in 2001.

"Afghanistan has vast arable land, rich mines and high potential of energy resources, therefore, we can make investments," Mullah Omar said in a lengthy statement carried by the SITE online monitoring service.

Such investments would "wrangle ourselves from the tentacles of poverty, unemployment, backwardness and ignorance", the one-eyed reclusive leader said in conjunction with Eid al-Fitr, Islam's most important festival, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Omar also said the ongoing battle against the Nato-led forces would lead to an "imminent victory" for the Taliban.

Nato is racing against the clock to train Afghanistan's poorly equipped army and police force by the end of 2014, the deadline for US combat troops' exit and when all security responsibilities will be handed over to the Afghans.

The United States and Nato earlier this year reluctantly backed Kabul's peace plan, which involves negotiating with some members of the Taliban. But the extremist group has repeatedly said it would not consider that until all foreigners fighting in its country had left.

The Taliban's interest in Afghanistan's natural resources coincides with government plans to explore what Kabul says is Asia's largest unmined iron deposit — the two-billion-tonne Hajigak project in the centre of the country.

But experts warn the bounty from such plans could be decades away, with potential investors facing hurdles over infrastructure, security and corruption.

Taking a softer tone than in the past, Omar also said that the Taliban would ensure the private sector would be safeguarded, and that "businessmen will be further encouraged, without any discrimination, to serve their religion and country".

Under the group's extremist rule from 1996-2001 — which gained global criticism for its harsh treatment of women — shops selling music, certain toys and clothing were banned from operating as they were deemed un-Islamic.

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Report: US has wasted $30 billion on Iraq, Afghanistan contracts and grants

Washington, Aug 30 (Newswire): The US government has wasted more than $30 billion on contracts and grants in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new report set to be released here.
 
The co-chairmen of the committee producing the report previewed the results, saying "major changes in law and policy" will be needed to prevent such a large degree of waste in future conflicts. Christopher Shays, a former Connecticut congressman, and Mark Thibault, a former Pentagon official overseeing contracts, blamed poor management and a slew of other factors in a Washington Post column.

The amount of money wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade represents at least one in every six dollars spent. Part of the problem was contracts were doled out without "effective competition," while others were subcontracted to foreign firms not subject to U.S. laws.

The result was a series of boondoggles. The co-chairmen cited a $40 million prison in Iraq that the country did not want and was not completed. They also cited a $300 million Kabul power plant -- which, like some other projects the co-chairmen expressed concern about, would require sustained funding and expertise that Kabul does not have the resources to provide.
The Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan will submit its report to Congress.

The officials noted that because the number of contractors in the war zones has roughly equaled the number of military forces, the U.S. cannot conduct major operations without them. In the future, they recommended creating a "permanent inspector general for contingency operations," as well as an official who would work in the White House budget office and participate in National Security Council meetings to make sure agencies are properly coordinating contracts.

They also recommended "more rigorous use of risk analysis" to determine whether certain jobs should be contracted out in the first place.

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Could a tumor suppressor also fight obesity?

Islamabad, Aug 30 (Newswire): The hormone receptor guanylyl cyclase C (GCC) has been established as a suppressor of colorectal cancer tumors, but new evidence from Thomas Jefferson University suggests it may also help fight one of the country's biggest pandemics: obesity.

Reporting in the August 25 online issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Scott Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Jefferson, and colleagues found that silencing GCC affected appetite in mice, disrupting satiation and inducing obesity. Conversely, mice who expressed the hormone receptor knew when to call it quits at mealtime.

Revealing a never-before-shown endocrine axis between the intestine and hypothalamus, the research could provide novel therapeutic targets to control appetite, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, a promising notion, given that one-third of the U.S. population is considered obese.

Until now, the role of GCC outside the gut has remained elusive. Dr. Waldman and his team have previously shown its role as a tumor suppressor and biomarker that reveals occult metastases in lymph nodes. But its role in appetite is new and surprising territory.

"We were working with GCC-deficient mice to look at its role in tumorigenesis in the intestine," said Dr. Waldman. "Then the mice grew up, and we noticed something: They got fatter.

"We couldn't understand why it was happening, because GCC is expressed predominantly in intestine, and there was no indication that it regulated any function that had to do with metabolism and nutrient uptake."

To investigate this, Dr. Waldman, who also leads the Gastrointestinal Malignancies Program at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson, and his colleagues raised both GCC mice and GCC deficient mice, tracking their weight, satiation responses, hepatic and serum triglyceride measurements, hormone receptor expression, and physical activity.

When food was digested by the mice, they found, the gut released hormones into the blood stream, not just within the intestines, and up into the brain, where the hormone receptors were triggered. Mice with GCC knew when to stop, but hormone receptor-deficient mice never got the message that their stomachs were full. They simply kept eating and became obese.

"They got to be diabetic and developed the metabolic syndrome, fatty livers, etc." Dr. Waldman said. "We ruled out usual suspects: gastroenterology function was normal. They weren't more sedentary than wild type mice. And they did not have abnormal metabolism. We realized they just have a different appetite."

The research offers up a new neural-gut axis that explains appetite more, but it still begs some questions: Do obese people possess little to no GCC? And if so, does that mean obese people have a genetic disposition to gain weight?

It's possible, said Dr. Waldman, but it's still unclear. There is the possibility that obese people do not have the receptor or they do not release enough hormones to trigger the receptor. More studies are needed to better explain this, he added.

"Obesity could be biological, and not behavioral," said Dr. Waldman. "But there is no evidence here that confirms that; however, knowing this new information opens that possibility."

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New prostate cancer screening test shows promise for diagnosis

Islamabad, Aug 30 (Newswire): A new prostate screening test developed by AnalizaDx, Inc., a Cleveland-based biotech company, and studied by researchers at the Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center along with colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic, the Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare and the National Cancer Institute, may prove to be a promising new tool in the diagnosis of prostate cancer.

The study which published in the Urology found that this new screening test, the PSA/SIA assay, may be more sensitive in detecting prostate cancer than traditional screening methods.

"This has the potential to be a major advance in the development of more accurate tests for prostate cancer diagnosis," says Mark Stovsky, MD, Principal Investigator and lead author of the study, urologist at UH Case Medical Center and Associate Professor of Urology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

"Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men but traditional screening is not very accurate. This test provides a new way to look at prostate cancer diagnosis utilizing a novel biological assay which differentiates PSA molecular structures arising from cancer versus non-cancerous glands."

The accuracy of traditional prostate cancer screening (serum prostate-specific antigen or PSA) is limited by both relatively high false positive and false negative rates. Current diagnostic strategies that use total PSA to determine the need for biopsy demonstrate false positive rates of approximately 55-75 percent.

This finding can therefore lead to unneeded prostate biopsies and unnecessary worry in patients. Additionally, the serum PSA test carries, in some studies, false negative rates of up to 15 percent, meaning that some men with 'normal' PSA values actually have cancer. What is needed is a test that can more accurately predict the presence of prostate cancer on biopsy.

Working with AnalizaDx, Inc., Dr. Stovsky and colleagues studied a urine-based test that works differently than most prostate screening methods by using a novel assay to separate PSA protein structures as being linked to either a 'cancer' or 'non-cancer' pathologic diagnosis based on ultrasound guided biopsy. Instead of attempting to find a single genetic biomarker which predicts the presence of cancer, the PSA/SIA assay is based on the assumption that there may be myriad different ultra-structural changes in the PSA protein which define the cancer phenotype.

The authors theorize that the extremely high sensitivity of the test is the result of the ability of the PSA/SIA biological filter to categorize the myriad ultra-structural changes in the PSA protein as being made by either cancer versus non-cancer glands. The PSA/SIA assay was also found to have relatively high specificity (low false positive) results compared to the traditional serum PSA test.

The initial study, which followed 222 men, found that the new screening method had 100% sensitivity (no false negative results) and 80.3% specificity (low false positive results). The study data was collected at three clinical sites -- UH Case Medical Center, VA Boston and Cleveland Clinic, and was analyzed at the National Cancer Institute.

"This new assay is a complete departure from how the scientific community has looked at biomarkers for cancer," says Arnon Chait, CEO of AnalizaDx, Inc. "Instead of just measuring levels of proteins, we are exploring changes in structure which are associated with cancer. This new method of diagnosing cancer truly has significant potential for other types of cancer as well."

The technology will be tested in further clinical research studies to determine its accuracy in serum as well as its ability to predict cancer grade/aggressiveness and the response to curative intent therapies.

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New genetic clue in development of rheumatoid arthritis

Islamabad, Aug 30 (Newswire): Scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Toronto, University Health Network and McGill University have obtained significant new insights into the causes of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other autoimmune disorders including type 1 diabetes, lupus and Graves disease.

The findings represent a key initial step in realizing the full potential of genomics and personalized medicine.

In a study published in Nature Genetics, Dr. Katherine Siminovitch and her team identified the exact means by which an alteration in the gene PTPN22 increases risk for RA and other autoimmune disorders. The study used advanced genomics technologies that enable testing of millions of genetic markers in a single experiment to identify genes, such as PTPN22, that confer risk for disease.

The team then generated a mouse genetic model to show how the PTPN22 gene mutation impairs immune cell function and then validating their findings in humans, taking their discovery from the laboratory bench to the clinic.

The result: a more accurate understanding of how autoimmune conditions develop, and how new diagnostic tests and targeted therapies can be designed for better symptom control and potential cure.

"Our findings are particularly exciting because this study sets a new precedent for studying arthritis and other autoimmune disorders," said lead author Dr. Siminovitch, Senior Investigator and the Sherman Family Research Chair in Genomic Medicine at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Director of the Fred A. Litwin & Family Centre in Genetic Medicine.

"This is one of the first studies in which we have traced the steps that connect a specific genetic lesion to the development of a common, complex autoimmune condition."

Led by Dr. Siminovitch, the group used genetically modified mice in which PTPN22 had been altered to mimic a genetic mutation found in many RA patients.

The effects of this change on immune cells were observed in the mice, and the studies were then repeated in human blood samples from patients with and without RA. By this means, the group honed in on the impact of a key protein called Lyp/Pep that -- in healthy cells -- prevents the hyper-immune responses that lead to autoimmune disorders. The group found that this gene mutation leads to decreased levels of Lyp, thereby removing a natural brake that normally prevents the inflammatory processes underlying RA and many other autoimmune conditions.

"Measuring levels of this protein will help us monitor disease severity in patients with autoimmune disorders, test the effects of various therapies including new drugs, and determine which treatments work best in specific patients," said Dr. Edward Keystone, co-author of the study and Director of the Rebecca MacDonald Centre for Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease at Mount Sinai Hospital. "We are truly seeing genomics in action with this study, and the results give us new hope for improving patient outcomes."

Dr. Keystone emphasized the importance of this type of research to the practice of medicine in general, noting that advances in genetics knowledge are allowing for earlier diagnoses and more personalized treatments that give patients better outcomes.

"Using the powerful genetic tools now available, previously cryptic diseases are being dissected and their underlying causes identified," said Dr. Jim Woodgett, the Lunenfeld's Director of Research. "Drs. Siminovitch and Keystone are at the leading edge of employing these genomic approaches for the benefit of patients, seamlessly combining their research skills with clinical insights."

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