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Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50329141/
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সোমবার, ৩১ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২
Top 10 Exotic Pet Names for 2012
Cats and dogs may be the most popular pets, but there are plenty of exotic animals like birds, reptiles, and pocket pets enjoying household member status, too.
Pet insurer VPI provides medical insurance policies for exotics, and they released a list of the top 10 names for birds and small animals over the past year:
Charlie
Buddy
Bella
Max
Angel
Baby
Coco
Rocky
Bandit
Sunny
I'm an exotic owner myself, with a bird and two guinea pigs. If you have piggies, too, check out my articles on basic supplies and on keeping peace among your cavy herd.
Source: http://petsupplies.about.com/b/2012/12/30/top-10-exotic-pet-names-for-2012.htm
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London stalls for more than a year over Scotland?s gambling ?problem?
WESTMINSTER has failed to act on concerns about problem gambling north of the Border, raised by the Scottish Government more than a year ago.
The Scotsman has seen correspondence between Kenny MacAskill and UK ministers in which the justice secretary warns there is ?no room for complacency?.
He suggests new laws could be introduced in Westminster, further research carried out, or powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament to find a ?distinctly Scottish approach?.
However, the last letter on the subject, released through Freedom of Information, was written more than a year ago, and the Scottish Government confirmed progress has stalled.
There is particular concern about fixed-odds betting terminals, featuring games such as ?digital roulette, which have ?become more common since the Gambling Act 2005.
Earlier this month, the Responsible Gambling Trust announced that it will conduct one of the biggest pieces of research into gaming machines ever conducted in the UK.
John Mason MSP, who has been among those raising concerns about problems in Scotland, said the research cannot come soon enough. I?m definitely concerned,? he said. ?Kenny [MacAskill] is calling for a review and that is what I would want.
?I?m not surprised that a Conservative government, which is trying to deregulate generally, is not going to rush out and regulate the gambling industry.?
Mr Mason said he wants to see more powers given to local authorities to tackle gambling on their doorstep. ?Councils can put a limit on hot food shops and sex shops, but they can?t put a limit on bookmakers,? he added. Another option would be tighter rules on advertising.
Mr Mason said: ?At this point in time so many people are so without hope of some way out of their financial problems, that some glittering picture of ?winning all this money is very attractive.
?People have to make their own decisions but we, as a society, have a duty to protect. We?re doing that with alcohol, we?ve done it with tobacco, are we doing enough with gambling??
Mr MacAskill?s letter to minister for tourism and heritage John Penrose was triggered by the Gambling Prevalence Survey 2010, which highlighted a problem north of the Border.
It found that 75 per cent of Scots have gambled in the past 12 months, higher than the UK average of 73 per cent.
Mr MacAskill wrote in September last year: ?One particular concern is the high rate of ?participation in Scotland in fixed-odds betting terminals, that was revealed by the prevalence survey. There is some evidence that associates these machines with problem gambling for reasons such as the speed of play combined with the high permissible stakes.?
The UK government said it was committed to improved research on problem gambling. A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: ?Our priority is to establish a sound evidence base on which policy decisions on gambling regulation can be based.?
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Software Development Engineer (SDE) 2 / Microsoft / Vancouver, BC, Canada
Jobs Home > Software Development Engineer (SDE) 2
 Location: Vancouver, CAJob ID: 818430-98513 Division: Corporate Research & Development The Startup Business Group (SBG) is a unique group at Microsoft focused on advanced technology. Our mission is to drive - MS degree in CS or equivalent, PhD a plus TO APPLY  Share  | Post a Job
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May 4, 2009. The Council of Canadians London Chapter, the Ontario Health Coalition, and the Canadian Auto Workers Union present a lecture by Holly Dressel in London, ON.
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শনিবার, ২৯ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২
Senate approves $60.4 billion Superstorm Sandy aid bill
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion aid package to pay for reconstruction costs from Superstorm Sandy, which ravaged mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, after defeating Republican efforts to trim the bill's cost.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to quickly take up the bill, which includes $12 billion to repair and strengthen the region's transportation system against future storms.
"There is no time to waste," Reid said.
Both chambers have to agreed on a package by January 2, when the current term of Congress is expected to end, or restart the process of crafting legislation in 2013. The Senate approved the bill 62-32, with most Republicans voting no.
"We beat back all of the crippling amendments," said Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, which suffered the largest monetary damage in the storm.
"The century-old tradition of different parts of the country rallying to help those who are beleaguered because of difficult natural disasters continues," Schumer said.
The bill's chances in the next few days could depend on whether President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reach a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts set to begin taking effect in the new year.
House Republican leaders have not yet decided whether to take up the Senate bill, a Republican aide said.
The bill also provides $17 billion in Community Development Block Grants to help rebuild homes, schools, hospitals and other buildings destroyed by the late October storm, help small businesses and improve the power infrastructure.
Senate Republicans complained the $60.4 billion reconstruction package requested by Obama is more than the annual budgets for the departments of Interior, Labor, Treasury and Transportation combined.
HOUSE ACTION UNCLEAR
Senator Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, offered an alternative that would have provided $23.8 billion in funding to help victims of the storm through the end of March and give Congress time to determine additional needs.
"Let me just say, we simply are allowing three months for the Congress of the United States, the representatives of the taxpayers' dollars, to assess, document and justify additional expenditures that go beyond emergency needs," Coats said just before his amendment was defeated.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, a Republican from Kentucky, would still prefer to pass a stop-gap bill to meet immediate needs and wait to do another package after better estimates come in, a committee aide said.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated about $8.97 billion of the Senate bill would be spent in 2013, with another $12.66 billion spent in 2014 and $11.59 billion spent in 2015.
The Senate bill is considerably less than the $82 billion in aid requested by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the states that bore the brunt of damage from the storm.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, was in Washington this month, lobbying lawmakers for the larger amount.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund now has less than $5 billion available.
The damage to New York and New Jersey coastal areas was on a scale not seen since Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans in 2005. Two weeks after that storm hit, Congress approved $62.3 billion in emergency appropriations.
Lawmakers passed numerous subsequent emergency funding requests over several years to cover damages from Katrina, which topped $100 billion. A number of Gulf State Republicans supported the Sandy relief bill.
Republicans were successful in requiring offsetting spending cuts for $3.4 billion in mitigation work to prevent future disasters. Some Democrats said this would set a precedent for future disaster aid bills.
(Reporting By Doug Palmer and David Lawder; editing by Todd Eastham)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-approves-60-4-billion-superstorm-sandy-reconstruction-000707603.html
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vvslaxman25: Publishing Your eZine the Cons | My life - mlyvyn's ...
As with any other types of businesses, publishing your own online newsletter a.k.a. eZine has its share of drawbacks, in spite of the several benefits it offer.
The purpose of this article is not to scare you away with the disadvantages of publishing your own eZine, as the benefits are often more attractive. However, I will also show you how you can easily tackle the cons.
One obvious challenge most beginning eZine publishers face is the creation of eZine content. Creating your own content can be tiresome, especially if you are not a gifted writer and that you run out of ideas every so often that your publishing schedule is threatening you.
A way of taking care of this problem is to create your content in advance. You can compile 30 days worth of content in one day, for example. If you are not blessed with writing skills, you can broker the writing task to capable freelance writers which you can find at places such as http://www.elance.com/ or http://www.rentacoder.com/. While you need to pay for such services, you are at liberty to take the credit for written articles.
Alternatively, you can republish articles from article directories such as http://ezinearticles.com/. This is a free method you can use in making content, provided you include the resource box of the original author and that the article has republishing rights conveyed.
In conclusion, you can easily tackle the content creation challenge using the mentioned methods that do not require writing on your part, free or paid.
[Insert Your Resource Box Here]
(Words: 253)
Source: http://blog.swelex.com/teamangel/publishing-your-ezine-the-cons.html
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Source: http://vvslaxman25.blogspot.com/2012/12/publishing-your-ezine-cons-my-life.html
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Source: http://mlyvyn.posterous.com/vvslaxman25-publishing-your-ezine-the-cons-my
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In-Home Therapy-Masters Level Clinician | Child & Family Services ...
NEW BEDFORD-MA, Full time, 40 hour, salaried position.? Candidate will need to be able to work some evenings and be available for an on-call rotating shift.
JOB CODE: IHTNB02
Requires:
Masters Degree in Psychology, Social Work or a related field from an accredited educational institution.? Experience/interest in child/adolescent family and intensive home-based family interventions. Able to provide clinical care and support toward effort to prevent hospitalization and maintain youth safely in community. Valid Driver?s License Required.
Summary:
In-Home Therapy is a structured, consistent, strengths-based therapeutic relationship between a licensed clinician and the youth and family for the purpose of meeting the youth?s behavioral health needs, including improving the family?s ability to provide effective support for the youth to promote his/her healthy functioning within the family. Interventions are designed to enhance the family?s capacity to improve the youth?s functioning in the home and community and may prevent the need for the youth?s admission to an inpatient hospital, residential treatment facility or other treatment setting
?Responsibilities:
The following responsibilities are not meant to be all inclusive and may be adjusted to meet the agency?s needs.
- ?Provide direct diagnostic, crisis intervention and treatment services including behavioral strategies within a therapeutic relationship to assist persons to achieve stabilization with the family.
- Advocacy
- Utilize diagnostic skills involving practical knowledge of the DSM-IV and family assessment tools.
- Aggression outreach, tracking and follow-up.
- Maintain production expectations and record keeping requirements.
- Behavioral management training.
- Provide diagnostic and treatment consultation to other agency programs and community agencies.
- Provide Family therapy.
- Participate in appropriate clinical and administrative staff meetings.
- Participate in independent education and training opportunities.
- Training assistance in decision-making, vocational guidance, skill building, problem solving, and support in both crisis and non-crisis situations.
?View Available Benefits
?
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Source: https://child-familyservices.org/2012/12/in-home-therapy-masters-level-clinician-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-home-therapy-masters-level-clinician-2
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Anthology Magazine | Food & Drink | Soup Roundup
{Above: Chorizo, Lentil & Roasted Tomato Soup from What Katie Ate}
Traveling for the holidays gave me a healthy dose of the wintery weather that we?re lacking in the Bay Area. I took advantage of a particularly snowy afternoon to walk my Christmas cards to the post office as the drifts began to build. On the walk back, as I tried to keep warm, I started dreaming of making some delicious, steamy soup. While I?m thankful to have made it back to California before this latest storm started piling snow up across the midwest and east coast and causing travel headaches, a little part of me would like to be hunkering down right now, and putting a pot of one of these soups on the stove.
If you?re lucky enough (or unlucky enough, as the case may be) to be digging out from the latest blizzard, consider these recipes to keep warm. The Chorizo, Lentil & Roasted Tomato Soup pictured above from What Katie Ate is at the top of my recipes-to-try list. And the Kale & White Bean Soup from Guest Recipes contributor Love & Lemons looks like a perfect lunch. I?m also bookmarking Aran?s?Lobster and Fennel Stew for a future dinner party or special occasion.
{From the top: Beet Greens Soup from Sunday Suppers; Kale & White Bean Soup from Love & Lemons;?Lobster and Fennel Stew from Cannelle et Vanille; Celery Root Soup from David Lebovitz; White Bean + Shitake Soup with Herb Oil from Sunday Suppers}
Source: http://anthologymag.com/blog3/2012/12/27/recipe-roundup-soup/
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শুক্রবার, ২৮ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২
MMA - is anyone interested in this sport?
myMMA? Threads: 1
Joined: Aug 14, 12 ??? ?Aug?14,?12,?16:35 ? ? #
Hello!
I don't see any topic about Mixed Martial Arts here, so that why I am writing about this. Is there anybody who like or watch that sport? In USA, and in the world, the most popular organisation is UFC, Strikeforce and Bellator. In Poland we have KSW and MMA Attack. Are in USA Polish fans of this sport?
Posts: 2,785
Joined: Mar 15, 12 ????? ?Aug?14,?12,?17:37 ? ? #
Is that something like Chess Boxing?
phtoa? Threads: 15
Posts: 220
Joined: Jan 11, 12 ??? ?Aug?15,?12,?08:22 ? ? #
Im not a huge fan, but I started on the beginners team out at the comcom zone in Krakow mostly just to stay in shape.
It's an extremely demanding sport and I have great respect for the fighters!
I think the gym in the comcom zone belongs to the famous Polish UFC fighter Tomasz Drwal.
Posts: 2,188
Joined: Nov 18, 07 ??? ?Nov?16,?12,?20:39 ? ? #
WOOT WOOT WOOT!!!--Marcin Held fights tonight in Bellator--WOOT WOOT WOOT!!!!
Davaj Davaj M?ody (excuse the crap spelling)
Bastion! Bastion! Bastion!
He's fighting Rich Clementi in the tournament final....I would be really really surprised with anything but a victory for Marcin but I pray he doesn't dangle that chin out there....the kid is an amazing talent and an EXCELLENT ambassador for his sport, his club and his country. All class.
Posts: 921
Joined: Sep 8, 09 ??? ?Nov?16,?12,?21:12 ? ? #
I used to watch half naked men hold each other down and shout rude words at each other, but that was when I worked in a gay bar. From what I've seen of this 'sport' it's not much different :P
haters gonna hate (^_^)
Nacjonalista? Threads: 3
Posts: 128
Joined: Oct 30, 12 ??? ?Nov?24,?12,?21:43 ? ? #
smurf:
I used to watch half naked men hold each other down and shout rude words at each other,LOL isn't that American wrestling?
Posts: 517
Joined: Jun 3, 11 ??? ?Nov?25,?12,?18:35 ? ? #
Yeah it does pretty much some up wrestling. I still sometimes watch that [ashamed to say] for fun but if anyone ever confronted me about it and told me it is stupid, I would have no defense, it really is.
szkotja2007? Threads: 38
Posts: 2,592
Joined: Dec 29, 06 ??? ?Nov?25,?12,?18:38 ? ? #
Can anyone tell me what the polish terms would be for uppercut, hook, jab etc ?? Thanks
?Yesterday, 03:00 ? ? #
When they arent talking about GSP locally. We are at a bar or house party watching the mixed martial arts -yes and there is some decent polish fighters coming out like Chris Horecki- polish fighting out canada , Sarnasky a really good guy always on bellator.. he is young and blonde
Foreigner4? Threads: 22
Posts: 2,188
Joined: Nov 18, 07 ??? ?Yesterday, 13:29 ? ? #
Jacqueline:
Chris Horecki- polish fighting out canadaPah-leeeeze... A) that's not his name B) he's not going anywhere in the sport C) he's not really Polish.
This place and Russia are the places to keep an eye on when it comes to talent in about 5-10 years time imo.
Trevek? Threads: 34
Posts: 2,220
Joined: May 21, 08 ??? ?Yesterday, 18:15 ? ? #
Here in Olsztyn, we have a couple of MMA clubs, and one of the top MMA-ers in Poland, Mamed Khalidov.
If I was younger, and didn't have a dodgy neck, I'd like to try MMA.
Olsztyn has a pretty strong Martial Arts scene in other disciplines too.
Random: Cowes prepares to celebrate Polish Heroes
Only registered and logged-in users may post here. Please log in on the main page or register.
Source: http://www.polishforums.com/sports-recreation-15/mma-anyone-interested-sport-61351/
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UFO-shaped gas station among this year's 'Preservation Wins'
1 day
It?s a travel itinerary as eclectic as they come: From a gas station shaped like a UFO, to an inn once proclaimed one of the most magnificent hotels in the country, to mystical rock pillars that fascinated an ancient culture.
Put them all together and you have part of a collection that may make history buffs smile and explorers reach for their maps.
Behold the list of ?Preservation Wins of 2012? put together by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization that has made it its mission to save America?s historic sites.
?These are places that were threatened in some way ? whether it was demolishing them or (fearing they would) fail and maybe they wouldn?t be preserved ? and essentially, they ended up being maintained or restored,? said Rebecca Morgan, a spokeswoman for the trust.
The list was assembled in no particular order???Morgan declined to rank the successes, calling each a great save.
Here are the sites that made the cut:
Cesar Ch?vez National Monument???Keene, Calif.
In October, President Obama designated the property known as Nuestra Se?ora Reina de la Paz???the home, workplace and burial site of labor leader C?sar Ch?vez ? a national monument.
?This site marks the extraordinary achievements and contributions to the history of the United States made by C?sar Ch?vez and the farm worker movement that he led with great vision and fortitude,? the presidential proclamation reads.
?La Paz reflects his conviction that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.?
National Trust President Stephanie Meeks applauded the move, noting it was a big first step in celebrating the life and legacy of Ch?vez.
Howard Theatre ? Washington
This historic landmark, which helped launch the careers of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye and The Supremes, sat vacant for decades, the trust said.
But in the spring of 2012, it was restored to its original 1910 appearance after a $29 million renovation. The venue is now once again showcasing artists and drawing stars including B.B. King, Little Richard and Tracy Morgan.
Michigan Bell Building???Detroit, Mich.
Built in 1929 as the headquarters for Western Electric, this building was transformed this year from a vacant warehouse into a mixed-use space that will provide housing for the homeless, the trust noted.
The Neighborhood Service Organization, a Detroit nonprofit group, took charge of the project, creating 155 furnished, one-bedroom apartments inside the structure, along with a health care clinic, gym, library, computer room, art and music rooms, and a chapel.
'The Flying Saucer' Phillips 66 Gas Station???St. Louis.
When local preservationists found out this former gas station was threatened with demolition, they launched a public campaign to save the landmark, the trust said. Built in 1967, the glass and concrete building features a 120-foot circular roof and is a ?prized example of mid-century modern architecture,? the activists told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Their work paid off. In September, the saucer-shaped structure opened as a Starbucks and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Chimney Rock National Monument???Pagosa Springs, Colo.
Located on more than 4,000 acres in the San Juan National Forest and home to the ancestors of the modern Pueblo Indians, this area was designated a national monument by President Obama in September.
?It is a living landscape that shapes those who visit it and brings people together across time,? he noted in a statement.
The ancient inhabitants who lived here 1,000 years ago left behind more than 200 homes and ceremonial structures on the mesa overlooking the two stone spires called Chimney Rock and Companion Rock. The moon rises perfectly between the rocks every 18.6 years.
The National Trust calls the area the single most important cultural site managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
Pillsbury A Mill???Minneapolis, Minn.
Declaring the mill ?a masterpiece of industrial architecture and the largest and most advanced facility in the world at the time of its completion in 1881,? the trust included the vacant complex on its list of America?s 2011 Most Endangered Historic Places.
But this year, local lawmakers gave a thumbs-up to a plan which will convert the building into 250 low-income apartments.
Los Angeles Boyle Hotel???Los Angeles
Built in 1889, the hotel later fell into disrepair and was converted into an apartment complex. The nonprofit East Los Angeles Community Corporation bought the property in 2006 and began an extensive renovation, seeking to restore some of its grandeur. The project was completed in August, with many of the original features back in place, including the grand staircase and foyer, the brick fa?ade, and the corner cupola and cap.
Emerson School???Denver
This 1885 schoolhouse underwent a ?green rehabilitation? in May, and now features a new geothermal heating and cooling system, a complete interior rehabilitation, window restoration, and new fencing, trees and landscaping.
Wake Forest Biotech Place???Winston Salem, N.C.
Two former R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. warehouses now serve as a state-of-the-art life sciences center. Opened this year, this development enhances Winston-Salem?s rich history and architectural heritage, the trust said.
Hotel Lafayette???Buffalo, N.Y.
When it opened its doors in 1904, this inn boasted a grand lobby, enormous windows and posh rooms, prompting reviewers of the time to proclaim it "one of the most perfectly appointed and magnificent hotels in the country,? according to its biography. This year marked the completion of a rehabilitation project that converted the hotel into a mixed use building of apartments and businesses. ? ?
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Vegas police seek information about missing girl
This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows Jade Moris, 10, who police are searching for after she failed to return home Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, from a shopping trip with a woman arrested that night and accused of slashing the face of a female co-worker at the Bellagio resort on the Las Vegas Strip. The woman, Brenda Stokes, 50, made her first appearance in Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Police Department)
This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Police Department shows Jade Moris, 10, who police are searching for after she failed to return home Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, from a shopping trip with a woman arrested that night and accused of slashing the face of a female co-worker at the Bellagio resort on the Las Vegas Strip. The woman, Brenda Stokes, 50, made her first appearance in Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Police Department)
This booking photo provided by the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, Nev,. Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012, shows 50-year-old Brenda Stokes. Police in Las Vegas have issued a plea for information about 10-year-old Jade Morris after she failed to return home Friday, Dec. 21, 2012, from a shopping trip with a woman who is thought to be Stokes. Stokes was arrested that night and accused of slashing the face of a female co-worker at the Bellagio resort on the Las Vegas Strip. She made her first appearance in Las Vegas Justice Court Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Clark County Detention Center )
LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Police in Las Vegas issued a new plea for information Thursday about a 10-year-old girl last seen with a casino card dealer just hours before the woman was accused of slashing a co-worker's face with razor blades at a Las Vegas Strip resort.
"We're hoping to reach somebody who may have information that will lead us to the whereabouts of this young girl," police Capt. Chris Jones said.
Police issued a missing persons alert late Tuesday about Jade Morris, who officials say was last seen by her family about 5 p.m. last Friday with Brenda Stokes.
Stokes, 50, also uses the name Brenda Wilson. Police said she was a friend of the girl's father, and was supposed to have taken the girl Christmas shopping at an outlet mall off Interstate 15 near downtown Las Vegas.
Jones, a supervisor in the department's robbery-homicide division, said Stokes returned to another friend the red 2007 Saab sedan that she borrowed for the shopping trip.
A short time later, Stokes was arrested at the Bellagio casino after allegedly attacking a female co-worker, Joyce Rhone, as the woman dealt blackjack.
Stokes is accused of wielding a razor blade in each hand as she attacked Rhone, who was hospitalized with deep cuts on her face, including one from her ear to the edge of her mouth. A police arrest report said Rhone, 44, also had several smaller cuts around her right eye.
Records show that Stokes was being held Thursday on $60,000 bail at the Clark County jail on felony battery with a weapon, burglary and mayhem charges that could get her decades in prison.
She told a judge Wednesday that she had not obtained a lawyer. She is due again in Las Vegas Justice Court on Friday.
The arrest report says casino video shows Stokes attacking Rhone before a casino patron and security officers intervene. Officer Marcus Martin said the video is evidence that may be shown by prosecutors in court but will not be made public by police.
Police said Stokes later told investigators that she attacked Rhone over harassing phone calls and an unspecified betrayal that ended their seven-year friendship.
Stokes also told police she visited her doctor last week, seeking to be admitted to a hospital "due to feeling like she wanted to hurt someone."
She is reported to have told investigators she hadn't taken a prescription anti-anxiety drug Friday, and that, "Sometimes people just snap."
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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৭ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১২
Transfusions add risk in some heart attacks, finds study of patients with anemia
Dec. 24, 2012 ? When heart attack patients present in the emergency department with some degree of anemia, or anemic patients have a heart attack, physicians have a tendency, but not much guidance, about whether to provide a blood transfusion. The idea is that a transfusion could help more oxygen get to the heart. Recent national guidelines suggested that there simply isn't good evidence to encourage or discourage the common practice, but a new meta-analysis of 10 studies involving more than 203,000 such patients comes down on the side of it increasing the risk of death.
The next step for determining when the practice could be appropriate needs rigorous randomized trials that will generate more decisive, high-quality data, said lead author Dr. Saurav Chatterjee, a cardiology fellow at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the Providence VA Medical Center.
For the analysis published Dec. 24 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Chatterjee and his co-authors combined and analyzed data from studies in which anemia patients with heart attacks either received "liberal" transfusions or received more restricted versions of the treatment or no transfusions at all. Liberal transfusions were defined as cases in which patients either received two units of blood or more or had a transfusion even with a hematocrit reading (a measure of red blood cell concentration) higher than 30 percent (normal is in the low 40s).
What the researchers found, after statistical adjustments to control for important medical factors, was that the risk of death was 12 percent higher for people who received the liberal transfusions than those who did not. Moreover, the group that received liberal transfusions had twice the odds of having another heart attack.
"What we found is that the possibility of real harm exists with transfusion," Chatterjee said. "It is practiced in emergency departments all across the United States. I think it is high time that we need to answer the question definitively with a randomized trial."
Of the 10 papers that Chatterjee and his co-authors reviewed, all but one were observational studies. The only randomized trial was a small pilot experiment.
Searching for an answer
Chatterjee began the study when he was a resident at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. He noticed a paper by the AABB (formerly the American Association of Blood Banks) in which the association said there was not enough clinical evidence for or against transfusions in heart attack patients.
For clinicians, the practice has always been a tough judgment call. Some transfusions are clearly necessary, for example when a patient's troubles include not just a heart attack but also severe ongoing bleeding, Chatterjee said. But transfusions also create health risks, such as an increase in potential clotting because platelets may clump together more, or from an inflammatory immune response to the introduction of blood of a "foreign" source into the body.
Chatterjee and his co-authors decided to comb the literature to determine whether, if properly combined and analyzed, existing data could provide some insight. They found 729 potentially relevant studies, but only 10 that had the right data to help answer the question.
Few as they were, Chatterjee said, the studies all told much the same story.
"One of the things that struck us is that there were very few studies in evidence of transfusion at all," Chatterjee said. "In our case, though, we found that the effect was pretty consistently harmful across the spectrum of studies, spectrum of time, and spectrum of patients that were enrolled in the individual studies."
Chatterjee said the study should not be taken to mean that transfusions should be stopped altogether for anemic heart attack patients. Instead, he said, doctors must continue exercising their clinical judgment, at least until results from a large, well-designed randomized trial can be produced. Mindful of the risk his study found, however, they might just want to shift their thinking about where the border is among borderline cases.
"Before a definitive trial is out there, we should be conservative, especially considering the high risk of harm," he said.
In addition to Chatterjee, the paper's other authors are Jorn Wetterslev of the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research in Copenhagen, Denmark; Abhishek Sharma and Edgar Lichstein of Maimonedes Medical Center; and Debabrata Mukherjee of Texas Tech University.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Chatterjee S, Wetterslev J, Sharma A, Lichstein E, Mukherjee D. Association of Blood Transfusion With Increased Mortality in Myocardial Infarction: A Meta-analysis and Diversity-Adjusted Study Sequential Analysis. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012; DOI: 10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.1001
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/ZFtbTHlNmQQ/121226080904.htm
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Gmail phone calls remain free of charge in 2013 for US and Canada
It may be an expected holiday gift, but it's still a nice one: Google's VoIP service in Gmail will remain free of charge for calls within the United States and Canada in 2013. A note on the Gmail Blog announced as much today; the news ushers in a thrilling third year of free Google Voice service for US and Canadian customers, right through the standard Gmail interface. Of course, we prefer the retro-inspired phone booth that Google showed off back in 2010 when the service was first announced, but free is free. Now, what to get for the megacorporation that has everything. We're thinking ... Furby? Probably a Furby.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: Google
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/J8hRpCiUz-8/
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Happy Holidays, from my tank to yours!
December 25, 2012 |??
Stumpy (devil scorpionfish, Scorpaenopsis diabolus) and Ginny (Hawaiian green lionfish, Dendrochirus barberi) wishing you the best this holiday season!
About the Author: Christie Wilcox is a science writer and blogger who moonlights as a PhD student in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Hawaii. Follow on Google+. Follow on Twitter @NerdyChristie.More??
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=ff14251df77b5c6b9870116b8e654af4
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US Treasury to take steps to avoid debt ceiling
7 hrs.
WASHINGTON --?The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday announced the first of a series of measures to delay hitting the government's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit. Without those steps, the debt ceiling?would be hit on Dec. 31.?
The government is facing a crunch on the debt ceiling because the issue has become ensnarled in talks to avoid some $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts due to begin in early January. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could cause the government to default on its debt.
To cut government spending and delay bumping up against the debt ceiling, the Treasury will suspend issuance of state and local government series securities -- known as "slugs" -- beginning on Dec.?28.
Investments in a government employee pension fund will also be suspended, along with some other measures, although Treasury did not give dates for when these other measures will begin.
"These extraordinary measures ... can create approximately $200 billion in headroom under the debt limit," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote in a letter to congressional leaders.
Normally, these measures would buy the Treasury about two months time before hitting the debt ceiling, Geithner said in the letter. But a series of planned tax hikes and spending cuts due to take effect in early January could give Treasury further time if they take effect as scheduled, he said.
"Treasury will provide more guidance regarding the expected duration of these measures when the policy outlook becomes clearer," he said.
The instruments known as slugs are special low-interest Treasury securities offered to state and local governments to temporarily invest proceeds from municipal bond sales. They have been suspended several times over the last 20 years to avoid hitting the debt ceiling.
Many analysts believe the measures available to the Treasury can stave that date off into late February.
The U.S. Congress typically authorizes government borrowing in a two-stage process, first drafting plans to spend more than it raises in tax revenues. Every few years, it raises a limit on government borrowing to accommodate annual deficits, a process that this year has become ensnared by the contentious budget talks in Washington.?
Information from the Associated Press and Reuters was included in this report.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/us-treasury-take-steps-avoid-hitting-debt-ceiling-monday-1C7662780
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Transfusions add risk in some heart attacks, finds study of patients with anemia
Dec. 24, 2012 ? When heart attack patients present in the emergency department with some degree of anemia, or anemic patients have a heart attack, physicians have a tendency, but not much guidance, about whether to provide a blood transfusion. The idea is that a transfusion could help more oxygen get to the heart. Recent national guidelines suggested that there simply isn't good evidence to encourage or discourage the common practice, but a new meta-analysis of 10 studies involving more than 203,000 such patients comes down on the side of it increasing the risk of death.
The next step for determining when the practice could be appropriate needs rigorous randomized trials that will generate more decisive, high-quality data, said lead author Dr. Saurav Chatterjee, a cardiology fellow at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the Providence VA Medical Center.
For the analysis published Dec. 24 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Chatterjee and his co-authors combined and analyzed data from studies in which anemia patients with heart attacks either received "liberal" transfusions or received more restricted versions of the treatment or no transfusions at all. Liberal transfusions were defined as cases in which patients either received two units of blood or more or had a transfusion even with a hematocrit reading (a measure of red blood cell concentration) higher than 30 percent (normal is in the low 40s).
What the researchers found, after statistical adjustments to control for important medical factors, was that the risk of death was 12 percent higher for people who received the liberal transfusions than those who did not. Moreover, the group that received liberal transfusions had twice the odds of having another heart attack.
"What we found is that the possibility of real harm exists with transfusion," Chatterjee said. "It is practiced in emergency departments all across the United States. I think it is high time that we need to answer the question definitively with a randomized trial."
Of the 10 papers that Chatterjee and his co-authors reviewed, all but one were observational studies. The only randomized trial was a small pilot experiment.
Searching for an answer
Chatterjee began the study when he was a resident at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. He noticed a paper by the AABB (formerly the American Association of Blood Banks) in which the association said there was not enough clinical evidence for or against transfusions in heart attack patients.
For clinicians, the practice has always been a tough judgment call. Some transfusions are clearly necessary, for example when a patient's troubles include not just a heart attack but also severe ongoing bleeding, Chatterjee said. But transfusions also create health risks, such as an increase in potential clotting because platelets may clump together more, or from an inflammatory immune response to the introduction of blood of a "foreign" source into the body.
Chatterjee and his co-authors decided to comb the literature to determine whether, if properly combined and analyzed, existing data could provide some insight. They found 729 potentially relevant studies, but only 10 that had the right data to help answer the question.
Few as they were, Chatterjee said, the studies all told much the same story.
"One of the things that struck us is that there were very few studies in evidence of transfusion at all," Chatterjee said. "In our case, though, we found that the effect was pretty consistently harmful across the spectrum of studies, spectrum of time, and spectrum of patients that were enrolled in the individual studies."
Chatterjee said the study should not be taken to mean that transfusions should be stopped altogether for anemic heart attack patients. Instead, he said, doctors must continue exercising their clinical judgment, at least until results from a large, well-designed randomized trial can be produced. Mindful of the risk his study found, however, they might just want to shift their thinking about where the border is among borderline cases.
"Before a definitive trial is out there, we should be conservative, especially considering the high risk of harm," he said.
In addition to Chatterjee, the paper's other authors are Jorn Wetterslev of the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research in Copenhagen, Denmark; Abhishek Sharma and Edgar Lichstein of Maimonedes Medical Center; and Debabrata Mukherjee of Texas Tech University.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Brown University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Chatterjee S, Wetterslev J, Sharma A, Lichstein E, Mukherjee D. Association of Blood Transfusion With Increased Mortality in Myocardial Infarction: A Meta-analysis and Diversity-Adjusted Study Sequential Analysis. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012; DOI: 10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.1001
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/ZFtbTHlNmQQ/121226080904.htm
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The Sports Beat: What should the NFL do with the kickoff?
The Sports Beat: What should the NFL do with the kickoff?
By ksl.com
December 7th, 2012 @ 12:12pm
SALT LAKE CITY ? With a finger on the pulse of the sports world, KSL asks the pressing questions and gets the insightful answers from our team of sports reporters.
What should the NFL do with the kickoff?
1. Keep it, no change
2. Punt/4th and 15 from own 30
3. Start on the 20-yard line
KSL takes a look at the day's most topical issues, local and national, and gets to the bottom of what it means and the type of impact we can expect.
Commissioner Goodell talks about ditching the kickoff and proposes punting the kickoff or 4th and 15 instead of an onside kick. So... What should the NFL do with the kickoff?
But we know we are not the only ones with opinions. Weigh in on The Sports Beat by voting in the poll, sharing your thoughts in the Comment Boards and by sounding off on Facebook and Twitter using #TheSportsBeat.
What should the NFL do with the kickoff?
VOTE: Keep the kickoff NFL Commish wants to outlaw/adjust kickoffs? Ask Whittingham or @reggiedunn_14 what they think of that! Keep 'kickin' it'
VOTE: Punt/4th and 15 concept Any opportunity to reduce the need for kickers in football is a good thing. And I'd much rather have the ball in the hands of my QB than at the foot of my kicker
VOTE: Keep the kickoff Enforce the tackling rules. Stop wrist slapping headhunters. Suspend guys, no fines.
VOTE: Start at 20-yard line I don't like going away from kickoff. I understand safety concerns, but that's the nature of football and provides entertainment. If you have to go away from it, just start on the 20-yard line.
VOTE: Keep the kickoff Touchback percentage is suitably high, collisions are down.
VOTE: Keep the kickoff The NFL needs to get out of its way or it may get stuck up "messing with a good thing" creek with out a paddle. If its not broke then don't try and fix it.
VOTE: Keep the kickoff Go back to before 2010 when the kickoff was from the 30-yard line. I actually like the idea of 4th and 15 instead of an on-side kick. Makes it interesting
VOTE: Keep the kickoff NFL shouldn't do anything. Period.
VOTE: Keep the kickoff Can't start worrying about potential injury for everything or you'll just get rid of football all together.
VOTE: Who cares? Lets just get the local bowl games going already. When Utah gets a pro team I'll be more concerned about NFL rules.
VOTE: Keep the kickoff I've experienced a few too many 4th and forever situations that went against my team
VOTE: Keep the kickoff If you get rid of kickoffs then you might as well drop fg and punts. 4 downs for 15 yds
Source: http://www.ksl.com/?sid=23284347&nid=140&s_cid=rss-extlink
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Consumer Debt - Still A Long Way To Go
I have seen numerous articles as of late discussing how the average American family has finally delevered their household balance sheet at last. This would be good news as lower debt levels means more personal savings which would lead to productive investment. It would also mean more consumption that would provide stronger end demand to businesses. Both of these outcomes are necessary for sustained economic growth. The chart below has been used repeatedly to argue the deleveraging case for the economy.
At first glance the case of such deleveraging is clear. Households have develeraged, however, household debt to GDP is a bit misleading because GDP includes all activity of the economy including corporations and government. What we really want to know is how has the average American family has fared in this process. This is important to know considering that Personal Consumption currently makes up more than 70% of the economy as shown in the first chart below.
I have also included the household debt to GDP analysis as well as the 10-year rolling change in GDP. The important point to this discussion is the breaking point of economic growth as noted by the dashed black vertical line. As shown, the rate of economic growth began its decline as personal consumption became fueled by expanding levels of debt. Since debt by its very nature is destructive to economic prosperity, as it reduces savings and productive investment, it is only logical that in order to start restoring economic growth rates to higher levels - debt must return to levels that support higher personal savings rates and productive investment.
The importance of savings rates, as shown above, is crucially important to long term economic prosperity. When individuals save money they have more to spend on discretionary items which bolsters end demand and encourages businesses to increase employment and expand production. Personal savings are also used by financial institutions to loan to businesses to increase production, plant expansion or make other investments. Without savings the ability to expand economic growth becomes constrained.
With this in mind we now return to the discussion of consumer deleveraging. It is true that the consumer has deleveraged its balance sheet since the end of the last financial crisis. This should be considered a positive event except for two primary issues. First, according to the most recent quarterly update on household debt balances the only deleveraging that has really occurred is within mortgages (as shown in quote below). The problem is that this has been achieved primarily through forced write downs, foreclosures, refinancing and shortsells. This is obviously not the healthy kind of balance sheet repair accomplished through rising wages and payment of debt. Secondly, if consumer debt was being worked off in a productive manner then personal savings rates should be rising. That is not the case which tells you that something else is occurring.
"Mortgages, the largest component of household debt, continue to drive the decline in overall indebtedness. Mortgage balances shown on consumer credit reports continued to drop, and now stand at $8.03 trillion, a 1.5% decrease from the level in 2012Q2. Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) balances dropped by $16 billion (2.7%). Non-mortgage household debt balances jumped by 2.3% in the third quarter to $2.7 trillion, boosted by increases of $18 billion in auto loans, $42 billion in student loans, and $2 billion in credit card balances."
The problem is that even with reduced mortgage debt levels consumers are still carrying debt will in excess of what their incomes can healthily support and allow for increased savings. Furthermore, they are now adding to those balances in order to maintain their current standard of living as real incomes have come under pressure and remain at the same level as they were in 2008. Rather than household debt to GDP - a better measure of household balance sheet strength is debt to income per capita.
The chart below shows real (inflation adjusted) total household debt as compared with real incomes. The dashed red line running below real incomes is the normalized growth rate of debt at levels that were previously supportive of higher savings rates. That level, between 1959 and 1980 was 89% of real debt to income. This lower level of debt allowed for higher savings rates and stronger economic growth.
The immediate argument is that lower interest rates can allow for greater leverage within the household and still foster savings and productive investment. While I would agree with the premise of that argument there is no historical evidence showing this to be true. The following chart shows the decelerating rate of economic growth, and falling savings rate, even as interest rates have been pushed lower. There have been arguments made that the Federal Reserve should promote higher rates in order to restore economic growth as it would lead to reduced debt levels and higher savings rates. This chart would be supportive of that statement.
Deleveraging To Continue?
This begs the question of how much further does the consumer need to deleverage in order to restore a healthy balance between debt and incomes? The chart below shows the deviation between the current real debt/income ratio and the median of the normalized trend which was shown in the previous chart above.
It is important to remember that reversions to the mean typically return an equal and opposite distance beyond the mean. Therefore, with debt still 80% above normalized debt levels, and consumer debt to income ratios still at a lofty 170%, the reversion back to levels that are constructive to economic growth still has a very long way to go. The problem is that apart from mortgage debt, whose decline has been facilitated by massive central bank and governmental intervention, other debt is still being piled on. The chart below shows the monthly change in consumer credit versus personal consumption. Whatever deleveraging there might have been post the financial crisis - it is now over.
These other debts are at substantially higher rates than mortgages and negatively impacts the consumer's ability to save. This is why savings rates continue to fall. As full-time employment remains elusive, the average American continues to resort to debt, and governmental support, to fill the gap between waning real incomes and their expected standard of living. This is a game that has a finite end.
The diversion of income from savings to support debt service requirements will continue to impede economic growth until such time as either debt returns to levels that are conducive for higher levels of personal savings or incomes rise. The problem for the latter is that the excessively large, and available, labor pool continues to increase competition for employment which suppresses wages. This leaves consumers trapped between the need to payoff of debts in order to free up cash flow but needing increased levels of debt to sustain their standard of living. In the end the consumer will delever, either by choice or by force, the only difference between the two outcomes is the length of time that the current economic malaise lasts.
Source: Street Talk Live
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fso/~3/IjAj3WE2FEI/consumer-debt-still-a-long-way-to-go
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"Quartet" review: Dustin Hoffman's slight, but appealing look at aging
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Age has its privileges. And one of those is to choose to appear in, and seemingly have a splendid time doing it, a vehicle as slight as "Quartet."
Maggie Smith, she of the raised eyebrow and smiling sneer, stars in "Quartet," an appealing but predictable comedy set in an old folks home for retired musicians in England.
The film marks the honorable directing debut of Dustin Hoffman, now 75 - making good on the adage that it's never too late. (The film opens in Los Angeles for a week on Friday, December 7, for an Oscar-qualifying run, and then will be released in New York on January 11, and later elsewhere.)
Screenwriter Ronald Harwood adapted the movie from his own play, which in turn was inspired by "Tosca's Kiss," a 1984 documentary about a retirement home for aged opera singers in Italy.
The setup for the film is simple: Jean (Smith), an opera diva, moves to Beecham House, a lovely old mansion on stately landscaped grounds. She is surprised to discover that her fellow residents include Reggie (Tom Courtenay), her ex-husband, an opera singer whom she hasn't seen since they parted badly many years ago. Also living at Beecham are other longtime colleagues, Sissy (Pauline Collins), an often-dotty sweetie, and Wilfred (Billy Connolly), a cheerful rogue.
There are essentially two main plot threads here, which overlap. Jean and Reggie warily circle each other, their emotional bruises from the past still evident even as they obviously still harbor strong feelings for each other. At the same time, Reggie, Sissy and Wilfred try to recruit a reluctant Jean - "I can't insult the memory of who I was," she says - to perform with them, singing a quartet from Verdi's "Rigoletto," at an annual benefit for the retirement home.
The movie touches, mostly jokingly, on the indignities of growing old. "Quartet" is the happy face antidote to "Amour," director Michael Haneke's harrowing portrait of the ravages of aging, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival and opens in the U.S. on December 19.
Occasionally, though, "Quartet" manages to add a little bite to its colorful geezers routine, as when Jean complains to Reggie, "My gift has deserted me," and he wisely tells her, "It's called old age. Let go."
The pleasures here are both in the performances and the splendid music. No one can land a tart one-liner like Smith, and she goes about it gleefully in "Quartet," insulting everyone in sight while looking more than a little pleased with herself. As Reggie, Courtenay is affecting, showing a man who has made a certain peace with his life and place in the world.
Too insubstantial in the end to serve as a full meal, "Quartet" is a diverting dessert, a cr?me brul?e, if you will, whose slightly bitter, burnt crust can't mask the sweet, abundant goo that lies beneath.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/quartet-review-dustin-hoffmans-slight-appealing-look-aging-221228490.html
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Can lessons from Iraq be applied to US-Iran tensions?
More than nine years after US forces invaded Iraq, the CIA's declassified analysis of mistakes over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is rich with lessons that apply to Iran, as talk of another war simmers.
The outlines of the US intelligence failure on Iraq are well-known: Expectations that Saddam Hussein had a dangerous arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and even fresh nuclear ambitions, proved to be an illusion.
Less understood are how the Iraq conclusions are being applied to understanding the Islamic Republic and its nuclear motivations. Signs abound that the US has learned numerous intelligence lessons; but the fraught political dynamics that can lead to war persist.
How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz.
"Analysts tended to focus on what was most important to us ? the hunt for WMD ? and less on what would be most important for a paranoid dictatorship to protect," says the January 2006 report, one portion of what the CIA calls its ?Iraq WMD Retrospective Series.? Labeled "Secret," it was declassified this summer and published in September by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, though entire sections of the document are excised.
"Viewed through an Iraqi prism, their reputation, their security, their overall technological capabilities, and their status needed to be preserved," notes the report, which was released six years after the archive made its request. "Deceptions were perpetrated and detected, but the reasons for those deceptions were misread."
One obvious result of the lessons learned from the Iraq intelligence failure already become clear, and were made public, however, with the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. That report challenged long-held assumptions with its determination that Iran had halted a nuclear weapons effort years earlier, in the fall of 2003, and that Iran made decisions based on a rational ?cost-benefit analysis.?
Similar conclusions were made in a second NIE on Iran in 2011, which has never been made public. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reaffirmed those Iran conclusions again in testimony last January.
But it's unclear if the US is any closer to understanding Iran's gamesmanship on related issues, from the UN's yearlong bid for access to a suspect site at Parchin to the sincerity of repeated statements rejecting nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.
"The Iraq experience has already produced a different mindset in the intelligence community in its premier national product (the NIE)," says Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA who worked on Iran and Iraq for years and is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
He notes that in the case of Iran, focus has been "almost exclusively on how do we get them out of the nuclear business, and secondarily, how do we get them out of the terrorism business," says Mr. Riedel. "The harder thing to evaluate is ... do we have sufficient empathy for how the Iranians see the problem, instead of how we see the problem?"
MILITARY EXERCISES, STRIDENT STATEMENTS
Increasingly strident rhetoric toward war with Iran reached a crescendo earlier this year, especially from Israel, which claims an Iranian nuclear weapon would be an "existential threat."
How much do you know about Iran? Take our quiz.
Iran frequently trumpets its military power and conducts extensive exercises in its bid to deter any US or Israeli strike. And in Washington and Tel Aviv, "no option is off the table" is the typical code phrase for military action. The US has led the movement to impose stringent sanctions against Iran's economy.
Yet, notes Ali Vaez, Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group in Washington, the NIE assessment that Iran halted its structured clandestine nuclear program in 2003 shows caution in the US intelligence community when it comes to drawing conclusions.
But that restraint could be trumped by other factors. "The problem [today] is that more political lessons have been forgotten than intelligence lessons learned," says Mr. Vaez. "In a mirror image of Iraq, Iran is guilty in Washington's corridors of power until proven innocent."
Iran has refused access to Parchin in the past year, for example; Iranian diplomats suggest privately that they expect to resolve outstanding issues such as Parchin with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as part of a broader deal with world powers over its nuclear program.
But that Iranian refusal ? while at the same time engaging in "substantial" landscaping of the site, which the IAEA says undermines its ability to inspect it for traces of past nuclear work ? echoes many Iraqi weapons inspections in the 1990s. In those standoffs, Iraqi officials often behaved as if they had something to hide, when in fact they did not.
As the CIA?s 2006 assessment states, ?Iraq?s intransigence and deceptive practices during the periods of UN inspections between 1991 and 2003 deepened suspicions ? that Baghdad had ongoing WMD programs.?
The CIA further notes that Iraqi attempts ?to find face-saving means to disclose previously hidden information? meant that Iraqi attempts later to ?close the books? only ?reinvigorated the hunt for concealed WMD, as analysts perceived that Iraq had both the intent and capability to continue WMD efforts.??
This led Iraq to one conclusion, similar to the public declarations of Iranian leaders today: ?When Iraq?s revelations were met by added UN scrutiny and distrust, frustrated Iraqi leaders deepened their belief that inspections were politically motivated and would not lead to the end of sanctions,? read the CIA report.
That conclusion echoes the current situation with Iran. Vaez notes that "Cleansing activity in Parchin is interpreted by Western politicians as evidence of a present, not a previous, nuclear weapons program." The political hostility means few carrots are seen to be necessary, he says: "Just like Iraq, Iran's hostility is viewed as unalterable and thus there is no need for a light at the end of the sanctions tunnel.?
Still, despite the spreading prevalence of "biases and accusations," says Vaez, the intelligence community "has stood its ground on Iran. That is progress."
AMPLE ROOM FOR ERROR
Nevertheless, there appears to be plenty of room for miscalculation. The frequency of Iranian military exercises and claims of brisk progress, from an expanding missile force and cyber-war capabilities, to record-fast torpedoes and drone warfare, have opened the door to misinterpretation.
"The question is, 'Why do they do it?'" asks Alex Vatanka, an Iran specialist at the Middle East Institute in Washington, and the US Air Force Special Operations School.
"Clearly [the answer] is along the lines of Saddam Hussein and his people, which is to show strength, operate from a level of strength," says Mr. Vatanka. "Don't show up at the negotiating table weak ? that has been valid for years. And importantly, don't lose face in Iran, in front of your own domestic audience."
Iran's history of the past two centuries includes many examples of weak Persian leaders losing territory and being humiliated in the face of unscrupulous colonial powers like Russia and Britain, and later the US. Iran's everyday vocabulary today includes negative associations about being weak that stem directly from those experiences, notes Vatanka.
"The idea that if you are weak and humiliated really does play a large role in the calculations of the regime, and has nothing to do with the theocracy," says Vatanka. "If the question is, 'Is there a lot of brinkmanship, or showmanship?' Yes, absolutely that is the case with Iran right now."
But he adds: "We've had 10 years of looking at this [nuclear program], and if it was so clear-cut black-and-white that Iran would have the bomb tomorrow, I think we would have had a different debate [in the intelligence community] today."
The US has a few veteran analysts who were on the Iran case decades ago, who can decode how formative events such as the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s affect Iran's leadership decisions and worldview today. But a generation of US-Iran mutual hostility has added levels of blindness.
"Because we haven't had an embassy there for more than 30 years, because you can't travel there ... you have very, very few analysts or case officers working on Iran who have any practical experience with the reality of modern Iran," says Riedel of Brookings.
"As a consequence, very few people have what you would call 'ground truth,' they've never been there so they don't know what the ground looks like," adds Riedel. "That's a problem that's insoluble, really."
Follow Scott Peterson on Twitter @peterson__scott
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lessons-iraq-applied-us-iran-tensions-145744267.html
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