Santa Clarita, CA?Rob Dyrdek, 37, a professional skateboarder and ubiquitous MTV personality, took a modified Chevrolet Sonic out on the parking lot of the Magic Mountain amusement park and "kick flipped" it last Saturday morning. The stunt is nothing less than incredible.
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BAGHDAD ? A wave of at least 14 bombings ripped across Baghdad Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people in the worst violence in Iraq for months. The apparently coordinated attacks struck days after the last American forces left the country and in the midst of a major government crisis between Shiite and Sunni politicians that has sent sectarian tensions soaring.
The bombings may be linked more to the U.S. withdrawal than the political crisis, but all together, the developments heighten fears of a new round of Shiite-Sunni sectarian bloodshed like the one a few years back that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the bombings bore all the hallmarks of al-Qaida's Sunni insurgents. Most appeared to hit Shiite neighborhoods, although some Sunni areas were also targeted. In all, 11 neighborhoods were hit by either car bombs, roadside blasts or sticky bombs attached to cars. There was at least one suicide bombing and the blasts went off over several hours.
The deadliest attack was in the Karrada neighborhood, where a suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden vehicle blew himself up outside the office of a government agency fighting corruption. Two police officers at the scene said the bomber was driving an ambulance and told guards that he needed to get to a nearby hospital. After the guards let him through, he drove to the building where he blew himself up, the officers said.
Sirens wailed as ambulances rushed to the scene and a large plume of smoke rose over the area. The blast left a crater about five yards (meters) wide in front of the five-story building, which was singed and blackened.
"I was sleeping in my bed when the explosion happened, said 12-year-old Hussain Abbas, who was standing nearby in his pajamas. "I jumped from my bed and rushed to my mom's lap. I told her I did not to go to school today. I'm terrified."
At least 25 people were killed and 62 injured in that attack, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Figures gathered from Iraqi health and police officials across the city put the death toll at 60, and 160 injured. The spokesman for the Iraqi health ministry put the death toll at 57 and said at least 176 people were injured. But conflicting casualty figures are common in the aftermath of such widespread bombings.
For many Iraqis and the Americans who fought a nearly nine-year war in hopes of leaving behind a free and democratic country, the events of the past few days are the country's nightmare scenario. The fragile alliance of Sunnis and Shiites in the government is completely collapsing, large-scale violence with a high casualty toll has returned to the capital, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is displaying an authoritarian streak and may be moving to grab the already limited power of the Sunnis.
Al-Maliki's Shiite-led government this week accused Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country's top Sunni political leader, of running a hit squad that targeted government officials five years ago, during the height of sectarian warfare. Authorities put out a warrant for his arrest.
Many Sunnis fear this is part of a wider campaign to go after Sunni political figures in general and shore up Shiite control across the country at a critical time when all American troops have left Iraq.
Because such a large-scale, coordinated attack likely took weeks to plan, and the political crisis erupted only few days ago, the violence was not likely a direct response to the tensions within the government. Also, al-Qaida opposed Sunni cooperation in the Shiite-dominated government in the first place and is not aligned with Sunni politicians.
The Sunni extremist group often attacks Shiites, who they believe are not true Muslims.
U.S. military officials worried about a resurgence of al-Qaida after their departure. The last American troops left Iraq at dawn Sunday.
Al-Qaida in Iraq is severely debilitated from its previous strength in the early years of the war, but it still has the capability to launch coordinated and deadly assaults from time to time.
The attacks ratchet up tensions at a time when many Iraqis are already deeply worried about security. The real test of whether sectarian warfare returns, however, will be whether Shiite militants are resurgent and return to the type of tit-for-tat attacks seen at the height of sectarian warfare in 2006-2007.
Iraqis are already used to horrific levels of violence, but many wondered when they would be able to enjoy some measure of security and stability after years of chaos.
"My baby was sleeping in her bed. Shards of glass have fallen on our heads. Her father hugged her and carried her. She is now scared in the next room," said one woman in western Baghdad who identified herself as Um Hanin. "All countries are stable. Why don't we have security and stability?"
While Baghdad and Iraq have gotten much safer over the years, explosions like Thursday's are still commonplace.
Al-Maliki's tactics are another source of concern, especially for Sunnis. He is also pushing for a vote of no-confidence against another Sunni politician, the deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.
Ayad Allawi, who heads a Sunni-backed party called Iraqiya, laid the blame for Thursday's violence with the government. The Iraqiya coalition also includes al-Hashemi and al-Mutlaq, and Allawi has been one of al-Maliki's strongest critics. Allawi warned that violence would continue as long as people are left out of the political process.
"We have warned long ago that terrorism will continue ... against the Iraqi people unless the political landscape is corrected and the political process is corrected, and it becomes an inclusive political process and full blown non-sectarian institutions will be built in Iraq," Allawi told The Associated Press, speaking from neighboring Beirut. __
Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.
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ROME?? A courtyard column of a Roman house in Pompeii collapsed on Thursday, renewing concerns about the state of the site which was frozen in time when Mount Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years ago, burying inhabitants alive and preserving their homes.
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Last year the Italian government was accused of neglecting the UNESCO World Heritage site near Naples in southern Italy when part of the "House of the Gladiators" fell down.
That collapse, along with three others in 2010, and the subsequent accusations of neglect and mismanagement, helped trigger a no-confidence vote against former culture minister Sandro Bondi in January.
Slideshow: World Heritage Sites (on this page)Bondi, a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government, survived the vote but quit in March.
Officials said the latest part of the site to crumble was one of several columns that once held up wooden trellises in the house where Loreio Tiburtino, a Roman nobleman, lived.
Built in the second century BC, the house was renovated in 62 AD, 17 years before the cataclysmic eruption.
"This is a torment without end," said Luisa Bossa, a lawmaker from the leftist opposition Democratic Party and former mayor of the Naples-area town of Herculaneum, also a major Roman-era archeological site.
"We have been complaining for three years but the country's most important archeological area continues to fall apart. The truth is that the site has been left alone for years and now, a bit at a time, we are paying the price," she said.
She called on Italy's culture minister, Lorenzo Ornaghi, to "take stock of the gravity of the situation and confront it with determination and speed."
Italy's archaeologists also voiced their concerns.
Slideshow: Italian dreams (on this page)"To overcome the emergency created by these collapses, we need to hire specialized maintenance workers straight away. That is the only possible cure for Pompeii," Tsao Cevoli, head of the National Archaeologists Association, told news agency Ansa.
Pompeii was home to about 13,000 people when it was buried under ash, pumice pebbles and dust in 79 AD as it endured the force of an eruption equivalent to 40 atomic bombs.
Two-thirds of the 66-hectare (165-acre) town has since been uncovered. Pompeii attracts some 2.5 million tourists each year, making it one of Italy's most popular attractions.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45767162/ns/travel-destination_travel/
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The Samsung MV800 ($279.99 list) is a compact camera that has been designed around one distinct feature: its flip-out touch-screen LCD. The slim shooter may be the perfect camera to capture the arm's length self-portraits that invariably find a home as a Facebook profile picture.?This isn't Samsung's first foray into this type of camera. The Dual View TL225 ($349.99, 4 stars), has a front-facing LCD and was good enough to earn our Editors' Choice award.?Sadly, the MV800 doesn't live up to its predecessor's pedigree. The tilting LCD isn't a bad thing?I love that feature on the Sony Alpha NEX-5N ($699.99, 4.5 stars). The problem is that the MV800 only manages photos with so-so sharpness and doesn't do well in lower light. Because of this, the Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS ($259.99, 4 stars) remains our Editors' Choice for mid-range compacts, even though it lacks some of the bells and whistles found on the MV800.
Design and Features
The MV800 is a light and slim camera, one that can easily slide into your shirt pocket. It measures just 2.2 by 3.6 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs about 4.3 ounces. It's actually smaller and lighter than the Canon Elph 310 HS, which measures 2.2 by 3.8 by 0.9 inches and weighs 4.9 ounces. Samsung advertises the camera as a 16-megapixel model, but by default the camera only captures 12-megapixel photos. The sensor is a 4:3 aspect ratio, but out of the box the camera is configured to shoot 16:9 images. To get the full resolution, you'll need to adjust the settings to capture 4:3 photos.
The 5x zoom lens? covers a 26-130mm (35mm equivalent) field of view. This is a pretty nice zoom range for the camera, especially on the short end, as a wider-than-normal lens is ideal for closer shots. It isn't as wide as the 21mm-equivalent fixed focal length lens found on the Casio Tryx ($249.99, 3.5 stars), another camera built around the self-photo concept.
There are few buttons to speak of, the camera's rear is dominated by the 3-inch LCD. The screen itself is bright and crisp, so you won't have any trouble using it outdoors on a sunny day. A Power button, shutter release, and zoom rocker are located up top, and the Home button and Image Playback button are located on the rear, to the right of the LCD. When you flip up the display, a second shutter release is revealed on the rear of the camera, allowing you to fire a shot when the lens and LCD are facing you. If you want to exercise any sort of manual control over the camera, you'll have to do it via the touch screen.?
Thankfully, the touch interface is pretty responsive. Although it doesn't support multi-touch input, you can swipe to scroll through photos. The camera utilizes it well for its menu system. Hitting the home button brings up an icon-based menu screen that grants access to all of the camera's shooting modes. The standard modes are there?Auto, Program, Movie, and Scene?as well as some that you won't find on every camera including 3D image capture, panoramas, and a Self Shot mode. Self Shot shows a flattering self-portrait of a model in the corner, so you'll be able to emulate one of 11 poses to create a similar shot. Other special shooting modes allow you to create a picture-in-picture effect, add an artistic frame to your photo, or apply funhouse mirror distortion to faces.
Performance and Conclusions
Not a particularly speedy camera, the MV800 takes about 2.3 seconds to start up and grab a shot, requires you to wait a full 1.6 seconds between photos, and records a 0.4-second shutter lag. Its performance is on par with the Panasonic Lumix DHC-FH27 ($229.99, 2.5 stars). That point-and-shoot starts in 2 seconds, requires 2.3 seconds to recycle between shots, and records a 0.4-second shutter lag.
I used the Imatest software suite to measure the sharpness and image noise in photos captured by the MV800. The camera recorded a center-weighted sharpness score of 1,475 lines per picture height, well shy of the 1,800 lines that denote a sharp image. Our Editors' Choice, the Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS, did much better in tests. It was able to capture 1,857 lines, which is significantly sharper.
Equally lacking in low-light performance, the MV800 was only able to keep image noise below 1.5 percent through ISO 200, a setting which is really only good for use outdoors or in brightly lit interiors. When an image is composed of more than 1.5 percent noise, it becomes noticeably grainy. Another touch-screen camera, the Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS fared much better, snapping clean images through ISO 800.
Video is captured in 720p30 format. The quality is nothing to write home about?details are not as crisp as they could be and colors are a bit flat. You can zoom while recording, but the camera has a hard time reacquiring focus after doing so, leaving you with out-of-focus footage. The MV800 can connect directly to your HDTV thanks to a micro HDMI port, and you get a standard micro USB port for PC connectivity. The camera uses microSD memory for recording, which can be a bit more expensive?and easier to lose?than the standard, larger SD cards.
Although it succeeds in packing a lot of filters and gimmicks into its svelte body, the MV800 fails in its ability to capture sharp images and suffers greatly in lower light. While the flip-out screen is a fun feature, the camera it is attached to is disappointing, especially when you consider the price. For $20 less, you can opt for our Editors' Choice, the very capable Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS. You won't get the flipping LCD, but you will get an 8x zoom lens and top-notch speed and performance.? If a touch screen is a necessity, the Elph 500 HS makes a lot of sense, as it's a better performer, and is priced only $20 higher than the MV800. Its LCD won't flip to face you, so you'll just have to use some guesswork when you're trying to capture your own mug.
More Digital Camera reviews:
??? Samsung MV800
??? Nikon Coolpix P7100
??? Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF3
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It's rubbed on the skin to reduce signs of aging and consumed by athletes to improve endurance but scientists now have the first evidence of one of vitamin E's normal body functions.
The powerful antioxidant found in most foods helps repair tears in the plasma membranes that protect cells from outside forces and screen what enters and exits, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report in the journal Nature Communications.
Everyday activities such as eating and exercise can tear the plasma membrane and the new research shows that vitamin E is essential to repair. Without repair of muscle cells, for example, muscles eventually waste away and die in a process similar to what occurs in muscular dystrophy. Muscle weakness also is a common complaint in diabetes, another condition associated with inadequate plasma membrane repair.
"Without any special effort we consume vitamin E every day and we don't even know what it does in our bodies," said Dr. Paul McNeil, GHSU cell biologist and the study's corresponding author. He now feels confident about at least one of its jobs.
Century-old animal studies linked vitamin E deficiency to muscle problems but how that happens remained a mystery until now, McNeil said. His understanding that a lack of membrane repair caused muscle wasting and death prompted McNeil to look at vitamin E.
Vitamin E appears to aid repair in several ways. As an antioxidant, it helps eliminate destructive byproducts from the body's use of oxygen that impede repair. Because it's lipid-soluble, vitamin E can actually insert itself into the membrane to prevent free radicals from attacking. It also can help keep phospholipids, a major membrane component, compliant so they can better repair after a tear.
For example, exercise causes the cell powerhouse, the mitochondria, to burn a lot more oxygen than normal. "As an unavoidable consequence you produce reactive oxygen species," McNeil said. The physical force of exercise tears the membrane. Vitamin E enables adequate plasma membrane repair despite the oxidant challenge and keeps the situation in check.
When he mimicked what happens with exercise by using hydrogen peroxide to produce free radicals, he found that tears in skeletal muscle cells would not heal unless pretreated with vitamin E.
Next steps, which will be aided by two recent National Institutes of Health grants, include examining membrane repair in vitamin E-deficient animals.
McNeil also wants to further examine membrane repair failure in diabetes. Former GHSU graduate student Dr. Amber C. Howard showed in a recent paper in the journal Diabetes that cells taken from animal models of types 1 and 2 diabetes have faulty repair mechanisms. Howard found high glucose was a culprit by soaking cells in a high-glucose solution for eight to 12 weeks, during which time they developed a repair defect. It's also well documented that reactive oxygen species levels are elevated in diabetes.
The Nature Communications paper showed that vitamin E treatment in an animal model of diabetes restored some membrane repair ability. Also, an analogue of the most biologically active form of vitamin E significantly reversed membrane repair deficits caused by high glucose and increased cell survival after tearing cells in culture.
Now McNeil wants to know if he can prevent the development of advanced glycation end products ? a sugar that high glucose adds to proteins that his lab has shown can also impede membrane repair ? in the animal models of diabetes. The researchers have a drug that at least in cultured animal cells, prevents repair defects from advanced glycation end products.
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Georgia Health Sciences University: http://www.georgiahealth.edu
Thanks to Georgia Health Sciences University for this article.
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