Fresh and Alive! Raw Vegetarian Recipes Full Download - Flmsdown

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? Fresh and Alive! Raw Vegetarian Recipes E-Books Fresh and Alive! Raw Vegetarian Recipes 2xDVDRip | AVI / DivX, ~1079 kb/s | 720x360 | Duration: 03:47:44 | English: MP3, 64 kb/s (2 ch) | + PDF Guide | 1.84 GB Genre: Cooking Hippocrates Health Educator, Ken Rohla, shows you step-by-step how to make 27 of his exclusive, easy, and great-tasting recipes, from salads and raw pasta dishes to crackers, snacks, smoothies, and desserts, including information on proper food combining, recommended equipment and its use, juicing wheatgrass and green drinks, food prep tricks, and much more. With over 3-1/2 hours of video on two DVDs, this will show you the techniques to also make the variety of dishes found in other raw food recipe books. Each recipe is indexed in the DVD menu so you can go right to the recipe you want to watch ??? no wading through a long video to find what you're looking for. Comes with the recipes in a booklet for quick reference in your kitchen, and a food combining chart for enjoying truly healthy raw vegan meals. Download link: (Buy premium account for maximum speed and resumming ability) Extabit: http://extabit.com/file/2du8qj1f0pmkh/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part1.rar http://extabit.com/file/2du8qj1f0pjcx/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part2.rar http://extabit.com/file/2du8qj1f0pg8x/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part3.rar http://extabit.com/file/2du8qj1f02w35/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part4.rar http://extabit.com/file/2du8qj1f02mgx/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part5.rar Uploaded: http://uploaded.net/file/2vylmbxy/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part1.rar http://uploaded.net/file/fiaylqqu/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part2.rar http://uploaded.net/file/d7khein6/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part3.rar http://uploaded.net/file/mxy1yqi2/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part4.rar http://uploaded.net/file/edtynh5b/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part5.rar Lumfile: http://lumfile.com/82qspxhzas3y/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part1.rar.html http://lumfile.com/oi3lf26t862a/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part2.rar.html http://lumfile.com/154my5a8mdvx/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part3.rar.html http://lumfile.com/attijwh787zw/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part4.rar.html http://lumfile.com/4engmmrvonhg/Fresh.and.Alive.Raw.Vegetarian.Recipes.part5.rar.html Links are Interchangeable - No Password - Single Extraction Fresh and Alive! Raw Vegetarian Recipes rapidshare free full downloads. Fresh and Alive! Raw Vegetarian Recipes download torrent. Related News{related-news} ?

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Johnny Depp Surprises Oklahoma With Native American Parade Appearance!

Look at him! He's just so happy to be there!

Being an amazing person once again, Johnny Depp decided to spend time with his fellow members of the Comanche Indian tribe during the Comanche Nation Fair on Saturday.

As an honorary member, Johnny waved and smiled at the Oklahoma residents who lined the streets to watch the parade.

But here's the really cool part ? his appearance wasn't publicized? at all.

It was all a HUGE surprise!! Ahhh!! Those lucky, lucky Oklahoma people!!

As we've discussed before, Johnny became an honorary member back in the Spring for his work with Lone Ranger.

With all the time he spends on that film, it's amazing he can actually donate what's leftover to things like this!!

Tags: comanche, fair, johnny depp, lone ranger, native american, parade, photo, tribe

Source: http://perezhilton.com/2012-09-29-johnny-depp-native-american-parade-comanche-indian-tribe-fair-photo

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Interview with Max Starkov, President & CEO of - HeBS Digital

Interview with Max Starkov, President & CEO of HeBS Digital, on the hot topic of the emerging role of the community manager in hospitality.

Masha Polshinskaya, Senior Project Manager ? Hospitality Worldwide, Cleverdis: There has been much discussion about the need for social media to be managed at the property level by a new breed of employee focused solely on social media. How would you define the role of such a ?community manager? at the hotel?

Max Starkov: Social media is a customer engagement channel and a customer-service channel, and not a distribution channel. The role of the social media marketer is already evolving to better reflect the hard-learned realization of the role social media should play in travel and hospitality. The ?owner? of the hotel social media profiles?the one who manages and is responsible of posting, monitoring and reacting to customer comments?is also evolving and is being transitioned from outside social media agencies and PR agencies to property-based social marketing coordinators and community managers.

The customer engagement side of social media at the hotel means branding and marketing engagements and requires involvement by the hotel sales and marketing team and perhaps an outside PR or digital marketing agency. The customer service side of social media requires the services of a new type of social media-savvy employee or a team of employees who are able to monitor and react to customer service-related social media engagements 24/7. In other words: I see a dual role at the property:

• One that is more branding and marketing engagement-focused and could be handled by someone within regular business hours
• One that is strictly customer service-related and should monitor social media and customer review postings 24/7

In addition, I have noticed that the industry does not make a clear distinction between the two media formats in question here: social media and customer reviews. Even though they both fall into the realm of user-generated media, there are clear distinctions between the two.

Social Media:

There is no doubt that social media has changed how travel consumers research and plan travel, access travel information, and perceive credibility of information. Internet users are increasingly influenced by social networks and peer reviews. By utilizing a comprehensive social media strategy, hoteliers can create social media ?buzz,? target receptive audiences, and stimulate hotel website visits, interactions and bookings, as well as instantaneously resolve arising customer service issues.

Customer Reviews:

We see more and more hotel customers using the hotel Facebook wall or Twitter profile to communicate their customer service frustrations, in many cases in real time: ?There is no hot water in my room!? or ?The lights are out in the bathroom,? etc. In other words, there is a convergence of customer reviews and social media, which exacerbates the situation even further and creates the need for hoteliers to monitor their social media profiles and customer review sites in a 24/7 fashion.

Traditionally, customer reviews on TripAdvisor, the OTA sites and more recently on major hotel brand websites have been reactive i.e. post-stay. Lately, we see more and more ?real-time? reviews where customers are posting reviews during their hotel stays, especially disgruntled guests. All of this necessitates the 24/7 monitoring and reacting to customer reviews, especially negative ones, which should be addressed and resolved as soon as possible.

Cleverdis: Why is social media not a distribution channel? Many hospitality marketers would claim otherwise.

Starkov: In my view, hoteliers that are still trying to use social media as a distribution channel are the ones trying to find some kind of meaningful ROI to justify their efforts. Smart hoteliers understand that social media is not a distribution channel in hospitality and therefore use a different set of metrics to gauge success.? Despite the monumental efforts by many hotel marketers in the past five years to use social media as a ?new and revolutionary? distribution channel in hospitality and travel, they all failed miserably. Today the social scene is littered with the abandoned corpses of hotel and other travel-related profiles.

Why?? Because a distribution channel is primarily a one-way street: the owner or aggregator of travel inventory/information pushes inventory/information through distribution channels which have been accepted by interested parties such as the traveling public, travel agents, group planners, etc. These distribution channels have been incorporated in travel planning technology and marketing solutions like GDS, travel supplier sites, OTA sites, etc.

Social media is not a one-way street. It is a multi-street maze of peer-to-peer, marketer-consumer and consumer-marketer engagements and relationships.

In other words, in travel and hospitality, social media is a customer engagement channel and a customer service channel, not a distribution channel. Hoteliers should use the same performance indicators they apply to customer service and branding initiatives.

Cleverdis: What would your social media strategy be for 2013?

Starkov: I would do everything possible to bring social media management and customer review monitoring in-house and at the property level. I would create internal social media management and customer review monitoring processes, preferably in the following manner:

Social Media Profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.:

Services provided by an outside agency

I would hire an outside agency to provide best practices and train my staff with quarterly guidelines and concrete ideas regarding social media postings, contests, sweepstakes, etc. This agency would perform quarterly audits of my hotels? management of social media profiles and provide recommendations. This company would be in charge of designing and implementing all of the digital technology tasks: Facebook custom tabs, Facebook sweepstakes, reveal tabs and promotions, Twitter backgrounds, YouTube Channel customizations, etc.

Services I would retain in-house:

1. Customer engagement side of social media ? For the ongoing management of the social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, etc. I would appoint a designated marketing coordinator/community manager to work as part of the Sales & Marketing Department. This community manager would monitor customer posts, manage customer engagements, post branding and marketing messages and handle questions and reviews by customers via the social media profiles during regular business hours. Any customer-related issue outside of business hours should be referred to the customer service team at the property.

2. Customer service side of social media ? This would include monitoring and reacting to customer service-related comments, issues and complaints. Hotel employees from the client-facing staff, including designated reception/front desk managers and clerks would be in chare of these services. The goal is to have a person monitoring customer service issues during each shift, thus ensuring 24/7 ?social media? support. Once again, the 24/7 social media monitoring applies only to customer service issues that require urgent attention and immediate resolution.

Customer Reviews:

Monitoring customer reviews should be handled at the property and not by an outside agency and should be assigned to different teams similar to the social media management strategy. During business hours, this could be a marketing coordinator/community manager and after hours, specially-trained members of the front desk servicing teams (including designated reception/front desk managers and clerks).

Utilizing reputation-monitoring tools like Revinate and ReviewPro is highly recommended for efficiencies, breadth of review sites, and monitoring the comp set.

Cleverdis: What social media platform would you spend the most time on in 2013?

Starkov: To be successful in the social space you cannot focus on just one social channel. In any multichannel marketing strategy, it is important to focus your efforts across all social channels that are incorporated into your marketing mix.

In 2013 I would make sure that my property presence is optimized to the max and I am doing everything possible on the following social media platforms:

• Facebook: for brand building and deep customer engagement
• Twitter: for instant communications with customers and as a customer sentiment ?listening tool?
• Google+: as an up-and-coming social network; at a minimum create and optimize the hotel profile

Updating your social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ with fresh content daily harnesses the power of a successful social media strategy. The whole of these efforts is exponentially greater and more valuable than the sum of its parts.

Cleverdis: ?What?s the difference in communicating on Twitter and Facebook?

Starkov: Twitter is an open platform where hoteliers can easily search buzz surrounding their brand and reach out and engage new customers. Twitter is becoming more and more a customer service tool where hoteliers must monitor and handle feedback and requests from guests in real-time. Consider Twitter as an instantaneous communication tool. You can use Twitter in place of a short promotional email. Or in place of an SMS message. At the same time, Twitter is ?an early warning system? for service problems at the hotel. Therefore, you need to monitor tweets 24/7.

Facebook is more of a brand relationship tool for fostering customer loyalty and building a robust community of fans. Prompting fans to share photos and experiences is key in building a strong brand community and virally promoting the property in the Newsfeed. Consider Facebook as an extension to your property website, a platform which adds an interactive capability to your customer engagement strategy. Unlike the predominantly static hotel website, Facebook allows two-way conversations (marketer-customer and customer-marketer) as well as peer-to-peer engagements. Example, having one or more ?brand ambassadors? among your Facebook fans goes a long way in promoting your hotel and engaging the rest of the fans and building brand equity and loyalty.

Cleverdis: What other social media would you use?

Starkov: In this age of rich media and exploding video format, I would spend the necessary efforts and resources on enhancing and optimizing my property?s YouTube channel and Flickr profile.

I would also create 30- to 60-second videos focusing on various aspects of my hotel product: leisure travellers, meeting planners, wedding planners, family travellers, spa, etc. and use those for the hotel website, YouTube channel, Google+ Local and Bing local listings, as well as for MMS promotions.

The search benefits of Google+ are becoming vital in an SEO online strategy. The power of Google+ results in Google organic search cannot be ignored, and this growing presence in search results are turning the heads of social networks such as Twitter who used to own social search result listings.

Another social platform hoteliers should leverage in 2013 is Foursquare. Foursquare is intrinsic in socially engaging guests on a local level. Offering Foursquare check-in specials for guests is?a perfect way to up-sell onsite accommodations such as dining and spa as well as increase viral awareness.

Emerging social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest should also be on hoteliers? radar.

Cleverdis: ?What content would you put online? Where can you find it?

Starkov: One of the biggest challenges in our industry is the creation of new, original and engaging content for the hotel website, the hotel blog, email marketing, social media postings, etc.

The 2011 Google Panda Update made most hotel websites and other hotel digital content assets obsolete by introducing very strict requirements for content, interactivity, and page download speeds. The update requires hoteliers to generate engaging and unique website content (as opposed to bland, old and tired content) that would intrigue users and increase the site?s ?stickiness.? An even more recent algorithm update by Google now known as the ?Freshness? update added a strict requirement that determines how news-worthy and how current the content is on the hotel website, blog, etc.

Social media added an additional complexity to the equation. Social media users dislike pompous over-the-board content. The ?official? content ? the content that comes from the hotel in the form of website copy, blog articles, Facebook postings, etc. ? should be as close to the style and format of the ?unofficial? content or the user-generated content. The bigger the gap between the official and unofficial content, the less credible the official content is since people tend to trust their peers more than any official entity.

Hoteliers should be looking into generating good and engaging content for the social media profiles and the hotel website blog using all available sources:

• Hotel Website?s Content Management System (CMS): does your property website CMS have the functionality to automatically push ?fresh? content in the form of specials and promotions and the latest events at the hotel or the destination to your Facebook wall, Twitter, mobile site, etc.?

• Good copywriting skills should be a requirement for any community manager/social media marketing coordinator. This should be part of the job description and job requirements.

• Create an internal system within the hotel for sharing ?Facebook-worthy? news, happenings, events and activities. Your in-house experts, from famous chefs to popular spa practitioners to wedding coordinators, are your biggest assets. Ask them to share their stories, best practices, case studies and recommendations. From seasonal recipes to ?How to?? advice to ?Top 10?? lists?all of these constitute valuable content worth publishing.

• PR Agency: your contract with an outside PR agency should also include a Facebook and a blog version of any consumer-focused press release they produce. Such announcements about a hotel promotion, new amenity or service, happening at the hotel, etc. should be shorter and structured as sharing exciting news with your Facebook fans or hotel website blog readers.

Traditionally, hotel websites have been content rich vs. news rich, with descriptions and information featuring and explaining in detail every facet of the hotel business and service, from the bed linens to the capacity of a meeting room. The static content is there, but the ?fresh? content or the ?original and engaging? content is certainly lacking, and this is the main issue with current hotel websites after the latest Google algorithm updates.

Cleverdis: If you were an independent hotelier and had only 1,000 Euros, what would your online marketing strategy be? Would you use only social media?

Starkov: With only 1,000 Euros I would address social media only if everything on my website was fully optimized and functional. Is your website SEO up to par? Do you have a mobile website? How about a booking engine on both the desktop and mobile sites? Are the calendar of events and activities on the site updated? Do you send monthly email promotions to your customers? Do you have content on the site addressing all of your important and key customer segments? How about landing pages describing all aspects of the hotel product? How about content in foreign languages to address your main foreign feeder markets?

With a low budget, it is important to take full advantage of organic visibility in natural search results. I would begin optimizing all property local listings including Google+ Local, Yahoo Local Directory and Bing Local. I would optimize the TripAdvisor presence and set up free links from online directories and destination sites to the property website to boost Google rankings and your Google PageRank. Once I have optimized my presence across the web, I would take advantage of Google AdWords to launch paid search campaigns ? these could be micro-campaigns in selected feeder markets or promoting a concrete hotel special/package.

I would create an internal system to monitor customer reviews about my hotel on all important review and OTA sites, from TripAdvisor to Booking.com to Expedia. I would train my staff how to monitor customer reviews and how to react in each of the following three instances: highly negative, but true reviews; negative, but false, and highly positive reviews. I would create internal guidelines with concrete ?owners? of the process and even recommend ?official property comments? in each of the above instances.

Then and only then would I start thinking about building a social media presence, starting with the hotel fan page on Facebook, including a custom tab with the hotel logo, photos, descriptive copy, a reservation widget, an email capture widget and call-outs to the hotel website.

Here are some final quick tips for managing a robust social media strategy:

Facebook

1. Fresh content is key to maintaining a Facebook Fan Page community.
2. Engagement is the true measure of ROI. Engage fans with open-ended questions, fill-in-the-blanks, and trivia.
3. Use Facebook Insights to tailor your Fan Page content. Use the power of social analytics to find out the best time of day to reach the highest number of users and what type of content is receiving the most engagement. Use this insight to shape your strategy.
4. Let your fans shape your community. Facebook is a two-way marketing platform, and it is important to make sure you are answering all comments/questions and providing your fans with the content that inspired them to ?Like? your page.
5. Focus on local engagement. Utilize Facebook Deals to offer check-in specials to guests. Local, social marketing is becoming strategic in resonating with key customer segments.

Blog on the Hotel Website

1. Post fresh, unique and engaging blog articles.
2. Host blog contests to engage customer segments. Prompt visitors to comment on a blog post to enter to win a prize/free stay.
3. Create blog categories that target your key customer segments. Create sections tailored around Travel Tips, Specials & Packages, Dining, and other onsite amenities.
4. Link to your Blog in highly visible real-estate on your website homepage to capture more traffic and qualified leads. Promote your blog on social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
5. Link to your blog on your email marketing template, and highlight your latest posts in monthly email marketing pieces.

5 ideas to gain more visibility

1. Tag relevant social media pages to gain qualified fans and followers.
2. Favorite relevant Fan Pages on Facebook or ?List? relevant handles on Twitter to build strategic connections and visibility.
3. Post fresh and engaging content for more visibility in newsfeeds.
4. Link to social community profiles on your website, email template, and blog.
5. Cross promote your social channels.

The ?Don?ts? of a community manager

1. Don?t ignore your community. Listen. Learn. Respond.
2. Don?t neglect your brand. Foster positive buzz, and shape the conversation to align with your persona and branding.
3. Don?t tell your community what they want, ask them.
4. Don?t be a bore. Engage your community with fun contests, trivia, and more. Remember social media is just that?social.
5. Don?t isolate. Integrate your community into the comprehensive marketing mix. No community can grow on an island.

Communicate to bloggers to incite them to talk about your hotel

1. Host blogger contests where you prompt them to write about your hotel (linking to your website) in order to be entered to win a free stay.
2. Create a Special Package specifically for bloggers where they can stay at the hotel at a discounted price and then blog about the experience.
3. Prompt bloggers to write guest articles for the hotel blog to give them a free ?plug? (great for reciprocal linking).
4. Create an email list targeted specifically to bloggers so you can begin building a brand relationship and prompt them to blog about the hotel regularly. To build this list, you can host a blogger sweepstakes.
5. Feature a ?Blogger of the Month? section on the hotel website for cross promotion (great for reciprocal linking).

About the Author and HeBS Digital

Max Starkov is President & CEO of HeBS Digital (Hospitality eBusiness Strategies), the hospitality industry?s leading full-service digital marketing and direct online channel strategy firm based in New York City (www.HeBSdigital.com).

HeBS Digital as pioneered many of the best practices in hotel Internet marketing, social and mobile marketing, and direct online channel distribution. The firm has won over 220 prestigious industry awards for its digital marketing and website design services, including numerous Adrian Awards, Davey Awards, W3 Awards, WebAwards, Magellan Awards, Summit International Awards, Interactive Media Awards, IAC Awards, etc.

A diverse client portfolio of top tier major hotel brands, luxury and boutique hotel brands, resorts and casinos, hotel management companies, franchisees and independents, and CVBs are taking? advantage of HeBS Digital?s direct online channel strategy and digital marketing expertise. Contact HeBS Digital consultants at (212) 752-8186 or success@hebsdigital.com.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2012 at 3:44 pm and is filed under HeBS Articles & Publications, HeBS Digital, Social Media & Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://www.hebsdigital.com/blog/interview-with-max-starkov-president-ceo-of-hebs-digital-on-social-media-and-customer-review-best-practices/

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California Protects Social Media Accounts From the Grasp of Employers [Privacy]

A small victory in the fight for digital privacy: California Governor Jerry Brown has announced his signing of bills to prevent employers and universities from demanding social network login. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/PDz2jhuKzJg/california-protects-social-media-accounts-from-the-grasp-of-employers

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Schwarzenegger calls affair with housekeeper "stupidest thing"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking about his affair with a family housekeeper for the first time in a television interview, said it was "the stupidest thing" he did in his marriage to Maria Shriver and said it "inflicted tremendous pain" on his family.

In a "60 Minutes" interview with reporter Leslie Stahl due to air on September 30, Schwarzenegger admitted that he lied to Shriver about the affair. CBS released a clip of the interview on Friday.

"I think it was the stupidest thing I've done in the whole relationship. It was terrible. I inflicted tremendous pain on Maria and unbelievable pain on the kids," Schwarzenegger said.

Schwarzenegger, 65, had been quiet in public about his affair with their housekeeper Mildred Baena. He and Baena had a son, Joseph, who grew up not knowing Schwarzenegger was his father until the scandal made headlines last year.

After the revelations, Shriver and Schwarzenegger began proceedings to end their 25-year marriage. They have four children together.

The interview coincides with the October 1 release of Austrian-born Schwarzenegger's autobiography, "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life." He told Stahl that he was determined to write a book that included his "failures" as well as his successes in bodybuilding, film and politics.

Since his term as Republican governor ended, Schwarzenegger has returned to movies with "The Expendables 2" last August, and he has five more films in the pipeline. He also inaugurated a global policy think tank in his name at the University of Southern California's Los Angeles campus.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/schwarzenegger-calls-affair-housekeeper-stupidest-thing-173819962.html

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Genetic sleuthing uncovers deadly new virus in Africa

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) ? An isolated outbreak of a deadly disease known as acute hemorrhagic fever, which killed two people and left one gravely ill in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2009, was probably caused by a novel virus scientists have never seen before.

Described this week in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, the new microbe has been named Bas-Congo virus (BASV) after the province in the southwest corner of the Congo where the three people lived.

It was discovered by an international research consortium that included the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and University of California, Davis (UCD), Global Viral, the Centre International de Recherches M?dicales de Franceville in Gabon, the Institut National de Recherche Biom?dicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Metabiota and others.

"Known viruses, such as Ebola, HIV and influenza, represent just the tip of the microbial iceberg," said Joseph Fair, PhD, a co-author and vice president of Metabiota. "Identifying deadly unknown viruses, such as Bas-Congo virus, gives us a leg up in controlling future outbreaks."

"These are the only three cases known to have occurred, although there could be additional outbreaks from this virus in the future," said Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine at UCSF and director of the UCSF-Abbott Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center, who spearheaded the UCSF effort to identify the virus. Chiu and his team continue to work on new diagnostics to detect the virus so that health officials in Congo and elsewhere can quickly identify it should it emerge again.

One odd characteristic of the Bas-Congo virus, Chiu said, is that while a number of other viruses in Africa also cause deadly outbreaks of acute hemorrhagic fever -- Ebola virus, Lassa virus and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus to name a few -- the new virus is unlike any of them.

Genetically it is more closely related to the types of viruses that cause rabies, which are known to infect people with a very different sort of disease -- a neurological illness that is uniformly fatal if untreated but may take months to develop.

An antibody test developed in this study was applied to the one patient who survived and to others who had come into contact with him. It suggested that the disease may be spread from person to person but likely originated from some other source, such as an insect or rodent.

The identity of this animal "reservoir" and the precise mode of transmission for the virus remain unclear and are currently being investigated by Metabiota and the central African members of the consortium through the PREDICT Project of USAID's Emerging Pandemic Threats Program. (http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/ohi/predict/index.cfm)

How the New Virus Emerged

In the summer of 2009, a 15-year old boy in a small rural community called Mangala village suddenly fell ill and developed a bleeding nose, bleeding gums and bloody vomit. He rapidly worsened, dying within three days of the first signs of illness.

A week later, a 13-year old girl who attended the same school and lived in the same neighborhood as the boy came down with a similar, serious illness. She declined just as rapidly and also died within three days. One week after that, the male nurse who cared for this girl began showing the same symptoms, and he was transferred to a hospital in Boma, a nearby port city that sits along the Congo River upstream from Africa's Atlantic coast.

Members of the consortium, who had initiated a project to diagnose unusual cases of severe hemorrhagic fever, obtained blood samples collected from the nurse by the Congolese doctors and sent them to the laboratory of Eric Leroy, PhD, doctor of veterinary medicine at the Centre International de Recherches M?dicales de Franceville in Gabon. There the samples were tested for traces of any known virus, but nothing was found. The Metabiota scientists then solicited the expertise of Chiu at UCSF and Eric Delwart at the Blood Systems Research Institute (BSRI) in San Francisco to aid in the diagnosis.

The researchers ultimately identified a completely new virus as the cause of the mysterious illness through a powerful strategy for identifying novel pathogens known as "deep sequencing," in which millions of DNA sequences are generated from a clinical sample and then pieced together using computer algorithms combined with human analysis.

Distinct Attributes of Bas-Congo

The Bas-Congo virus belongs to a family of viruses known as the rhabdoviruses, a large family of viruses that infect plants, insects and mammals, including humans. The most famous member of this family is the virus that causes rabies. But even among the rhabdoviruses, Bas-Congo is something of an outlier, being very genetically distinct from other members of the family.

What's most unusual about this virus, though, said Chiu, is what it does to people.

No other rhabdoviruses are known to cause the acute, rapid and deadly hemorrhagic fever seen in the three cases in the Congo. Rabies, for instance, can be a deadly disease if untreated, but the course of rabies in humans is nothing like the rapid and deadly onset seen with the Bas-Congo virus. There is some precedent, however, for hemorrhagic disease from rhabdoviruses in the animal kingdom: fish rhabdoviruses are known to cause hemorrhagic septicemia -- acute bleeding and death -- in affected fish.

The third patient had enormous amounts of BASV in his bloodstream just two days after he fell ill -- more than a million copies in every milliliter of blood.

The BASV sequence was also used to design an antibody test for the virus, an effort led by Graham Simmons at the BSRI, another member of the consortium. Antibodies are blood immune proteins produced in response to an infection. The antibody test allowed the researchers to screen both the third patient with acute hemorrhagic fever and other people who had come into contact with the third patient, including the nurse who cared for him in the Boma hospital. High levels of BASV-specific antibodies were found in the third patient, establishing that he indeed had been infected with Bas-Congo virus. The same antibodies were also found in the second nurse, even though he never actually became sick.

"What this suggests is that the disease may be transmissible from person to person -- though it's most likely to have originated from some other source," said Nathan Wolfe, PhD, founder and chairman of Global Viral, and a co-author on the paper. "The fact that it belongs to a family of viruses known to infect a wide variety of mammals, insects and other animals means that it may perpetually exist in insect or other 'host' species and was accidentally passed to humans through insect bites or some other means."

The research consortium includes San Francisco-based Global Viral, Metabiota, UCSF, BSRI, as well as researchers with the Centre International de Recherches M?dicales de Franceville in Gabon; the Institut de Recherche pour le D?veloppement in Montpellier, France; the Institut National de Recherche Biom?dicale, Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX; the University of California, Davis; the University of California, Los Angeles; Stanford University; and the Howard Hughes Medical Center.

This work was funded by support from Google.org, the Skoll Foundation, the government of Gabon, Total-Fina-Elf Gabon, and the Minist?re des Affaires Etrang?res et Europ?ennes de la France, the U.S. Department of Defense Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, Division of Global Emerging Infections, Surveillance Operations (AFHSC GEIS) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (DTRA-CBEP), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats Program, PREDICT project. Additional funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health provided via grant numbers R01-HL083254, R01-HL105770, R56-AI089532, and R01-HL105704 and by an Abbott Viral Discovery Award.

* Global Viral was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

**Metabiota was previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Inc.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), via Newswise.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Gilda Grard, Joseph N. Fair, Deanna Lee, Elizabeth Slikas, Imke Steffen, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, Taylor Sittler, Narayanan Veeraraghavan, J. Graham Ruby, Chunlin Wang, Maria Makuwa, Prime Mulembakani, Robert B. Tesh, Jonna Mazet, Anne W. Rimoin, Travis Taylor, Bradley S. Schneider, Graham Simmons, Eric Delwart, Nathan D. Wolfe, Charles Y. Chiu, Eric M. Leroy. A Novel Rhabdovirus Associated with Acute Hemorrhagic Fever in Central Africa. PLOS Pathogens, 2012; 8 (9): e1002924 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1002924

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/~3/P7jIxRM8jWc/120927174336.htm

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Salisbury News: Foundation Needs Help Finding Stolen Puppy

A 7-week-old puppy was stolen from the Animal Resource Foundation in Maryland on Tuesday and a $500 reward has been offered for the puppy's safe return.

ARF, located in Chester, Md., announced the reward on their Facebook?page.

They say a couple in their 20s came to the foundation around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 25 to visit puppies. After a quick visit, the couple left and drove away.

Source: http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2012/09/foundation-needs-help-finding-stolen.html

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Cheers as NFL refs return: 'It's good to be back'

Referee Gene Steratore, right, and back judge Bob Waggoner, left, look around the field before an NFL football game between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns in Baltimore, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Referee Gene Steratore, right, and back judge Bob Waggoner, left, look around the field before an NFL football game between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns in Baltimore, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Referee Gene Steratore, left, talks with Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh before an NFL football game between the Ravens and the Cleveland Browns in Baltimore, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

FILE - In this Sept. 5, 2012, file photo, Commissioner Roger Goodell gestures to fans before an NFL football game between the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys in East Rutherford, N.J. The NFL and referees' union reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday, Sept. 26, to end a three-month lockout that triggered a wave of frustration and anger over replacement officials and threatened to disrupt the rest of the season. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun, File)

FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 24, 2012, file photo, an official, rear center, signals for a touchdown by Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Golden Tate, obscured, as another official, at right, signals a touchback, on the controversial last play of an NFL football game against the Green Bay Packers in Seattle. The Seahawks won 14-12. The NFL referee strike puts the spotlight on a nebulous notion that is often overlooked when it works as it's supposed to: the question of expertise. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear, File)

Referee Gene Steratore looks over the instant replay monitor before an NFL football game between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns in Baltimore, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

BALTIMORE (AP) ? Referee Gene Steratore turned on his microphone to greet the captains of the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens for the pre-game coin toss Thursday night.

"Good evening, men," Steratore said. "It's good to be back."

The stadium erupted in a roar.

Yes, the real refs are back. Official harmony is restored to the NFL.

Steratore and his seven-man crew donned their familiar stripes for the first game of Week 4 after three weeks of replacement officials created moments of chaos throughout the league. For a change, everyone on all sides was happy to see the familiar faces they usually love to boo.

"You know we always pride ourselves in being a face without a name," Steratore, a 10-year league veteran, told The Associated Press about an hour before kickoff. "This will be a little different, but I don't expect it to last too long. And that's the goal ? is that we can let them get through that portion of this. It's happy to be back, it's happy to be appreciated. But then as soon as the game starts, it's happy to disappear again and let the entertainers entertain."

The welcome-back love began early. About an hour before kickoff, the officials walked on the field and heard cheers from the early arrivals. A few minutes later, Steratore was shaking hands with Browns coach Pat Shurmur near midfield and getting a hug from Ravens face-of-the-franchise Ray Lewis at the 30-yard line.

Later, when the crew returned, they walked on the field they received a standing ovation and doffed their caps to the crowd. One fan held up a sign that read: "Finally! We get to yell at real refs! Welcome back!"

"The other refs just made dumb calls," said Jessie Riley, a 15-year-old fan wearing an Ed Reed jersey. "I couldn't stand them. Now we won't get robbed; everything will be fair ? hopefully."

A lockout of the league's regular officials ended late Wednesday, two days after a disputed touchdown catch on the last play of "Monday Night Football" brought debate over the use of the replacements to a fevered pitch nationwide. The Seattle Seahawks were awarded the score ? and a 14-12 win ? over the Green Bay Packers, a result that Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged "may have pushed the parties further along" in the talks.

"Obviously when you go through something like this it is painful for everybody," Goodell said. "Most importantly, it is painful for our fans. We are sorry to have to put our fans through that, but it is something that in the short term you sometimes have to do to make sure you get the right kind of deal for the long term and make sure you continue to grow the game."

The deal is only tentative ? it must be ratified by 51 percent of the union's 121 members in a vote scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Dallas ? but both sides nevertheless went forward with the plan to have the regulars back for Thursday's game.

So Steratore hustled to Baltimore, making the 3?-hour drive Thursday morning from his home in the Pittsburgh area. He's usually in place the day before a game, but none of his regular pregame meetings had to be changed because the Browns-Ravens game was at night.

"Very elated to be back," he said. "It feels like being back home."

Steratore, who is a basketball official in the Big East Conference among others, also was fully aware he would be booed the first time he makes a questionable call ? just like always.

"Without a question," he said. "I've been yelled at by my own children many times, so this won't be any different."

Steratore and his crew set up shop in the designated "Officials Locker Room" in the bowels of the stadium. He emerged about 2? hours before kickoff to talk briefly to a stadium official about the wireless on-field microphone the referee wears. He later held a regular pregame meeting with stadium crew, telling them to "make sure we run this thing as smoothly" as they had in his previous visits to Baltimore.

Steratore then walked down the tunnel and onto the field, pacing the sidelines with little fanfare because he was still wearing his coat and tie.

The lockout was ended after marathon negotiations produced an eight-year agreement to end the lockout that began in June.

"Those guys might mess up every now and then, but we can live with that happening with professional guys out there," Detroit Lions receiver Calvin Johnson said.

For the Packers, Redskins, Lions and other teams who voiced their displeasure with calls that might have swayed games, the agreement doesn't change their records. The commissioner said he watched Monday night's frenetic Packers-Seahawks finish at home.

"You never want to see a game end like that," he said.

The new agreement will improve officiating in the future, Goodell asserted, reducing mistakes like those made Monday and making the strains of the last three weeks worthwhile.

Goodell acknowledged "you're always worried" about the perception of the league.

"Obviously, this has gotten a lot of attention," he said. "It hasn't been positive, and it's something that you have to fight through and get to the long term. ... We always are going to have to work harder to make sure we get people's trust and confidence in us."

The dispute even made its way to the campaign trail, with President Barack Obama's spokesman, Jay Carney, calling Thursday "a great day for America."

"The president's very pleased that the two sides have come together," Carney said.

___

AP Sports Writer Rachel Cohen and AP Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner in New York, AP Pro Football Writer Howard Fendrich in Washington, and AP Sports Writers David Ginsburg in Baltimore, Larry Lage in Allen Park, Mich., Joe Kay in Cincinnati and Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.

___

Follow Joseph White on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JGWhiteAP

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-09-27-Refs%20Return/id-9ee3f199d6984fb9bf10eab2a5ccf0e0

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Asteroid's troughs suggest stunted planet

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2012) ? Enormous troughs that reach across the asteroid Vesta may actually be stretch marks that hint of a complexity beyond most asteroids. Scientists have been trying to determine the origin of these unusual troughs since their discovery just last year. Now, a new analysis supports the notion that the troughs are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta's south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons.

Asteroid surface deformities are typically straightforward cracks formed by crashes with other asteroids. Instead, an extensive system of troughs encircles Vesta, the second most massive asteroid in the solar system, about one-seventh as wide as the Moon. The biggest of those troughs, named Divalia Fossa, surpasses the size of the Grand Canyon by spanning 465 kilometers (289 miles) long, 22 km (13.6 mi) wide and 5 km (3 mi) deep.

The origin of these troughs on Vesta has puzzled scientists. The complexity of their formation can't be explained by simple collisions. New measurements of Vesta's topography, derived from images of Vesta taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft last year, indicate that a large collision could have created the asteroid's troughs. But, this would only have been possible if the asteroid is differentiated -- meaning that it has a core, mantle and crust -- said Debra Buczkowski of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Because Vesta is differentiated, its layers have different densities, which react differently to the force from the impact and make it possible for the faulted surface to slide, she added. "By saying it's differentiated, we're basically saying Vesta was a little planet trying to happen."

Her team's research will be published online this Saturday in Geophysical Research Letters.

Most asteroids are pretty simple. "They're just like giant rocks in space," said Buczkowski. But previous research has found signs of igneous rock on Vesta, indicating that rock on Vesta's surface was once molten, a sign of differentiation. If the troughs are made possible by differentiation, then the cracks aren't just troughs, they're graben. A graben is a dip in the surface that forms when two faults move apart from each other and the ground sinks into the widening gap, such as in Death Valley in California. Scientists have also observed graben on the Moon and planets such as Mars.

The images from the Dawn mission show that Vesta's troughs have many of the qualities of graben, said Buczkowski. For example, the walls of troughs on simpler asteroids such as Eros and Lutetia are shaped like the letter V. But Vesta's troughs have floors that are flat or curved and have distinct walls on either side, like the letter U -- a signature of a fault moving apart, instead of simple cracking on the surface.

The scientists' measurements also showed that the bottoms of the troughs on Vesta are relatively flat and slanted toward what's probably a dominant fault, much as they are in Earth-bound graben.

These observations indicate that Vesta is also unusually planet-like for an asteroid in that its mantle is ductile and can stretch under a lot of pressure. "It can become almost silly putty-ish," said Buczkowski. "You pull it and it deforms."

Buczkowski and her colleagues' arguments for differentiation of Vesta are interesting, said planetary scientist Geoff Collins of Wheaton College, in Norton, Mass, who specializes in tectonics, the structure and motion of planetary crusts. "On many much smaller asteroid bodies, we've seen very narrow troughs that look just like cracks on the surface," said Collins, who was not involved in the new study. "But nothing that looks like a sort of traditional terrestrial graben that you'd find on Mars or the moon where things have really been pulled apart."

But Collins is not yet fully convinced that Vesta's troughs are graben. An example of rock-solid evidence of graben on Vesta that has yet to be discovered, he said, would be an obvious crater that had been torn in two by a trough.

There are other qualities of Vesta that could be clues to how the troughs formed. For example, unlike the larger asteroid Ceres, Vesta is not classified as a dwarf planet because the large collision at its south pole knocked it out of its spherical shape, said Buczkowski. It's now more squat, like a walnut. But if Vesta has a mantle and core, that would mean it has qualities often reserved for planets, dwarf planets and moons -- regardless of its shape.

The origin of that funny shape is the centerpiece of a different hypothesis about how the troughs formed. Britney Schmidt of the Institute for Geophysics in Austin, Texas, believes the south pole collision knocked Vesta into its current speedy rate of rotation about its axis of about once per 5.35 hours, which may have caused the equator to bulge outward so far and so fast that the rotation caused the troughs, rather than the direct power of the impact. "It's an enigma why Vesta rotates so quickly," said Schmidt, who was not a part of the current study.

Dawn has already left to explore Ceres, so all the data it will retrieve on Vesta is in hand. Buczkowski said scientists will continue to sort that data out and improve on computer simulations of Vesta's interior. As those analyses come along, she said she will keep an open mind toward any revelations that come to light, but she doesn't expect her conclusion will change. "I really think that these are graben," she said.

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Journal Reference:

1. Debra L Buczkowski, Paul M. Schenk, Lucille Le Corre, Vishnu Reddy, R. Aileen Yingst, Scott Charles Mest, David A Williams, W. Brent Garry, Olivier S. Barnouin, Ralf Jaumann, Carol A. Raymond, Danielle Y Wyrick, Christopher T. Russell, Kaushik Iyer, Eliezer Kahn, Jennifer Scully, Andreas Nathues, Bob Gaskell, Thomas Roatsch, Frank Preusker. Large-scale troughs on Vesta: A signature of planetary tectonics. Geophysical Research Letters, 2012; DOI: 10.1029/2012GL052959

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_technology/~3/AciuPY1OcdE/120926143519.htm

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Open Season on Salt: What the Science on Hypertension Really Shows

Shedding pounds may be a better way to promote cardiovascular health than avoiding the saltshaker

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Image: Flickr/reallyboring

The latest news reports about salt are enough to make a parent ponder a household ban on pizza and cold cuts. A study published last week in Pediatrics found that children eat, on average, 3.4 grams of sodium daily?more than twice the amount recommended for adults by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). News outlets, including the Associated Press and USA Today, explained that, according to the study, the quarter of American kids who eat the most sodium are twice to three times as likely to develop high blood pressure as the quarter who eat the least. The take-home message from these stories is clear: kids need to cut down on salt or they will suffer serious health consequences.

It's a compelling argument. Problem is, it may be wrong.

The study that these articles reference, which was published by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), did not actually find a statistically significant association between salt intake and blood pressure in kids. And the doubling or tripling of risk described by some outlets isn't an accurate portrayal of the findings either. As lead author Quanhe Yang explained to Scientific American in an interview, high salt intake doubles the odds that kids have hypertension or pre-hypertension (and again, this doubling is not statistically significant), but odds and risk are two very different things. "I am not sure the best way to convert this odds ratio into a risk ratio," Yang says, but if he had to guess, the risk would probably be lower than the odds.

Yang's study does provide compelling insights. It shows that among obese or overweight children, increased salt intake is linked to higher blood pressure, an association that is statistically significant. Scientists have long known that obesity increases hypertension risk in adults and kids, but the CDC's study suggests that being overweight might also make kids more sensitive to salt's blood-pressure-boosting effect.

Still, the kids' blood pressure changes were not huge: The overweight children who ate the most sodium?an average of about 4.6 grams per day?had an average systolic blood pressure (the top number in the blood pressure ratio) of 112.8 millimeters of mercury (mmHg), whereas those who consumed the least?an average of 2.3 grams of sodium?had an average systolic pressure of 109 mmHg. (The two groups? average diastolic pressures, the bottom number in the ratio, were the same.) In other words, among overweight and obese kids, a doubling of sodium intake was associated with a 3 percent increase in systolic blood pressure. This difference may not be clinically significant for individuals, because "systolic blood pressure changes from minute to minute" by as much as 5 mmHg, says Michael Alderman, a professor emeritus at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and editor in chief of the American Journal of Hypertension.

An average systolic blood-pressure difference of 3 percent could, however, have consequences for overall public health. But Yang says that it's impossible to tell from his study whether eating more salt actually causes blood pressure to rise. "This is a cross-sectional study; we cannot say anything about causality," he explains. Although he and his colleagues tried to control for potentially confounding variables, it's possible that kids who eat more salt also have other habits that predispose them to high blood pressure. (For instance, research suggests that children who eat lots of salt also drink lots of soft drinks, which are associated with blood pressure increases, too.) Indeed, research doesn't always support the notion that salt causes high blood pressure: A large, multicenter study known as INTERSALT compared urinary sodium levels?an accurate indicator of prior sodium consumption?with hypertension in more than 10,000 people in 1988 and found no statistically significant association between them. In fact, the population that ate the most sodium had a lower median blood pressure than the population that ate the least.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=ed833af8c7cab6077f07359cd8704253

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August Top 10 Google SEO Tips List for Small Business Released by JM Internet Group

What do small businesses want to know about Google and SEO? As a leader in SEO training and courses, the JM Internet Group shares the most popular inbound SEO tips queries for August, 2012.Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) September 12, 2012 The JM Internet Group (web: jm-seo.org), a provider of online SEO courses, is proud to announce their list of the most popular SEO Tips on Google and SEO for August ...

Emma Watson Tops List of Most Dangerous Celebrities

By now, almost everyone knows the Internet is far from a safe place. In a new study released by McAfee, celebrities names are being used by scammers to tempt web users who search for celebrities to visit websites that are actually laden with malicious software. Anyone looking for the latest videos or pictures could end up with a malware-ridden computer instead of the trendy content they were ...

Emma Watson Tops List of 10 Most Dangerous Celebrities on Web

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Internet Marketing Tools List Provided Free of Charge Online

Internet marketing tools list compiled by Marketer's Black Book is now provided free of charge online. This in-demand list includes a large resource of tools that business owners, website owners and Internet marketers can use to help increase website traffic and sales volume for a website or blog.Baltimore, Maryland (PRWEB) September 08, 2012 Internet marketing is one area of business that an ...

Sweden Tops The List For Internet Know-How

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Mitt Romney apologizes to terrorists who killed US ambassador (Americablog)

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France and Germany clash over pace of debt relief plans

irishtimes.com - Last Updated: Saturday, September 15, 2012, 10:54

ARTHUR BEESLEY

German finance minister Wolfgang Sch?uble said it was unrealistic to expect direct bank recapitalisations by the European Stability Mechanism fund early next year as Spain resisted pressure to seek more aid from Europe.

At day-long talks in Nicosia, EU finance ministers gave themselves extra time to decide on a second bailout for Greece and debated a proposal to empower the European Central Bank to supervise the banking system in the euro zone.

EU leaders have said the new supervisor must be up and running within the ECB before the ESM can be deployed to recapitalise stricken euro zone banks.

While this is a core element of Ireland?s campaign for bank debt relief, the Government?s attention seems fixed on a deal to restructure the debts of Anglo Irish Bank.

Amid division over the scope of the ECB?s new powers, Mr Sch?uble questioned whether the new system could be in place by the end of this year and warned against creating unrealistic expectations in markets.

?I don?t see that there can be direct recapitalisation through the ESM already by January 1st,? he said.

?Aside from that you have to remember: even when you have a European banking supervision, the member state in question not only has to apply for bank recapitalisation, but also has to agree the memorandum of understanding with its appropriate macroeconomic agreements. Conditionality is not invalidated.?

His remarks were at odds with those of his French counterpart, Pierre Moscovichi, who said: ?The direction set by the European Council is very clear. It?s to complete the discussion in 2012 and to go fast. Otherwise everything remains theoretical and our problems are concrete".

"The euro crisis is affecting everyone in the euro zone, including Germany. It is not a question of rushing but we must keep up the rhythm of reform," he added.

These tensions come amid doubt among top Europeans over Spain?s prospects of avoiding a full-blown sovereign bailout, something the government insists it does not need. Although the announcement of the ECB?s bond-buying initiative has helped ease Spanish bond yields, the country must still sign up to a formal aid programme before the central bank intervenes to buy its debt.

Spanish economy minister Luis de Guindos said Madrid will set new targets for structural reforms before October but maintained the move was not linked to any possible terms for a sovereign bailout.

?It is much more important to meet our public deficit targets and comply with our programme of reform than a potential rescue,? he said. ?We will adopt a new set of reforms to boost growth . . . ?

The uncertainty over Spain?s precise intentions came as ministers pushed back until the second half of October the timeline for the conclusion of the Greek bailout.

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said it was worth examining whether the country should be given more time. ?It seems to us quite clear that Greece has already produced a huge effort but will have to continue to do so,? she said. ?And the target when it comes to achieving debt sustainability is very high, so there are various ways to adjust: time is one and that needs to be considered as an option.?

Establishing a common framework for dealing with problem banks would mark a departure from the previously haphazard approach taken by the euro zone's 17 members that has frustrated investors and helped drive up borrowing costs for weaker states.

A banking union foresees three steps: the ECB getting the power to monitor all euro zone banks and others in the wider EU that agree to the oversight; the establishment of a fund to close troubled banks; and a fully fledged scheme to protect citizens' deposits across the euro zone.

Given that day-to-day supervision of banks would remain the task of national regulators, some officials suspect that Berlin's real concern is that a banking union would see it paying the costs of propping up lenders in weak countries.

Joerg Asmussen, a member of the ECB's executive board which forms the nucleus of its policymaking, warned that a banking union could not work without a fund paid for by industry to cover the cost of closing banks and a deposit protection scheme.

Experts from think tank Bruegel delivered a similar message to ministers.

The close ties between governments and the banks they supervised and on whom they also relied to buy their debt, has dragged both ever deeper into crisis.

A banking union would break this link by making the policing of banks supranational and establishing central schemes paid into collectively to cover the costs of closing failed lenders.

Additional reporting: Agencies?

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Japan Frets Over U.S. Support In China Dispute

Reuters

A China marine-surveillance ship, foreground, is shadowed by a Japanese coast-guard vessel in territorial waters off the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012

TOKYO ? When the U.S. Defense Secretary arrives in Asia this weekend, his biggest challenge may not be convincing China that America will give its full support to longtime ally Japan in the escalating dispute over islands in the East China Sea.? His biggest challenge may be convincing Japan.

?There is a perception in Japan that the U.S. commitment is ambiguous,? says Yoichiro Sato, director of international strategic studies at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in southern Japan. ?If China thinks Japan will hesitate to respond or that America will hesitate, that will embolden the Chinese. It?s better that America sends a clear, explicit message now than have to respond to something worse later.?

On Friday, a group of six Chinese marine-surveillance ships entered territorial waters around the remote Senkaku Islands, which are claimed and administered by Japan as sovereign territory. It was the latest and most serious escalation in the dispute over the small but potentially valuable islands; they are also claimed by China, where they are known as Diaoyu.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is scheduled to meet separately with Japan?s Foreign and Defense ministers on Monday before continuing on to China and later New Zealand. It will be Panetta?s third trip to Asia in 11 months as the U.S. looks to rebalance its forces in the region in response to China?s growing military power and assertiveness.

The disagreement between Japan and China over ownership of Senkaku/Diaoyu, a group of tiny islets and rock outcroppings near Taiwan, has grown increasingly bitter. Though surrounding seabeds are believed to hold large deposits of oil and gas, the dispute hinges largely on issues related to Japan?s wartime and colonial period.

The lightly armed Chinese marine-surveillance ships? entry into Senkaku/Diaoyu territorial waters was an apparent display of Beijing?s displeasure at the purchase of the islands by Japan?s national government earlier this week. Though Tokyo insists that the purchase ? from private owners in Japan ? was necessary to preserve the islands in their current state, China views the transaction as illegal and an affront to its sovereign rights.

Officially, the U.S. takes no position on the Senkaku-Diaoyu dispute or the many other conflicting territorial claims that are upsetting the region. Under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the U.S. is obligated to respond to any attack on Japan or its territory. Pressed to declare whether that security umbrella includes Senkaku/Diaoyu, U.S. officials stated publicly that the treaty applies to ?all areas under Japanese administration? ? a seemingly clear nod to Senkaku/Diaoyu.

But Sato says that?s not clear enough.? The alliance also calls for Japan to take ?primary responsibility? for territorial defense. That could give the U.S. a loophole to avoid confronting its most important trading partner and leave Japan on its own, he says.

?If Japan loses the islands and the U.S. doesn?t come to aid Japan, the credibility of not only the U.S. alliance with Japan but of all U.S. alliances globally would be severely harmed,? Sato says.

For an officially pacifist country, Japan has a deceptively large and powerful military. More than 250,000 of its men and women are in uniform, and its annual defense spending is the 6th highest in the world. Its maritime forces bristle with modern submarines and surface warships.

In 2010 Japan adopted a realignment plan to better protect its southwestern islands, which extend more then 750 miles (1,200 km) from Japan?s home islands. But it has a long way to go. While Japan?s naval forces are more than a match for China?s navy and armed patrol fleet, ground forces still have little capability to retake islands that China, if so inclined, might succeed in occupying.

About 40 Japan Ground Self-Defense Force troops are conducting their first-ever amphibious warfare training this month with U.S. Marines in Guam; the JGSDF plans to buy four amphibious assault vehicles ? but not until next year. That?s too little, too late to help with Senkaku/Diaoyu.

The U.S., meanwhile, has more than 14,000 Marines stationed in Okinawa, many of them veterans of multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The powerful U.S. 7th Fleet is homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, within easy range of the East China Sea.

But for all that, a direct confrontation at sea is unlikely, says Alessio Patalano, a Japan naval historian and East Asia security specialist at the Department of War Studies, King?s College London.? He notes that the patrol vessels cruising Senkaku/Diaoyu belong to neither China?s navy nor its coast guard; instead, they are part of the Chinese marine-surveillance service, a largely civilian organization charged with environmental protection, scientific research, enforcement issues related to exclusive economic zones and similar duties.

?The PLA Navy is aware of its limitations, and they don?t want to get a beating from the Japanese,? says Patalano, who presented a series of lectures in Beijing and Tokyo this month. ?The more likely scenario would be for China to insert special forces under cover of night, by parachute or other means. When the Japanese wake up in the morning and see Chinese soldiers on one of their islands, what do they do then??

Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu, says there?s little doubt that the U.S. would respond if shooting were to break out between China and Japan. The key, Glosserman says, is to make sure the Japanese know exactly what they can count on from the U.S. ? and what, if anything, they can?t.

?The U.S. will be there, because if we aren?t, our credibility is shot and the Japanese will never trust us again. That would transform the regional security environment, and the Chinese will think they have carte blanche,? says Glosserman. ?But the problem is, do Americans and Japanese agree on what ?being there? means? Does that mean submarines? Surface warships? Helicopters with Marines rappelling to the ground? The Americans need to understand what the Japanese expect of them, because failure to do those things could cause big problems.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/time/topstories/~3/1LaErdQAaEc/

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