ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? Federal officials say a suspected drug trafficker affiliated with the deadly Sinaloa Cartel couldn't dance his troubles away.
Omar Cota was taken into custody early Friday off a dance floor at Route 66 Casino's Club Envy in New Mexico. Officials say federal agents and police in Laguna arrested the 28-year-old after receiving a tip that he liked to go to the casino.
The U.S. Marshals Service says Cota had an outstanding federal arrest warrant for drug trafficking and had eluded federal agents since February 2012.
Authorities say agents found a large amount of cash and suspected drugs with Cota, who is believed to be a member of the Brew Town gang.
Can't make it to see "Jurassic Park" in 3-D? The artists at Airigami have you covered.
With some help from volunteers and schoolchildren, the group, headed by Larry Moss, has created a 20-foot-tall dinosaur from balloons. The effort took days, but in the above video you can watch from beginning to end in less then two minutes.
As reported by designboom.com, the acrocanthosaurus is being housed at the Virginia Museum of Natural History until the balloons begin to wither, which could be any second now. After that, well, the balloon beast will go the way of the dinosaur.
According to Airigami's blog, this isn't the first time the group has constructed a dinosaur from air and plastic. But it does mark the first time it was able to build a fearsome creature next to a real dinosaur skeleton.
Moss writes that "having a life-size model next to us sure made the construction a lot easier. Our design, based on images we found online, was pretty accurate, but it was nice to be able to look up and take measurements off of the real thing."
For more amazing balloon sculptures, check out Airigami's official site.
MOSCOW (AP) ? Two men in their early twenties lie face down in the snow, hands tied behind their backs, heads doused with dark red paint. A dozen young men, some wearing surgical masks, wreck a car with hammers and axes. One sets fire to a plastic bag filled with a greenish powder and a stack of cards that read: "Aroma. Smoking mixes."
The powder is a synthetic drug known as "spice" that is Russia's latest scourge. The pair on the ground are alleged pushers. And the hammer-wielding men? Vigilantes fighting the drug's spread with widespread public approval, admiring television coverage ? and, according to critics, the Kremlin's tacit blessing.
The anti-drug gangs roaming streets in Moscow and other urban centers are an offshoot of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia. The vigilantes, who call themselves the Young Anti-Drugs Special Forces, have tapped into rising public outrage over the spread of drug use in Russia, and the impotence of law enforcement to stop it. They are also stirring concerns about President Vladimir Putin's perceived tolerance for extralegal actions against forces considered harmful to the regime or to public order.
Young Russia and a half dozen other pro-Kremlin youth groups were formed in the mid-2000s, analysts and opposition figures say, to prevent street protests similar to those that ushered pro-Western opposition forces into power in three ex-Soviet states: Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. Russian authorities are accused of encouraging violence, or the threat of violence, by youth gangs when dealing with what they see as threats to stability. The vigilantes' free hand indicates that the spice epidemic is seen as one of such threats.
The Interior Ministry, which controls Russia's police, declined comment to The Associated Press on the gangs, which suspended their activities this month without explanation. The head of Russia's anti-drugs agency, Viktor Ivanov, criticized the group's actions as illegal and "nothing but noise."
Spice consists of herbs coated in chemicals that mimic the effects of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine. In recent years, millions here, mostly teenagers, have smoked various kinds of spice, attracted by its cheapness, availability and reputation for being harmless, officials and anti-drug campaigners say. Reliable figures on usage are not available because of the variety of kinds of spice on offer and the lack of official studies on the phenomenon.
Pushers sell bags of spice for less than $15, in schools or online, from bulletproof cars and shops with barred windows and metal doors. Their phone numbers are often scrawled on walls or sidewalks, or printed on business cards that carry messages such as "100 percent harmless smoking mix" and "Smoke and go to paradise." Some pushers never see their customers and text message the whereabouts of a spice stash after getting a money transfer.
Spice is mass produced in China and Southeast Asia and exported to Russia as bath salts, incense and slimming additives, often in mail packages.
Ivanov, who heads Russia's Federal Drug Control Agency, said fighting spice is nearly impossible, because banning one or more ingredients means manufacturers simply change the molecular structure of the chemicals or replace the herbs to skirt the law.
"There are 900 versions of it, and every week they come up with a new one," Ivanov told The Associated Press.
And that's where the masked men with hammers come in. The Anti-Drugs Special Forces, widely known by their Russian acronym, MAS, was formed last year and includes dozens of activists in Moscow, many of them with a background in martial arts. Leaders say the group gets funding from donors and small city-run construction projects that its volunteers work on.
And the group has its own formula for hunting down spice traders. They track down a pusher. One of them uses a hidden camera to videotape a "control purchase." And then a dozen or more attack, while one or two of them shoot video.
They sometimes face no resistance from lone pushers who beg to be released and swear never to sell spice anymore. Other times, they fail to break into their fortified shops, leaving after painting the doors and bullet-proof windows with graffiti saying: "Drugs are sold here" or "They kill your children with impunity." On rare occasions, pushers fight back or call their bosses ? burly men with guns and knives.
An Associated Press reporter observed the Moscow attacks on the two pushers who were doused with red paint in the snow.
Screaming obscenities and threats, more than a dozen vigilantes wearing masks and holding hammers surrounded a man with a baseball bat who had just jumped out of a parked car. The man moved backward, swinging his bat as several masked vigilantes closed in. The driver sat in the car, face convulsed with fear.
The attackers broke a window of the car and threw in a smoke candle, forcing the driver out. They punched and kicked him, tied his arms and legs with duct-tape and threw him to the snow, dousing his head with paint. From the car's front seat, they took a plastic bag with spice and set it afire. Seconds later, the first man was tied up and also soaked in paint. The assailants smashed the car with metal bars and hammers and turned it on its side.
The group admits that its methods are illegal.
"We're walking on the edge, but you have to understand that fighting drugs is a serious thing," said group leader Alexei Grunichev, fair-haired and gaunt, while showing raid videos on his laptop at the group's headquarters in several decrepit rooms. "We also understand our guilt for what we do, but I think that what we do is right and we will fight, keep fighting using these methods until law enforcement agencies, authorities can put everything under control."
The group claims to have conducted more than 300 raids over the past year in Moscow alone, and posts many raid videos online. These short clips are the backbone of the group's reputation and popular support ? despite the violence, obscenities and property damage they contain. They are available on YouTube, the website of their mother group, Young Russia, and on the group's page on vk.com, Russia's most popular social networking site.
MAF issued a low-key statement on vk.com this month saying that it had halted drug raids on April 12. However, the group's main website does not mention the suspension and still advertises its hardcore solutions to the spice use problem.
Hundreds of Russians leave encouraging messages on the group's webpages, young rappers praise them in songs and Russian television networks run reports on the group's raids.
"People often say, 'You should just kill those pushers,' although that's not the way we work," says Arkady Grichishkin, an agitated 21-year-old martial arts student often seen on the group's videos as a leader of raids.
The Federal Drugs Control Agency said it does not condone the group's raids.
"We cannot welcome it," said Ivanov. "It lies beyond law ? first of all. And secondly, it makes nothing but noise." The vigilantes, however, appear to see Ivanov as an ally, posting his portrait on the walls of their headquarters.
Users say that the high they get is extremely intense and hallucinogenic. After several weeks of using spice, the drug causes sleep and weight loss, hypertension, seizures and can even lead to schizophrenia, according to officials, health experts and studies in Russia, EU and the U.S.
Users' parents also appear to be worried.
"Eighty per cent of phone calls our hot line gets are about spice," says Alexander Bysov of the Moscow-based Sodeistvie ? or Assistance ? anti-drugs fund that has a hotline for drug addicts and their parents and runs a rehab. "Parents are already crying SOS."
___
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr. contributed to this report
Premiere Pro has already been tearing through video with OpenCL on Macsfor a year, and now AMD and Adobe have teamed up to bring support for the open standard to Windows with the software's next version. Not only does the duo claim it's the first time Microsoft's OS has been graced with hardware-accelerated video editing using OpenCL, but they boast that exporting video replete with effects from a source to a final format can now be done up to 4.3 times faster. There's no word on when the fresh release of Premiere Pro will arrive, but if it's any consolation, Adobe says it's set to unveil some "incredible enhancements" to its video editing tools at NAB next week.
Adhesive force differences enable separation of stem cells to advance therapiesPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Toon jtoon@gatech.edu 404-894-6986 Georgia Institute of Technology
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A new separation process that depends on an easily-distinguished physical difference in adhesive forces among cells could help expand production of stem cells generated through cell reprogramming. By facilitating new research, the separation process could also lead to improvements in the reprogramming technique itself and help scientists model certain disease processes.
The reprogramming technique allows a small percentage of cells often taken from the skin or blood to become human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) capable of producing a wide range of other cell types. Using cells taken from a patient's own body, the reprogramming technique might one day enable regenerative therapies that could, for example, provide new heart cells for treating cardiovascular disorders or new neurons for treating Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease.
But the cell reprogramming technique is inefficient, generating mixtures in which the cells of interest make up just a small percentage of the total volume. Separating out the pluripotent stem cells is now time-consuming and requires a level of skill that could limit use of the technique and hold back the potential therapies.
To address the problem, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tunable process that separates cells according to the degree to which they adhere to a substrate inside a tiny microfluidic device. The adhesion properties of the hiPSCs differ significantly from those of the cells with which they are mixed, allowing the potentially-therapeutic cells to be separated to as much as 99 percent purity.
The high-throughput separation process, which takes less than 10 minutes to perform, does not rely on labeling technologies such as antibodies. Because it allows separation of intact cell colonies, it avoids damaging the cells, allowing a cell survival rate greater than 80 percent. The resulting cells retain normal transcriptional profiles, differentiation potential and karyotype.
"The principle of the separation is based on the physical phenomenon of adhesion strength, which is controlled by the underlying biology," said Andrs Garca, the study's principal investigator and a professor in Georgia Tech's Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. "This is a very powerful platform technology because it is easy to implement and easy to scale up."
The separation process will be described April 7 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Methods. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), supplemented by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
"The scientists applied their new understanding of the adhesive properties of human pluripotent stem cells to develop a quick, efficient method for isolating these medically important cells," said Paula Flicker, of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the research. "Their work represents an innovative conversion of basic biological findings into a strategy with therapeutic potential."
An improved separation technique is essential for converting the human induced pluripotent stem cells produced by reprogramming into viable therapies, said Todd McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and director of Georgia Tech's Stem Cell Engineering Center.
"For research purposes, depending on labeling reagents for separation is not a major problem," said McDevitt, one of the paper's co-authors. "But when we move into commercialization and manufacturing of cell therapies for humans, we need a technology approach that is unbiased and able to be scaled up."
The separation technique, called micro stem cell high-efficiency adhesion-based recovery (SHEAR), will allow standardization across laboratories, providing consistent results that don't depend on the skill level of the users. "Because of the engineering and technology involved, and the characterization work, we now have a technology that is readily transferrable," McDevitt said.
The SHEAR process grew out of an understanding of how cells involved in the reprogramming process change morphologically as the process proceeds. Using a spinning disk device, the researchers tested the adhesive properties of the hiPSCs, the parental somatic cells, partially-reprogrammed cells and reprogrammed cells that had begun differentiating. For each cell type, they measured its "adhesive signature" the level of force required to detach the cells from a substrate that had been coated with specific proteins.
The research team, which included Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellows Ankur Singh and Shalu Suri, tested their technique in microfluidic devices developed in collaboration with Hang Lu, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
In the testing, cells from the culture were first allowed to attach to the substrate before being subjected to the flow of buffer fluid. Cells with a lower adhesive signature detached from the substrate at lower flow rates. By varying the flow rate, the researchers were able to separate specific types of cells, allowing production of stem cell cultures with purity as high as 99 percent from mixtures in which those cells accounted for only a few percent of the total.
"At different stages of reprogramming, we see differences in the molecular composition and distribution of the cellular structures that control adhesion force," Garca explained. "Once we know the range of adhesive forces for each cell type, we can apply those narrow ranges to select the populations that come off in each range."
Using inexpensive disposable "cassettes," the microfluidic system could be scaled up to increase the volume of cells produced and to provide specific separations, Garca noted.
Unlike existing labeling techniques, the new separation process works on cell colonies, avoiding the need to risk damaging cells by breaking up colonies for separation. The separation process has been tested with both reprogrammed blood and skin cells. Cells were provided for testing by ArunA Biomedical, a company based in Athens, Ga., founded by University of Georgia professor Steven Stice.
Beyond the direct application in producing stem cells, the separation technique could also help scientists with other research in which cells need to be separated including potential improvements in the reprogramming technique, which won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2012.
"Cell reprogramming has been a black box," said McDevitt. "You start the reprogramming process, and when the cells are fully reprogrammed, you can pick them out visually. But there are really interesting scientific questions about this process, and by isolating cells undergoing reprogramming, we may be able to make new discoveries about how the process occurs."
###
In addition to those already mentioned, the project also included graduate student Ted Lee and research technician Marissa Cooke of Georgia Tech, researcher Jamie Chilton of ArunA, and Weiqiang Chen and Jianping Fu of the University of Michigan.
This work was supported by an ARRA supplement to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) award R01 GM065918 and R43 NS080407, the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, by the National Science Foundation under award DBI-0649833 and an ARRA sub-award under grant RC1CA144825, and by NSF award CMMI-1129611, the Georgia Tech-Emory Center for Regenerative Medicine (GTEC) and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions of the NIH or NSF.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Adhesive force differences enable separation of stem cells to advance therapiesPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: John Toon jtoon@gatech.edu 404-894-6986 Georgia Institute of Technology
Sticky signature
A new separation process that depends on an easily-distinguished physical difference in adhesive forces among cells could help expand production of stem cells generated through cell reprogramming. By facilitating new research, the separation process could also lead to improvements in the reprogramming technique itself and help scientists model certain disease processes.
The reprogramming technique allows a small percentage of cells often taken from the skin or blood to become human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) capable of producing a wide range of other cell types. Using cells taken from a patient's own body, the reprogramming technique might one day enable regenerative therapies that could, for example, provide new heart cells for treating cardiovascular disorders or new neurons for treating Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease.
But the cell reprogramming technique is inefficient, generating mixtures in which the cells of interest make up just a small percentage of the total volume. Separating out the pluripotent stem cells is now time-consuming and requires a level of skill that could limit use of the technique and hold back the potential therapies.
To address the problem, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tunable process that separates cells according to the degree to which they adhere to a substrate inside a tiny microfluidic device. The adhesion properties of the hiPSCs differ significantly from those of the cells with which they are mixed, allowing the potentially-therapeutic cells to be separated to as much as 99 percent purity.
The high-throughput separation process, which takes less than 10 minutes to perform, does not rely on labeling technologies such as antibodies. Because it allows separation of intact cell colonies, it avoids damaging the cells, allowing a cell survival rate greater than 80 percent. The resulting cells retain normal transcriptional profiles, differentiation potential and karyotype.
"The principle of the separation is based on the physical phenomenon of adhesion strength, which is controlled by the underlying biology," said Andrs Garca, the study's principal investigator and a professor in Georgia Tech's Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. "This is a very powerful platform technology because it is easy to implement and easy to scale up."
The separation process will be described April 7 in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Methods. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), supplemented by funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
"The scientists applied their new understanding of the adhesive properties of human pluripotent stem cells to develop a quick, efficient method for isolating these medically important cells," said Paula Flicker, of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the research. "Their work represents an innovative conversion of basic biological findings into a strategy with therapeutic potential."
An improved separation technique is essential for converting the human induced pluripotent stem cells produced by reprogramming into viable therapies, said Todd McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and director of Georgia Tech's Stem Cell Engineering Center.
"For research purposes, depending on labeling reagents for separation is not a major problem," said McDevitt, one of the paper's co-authors. "But when we move into commercialization and manufacturing of cell therapies for humans, we need a technology approach that is unbiased and able to be scaled up."
The separation technique, called micro stem cell high-efficiency adhesion-based recovery (SHEAR), will allow standardization across laboratories, providing consistent results that don't depend on the skill level of the users. "Because of the engineering and technology involved, and the characterization work, we now have a technology that is readily transferrable," McDevitt said.
The SHEAR process grew out of an understanding of how cells involved in the reprogramming process change morphologically as the process proceeds. Using a spinning disk device, the researchers tested the adhesive properties of the hiPSCs, the parental somatic cells, partially-reprogrammed cells and reprogrammed cells that had begun differentiating. For each cell type, they measured its "adhesive signature" the level of force required to detach the cells from a substrate that had been coated with specific proteins.
The research team, which included Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellows Ankur Singh and Shalu Suri, tested their technique in microfluidic devices developed in collaboration with Hang Lu, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
In the testing, cells from the culture were first allowed to attach to the substrate before being subjected to the flow of buffer fluid. Cells with a lower adhesive signature detached from the substrate at lower flow rates. By varying the flow rate, the researchers were able to separate specific types of cells, allowing production of stem cell cultures with purity as high as 99 percent from mixtures in which those cells accounted for only a few percent of the total.
"At different stages of reprogramming, we see differences in the molecular composition and distribution of the cellular structures that control adhesion force," Garca explained. "Once we know the range of adhesive forces for each cell type, we can apply those narrow ranges to select the populations that come off in each range."
Using inexpensive disposable "cassettes," the microfluidic system could be scaled up to increase the volume of cells produced and to provide specific separations, Garca noted.
Unlike existing labeling techniques, the new separation process works on cell colonies, avoiding the need to risk damaging cells by breaking up colonies for separation. The separation process has been tested with both reprogrammed blood and skin cells. Cells were provided for testing by ArunA Biomedical, a company based in Athens, Ga., founded by University of Georgia professor Steven Stice.
Beyond the direct application in producing stem cells, the separation technique could also help scientists with other research in which cells need to be separated including potential improvements in the reprogramming technique, which won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2012.
"Cell reprogramming has been a black box," said McDevitt. "You start the reprogramming process, and when the cells are fully reprogrammed, you can pick them out visually. But there are really interesting scientific questions about this process, and by isolating cells undergoing reprogramming, we may be able to make new discoveries about how the process occurs."
###
In addition to those already mentioned, the project also included graduate student Ted Lee and research technician Marissa Cooke of Georgia Tech, researcher Jamie Chilton of ArunA, and Weiqiang Chen and Jianping Fu of the University of Michigan.
This work was supported by an ARRA supplement to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) award R01 GM065918 and R43 NS080407, the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, by the National Science Foundation under award DBI-0649833 and an ARRA sub-award under grant RC1CA144825, and by NSF award CMMI-1129611, the Georgia Tech-Emory Center for Regenerative Medicine (GTEC) and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official positions of the NIH or NSF.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Militants killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat, and an Afghan doctor Saturday in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan on Saturday. It was the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.
The violence ? hours after the U.S. military's top officer arrived for consultations with Afghan and U.S.-led coalition officials ? illustrates the instability plaguing the nation as foreign forces work to pull nearly all their combat troops out of the country by the end of 2014.
The attacks came just days after insurgents stormed a courthouse, killing more than 46 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the war, now in its 12th year.
The three U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when the group was struck by an explosion while traveling to donate books to students in a school in the south, officials and the State Department said.
In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Americans included a department of defense civilian and the foreign service officer.
"She tragically gave her young life working to give young Afghans the opportunity to have a better future," Kerry said. "We also honor the U.S. troops and Department of Defense civilian who lost their lives, and the Afghan civilians who were killed today as they worked to improve the nation they love."
Officials said the explosion occurred just as a coalition convoy drove past a caravan of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province to the same event.
Another American civilian was killed in a separate insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement.
It was the deadliest day for Americans since Aug. 16, when seven American service members were killed in two attacks in Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency. Six were killed when their helicopter was shot down by insurgents and one soldier died in a roadside bomb explosion.
The latest attacks occurred just hours after U.S. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, landed in Afghanistan for a visit aimed at assessing the level of training that American troops can provide to Afghan security forces after international combat forces complete their withdrawal.
A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said several other Americans and Afghans, possibly as many as nine, were wounded. The State Department said four of their staff were wounded, one critically.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in Zabul and said the bomber was seeking to target either a coalition convoy or the governor.
"We were waiting for one of them," Ahmadi said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It was our good luck that both appeared at the same time."
The deaths bring the number of foreign military troops killed this year to 30, including 22 Americans. A total of six foreign civilians have died in Afghanistan so far this year, according to an AP count.
Provincial Gov. Mohammad Ashraf Nasery, who survived the attack in Qalat, said the explosion occurred in front of a hospital and a coalition base housing a provincial reconstruction team, or PRT. International civilian and military workers at the PRT train Afghan government officials and help with local development projects.
Nasery said the car bomb exploded as his convoy was passing the hospital. He said the doctor was killed, and two of his bodyguards and a student from the school were wounded.
"The governor's convoy was at the gate of the school at the same time the (coalition) convoy came out from the PRT," said provincial police chief Gen. Ghulam Sakhi Rooghlawanay. "The suicide bomber blew himself up between the two convoys."
Nasery said he thought his convoy was the intended target.
"I'm safe and healthy," he told the AP in a telephone interview.
Insurgents have stepped up attacks around the country in recent weeks as Afghanistan enters what could be one of the most critical periods following the U.S. invasion in late 2001 that ousted the Taliban.
The majority of U.S. and coalition forces are expected to begin a significant drawdown in the latter part of this year, leaving Afghan forces in charge of security across the country within months. Afghanistan also is gearing up for a presidential election next spring, and the Taliban have not yet accepted an offer to engage in peace talks in the Gulf state of Qatar.
There currently are about 100,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including 66,000 from the United States. The U.S. troop total is scheduled to drop to about 32,000 by early next year, with the bulk of the decline occurring during the winter months.
While there has been no final decision on the size of the post-2014 force, U.S. and NATO leaders say they are considering a range of between 8,000 and 12,000 ? most of them trainers and advisers.
The Taliban have already sought to disrupt the political process as Afghanistan's various ethnic groups prepare to field candidates to run in the presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai is banned by the constitution from seeking a third term.
The Taliban have increasingly targeted Afghan government officials in recent attacks, including an assault on Wednesday on a courthouse and government offices in western Farah province. Forty-six people were killed, including two judges, six prosecutors, administration officers and cleaners working at the site.
The Taliban have said civilians working for the government or the coalition are legitimate targets, despite a warning from the United Nations that such killings may violate international law.
They also have been staging complex attacks in Kabul and other urban areas. On March 14, the Afghan intelligence service seized a massive truck bomb packed with 7,257 kilograms (8 tons) of explosives on the eastern outskirts of Kabul. The truck apparently was going to be used in an attack on a NATO facility in the capital.
___
Quinn reported from Kabul. AP National Security writer Robert Burns traveling with Dempsey contributed.
We already knew Twitter was planning on expanding its Card content to include app, gallery and product info. But the company apparently had another sweeping change waiting in the wings: a UI refresh for Android version 4.0 and up. The update, which is currently rolling out to users, aims to bring the 140 characters or less experience more in line with native Android design. To that end, the new layout enlarges the size of tweets displayed in the timeline, incorporates long-presses for "quick actions," and adds an ability to swipe left or right to parse through navigation tabs. As for that new Card integration, it's live now, so users on Android, iOS and Twitter's mobile site should be seeing those tweaks soon.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry will donate five percent of his annual salary to charity, joining President Barack Obama and other officials in a show of solidarity with government workers forced to take unpaid leave as a result of deep spending cuts.
Kerry would contribute $9,175 from his $183,500 State Department salary "to an appropriate charity that will benefit employees of the State Department," department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Thursday.
The funds would likely go to charities that support U.S. diplomats who have been injured or killed in the line of duty, or that support children of employees, she said.
"We're still looking at the best choice and whether all of the money will go to one, or whether it'll be spread" between different charities, Nuland said.
Defense and non-defense discretionary spending has shrunk across the board as a result of reductions under a process known as sequestration. To maintain critical functions, many agencies are making workers take unpaid leave, or furloughs.
Obama's self-imposed 5 percent pay cut from his $400,000 salary would be effective from March 1, when the spending cuts began, and would last through the end of December, an administration official said on Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will give back the equivalent of 14 days of pay to the government, about $10,750, his spokesman said on Tuesday.
Before taking up his post as the top U.S. diplomat early this year, Kerry was ranked as the richest member of the U.S. Senate, with a net worth estimated in filings for 2011 at between $184 million and $288 million.
Kerry, 69, inherited money from his mother's family and is married to the widow of a wealthy heir to the H.J. Heinz Company.
(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by Todd Eastham)
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Tuesday, suggesting a rebound from the previous session and again putting the S&P 500 within striking distance of its all-time intraday high.
The benchmark index last week set an all-time closing high, but has thus far been unable to reach its intraday record of 1,576.09, an important psychological level for investors.
While moves may be limited this week ahead of the monthly payrolls report on Friday, investors will be looking to the latest economic data for signs of economic strength.
February factory orders are scheduled for release at 10 a.m. EDT and are seen rising 2.9 percent, compared with a 2 percent drop in the previous month.
The Institute for Supply Management-New York's March index of regional business activity is due at 9:45 a.m. U.S. car companies will report March sales on Tuesday, and a Reuters poll forecast total vehicle sales at 15.32 million last month.
"We've had significant pockets of strength in the data, but also some weakness. If we can see some broad-based expansion of growth, that would be very beneficial for markets," said Oliver Pursche, president of Gary Goldberg Financial Services in Suffern, New York.
S&P 500 futures rose 6.3 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures added 48 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 19.25 points.
A weak reading on manufacturing sparked a decline in Monday's session, though other indicators have pointed to a strengthening economy and helped push both the Dow and S&P to record highs last week.
Telecommunication shares will be in focus. Verizon Communications and AT&T have been working together on a breakup bid for British mobile operator Vodafone, according to the Financial Times' Alphaville blog.
Verizon and AT&T, both Dow components, were not active in premarket trading, but U.S. shares of Vodafone gained 4.7 percent to $29.67 before the bell. The stock was one of the biggest boosts among European shares <.fteu3>, which rose 1 percent.
European shares bounced back after a two-week slide and with a blue chip index breaking above a resistance level, as the M&A activity helped lift sentiment.
Healthcare stocks will also be in focus as planned cuts in government payments for private Medicare Advantage insurers did not materialize. Humana , which derives about two-thirds of its revenue from Medicare Advantage business, soared 9.6 percent to $82.20 in premarket trading.
The S&P is up 9.5 percent so far this year while the Dow is up more than 11 percent. While investors view market momentum as positive, many are also calling for a pullback given the size and swiftness of recent gains.
"We take money off the table on days when we see rallies of about 1 percent," said Pursche. "We think things are getting overstretched."
Hewlett-Packard Co slumped 4.1 percent to $22.36 in premarket trading after Goldman Sachs downgraded the Dow component, saying it expects the company's earnings power to come under pressure. Goldman has a $16 price target on the stock, which implies downside of more than 30 percent from HP's Monday closing price.
Goldman Sachs also removed Apple Inc from its Conviction Buy list, though it affirmed its "buy" rating on the stock. "We believe Apple may find it difficult to hit consensus expectations in the March and June quarters," the bank wrote to clients.
BGC Partners late Monday said it would sell its eSpeed platform to Nasdaq OMX Group for $750 million in cash. Shares of BGC soared 40 percent to $5.40 before the bell.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Apple is set for a possible summer launch of the next iPhone, rather than a fall launch like the last two models, according to a report Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal.
Apple Inc. is also working on a cheaper iPhone model that could win it some market share in developing countries, the paper said. It cited unnamed people "familiar with the device's production."
The report is in line with the expectations of company watchers and Wall Street analysts. The iPhone 5 costs around $600, and while Apple maintains older iPhones in production, even those aren't cheap enough to compete effectively against low-end smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software.
Apple doesn't comment on future products before its launch events. Its executives usually emphasize that the company's goal is to make the best products, not the cheapest ones.
The Journal said Apple is set to start production of the new iPhone within the next three months. It's apparently relying on sources among the Asian companies that supply components for the phone and assemble it.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc trader Matthew Marshall Taylor has turned himself in to federal authorities in connection with charges that he defrauded the Wall Street bank out of $118 million in 2007, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Taylor voluntarily turned himself in to agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York around 8:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Taylor in November, accusing him of fabricating trades to conceal an $8.3 billion futures position. The CFTC sought $130,000 in penalties.
Taylor's move on Wednesday is related to criminal charges that are expected to come from federal prosecutors in New York. He is expected to plead guilty to those charges later on Wednesday, the sources said. It was not clear precisely what he will be charged with.
An attorney who represented Taylor in his civil case did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. A Goldman spokesman declined to comment.
Goldman itself paid $1.5 million last year to settle charges that it had failed to appropriately supervise Taylor. The bank has since put in place procedures to catch wayward trading activity more quickly.
According to charges outlined against him, Taylor established his futures position in e-mini Standard & Poor's futures contracts on December 13, 2007. The next day, it was flagged by Goldman's controls. By the time the trade had been unwound, it had caused $118 million in losses.
After leaving Goldman Sachs, Taylor moved to a position at Morgan Stanley in March 2008. He left that bank in July 2012.
(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra and Emily Flitter; Editing by Matthew Goldstein, Gerald E. McCormick and Maureen Bavdek)
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Public release date: 7-Apr-2013
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