By Carey Gillam (Reuters) - Heavy use of the world's most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers, according to a new study. The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates??
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The main suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing are said to be two brothers from Chechnya, a mountainous and mainly Muslim republic in southern Russia that has been the scene of cyclical revolts and brutal crackdowns by Moscow's forces for the past 200 years. Though Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev have spent most of their lives outside of Chechnya, their postings on YouTube and the Russian-language VKontakte social media site illustrate a proud attachment to their ancestral homeland and offer many hints that both identified closely with Chechnya's defiant and fiercely independent mountain warrior traditions.
Where is Chechnya?
Chechnya is one of eight mainly Muslim ethnic republics that sprawl across the northern face of the Caucasus Mountains ? which contain some of Europe's highest peaks ? between the Black and Caspian Seas. The region is a patchwork of separate nationalities, speaking wildly different tongues, who have a history of intense animosity between each other that's eclipsed only by their historic tensions with Russia.
The approximately 1.2 million Chechens, whose republic occupies about 6,600 square miles in the center of the chain, are a fierce mountain people who speak Noxchi Mott, a language that's incomprehensible to most of their neighbors ? but which was one of the three languages, along with Russian and English, that the younger Tsarnaev claimed to speak fluently on his VKontakte page.
How did it become part of Russia?
The Caucasus region was conquered by Czarist Russia, whose armies took three decades to overcome the resistance of the guerrilla warriors. The long war, whose brutal and treacherous nature was brilliantly captured by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy in his last novel, Hadji Murat, was finally won by Russian Gen. Mikhail Yermolov, who used scorched earth tactics, hostage taking, and deliberate bloody civilian massacres to crush the Chechen rebels.
Chechnya has erupted in revolt every time the Russian grip has weakened ever since, notably amid the chaos following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so infuriated by Chechen disloyalty in World War II that he ordered the entire Chechen nation ? half a million people ? deported to Central Asia in 1944. An estimated 150,000 Chechens died on the bitter winter march.
The Chechens were allowed to return home after Mr. Stalin died, but they declared independence as the USSR crumbled in 1991. The Russian Army invaded in 1994, but withdrew in defeat after two years of futile war and an estimated 80,000 mostly civilian casualties.
After winning independence, however, the Chechens failed to build a viable state. Leading warlords such as Shamil Basayev and the Jordanian-born Khattab embraced Islamist ideology and sought to export their revolution to neighboring republics. Russia, now led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, invaded again in 1999.
How did Chechnya become linked with terrorism?
During Russia's second assault on Chechnya, most of the little republic's first wave of independence-seeking leaders, who had espoused secular nationalism, were either killed or defected to the Russian side. Militant Islamists, seeking to create a Caucasus-wide "caliphate," took over the movement and found tactical inspiration, as well as material support, from Middle Eastern Islamist terror networks like Al Qaeda. The Islamist insurrection has since spread to neighboring republics, especially Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Chechen-led terrorists have struck repeatedly in the Russian heartland, notably a mass hostage-taking at a downtown Moscow theater in 2002 that killed 130 people and a horrific school siege in Beslan, North Ossetia, that killed 330 people, half of them children. A double suicide bombing by "black widow" terrorists ? wives of rebels killed by Russian security forces ? left 40 people dead in a 2010 Moscow metro attack and another suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport the next year left 35 people dead.
What is Chechnya like today?
In 2009 the Kremlin declared victory in Chechnya, pulled its army out, and left the republic under control of a pro-Moscow strongman named Ramzan Kadyrov. Under Mr. Kadyrov, Chechnya has enjoyed a stunning economic rebirth, financed mainly by subsidies from Moscow.
But Russian human rights monitors allege the republic has become a legal black hole, where opponents of Kadyrov are rounded up by official death squads, and critical journalists sometimes turn up bullet-ridden and dead on the side of the road. In defiance of the Russian constitution, critics say, Kadyrov is also imposing sharia law in the republic, and meting out punishment to those who disobey.
Still, Kadyrov can rightly claim ? as he routinely does to visiting celebrities ? that Chechnya is practically the safest place in the turbulent northern Caucasus these days.
How will the alleged involvement of Chechens in the Boston bombings affect US-Russia relations?
Since the beginning of the second Chechen war, Mr. Putin has tried to convince US leaders that Russia's war in Chechnya is a chapter of the global war against terrorism, and that the US should stop criticizing Russia's brutal crackdown there and join forces with Moscow.
This argument has gained little traction in Washington, where the often horrific outcomes of Moscow's campaign to pacify Chechnya have made it difficult to see things Putin's way. Despite repeated rumors about Chechen involvement with anti-American terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, little solid evidence has ever turned up.
But the Chechen brothers who allegedly carried out the Boston Marathon bombing might prompt US leaders to rethink that approach.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chechnya-remote-russian-republic-became-linked-terrorism-161021744.html
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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) ? Songwriter George Jackson, co-author of "Old Time Rock and Roll" and hundreds of other soul, rock and rhythm and blues tunes, has died. He was 68.
Jackson died Sunday morning at his home in Ridgeland, a suburb of Jackson, said Thomas Couch Sr., board chairman of Malaco Records. Jackson had been sick with cancer for about a year.
"It was not unexpected, but it's always too soon," Couch said.
Born in Indianola, Miss., Jackson was writing songs by the time he was in his teens. It was Ike Turner who brought Jackson to New Orleans R&B pioneer Cosimo Matassa's studio in 1963, where he recorded his first song.
Jackson recorded dozens of singles in the 1960s and worked in Memphis, Tenn., but made his mark as a writer, beginning with FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. He later was a songwriter for crosstown rival Muscle Shoals Sound Studios before returning to Memphis. When Malaco bought Muscle Shoals Sound, it hired Jackson to write songs, said Wolf Stephenson, Malaco's vice president and chief engineer.
"George had hooks coming out of his ears," Stephenson said. "They weren't all hits, but I never heard him write a bad song. He never really got the recognition that's normally due a writer of his stature."
The Osmonds recorded Jackson's "One Bad Apple" in 1970, taking it to No. 1. Jackson and Thomas Jones III wrote "Old Time Rock and Roll," which Bob Seger recorded in 1978.
Stephenson said "Old Time Rock and Roll" is truly Jackson's song, and he has the tapes to prove it, despite Seger's claims that he altered it.
"Bob had pretty much finished his recording at Muscle Shoals and he asked them if they had any other songs he could listen to for the future," Stephenson said.
Besides Seger, the Osmonds and Ike and Tina Turner, Jackson's songs were also recorded by James Brown, Wilson Pickett and Clarence Carter. Later, he wrote "Down Home Blues" for Z.Z. Hill, a song which was a keystone for Malaco. The Mississippi label is a storehouse of soul, rhythm and blues and gospel music.
"He had a way of seeing things about life and saying them in a way that a lot of other people could relate to," Couch said.
Jackson's own vocal performances were mainly scattered over singles, although some have been collected into albums, including a 2011 reissue of his FAME recordings, "Don't Count Me Out," which won critical acclaim. That and other compilations were aimed at part at fans in the United Kingdom, where Stephenson said Jackson had a strong following.
Funeral arrangements were still being made.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rock-soul-songwriter-george-jackson-dies-68-235909797.html
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SALMON, Idaho - A fire sparked by an electrical short swept through a house in Idaho on Saturday, killing a family of four and a teenage friend who had been spending the night as part of a birthday celebration, a fire official said.
Orofino Fire Chief Mike Lee said flames had fully engulfed the home and likely caused the smoke inhalation deaths of the five occupants by the time firefighters arrived at a blaze reported by a neighbor at 1:38 a.m. local time. The home did not have smoke alarms.
The fire in the small logging community in north-central Idaho killed a couple and their two teenage children as well as the teenage friend, Lee said.
There was no sign of foul play, he said. Autopsies were planned early next week for the dead, whose names were withheld pending notification of family.
"It is the worst tragedy we've ever had in Orofino, fire-wise," Lee said. He added that two veteran Idaho state fire marshals reported they had never investigated a house fire that took as many lives.
The fire was ignited by a short in an overloaded extension cord on the front porch of a two-story home in a residential neighborhood, Lee said. He said the family was likely asleep when the fire swept through the rooms on the ground floor of the home.?
-- Reuters
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FILE - In this April 7, 2013 file photo Pope Francis waves to faithful upon his arrival for his installation Mass at the St. John in Lateran Basilica, in Rome. Pope Francis has named nine cardinals to advise him on running the church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy. The Vatican announced Saturday, April 13, 2013 the members of the advisory panel and said they would hold their first meeting Oct. 1-3. They include current Vatican officials but more importantly cardinals from Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia,File)
FILE - In this April 7, 2013 file photo Pope Francis waves to faithful upon his arrival for his installation Mass at the St. John in Lateran Basilica, in Rome. Pope Francis has named nine cardinals to advise him on running the church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy. The Vatican announced Saturday, April 13, 2013 the members of the advisory panel and said they would hold their first meeting Oct. 1-3. They include current Vatican officials but more importantly cardinals from Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia,File)
FILE - In this Wednesday, April 10, 2013 file photo cardinals line up to salute Pope Francis, not pictured, at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican. Pope Francis has named nine cardinals to advise him on running the church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy. The Vatican announced Saturday, April 13, 2013 the members of the advisory panel and said they would hold their first meeting Oct. 1-3. They include current Vatican officials but more importantly cardinals from Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Francis marked his first month as pontiff on Saturday by naming eight cardinals from around the globe to a permanent advisory group to counsel him on running the Catholic Church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy ? a bombshell announcement that indicates he intends a shift in how the papacy should function.
The panel includes only one current Vatican official; the rest are cardinals from North, Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia ? a clear indication that Francis wants to reflect the universal nature of the church as he goes about governing.
The church is growing and counts most of the world's Catholics in the southern hemisphere while it's shrinking in Europe, yet the Vatican and the 200-strong College of Cardinals, traditionally the pope's primary advisers, remain heavily European.
In the run-up to the conclave that elected Francis the first Latin American pope one month ago, cardinals demanded the Vatican be more responsive to their needs on the ground, and said the bureaucracy itself must be overhauled. Including representatives from each continent in a permanent advisory panel to the pope would seem to go a long way toward answering those calls.
In its announcement Saturday, the Vatican said Francis got the idea to form the advisory body from the pre-conclave meetings where such complaints were aired. "He has formed a group of cardinals to advise him in the governing of the universal church and to study a revision of the apostolic constitution Pastor Bonus on the Roman Curia," the statement said.
Pope John Paul II issued Pastor Bonus in 1988, and it functions effectively as the blueprint for the administration of the Holy See, known as the Roman Curia, and the Vatican City State. The document metes out the work and jurisdictions of the congregations, pontifical councils and other offices that make up the governance of the Catholic Church.
Pastor Bonus itself was a revision of the 1967 document that marked the last major reform of the Vatican bureaucracy, undertaken by Pope Paul VI.
A reform of the Vatican bureaucracy has been demanded for decades, given that both John Paul and Benedict XVI essentially neglected in-house administration of the Holy See in favor of other priorities. But the calls for change grew deafening last year after the leaks of papal documents exposed petty turf battles within the Vatican bureaucracy, allegations of corruption in the running of the Vatican city state, and even a purported plot by senior Vatican officials to out a prominent Catholic as gay.
Francis' advisory group will meet in its inaugural session Oct. 1-3, the Vatican said in a statement.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stressed that the cardinals are a consultative body, not a decision-making one, and that they don't take the place of the Vatican bureaucracy. His comments appeared aimed at reassuring Vatican bureaucrats that they weren't being sidelined by a counterweight advisory body that better reflects the geographic distribution of today's church.
The members of the panel include Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Vatican city state administration ? a key position that oversees, among other things, the Vatican's profit-making museums. The non-Vatican officials include Cardinals Francisco Javier Err?zuriz Ossa, the retired archbishop of Santiago, Chile; Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, India; Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany; Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo; Sean Patrick O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston; George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, Australia; and Oscar Andr?s Rodr?guez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, who will serve as coordinator.
Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, bishop of Albano, Italy will be the panel secretary.
In theory, all popes have cardinals at their disposal to serve as advisers; advising the pope is a cardinal's main job aside from voting in conclaves. But neither John Paul nor Benedict made frequent use of their cardinal advisers, in part because they were so far away and numbered more than 200.
With such a small group of men hand-picked by the pope to specifically advise him in running the church and reforming the Vatican, it appears Francis wants a more collegial type of governance. That also would meld with his reluctance to call himself pope in favor of his other main title, bishop of Rome.
That said, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio is on record saying that when it comes time to actually making decisions, he is very much a loner.
"One can ask for advice but, in the end, one must decide alone," he said in the 2010 book "The Jesuit" written by his authorized biographer. Doing so means making mistakes, and Bergoglio acknowledged he had made plenty in his lifetime.
"That's why the important thing is to ask God," he said.
In the run-up to his election, cardinals were very clear that the status quo of the Vatican was untenable.
Prelates said they wanted term limits on Vatican jobs to prevent priests from becoming career bureaucrats. They wanted consolidated financial reports to remove the cloak of secrecy from the Vatican's murky finances. And they wanted regular Cabinet meetings where department heads actually talk to one another to make the Vatican a help to the church's evangelizing mission, not a hindrance.
They also said they wanted the Vatican to serve the bishops in the field, and not the other way around.
"It just doesn't work either very quickly or very efficiently," U.S. Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said in an interview soon after Francis was elected. "Take marriage cases: People shouldn't have to be asked to wait three, four, five, six years to get a response" for a request for an annulment.
Aside from Saturday's announcement, Francis has made one Vatican appointment so far, naming a member of his namesake Franciscan order to the important No. 2 spot at the Vatican's congregation for religious orders.
His most eagerly-watched appointment has yet to come: that of the Vatican secretary of state, who runs the day-to-day administration of the Holy See. Currently, the position is held by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a 78-year-old canon lawyer whose administrative shortcomings have been blamed for many of the Vatican's current problems today.
George Weigel, a papal biographer who interviewed Bergoglio last May for his new book "Evangelical Catholicism," said Francis understands well the problems of the curia, saying he "displayed a shrewd, but not cynical, grasp of just what was wrong with the church's central bureaucratic machinery, and why."
"I think we can expect the new pope to lead the church in a purification and renewal of the episcopate, the priesthood, the religious life, and the curia, because he understands that scandal, corruption, and incompetence are impediments" to the mission of spreading the faith, Weigel wrote in a recent essay.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who has become something of the ringleader of the reform group, said he had high hopes that Francis would turn the Holy See into a model of good governance given his background and no nonsense style.
"Sometimes in the past the curia has been an example of what not to do, instead of what to do," Dolan said in an interview after Francis' installation. "We need to look to the Holy See and the Roman Curia as a model of good governance, of honesty, of simplicity, of frugality, of transparency, of candor, of raw Gospel service, of a lack of careerism, of people who are driven by virtue."
Dolan suggested that one crucial area of reform would be imposing term limits on Vatican bureaucrats to prevent them from becoming lifers. He said there was also no reason why more laymen and women couldn't be brought into the Vatican bureaucracy, and that the administration itself could shrink.
Archbishop Claudio Mario Celli, who heads the Vatican's social communications office, wants greater communication within the various Vatican departments, including regularly scheduled meetings of department heads.
"We need a more synergetic activity," Celli said in an interview. "If we want to have a more effective service in the church, we need to have a symphonic approach."
George, the archbishop of Chicago, dismissed speculation that one area of Francis' reforms would involve closing the Vatican bank, the Institute for Works of Religion, which has long been a source of scandal for the Vatican.
Doing so would be financial suicide for the Vatican, since it currently provides the pope with about 50 million euros ($65 million) a year in income investing, among other things, assets of its account holders that would have to be returned if it were to close.
The Vatican spokesman, Lombardi, has said any speculation about the IOR's possible closure "is purely hypothetical and isn't based on any believable or concrete facts."
___
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