Popocatepetl Volcano Spews Volcanic Ash onto Mexico City

Mexico City residents are still experiencing the harsh repercussions from a deadly volcano.

Just Saturday, residents awoke to layers of volcanic dust on their cars and coming into their homes thanks to the Popocateptl volcano. Reports indicate that a cloud of ash and vapor 2 miles high was shot out from the volcano over a period of several days last week.

Though officials note that it has been years since the city has seen noticeable volcanic ash, Claudia Dominguez, spokeswoman for the Mexico City civil defense office, said that very fine ash has probably been hitting the city due to volcanic acitivity from previous days and may have worsened with rainfall that came Friday.

Mexico's National Center for Disaster Prevention reported that security warnings have changed from Stage 2 Yellow to Stage 3 Yellow, with the final more rare red stage alert in case of emergency for evacuation.

According to CBS News, Mexico City civil protection secretary Fausto Lugo said the main risk for the metropolis via an article seven days ago, was that people wouldn't know how to handle problems with ash. This finalized their decision to close the airport and cancel flights out of Mexico.

"If there is an eruption, we wouldn't evacuate Mexico City," Lugo said, via CBS News. "For us the main risk is the handling of volcanic ashes."

As of Friday, the U.S. airlines canceled at least one flight at Mexico City's airport as a precautionary measure. Four other airlines also canceled a total of 17 flights "due to climate conditions and in accordance with their own internal policies," according to the airport, via a statement.

The volcano is approximately 40 miles from the apirport which is just a few miles east of the city's center, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The Environment Ministry is urging Mexico City Residents to stay inside whenever possible and wear dusk masks, as well as cover water supplies.

When outside, officials state that it's also important to sweep up ash and place it in plastic bags as to prevent the formation of a concrete mix that could block drains.

Science world Report

Pastor Mark Biltz "The Significance of the Blood Moons"

2 Dead, 2 Missing in Torrential Rains in S. Korea

Two people were killed and two remain missing after 300 mm of torrential rainfall drenched Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Gangwon Province over the weekend.

Disaster relief officials on Sunday said a 57-year-old man was swept away by swelling currents along a drainage canal in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province on Sunday, and a 38-year-old woman was swept away by fast-moving waters in a canyon in Gapyeong in the same province on Saturday afternoon.

A 34-year-old man is missing after being swept away by fast currents there on Sunday, and an 85-year-old man is missing after being buried under a landslide in Hongcheon, Gangwon Province also on Sunday.Heavy rainfall also flooded roads and triggered landslides in other areas. In the capital, the Cheonggye Stream downtown and Jamsu Bridge crossing the Han River were closed to traffic due to swelling waters.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said central parts of the country will see monsoon rains continue through Monday and gradually stop in the evening, while southern regions will experience sporadic showers amid overcast skies. Heavy rainfall is expected again starting Tuesday night.

The Chosunilbo

Israel says might go solo to strike Iran

Israel has threatened to take unilateral action against the Islamic Republic of Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on CBS News's Face the Nation on Sundauy that Tel Aviv might act against Iran before the United States does.

"Our clocks are ticking at a different pace. We're closer than the United States. We're more vulnerable. And therefore, we'll have to address this question of how to stop Iran, perhaps before the United States does," the Israeli prime minister said.

Netanyahu also said Iran is edging up to what he called a red line.

"They're edging up to the red line. They haven't crossed it yet," he said.

On September 2, 2012, Netanyahu called on the international community to set a “clear red line” for Iran over its nuclear energy program.

On September 24, US President Barack Obama said in response that the issue concerned US national security decisions, and that he was “going to block out any noise that's out there.”


PressTV

Cancer cure just got closer thanks to a tiny British company

A single-storey workshop on a nondescript business park in Oxfordshire is not the sort of place where you would expect scientific revolutions to take place. But behind the white-painted walls of this small start-up company, scientists are talking about the impossible – a potential cure for cancer.

For the past 20 years, the former academics who set up Immunocore have worked hard on realising their dream of developing a totally new approach to cancer treatment, and finally it looks as if their endeavours are beginning to pay off. In the past three weeks, the company has signed contracts with two of the biggest players in the pharmaceuticals industry which could lead to hundreds of millions of pounds flowing into the firm's unique research on cancer immunotherapy – using the body's own immune system to fight tumour cells.

Immunocore is probably the only company in the world that has developed a way of harnessing the power of the immune system's natural-born killer cells: the T-cells of the blood which nature has designed over millions of years of evolution to seek out and kill invading pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. T-cells are not nearly as good at finding and killing cancer cells, but the hard-nosed executives of the drugs industry – who are notoriously cautious when it comes to investments – believe Immunocore may have found a way around this so that cancer patients in future are able to fend off their disease with their own immune defences.

"Immunotherapy is radically different," said Bent Jakobsen, the Danish-born chief scientific officer of Immunocore who started to study T-cells 20 years ago while working at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. "It doesn't do away with the other cancer treatments by any means, but it adds something to the arsenal that has one unique feature – it may have the potency to actually cure cancer," Dr Jakobsen said.

It is this potency that has attracted the attention of Genentech in California, owned by the Swiss giant Roche, and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline. Both companies have independently signed deals with Immunocore that could result in up to half a billion pounds being invested in new cancer treatments based on its unique T-cell therapy.

It is no understatement to say that cancer immunotherapy, or immuno-oncology as it is technically called, represents a sea change in terms of cancer treatment. Cancer in the past has been largely treated by slicing (surgery), poisoning (chemotherapy) or burning (radiotherapy). All are burdened with the inherent problem of how to spare healthy tissue from irreparable damage while ensuring that every cancer cell is killed, deactivated or removed.

Now there is another approach based on the immune system, a complex web of cells, tissues and organs that constantly strive to keep the body free of disease, which almost certainly includes keeping cancerous cells in check.

For many years, scientists have realised that the immune system plays a key role in cancer prevention. There is ample evidence of this, not least from patients who are immune-suppressed in some way – they are more likely than other patients to develop cancer.

The immune system has two basic ways of fighting invading pathogens and the body's own cells that have gone awry. One involves the release of free-floating proteins, or antibodies, that lock on to an invader, triggering other immune cells to come in and sweep them away.

Many organisations have tried to develop anti-cancer treatments based on antibodies, with limited success, Dr Jakobsen said. Part of the problem is that antibodies are not really designed to recognise cells. What Immunocore has done is to build a therapy around the second arm of the immune system, known as cellular immunity, where T-cells seek out and destroy invading pathogens.

"There are a lot of companies working with antibodies but we are virtually the only company in the world that has managed to work with T-cells. It has taken 20 years and from that point we are unique," Dr Jakobsen said.

Immunocore has found a way of designing small protein molecules, which it calls ImmTACs, that effectively act as double-ended glue. At one end they stick to cancer cells, strongly and very specifically, leaving healthy cells untouched. At the other end they stick to T-cells.

The technology is based on the "T-cell receptor", the protein that sticks out of the surface of the T-cell and binds to its enemy target. Immunocore's ImmTACs are effectively independent T-cell receptors that are "bispecific", meaning they bind strongly to cancer cells at one end, and T-cells at the other – so introducing cancer cells to their nemesis.

"What we can do is to use that scaffold of the T-cell receptor to make something that is very good at recognising cancer even if it doesn't exist naturally," said Dr Jakobsen. "Although T-cells are not very keen at recognising cancer, we can force them to do so. The potential you have if you can engineer T-cell receptors is quite enormous. You can find any type of cell and any kind of target. This means the approach can in theory be used against any cancer, whether it is tumours of the prostate, breast, liver or the pancreas.

The key to the success of the technique is being able to distinguish between a cancer cell and a normal, healthy cell. Immunocore's drug does this by recognising small proteins or peptides that stick out from the surface membrane of cancer cells. All cells extrude peptides on their membranes and these peptides act like a shop window, telling scientists what is going on within the cell, and whether it is cancerous or not.

"All these little peptides tell you the story of the cell. The forest of them on the cell surface is a sort of display saying 'I am this kind of cell. This is my identity and this is everything going on inside me'," Dr Jakobsen explained.

Immunocore is building up a database of peptide targets on cancer cells in order to design T-cell receptors that can target them, leaving healthy cells alone and so minimising possible side effects – or that is the hope.

The first phase clinical trial of the company's therapy, carried out on a small number of patients in Britain and the United States with advanced melanoma, has shown that people can tolerate the drug reasonably well and preliminary results suggest there are "early signs of anti-tumour activity", the company said.

A danger with deploying T-cells against cancer is their potency. Yet it is this very potency that it is so exciting because it could lead to a cure for metastatic disease that has spread around the body, Dr Jakobsen said. "You can never make a single-mechanism drug that would come anywhere near a T-cell in terms of its potency.

"If you want to make an impact on cancer you need something that is incredibly potent – but when something goes wrong, it goes badly wrong. I think the honest truth about all cancer treatments is that no matter how much we test and do beforehand, it will continue to go wrong sometimes."

One infamous case of something going disastrously wrong was a clinical trial in 2006 at Northwick Park Hospital in London where scientists were testing a powerful immuno-regulatory drug on six volunteers. All suffered serious side effects caused by the overstimulation of their immune systems.

But Dr Jakobsen said the clinical trial of Immunocore's T-cell drug, as well as future trials, are inherently safe because they are based on incremental rises in dose. All indications suggest it will lead to the expected breakthrough.

He added: "All the pharma companies have come to the realisation that immunotherapy may hold the ultimate key to cancer; it is the missing link in cancer treatment that can give cures."

"They have seen this technology develop. It has come over the mountain top, if you like. With our melanoma trial they have seen it is safe – and it is working."

T-cell therapy
Using the body's immune system to fight cancer is one of the most promising areas of therapy, and could prove particularly helpful in the treatment of metastatic disease, when the cancer has spread from its original site.

The immune system is complex and is composed of many kinds of cells, proteins and chemical messengers that modulate how it works. Scientists are working on ways of exploiting the immune defences to recognise and eliminate cells that have become cancerous.

One of the most interesting examples is ipilimumab, a "monoclonal antibody" made by Bristol-Myers-Squib. It recognises and binds to a molecule, called CTLA-4, which is found on the T-cells of the immune system. CTLA-4 normally keeps T-cells from proliferating, but in the presence of ipilimumab, it becomes blocked, allowing T-cells to increase in numbers, so leading them to attack cancer cells.

Other drugs based on monoclonal antibodies are designed to attack tumours more directly. When they bind to a cancerous cell, it serves as a signal for other cells of the immune system to come in and sweep the cancer cells away.

The trouble is that cancer cells are notoriously mutational. Eliminating 99.9 per cent of cancer cells in a patient may be an improvement, but it still leaves 0.1 per cent that could "escape".

One hope of using T-cells, is that this possibility of escape is narrowed down, or even eliminated. Of course, these are still early days. This is only just beginning to go through the first clinical trials. It could take five or 10 years before we know whether or not they work.

The Independent

ISLAMIC MILITANT LEADER VOWS TO BURN MORE SCHOOLS AND KILL MORE TEACHERS IN NIGERIA

LAGOS, Nigeria (TheBlaze/AP) — The leader of Nigeria’s extremist Islamic sect threatens to burn down more schools and kill teachers. But he denies his fighters are killing children.



In this Thursday, June 6, 2013 file photo, soldiers stand guard at the offices of the state-run Nigerian Television Authority in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram, the radical group that once attacked only government institutions and security forces, is increasingly targeting civilians. (AP)

Islamic radical Abubakar Shekau speaks in a video released Saturday and denies his Boko Haram group is negotiating a peace with the Nigerian government.

He says he supports fighters who have burned down several schools in northeastern Nigeria in recent weeks but that the Quran teaches one must not kill children, women and elderly people. Dozens of children have been killed; last week, at least 29 students and one teacher were massacred in a militant attack.

But he says “School teachers who are teaching Western education? We will kill them! We will kill them.”

Attacks on schools have continued though Nigeria has deployed thousands of troops to put down an Islamic uprising posing the greatest threat in years to national security.

The Blaze

Russia Launches Largest Military Exercise in Post-Soviet Period

Russia started on Saturday large-scale exercise in the Eastern Military District aimed at improving combat readiness of the Russian armed forces.

The Defense Ministry announced the move which is the largest surprise check of combat readiness of the Russian military in the post-Soviet period.

The exercise, which involves over 80,000 servicemen, some 1,000 armored vehicles, 130 aircraft and 70 warships from the Pacific Fleet, will continue until July 20, Russian news agency, RIA Novosti reported.

“The main goal of the drills is to check the readiness of units to carry out their missions, and to assess the quality of their training and technical preparedness,” the ministry said in a statement.

The snap drills were ordered by President Vladimir Putin on Friday when he told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to inform foreign countries about the upcoming exercises, taking into account their scale and common international practice.

It is the third surprise check of combat readiness since the beginning of the year and follows a major shake-up at the top of a military establishment tarnished by persistent evidence of rampant corruption.

Putin said in May that surprise military drills is a perfect way to keep the armed forces in good shape and vowed to continue similar practices in the future.

The Eastern Military District is one of the four operational strategic commands of the Russian Armed Forces. The district was formed in 2010. It absorbed the territories of the former Far East Military District and part of the former Siberian Military District with headquarters at Khabarovsk.


Al Amar