In 1993, in a referendum supported by Ethiopia, Eritreans voted almost unanimously for independence, leaving Ethiopia landlocked.

The two countries hardly became good neighbours, with the issues of Ethiopian access to the Eritrean ports of Massawa and Assab and unequal trade terms souring relations.

In 1998 border disputes around the town of Badme erupted into open hostilities. This conflict ended with a peace deal in June 2000, but not before leaving both sides with tens of thousands of soldiers dead. A security zone separates the two countries. The UN patrolled the zone at one time but pulled out, unable to fulfil its mandate.

The unresolved border issue compounds other pressing problems. These include Eritrea's inability to provide enough food; two thirds of the population receive food aid. Moreover, economic progress is hampered by the proportion of Eritreans who are in the army rather than the workforce.

Kentucky Derby winner Orb gets a blanket put on him by exercise rider Jennifer Patterson and trainer Shug McGaughey after a workout earlier this week at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Orb contends Saturday for the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown.

Orb takes a drink during a bath Thursday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. The feisty bay colt won the Kentucky Derby on May 4 and is favored to win Saturday’s Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.

“What I saw was what he was bringing to the table. Every time we ran him, he just got better and better, but when we started out in January with him, we had no idea we’d be standing here with him today. We didn’t have this in mind. He just won his first race Nov. 24, and at that time I was thinking, ‘Maybe he’s going to be OK sometime,’ but I didn’t think we were going to win the Kentucky Derby. He was far back there [during the race], but I knew when he pushed the button we were going to be a factor.”

Orb will start the Preakness from the position closest to the rail, which means he may need to break out ahead quickly to avoid getting trapped among his competitors. Tabasco Cat was the last horse to win the Preakness from the rail position, in 1994 — which makes one win from that slot out of the past 52 times the race has been run.

But McGaughey remains optimistic. “Well, they always told me the shortest way around there was on the rail. He’ll be fine.”

In the background as McGaughey spoke, Orb was getting a bath. The thoroughbred stood tall and restless, jerking his muscular head alertly toward the crowd and biting on the leather straps that held him in place. “He’s a bit of a ham,” McGaughey said, chuckling.

McGaughey said that even if Orb doesn’t win the Triple Crown, “My dream came true. A week ago this past Saturday [when the Kentucky Derby was held] — that was something I’ve dreamed about for years, since I got into this, you know, working with thoroughbreds.

“I’ve always said that I wished I’d won it when I was young, so I wouldn’t have had to worry about it anymore, but I don’t believe that now. I think that I appreciate it a lot more now, and I think the people probably appreciate it for me a lot more, because hopefully they know what we’ve tried to do over the years and appreciate that.”

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Mousbak Sawalif promotion has been designed in response to Nawras listening carefully to customers and to the way they say they want to communicate.  With this versatile and rewarding call plan, Nawras is doing more to enrich the customer experience by bringing individuals and communities closer together. 

The new flat rate helps Nawras Mousbak prepaid customers get the most from their service.  With many additional network sites installed over recent months, more customers can now enjoy great value as Nawras constantly seeks new and better ways to surprise, delight and enthuse customers.

Other phone numbers starting with 08 have allowed businesses or helplines to take calls and divert them to call centres in different parts of the UK, or even internationally.

However, the charging structure can be complicated – with costs often overestimated by consumers, according to Mr Sivak.

For example, some calls that start with 087 include a call set-up fee, whereas some starting with 084 do not. Meanwhile, some 0845 and 0870 numbers are included in packages – making them free at certain times of day – whereas 0844 or 0871 numbers are generally not included.

The complexity has led to pressure – from the regulator, the public and MPs – on key organisations to switch their numbers to one with a slightly cheaper 030 prefix, mainly because these are free in call packages.

HM Revenue and Customs is planning to move all its helplines, such as the self-assessment tax line, to 030 numbers by the end of the summer.

One pressure group has also been running a campaign, highlighting alternative geographic numbers to those fed up with calling 08 numbers.

The key to these chargeable 08 numbers or premium rate 09 numbers is that some of the fee goes to the telephone company and some to the business that is providing the service.

This helps pay for the cost of the service, such as bus or train timetables, but it also means a profit can be made from these calls.

Some 93% of people asked in a survey by market research company Consumer Intelligence said they thought it was unfair that companies could make money from such calls.

Under Ofcom's proposals, the charges will be split into two sections so consumers know what they are paying and where the money is going.

Callers will be told: "This call will cost x pence per minute, plus your standard access charge."

The access charge is a fixed fee that will go to the telephone company. The service charge, quoted in pence per minute, goes to the company being called.

Consultation on the plans ends on 28 May and the regulator hopes the new system will be in place by the start of 2015.

The Federation of Small Businesses wants the changes to be made efficiently, and in one go.

"If it is one good overhaul, we would welcome that, but it never seems to be that way. It may be another five years, or it could be 10 years, but change keeps happening," said Mike Cherry, the FSB's national policy chairman.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for mobile operator O2 said: "Currently, even though we levy retail charges for calls to 0800 numbers, O2 customers can call many of these numbers for free. These include Childline, Crimestoppers and 0800 Reverse.

"In the future, Ofcom proposes that service providers make adequate payments to mobile operators to cover the cost of originating calls to 080 numbers. We support this approach. There are costs associated with delivering mobile phone calls to 0800 services and these need to be recovered, somehow."

When Lillehei performed the first open-heart surgery in 1954, Gott was observing as an intern. He later drew an illustration of the operation showing the defects in the patient’s heart, which caught Lillehei’s eye. Gott went on to become one of the pioneers in the development of the pacemaker — a device that he himself benefits from today.

Gott stopped operating at 67, but kept working until age 81, seeing patients, teaching medical students and doing research. These days, Gott, 86, is retired and writing a children’s book about the history of cardiac surgery.

Gott met with CNN to talk about his influential career.

Did you originally want to become an artist?

(chuckles) When I was 12, my folks enrolled me in an art class, and I enjoyed it very much. And I continued with my art. Really, when I got to Baltimore in 1965, I took art lessons once a week from a very fine illustrator-artist, Ann Schuler.

So it was helpful and in fact, as you know, I made a sketch of that very first operation of Dr. Lillehei’s little boy’s heart and all, and it was really that sketch that caught Dr. Lillehei’s attention, and got me into his lab and into heart surgery.

I’ve really enjoyed, over the last year and a half, working on a book on the history of heart surgery for young readers. And so I’m just about through with the illustrations. I’m illustrating about 30 different operations and illustrating also about 25 of the most prominent heart surgeons in the world.

Why did you want to become a surgeon?

I had the opportunity of knowing some surgeons in my hometown of Wichita (Kansas), particularly a very prominent plastic surgeon in Wichita and even when I was in high school, I was able to go over and observe his operations. And when I was in medical school, I was able to observe his operations.

I was very influenced at Yale Medical School, when I was a student, by some of the faculty there, the surgeons at Yale. Then when I finished Yale, I thought, well there was no specialty of heart surgery in 1953 when I finished medical school so I decided, well, I want to be a plastic surgeon.

That’s why then I enrolled in a program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis because they had a straight surgical internship, and it was my plan to stay in plastic surgery. And that all changed with Dr. Lillehei’s operation.

You’ve participated in some highly experimental procedures. Do you think it would be harder to do those kinds of procedures today in the current regulatory environment?

That’s a good question. I don’t think so. There’s a regulatory environment, but with cardiac surgery with anything, there’s continual improvement. I’ve seen over my career, tremendous changes and improvements, say, in the management of coronary artery disease.

These procedures we did were not necessarily experimental but they were new, some of the procedures, particularly for the Marfan aneurysm, were new. And I don’t think, sure, we have greater regulation but I think the opportunity for developing new operations has not been stymied or diminished by the new regulations. New regulations, the HIPPA regulations, are really to permit the privacy for the patient in their medical care.

What do you remember about your first heart transplant? Did you think it would work?

Well, first of all, I’d had the opportunity to train with Dr. Christiaan Barnard (a South African surgeon who performed the world’s first heart transplant). Chris Barnard was trained by Dr. Lillehei, so I knew him well. And also the other person who really was active was Dr. Norman Shumway, who was trained by Dr. Lillehei. Dr. Shumway really worked out the technique of heart transplantation (but) wasn’t able to perform it as soon as Dr. Barnard because of our restrictions here in this country on brain death.

We did our first heart transplant, it was in ’67, and was fortunate to have Dr. Harvey Bender, who was on our junior faculty, as he and I performed the operation together. And I remember, we had the donor in one room and the recipient in the adjacent room. In those days, of course, we had restrictions as far as taking the heart from the donor, there had to be brain death before you could take the heart, and that was important.

It was an important day and the operation went well. The patient, as I remember, only lived for about a year. We just didn’t have the great medications or drugs that we have now to prevent rejection. I’ll never forget that day.

How did you get involved in developing the pacemaker?

When Dr. Lillehei was putting these patches in the children to close the ventricaluar septal defect, there’s a critical nerve that runs right along that hole, and it’s invisible. And in about 10% of the patients, the stitch could go around that nerve and then cause the heart rate to go from, say, 100 in a 2-year-old child, to 20, which is not compatible with life.

More about that from Dr. Gott

That was a problem, actually, for almost two years after Dr. Lillehei started his surgery. It was in the fall of 1956 that a young physiologist, Dr. Jack Johnson at the University of Minnesota, said you know, to Dr. Lillehei and the rest of them, ‘I’ve been pacing frog hearts for five years with an electrical stimulator. Why don’t you use that?’

I went over and borrowed this electrical stimulator from Jack Johnson, and we were able to create heart block in a research animal very easily. It’s just a matter of putting a wire in the heart and a wire in the skin, and connecting it up to Dr. Johnson’s electrical stimulator, and it worked. And then Dr. Lillehei started using that in January of 1967, and that was really the start of the pacemaker.

At that time, there was not a portable pacemaker. And these children could not go home with a pacemaker, but Mr. Earl Bakken, who was the president of a small company called Medtronic in Minneapolis, then built a portable, battery powered pacemaker that these children could use.

We never envisioned at that time that there would be literally hundreds of thousands of adults who could benefit from the pacemaker. I in fact received a pacemaker myself five years ago for heart block.

What is the next step in the field of heart surgery?

I think currently the artificial valves that are used are really quite beautifully designed and functioning extremely well, and work for decades. One of the areas that we’re hoping for improvement will be in longevity for patients after a heart transplant. They’re still a problem, and I’ve been out of surgery now for five years so I’m not totally updated on this, but there’s still a problem with rejection of the heart after transplant.

The other major progress as I see as a development is a total artificial heart. Over the last 30 years, there (has) been a lot of research going on in the artificial heart, and we now seem to have an artificial heart that’s certainly fine as a bridge to a transplant. We still, I think, are looking for a better artificial heart that can be implanted and then left as the final heart.

You can see Dr. Gott and other fascinating stories from the world of health and medicine on “Sanjay Gupta MD,” Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET.

It can literally change their lives.

“There is a kid’s way of seeing the world,” says Keith Bellows, editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler magazine and author of National Geographic’s “100 Places That Can Change Your Child’s Life.” “As an adult, get out of the way, and stop marching them through an experience. When you get them to slow down and experience a place from their perspective, it’s magic. Not just the place itself, but the experience.”

Consider Bellows’ suggestions a step up from simply taking a vacation. He says these places could open your child’s eyes to the diversity of the world, help them learn what interests them and inform how they navigate it as adults.

Marco Island, Florida

Of course Walt Disney World is a Florida rite of passage for many children (and their parents) but there’s so much to the state that isn’t prefabricated. Marco Island is one of those places for Bellows, with beaches showing off the rusticity and charm of old Florida. Kids will love the beach and you can sneak in some science in the spectacular nature surrounding you.

To Disney or not to Disney?

Get on board the Dolphin Explorer with your children and turn them into citizen scientists. Capt. Chris Desmond, founder of the 10,000 Islands Dolphins Project, directs children to note the family compositions, behavior and even evidence of shark bites of the dolphins they spot. They give the data to adult biologists onboard who feed it into a computer. The bonus: If a child spots a new dolphin — most are already known to the crew — that child gets to name the dolphin. “Every kid wants to spot a newcomer and it happened on a trip I was on,” says Bellows.

Big Sur, California

The drive from San Francisco into Big Sur may be Bellows’ favorite drive in the world. “It is one of the most hair-raising drives in the world, and you get the sense of a wild, driving adventure,” he says. “I’ve done it at least 40 or 50 times, and I never get tired of it.”

He recommends renting a convertible and coming down from San Francisco through the agriculture fields onto the California coast, much of which is protected and can be explored along the way. One highlight: Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, just north of Big Sur. “It really teaches children that if you really love an area, you can protect it. Most of that coastline is protected, and it shows you what happens when you don’t screw it up. “

Grand Canyon

Nothing makes Bellows feel more humble than standing on the lip of the Grand Canyon, even if he’s standing with thousands of other people. “It’s a bite out of the Earth, a thrilling glimpse into the inside of the Earth,” he says.

Top U.S. spots for family fun

When children see the canyon layers below, that’s the first step in their understanding of the geology of the Earth, says Bellows. Take an age-appropriate hike so your children can see the layers and wildlife that make up the canyon. “They can see we didn’t just spring from nothing. This is a wafer sandwich of the world, and we’re going to be one of the layers one day.”

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

The nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay is filled with 64,000 square miles of rivers, marshes and bays. “My kids have grown up there kneeling in grass, looking for tadpoles and pulling up crab pots … and I love it,” says Bellows. “It’s some of the wildest primitive country we have. You can watch the ebb and flow of oysters, crabs and fishes, and it tells you how you’re treating this incredible place.”

It’s the home of the wild ponies children have read about it in Marguerite Henry’s “Misty of Chincoteague.” Those ponies of Assateague Island National Seashore live in two herds. You can see the ponies at the park but don’t feed them (to keep them wild).

Library of Congress, Washington

It’s OK to tell your children that the movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” was filmed at the Library of Congress. (Heck, show them the movie in advance of your trip.) And yes, that it’s the biggest library in the world with 3,800 staff, 500 miles of shelving and 128 million items (with about 10,000 items added each day).

7 tips for cherry blossom fun in D.C.

“If you go into the Library of Congress, you’re going to tell them it’s a library but it’s also a treasure trove,” says Bellows. Whatever your child likes, whether it’s music or maps or sports or humor, it’s likely he or she can find something about it here.

Your children also can get a “Passport to Knowledge” to guide them to the library’s so-called greatest hits, and they can play at Knowledge Quest kiosks and bookmark places of interest to explore later on a personalized mini-site.

New York City

A visit to New York for every child who has not grown up there is also a rite of passage, says Bellows. “Every kid has to go to New York City, and every adult does, too,” he says. “Every time you go back and haven’t been there for awhile, it’s a new place. It’s so big and so fast.”

Take the Circle Line boat tour, he suggests, so you can see by sailing around it how small an island Manhattan actually is. You can notice how connected it is to the other islands of Staten Island and Long Island (where Brooklyn and Queens are) and the Bronx, which is actually on the U.S mainland. “Here’s an island in the middle of nowhere but it’s connected to the entire world.”

For children seeing the Statue of Liberty, a Broadway show or the city decorated at Christmas for the first time, “it gets imprinted on kids’ minds.”

London

London is a starter city for U.S. parents who want to take their kids out of the country, after you’ve explored the nearest metropolitan city and your national parks. “They speak English in London but a child will know just how foreign it is, with things like Marmite,” says Bellows. “The wonderful thing about it is, this is a little like Harry Potter world. It’s familiar enough to be safe and foreign enough to be thrilling.”

Older children will love the ghoulish (and true) tales of the Tower of London. Begun in the 1070s by William the Conqueror, the tower was Europe’s first fortress. Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded there in 1536 and is rumored to still haunt the place.

Trim, Ireland

How could medieval warriors run in chain mail armor? How heavy is a stone ax, really? Head to the ruins of the Dominican Black Friary, a short distance from Trim Castle in the town of Trim, Ireland.

Once a home for religious men and women, the friary’s ruins are being excavated in a special way. Visitors can get a crash course in excavation and start digging and recording their findings side-by-side with archaeologists and geologists. Younger children get to play at a camp, where they get to pick up heavy stone axes and run in chain mail.

Older children will enjoy a tour of nearby Trim Castle, which starred in the movie “Braveheart.” Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter began construction of the castle, the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland, in the 1170s. The castle protected the medieval village, once a commercial and religious powerhouse.

“What amazing architects these people were, and how remarkably old this is,” says Bellows. “It’s the quintessential castle. It’s knights, bow and arrows and blood on the ground.”

Muskoka, Canada

Bellows grew up in Muskoka, two hours north of Toronto in Ontario’s cottage country. “This is where kids can really connect with wilderness, even more so than the Chesapeake,” he says.

“There are dark lakes and loons at night. You can come out to a fish, flip the canoes and find the air holes underneath.”

Almost anyone can rent a cabin in this area known for its more than 1,600 lakes and leave electronic entertainment behind, he says. “It is simple, simple living. You can take off your shoes for days” and simply run around barefoot.

Galapagos Islands

There’s no doubt this trip is expensive. People who want to visit the Galapagos Islands have to take approved tours, designed to protect the islands’ fragile ecology. This is where Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, where nearby islands have different ecologies and animals who have adapted differently to their environments.

“There is no place like it in the world,” says Bellows. “I’ve been twice, and the first time I went, I realized what Darwin was talking about. You see two birds who look the same but they have different vocalizations. It’s like two people speaking English but one person is from Brooklyn and the other is from Boston.”

The animals have no fear of humans, so your children will swim with dolphins and turtles and play near seals. But it’s not all peaceful.

“I saw a seal attacked by a shark and dying, tortoises leaning into each other, both dead,” he says. “You’re on a beach and you see crabs hatch prematurely in the middle of the day, slowly breaking down. It’s Darwin’s theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest.”

A tough, but essential, life lesson.

Where do you want to take your children before they grow up? What do you think is important or them to see? Please share in the comments below.

]]> http://downtowncanyonville.com/10-trips-to-change-a-kids-life/feed 0 http://downtowncanyonville.com/scientists-agree-on-climate-change-why-doesnt-the-public http://downtowncanyonville.com/scientists-agree-on-climate-change-why-doesnt-the-public#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 11:17:47 +0000 ChuckKnowl http://downtowncanyonville.com/scientists-agree-on-climate-change-why-doesnt-the-public Story By: All Things Considered

A new study confirms that the vast majority of scientists who research the climate accept that the planet is warming and human beings are largely responsible. Yet a large slice of the American public believes that scientists are deeply split about global warming.

Altaf Hussain, leader of the MQM party that controls Karachi, addressed supporters from London last Sunday after Pakistan's general elections.

In response to accusations of electoral fraud, he is alleged to have threatened his accusers with violence.

Mr Hussain says that his remarks were taken out of context.

London's Metropolitan Police confirmed to the BBC that an investigation had been launched "following complaints concerning comments made in a broadcast" by Mr Hussain.

Since the mid-1980s, the MQM has won every poll it has contested in Karachi and it did so again in last Saturday's general election.

But this time, it is facing strong and widespread allegations of rigging and electoral fraud.

Half a dozen smaller parties, led by former international cricketer Imran Khan's Movement for Justice Party (PTI), have been holding rallies and sit-ins to demand a re-run in Karachi.

On Sunday, addressing party workers from London, Mr Hussain responded to the allegations by appearing to threaten protesters with violence, and suggesting that if his party's mandate was tampered with, Karachi would have no choice but to separate from Pakistan.

During his speech he referred to protests taking place near the Three Swords roundabout in Karachi.

"Those people who are protesting – and grandstanding – near Three Swords – I don't want to fight or quarrel, but if I order my supporters now, they will go to Three Swords and turn them into a reality."

He added: "MQM is blamed for everything. I say, oppose us with respect and decency, and with proof, otherwise I will soon unleash my supporters."

Karachi is wracked with violence – much of it politically motivated.

Mr Hussain has since said that his remarks, which were broadcast on live TV, were taken out of context.

On Wednesday, the British High Commissioner in Pakistan, Adam Thomson, told a news conference that the UK took allegations of inciting hatred very seriously.

He said it was up to the police in London to determine whether Mr Hussain's remarks violated British laws, and whether or not he could face prosecution.

The BBC's Shahzeb Jillani in Karachi says that Mr Hussain effectively controls the city of 18 million people from his MQM headquarters in north London.

He has lived in the UK since 1991, saying his life would be at risk if he returned to Pakistan.

The MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement) is supported mainly by Muslim Urdu-speaking people whose families moved to Sindh province at the time of the partition of India in 1947.

A scholarly publisher has issued a warning to Jeffrey Beall, a librarian who writes about what he calls “predatory” practices in the scholarly publishing industry, threatening him with a $1 billion lawsuit for his blog posts criticizing the company.

Beall is an academic librarian at the University of Colorado; he writes about the journal industry on his personal blog, Scholarly Open Access.

More specifically, Beall identifies and lists journals that he says prey on academics’ need to publish their research. Such companies often charge a “handling fee” that requires authors to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars if a paper is published.

One publisher named on “Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers 2013″ is OMICS Publishing Group, which told him this week that it “intends to sue Mr. Beall, and says it is seeking $1-billion in damages,” reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

And because OMICS is based in India, The Chronicle says, it also warned Beall that he could also face a prison sentence if an Indian court finds him guilty. There has been no indication that a lawsuit has been filed.

The message from OMICS came in a letter from its attorney at IP Markets, a law firm described on its own website as the “largest Intellectual Property rights management firm” in India.

“I found the letter to be poorly written and personally threatening,” Beall tells The Chronicle. “I think the letter is an attempt to detract from the enormity of OMICS’s editorial practices.”

The Chronicle, also spoke to IP Markets’ Ashok Ram Kumar, a senior lawyer. with IP Markets, who said of Beall, “What he has written is something highly inappropriate,” adding, “He has committed a criminal offense.”

Beall explains his criteria for scholarly publishers on his blog. The factors he looks at range from adhering to ethical standards and codes of conduct to being transparent about ownership and staffing. A warning sign, he says, is when a publisher creates dozens of journal websites at once. Or they might plagiarize the submission guidelines they provide authors.

An article on predatory publishers in The New York Times featured Beall last month. It described another ploy of unscrupulous publishers: creating scientific conferences that have names similar to — and none of the prestige of — established gatherings.

The Times article also mentioned the OMICS Group, and its director, Srinubabu Gedela, noting that the publisher “has about 250 journals and charges authors as much as $2,700 per paper.”