Motorola delays or cancels Android 4.0 update for some devices

2. FrostyDanny posted on yesterday, 23:41 0 0

Moto take way to long to update its devicss

3. mas11 posted on yesterday, 23:41 0 0

It's difficult to deal with updates. A rule of thumb is stick with Nexus phones or a manufacture's flagship device.

7. 14545 posted on yesterday, 23:49 0 0

Wasn't the A2 a flagship at one point? Either way, until google tears down that "wall" moto will still continue to suck.

15. KingKurogiii posted on 1 hour ago 0 0

no, it certainly wasn't. the Atrix 2 was a mid range device on AT&T's line-up. Moto's flagships went from the Atrix to the Bionic to the Razr series and now the Razr HD series.

4. sportsinger75 posted on yesterday, 23:44 1 0

A pretty darn stable official ICS rom for the ATRIX 2 showed up months ago at XDA and I had used it for quite some time before selling the phone and never once had an issue... They should have released at least that update by now.

5. XPERIA-KNIGHT posted on yesterday, 23:46 1 0

its obvious they are focusing on fulfilling the promise of the new line up.....if they fail to deliver there it will be hell to pay..... so cant blame them about that

8. Droid_X_Doug posted on yesterday, 23:50 1 0

Once the handset is sold, it becomes yesterday's news. The manufacturer is always looking to future sales. Bad news for owners of the handsets not getting the ICS love, though.

9. XPERIA-KNIGHT posted on yesterday, 23:53 1 0

its not that they wont be getting no love at all......just not right now lol

11. Droid_X_Doug posted on 1 hour ago 1 0

If no love now, love in the future is even more problematic.

He loves me; he loves me not....

19. XPERIA-KNIGHT posted on 1 hour ago 1 0

lol.......well hopefully they will deliver on both promises

6. neutralguy posted on yesterday, 23:49 0 0

I have a question here, if I flashed a device with a custom ROM, will it be sim-unlocked?

23. antmiu2 posted on 39 min ago 0 0

no, but you can simply buy a unlock code for about 3 bucks on ebay

25. neutralguy posted on 12 min ago 0 0

ohh, okay :) THANKS! do you think, any carrier would give me a free unlock code if I asked them one?

10. BattleBrat posted on yesterday, 23:58 2 0

I wonder when the RAZR will get JellyBean......

13. g2a5b0e posted on 1 hour ago 0 0

I've been wondering that myself. The only phones Motorola has slated for Jellybean are the newest 3. The Razr & Razr Maxx almost seem like no-brainers for JB considering how well they sold, but with Motorola, you never know. One also has to wonder about the Atrix HD. I think they're really dropping the ball here.

20. KingKurogiii posted on 1 hour ago 1 0

Motorola has actually slated that most of their 2011 line-up will get the JB treatment. that may be why select devices have "further plans coming soon"

12. Techboi posted on 1 hour ago 1 0

Wow no ics for my photon then huh smh

14. mxion posted on 1 hour ago 2 3

iphone 5 is the best phone ever

16. wendygarett posted on 1 hour ago 2 0

please utilise the word 'choice' dude...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PhoneArena-LatestNews/~3/kFtXxKXkvBk/Motorola-delays-or-cancels-Android-4.0-update-for-some-devices_id34788

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Former Texas Tech coach Billy Gillispie accused of verbal abuse by mother of teenage camper

Billy Gillispie, ousted as head coach at Texas Tech this week, has another matter on his hands, according to the Associated Press.

In a report published Friday, the AP reports that the mother of a teenage boy who attended one of Gillispie?s summer camps wrote a letter to a top Texas Tech administrator, alleging?that Gillispie verbally abused her son while at camp.

From the AP:

The woman wrote that other coaches at the camp told her son that Gillispie ?likes to pick someone and try to `break them? for some reason,? and that the young man ?wasn?t doing anything wrong,? according to a letter to Texas Tech?s chancellor obtained through an open records request.

According to the mother?s letter, her son overthrew a pass to a fellow camper, which sparked the reaction from Gillispie.

?It happens,? the mother wrote, as reported by the AP. ?That?s the only thing he thought brought on the barrage of insults spurted from the mouth of your coach Gillispie. This was the first of many such verbal attacks.?

Gillispie has been hospitalized multiple times in recent weeks, which is the official reason for his resignation, though accusations of player mistreatment by the coach have been swirling in media reports at the same time.

Among the claims are accusations that Gillispie forced players to practice over the time allowed by the NCAA, causing injury to his players.

Gillispie was set to begin his second year at Texas Tech before his resignation.

Daniel Martin is a writer and editor at?JohnnyJungle.com, covering St. John?s. You can find him on Twitter:@DanielJMartin_

Source: http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/22/former-texas-tech-coach-billy-gillispie-accused-of-verbal-abuse-by-mother-of-teenage-camper/

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Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.: Forget Self-Esteem

If you look under the "Self-Help" heading on Amazon, you'll find roughly 5,000 books listed under the sub-head "Self-Esteem." The vast majority of these books aim to not only tell you why your self-esteem might be low, but to show you how to get your hands on some more of it. It's a thriving business because self-esteem is, at least in Western cultures, considered the bedrock of individual success. You can't possibly get ahead in life, the logic goes, unless you believe you are perfectly awesome.

And of course you must be perfectly awesome in order to keep believing that you are -- so you live in quiet terror of making mistakes, and feel devastated when you do. Your only defense is to refocus your attention on all the things you do well, mentally stroking your own ego until it has forgotten this horrible episode of unawesomeness and moved on to something more satisfying.

When you think about it, this doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for success, does it? Indeed, recent reviews of the research on high self-esteem have come to the troubling conclusion that it is not all it's cracked up to be. High self-esteem does not predict better performance or greater success. And though people with high self-esteem do think they're more successful, objectively, they are not. High self-esteem does not make you a more effective leader, a more appealing lover, more likely to lead a healthy lifestyle, or more attractive and compelling in an interview. But if Stuart Smalley is wrong, and high self-esteem (along with daily affirmations of your own terrificness) is not the answer to all your problems, then what is?

A growing body of research, including new studies by Berkeley's Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, suggest that self-compassion, rather than self-esteem, may be the key to unlocking your true potential for greatness.

Now, I know that some of you are already skeptical about a term like "self-compassion." But this is a scientific, data-driven argument -- not feel-good pop psychology. So hang in there and keep an open mind.

Self-compassion is a willingness to look at your own mistakes and shortcomings with kindness and understanding -- it's embracing the fact that to err is indeed human. When you are self-compassionate in the face of difficulty, you neither judge yourself harshly, nor feel the need to defensively focus on all your awesome qualities to protect your ego. It's not surprising that self-compassion leads, as many studies show, to higher levels of personal well-being, optimism and happiness, and to less anxiety and depression.

But what about performance? Self-compassion may feel good, but aren't the people who are harder on themselves, who are driven to always be the best, the ones who are ultimately more likely to succeed?

To answer that, it's important to understand what self-compassion is not. While the spirit of self-compassion is to some degree captured in expressions like give yourself a break and cut yourself some slack, it is decidedly not the same thing as taking yourself off the hook or lowering the bar. You can be self-compassionate while still accepting responsibility for your performance. And you can be self-compassionate while striving for the most challenging goals -- the difference lies not in where you want to end up, but in how you think about the ups and downs of your journey. As a matter of fact, if you are self-compassionate, new research suggests you are more likely to actually arrive at your destination.

In their studies, Brienes and Chen asked participants to take either a self-compassionate or self-esteem-enhancing view of a setback or failure. For example, when asked to reflect on a personal weakness, some were asked to "imagine that you are talking to yourself about this weakness from a compassionate and understanding perspective. What would you say?"

Others were asked to instead focus on boosting their self-esteem: "Imagine that you are talking to yourself about this weakness from a perspective of validating your positive qualities. What would you say?"

People who experienced self-compassion were more likely to see their weaknesses as changeable. Self-compassion -- far from taking them off the hook -- actually increased their motivation to improve and avoid the same mistake again in the future.

This increased motivation lead to demonstrably superior performance. For instance, in one study, participants who failed an initial test were given a second chance to improve their scores. Those who took a self-compassionate view of their earlier failure studied 25 percent longer, and scored higher on a second test, than participants who focused on bolstering their self-esteem.

Why is self-compassion so powerful? In large part, because it is non-evaluative -- in other words, your ego is effectively out of the picture -- you can confront your flaws and foibles head-on. You can get a realistic sense of your abilities and your actions, and figure out what needs to be done differently next time.

When your focus is instead on protecting your self-esteem, you can't afford to really look at yourself honestly. You can't acknowledge the need for improvement, because it means acknowledging weaknesses and shortcomings -- threats to self-esteem that create feelings of anxiety and depression. How can you learn how to do things right when it's killing you to admit -- even to yourself -- that you've done them wrong?

Here's an unavoidable truth: You are going to screw up. Everyone -- including very successful people -- makes boatloads of mistakes. The key to success is, as everyone knows, to learn from those mistakes and keep moving forward. But not everyone knows how. Self-compassion is the how you've been looking for. So please, give yourself a break.


For more science-based strategies you can use to reach your goals and get happier and healthier, check out Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals and Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.

Trying to figure out where you go wrong when it comes to reaching your goals? Check out the free Nine Things Diagnostics.

For more by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., click here.

For more on success and motivation, click here.

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Follow Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hghalvorson

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/self-compassion_b_1900989.html

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PANscan

PANscan from SecurityMetrics is a scanning tool that looks for files containing credit card numbers and other financially sensitive information stored on the computer. Considering the number of recent data breaches in which attackers broke into the network and just stumbled upon sensitive data, unencrypted and free for anyone to grab, a tool like this will allow small businesses to proactively discover potential goldmines before an incident occurs. PANscan is similar to Identity Finder, another software that looks for sensitive pieces of information hidden throughout the network.

The Payment Card Industry mandates that organizations secure "track 1, track 2, and primary account number" data. Some credit cards store the full 13- or 16-digit account number, name information, expiration date, service code, and the three-digit security CVV code (track1) on the magnetic stripe; others store just that 13- or 16-digit account number, expiration date, service code, PIN verification code, and the three-digit CVV (track 2). If any of these pieces of data are stored unencrypted, that merchant is automatically in violation of PCI Data Security Standard.

The freely available PANscan helps merchants identify when credit card data is improperly handled so that they can fix the problem before a data breach occurs. The free tool allows merchants to scan for unencrypted payment card data hiding in files stored on the computer. The software searches on local hard drives, optical drives, and network servers, and then displays a summary of results.

Using a Third-Party Card Processor?
Many businesses decide to use a third-party card processor instead of trying to handle payments in-house. This makes sense on one level, because the card processor is more likely to have infrastructure in place to properly collect, store, and manage financial data. However, the PCI Security Standards Council is very clear on the fact that outsourcing payment processing does not absolve the merchant of PCI-compliance responsibility.

The business still has to make sure the providers' applications and systems are PCI compliant; if they aren't and a data breach occurs, the business is liable.

Many merchants often make the mistake of thinking that because they are using a third-party processor, then they don't have any sensitive data being saved on their own systems. That is not always the case, as improperly configured payment applications can "leak" data and save local copies of the data being collected. They may also be storing cardholder data when processing charge-backs and refunds.

PANscan Features
The scanning software searches all files include archives such as .zip and .gz files for cardholder information. The scans can be conducted on local hard drives, optical drives, and network servers. SecurityMetrics claims to triple-check threats to minimize false positives.

Unfortunately, there is no way to exclude certain directories from the scan. There was also no way to flag a certain subset of files and ask to scan that. PANscan always runs a "complete" scan.

The interface is pretty straightforward, with five tabs: Register, Scan, Results, Settings, and Help. The Register tab is used to enter the username and password. There is also a link to import the license file into the tool.

The scan is easy to start: press the "play" button on the Scan tab. There is a large "pause" and "stop" button to suspend and cancel scanning, respectively. A scan summary gives an ongoing count of information found, amount of data scanned, and the time elapsed.

It's possible to switch to the Results tab even in the middle of the scan to find files that have already been detected, as well as files that couldn't be scanned because they were either locked and in use, or access was denied.

The Settings tab allows users to specify where the scanner should look. By default, all optical drives, network shares, and local drives are selected. Image files such as .bmp, .jpg, and .png, as well as executables such as .exe, .dll, and .sys files are excluded by default.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/E41WWZT6Qrc/0,2817,2409814,00.asp

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Security not compromised during Secret Service scandal: Probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thirteen employees of the U.S. Secret Service were entangled in a prostitution scandal in Colombia earlier this year but their actions did not compromise the safety of the president, a Department of Homeland Security investigation found.

In a letter to members of Congress obtained by Reuters on Friday, acting Homeland Security Inspector General Charles Edwards summarized his agency's findings after an investigation into the biggest scandal to hit the Secret Service.

A dozen Secret Service employees were accused of misconduct for bringing women, some of them prostitutes, back to their hotel rooms in Colombia in April ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to Cartagena. At least seven of the Secret Service employees have left the agency since the scandal was uncovered.

"Although we found that these agents engaged in misconduct, our investigation developed no evidence to suggest that the actions of (U.S. Secret Service) personnel in Cartagena compromised the safety and security of the president or any sensitive information during this trip," Edwards wrote.

The letter was sent to the members of Congress in advance of a briefing on the investigation. In his letter Edwards said his office would not disclose the investigative report or discuss it publicly.

Edwards said the Inspector General's office interviewed or attempted to interview 251 Secret Service personnel and reviewed travel records, hotel registries and cables as well as personnel assignments and Secret Service and U.S. Embassy documents.

Based on the review and interviews, he said his office could identify 13 Secret Service employees who "had personal encounters" with Colombian women at two hotels and a private residence.

Six of the women were paid by the Secret Service employees, four asked for money but were not paid and three left the hotel rooms without asking for money, Edwards said. Prostitution is legal in Colombia.

One of the women who was paid was initially refused payment but she brought a Colombian police officer to the door of the Secret Service employee's room. When he did not answer the door, a different Secret Service employee paid her, the letter said.

A hotel registry showed that a Defense Department employee working with the White House Communication Agency and another person possibly affiliated with the White House advance operation also might have had contact with foreign nationals, the letter said.

But a White House review concluded that no members of the advance team engaged in inappropriate conduct during Obama's trip to Colombia, a White House official said.

Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Homeland Security committee, said she was troubled about the different conclusions on possible involvement by White House staff and said it raised concerns about the credibility of the White House investigation.

The U.S. military has completed a separate report about a dozen U.S. military service members who brought Colombian women to their hotel rooms in Cartagena. The military has said it was not pursuing criminal charges against the service members but was pursuing lesser punishments instead.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Matt Spetalnick; Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/secret-did-not-compromise-security-during-colombia-prostitute-010911216.html

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PFT: Kolb to skip game if wife goes into labor

greg-schiano-campus-unionGetty Images

When the Buccaneers hired Greg Schiano from Rutgers earlier this year, few league insiders had much to say.? Now that Schiano has ruffled the feathers of two-time Super Bowl winning coach Tom Coughlin by telling Schiano?s guys to play football during, you know, a football game, those who had previously been silent are teeing off.

Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports writes, relying on multiple unnamed sources, that Schiano was considered to be a bully during his time at Rutgers.? Silver reports that Schiano was ?universally viewed as unaccommodating, intimidating and downright disrespectful by NFL representatives who paid visits to Rutgers.?

?It?s his way or [expletive] you,? an unnamed veteran coach told Silver.? ?He needs to back up a little bit, or he?s going to have a very hard time in this league over the long haul.?

We?ve got no reason to doubt Silver?s reporting, although we wonder whether the opinions expressed would be quite as strong if not anonymous.

That said, coaches are often jerks.

It?s a point we made last month, when ESPN devoted a segment of Outside The Lines to the scintillating question of whether suspended Saints coach Sean Payton is a nice guy.? Plenty of football coaches aren?t nice guys (cough . . . Parcells . . . cough . . . Belichick), for a variety of reasons both strategic and psychological.

Though Schiano has yet to establish much of a track record at the NFL level, his 11 years at Rutgers rubbed scouts the wrong way.

?Penn State was off limits for all but two days a year, but they didn?t make you feel as unwelcome,? another unnamed source told Silver.? ?At Rutgers, it was a really unpleasant day.? You were made to feel like an outsider, like you weren?t welcome. And everyone was scared to talk to you.

?[Schiano] tried so hard to be a hard ass and went out of his way to be rude.? When you?d pass him in the hallway, you might say, ?Good morning,? and he?d look at you like you?re a [expletive] idiot.? A guy like him doesn?t realize that probably half of us played the game at a really high level ? it?s completely condescending.? He would go out of his way to make you feel as uncomfortable as he could.?

The disrespect, per the report, went farther than interactions.? Scouts were given strangely limited access to Rutgers practices.

?There?s a box, a little bitty box, way away from the field,? one of the sources told Silver.? ?All the scouts had to stand in that box like a bunch of little kids.? You couldn?t step out; you literally had to stand in it.? My feeling is that given who was chosen to coach the Bucs, all Tampa scouts should have to stand in a box at every college in America.?

Of course, none of that stopped Buccaneers G.M. Mark Dominik from hiring Schiano.? And if Schiano is successful at the NFL level, he?ll be no different than any of the other coaches who were primarily known for being big jerks until they put pelts on the wall ? and even after.

Let?s face it, while the resentment of Schiano has caused many to embrace Coughlin, he was regarded as a big jerk, too, until those Super Bowl trophies started to pile up.

Bottom line?? Plenty of football coaches are big jerks.? (Not all, but plenty.)? Some are worse than others.? And winning is the best way to get people not to notice, or to care, about any antisocial tendencies that so many football coaches seem to have.

For Schiano, that puts even more pressure on him to win at this level, or he?ll soon be back at a college program, possibly making NFL scouts feel even less welcome.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/09/22/kevin-kolb-plans-to-skip-game-if-wife-goes-into-labor/related/

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Razer Game Booster enters closed beta, ready to fine tune your rig (video)

Razer Game Booster enters closed beta, ready to fine tune your rig

Normally we associate Razer with hardware. Gaming mice, keyboards and headsets are the company's bread and butter. It even has a laptop geared expressly towards the serious pixel pusher. But, you might be surprised to learn it's also in the software business. The latest member of its burgeoning application family is the Razer Game Booster. Based largely on IObit's app of the same name, the new downloadable utility will crank your rig to 11. There are three basic features, the most important being Game Mode which, with the click of a button, shutsdown unessential services and programs to keep your PC focused on the task at hand. (We assume that involves killing something or other with a large weapon.) There's also a calibration guide that ensures your drivers are up to date and your essential gaming files are properly defragged. Last is Share Mode, which allows you to take screen shots or capture live audio and video to preserve your accomplishments. For now Razer Game Booster is in private beta, but you can request an invite at the source link. And don't miss the PR and video after the break.

Continue reading Razer Game Booster enters closed beta, ready to fine tune your rig (video)

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/kzAPC-L6PoM/

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Young jobless on the rise in Europe's rich north

Eric Vidal / Reuters

The face of northern Europe's jobless. Youth worker Mostafa Ameziane (L), 31, and unemployed Hamza Ahmadoun, 25, pose for a photograph in Antwerp.

By Robin Emmott and Robert-Jan Bartunek, Reuters

ANTWERP, Belgium - At 29, Samira Ahidar just got a permanent job, her first.

Ahidar, who still lives with her parents, dropped out of school a decade ago and her adult life has been dominated by the search for work. She would still be jobless if it were not for a job creation scheme that employs her at an elderly care home.

"I've no idea where I'll be in five years time," said Ahidar, dressed in an orange apron that comes with her new role. "It is so hard to find work, you feel like giving up."

Ahidar does not live in Greece or Spain, countries where as many as one in two young people are without work, but in the wealthy Belgian port city of Antwerp. With its stunning 16th-century Gothic houses, the city is a world centre for diamond trading and boasts a cutting-edge fashion industry. It also has a fast-growing number of unemployed twentysomethings.

Youth unemployment is notoriously a problem of southern Europe. What is less obvious, as the euro zone slips into its second recession in just three years, is the scale of the problem in the north.

A quarter of 18-to-25 year olds in Antwerp are now jobless, up from 19 percent in 2008. In some parts of Brussels, the Belgian and European capital and the third-richest region in the European Union, youth joblessness is as high as 40 percent. In France, Britain and Sweden, as many as one in five young people are now out of work.

The rising pool of jobless youth is fuelling class and racial divisions, according to youth workers and some politicians. Many experts blame joblessness for outbursts of violence such as last year's riots in Britain.

And today's problem could have a big impact on Europe's future. The continent's labour force is set to decline by 50 million people over the next 50 years, according to the World Bank. Skilled, experienced new workers will be needed to support an ageing population.

"Young people are being marginalised with major economic consequences," said Francois Robert, a social worker at the employment institute Bruxelles Formation. "The problems people are talking about in Greece and Spain are right outside the European Commission's door in Brussels."

Vacancies, but no work
Southern Europe has long struggled with youth unemployment. In Italy, the rate has not dropped below 20 percent in more than two decades, according to the EU's statistics office Eurostat. In Spain, the rate has averaged 30 percent since 1990.

By contrast, in the United States, youth unemployment is 17 percent, up from just under 12 percent in December 2007. The European exception is Germany, where only 8 percent of young people aged 15 to 24 are out of work, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

It is normal that unemployment goes up in tough times. But worryingly, some of the problems, even in northern Europe, are structural. In Belgium as elsewhere, these include a lack of skills, discrimination and the cushion of welfare payments that approach the minimum wage.

Belgium has an open, high-tech economy and the world's 12th highest per capita income, but "the education we offer is not always in tune with what the market needs," says Pascal Smet, education minister for Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking half of the country.

The shortcomings have important consequences. The gap between young people's skills and those required by employers means Belgium has one of the highest percentages in the industrialised world of young people who are not in employment, education or training, according to the OECD.

It's not as if there are no jobs. Flanders, which is home to Antwerp, has a trade-friendly location between Germany's industrial belt and the North Sea that attracts multinationals. In 2011, the number of jobs on offer in the region - excluding temporary agency work - rose 17 percent from the year before. But there were only about three job seekers for every vacancy in March, according to the latest data available - the lowest level since 2000.

Entrepreneur Frederic Bulcaen says he cannot find the staff he needs for his industrial ventilation company Typhoon, which deploys teams of engineers across Europe to install equipment to keep factories clean.

"I just hired somebody with a master's in industrial engineering who was able to choose from 10 different companies that all wanted him," said Bulcaen, in an office overlooking stacks of shiny steel pipes and giant motors. "It is very, very difficult."

Materials engineers are needed in industries such as aerospace and chemicals, but only about 15 of them graduate in Belgium every year, forcing companies to look abroad.

Wanted: English speakers
For some young people, basic education is the problem. To work in Brussels, for instance, English is a must-have: the city, often likened to Washington D.C., is packed with embassies, international organisations and industry lobbyists.

About 36 percent of people in Brussels come from outside the European Union, and there's not much opportunity for monolingual French-speaking children of immigrants. The car plants and factories where they would have found work two decades ago have closed.

Twenty-four-year-old Michel Ayim is a second-generation immigrant who spends his days with his friend Pierre Bello, smoking cigarettes and listening to French rap in front of the paint-flaked warehouses along Brussels' industrial-era canal. Just a few stops away on the metro are the shiny complexes of the EU institutions, where members of the European Parliament earn 95,000 euros ($120,000) a year plus benefits.

"I go to a temping agency, but I get turned away because I don't speak good English," said Ayim, who has not had a permanent job since leaving school. "So maybe I work as a waiter for a day, but I can only dream of a good salary."

Children of immigrants - who mostly came from North Africa - face particular hurdles. One in five people in Belgium are of immigrant origin but people from outside Europe are often poorly integrated, and immigrants rarely fill professional jobs.

Fewer than half the non-EU immigrants who have yet to obtain Belgian nationality were in a job in May this year, according to a study by the Flanders job agency VDAB.

"They should have told our parents how important education is and that you have to push your children to get a qualification," said Ahidar, whose parents came from North Africa in the 1960s to work in Belgian industry.

Some children of immigrants say they are dissuaded from gaining useful skills. Jobless 26-year-old Rashid, whose parents came from Morocco, said his "teachers at primary school used to tell my parents I was a talented and creative student."

"But when I moved to secondary education, they immediately started telling them I should follow a career in manual labour," he said, sipping mint tea and watching Latin American football in a Moroccan cafe in Antwerp.

Some Belgian employers also discriminate on race despite laws against it. An investigation by recruitment agency federation Federgon found a third of agencies agreed to send only white Belgians to fill vacancies during the past year.

One 25-year-old, Hamza Ahmadoun, said he had done around 60 jobs from security to telesales in the six years since leaving school. "I speak Dutch, English and Arabic, but I don't get a chance, it is pure discrimination," he said. "In the morning I get up, I pray and see what the day brings."

But it is not just the children of immigrants who are struggling.

Anna De Cock, 24, a white Belgian born in the Netherlands, works sweeping Antwerp's tree-lined avenues as part of another job creation scheme. "I am lucky to be here," she said, dressed in a bulky jump suit and carrying a black broom.

De Cock wanted to become a chef and took jobs washing dishes in dark, back-alley kitchens, but was unable to find steady work, lost interest and stopped showing up.

Stuck on welfare
Then there's the issue of unemployment benefits in northern Europe, which for a single young person are more than double that of the United States. Belgium is even more generous than that.

A Belgian school leaver with a diploma can receive benefits of around 900 euros ($1,200) a month after a year of unemployment. The minimum wage of 1,400 euros a month before tax, which De Cock earns, is one of the world's highest.

After deductions, there's only about a 150-euro difference between unemployment benefit and the pay for low-skilled work, said Peter Stappaerts, director of Werkhaven, a job scheme in Antwerp. "So unfortunately it is easier to stay home and collect benefits." On top of this, young mothers have an added disincentive: to work, they have to pay for childcare.

Over the past year, riots in Britain and France have been linked with the frustration of unemployment. There has also been rioting in Antwerp and Brussels. Earlier this year, protesters hurled bins and metal barriers at a police station in a poor area of Brussels after a Muslim woman was arrested for refusing to remove a face veil, banned in Belgium.

"We are looking at the emergence of a generation of young people who have always been unemployed," said Patrick Manelickx, the head of Brussels-based youth centre JES that trains youngsters and tries to get them into work.

"There is a feeling of frustration, of anger among many of them, that they don't have a future," he said.

The European Commission is pushing the bloc's 27 countries to set up schemes to offer training or further study to any young person who does not find a job within four months of leaving school. Some countries have set aside funds to support this.

Governments elsewhere have moved to reform benefits or education, and encourage youth employment with lower taxes and less job security. In France, the government is fast-tracking a job-creation scheme.

But Belgium is forcing through around 13 billion euros in budget cuts this year and says it cannot afford such a plan, although it may reform its education system. Flanders' education minister Smet wants to make unemployment benefits dependent on trying to find work or study. "I am all for solidarity in our society," he said. "But you can't have something for nothing."

Ahidar's new job as a driver gives her hope of starting her own taxi business ferrying Antwerp's elderly about. But she cannot get bank financing.

"I had the character to keep looking for work," Ahidar said. "Others didn't and ended up in crime, and the job situation is so bad that you start to understand why."

More money and business news:

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Source: http://bottomline.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/21/14009451-joblessness-strikes-more-young-people-in-europes-wealthy-north?lite

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Intrinsically disordered proteins: A conversation with Rohit Pappu

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Diana Lutz
dlutz@wustl.edu
314-935-5272
Washington University in St. Louis

Students are taught that a protein's 3-dimensional shape is critical to its function, but it turns out that many proteins exist in a state of 'disorder' and yet are functional

If you open any biology textbook to the section on proteins, you will learn that a protein is made up of a sequence of amino acids, that the sequence determines how the chain of amino acids folds into a compact structure, and that the folded protein's structure determines its function. In other words sequence encodes structure and function derives from structure.

But the textbooks may have to be rewritten. As Rohit Pappu and two colleagues explain in a perspective published Sept. 20 in Science, a large class of proteins doesn't adhere to the structure-function paradigm. Called intrinsically disordered proteins, these proteins fail fold either in whole or in part and yet they are functional.

We sat down recently with Pappu, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Center for Biological Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis to catch up on the latest science.

When did people realize some proteins violate the rules?

It's been about 20 years. The earliest clue was that some protein segments didn't show up in X-ray crystallography or NMR studies, the standard ways of studying protein structure.

By the 1990s people who studied how proteins interact with DNA had noticed the proteins often change shape when they interact with DNA. In the absence of DNA all the standard probes for protein structure reported back that the proteins were floppy, and yet when the protein formed a complex with DNA it had a well-defined three-dimensional structure.

How did you first come to hear about them?

By serendipity. When I was leaving Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington University in 2001 I had a meeting with Keith Dunker of the Indiana University Schools of Medicine and Informatics, one of the founding fathers of this field. It was pure chance. The meeting started awkwardly because Keith was wondering who I was and I had never heard of him. I was working on a polymer physics description of unfolded proteins, and it turned out he had just written an 80-page review paper on intrinsically disordered proteins.

"Every time you talk to people in the back alleys of protein science," he said, "they tell you their proteins are very flexible or highly dynamic, and this dynamism is important for function."

So Keith did two things. He synthesized all of the information then known about these flexible, highly disordered proteins. And, together with his colleague Vladimir Uversky, he asked if it was possible to predict which sequences would be incapable of folding autonomously. With the help of computer scientists who taught him how to look for patterns in high-dimensional spaces, he learned that 11 out of the 20 amino acids predispose sequences toward being disordered. Today there are about 20 predictors of disorder.

So when I heard this story I thought, "OK, either this is absolutely crackers or it is going to be transformative. I'm going to take a bet on transformative because I find what he's saying compelling."

So during my first two years at Washington University I started to devour the literature. I think I scared a lot of people here who weren't sure they had hired the person they thought they were hiring.

What percentage of proteins are intrinsically disordered?

It goes by kingdoms. So in bacteria and prokaryotic organisms these numbers are pretty small. They're about 5 percent of the proteome, the entire set of proteins made by an organism. But if you go to eukaryotes or multicellular organisms then the numbers get to 30 or 40 percent of the entire proteome.

But if you ask what percentage of sequences that make up the signaling proteome proteins that are busy passing messages to other proteins are intrinsically disordered, then the numbers jump up to 60 to 70 percent.

There seems to be a division of responsibilities. Structured proteins take part in catalysis and transport. Intrinsically disordered proteins are important for signaling and regulation.

Why are disordered proteins involved in signaling and regulation?

I think there are two logical reasons. One is that complexes involving intrinsically disordered proteins are short-lived and the other is that they typically bind many rather than just one molecule.

If a molecule cannot fold except in the context of a complex, then some of the energy used for folding must come from intermolecular interactions. And if the molecule has taken out an energy loan, the complex that forms is not going to be very stable or long-lived.

You're combining high specificity (because the protein will only fold when it recognizes the molecule with which it forms a complex) with low overall affinity (because the complex is not very stable).

The many-to-one interactions arise because disordered proteins typically function through short amino acid stretches instead of large protein-protein interfaces. So a single polypeptide stretch can interact with multiple targets. One motif talks to one protein, and a second motif talks to another protein, but through the chain they can communicate with each other.

That's why these molecules happen to be at hubs within networks. They're trafficking information through networks like the air traffic control tower in an airport hub. Because most of their functions are carried out by these very short motifs, they are capable of coordinating large amounts of information that are disparate in nature. You get many things happening at the same time.

What was remarkable to me about your perspective is that you emphasized functionality of these proteins. Isn't the name a bit misleading?

You're right. As we get to know them better we've thought we should have called disordered proteins, molecular rheostats. But to a physicist disorder just means thermal fluctuations are dominant, so for physicists it's an accurate description. The problem is that in the biomedical field the word disorder has been coopted for disease.

You mention several tricks these proteins have up their sleeves. One I thought was clever was modulating the local chemical environment to encourage a particular reaction.

This is a very important idea. If you're doing chemistry in a test tube, and you want to make a reaction go, you increase the concentration of the reactants: A needs to bump into B and do so often. But this is a matter of probability so you might need a gazillion molecules of A and bazillion of B to get some statistics.

But if there's a tether between A and B, they're guaranteed to bump into each other quite often. You might be able to get away with a handful of molecules instead of gazillion.

The loose tether, in effect, increases the concentration of A around B, and the tether is often a disordered region.

Another thing you mentioned was cryptic disorder: the idea that structured proteins can become disordered. That's such a backward flip.

Richard Kriwacki of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a co-author of this perspective, is the person who made the clearest discovery in that regard. He shows that two structured domains can come together this is part of the whole p53 tumor suppressor apparatus and in trying to commingle, they undergo an unfolding transition that exposes sites that otherwise were buried.

This is the idea of cryptic disorder: that domains, by promoting disorder in one another, reveal hidden, or cryptic, motifs or sites that now are available for function.

You mention that in the biomedical community disorder is associated with disease. Your co-author M. Madan Babu of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge has written about this connection.

Yes. Cells make many decisions. They decide to differentiate, to die, to regenerate, or to go quiet ,and these decisions are controlled by regulatory networks. The integrators in the networks are predominantly disordered regions.

So the question is: Will mutations in those regions give rise to unwarranted cellular phenotypes and hence diseases, such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer and neurodegeneration? The answer is absolutely yes.

But what we are learning is that mutations in disordered regions don't necessarily generate a deleterious phenotype because disordered regions are fairly unconstrained compared to structured regions. So these regions are also engines of robustness.

They're more robust to mutation?

At least the one study that looked at cancer mutation would suggest that. It showed that cancer-associated mutations partition toward structured regions of proteins, not toward disordered regions.

Do you think the new awareness of disordered proteins will lead to medical breakthroughs?

Maybe. If I tell you that a disordered protein is at the hub of a network, then it stands to reason that targeting the hub with a drug gives you a ready-made way of controlling a cellular decision.

The only problem is that we don't quite know what it means to target a hub. If a protein has a very precise shape we know how to target it: it's like designing a key for a lock. But if a protein is disordered we have to understand what that means for that particular hub. We also have to be aware that anything that changes the hub will change a range of downstream processes, pathways and cellular decisions.

Nonetheless many people now are talking about these disordered proteins as druggable targets.

Together with Peter Tompa, another of the field's founders, you organized a Gordon Research Conference on disordered proteins this summer. This was a chance for the leading scientists in the field to explore their thoughts off the record. What was the consensus?

It was evident that the more you know the harder it is to draw the order/disorder demarcation. There is a continuum. In fact, many disordered regions do end up adopting structure; they just defer the adoption of structure to the appropriate context.

We wrote the Science perspective because we thought this was the opportune moment to make the point that there is probably evolutionary synergy between the structured domains and the disordered regions, and that synergy is what we really need to wrap our heads around if we are really going to get at how biology integrates signals to control processes and generate responses.

So at the end of the day what you end up with is molecular integrators and it appears that these disordered regions are the molecular integrators.

###


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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.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 20-Sep-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Diana Lutz
dlutz@wustl.edu
314-935-5272
Washington University in St. Louis

Students are taught that a protein's 3-dimensional shape is critical to its function, but it turns out that many proteins exist in a state of 'disorder' and yet are functional

If you open any biology textbook to the section on proteins, you will learn that a protein is made up of a sequence of amino acids, that the sequence determines how the chain of amino acids folds into a compact structure, and that the folded protein's structure determines its function. In other words sequence encodes structure and function derives from structure.

But the textbooks may have to be rewritten. As Rohit Pappu and two colleagues explain in a perspective published Sept. 20 in Science, a large class of proteins doesn't adhere to the structure-function paradigm. Called intrinsically disordered proteins, these proteins fail fold either in whole or in part and yet they are functional.

We sat down recently with Pappu, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Center for Biological Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis to catch up on the latest science.

When did people realize some proteins violate the rules?

It's been about 20 years. The earliest clue was that some protein segments didn't show up in X-ray crystallography or NMR studies, the standard ways of studying protein structure.

By the 1990s people who studied how proteins interact with DNA had noticed the proteins often change shape when they interact with DNA. In the absence of DNA all the standard probes for protein structure reported back that the proteins were floppy, and yet when the protein formed a complex with DNA it had a well-defined three-dimensional structure.

How did you first come to hear about them?

By serendipity. When I was leaving Johns Hopkins University to come to Washington University in 2001 I had a meeting with Keith Dunker of the Indiana University Schools of Medicine and Informatics, one of the founding fathers of this field. It was pure chance. The meeting started awkwardly because Keith was wondering who I was and I had never heard of him. I was working on a polymer physics description of unfolded proteins, and it turned out he had just written an 80-page review paper on intrinsically disordered proteins.

"Every time you talk to people in the back alleys of protein science," he said, "they tell you their proteins are very flexible or highly dynamic, and this dynamism is important for function."

So Keith did two things. He synthesized all of the information then known about these flexible, highly disordered proteins. And, together with his colleague Vladimir Uversky, he asked if it was possible to predict which sequences would be incapable of folding autonomously. With the help of computer scientists who taught him how to look for patterns in high-dimensional spaces, he learned that 11 out of the 20 amino acids predispose sequences toward being disordered. Today there are about 20 predictors of disorder.

So when I heard this story I thought, "OK, either this is absolutely crackers or it is going to be transformative. I'm going to take a bet on transformative because I find what he's saying compelling."

So during my first two years at Washington University I started to devour the literature. I think I scared a lot of people here who weren't sure they had hired the person they thought they were hiring.

What percentage of proteins are intrinsically disordered?

It goes by kingdoms. So in bacteria and prokaryotic organisms these numbers are pretty small. They're about 5 percent of the proteome, the entire set of proteins made by an organism. But if you go to eukaryotes or multicellular organisms then the numbers get to 30 or 40 percent of the entire proteome.

But if you ask what percentage of sequences that make up the signaling proteome proteins that are busy passing messages to other proteins are intrinsically disordered, then the numbers jump up to 60 to 70 percent.

There seems to be a division of responsibilities. Structured proteins take part in catalysis and transport. Intrinsically disordered proteins are important for signaling and regulation.

Why are disordered proteins involved in signaling and regulation?

I think there are two logical reasons. One is that complexes involving intrinsically disordered proteins are short-lived and the other is that they typically bind many rather than just one molecule.

If a molecule cannot fold except in the context of a complex, then some of the energy used for folding must come from intermolecular interactions. And if the molecule has taken out an energy loan, the complex that forms is not going to be very stable or long-lived.

You're combining high specificity (because the protein will only fold when it recognizes the molecule with which it forms a complex) with low overall affinity (because the complex is not very stable).

The many-to-one interactions arise because disordered proteins typically function through short amino acid stretches instead of large protein-protein interfaces. So a single polypeptide stretch can interact with multiple targets. One motif talks to one protein, and a second motif talks to another protein, but through the chain they can communicate with each other.

That's why these molecules happen to be at hubs within networks. They're trafficking information through networks like the air traffic control tower in an airport hub. Because most of their functions are carried out by these very short motifs, they are capable of coordinating large amounts of information that are disparate in nature. You get many things happening at the same time.

What was remarkable to me about your perspective is that you emphasized functionality of these proteins. Isn't the name a bit misleading?

You're right. As we get to know them better we've thought we should have called disordered proteins, molecular rheostats. But to a physicist disorder just means thermal fluctuations are dominant, so for physicists it's an accurate description. The problem is that in the biomedical field the word disorder has been coopted for disease.

You mention several tricks these proteins have up their sleeves. One I thought was clever was modulating the local chemical environment to encourage a particular reaction.

This is a very important idea. If you're doing chemistry in a test tube, and you want to make a reaction go, you increase the concentration of the reactants: A needs to bump into B and do so often. But this is a matter of probability so you might need a gazillion molecules of A and bazillion of B to get some statistics.

But if there's a tether between A and B, they're guaranteed to bump into each other quite often. You might be able to get away with a handful of molecules instead of gazillion.

The loose tether, in effect, increases the concentration of A around B, and the tether is often a disordered region.

Another thing you mentioned was cryptic disorder: the idea that structured proteins can become disordered. That's such a backward flip.

Richard Kriwacki of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, a co-author of this perspective, is the person who made the clearest discovery in that regard. He shows that two structured domains can come together this is part of the whole p53 tumor suppressor apparatus and in trying to commingle, they undergo an unfolding transition that exposes sites that otherwise were buried.

This is the idea of cryptic disorder: that domains, by promoting disorder in one another, reveal hidden, or cryptic, motifs or sites that now are available for function.

You mention that in the biomedical community disorder is associated with disease. Your co-author M. Madan Babu of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge has written about this connection.

Yes. Cells make many decisions. They decide to differentiate, to die, to regenerate, or to go quiet ,and these decisions are controlled by regulatory networks. The integrators in the networks are predominantly disordered regions.

So the question is: Will mutations in those regions give rise to unwarranted cellular phenotypes and hence diseases, such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer and neurodegeneration? The answer is absolutely yes.

But what we are learning is that mutations in disordered regions don't necessarily generate a deleterious phenotype because disordered regions are fairly unconstrained compared to structured regions. So these regions are also engines of robustness.

They're more robust to mutation?

At least the one study that looked at cancer mutation would suggest that. It showed that cancer-associated mutations partition toward structured regions of proteins, not toward disordered regions.

Do you think the new awareness of disordered proteins will lead to medical breakthroughs?

Maybe. If I tell you that a disordered protein is at the hub of a network, then it stands to reason that targeting the hub with a drug gives you a ready-made way of controlling a cellular decision.

The only problem is that we don't quite know what it means to target a hub. If a protein has a very precise shape we know how to target it: it's like designing a key for a lock. But if a protein is disordered we have to understand what that means for that particular hub. We also have to be aware that anything that changes the hub will change a range of downstream processes, pathways and cellular decisions.

Nonetheless many people now are talking about these disordered proteins as druggable targets.

Together with Peter Tompa, another of the field's founders, you organized a Gordon Research Conference on disordered proteins this summer. This was a chance for the leading scientists in the field to explore their thoughts off the record. What was the consensus?

It was evident that the more you know the harder it is to draw the order/disorder demarcation. There is a continuum. In fact, many disordered regions do end up adopting structure; they just defer the adoption of structure to the appropriate context.

We wrote the Science perspective because we thought this was the opportune moment to make the point that there is probably evolutionary synergy between the structured domains and the disordered regions, and that synergy is what we really need to wrap our heads around if we are really going to get at how biology integrates signals to control processes and generate responses.

So at the end of the day what you end up with is molecular integrators and it appears that these disordered regions are the molecular integrators.

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share 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.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/wuis-idp091912.php

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Iraq bars Syria-bound plane with suspected arms

BEIRUT (AP) ? Iraq has banned a North Korean plane from its airspace on suspicion it was carrying weapons for Syria, a government spokesman said Friday, potentially closing a supply line for President Bashar Assad's embattled regime.

U.S. officials have accused Baghdad of allowing Iran to fly weapons to Syrian forces through Iraqi airspace, a charge Iraq has denied. North Korea and Iran are allies of Assad whose military is fighting a civil war against rebels trying to topple him.

In remarks published Friday, Assad was adamant that the rebels "will not succeed" and said a foreign military intervention such as the one that helped topple Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will "not be repeated" in Syria.

Assad's comments come at a time of bloody stalemate, with neither side able to deliver a knock-out blow. Activists on Friday raised the number of people killed in the 18-month conflict to nearly 30,000. Daily death tolls have been rising in recent weeks, with the regime attacking from the air and some rebels using heavy weapons.

Both sides have foreign backers. Assad's allies include Russia and China, along with Iran and North Korea, while the rebels are supported by the U.S. and Western allies, Turkey and several Gulf states, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department identified 117 Iranian aircraft it said were ferrying weapons to the Syrian regime. The department said the planes were delivering weapons and Iranian forces under the cover of "humanitarian" shipments.

Iraq has accepted Iranian assurances that it is not using Iraqi airspace to smuggle weapons into Syria, the Obama administration's choice for ambassador to Iraq, R. Stephen Beecroft, said earlier this week. He said the U.S. is pressing the Iraqi government, whose Shiite-led coalition has close ties with Iran, to force flights to land and be inspected.

Iraq has denied it is turning a blind eye to suspected Iranian weapons shipments, but on Thursday banned a North Korean plane from using its airspace. The government rejected the request from Pyongyang to fly a plane to Syria through Iraqi skies, on suspicion it carried weapons, government spokesman Ali al-Moussawi confirmed Friday.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an ally of Iran, has denied repeatedly that he is allowing weapons trafficking and has said Baghdad will remain neutral in the Syria conflict.

The issue has been a sore point between Baghdad and Washington. It was raised again in a phone call Friday between al-Maliki and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The vice president spoke of the need "to prevent any state from taking advantage of Iraq's territory or air space to send weapons to Syria," the White House said.

Iraq's decision to ban the North Korean plane may signal Baghdad's attempts to repair weakening relations with the United States.

In Damascus, meanwhile, Assad lashed out at Gulf countries, which he accused of using their enormous oil wealth to try to drive him from power. He singled out Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among his most vocal critics.

"They think their money can buy geography, history and a regional role," Assad was quoted as saying in the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi.

"They are giving terrorists weapons and money with hope of repeating the Libyan model," Assad added. "Instead of helping regional stability, they are supplying armed elements with weapons and training in order to weaken the Syrian state."

The upheaval in Syria presents an opportunity for the Gulf's Sunni rulers to bolster their influence and possibly leave Shiite powerhouse Iran without its critical alliances that flow through Damascus. Assad's regime is led by the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Syria's ties with the Gulf nations have been strained in the past ? Assad once called Saudi King Abdullah and other Arab leaders "half men" for being critical of Hezbollah over the 34-day war between the Lebanese Shiite militant group and Israel in 2006.

After Assad's remarks were published, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi told state-run TV that the president had received nine Egyptian journalists and had a chat with them about the latest developments.

The minister said none of the journalists took notes as the meeting was considered a "personal visit," but a reporter for Al-Ahram Al-Arabi published some of what was said.

In the meeting with the Egyptian journalists, Assad was also quoted as saying that the only way to solve the Syrian crisis is through "dialogue with the opposition" and that the "door for dialogue is open."

Most Syrian opposition groups reject any talks with the regime, saying they will not accept anything less than Assad's departure from power and the dissolving of his regime's security agencies.

One of the opposition groups, the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, on Friday accused the regime of being behind the disappearance of two of its leaders.

Abdul-Aziz al-Kheir and Ayas Ayyash were expected to take part in a conference Sunday in Damascus by some 20 Syrian groups that are calling for Assad to step down. But they disappeared Thursday along with a friend who had picked them up at Damascus International Airport, the group said.

The group's head, Hassan Abdul-Azim, said the regime was believed to be behind the disappearance. Openly disparaging the regime has always been taboo and fraught with danger in Syria, although some have grown emboldened because of the uprising.

Abdul-Azim said the opposition wants a "new regime that represents the will of the people." He said his group will go ahead with the conference. The gathering will invite European ambassadors and envoys from China and Russia.

Also Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nearly 30,000 Syrians have been killed during the conflict.

The Observatory's count includes 20,935 civilians; 1,153 army defectors fighting alongside the rebels; and 7,141 Syrian troops fighting for the Assad regime ? which gives a total of 29,229, said the head of the group, Rami Abdul-Rahman.

The list is compiled from reports by witnesses and medical staff, he said, adding that he only includes those identified by name or whose death was authenticated by amateur video. The Syrian military rarely releases figures on troops killed.

Another Syrian opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees, put the overall death toll at 26,405. However, its count does not include Syrian troops killed in battle. The LCC relies on a network of activists in Syria to collect its information.

____

Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Beirut and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-bars-syria-bound-plane-suspected-arms-181758361.html

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