BAMAKO/SEGOU, Mali (Reuters) - The first West African regional forces arrived in Mali on Thursday to reinforce French and Malian troops battling to push back al Qaeda-linked rebels after seven days of French air strikes.
A contingent of around 100 Togolese troops landed in Bamako and was due to be joined by Nigerian forces already en route. Nigerien and Chadian forces were massing in Niger, Mali's neighbor to the east.
The scrambling of the U.N.-mandated African mission, which previously had not been due for deployment until September, will be a boon for France, the former colonial power in Mali.
French troops, which had moved northwards from Bamako in an armored column on Tuesday, pinned down some Islamist fighters in the small town of Diabaly. But French forces held back from launching an all-out assault as the insurgents had taken refuge in the homes of civilians, residents said.
"The Islamists are still in Diabaly. They are very many of them. Every time they hear a plane overhead, they run into homes, traumatizing the people," said one woman who fled the town with her three children overnight.
Residents in the town of Konna, to the north of the central garrison town of Sevare, said Islamists had fled as Malian soldiers backed by French troops deployed.
"Life is difficult for the people of northern Mali and the international community has the duty to help these people," said Togolese Lieutenant Colonel Mawoute Bayassim Gnamkoulamba.
"That is why we think that it is necessary for us to protect Mali and we are proud today to fulfill that mission."
French forces, numbering some 1,400 soldiers, began ground operations on Wednesday against an Islamist coalition grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and the home-grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA militants.
President Francois Hollande ordered the intervention on the grounds that the Islamists who had taken over the poor West African country's north could turn it into a "terrorist state" which would radiate a threat beyond its borders.
Hollande has pledged they will stay until stability returns to Mali but, in the first apparent retaliatory attack, al Qaeda-linked militants took dozens of foreigners hostage at a gas plant in Algeria, blaming Algerian cooperation with France.
A total of 2,500 French troops are expected in Mali but Paris is keen to swiftly hand the mission over to West Africa's ECOWAS bloc, which in December secured a U.N. mandate for a 3,300-strong mission to help Mali recapture its north.
A rebel push into central Mali was last week halted by bombings by French aircraft and the deployment of ground troops.
A convoy of armored vehicles, fuel tankers and ambulances and around 200 soldiers from Mali's eastern neighbor Niger was positioned at that eastern border, witnesses said.
A Reuters witness at the scene said heavy weapons fire rang out as troops tested artillery.
Communications with residents in Islamist-controlled towns have become more difficult as some mobile phone towers have stopped working. Residents said rebel fighters are suspicious of anyone using phones, fearing they are passing information to the enemy.
"There are no longer any police stations. (The Islamists) have dispersed across the city, mixing in with the population," said Ibrahim Mamane, a resident from the town of Gao who reached the border with Niger.
"The population is ready and is waiting for the French forces with open arms. If they attack Gao, the people will fight the Islamists with their bare hands," he added.
Reuters journalists travelling north of Bamako saw residents welcoming French troops and, in places, French and Malian flags hung side by side.
AFRICAN TALIBAN
Mali's recent troubles began with a coup in Bamako last March, ending a period of stable rule that saw a series of elections. In the confusion that followed, Islamist forces seized large swathes of the north and imposed a strict rule reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Military experts say France and its African allies must now capitalize on a week of hard-hitting air strikes by seizing the initiative on the ground to prevent the insurgents from withdrawing into the desert and reorganizing.
"The whole world clearly needs to unite and do much more than is presently being done to contain terrorism," Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said.
Diabaly is a country town with a population of about 35,000, about 360 km (220 miles) from Bamako and near the border with Mauritania, where AQIM has bases.
A spokesman for MUJWA confirmed that their positions in Diabaly had been fired on but said French forces had not penetrated the town itself.
Diabaly Mayor Salif Ouedrago, who fled on Wednesday, told Malian state radio: "There were deaths on the side of the jihadists. They buried their dead yesterday."
Meanwhile, the Malian army rushed reinforcements to a town closer to Bamako on Thursday after Islamist fighters were spotted near the frontier with Mauritania.
"Banamba is in a state of alert. Reinforcements have been sent. Nigerian troops expected to arrive in Bamako today could be deployed there to secure the zone," a senior Malian military source told Reuters.
An inhabitant of Banamba, 140 km (90 miles) from the capital, reported the arrival of soldiers after insurgents were seen in the Boron border area.
With African states facing huge logistical and transport challenges, Germany promised two Transall military transport planes to help fly in their soldiers.
Britain has supplied two C-17 military transport planes to ferry in French armored vehicles and medical supplies. The United States is considering logistical and surveillance support but has ruled out sending in U.S. troops.
(Additional reporting by Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra in Bamako, Benkoro Sangare in Niono, Noel Tadegnon in Lome and David Lewis in Dakar; Writing by Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Contact: Bill Steigerwald William.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov 301-286-5017 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Titan's siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn's moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan Saturn's largest moon may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters, according to new research using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
"Most of the Saturnian satellites Titan's siblings have thousands and thousands of craters on their surface. So far on Titan, of the 50 percent of the surface that we've seen in high resolution, we've only found about 60 craters," said Catherine Neish, a Cassini radar team associate based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "It's possible that there are many more craters on Titan, but they are not visible from space because they are so eroded. We typically estimate the age of a planet's surface by counting the number of craters on it (more craters means an older surface). But if processes like stream erosion or drifting sand dunes are filling them in, it's possible that the surface is much older that it appears."
"This research is the first quantitative estimate of how much the weather on Titan has modified its surface," adds Neish.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, and the only world besides Earth known to have lakes and seas on its surface. However, with a frigid surface temperature of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (94 kelvins), the rain that falls from Titan's skies is not water but instead liquid methane and ethane, compounds that are normally gases on Earth.
Neish and her team made the discovery by comparing craters on Titan to craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede is a giant moon with a water ice crust, similar to Titan, so craters on the two moons should have similar shapes. However, Ganymede has almost no atmosphere and thus no wind or rain to erode its surface.
"We found that craters on Titan were on average hundreds of yards (meters) shallower than similarly sized craters on Ganymede, suggesting that some process on Titan is filling its craters," says Neish, who is lead author of a paper about this research published online in the journal Icarus Dec. 3, 2012.
The team used the average depth-versus-diameter trend for craters on Ganymede derived from stereo images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The same trend for craters on Titan was calculated using estimates of the crater depth from data derived from images made by Cassini's radar instrument.
Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a trace of methane and other, more complex molecules made of hydrogen and carbon (hydrocarbons). The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because methane in the atmosphere is broken down over relatively short timescales by sunlight. Fragments of methane molecules then recombine into more complex hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere, forming a thick, orange smog that hides the surface from view. Some of the larger particles eventually rain out on to the surface, where they appear to get bound together to form the sand.
"Since the sand appears to be produced from the atmospheric methane, Titan must have had methane in its atmosphere for at least several hundred million years in order to fill craters to the levels we are seeing," says Neish. However, researchers estimate Titan's current supply of methane should be broken down by sunlight within tens of millions of years, so Titan either had a lot more methane in the past, or it is being replenished somehow.
Team members say it's possible that other processes could be filling the craters on Titan: erosion from the flow of liquid methane and ethane for example. However, this type of weathering tends to fill a crater quickly at first, then more slowly as the crater rim gets worn down and less steep. If liquid erosion were primarily responsible for the infill, then the team would expect to see a lot of partially filled craters on Titan. "However, this is not the case," says Neish. "Instead we see craters at all stages; some just beginning to be filled in, some halfway, and some that are almost completely full. This suggests a process like windblown sand, which fills craters and other features at a steady rate."
All solid materials under stress flow very slowly over time. This is called viscous flow, and it is like what happens when someone takes a scoop out of a fresh tub of whipped cream -- the material slowly flows in to fill the hole and flatten the surface. Craters on icy satellites tend to get shallower over time as the ice flows viscously, so it's possible that some of the shallow craters on Titan are simply much older or experienced a higher heat flow than the similarly sized, fresh craters on Ganymede studied in this work.
However, Titan's crust is mostly water ice, and at the extremely low temperatures on Titan, ice shouldn't flow enough to account for such a large difference in depth compared to the Ganymede craters, according to the team. Also, just like stream erosion, deformation from viscous flow tends to happen rapidly at first, then more slowly as the material adjusts, so one would expect to see a lot of partially filled craters on Titan if its surface was deforming easily through viscous flow.
As Cassini flies past Titan on its multi-year tour of Saturn and its moons, the radar instrument gradually builds up a map of the surface. To date, the instrument has provided data in strips covering approximately 50 percent of Titan's surface. The craters measured by the team are all within about 30 degrees of the equator, a relatively dry region on Titan.
"However, the presence of liquids on the surface and in the near subsurface can also cause extensive modification to crater shape, as is observed on Earth," says Neish. "In the case of Titan, liquids consist of hydrocarbons, either as wet sediments (such as those observed at the Huygens landing site) or shallow marine environments (such as the lakes observed at the north and south poles). Craters formed in similar environments on Earth lack any significant surface topography, including the absence of a raised rim, as wet sediments slump into the crater. It is possible that the lack of topography associated with marine-target impacts may help to explain the relative scarcity of impact craters observed near the poles of Titan. If Titan's polar regions are saturated by liquid hydrocarbons, craters formed in those regions may lack any recognizable topographic expression."
The team thinks these considerations are good areas for more research, but based on the data so far, the difference in depth between craters on Titan and Ganymede is best explained by filling from windblown sand, although erosion from liquids and viscous flow might contribute to the modification of Titan's craters.
NASA's Cassini mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and the NASA Postdoctoral Program, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities, funded the research.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries.
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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.
Contact: Bill Steigerwald William.a.steigerwald@nasa.gov 301-286-5017 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Titan's siblings must be jealous. While most of Saturn's moons display their ancient faces pockmarked by thousands of craters, Titan Saturn's largest moon may look much younger than it really is because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in its craters, according to new research using observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
"Most of the Saturnian satellites Titan's siblings have thousands and thousands of craters on their surface. So far on Titan, of the 50 percent of the surface that we've seen in high resolution, we've only found about 60 craters," said Catherine Neish, a Cassini radar team associate based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "It's possible that there are many more craters on Titan, but they are not visible from space because they are so eroded. We typically estimate the age of a planet's surface by counting the number of craters on it (more craters means an older surface). But if processes like stream erosion or drifting sand dunes are filling them in, it's possible that the surface is much older that it appears."
"This research is the first quantitative estimate of how much the weather on Titan has modified its surface," adds Neish.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, and the only world besides Earth known to have lakes and seas on its surface. However, with a frigid surface temperature of around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit (94 kelvins), the rain that falls from Titan's skies is not water but instead liquid methane and ethane, compounds that are normally gases on Earth.
Neish and her team made the discovery by comparing craters on Titan to craters on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Ganymede is a giant moon with a water ice crust, similar to Titan, so craters on the two moons should have similar shapes. However, Ganymede has almost no atmosphere and thus no wind or rain to erode its surface.
"We found that craters on Titan were on average hundreds of yards (meters) shallower than similarly sized craters on Ganymede, suggesting that some process on Titan is filling its craters," says Neish, who is lead author of a paper about this research published online in the journal Icarus Dec. 3, 2012.
The team used the average depth-versus-diameter trend for craters on Ganymede derived from stereo images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The same trend for craters on Titan was calculated using estimates of the crater depth from data derived from images made by Cassini's radar instrument.
Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a trace of methane and other, more complex molecules made of hydrogen and carbon (hydrocarbons). The source of Titan's methane remains a mystery because methane in the atmosphere is broken down over relatively short timescales by sunlight. Fragments of methane molecules then recombine into more complex hydrocarbons in the upper atmosphere, forming a thick, orange smog that hides the surface from view. Some of the larger particles eventually rain out on to the surface, where they appear to get bound together to form the sand.
"Since the sand appears to be produced from the atmospheric methane, Titan must have had methane in its atmosphere for at least several hundred million years in order to fill craters to the levels we are seeing," says Neish. However, researchers estimate Titan's current supply of methane should be broken down by sunlight within tens of millions of years, so Titan either had a lot more methane in the past, or it is being replenished somehow.
Team members say it's possible that other processes could be filling the craters on Titan: erosion from the flow of liquid methane and ethane for example. However, this type of weathering tends to fill a crater quickly at first, then more slowly as the crater rim gets worn down and less steep. If liquid erosion were primarily responsible for the infill, then the team would expect to see a lot of partially filled craters on Titan. "However, this is not the case," says Neish. "Instead we see craters at all stages; some just beginning to be filled in, some halfway, and some that are almost completely full. This suggests a process like windblown sand, which fills craters and other features at a steady rate."
All solid materials under stress flow very slowly over time. This is called viscous flow, and it is like what happens when someone takes a scoop out of a fresh tub of whipped cream -- the material slowly flows in to fill the hole and flatten the surface. Craters on icy satellites tend to get shallower over time as the ice flows viscously, so it's possible that some of the shallow craters on Titan are simply much older or experienced a higher heat flow than the similarly sized, fresh craters on Ganymede studied in this work.
However, Titan's crust is mostly water ice, and at the extremely low temperatures on Titan, ice shouldn't flow enough to account for such a large difference in depth compared to the Ganymede craters, according to the team. Also, just like stream erosion, deformation from viscous flow tends to happen rapidly at first, then more slowly as the material adjusts, so one would expect to see a lot of partially filled craters on Titan if its surface was deforming easily through viscous flow.
As Cassini flies past Titan on its multi-year tour of Saturn and its moons, the radar instrument gradually builds up a map of the surface. To date, the instrument has provided data in strips covering approximately 50 percent of Titan's surface. The craters measured by the team are all within about 30 degrees of the equator, a relatively dry region on Titan.
"However, the presence of liquids on the surface and in the near subsurface can also cause extensive modification to crater shape, as is observed on Earth," says Neish. "In the case of Titan, liquids consist of hydrocarbons, either as wet sediments (such as those observed at the Huygens landing site) or shallow marine environments (such as the lakes observed at the north and south poles). Craters formed in similar environments on Earth lack any significant surface topography, including the absence of a raised rim, as wet sediments slump into the crater. It is possible that the lack of topography associated with marine-target impacts may help to explain the relative scarcity of impact craters observed near the poles of Titan. If Titan's polar regions are saturated by liquid hydrocarbons, craters formed in those regions may lack any recognizable topographic expression."
The team thinks these considerations are good areas for more research, but based on the data so far, the difference in depth between craters on Titan and Ganymede is best explained by filling from windblown sand, although erosion from liquids and viscous flow might contribute to the modification of Titan's craters.
NASA's Cassini mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and the NASA Postdoctoral Program, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities, funded the research.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the US and several European countries.
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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.
Billionaire and Obama campaign financier Tom Steyer talked up the California budget Wednesday, using the state as an example for Washing, but failed to mention the state?s continued debt issues.
?We?ve worked through this over a decade,? Steyer said of California. ?As you said, we are starting to come out the other side. We?re starting to see the comeback in a variety of ways, but it has not been easy.?
What Steyer leaves out, however, is the state?s massive debts that remain, as well as a developing pension crisis. Despite Gov. Jerry Brown?s proclamation of a budget surplus for the beleaguered state, California faces enormous obligations to health care providers, local governments, Wall Street, and state workers, as the?Los Angeles Times?detailed in depth earlier this week:
Sacramento is legally obligated to pay many billions of dollars withheld from schools, local governments and healthcare providers as lawmakers struggled repeatedly to balance the books. It owes Wall Street more per resident than almost every other state. And it has accumulated a crushing load of debt for retiree pensions and healthcare, now totaling more than taxpayers spend each year on all state programs combined.
The budget Brown proposed Thursday addresses only a small portion of the overall debt, which stems from the same types of bills that drove cities like Vallejo, Stockton and San Bernardino into bankruptcy. The state is likely to find its debt consuming an ever larger share of money meant for the basic needs of government. [...]
Payments of $4.2 billion would be made in the budget year that begins in July. Subsequent payments, growing to as much as $7.3 billion a year, would continue into 2017.
At that point, Brown says, $4.3 billion in debt would remain, mostly for delayed payments to healthcare providers and money owed to municipalities and schools for implementing state mandates.
Steyer, whose name has been rumored to be on the short list for secretary of energy in President Obama?s cabinet, said he would be ?surprised? to receive such a nomination.
Steyer, who made his fortune in investment, raised more than $50,000 for President Obama?s reelection campaign and has donated more than $275,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2007.
From Balochistan Times (Pakistan) (January 15, 2013)
Swiss drugmaker Roche's cancer drug Avastin failed to make a
statistically significant difference to survival rates of patients
with a common form of brain cancer in a late-stage study, the
company said on Saturday.
The Phase III AVAglio study presented at the Society for
Neuro-Oncology congress in Washington on Saturday showed Avastin,
combined with radiation and chemotherapy, reduced the risk of
cancer worsening or death, the Basel-based drugmaker said in a news
release.
But the drug did not reach statistical significance in overall
survival, a key data point. Further data are expected next year,
Roche said.
"The interim results for overall survival (OS), the other
co-primary endpoint, did not reach statistical significance," the
company said in the statement.
Earlier data from the study published in August showed Avastin
significantly extended progression-free survival of people with an
aggressive form of brain cancer.
Avastin is Roche's third-biggest seller and is approved to treat
several types of cancer, including breast, kidney, colorectal and
ovarian cancers.
Westwego saw a 16 percent drop in its crime rate in 2012 compared with the year before, with increases seen only in the assault and homicide categories; the city had one murder during the year. "We hadn't had one in years," Police Chief Dwayne "Poncho" Munch said Monday night of the lone homicide.
Unincorporated Jefferson Parish and Gretna also saw declines in crime in 2012, law enforcement officials reported.
In Westwego, assaults were up 11 percent, or 14 more assaults than 2011, Munch said. "We've had an uptick in domestic violence arrests," he said. In the 134 assault cases, which include domestic violence complaints, Westwego police made 139 arrests, Munch said.
In other categories, Munch said robberies were down 33 percent; burglaries were down 30 percent; thefts were down 32 percent; and auto thefts were down 25 percent.
Westwego's homicide happened in January 2012, when Al Williams, 33, of Marrero, was found shot in his neck in a car in the 1000 block of Spruce Street.?
Westwego police investigated four rapes during the year; three were date rapes, for which arrests were made, and the fourth is unsolved, Munch said.
Munch made no secret of his intent to seek another term in the April 6 municipal primaries, when Westwego's mayor and City Council also are up for re-election. As evidence of his political aspirations, Munch told the council during its meeting Monday night that his office has collected about $4 million in grants and through asset forfeitures during the past 11 years, which coincides with the length of time he's been chief.
That includes $200,000 the department received this month from a federal Drug Enforcement Agency regional task force, part of a $1 million take the group got in a New Orleans doctor-shopping case, Munch said. Westwego's police officer assigned to that task force made the case, Munch said.
Foreclosure inventories declined to 3.51 percent in November, a drop of 2.84 percent from the month before, according to the November Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services. Meanwhile, the mortgage delinquency rate increased 1.2 percent in November from the month before and has increased 3.7 percent since August.
Total U.S. loan delinquency rate:
7.12%
Month-over-month change in delinquency rate:
1.2%
Total U.S. foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate:
3.51%
Month-over-month change in foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate:
-2.84 %
States with highest percentage of non-current* loans:
FL, NJ, MS, NV, NY
States with the lowest percentage of non-current* loans:
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Public release date: 17-Jan-2013
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Foreclosure inventories declined to 3.51 percent in November, a drop of 2.84 percent from the month before, according to the November Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services. Meanwhile, the mortgage delinquency rate increased 1.2 percent in November from the month before and has increased 3.7 percent since August.