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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

'Major' Microsoft announcement in Los Angeles

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Monday, June 18, 2012

Dating evidence: Relics could be of John the Baptist

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) ? New dating evidence supports claims that bones found under a church floor in Bulgaria may be of John the Baptist, who is described in the Bible as a leading prophet and relative of Jesus Christ. A team from the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at Oxford University dated a knucklebone from the right hand to the 1st century AD, a date which fits with the widely held view of when he would have lived. The researchers say they were surprised when they discovered the very early age of the remains adding, however, that dating evidence alone cannot prove the bones to be of John the Baptist.

The bones were originally discovered in 2010 by archaeologist Kazimir Popkonstantinov, excavating under an ancient church on an island in Bulgaria known as Sveti Ivan, which translates into English as St John. The knucklebone was one of six human bones, including a tooth and the face part of a cranium, found in small marble sarcophagus under the floor near the altar. Three animal bones were also inside the sarcophagus. Oxford professors Thomas Higham and Christopher Ramsey attempted to radiocarbon date four human bones, but only one of them contained a sufficient amount of collagen to be dated successfully.

Professor Higham said: 'We were surprised when the radiocarbon dating produced this very early age. We had suspected that the bones may have been more recent than this, perhaps from the third or fourth centuries. However, the result from the metacarpal hand bone is clearly consistent with someone who lived in the early first century AD. Whether that person is John the Baptist is a question that we cannot yet definitely answer and probably never will.'

Former Oxford student Dr Hannes Schroeder and Professor Eske Willerslev, both from the University of Copenhagen, also reconstructed the complete mitochondrial DNA genome sequence from three of the human bones to establish that the bones were all from the same individual. Significantly, they identified a family group of genes (mtDNA haplotype) as being a group most commonly found in the Near East, which is better known as the Middle East today -- the region where John the Baptist would have originated from. They also established that the bones were probably of a male individual after an analysis of the nuclear DNA from samples.

Dr Schroeder said: 'Our worry was that the remains might have been contaminated with modern DNA. However, the DNA we found in the samples showed damage patterns that are characteristic of ancient DNA, which gave us confidence in the results. Further, it seems somewhat unlikely that all three samples would yield the same sequence considering that they had probably been handled by different people. Both of these facts suggest that the DNA we sequenced was actually authentic. Of course, this does not prove that these were the remains of John the Baptist but nor does it refute that theory as the sequences we got fit with a Near Eastern origin.'

The Bulgarian archaeologists, who excavated the bones, also found a small tuff box (made of hardened volcanic ash) close to the sarcophagus. The tuff box bears inscriptions in ancient Greek that directly mention John the Baptist and his feast day, and text asking God to 'help your servant Thomas'. One theory is that the person referred to as Thomas had been given the task of bringing the relics to the island. An analysis of the box has shown that the tuff box has a high waterproof quality and is likely to have originated from Cappadocia, a region of modern-day Turkey. The Bulgarian researchers believe that the bones probably came to Bulgaria via Antioch, an ancient Turkish city, where the right hand of St John was kept until the tenth century.

In a separate study, another Oxford researcher Dr Georges Kazan has used historical documents to show that in the latter part of the fourth century, monks had taken relics of John the Baptist out of Jerusalem and these included portions of skull. These relics were soon summoned to Constantinople by the Roman Emperor who built a church to house them there. Further research by Dr Kazan suggests that the reliquary used to contain them may have resembled the sarcophagus-shaped casket discovered at Sveti Ivan. Archaeological and written records suggest that these reliquaries were first developed and used at Constantinople by the city's ruling elite at around the time that the relics of John the Baptist are said to have arrived there.

Dr Kazan said 'My research suggests that during the fifth or early sixth century, the monastery of Sveti Ivan may well have received a significant portion of St John the Baptist's relics, as well as a prestige reliquary in the shape of a sarcophagus, from a member of Constantinople's elite. This gift could have been to dedicate or rededicate the church and the monastery to St John, which the patron or patrons may have supported financially.'

The scientific analysis of the relics undertaken by Tom Higham and Christopher Ramsey at Oxford, and their colleagues in Copenhagen was supported by the National Geographic Society. The documentary 'Head of John the Baptist', featuring the scientists' work was shown on the National Geographic Channel on 17 June 2012.

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Top court rejects DNA lab test analyst questioning

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON | Mon Jun 18, 2012 12:00pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for prosecutors to use expert testimony about DNA laboratory reports at trial without allowing defendants to confront and question the forensic analysts involved in the tests.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court refused to add to a string of decisions since 2004 that have broadly interpreted the constitutional rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses against them. The case involved a sexual assault in 2000 in Chicago for which the defendant was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The case had been closely watched because it could have had significant impact for prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and crime labs nationwide.

The Supreme Court's ruling was narrow, concluding that the expert testimony in the case from Illinois did not violate the U.S. Constitution. The dispute produced a splintered rationale that makes it difficult to predict how broadly the decision will affect future cases.

In the decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court said that the limited DNA testimony at issue in the case did not fall within the protections of the Constitution's "Confrontation Clause" guaranteeing that criminal defendants "be confronted with the witnesses against him."

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, said the ruling significantly confused this area of criminal law.

"Before today's decision, a prosecutor wishing to admit the results of forensic testing had to produce the technician responsible for the analysis," she wrote. "But that clear rule is clear no longer."

The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that defendants have the right to cross-examine the analyst who prepares DNA, blood, ballistic and other laboratory reports introduced at trial.

The court then ruled in 2010 that the defendant must be allowed to question the lab analyst who did the test, not a colleague or supervisor.

The Supreme Court did not overrule those past decisions, but Monday's ruling casts a cloud over them.

Monday's case tested situations in which the DNA report has not been introduced as evidence at trial, but was used as the basis for an opinion by an expert witness.

Illinois was backed by more than 40 states in arguing that scientific experts should be allowed to testify about DNA data without having to call the analyst involved in the test.

The defendant in the case, Sandy Williams, was arrested on an unrelated charge and he provided a DNA sample for the state police lab database. A forensic analyst later testified at his trial about the procedures she had used to get his DNA sample and how she had entered the information into the database.

Police also recovered DNA material from the victim. That was analyzed by Cellmark Diagnostic Laboratory in Maryland, but the lab report was not introduced as evidence at trial and no one from the lab testified about it.

The DNA expert who did testify said she compared the two samples and offered her opinion that they matched. She said her testimony was partly based on Cellmark's testing procedures.

Williams was convicted on sexual assault charges, among other offenses, and sentenced to life in prison. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Williams appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing his constitutional rights had been violated.

The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court. "We conclude that there was no Confrontation Clause violation in this case," Alito wrote, noting that the expert referred to the testing only to explain the assumptions on which her opinion rested.

Joining Kagan in dissent were Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

The Supreme Court case is Williams v. Illinois, No. 10-8505.

(Additional reporting by Joan Biskupic; Editing by Will Dunham)

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2 months later, massacre haunts Syrian town

TAFTANAZ, Syria (AP) ? The main street of this once-bustling Syrian farm town now stands eerily quiet, its shops charred black from arson, its shoppers replaced by cats roaming the rubble of homes destroyed by tank fire.

At dawn on April 3, Syrian forces shelled the town in the first volley of what residents say was a massive assault after a string of large protests calling for the end of the regime of President Bashar Assad. Soldiers then stormed in, torching homes and businesses and gunning down residents in the streets. By the time they left on the third day, at least 62 people were dead.

Two months later, the destruction remains, but most residents are gone. Locals estimate that about two-thirds of the town's 15,000 people have left. Most don't expect them to return.

"There is nothing for people to come back to, and they worry that if they rebuild, the army will destroy it again," said resident Bassam Ghazzal, who lost more than 20 members of his extended family in the attack. "People don't want to become refugees twice."

The destruction in Taftanaz, seen by an Associated Press reporter, provides an on-the-ground example of the huge price paid by Syrian communities that have chosen to defy one of the Middle East's most brutal autocracies.

Since the start of the anti-Assad uprising in March 2011, the regime has responded to unrest with brute force, dispatching snipers, troops and tanks to quash dissent. Activists say more than 14,000 people have been killed since, many of them civilians.

In general, the violence has not stopped the uprising, emboldening protesters, galvanizing international condemnation and leading many in the opposition to take up arms.

Taftanaz tells a different story. It is a place where overwhelming force appears to have not only crushed a burgeoning protest movement but struck a blow against a community that may never recover.

In many ways, Taftanaz, a jumble of simple concrete homes surrounded by golden wheat fields some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the northern city of Idlib, tells the story of Syria's uprising, writ small.

Residents had long complained of state neglect and corruption that left many living in poverty, Ghazzal said. So when protesters inspired by the successful uprisings against autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets in Syria, they followed along, first demonstrating for change in April 2011.

Local security officers quickly ended the protest, but the town organized more, sparking further crackdowns and arrest campaigns by regime authorities, Ghazzal said.

The Syrian army raided the village three times in the next four months, Ghazzal said. During a June raid, Ghazzal's cousin was shot dead at a regime checkpoint while trying to flee, making him the first of the town's "martyrs."

Others followed. Some in the town took up arms, and an October clash between the army and local rebels killed five residents. Other residents buried them and held another protest the same day, Ghazzal said.

Then all was quiet until April 3, when tanks shelled the town from four sides before armored cars brought in dozens of soldiers who dragged civilians from their homes and gunned them down in the streets, witnesses said. The soldiers also looted, destroyed and torched hundreds of homes, bringing some down on their owners' heads.

Videos shot at the time show tanks posted near the town's entrance and huge columns of smoke rising throughout the area. Photos of the dead show bodies torn apart by shrapnel, charred by fire, crushed under rubble or with bullet holes in their chests, foreheads and temples.

Local activist Abdullah Ghazzal, a university student in English, says 62 people were killed during the attack, four of them burned beyond recognition. Two others have never been found.

Residents are unsure what sparked the assault. The town had only a small rebel presence, though fighters from the area had killed soldiers at nearby checkpoints or destroyed regime tanks, said local fighter Sahir Schaib. Rebels also blew up nine regime tanks as they left the town, mostly with homemade bombs planted along the roads.

He suspects the regime sought to stop the town from emerging as a protest center, especially since it is near a military base.

"There were lots of villages around that had just started protesting and they wanted to say, 'This is what we can do to you,'" Schaib said. "They committed the massacre to teach the whole region a lesson."

The Syrian government rarely comments on its military actions and blames the uprising on armed terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy. It bars most reporters from working in the country, and the AP was able to visit Taftanaz only after entering from a neighboring country.

The price of Taftanaz's defiance is obvious around town. Homes have been reduced to rubble. Most shops along the town's main street are shuttered, their thick metal doors scarred by shrapnel and gunfire. Black soot lines the windows of others. Yet others lie collapsed in piles of bricks and mortar.

"They took what they took and burned what they burned," said Abu Eissa Ghazzal, 75, another member of the extended Ghazzal family. Standing near his torched grocery store on the ground floor of a three-story building, he despaired for the future.

"They didn't leave me a single nail," he said.

His younger brother had built the building after working for two decades in Saudi Arabia and lived with his family in the top two floors, Ghazzal said. Now all had been torched, and his brother and family had fled to a refugee camp in Turkey.

His older brother lived across the alley and refused to leave his home when the army came. When the attack was over, rescue teams found the 81-year-old man's body still in his home, burned to a crisp.

"Now there is nobody left," he said. "Who is going to rebuild all of this, now that all of those with children have left?"

The army has not returned since the April raid. Local activists still organize protests, though many fewer people attend, and rumors of impending military incursions often terrify residents.

Most of the dead rest in a long mass grave on the village's east side, their names scrawled in marker on cinder block headstones. Preceding most names is the honorific "hero martyr." One inscription for the unidentified bodies reads simply "four people."

"Most of them were my friends, " said Abdullah Ghazzal, the English student, walking among the graves. He pointed out the grave of his 44-year-old brother, shot dead that day.

"They also burned down his house," he said.

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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Egypt votes to choose successor to Hosni Mubarak

An Egyptian woman shows her ink-stained finger after voting, while others line up in front of their polling station during the first day of the presidential runoff, in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, June 16, 2012. Egyptians voted Saturday in the country's landmark presidential runoff, choosing between Hosni Mubarak's ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood after a race that has deeply polarized the nation. The two-day balloting will produce Egypt's first president since a popular uprising last year ousted Mubarak, who is now serving a life sentence. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Egyptian women vote in a polling station during the first day of the presidential runoff, in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, June 16, 2012. Egyptians voted Saturday in the country's landmark presidential runoff, choosing between Hosni Mubarak's ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood after a race that has deeply polarized the nation. The two-day balloting will produce Egypt's first president since a popular uprising last year ousted Mubarak, who is now serving a life sentence. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Egyptian soldiers help elderly voters after they cast their votes at a polling station in Zagazig, 62 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, June 16, 2012. Egyptians voted Saturday in the country's landmark presidential runoff, choosing between Hosni Mubarak's ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood after a race that has deeply polarized the nation. The two-day balloting will produce Egypt's first president since a popular uprising last year ousted Mubarak, who is now serving a life sentence. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Egyptian women wait for the opening of their polling station on the first day of the presidential runoff, in Cairo, Egypt Saturday, June 16, 2012. Egyptians voted Saturday in the country's landmark presidential runoff, choosing between Hosni Mubarak's ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood after a race that has deeply polarized the nation. The two-day balloting will produce Egypt's first president since a popular uprising last year ousted Mubarak, who is now serving a life sentence. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

CAIRO (AP) ? Faced with a choice between Hosni Mubarak's ex-prime minister and an Islamist candidate, Egyptians voted Saturday in a presidential runoff the outcome of which will mean the difference between installing a remnant of the old regime and bringing Islam into government.

The race between Ahmed Shafiq, a career air force officer like Mubarak, and Mohammed Morsi, a U.S.-trained engineer, has divided this mainly Muslim nation of some 85 million people 16 months after a stunning uprising by millions forced the authoritarian Mubarak to step down after 29 years in office.

Voters lined up outside polling centers an hour or more before they opened at 8 a.m. But turnout was not expected to exceed 50 percent, possibly because of voting fatigue. Since the ouster of Mubarak on Feb. 11, 2011, Egyptians have voted several times ? in a referendum on a military-sponsored "constitutional declaration," in staggered and elections for parliament's two chambers and in the first round of the presidential elections last month.

Unlike in previous post-Mubarak voting when Egyptians were confident the balloting would be free, many this time round said they suspected the weekend's election may be tampered with.

"I don't think Shafiq could win, I think he will win," said 26-year-old Nagwan Gamal, who lectures on engineering at Cairo University. "I think there will be corruption to ensure that he wins, but I think a lot of people will vote for him," she said at polling center in the Cairo district of Manial. She voted for Morsi.

Shafiq, a self-confessed admirer and a longtime friend of Mubarak, has campaigned on a platform of a return to stability and law-and-order, something that resonated with many Egyptians frustrated and fatigued by more than a year of turmoil ? from deadly street protests, a surge in crime, to a faltering economy and seemingly endless strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations.

In contrast, Morsi marketed himself as a revolutionary who is fighting against the return of the old regime, promising guaranteed freedoms and an economic recovery, while softening his Islamist rhetoric in a bid to reassure liberals, minority Christians and women.

"The revolution was stolen from us," merchant Nabil Abdel-Fatah said as he waited in line outside a polling center in Cairo's working-class district of Imbaba. He said he planned to vote for Shafiq. "We can easily get rid of him if we want to, but not the Brotherhood, which will cling to power."

Brotherhood supporter Amin Sayed said he had planned to boycott the vote, but changed his mind after a court earlier this week dissolved parliament and allowed Shafiq to stay in the race.

"I came to vote for the Brotherhood and the revolution and to spite the military council," he said outside the same polling center in Imbaba, a stronghold of Islamists. "If Shafiq wins, we will return to the streets."

The two-day balloting will produce Egypt's first president since the ouster of Mubarak, now serving a life sentence for failing to prevent the killing of some 900 protesters during the 18-day uprising that toppled his regime.

The winner will be only the fifth president since the monarchy was overthrown nearly 60 years ago.

The election is supposed to be the last stop in a turbulent transition overseen by the military generals who took over from Mubarak. But whether they will genuinely surrender power by July 1 as they promised has been questioned all along, much more intensely since the military-backed government this week gave military police and intelligence agents the right to arrest civilians for a host of suspected crimes. Many saw the move as a de facto declaration of martial law.

On Thursday, judges appointed by the former president before he was toppled dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament and ruled that Shafiq could stay in the race despite a legislation barring Mubarak regime figures from running for office.

The move robbed the Brotherhood, which dominated the legislature, from its pro-Mubarak gains and threw the entire transitional process into disarray. They also led to suspicions that the vote may be rigged in favor of Shafiq, widely seen as the general's favorite candidate.

The generals deny that charge, but without a parliament or a constitution, and with the right to arrest civilians, they will wield even greater powers going forward, with the future president. Whether Morsi or Shafiq, likely to be beholden to them.

Already, the generals have been blamed for mismanaging the transition and they stand accused of killing protesters, torturing detainees and hauling before military tribunals at least 12,000 civilians since January last year.

"We didn't have a revolution to topple a regime that made us live in poverty and didn't treat us like human beings so we can bring it back," said school teacher Mohammed Mustafa as he waited to vote in Cairo.

"We lost this country for 30 years, and we are not ready to lose it again," he added. "I have no doubt there will be fraud. If there is, I will return to the street to win back my dignity because I won't live as a slave anymore."

___

Associated Press reporter Aya Batrawy contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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