Rachel Williams
The Guardian
August 5 2008

A group of activists including Tony Blair's sister-in-law Lauren Booth plans to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip by sailing into the Palestinian territory.

Some 46 campaigners, among them several Britons, a Holocaust survivor and an 81-year-old retired Catholic nun from the US, will make the 241-mile crossing from Cyprus in two wooden vessels at the end of the week, carrying medical supplies. The journey takes about 20 hours.


Campaigners could face resistance off Gaza from the Israeli navy, which previously imposed a similar sea blockade off the Lebanese coast. (Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)

The California-based Free Gaza movement wants to open unrestricted international access to Gaza while delivering a "symbolic" shipment of 200 hearing aids and batteries for a society for deaf children and other supplies such as painkillers. Organisers say they will not pass through Israeli waters and have therefore not notified Israeli authorities of their plans.

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By John von Radowitz
Independent.ie
August 05 2008

VITAMIN C that is injected rather than swallowed can destroy cancer, research has shown.

The therapy halved the growth of aggressive tumours in mice, killing cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.

It could provide a new lifeline for patients with a poor prognosis and few treatment options, scientists suggest.

Tackling cancer with vitamin C would also have the added advantage of being cheap.

Usually the body keeps a tight rein on vitamin C levels in the blood. But scientists found that the mechanism can be by-passed if the vitamin is injected straight into the bloodstream instead of passing through the digestive system.

When this is done it releases the powerful anti-cancer potential of the vitamin, according to the researchers.

Experiments showed that high levels of vitamin C in the blood generate hydrogen peroxide, which is lethal to tumours.

The chemical forms in the spaces between cancer cells, damaging membranes, upsetting metabolism, and scrambling DNA. Even the growth of aggressive, hard-to-treat cancers was held back in the studies.

But healthy tissues appeared to resist the effects.

The use of high dose vitamin C as a complementary or alternative cancer treatment has a long history dating back to the 1970s. Patients have taken the vitamin both by mouth and intravenously.

But despite some positive outcomes, reliable evidence that the therapy works has been lacking.

Experts

For this reason claims that vitamin C can treat cancer have been dismissed by conventional cancer experts.

The new US investigation led by Dr Qi Chen, from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, involved testing the effects of vitamin C on laboratory cell lines and cancer-ridden mice.

In the laboratory, two hours of exposure to the vitamin significantly reduced the survival of ovarian, pancreatic and brain tumour (glioblastoma) cancer cells.

Similar results were seen when mice bearing the same kinds of tumours were injected with vitamin C.

- John von Radowitz

Two similar and detailed e-fits of suspects in the Madeleine McCann case composed three days after the disappearance have been made public for the first time – 15 months after she vanished.

By Caroline Gammell in Portimao
Telegraph
05 Aug 2008

The image of a young, white man with dark and deep set eyes was put together from sightings by British holidaymaker Derek Flack and British expat Lance Purser.


Portuguese police resisted releasing the efits because of secrecy laws and the fear of prejudicing any further investigation (Photo: PA)

Mr Flack saw a man acting suspiciously around Kate and Gerry McCann's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz just before their three-year-old daughter went missing.

Mr Purser said he had seen a similar man in the weeks running up to Madeleine's disappearance.

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I'm posting this because I think Crissy will like it. The writer is a bit too male-bashy for my taste, but she's kinda funny:

Please save us from the boo-hoo boys

A wise ass placed a fake sex advert in Craigslist and published the responses. Now, 2 years later, he is being sued by one of his 'victims.'

Craigslist ho

Have you looked at Craigslists sex ads? They are disgusting. I didna know there was even any such thing til I saw someone on the melo wall mention an ad there. I thought Craigslist was for jobs and legitimate things.

First of all, I dun believe ads for sex should even exist, but if anyone is stupid and venal enough to reply to one, they deserve every bad thing they get. eejits.

Scientists will meet today to debate the latest techniques for creating artificial life - and in the process, hope to solve one of the key riddles of evolution. Roger Highfield investigates

Telegraph.co.uk
5 August 2008

Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'

Artificial life being created

Robot that can build itself to be unveiled

Is evolution about to enter a new phase? Today, 300 biologists, computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and social scientists from around the world are gathering in Winchester. Their aim is to address one of the greatest challenges in modern science: how to create a genuine artificial life form.

The idea that life owes its existence to some "vital essence" or "animating spark" has long been discredited in scientific circles. Instead, it is believed that the first living thing emerged after a chemical reaction crossed the watershed that divides inanimate objects from the kind of self-replicating "organic" reactions that run our cells.

Photo: Intelligent design: self-aware computers such as Pixar’s Wall-E are surprisingly tricky to put together

Researchers into artificial life, or "ALife", take two basic approaches. In "wet" ALife, scientists either tinker with microbes and other forms of simple life, or try to cook up cocktails of chemicals on water (hence "wet") that have the capacity to extract energy and raw materials from the environment, to grow and reproduce, and ultimately to evolve. Meanwhile, "in silico" ALifers use silicon chips to try to kindle the spark of life in the heart of a computer.
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