Nigeria in back-channel talks with Islamists: official

Nigeria's government has reached out to members of Islamist militant group Boko Haram through back-channel talks in a bid to end an insurgency that has killed hundreds, the president's spokesman said Sunday.

"The form of the dialogue is that backroom channels are being used to reach across with the sole objective of understanding what exactly the grievances of these persons are, what exactly can be done to resolve the crises," Reuben Abati told journalists.

He said the effort was being made "in the overall best interest of ensuring peace and stability in Nigeria and the security of life and property."

Abati's comments were the first official government confirmation of back-channel talks with the Islamists, though the information minister has previously signaled some form of dialogue was underway.

They also came on the one-year anniversary of a suicide attack on UN headquarters in the capital Abuja, which killed at least 25 people and marked a sharp escalation in Boko Haram's insurgency.

What is believed to be the main branch of Boko Haram has however repeatedly ruled out dialogue, though the group is believed to have a number of factions with differing aims -- something Abati also spoke about.

Boko Haram is accused of killing more than 1,400 people in northern and central Nigeria since 2010.

The group has continually widened its targets, moving from assassinations to increasingly sophisticated bombings. Boko Haram members are believed to have received training from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in northern Mali.

While Muslims have often been its victims, it has recently specifically targeted churches, and President Goodluck Jonathan has accused the group of seeking to incite a religious crisis in a country roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.

The group has pressed for the creation of an Islamic state in Africa's most populous country and biggest oil producer, though its demands have repeatedly shifted.

A previous attempt at dialogue earlier this year collapsed when a mediator quit over leaks to the media and a purported Boko Haram spokesman said the government could not be trusted.

Nigeria's recently appointed National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki, a prominent figure in the country's north, has spoken of dialogue through local institutions, including religious leaders.

Heavy-handed military raids have so far failed to stop the Islamist attacks, and in some cases have provoked anger and fear among the civilian population, with the army accused of major abuses.

Abati said the president intended to employ other options in addition to the use of the military and police.

Describing the strategy, he said, "there would be leaders in these communities, in these villages, in these towns, who may have an idea and such persons needed to be carried along to assist in addressing the Boko Haram issue.

"When government adopts this approach, it does not mean government is abdicating its responsibility to ensure that persons who go against the law are sanctioned."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nigeria-back-channel-talks-islamists-official-224723646.html

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Heart separation device improves three year outcomes in heart failure patients

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2012) ? A novel non-invasive device which separates healthy and damaged heart muscle and restores ventricle function improves 3 year outcomes in patients with ischemic heart failure, according to research presented at the ESC Congress 2012.

The findings were presented by Professor William T. Abraham at an ESC press conference on 25 August and by Dr Marco Costa at an ESC Congress scientific session on 27 August.

Heart failure is a common, debilitating, and potentially deadly condition in which the heart is unable to supply sufficient blood flow to meet the needs of the body. Symptoms of heart failure negatively impact quality of life and include shortness of breath, persistent coughing or wheezing, buildup of excess fluid in body tissues (edema), fatigue, lack of appetite or nausea, impaired thinking, and increased heart rate. More than 20 million people around the world are affected.

Many heart attack survivors experience enlargement of the heart, causing a decrease in cardiac output that results in heart failure symptoms such as fatigue and shortness of breath. The healthy portion of the heart not affected by the heart attack has to compensate for the loss in output and becomes overloaded over time. Current treatment options for patients whose hearts have enlarged are limited.

The Parachute Ventricular Partitioning Device is the first minimally invasive treatment for patients with heart failure caused by damage to the heart muscle following a heart attack. The Parachute device is implanted in the left ventricle through a small catheter inserted in the femoral artery.

"The device creates a barrier between the non-functioning, damaged segment of heart muscle and the healthy, functional segment of heart muscle," said Dr Costa. "This decreases the overall volume of the left ventricle chamber and restores its optimal geometry and function. The procedure is performed in the catheterization laboratory under conscious sedation."

Two-year clinical data presented at the EuroPCR conference earlier this year demonstrated improved overall cardiac function and quality of life for patients treated with the Parachute device.

The current study included 31patients treated in the US and Europe with the Parachute system. The New York Heart Association (NYHA) Functional Classification of 1 (mildest) to 4 (most severe) was used to define the severity of heart failure at 1, 2 and 3 years after treatment.

The average NYHA class at baseline was 2.6. This improved to 1.6 (p<0.001) at 1 year, 1.9 (p<0.01) at 2 years and 1.8 (p<0.0001) at 3 years post treatment. Dr Costa said: "This shows that the severity of heart failure maintained its improvement over time after treatment with the Parachute device."

The proportion of patients who were hospitalized due to worsening heart failure increased from 29.7% at 2 years to 33.2% at 3 years after treatment. "This small increase could be because the Parachute is specifically targeting the structural heart problem by excluding the scar caused from a heart attack which initiated the negative ventricle remodeling," said Dr Costa.

The low cardiac death rate of 6.5% at 2 years remained unchanged at 3 years. "This suggests that percutaneous ventricle restoration with the Parachute system results in a plateau of the progression of heart failure in these patients," said Dr Costa. "These outcomes compare favorably with current medical therapy in a similar high-risk patient population."

"These results are compelling," said Professor Abraham. "The sustained improvements in functional capacity and plateauing effect seen in outcomes three years after treatment with the Parachute device are particularly encouraging, showing that we may be able to slow the progression of heart failure -- a very exciting prospect."

"We were already very excited about the two-year clinical data presented at the EuroPCR conference earlier this year," said Dr Costa. "Our three-year results in this high-risk population reinforce our initial enthusiasm and fuel our motivation to start a large randomized trial later this year."

Dr Costa concluded: "In these two first-in-man studies we have shown that the Parachute device is safe and leads to sustained improvements in symptoms, heart function, and clinical outcomes over three years. This points to a potentially historical turning point in the treatment of heart failure caused by a heart attack."

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/BVVytLoNrZU/120825155700.htm

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South Sudan denies abuses cited by HRW in Jonglei report

JUBA (Reuters) - The head of a South Sudan disarmament campaign dismissed a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report saying soldiers had raped, beaten, tortured and killed civilians during the campaign in Jonglei, the country's largest state.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan a year ago under a 2005 peace deal and is awash with firearms after a decades-long civil war with Khartoum that killed an estimated two million people.

Run mostly by former guerilla fighters, South Sudan's nascent government has struggled to assert control over its vast and restive territories since declaring independence.

HRW, citing local officials, victims and witnesses, said soldiers in the national Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), have committed the abuses since the disarmament campaign began in March, particularly in the eastern state's Pibor county.

The group urged the newly independent nation to investigate and punish those responsible.

Kuol Dim Kuol, head of the campaign in Jonglei, rejected the report and said the operation had succeeded in collecting thousands of guns.

"I believe those reports are not realistic," he told Reuters by phone from Jonglei.

The SPLA had mechanisms in place to hold unruly soldiers responsible, he said. "As I am talking to you now, I have about 30 SPLA who have been dismissed" because of abuses, he said.

South Sudan launched the campaign in Jonglei in response to a series of inter-communal and retaliatory attacks which began before independence and have killed thousands of people.

"In Pibor we documented cases of abuse by disarmament forces, particularly torture - torture in the form of soldiers dipping people's heads into water with the objective of extracting information about the location of weapons," HRW research fellow Elizabeth Ashamu told Reuters.

She said HRW had recorded beatings and killings as well as interviewing a victim of rape. A U.N. report issued this week said monitoring teams reported a dozen alleged cases of rape during the campaign in Jonglei.

A severe lack of infrastructure in Jonglei has hampered efforts by the government and relief agencies to assist tens of thousands of civilians made homeless by ethnic clashes.

South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for independence from Sudan in a 2011 referendum promised under the peace deal that ended the civil war. The two states are still negotiating issues including border security and disputed territories, and the two armies have clashed in border states since secession.

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Alexander Dziadosz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-sudan-denies-abuses-cited-hrw-jonglei-report-170903108.html

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If you have a legitimate internet marketing business you will inevitably reach a point when you begin to think about outsourcing some of the numerous tasks that have to be done to make your workload lighter. Although there are no hard and fast rules for when the time would be right for you, there are some things that you need to consider so that you can answer this question for yourself.

Here are some points that you should think about when you think about outsourcing:

1. How do You Value Your Time?

The first point that you must consider is the value of your time. For example if you put a value of $20 per hour on your time then any task that does not provide you with $20 worth of value per hour should be the first thing to be outsourced. So if it takes you one hour or longer to write an article then outsourcing content production would be a good idea as it will allow you to leverage the time of other people so that you can then make the best use of your own time.

2. Next Point is Skills.

If your technical skills are limited or non existent then trying to create a website yourself would not be making good use of your time. The number of internet marketers who are able to do everything well themselves is extremely limited and as the goal is to build a successful online business it would be far better to leverage the skills of people who can help you do the things that you struggle to do. We all have our strengths and weaknesses so if you know what yours are then let those whose skills complement yours do the things that you cannot do well yourself.

3. Scale and the Advantage of Leveraging.

Using article writing as an example, if you are able to write articles at the rate of say 4 per hour and you get paid $5 an article then by working an 8 hour day you would be able to earn $160. This would mean that you would need to work 8 hours every single day of the month in order to make $4960 provided you had sufficient clients to warrant this.

Although nearly $5000 may seem like a fair profit you would have actually created a false limit on your monthly income and you would also never ever get any time off.

If on the other hand you outsource this work you would be able to acquire many more clients while having other people to write the articles for you, which would give you the potential for an unlimited income.

This would apply equally to any type of legitimate internet marketing, whether it was product creation, customer service or website design or any other task that you would need to do. If you try to do all the work yourself you are limiting your earning potential considerably.

4. Last Major Consideration is Money.

There are internet marketers who start the business with considerable capital and are able to spend thousands of dollars a month to outsource, but the majority of people who begin an internet marketing business are barely managing to meet their monthly expenses. Obviously if you fall in to the latter group then you should not consider outsourcing. If it is going to run your businesses into the ground there is no point in outsourcing but if you can afford to outsource then the benefits are certainly worth it.

The decision to outsource tasks is one that only you can make and if you base it on the value of your time, the level of your skills and the amount of money you have to spend on it, then you will be able to make a decision that is right for you and your legitimate internet business.

Source: http://canuckclicks.blogspot.com/2012/08/when-should-legitimate-internet-based.html

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Source: http://rejewvenation2005.com/home-improvement/08/08/48/

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Source: http://www.newmexicostock.com/?p=17538

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