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Sport24.co.za | Rabiot 'open' to Premier League transfer

Manchester United and Everton have been put on alert by the news that Juventus midfielder Adrien Rabiot is willing to move to the Premier League.




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Sport24.co.za | Brighton chief urges caution over Premier League restart plan

Brighton chief executive Paul Barber has warned a premature return to football action from the coronavirus pandemic could "cost lives".




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Sport24.co.za | Lions legend says they need a confrontational skipper against Springboks: 'That is their DNA'

Former captain Paul O'Connell says it will be vital for the British & Irish Lions to pick a leader capable of beating the Springboks at their own game.




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Every country in the United Nations agreed to a global ceasefire during the pandemic — except the United States

After six weeks of negotiating, the UN Security Council was close to agreeing on a resolution for a global ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seems fair, right? Let's agree to stop killing each other for a while, so we can focus on the virus that's killing us instead?

China proposed that the text explicitly mention a commitment by member nations to support the efforts of the World Health Organization — who Donald Trump has blamed (without evidence) for withholding information on the coronavirus outbreak.

So the US looked at the resolution and said "LOL no," despite last minute efforts to reach a compromise. As The Guardian reports:

On Thursday night, French diplomats thought they had engineered a compromise in which the resolution would mention UN “specialized health agencies” (an indirect, if clear, reference to the WHO).

The Russian mission signaled that it wanted a clause calling for the lifting of sanctions that affected the delivery of medical supplies, a reference to US punitive measures imposed on Iran and Venezuela. However, most security council diplomats believed Moscow would withdraw the objection or abstain in a vote rather than risk isolation as the sole veto on the ceasefire resolution.

While everyone else seemed game to go along with these compromises, the US insisted it was one big Chinese trick. As one diplomat told CNN:  "This discussion has been taken hostage by issues that do not have to do with the real issues at stake. Instead it has been transformed into a fight between the US and China. Read the rest




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Tribute will help you create a heartfelt video montage and it won’t take you hours to do it

It seemed like such a great idea at the time. You wanted to put together a video for a loved one, including all their family and friends singing their praises, making their life look as epic as a Hollywood production.

Oh, it was a Hollywood production, all right. Contributors showed up late and sent weird file formats, editing took forever, the music wasn’t right...and on it went. Before you know it, a simple tribute video you thought might take an hour or two consumed multiple nights and had you cursing the day you ever thought of the idea.

Video montages take work. But by enlisting Tribute to help you assemble your message of love, It’s all a lot more manageable.

In fact, the Tribute process is so easy that you probably won’t have to do more than a few minutes of work to produce a high-quality tribute video that brings tears of joy. No, seriously...Tribute swears 80 percent of their videos elicit actual tears of joy. Of course, there’s no way of knowing their metrics for judging the results of their 500,000 Tribute videos so far...but if they’re close, your odds for an emotional testament to your subject are pretty darn high.

With Tribute, you just enter the emails for all the people you’d like to contribute to the video. Tribute emails your participants, explains the project, and guides your subjects through how to shoot and submit their segment for the finished video.

Once all your videos are in, Tribute will compile all your clips into a touching, polished montage. Read the rest




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Blue Skimmer Dragonfly


A Blue Skimmer Dragonfly, photographed yesterday at Campbell's Swamp near Griffith, NSW.




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Witness Tampering? Asst. HHS Secretary Releases Threatening Text Messages From Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell: “In clear violation of House Ethics rules “

The following article, Witness Tampering? Asst. HHS Secretary Releases Threatening Text Messages From Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell: “In clear violation of House Ethics rules “, was first published on 100PercentFedUp.com.

Now that Michael Caputo, who was previously a target of the Mueller investigation, has been cleared, he has released some pretty damning text messages from the virulently anti-Trump lawmaker from California, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D). The text messages appear to prove that Swalwell, who has spent the last 3 1/2 years calling for Trump’s impeachment, […]

Continue reading: Witness Tampering? Asst. HHS Secretary Releases Threatening Text Messages From Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell: “In clear violation of House Ethics rules “ ...




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Managing the Emergence of Rising Powers: A Western Response

Research Event

22 May 2014 - 5:00pm to 6:15pm

Chatham House, London

Event participants

Trine Flockhart, Senior Fellow, Transatlantic Academy
Patrick W Quirk, Fellow, Transatlantic Academy
Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, SOAS

This event will present the findings of the Transatlantic Academy’s new report, Liberal Order in a Post-Western World, which examines the future of international liberal order in a world shaped by the rise of emerging powers and a transatlantic community dealing with internal challenges. Produced by collaboration between scholars from Europe and North America, it recommends ways to build an enduring rules-based order for the 21st century.

Department/project




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China'€™s Priorities in Africa: Enhancing Engagements

Research Event

13 June 2014 - 12:45pm to 1:45pm

Chatham House, London

Event participants

Ambassador Zhong Jianhua, China’s Special Representative for African Affairs
Chair: Alex Vines OBE, Research Director, Area Studies and International Law; Head, Africa Programme, Chatham House

With extensive and diverse engagements across sub-Saharan Africa, China is one among a range of international partners that is evolving its policy and relations with African states. At this roundtable meeting, Ambassador Zhong Jianhua will discuss China’s interests in Africa, the challenges it has faced and how China cooperates with international governments and across sectors in Africa. 

Christopher Vandome

Research Fellow, Africa Programme
+44 (0) 20 7314 3669




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Delhi Voters Send Modi a Message

23 February 2015

Dr Gareth Price

Senior Research Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme
The opposition victory in Delhi’s legislative elections is less a vote against India’s prime minister than a warning to stick to a development-focused agenda.

20150223DelhiModi.jpg

A desolate scene at the Delhi BJP office on 10 February 2015 after its defeat in Delhi assembly elections. Photo by Getty Images.

The stunning victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in elections to Delhi’s legislative assembly on 7 February is clearly causing reverberations around India’s political establishment, and has been widely interpreted as the end of Narendra Modi’s honeymoon period. While it is not a rejection of the prime minister’s development agenda, it highlights the reality that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has built previous electoral victories on a divided opposition.  Its implications may well spread far beyond Delhi.

Sensing Modi’s likely ascendency, many Western countries expended energy in courting him in the run-up to last year’s election. For the previous decade, many had ostracized Modi for his response to the 2002 riots that occurred in Gujarat while he was chief minister (CM). The belief that Modi was the likely prime minister, coupled with the desire to strengthen relations with India, as well as the fact that he had been cleared of complicity in the riots in each court case, meant that past concerns were put to one side. Underpinning this recalibration was a belief that Modi was a changed man; the earlier firebrand had transformed into a managerial technocrat, focusing on development issues — providing power to farmers for instance — in Gujarat.

The 2014 general election campaign did little to change that impression. The BJP’s success was built on a promise of development — house-building, access to sanitation and so forth. Progress has understandably been slower than many would have hoped. But the Delhi election does not change the fact that if successful strategies are put in place to begin delivering on promises made by, say, the third year of the current parliament, Modi may well be able to preside over a 10-year transformation of India.

Modi has also been wooing foreign investment. His bonhomie with foreign leaders, whether Chinese or American, is a powerful signal that India is open for business. India’s economic boom in the middle of the last decade was driven in part by positive investor sentiment. The subsequent realization that ‘red tape’ was still an impediment to business helped drive the slowdown. Recreating a feel-good wave could well boost economic growth; if it coincided with better governance, it could even become self-sustainable.

The Delhi election doesn’t change this, either. It reduces Modi’s air of invincibility and will mean that he faces genuine opposition, admittedly from a chief minister rather than in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. The fact that it is India’s capital will give new Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal much greater prominence internationally than any other CM. But given that both Modi and Kejriwal won landslides on a platform that reflected an aspiration for change rather than a promise for some form of community-based redistribution gives them a (relatively) shared agenda.

If Modi’s vision is to be implemented, it necessarily requires cooperation with chief ministers. Clearly, that is easier if states are BJP-controlled, and BJP-controlled states can be used to test economic reforms. But if a vision is to be India-wide, there has to be some level of cooperation with the majority of states, which do not have BJP governments.

Until the Delhi election, the BJP had been performing strongly in recent state elections. It may well continue to do so and edge closer to a majority in the upper house of parliament, the Rajya Sabha. But one takeaway from both the general election and the Delhi election is that the BJP is far from a majority party. It won a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha with a little over 30 per cent of the vote. Its vote was concentrated geographically, and the opposition was divided. In the Delhi election, it won 32 per cent of the vote. The obvious takeaway is that a divided opposition benefits the BJP. If the economy booms, more parties are likely to want to join hands with the BJP. If it does not, and if the opposition was united (admittedly, a very big if), the BJP will struggle to win two terms.

An alternative takeaway is that the social base of the BJP needs to be widened. The reaction to US President Barack Obama’s recent speech, in which he mentioned the need for religious tolerance, suggests sensitivity towards communal issues. Delhi witnessed a number of small-scale communal incidents — including vandalism against churches — in the run-up to the state election. If such incidents were replicated in the run-up to the Bihar election later this year, the outcome may well be much worse.

Any switch towards a more Hindutva-focused agenda would seem likely to encourage the consolidation of non-BJP parties. A serious outbreak of communal violence while Modi is PM will be bad for India, but also troubling for the West. Having portrayed himself in a presidential manner, Modi would struggle not to take some responsibility.

Thus, sticking with a development agenda must be imperative. The Delhi election should be seen as a blip for the BJP, a demonstration of the value Indian voters place on development and reinforce the need to focus on delivering that development. While voters may be getting impatient, what’s important is where India stands at the time of the next election.

This article was originally published in the Indian Express.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback




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Ranking a new website on Google page 1




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Anything Against OsCommerce?




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After Five Bloody Years in Syria, Russia Is Turning Against Iran—and Assad

GAZIANTEP, Turkey—After five years fighting to preserve Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Russia now appears inclined to dispose of its infamous client. Assad’s persistent brutality and corruption, and his inability to establish even the semblance of a functioning state, has grown to be a burden Moscow would prefer not to bear.And then there’s the problem of Iran. Assad, members of his family, and his Alawite clansmen enjoy close, perhaps unbreakable, bonds to the regime in Tehran and to Iranian-backed militias in Syria. All of which undermines Moscow’s primary mission there: to rehabilitate the Assad regime as a symbol of stability capable of attracting hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment for reconstruction, which Russian firms would then be poised to receive. As long as Assad’s relatives continue to function as a mafia and give free rein to Iranian troops using Syria as base of operations to threaten Israel and plan attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, those countries likely to foot the bill for Syrian reconstruction—the nations of Europe and the Gulf—are unlikely to come up with the cash. Amid Escalating Syrian Carnage, Turkey Shoots Down Assad’s PlanesThis has not gone unnoticed by the United States.“Assad has done nothing to help the Russians sell this regime,”James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for the Coalition to Defeat ISIS, told reporters in a State Department briefing on Thursday. “You find Assad has nothing but thugs around him, and they don't sell well either in the Arab world or in Europe. We have heard repeatedly from Russians we take as credible that they understand how bad Assad is.” The Syrian president’s “refusal to make any compromises” in order to secure diplomatic recognition and acceptance for his regime has jeopardized “hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance” for Syria, according to Jeffrey. Yet the Trump administration is unlikely to exploit this growing rift. “Getting Russia out of Syria,” Jeffrey said, “has never been our goal. Russia has been there for 30 years. It has a long-term relationship with Syria. We don’t think it has been healthy for the region. We don’t think it really is even healthy for Russia. But that’s not our policy.”  MEDIA FRENZYJeffrey’s statements come just one week after Russian state media unleashed a slew of reports and editorials targeting Assad, portraying the beleaguered president as hopelessly corrupt and unfit to govern, and suggesting the time had come to replace him with a new leader.The first batch of articles was published by the Russia’s Federal News Agency (FNA), an outlet owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and chairman of several companies implicated in the 2016 U.S. elections scandal. Appearing over the course of a mere three hours on April 17, they would shake Syria to its core. The first of the three articles in question highlighted a corruption scheme carried out by the regime in summer 2019 in which the Syrian prime minister purportedly lied to citizens about oil and gas scarcities in order to justify the occurrence of long power outages while selling Syrian electricity to businessmen in Lebanon. The second piece cited an opinion poll claiming only 32 percent of Syrians would vote for Assad in the country’s upcoming 2021 presidential election. The third and final article, entitled, “Corruption is Worse than Terrorism,” chastized President Assad for personally failing to combat corruption, prevalent at all levels of the state.  That these were published by Prigozhin’s news agency was the kind of signal it would be hard for Assad to miss. Prigozhin, who first built his fortune as a caterer, is sometimes known as “Putin’s chef.” But of particular relevance to Syria is his role as chairman of the Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have fought alongside Assad regime forces since October 2015 and helped the latter take back control of key revenue generating infrastructure such as the al-Sha’ir gas field in Homs province.Deputy Assistant Secretary Christopher Robin told the same State Department briefing Thursday, “Wagner is often misleadingly referred to as a Russian private military company, but in fact it’s an instrument of the Russian government which the Kremlin uses as a low-cost and low-risk instrument to advance its goals.”The article on corruption would also point out, suggestively, that the Assads are not the only powerful family in Syria, “there are also the Makhloufs.”Rami Makhlouf, who is in fact Bashar al-Assad’s first cousin, is Syria’s wealthiest man, and also, it would seem, Russia’s man. Certainly he has strong ties to the Kremlin and for years has been one of the most vocal critics of Iran’s presence in Syria. In July 2018, the al-Watan newspaper, one Syria’s most prominent pro-regime mouthpieces and owned by Rami Makhlouf since 2006, published a then unprecedented public rebuke to Iran, accusing it of sponsoring Islamist fanaticism throughout the Middle East alongside Turkey and Qatar, the main backers of Syria’s opposition. (Rami Makhlouf’s father Muhammad and brother Hafiz meanwhile are alleged by some to be living in Russia.) The April 17 articles published by Prigozhin’s FNA preceded the release of a wave of other articles and items in the media over the next 12 days that would further drive home the point that Moscow was considering options other than Assad to rule Syria. TASS, Russia’s largest state-run news agency, wrote in one editorial that, “Russia suspects that Assad is not only unable to lead the country anymore, but also that the head of the Syrian regime is dragging Moscow towards the Afghani scenario.” This is like evoking the Vietnam War for an American audience, a reference to the Kremlin’s botched campaign through the 1980s that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and finally break it apart.Amid this coverage, TASS would also take swipes at Iran, claiming that the Islamic Republic has “no interest in achieving stability in the region, because it considers it a battlefield with Washington”.On April 30, the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), a think tank established by Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, released a scathing report saying Russia was in talks with other parties to the Syrian conflict to draw up plans for a political resolution that did not include Bashar al-Assad as president. The report highlighted purported Russian efforts to compel the Syrian regime to commit to ceasefires with both American-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) opposition, while beginning steps to form a new unity government that would include representatives from both. That day, Rami Makhlouf, whose assets were frozen five months earlier as part of a tax dispute, uploaded a video onto his personal Facebook page accusing the Assad regime of corruption. In a state known for carrying out the full-scale slaughter of those who test its authority, Makhlouf’s videos, coming on the heels of the unprecedented Russian attacks in the media, sent shockwaves throughout the country.  THE ROYAL FAMILYWhile the Makhlouf clan clearly has thrown its lot in with Russia, key members of Bashar al-Assad’s immediate family and others with ties to Qardaha in Syria’s largely Alawite Latakia province, are among the most prominent Iranian-backed militia leaders in Syria. It’s an alliance that traces back to his father Hafez al-Assad, who was born in Qardaha, and who forged ties with the Iranian revolution almost from its beginning more than 40 years ago. The Iranians responded by offering religious legitimacy to the Alawite sect, which is regarded as heretical by Sunnis and indeed by many Shi’a.These Qardaha militia leaders have regularly engaged in armed clashes against Russian backed units. They are among the most egregious violators and abusers of power, overseeing wide networks of corruption similar to those lamented in the Russian media. And foremost among them is Bashar’s younger brother, Maher al-Assad. Since April 2018, Maher al-Assad has commanded the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division, one of country’s oldest, best equipped and overwhelmingly Alawite brigades. After the 2011 outbreak of the Syrian revolution, when the loyalty of much of the army was in doubt, it became a refuge for numerous Alawite-Shi’a dominated pro-regime militias.Currently, the 4th Armored Division’s members control many smuggling operations throughout the country, in cities from Albu Kamel on Syria’s eastern border with Iraq to Latakia on the Syrian coast, where the port was leased to Iran on October 1 last year. It has since become one of the biggest export hubs for drugs headed to markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Examples abound: On July 5, 2019, Greek coast guard and drug enforcement officials announced the biggest drug bust in history, seizing 5.25 tons (33 million pills) of Captagon amphetamines worth $660m hidden in shipping containers loaded at the Latakia port in Syria. That followed a long string of such seizures made by Greek authorities. More recently, in late April, customs officials in both Saudi Arabia and Egypt also announced the seizure of similar quantities of drugs in containers traced back to Latakia. Local reports have accused a range of actors including Maher al-Assad’s 4th Division, Hizbollah, Rami Makhlouf, and others of profiting from the massive drug exports emanating from the port. In January 2019 the 4th Armored Division launched attacks on the Russian-backed Tiger Forces unit in an attempt to wrest control of smuggling routes between regime- and opposition-held territory in Idlib province. The clashes led to the death of 70 fighters. These and other skirmishes prompted Russia to back a major campaign to arrest 4th Division and other Iranian-backed units throughout the country beginning in April 2019, which succeeded in rounding up numerous mid-ranking Iranian-backed officers. Among those targeted in the campaign was Bashar Talal al-Assad, a cousin to the president (similar name, different people) who was wanted on drug and weapons trafficking charges. Unlike others who were detained in the roundup, Bashar Talal al-Assad and his ‘Areen Brigade managed to fight off Russian-backed forces that sought to arrest him in Qardaha. He then pledged to attack Russia’s Hmeimim military base, located 17 miles east of Latakia city, in the event the regime sought to arrest him again.For Russia, the threat of such attacks on its military infrastructure is a real concern. The Hmeimim base—from which Moscow has directed its entire military campaign in Syria—had already been subject to a series of attacks from January to October 2018 by other Iranian-backed militias in the area. The threat posed by both Iran’s acquisition of the Latakia port and its support for local Assad family proxies in Syria’s coastal region is exacerbated by the fact that Tehran has also begun making progress toward completing construction of its Shalamcha railroad, which, via stops in Basra, Baghdad, Albu Kamel and Damascus, will give Tehran direct access to the Syrian and Lebanese coasts. If Iran succeeds in integrating the Latakia port with the Shalamcha rail line, this will cut off Hmeimim from Russian forces in central and southern Syria and enable Tehran to quickly deliver weapons to proxy forces in Latakia that are already engaged in clashes against Russian-backed groups. WORLDWIDE CONSENSUSMoscow’s inability to control Iranian backed Syrian militiamen engaged in widespread crime, corruption, and assaults on Russian forces has infuriated the Kremlin. But Russia is not the only major player on the ground with scores to settle against Iran, and the Russian military leadership in Syria has ignored if not largely encouraged Israeli strikes on Iranian troops throughout the country.It may not be coincidental that the Israeli attacks have increased in pace and scope since April, following the flurry of Russian media articles attacking Assad and his regime. “We have moved from blocking Iran’s entrenchment in Syria to forcing it out of there, and we will not stop,” Israel’s new defense minister, Naftali Bennett, declared on April 28. Without Russia, Iran has found itself the odd man out in Syria, the single party still seeking to push for war at a time when most other international players have been struck with fatigue and simply seek to put Syria’s pieces back together. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, the last patron of Syria’s battered FSA opposition, has himself made peace with Moscow, effectively agreeing last March to cede control of wide swaths of rebel held territory after a particularly bloody Russian led campaign against the last FSA holdout in Idlib province that ended in victory for regime forces. Ironically, Erdoğan’s long-held desire to overthrow Syria’s president may still come to fruition, albeit not as he expected, as Assad’s ouster may come at the hands of Russia itself, and not the revolution. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.





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NF-{kappa}B mediates lipopolysaccharide-induced alternative pre-mRNA splicing of MyD88 in mouse macrophages [Signal Transduction]

Although a robust inflammatory response is needed to combat infection, this response must ultimately be terminated to prevent chronic inflammation. One mechanism that terminates inflammatory signaling is the production of alternative mRNA splice forms in the Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling pathway. Whereas most genes in the TLR pathway encode positive mediators of inflammatory signaling, several, including that encoding the MyD88 signaling adaptor, also produce alternative spliced mRNA isoforms that encode dominant-negative inhibitors of the response. Production of these negatively acting alternatively spliced isoforms is induced by stimulation with the TLR4 agonist lipopolysaccharide (LPS); thus, this alternative pre-mRNA splicing represents a negative feedback loop that terminates TLR signaling and prevents chronic inflammation. In the current study, we investigated the mechanisms regulating the LPS-induced alternative pre-mRNA splicing of the MyD88 transcript in murine macrophages. We found that 1) the induction of the alternatively spliced MyD88 form is due to alternative pre-mRNA splicing and not caused by another RNA regulatory mechanism, 2) MyD88 splicing is regulated by both the MyD88- and TRIF-dependent arms of the TLR signaling pathway, 3) MyD88 splicing is regulated by the NF-κB transcription factor, and 4) NF-κB likely regulates MyD88 alternative pre-mRNA splicing per se rather than regulating splicing indirectly by altering MyD88 transcription. We conclude that alternative splicing of MyD88 may provide a sensitive mechanism that ensures robust termination of inflammation for tissue repair and restoration of normal tissue homeostasis once an infection is controlled.




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Glycation-mediated inter-protein cross-linking is promoted by chaperone-client complexes of {alpha}-crystallin: Implications for lens aging and presbyopia [Glycobiology and Extracellular Matrices]

Lens proteins become increasingly cross-linked through nondisulfide linkages during aging and cataract formation. One mechanism that has been implicated in this cross-linking is glycation through formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Here, we found an age-associated increase in stiffness in human lenses that was directly correlated with levels of protein–cross-linking AGEs. α-Crystallin in the lens binds to other proteins and prevents their denaturation and aggregation through its chaperone-like activity. Using a FRET-based assay, we examined the stability of the αA-crystallin–γD-crystallin complex for up to 12 days and observed that this complex is stable in PBS and upon incubation with human lens–epithelial cell lysate or lens homogenate. Addition of 2 mm ATP to the lysate or homogenate did not decrease the stability of the complex. We also generated complexes of human αA-crystallin or αB-crystallin with alcohol dehydrogenase or citrate synthase by applying thermal stress. Upon glycation under physiological conditions, the chaperone–client complexes underwent greater extents of cross-linking than did uncomplexed protein mixtures. LC-MS/MS analyses revealed that the levels of cross-linking AGEs were significantly higher in the glycated chaperone–client complexes than in glycated but uncomplexed protein mixtures. Mouse lenses subjected to thermal stress followed by glycation lost resilience more extensively than lenses subjected to thermal stress or glycation alone, and this loss was accompanied by higher protein cross-linking and higher cross-linking AGE levels. These results uncover a protein cross-linking mechanism in the lens and suggest that AGE-mediated cross-linking of α-crystallin–client complexes could contribute to lens aging and presbyopia.




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Catabolic degradation of endothelial VEGFA via autophagy [Glycobiology and Extracellular Matrices]

Extracellular matrix-evoked angiostasis and autophagy within the tumor microenvironment represent two critical, but unconnected, functions of the small leucine-rich proteoglycan, decorin. Acting as a partial agonist of vascular endothelial growth factor 2 (VEGFR2), soluble decorin signals via the energy sensing protein, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), in the autophagic degradation of intracellular vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA). Here, we discovered that soluble decorin evokes intracellular catabolism of endothelial VEGFA that is mechanistically independent of mTOR, but requires an autophagic regulator, paternally expressed gene 3 (PEG3). We found that administration of autophagic inhibitors such as chloroquine or bafilomycin A1, or depletion of autophagy-related 5 (ATG5), results in accumulation of intracellular VEGFA, indicating that VEGFA is a basal autophagic substrate. Mechanistically, decorin increased the VEGFA clearance rate by augmenting autophagic flux, a process that required RAB24 member RAS oncogene family (RAB24), a small GTPase that facilitates the disposal of autophagic compartments. We validated these findings by demonstrating the physiological relevance of this process in vivo. Mice starved for 48 h exhibited a sharp decrease in overall cardiac and aortic VEGFA that could be blocked by systemic chloroquine treatment. Thus, our findings reveal a unified mechanism for the metabolic control of endothelial VEGFA for autophagic clearance in response to decorin and canonical pro-autophagic stimuli. We posit that the VEGFR2/AMPK/PEG3 axis integrates the anti-angiogenic and pro-autophagic bioactivities of decorin as the molecular basis for tumorigenic suppression. These results support future therapeutic use of decorin as a next-generation protein therapy to combat cancer.




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ADAM10 and ADAM17 proteases mediate proinflammatory cytokine-induced and constitutive cleavage of endomucin from the endothelial surface [Membrane Biology]

Contact between inflammatory cells and endothelial cells (ECs) is a crucial step in vascular inflammation. Recently, we demonstrated that the cell-surface level of endomucin (EMCN), a heavily O-glycosylated single-transmembrane sialomucin, interferes with the interactions between inflammatory cells and ECs. We have also shown that, in response to an inflammatory stimulus, EMCN is cleared from the cell surface by an unknown mechanism. In this study, using adenovirus-mediated overexpression of a tagged EMCN in human umbilical vein ECs, we found that treatment with tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) or the strong oxidant pervanadate leads to loss of cell-surface EMCN and increases the levels of the C-terminal fragment of EMCN 3- to 4-fold. Furthermore, treatment with the broad-spectrum matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor batimastat (BB94) or inhibition of ADAM metallopeptidase domain 10 (ADAM10) and ADAM17 with two small-molecule inhibitors, GW280264X and GI254023X, or with siRNA significantly reduced basal and TNFα-induced cell-surface EMCN cleavage. Release of the C-terminal fragment of EMCN by TNF-α treatment was blocked by chemical inhibition of ADAM10 alone or in combination with ADAM17. These results indicate that cell-surface EMCN undergoes constitutive cleavage and that TNF-α treatment dramatically increases this cleavage, which is mediated predominantly by ADAM10 and ADAM17. As endothelial cell-surface EMCN attenuates leukocyte–EC interactions during inflammation, we propose that EMCN is a potential therapeutic target to manage vascular inflammation.




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Re: Management of respiratory failure due to covid-19




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Re: Covid-19: Brazil’s president rallies supporters against social distancing




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Re: Prognosis of unrecognised myocardial infarction determined by electrocardiography or cardiac magnetic resonance imaging: systematic review and meta-analysis




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Assessment and management of facial nerve palsy




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Emerging Transatlantic Security Dilemmas in Border Management

The exponential growth of international travel since the 1960s has left border management systems worldwide struggling to keep up and has exposed weaknesses in states’ abilities to effectively manage their borders, especially regarding terrorist attacks, human trafficking, and illegal migration.




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Improving Immigrants' Employment Prospects through Work-Focused Language Instruction

This report describes the range of policies available to improve immigrants’ economic integration through language acquisition, especially those focused on getting immigrants into jobs or moving into higher-paying jobs. It assesses promising models and practices from Europe and North America.




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The Role of Civil Society in EU Migration Policy: Perspectives on the European Union's Engagement in its Neighborhood

Civil society provides a crucial link between governments and the communities they represent—infusing policy processes with grassroots knowledge to which governments may not otherwise have access. Looking at the European Union’s efforts to engage with civil society in its “neighborhood,” this report examines the benefits, challenges, and mechanisms to building dialogue and cooperation on migration and development.




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Scientists, Managers, and Tourists: The Changing Shape of European Mobility to the United States

European dominance in U.S. immigration flows has decreased significantly since World War II, a result of economic, demographic, and policy trends on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, migration from European Union Member States to the United States, while small, is characterized by a substantial numbers of European scientists, professionals, and businesspeople.




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Tribute to a modern languages pioneer

On this Teachers’ Day, I fondly remember Fraulein Daphne Adams, my first German teacher who influenced my love for languages and who transitioned recently in Jamaica. Miss Adams was first and foremost an excellent, no-nonsense teacher of modern...




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Pogba, Rashford available again for Man United

MANCHESTER, England (AP): Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford are expected to be available for Manchester United whenever the Premier League is allowed to resume after the suspension caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Whether United manager Ole Gunnar...




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Cricket legend Murray warns against hasty restart

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC): Former top West Indies cricket administrator, 76-year-old Deryck Murray, has warned against a forced restart of cricket amid the current challenges posed by the deadly coronavirus pandemic, and says any premature actions...




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Andrews: We’ve never been approached for registration - Chairman says staff hurt by Fearon tragedy; ministry moving to certify 17 facilities

Declaring it has been “pained” by the Jodian Fearon situation, the embattled Andrews Memorial Hospital (AMH) is speaking out, saying it has never been approached for or rejected efforts at registration or certification since it began operating 76...




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Mark Wignall | Help! I need to be a child again

Last Thursday morning, I went to visit my youngest grandchild, three-year-old Morgan. As she emerged from her bedroom with her tablet in hand and a scream on her lips then saw me and barged towards me, I knew that a full embrace was not going to...




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Yaneek Page | It will be years, not months, for COVID-19 business recovery

ADVISORY COLUMN: SMALL BUSINESS On Thursday, May 7, the RJR/GLEANER Communications group staged a virtual town hall meeting on Television Jamaica titled “COVID-19...




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Be strong for your families - Lady Allen sends message of strength in COVID-19 battle, urges women to fight on

Lady Allen – wife of Jamaica’s Governor General Sir Patrick Allen – says Jamaican women are among the strongest and most resilient in the world, and despite many bearing the full brunt of the coronavirus pandemic as breadwinners for their families...




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Securing Human Mobility in the Age of Risk: New Challenges for Travel, Migration, and Borders

This volume, by a former senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, argues that the U.S. approach to immigration and border security is off-kilter and not keeping pace with the scope and complexity of people’s movement around the world, nor with expectations regarding freedom of movement.




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Comment associer les diasporas au développement: Manuel a l’usage des decideurs et praticiens dans les pays d’origine et d’accueil

Ce manuel pratique et simple d’utilisation à l’usage des décideurs et des praticiens fait le point des mesures les plus récentes prises par les pouvoirs publics en direction des diasporas. La question qui se pose aux responsables politiques n’est pas tant de savoir si les diasporas peuvent être utiles à leur pays d’origine, mais comment elles le sont et quels types de politiques et de programmes publics sont à même de favoriser ces relations.




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Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development: A Handbook for Policymakers and Practitioners in Home and Host Countries

This practical handbook highlights policies and programs that can magnify the resources, both human and financial, that emigrants and their descendants contribute to development. It gives concrete examples of policies and programs that have been effective, and pulls out both useful lessons and common challenges associated with the topics at hand.




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Rethinking National Identity in the Age of Migration

Across the Atlantic, large-scale migration has brought about unprecedented levels of diversity, transforming communities in fundamental ways — with a resulting immigration backlash and criticism of "multiculturalism." This volume delivers recommendations on what policymakers must do to build and reinforce inclusiveness given the realities on each side of the Atlantic.




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How Can Talent Abroad Induce Development at Home? Towards a Pragmatic Diaspora Agenda

This edited volume develops a pragmatic approach to the engagement of highly skilled members of the diaspora for the benefit of their countries of origin. The book, edited by a World Bank senior economist, is based on empirical work in middle-income and high-income economies.




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Managing Borders in an Increasingly Borderless World

This edited volume showcases approaches toward border management in Europe, Central America, and North America, and reflects on the challenges that countries in these regions face in managing their borders. The book brings together perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic on what border security means in practice, the challenges that continue to evade policymakers, and what policies have been the most (and least) successful in achieving “secure” borders.




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Is This Working? Assessment and Evaluation Methods Used to Build and Access Language Services in Social Services Agencies In Social Services Agencies

The enactment of President Clinton’s Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Executive Order, issued in 2000, triggered a proliferation of efforts to provide services to individuals who cannot speak, understand, read, or write English fluently. With increased service provision, state and local government agencies have expressed a strong and growing interest in assuring the quality and cost-effectiveness of language access services. This paper attempts to catalog and describe some of those tools and practices.




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Proactive Engagement: Two Strategies for Providing Language Access in Workforce Development Services

This interactive language access webinar, one in a series offered by the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, examines how New York and Illinois have broken down some of these barriers to proactively engage LEP communities to obtain workforce services.




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Proactive Engagement: Two Strategies for Providing Language Access in Workforce Development Services

This webinar examines how New York and Illinois have proactively engaged Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities to obtain workforce services.




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Language Access and Schools: Federal Requirements and School Experiences

This is the latest in NCIIP’s language access webinar series exploring the policy and program implementation imperatives for government and community agencies serving Limited English Proficient (LEP) populations.




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Language Access and Schools: Federal Requirements and School Experiences

This webinar from the MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services program explores federal requirements for providing interpretation and translation in schools and how select school districts in Minnesota and Colorado have managed these requirements.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Making It Work: Lessons in Collaboration on Language Access Contracting

A webinar on language access contracting for federal, state, and local officials, agency administrators, and community stakeholders concerned with the oversight and implementation of language access provision.




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Making It Work: Lessons in Collaboration on Language Access Contracting

A webinar on language access contracting for federal, state, and local officials, agency administrators, and community stakeholders concerned with the oversight and implementation of language access provision.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This report highlights gaps and anomalies in labor protection, while recognizing that U.S. law sets significant standards for minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor, safe and healthy workplaces, antidiscrimination, labor organizing, and collective bargaining.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This Migration Policy Institute webinar discusses labor enforcement laws during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations and chronicles gaps in labor protection.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This webinar discusses labor enforcement laws during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations and chronicles gaps in labor protection, while also discussing the elements necessary for an effective labor standards enforcement system and why labor standards enforcement should become a pillar of immigration policymaking.