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The Nine Circles of Hell! – all the news that gives you fits in print – the nine most hellish news stories, including a bonus story on US-Iran tensions, for Friday, January 13, 2012, are:

17 New Orleans residents shot in 18 hours

Lawmakers pushes Homeland Security scrutiny of social media

Romney-linked firm gives founders $138 million each

Nuclear scientist’s killing threatens American held in Iran

Afghan opium prices up 133% in 2011

Will oil strike bring Nigeria’s Christians, Muslims back together?

The difficulties of simple, cheap anti-global warming measures

Internet addiction similar to alcohol, cocaine, pot

Deodorant ingredient found in women with breast cancer

17 New Orleans residents shot in 18 hours
WDSU6
(1/13/12)

Mayor Landrieu On Recent Violence: ‘We Are All In This Together’

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Police Chief Ronal Serpas held a news conference to talk about the swarm of violence that has swept the city in recent days.

This week, 17 people were shot over an 18-hour period and at least two police officers were fired on.

Police on Thursday briefly evacuated their headquarters after two live hand grenades were found in a car seized after a chase. The grenades were found inside a safe in the vehicle.

Mayor Landrieu said in his opening statement to the public that, “We are all in this together,” and praised the quick response times of NOPD officers.

“This is something that we all have to work together on and win,” he said. “I know sometimes it feels like deluge is upon us, but I remain undaunted. We have to win this fight together.”

Lawmakers pushes Homeland Security scrutiny of social media
Reuters
(1/13/12)

US lawmakers press Homeland Security on Internet monitoring

Leaders of a U.S. congressional subcommittee are urging the Department of Homeland Security to extensively monitor social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to detect “current or emerging threats.”

The top Republican and Democrat on a House counter-terrorism subcommittee last month sent a letter to Homeland Security’s intelligence chief encouraging department analysts to pore over huge streams of social media traffic.

Representatives Patrick Meehan and Jackie Speier said in the letter to Caryn Wagner, undersecretary of homeland security for intelligence and analysis, that they “believe it would be advantageous for DHS and the broader Intelligence Community to carefully parse the massive streams of data from various social media outlets to identify current or emerging threats to our homeland security.”

Meehan, a Republican, is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s counter-terrorism and intelligence subcommittee. Speier is the panel’s ranking Democrat.

The two lawmakers said such monitoring raises “privacy and civil liberties concerns” and suggested that the department issue guidelines which balance citizens’ rights with the ability of analysts to identify threats.

Earlier this week, Homeland Security’s National Operations Center published a long list of websites which they monitor for “situational awareness.”

In an email to Reuters, Meehan said a hearing he had convened in December had “examined the evolving terrorist use of social media and effective intelligence and law enforcement responses.”

Meehan added: “If terrorists are operating in Pakistan or communicating through social media sites like Facebook, we need to remain vigilant. Yet there are important civil liberties questions involving U.S. government monitoring of social media and Americans’ Internet traffic. We are seeking answers on the Department’s guidelines and procedures to ensure Americans’ civil liberties are safeguarded.”

Romney-linked firm gives founders $138 million each
The Guardian
(1/11/12)

Three Carlyle founders each land a $138m payday

The trio who founded private equity powerhouse Carlyle Group took home more than $400m in compensation last year, according to a regulatory filing.

The huge payday for the firm, which claims presidents and prime ministers among its advisers, comes as the private equity industry has fallen under intense scrutiny over the course of the race for the Republican nomination.

Current GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney has come under fire for his time at Carlyle rival Bain Capital, where he amassed a large personal fortune.

Carlyle founders David Rubenstein, Bill Conway and Daniel D’Aniello each received $138m in pay last year, according to documents filed with the top US financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The three co-founders each received a base salary of $275,000, a bonus of $3.5m, and a $134m share of the firm’s investment profits.

Rubenstein, Conway and D’Aniello founded the Washington-based firm 25-years ago and named it after the luxurious New York hotel they favour. It once specialised in defence contracts but has since expanded its investment interests. Recent buyouts include the car rental group Hertz, Dunkin’ Donuts and Moncler, the Italian fashion and sportswear brand. The disclosures were made as Carlyle prepares for a stock market listing.

Often described as ‘secretive’, Carlyle is famous for its top-level contacts and political hires. It counts former president George Bush, his secretary of state James Baker, and John Major, the former UK prime minister, among its alumni and was a target of Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

Last year Carlyle returned $17bn to its investors, a company record. In the third quarter Carlyle’s net income rose 60% to $918.1m, on revenue of $2bn, the firm disclosed in a regulatory filing.

The payout comes amid intensified scrutiny of the private equity industry from both sides of the political spectrum. Romney’s Republican rivals have gone after his record as chief executive of Bain Capital. Newt Gingrich has accused Romney of “looting” companies, depicting him in ads as a greedy job killer “more ruthless than Wall Street”. Rival Rick Perry compared the industry to “vultures” in South Carolina this week.

Carlyle itself has had its run-ins with the law. In 2009 it paid $20m to settle a case brought by Andrew Cuomo, then New York attorney-general and now New York governor, which charged that it paid well-connected executives to secure investments from New York state’s huge pension fund …

Thanks to a longstanding tax break, payouts to private equity executives can be treated as a capital gain, taxed at a 15% rate, rather than income, typically taxed at 35%.

Nuclear scientist’s killing threatens American held in Iran
The Washington Post with Foreign Policy
(1/11/12)

Killing of Iranian scientist imperils former Marine

The assassination Wednesday of an Iranian nuclear scientist in northern Tehran increases the peril for an Iranian American who was sentenced to death Monday, analysts said.

Iranian officials quickly blamed the scientist’s killing on the United States, ratcheting up tensions between the two countries and making it less likely that Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a 28-year-old former U.S. Marine arrested in August and accused of spying for the CIA, will be released anytime soon.

“Unfortunately, the greater the escalation is, the greater the likelihood that the perceived costs of executing him decline,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council and author of a new book about the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran.

In recent years, there has been an increase in mysterious explosions at military and industrial sites in Iran. Three scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program have been assassinated, and a computer virus called Stuxnet wreaked havoc on the program.

As Tehran faces tighter international sanctions, a faltering economy and continued scrutiny of its nuclear program, the country’s justice system has turned its attention to Iranian Americans.

There has been a string of arrests of dual nationals in recent years. Typically, Iran charges them with espionage and sometimes shows them on state-run television making “confessions,” under what the detainees later say was duress. Negotiations have usually led to the detainees’ release after several months, sometimes after the announcement of a lengthy prison sentence.

But even analysts who believe Hekmati is being used as a bargaining chip say they were taken aback by the swiftness and harshness of his sentence.

• In other US-Iran tension news, The New York Times reports, “US Sends Top Iranian Leader a Warning on Strait Threat“:
  The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.
  The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line” if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.
  Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closing of the strait.
  The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.
  “If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.
  Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe that Iran’s threats to close the strait, coming amid deep frictions over Iran’s nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil. Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran’s petroleum exports — and for its food and consumer imports — would amount to economic suicide.
  “They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves,” said Dennis B. Ross, who until last month was one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran. “I don’t think they’re in such a mood of self sacrifice.”
  But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait. Although Iran’s naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of “asymmetric warfare” — mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats and antiship cruise missiles hidden along Iran’s 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline — which have become a threat to the world’s most powerful navy.
  “The simple answer is yes, they can block it,” General Dempsey said on CBS on Sunday.

Afghan opium prices up 133% in 2011
UPI
(1/13/12)

Afghan opium prices rise sharply

Opium prices in Afghanistan, the main source of income for the Taliban, shot up a whopping 133 percent in 2011, a United Nations survey indicates.

The survey, jointly done by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime and the Afghan government, estimated opium poppy farmers earned more than $1.4 billion last year, or 9 percent of country’s gross domestic product.

“Opium is therefore a significant part of the Afghan economy and provides considerable funding to the insurgency and fuels corruption,” said Yury Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. agency.

The price increase was blamed on a supply shortage resulting from a fungal disease that wiped out the poppy crop in 2010.

About 60 per cent of farmers surveyed said they were primarily motivated by the high prices from poppy cultivation. It was disturbing that the gross income from opium last year was 11 times higher than that earned from wheat, the biggest difference since 2003, officials said.

Afghanistan accounts for an estimated 90 per cent of the world’s opium.

The survey said poppy-crop cultivation spread over 7 percent more land than in 2010. The amount of opium produced increased by 61 per cent, from 3,600 tons in 2010 to 5,800 tons last year, it said.

Will oil strike bring Nigeria’s Christians, Muslims back together?
The Associated Press
(1/12/12)

Christians, Muslims unite at Nigeria protest

A human wave of more than 20,000 surrounded the Muslim faithful as they prayed toward Mecca Friday, as anti-government demonstrations over spiraling fuel prices and corruption showed unity among protesters despite growing sectarian tensions in Africa’s most populous nation.

While violence sparked by religious and ethnic divisions left about 1,500 people dead last year alone in Nigeria, some hope the ongoing protests gripping the oil-rich nation will bring together a country that already suffered through a bloody civil war.

“It shows that Nigeria is now coming together as one family,” said Abdullahi Idowu, 27, as he prepared to wash himself before Friday prayers.

Labor unions, meanwhile, announced Friday they would halt their five-day strike for the weekend, allowing families stuck largely inside their homes to go to markets and rest. Union leaders also plan to meet President Goodluck Jonathan and government officials on Saturday for new negotiations, just ahead of a promised labor shutdown of Nigeria’s oil industry.

Nigeria, which produces about 2.4 million barrels of crude a day, is the fifth-largest oil exporter to the U.S. While the country has a several-week stock of oil ready for export, the threatened shutdown Sunday could shake oil futures as traders remained concerns about worldwide supply.

The strike began Monday, paralyzing the nation of more than 160 million people. The root cause remains gasoline prices: President Goodluck Jonathan’s government abandoned subsidies that kept gasoline prices low Jan. 1, causing prices to spike from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter). The costs of food and transportation also largely doubled in a nation where most people live on less than $2 a day.

Anger over losing one of the few benefits average Nigerians see from being an oil-rich country, as well as disgust over government corruption, have led to demonstrations across this nation and violence that has killed at least 10 people. Red Cross volunteers have treated more than 600 people injured in protests since the strike began, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday.

The difficulties of simple, cheap anti-global warming measures
The Washington Post
(1/12/12)

Study: Simple measures could reduce global warming, save lives

Simple, inexpensive measures to cut emissions of two common pollutants will slow global warming, save millions of lives and boost crop production around the world, an international team of scientists reported Thursday.

The climate-change debate has centered on carbon dioxide, a gas that wafts in the atmosphere for decades, trapping heat. But in recent years, scientists have pointed to two other, shorter-term pollutants — methane and soot, also known as black carbon — that drive climate change.

Slashing emissions of these twin threats would be a “win-win-win” for climate, human health and agriculture, said NASA climate scientist Drew Shindell, who led the study appearing in the journal Science. “Even if you don’t believe climate change is a problem, these things are worth doing.”

Previous studies have noted the benefits of reducing methane and soot. But the new study looked at the specific effect of about 400 actions policymakers could take. Of those, just 14 interventions — such as eliminating wood-burning stoves, dampening emissions from diesel vehicles and capturing methane released from coal mines — would offer big benefits.

“They’re all things we know how to do and have done; we just haven’t done them worldwide,” said Shindell, who works at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

But simple changes can be difficult to implement globally, Shindell acknowledged, even when the ultimate benefits dwarf the upfront costs.

Reducing methane and soot would slow global warming dramatically — by almost a degree Fahrenheit — by the middle of the century, according to computer simulations run by the 24-member international team.

At the same time, the simulations show that better air quality would prevent lung and cardiovascular diseases, saving anywhere from 700,000 to 4.7 million lives annually. The wide range reflects uncertainties in the number of deaths caused by air pollution.

Global crop yields would also rise, by 30 to 135 metric tons annually, as rice, corn, wheat and soybean plants would have an easier time absorbing the nutrients they need from the air, according to the report.

“In the absence of a global carbon dioxide agreement, it makes sense to move ahead on global efforts to reduce these other gases,” said Joyce Penner of the University of Michigan, who has studied the climate impacts of soot but was not involved in the new research.

About 3 billion people in the developing world rely on stoves that burn wood, dung and other fuels that throw off soot. Switching to cleaner-burning stoves would help reduce short-term global warming while quickly improving local air quality. Soot particles fall out of the air in less than a week.

But getting people to switch to cleaner-burning stoves is “easier said than done,” said Elizabeth Ransom, a spokeswoman for University Research. With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the group recently doled out $1.3 million in grants to three groups studying how to get people in Uganda and India to adopt cleaner-burning stoves, as some projects to introduce modern stoves “just didn’t take off.”

Internet addiction similar to alcohol, cocaine, pot
The Independent
(1/12/12)

Addicted! Scientists show how internet dependency alters the human brain

Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. In a groundbreaking study, researchers used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains of adolescents who spent many hours on the internet, to the detriment of their social and personal lives. The finding could throw light on other behavioural problems and lead to the development of new approaches to treatment, researchers said.

An estimated 5 to 10 per cent of internet users are thought to be addicted – meaning they are unable to control their use. The majority are games players who become so absorbed in the activity they go without food or drink for long periods and their education, work and relationships suffer.

Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, who runs Britain’s only NHS clinic for internet addicts and problem gamblers, said: “The majority of people we see with serious internet addiction are gamers – people who spend long hours in roles in various games that cause them to disregard their obligations. I have seen people who stopped attending university lectures, failed their degrees or their marriages broke down because they were unable to emotionally connect with anything outside the game.”

Although most of the population was spending longer online, that was not evidence of addiction, she said. “It is different. We are doing it because modern life requires us to link up over the net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections – but not in an obsessive way. When someone comes to you and says they did not sleep last night because they spent 14 hours playing games, and it was the same the previous night, and they tried to stop but they couldn’t – you know they have a problem. It does tend to be the gaming that catches people out.”

Researchers in China scanned the brains of 17 adolescents diagnosed with “internet addiction disorder” who had been referred to the Shanghai Mental Health Centre, and compared the results with scans from 16 of their peers.

The results showed impairment of white matter fibres in the brain connecting regions involved in emotional processing, attention, decision making and cognitive control. Similar changes to the white matter have been observed in other forms of addiction to substances such as alcohol and cocaine.

“The findings suggest that white matter integrity may serve as a potential new treatment target in internet addiction disorder,” they say in the online journal Public Library of Science One. The authors acknowledge that they cannot tell whether the brain changes are the cause or the consequence of the internet addiction. It could be that young people with the brain changes observed are more prone to becoming addicted.

Deodorant ingredient found in women with breast cancer
USA TODAY
(1/13/12)

Does deodorant ingredient affect breast cancer risk?

For several years, researchers have studied a possible link between substances called parabens — widely used as a germ-fighting preservative in cosmetics such as deodorant/antiperspirants — and breast cancer.

Investigators have learned that parabens, also found in some drugs and food products, can mimic weakly the action of the female hormone estrogen — an established risk factor for breast cancer. And the fact that a disproportionate number of breast tumors occur nearer the underarm also had scientists wondering.

But now, British researchers who examined breast tissue samples from 40 women who had mastectomies have found that traces of parabens are widespread in tissues, even in the seven women who said they’d never used underarm products.

“The implication is that in these seven nonusers, the paraben measured must have come from another product or products,” said Dr. Philippa Darbre, a cancer researcher at the University of Reading who has long studied the issue.

In the study, published online in January in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, Darbre and her colleagues report that one or more kinds of parabens were found in 158 of the 160 samples taken from the tissue collected from the 40 women. They found 96 samples contained all five of the most common paraben esters (forms).

The levels of paraben found were higher, by about four times, than Darbre found when she did a similar but smaller study in 2004. “Since 2004, many manufacturers (although not all) have been removing parabens from the underarm deodorant/antiperspirant products and so I was rather surprised when we found higher levels of parabens in these breast tissues (sourced after 2004),” Darbre said.

Higher levels of one form of paraben were found in the region of the breast closest to the armpit, she said, and the women had a disproportionate incidence of breast cancer in that area.

However, Darbre cautioned that the research cannot be taken to imply cause and effect.