Saturday, May 10, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Nuclear Neighbors: Pakistan Nervous About India's Likely New Leader – NBC
BY HENRY AUSTIN AND WAJAHAT S. KHAN
First published May 2nd 2014

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is nervously watching as its huge neighbor and fellow nuclear power India gets set to elect a party feared to harbor virulently anti-Muslim views.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader Narendra Modi are widely expected to win when the results of the six-week election that ends on Monday are announced.

The fear is that the BJP will take an anti-Islamic turn both within India -- the country has a Muslim population of some 176 million -- and towards its northern neighbor, according to Pakistani politician Farahnaz Ispahani.

"He has never come out directly and said this was a tragedy of massive proportions and that the Muslims of Gujurat deserve an apology."

"It is very clear that if there is another attack like the one on Mumbai, we cannot expect restraint from someone like Narendra Modi,” Ispahani said, referring to the 2008 terrorist strike led by 10 Pakistani men that killed more than 160. The incident heightened tensions between the two countries, with some in India saying the attackers had counted on the support of officials in Pakistan's security services.

Earlier, a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament that left a dozen dead, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani militants, almost brought the two nations to the brink of war.

There is a history of hostility between the two countries since the dissolution of the British Raj in 1947 when around a million people are estimated to have died in communal violence as Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs moved to accommodate the new national borders.

The largest source of ongoing tension has been the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, control of which has been disputed since the partition of the two countries. India and Pakistan fought wars over the territory in 1965 and 1999.

Controversial Modi

Modi is already a controversial figure in Pakistan because many feel he did not do enough to stop the February 2002 Hindu-Muslim clashes in the state of Gujarat that left more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds more injured, Ispahani said. Many of the victims were Muslims.

A number of independent observers believe he failed, as chief minister of the state at the time, to protect his own citizens. This was a view endorsed by the U.S., which refused to grant Modi a visa for over 10 years, although officials reversed the decision earlier this year.

“He has never come out directly and said this was a tragedy of massive proportions and that the Muslims of Gujurat deserve an apology,” Ispahani said.

Modi isn't the only one that makes some in Pakistan nervous. Other prominent Hindu nationalists have whipped-up anti-Pakistani sentiment, according to Dr. Farzana Shaikh, an associate fellow at British think tank Chatham House.

In April, longtime Modi ally Pravin Togadia was caught on camera making anti-Islamic comments, raising questions about how an incoming BJP government would treat the country's Muslims.

Inflammatory language by politicians has been a staple on both sides of the border for those looking to score easy political points, however.

“They have had a very fractured relationship,” said Dr. Simona Vittorini of SOAS, University of London. “There is always controversy over who started what, but the antipathy is there.”

But Pakistan's fears stem from more than campaign-trail rhetoric. The BJP’s manifesto -- essentially, its political blueprint -- worries Pakistan’s political and military establishment.

“The suggestion that the BJP would revoke Article 370 of the Indian constitution that guarantees Kashmir’s special status would obviously raise a red flag to the Pakistani’s who believe this is restricted territory and any change in status or attempt to integrate Kashmir would spell disaster,” Shaikh said.

Article 370 grants special autonomous status to Kashmir, specifying that apart from defense, foreign affairs, finance and communications, India's parliament needs the state government's permission to apply other laws in the region.

Any change in this status would make Pakistan nervous because they would see it as India trying to establish a greater claim on the territory, Shaikh said.

“Modi has also said his party would revoke the ‘no first use’ policy in regard to nuclear weapons and that is also causing some concern in military circles,” she added. In other words, Modi might ensure that India has the right to strike first against its neighbor.

Still, many in Pakistan play down both the BJP's manifesto and the views espoused by prominent Hindu nationalists.

“Modi would have to tone himself down when faced with the strategic reality of a nuclear weaponized South Asia,” according to Pakistani political commentator Ayesha Siddiqa, who added that it will take time for both sides to feel each other out.

"This gives enough time for stakeholders on both sides," she said. "Or to put it another way, we will think about it when it comes to crossing the bridge."



“Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader Narendra Modi are feared by Pakistani and Islamic groups in India and Pakistan. 'It is clear that if there is another attack like the one on Mumbai, we cannot expect restraint from someone like Narendra Modi,' Ispahani said, referring to the 2008 terrorist strike led by 10 Pakistani men that killed more than 160....with some in India saying the attackers had counted on the support of officials in Pakistan's security services.” My first instinct is to say, “Well, don't keep making murderous attacks in India, then.”

I tend to think of too many Islamic groups as using warfare to spread their religion and take over other cultures where there is a weakness that allows it. There is a long-standing enmity between Pakistan and India, however, due partly to the division of lands after World War II. Both claim the territory of Kashmir, and there are Islamic groups living within India. Plus the Hindu religion has a tradition of fighting due to their deeply entrenched religion as a cultural identity point, going back thousands of years. This kind of thing is part of the problem in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries – the ethnic groups go back to the breakup of the Roman Empire and farther, and they both claim the land. “They have had a very fractured relationship,” said Dr. Simona Vittorini of SOAS, University of London. “There is always controversy over who started what, but the antipathy is there.”

There have been two wars between the countries since World War II in 1965 and 1999, with several other attacks on Indian sites coming from Pakistani groups; and there is fear that Modi might use the Indians nuclear weapons against Pakistan. That would be a tragedy. We have had only two cases of nuclear attacks – by the US against Japan – and they were horrific enough that most people around the world are afraid of using nukes again. People in Japan were literally vaporized and there is always radiation sickness among those not directly hit. Hopefully things won't come to that point in this case, and that the two populations will try the acceptance of differences as the basis of getting along peacefully.




Shorter Men Live Longer, Hawaii Study finds – NBC
First published May 9th 2014

Here’s the long and short of it: Being vertically challenged isn’t necessarily a disadvantage, especially when it comes to longevity.

A study of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii found that shorter men live longer than their taller counterparts.

Researchers studied the characteristics of thousands of American men of Japanese ancestry in two groups — those that were 5-foot-2 and shorter, and those that were 5-4 and taller. The men were followed closely for over 40 years as part of two long-term research projects, the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program and the Kuakini Honolulu-Asia Aging Study.

"The folks that were 5-2 and shorter lived the longest,” said Dr. Bradley Willcox, one of the study investigators and a professor in the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine's Department of Geriatric Medicine. “The range was seen all the way across from being 5-foot tall to 6-foot tall. The taller you got, the shorter you lived.”

The researchers said that shorter men were more likely to have a protective form of FOX03, a gene associated with longevity in humans, as well as lower blood insulin levels and less cancer.

"This study shows for the first time, that body size is linked to this gene," Willcox said in a statement. "We knew that in animal models of aging. We did not know that in humans. We have the same or a slightly different version in mice, roundworms, flies, even yeast has a version of this gene, and it's important in longevity across all these species."

Researchers at the Kuakini Medical Center, the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine and U.S. Veterans Affairs worked on the study, which was recently published in the peer-reviewed medical journal PLOS ONE.

More research is needed to determine whether the findings hold true for other racial groups and populations, the study’s authors said.

Not all scientists agree on the correlation between height and longevity. Some previous studies have suggested that taller people live longer.




A possible cause of these differences were given by Dr. Bradley Willcox, that “shorter men were more likely to have a protective form of FOX03, a gene associated with longevity in humans, as well as lower blood insulin levels and less cancer.”Surprisingly, the article said this same gene is found in a wide range of animals – “mice, roundworms, flies, even yeast has a version of this gene, and it's important in longevity across all these species." What about women, I wonder? Is this gene sex-linked? The study only concerned Japanese American men, but with the finding of a specific gene that is found in so many other animals as well, I would expect it to go across cultures and probably also be shared by women.

When I looked up senescence or aging in Wikipedia it gave a great deal of information about aging genetic theories, which basically said that the action of aging genes is based on when during the lifetime of an animal it reaches physical maturity and therefore is capable of producing young. Genes which are activated well after that point are not selected against by the evolutionary process.

There are also animals which are not considered “senescent” and their lifespan is not thought to be limited by genes so much as by other causes, such as predators or starvation. Tortoises can live to be 200 years old and maybe longer, and some fish are thought to live and continue to grow in size for an “unlimited” time span. There is also a genetically caused disorder among humans that involves the early development of aging during the individual's early twenties, and ending in an early death.

Well, this is all very interesting. I have inherited a gene that prevents the hair from turning gray until the late 70's or later. This was shared by my grandmother, my mother and all three of Mother's daughters. It is probably passed down to women only, because my boy cousins don't have the characteristic. It has occurred to me that this might be also a gene that gives a long life span. The argument against that is that, unlike FOX03, the women on my Mother's side have a tendency to have early strokes which are common causes of death. Still, it's good not to have to dye my hair.





Mom's video of bullied daughter gets attention
CBS NEWS May 9, 2014

A Minnesota mother's viral video of her daughter sobbing after being bullied at school got the attention of school officials, CBS affiliate KXJB-TV in Fargo, North Dakota, reports.

Sarah Cymbaluk, of Fosston, Minnesota, taped her daughter, Anna, crying and describing how the alleged bullying made her feel. 

In the video, Anna's little brother told her mother that someone on the playground told Anna, "You're going to die by suicide." The boy also said he was called expletives on the playground.

Cymbaluk posted the video to Facebook, where it was shared more than 10,000 times in less than 24 hours.

"They feel like they're worth nothing," Cymbaluk told KXJB-TV. "You tell them there's adults to help you, there's people to help you, the school will help you."

The school district's superintendent said the allegations were new to him.

"I found out about the situation a couple days ago, and I think it could have been resolved without going to Facebook," Superintendent Mark Nohner told KXJB-TV.

Cymbaluk said the family's been trying to get the bullying to stop since December. KXJB-TV reports the school is looking into the allegations.




“'I found out about the situation a couple days ago, and I think it could have been resolved without going to Facebook,' Superintendent Mark Nohner told KXJB-TV.... Cymbaluk said the family's been trying to get the bullying to stop since December. KXJB-TV reports the school is looking into the allegations.” If Mrs. Cymbaluk has been trying to get the school to intervene in the bullying since December, I assume the superintendent would have been told about it before “a couple of days ago.” I don't blame the mother a bit for going to facebook. As in so many cases, an ordinary complaint didn't produce any progress, but 10,000 hits on facebook was very effective. Thank goodness the school is now going to “look into the allegations.” I know schools, especially large ones, have a lot of things to take care of, but they must be held responsible for bullying. It has increased a great deal since I was in school. There might be a place for a law suit in this. I'll look for other news reports about it.





Woman back from the dead after CPR
CBS NEWS May 9, 2014

No one can believe Debbie Biggles is still alive.

Last Saturday, Biggles, a dog groomer at Kosmos Doghouse in Scottsdale, Ariz., was busy getting a golden labradoodle into the bath when she fell to the floor unconscious.

Biggles was clinically dead for 26 minutes but survived thanks to her colleague, Chelsea Loucks.

"I saw her laying on the floor in the back corner," Loucks told CBS affiliate KPHO in Scottsdale, Ariz. "She was like blue-purple-ish."

Loucks took Biggles' pulse -- nothing -- and also could see her breathing was shallow. She started chest compressions on Biggles to the beat of the Bee Gees hit "Staying Alive," just as she'd been taught in a CPR lesson years ago.

And the effort paid off -- Biggles stayed alive.

"She's my angel, she saved me," said Biggles.

Kurt Solem, the ER doctor who saw Biggles when she arrived at the hospital, said her heart was beating and her blood pressure was stable by then. However, he was initially uncertain Biggles would make a full recovery. "In fact, I wrote down the prognosis is grim and neurological damage was highly likely," he said. "I can only describe that, with her being neurologically intact, a miracle, that's it."




Chelsea Loucks checked for a pulse and found none, and Biggles' face was bluish in color, a sign of anoxia, but she was still breathing in a shallow way. Loucks remembered to administer chest compressions to the beat of a favorite old rock song Staying Alive. After 26 minutes her heart started to beat again. I've always been afraid I might have to administer first aid under these conditions and wouldn't know how, but if I can just remember this well-known song I can do it.

When the ambulance got her to the hospital her heart was beating and her blood pressure was stable. Being without oxygen for 26 minutes could have caused her to go into a coma or worse. The ER doctor calls it a miracle that Biggles didn't have brain damage. I'm sure Loucks and Biggles will be the best of friends from now on, and Loucks will be considered a heroine. She saw Biggles lying on the floor and instinctively took action. Sometimes that is the exact thing that makes a person a hero – not standing by while someone else steps in to act. Too many people in our society are “bystanders.”





The Congresswoman Whose Husband Called Her Home
by LIZ HALLORAN
May 10, 2014

Fifty-six years ago this weekend, newspapers across the nation told a sad tale of a family seemingly imploding.

At the center of the story was Coya Knutson, the opera-singing daughter of a Norwegian farmer, and the first woman from Minnesota elected to Congress.

Voted in on her own merits, not appointed to keep a late husband's seat warm for a successor, the trailblazing mother could only watch as vengeful party rivals, a manufactured scandal, and a feckless, alcoholic husband combined to sabotage her career.

It all came to a head on the eve of Mother's Day 1958.

Never heard of the charismatic Knutson, who briefly studied opera at the Juilliard School in New York before returning home to become a schoolteacher and political activist?

Not many have, even in her home state.

But during the late 1950s, when Knutson was running for her third U.S. House term representing Minnesota's rural 9th District, she briefly but spectacularly made the front pages across the nation.

Not for her work on Capitol Hill establishing the first federal student loan program and first grants for cystic fibrosis research. Or for being the first congresswoman ever appointed to the House Agriculture Committee – at the insistence of House Speaker Sam Rayburn over vehement gender-based objections of its chairman.

It was because of an infamous letter, signed by husband Andy back in tiny Oklee, Minn., but widely believed to have been written by grudge-driven operatives in the congresswoman's own party, the progressive Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party.

The letter — urging her to abandon the nation's capital and return to hearth and home — was first published in a regional newspaper under the headline, "Coya Come Home."

It spread like a virus, inspiring overheated stories nationwide. Like one in a Pennsylvania newspaper that described the "honey-blonde" congresswoman looking haggard as she "came out of hiding" to insist she wasn't angry at her husband.

"It's the dirtiest trick I've ever seen in politics," says Gretchen Beito, a Minnesota author who chronicled Knutson's historic path in the book, Coya Come Home.

Knutson's son Terry, now 74, had campaigned with his mother as a teenager but was already in college when the rumpus erupted. He said DFL operatives had also engaged a spurious whisper campaign back in his mother's very religious district that she was having an affair with a young man who was her top aide.

"They wanted to get even with her, to get her out of Congress," Knutson says.

What prompted this enmity? These reprisals? Historians largely agree that the Knutson was vulnerable only in part because of her gender at a time when the prevailing sentiment was that a woman's place was in the home.

"Women themselves resented her," says Beito, the author. "She was doing what women weren't supposed to do."

The populist Knutson's greatest political sin was that she had the temerity to buck party bosses at least twice, and with great success.

First, when, as a state legislator, she used her estimable campaigning skills – which included fluency in Norwegian and a charming ability to sing and play the accordion — to challenge and defeat the DFL's choice on her way to her first term in Washington.

Knutson stepped on toes once again, more significantly, when she chaired in 1956 the state presidential campaign of Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver, who was seeking the Democratic nomination. DFL officials, including Sen. Hubert Humphrey, who harbored vice presidential ambitions, had endorsed Illinois Sen. Adlai Stevenson.

Kefauver crushed Stevenson in the Minnesota presidential primary that year, a shocking embarrassment to party bosses, and an end to Humphrey's drive to be on a national ticket. Knutson won re-election that year, but was forced to again beat back a party-backed primary challenge two years later when she set out to win her third term.

Even so, her detractors were persistent, and played their trump card before the fall election.

"They decided to go to Andy," Terry Knutson says, "and pay him cash to sign the letter."
That letter urged the congresswoman to abandon her re-election campaign and "go home a make a home for your husband and son." It went on: "As your husband I compel you to do this...I'm sick and tired of having you run around with other men all the time and not your husband. I love you honey."

Says Terry Knutson: "After that, it was pretty much over," even though his adoptive parents hadn't been living together for years, he says, because of Andy's drinking and abusive behavior.

Coya Knutson lost to a Republican challenger – "A Big Man for A Man-Sized Job" was his slogan — in the fall of 1958. She obtained a divorce few years later, but steadfastly refused to speak ill of her husband. He died of alcoholism in 1969, but not before he admitted he did not write the famous letter.

"She had a philosophy that 'vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,'" said Beito. "That was her mantra."

A handful of party old-timers like George Farr, 90, who served as DFL state chairman in the 1960s, still assert that it was the unfounded rumor of the affair that undid Knutson, not any organized effort to oust her.

Her support of Kefauver, Farr insists, "was not a major factor" in her downfall.

"It's one of those deals where, as a candidate, you have to keep your home base secure," he says. "She let it get away from her."

Knutson lost two subsequent runs for Congress, but did return to Washington to work in the Defense Department. She eventually came back to her home state, where she lived with her son and his family until her death nearly two decades ago at age 84.

Legislation to establish a memorial in her honor in or near the State Capitol in St. Paul was vetoed in 1997 by GOP Gov. Arne Carlson. Knutson, he argued, hadn't been dead long enough to qualify.

In Oklee, where, inspired by Eleanor Roosevelt, Knutson launched her historic, if truncated, political career, a billboard that greets visitors proclaims its pride as the home of the state's first female member of Congress. Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a Minnesota Democrat, described Knutson in a 1997 salute to her in the Congressional Record as "electric."

At her funeral, family played an interview Knutson recorded with one of her young relatives. "Just strike out," she said, in what theStar Tribune newspaper reported was a bold, robust voice.

"Go on out and try your wings," she said. "That's what I did."




Coya Knutson is not a familiar name to me. I was thirteen, but I didn't pay attention that news story, apparently. It seems some dirty politicians from her own political party wrote a scandalous letter to her and got her husband to sign it, asking her to leave politics. Then they had it published in a newspaper under the headline “Cora Come Home.”

“'It's the dirtiest trick I've ever seen in politics,' says Gretchen Beito, a Minnesota author who chronicled Knutson's historic path in the book, Coya Come Home.” "Women themselves resented her," says Beito, the author. "She was doing what women weren't supposed to do."

She enraged her party by “bucking” the party bosses on two occasions “and with great success.” In 1956 she headed a campaign for Estes Kefauver against Adlai Stevenson and won resoundingly. Her party “bosses” were “shocked” and embarrassed, and apparently enraged.

In this kind of environment the mere fact that her opponents openly made fun of her because she was a woman was not even a cause of discussion, I don't imagine, since so many people in the American society at that time thought she was in fact getting out of “her place.” The same thing used to be said about black people or people “from the wrong side of the tracks” who became famous or made money -- "You're gettin' above your raisin'". I'm so glad that most of the people who held to those values have died and “gone to their reward” now. That's the old-fashioned “conservative” view and it cripples a society rather than allowing individuals to achieve to their highest possible level. The whole society can't "rise up" if the individuals within it can't. So we will remain the lowest in educational achievement tests, even compared to small poor nations in Africa.

Knutson ran for Congress twice more, but lost and ended up working in the Defense Department, after which she lived to the age of 84 with her son and his family. At her funeral the family played a recording of an interview between her and “a young relative” when she exhorted him to “Strike out” and try his wings. “That's what I did,” she said. I do like to see people have the basic hopefulness to make strong strides forward toward their goal. If you are in politics or any other very competitive field you can be humble, and that's good, but you can't be abashed. I especially like to see a woman who does this. Too often we don't have the courage to do something as simple as ask for a raise or a better job within the company. No wonder we don't make top dollar.