Medvedev hails 'equal competition' ahead of vote (AP)

MOSCOW ? Russia's political parties enjoy "free and equal competition" ahead of this weekend's parliamentary election, President Dmitry Medvedev insisted Friday, even as voters complained of record violations by the Kremlin party and the only independent election monitoring group faces prosecution.

Seven Kremlin-approved parties have been allowed to field candidates this year, while the most vocal opposition groups have been denied registration and barred from campaigning.

In a televised address, Medvedev made an apparent call to vote for the dominant United Russia party and warned that a parliament made up of diverse political camps would be incapable of working for the good of the country.

"Will it be a lawmakers' corps torn by irreconcilable conflicts, incapable of making a decision ? something that has, unfortunately, happened in our history?" he asked. "Or will we get a capable legislative body dominated by responsible politicians, who can help improve our people's living standards in practice, who will be guided in their actions by the interests of voters and national interests?"

United Russia dominates the nation's political life and has received overwhelmingly favorable coverage during the recent campaign, mostly from Kremlin-controlled national television. But the party is increasingly disliked, accused of supporting a corrupt bureaucracy and often called "the party of crooks and thieves."

Golos, a respected independent watchdog, compiles complaints of election law violations across the country and posts them on online. It has recorded more than 4,700 complaints, most involving United Russia.

But Golos has come under growing pressure since Sunday, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Western governments of trying to influence the election through their funding of Russian non-governmental organizations. Golos, whose name means "vote," is supported by grants from the United States and Europe.

Golos directors were called to court Friday to answer accusations that the organization has violated election law.

Prosecutors opened a case Thursday, claiming they had found indications that Golos was "abusing the freedom of the press by falsifying publicly important data, and spreading rumors under the disguise of reliable facts in an attempt to blacken the party and some of its members." The prosecutors' documents do not name the party.

Independent pollster Levada Center predicted last week that United Russia would receive 53 percent of the vote. While still a majority, this would deprive the party of the two-thirds majority that has allowed it to amend the constitution.

Levada said its survey indicated that the Communist Party's share of the vote would rise to 20 percent from less than 12 percent in 2007, as well as showing an uptick for the two other parties in parliament: the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Just Russia, a party established with Kremlin support to lure votes from the Communists.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/russia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_elections

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Wikileaks Uncovers a Global Network of Surveillance Companies for Hire [Wikileaks]

If you're a wealthy, militant despot of a nation and your sovereignty is slipping away, Wikileaks has discovered that you can attempt to prevent an uprising by hiring a network of spies who operate in the private sector and will keep tabs on citizens who threaten your reign. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/XdPyh4uDixo/wikileaks-uncovers-a-global-network-of-spies-for-hire

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Weaker brain links found in psychopaths

Decreased communication between emotional and executive centers may contribute

Web edition : Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Brain differences might help explain psychopaths? cold, calculated and often antisocial behavior, and perhaps even point out better ways to treat or prevent the disorder, a study of Wisconsin prison inmates suggests.

Compared with a group of 13 non-psychopathic criminals, a group of 14 psychopaths had weaker connections between an area near the front of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, or vmPFC, and the amygdala, a pair of almond-shaped structures deep in the brain. Earlier studies have hinted that this particular link is important for emotional regulation and aggression.

Neuroscientist Michael Koenigs of the University of Wisconsin?Madison and colleagues discovered the weaker connection by taking a mobile brain scanner to a medium-security prison. Psychopaths are overrepresented in prison populations thanks to their lack of empathy and tendency toward antisocial behavior.

After interviewing inmates and scrutinizing their disciplinary records to determine whether they were psychopaths, the scientists conducted two kinds of brain scans. The first measured the strength of brain connections called white matter tracts, which are bundles of nerves that serve as information superhighways that shuttle information between different brain regions. It was those scans that revealed the weaker link between the vmPFC and the amygdala in psychopaths, the team reports November 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In the second kind of brain scan, the team assessed which brain regions were coordinating their activity while the prisoners were daydreaming. Normally, the vmPFC and right amygdala work in tandem. But in psychopaths this coordination is lower, the team found.

Finding a breakdown in vmPFC connections was particularly intriguing to Koenigs. Neurologists have long observed that after damage to this area, people can take on personality traits that are reminiscent of psychopathy, including diminished empathy and irresponsible behavior. The results offer direct evidence that the link between the vmPFC and the amygdala is compromised in psychopaths.
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?This article does a marvelous job of integrating what we know about brain function,? says experimental psychologist Robert Hare of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who was not involved in the study. ?What?s striking is that it?s confirming what clinicians have suspected and discussed and talked about. Now we?re getting down to the real nitty-gritty here.?

Hare cautions that identifying what?s different in the brains of psychopaths isn?t the same thing as figuring out the cause of psychopathy. The weakened connections seen in the Wisconsin study could be a by-product of some other environmental or genetic factor commonly found among psychopaths.

??We have a chicken and an egg, in a sense,? he says. ?There?s a tendency, certainly among people in the criminal justice system, to take any of these deficits and say, ?Wow, we have a psychopath who has all these behavioral problems, and now we have this brain anomaly or dysfunction that seems to match, therefore one caused the other.??

Found in: Body & Brain

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/336538/title/Weaker_brain_links_found_in_psychopaths

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China says HIV/AIDS cases are soaring (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? The number of new HIV/AIDS cases in China is soaring, state media said on Wednesday, citing health officials, with rates of infections among college students and older men rising.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued figures showing 48,000 new cases in China in 2011, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Nearly 82 percent of those new cases were transmitted through sexual intercourse, Xinhua said, up from 11.6 percent between 1985 and 2005.

"The distribution of HIV/AIDS cases in our country is now wider and more scattered than ever, posing great difficulties for prevention and control efforts," Wu Zunyou, the director of the Center, said according to Xinhua.

The Center said the number of HIV positive men 60 and above soared from 483 in 2005 to 3,031 in 2010, or 8.9 percent of the total HIV cases in the country.

That same age group accounted for 2,546 of all AIDS cases, or 11 percent. Infections among male college students between the ages of 20 and 24 has also risen, it said.

The number of officially registered HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China is expected to jump from 346,000 to 780,000 by the end of 2011 after the data is updated, Xinhua said.

China's government was initially slow to acknowledge the problem of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s and had sought to cover it up when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers in rural Henan province became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

Beijing has since stepped up the fight, spending more on prevention programs, launching schemes to give universal access to anti-retroviral drugs to contain the disease, and introducing policies to curb discrimination.

But in a country where taboos surrounding sex remain strong and discussion of the topic is largely limited, people with HIV/AIDS say they are often stigmatized.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111130/wl_nm/us_china_aids

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Clinton condemns Iranian mob attack (AP)

BUSAN, South Korea ? U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the United States strongly condemns an Iranian mob attack on British diplomatic compounds in Tehran.

Clinton says that the United States expects Iran's government to protect the lives and property of diplomats. She spoke Wednesday at a global aid development forum in South Korea.

She calls the attack an affront against the British people and the international community.

Hard-line Iranian protesters stormed the British compounds Tuesday. They hauled down the British flag, torched an embassy vehicle and pelted buildings with petrol bombs.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_re_as/as_us_iran_britain

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