Al-Shabaab fires recruiter over internet videos

Al-Shabaab fighters                                       (c) AFP

It turns out al Qaeda has the same problem as ordinary companies with employees who spout off on the Internet, making their bosses look bad.
Al-Shabaab, the Somali branch of al Qaeda, booted Abu Mansour al-Amriki out of the group after he posted video messages contrary to the terrorist organization's teachings.
Al-Amriki, who was born Omar Hammami in a suburb of Mobile, Alabama, had become a highly visible member of the group that once dominated central and southern Somalia.
For a time, al-Amriki was a key recruiter for the group, attracting Americans of Somali heritage to the country to fight for the terrorist group.
But things changed in March when al-Amriki posted a video saying he felt like he was at risk. "I feel that my life may be endangered by Harakat Shabaab al-Mujahideen due to some differences that occurred between us regarding matters of the sharia and matters of strategy."

Regular tea can lower odds of ovarian cancer

Drinking tea seems to lower odds of ovarian cancer, Australian research involving 1,000 women says.
Dada Su from Curtin University co-authored the study in China, involving 500 patients of ovarian carcinoma and the other half being unaffected, who completed a questionnaire about tea consumption. They drank a mixture of green, black and oolong tea.

"It's not just the duration of tea drinking but also quantity of tea and the frequency of intake as well"

Andy Lee, professor at the Curtin School of Public Health, who led the study, said a dose-response relationship has also been established.

It is not just the green tea but also the oolong and black tea drinking, which has a similar effect

Obesity killing three times as many as malnutrition

With the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, eating too much is now a more serious risk to the health of populations than eating poorly, found the Global Burden of Disease study, published in a special edition of The Lancet.
Across the world, there has been significant success in tackling malnutrition, with deaths down two-thirds since 1990 to less than a million by 2010.

"We have gone from a world 20 years ago where people weren’t getting enough to eat to a world now where too much food and unhealthy food – even in developing countries – is making us sick"

But increasing prosperity has led to expanding waistlines in countries from Colombia to Kazakhstan, as people eat more and get less everyday exercise.
Dr Majid Ezzati, chair of global environmental health at Imperial College London, and one of the lead authors of the report, said: “We have gone from a world 20 years ago where people weren’t getting enough to eat to a world now where too much food and unhealthy food – even in developing countries – is making us sick.”
Between 1990 and 2010 overall global life expectancy at birth rose by about five years. The ‘average’ boy born in 2010 can expect expect to live to 67.5 and the ‘average’ girl to 73.3.

Americans living longer, but not healthier - study

Americans have longer, but not necessarily healthier, lives due to high rates of preventable chronic disease, according to an annual report on the nation's health released on Tuesday.
Gains in life expectancy contrast with Americans' unhealthy behaviors, which have led to a 28 percent adult obesity rate, a diabetes rate of nearly 10 percent and a high blood pressure rate of more than 30 percent, according to United Health Foundation's 2012 America's Health Rankings.
All three conditions are considered risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

"As a nation, we've made extraordinary gains in longevity over the past decades, but as individuals we are regressing in our health"

Since 1990, premature deaths have declined by 18 percent, cardiovascular deaths have fallen 35 percent, and cancer deaths have slipped by 8 percent, the report said.
Americans' life expectancy was 78.5 years in 2009, 1.7 years above the level in 2000, the report said.
"As a nation, we've made extraordinary gains in longevity over the past decades, but as individuals we are regressing in our health," said Dr. Reed Tuckson, a medical adviser at the United Health Foundation and chief of medical affairs at the UnitedHealth Group.

World end by Dec 21, SA man says "establish Dept of Esoteric Sciences"

It's another doomsday prediction in South Africa.
The country's Constitutional Court has received an “extremely urgent court application” for the appointment of an “investigative task team” to prepare for the end of the world on December 2, according to a SAPA report.

Robert Sefatsa, 38, a Soweto resident, also stated in papers handed in at court that the government needed to form a new department to prepare for judgment day next Friday.
He suggested that the new state department should be called the “department of paranormal and esoteric sciences”.
Sebatsa pointed out that according to the Mayan calendar, judgment day would be on December 21, and it was therefore a matter of extreme urgency that South Africa and other countries make their preparations for the apocalypse.
A commission of inquiry should include geologists, statisticians, astronomists, economists and extra-terrestrial technologists, and should be competent to cope with evacuation procedures, sea and air logistics, and resettlement, he said.

FBI arrest Facebook 'cybercrime ring' after they 'stole £525m'

Facebook has helped the FBI to bust an international hacking ring that stole more than £525million from unsuspecting computer users.
The gang are said to have infected 11million computers with spyware that stole credit card numbers and bank details to net one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.

They used 'Yahos' malicious software to steal the financial details and other personal information.

Ten suspects have been arrested by FBI agents in connection with the hacking.
One of the people in custody lives in Molesey, in Surrey.
The social networking site's security team helped the agents snare the gang after 'Yahos' targeted its users between 2010 and October 2012, the agency said in a statement.

Doctors defeat leukemia with modified HIV

US doctors say they have saved a 7-year-old girl who was close to dying from leukemia by pioneering the use of an unlikely ally: a modified form of the HIV virus.

After fighting her disease with chemotherapy for almost two years and suffering two relapses, the young girl "faced grim prospects," doctors at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said.
So in February this year they agreed to take her on in an experimental program that fought fire with fire.

Helped by a genetically altered HIV virus -- stripped of its devastating properties that cause AIDS -- doctors turned the girl's own immune cells into a superior force able to rout the "aggressive" leukemia.

Emily Whitehead was the first child and is one of only a handful of people in total to be given what's officially known as CTL019 therapy. The hospital stressed this could not yet be called "a magic bullet."
However in her case at least the success was dramatic.