Libyan rebels rout Gaddafi forces in strategic town

AJDABIYAH, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes retook the strategic town of Ajdabiyah on Saturday after an all-night battle that suggests the tide is turning against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the east.

Western warplanes bombed the outskirts of Misrata further west to stop Gaddafi forces shelling the city, a rebel spokesman said. One inhabitant said 115 people had died in Misrata in a week and snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.

In Ajdabiyah, rebel fighters danced on tanks, waved flags and fired in the air near buildings riddled with bulletholes. Half a dozen wrecked tanks lay near the eastern entrance to the town and the ground was strewn with empty shell casings.

There were signs of heavy fighting at Ajdabiyah's western gate. The decomposing bodies of more than a dozen Gaddafi fighters were scattered on the ground. An abandoned truckload of ammunition suggested Gaddafi forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

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Japan nuclear emergency workers to return to plant

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Emergency workers forced to retreat from a tsunami-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant when radiation levels soared prepared to return Wednesday night after emissions dropped to safer levels.

The pullback cost precious time in the fight to prevent a nuclear meltdown, further escalating a crisis spawned by last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami that pulverized Japan's northeastern coast and likely killed more than 10,000 people.

It was unclear what happened in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's overheating reactors after late morning, when the workers stopped pumping in seawater trying to cool their fuel rods. Officials gave only sparse information about the reactors.

But conditions at the plant appeared to be worsening. White steam-like clouds drifted up from one reactor which, the government said, likely emitted the burst of radiation that led to the workers' withdrawal. The plant's operator reported a fire at another reactor for the second time in two days.

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Japan races to contain nuclear threat after quake

SOMA, Japan – Dangerous levels of radiation leaking from a crippled nuclear plant forced Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors Tuesday after an explosion and a fire dramatically escalated the crisis spawned by a deadly tsunami.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation had spread from the four stricken reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant along Japan's northeastern coast. The region was shattered by Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that is believed to have killed more than 10,000 people, plunged millions into misery and pummeled the world's third-largest economy.

Japanese officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the reactor fire was in a fuel storage pond — an area where used nuclear fuel is kept cool — and that "radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere." Long after the fire was extinguished, a Japanese official said the pool might still be boiling, though the reported levels of radiation had dropped dramatically by the end of the day.

Late Tuesday, officials at the plant said they were considering asking for help from the U.S. and Japanese militaries to spray water from helicopters into the pool.

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Deaths from New York tour bus crash at 14

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death toll rose to 14 on Saturday after a tour bus carrying sleeping gamblers returning from a Connecticut casino flipped over in the Bronx, shearing off its roof.

The National Transportation and Safety Board was investigating what may be a hit-and-run accident involving a tractor trailer.

The NTSB was trying to determine what caused the bus to swerve on Interstate 95 and topple onto a support pole for a highway sign. The pole sliced the bus in half along the windows, severing the rooftop from the vehicle.

None of the 32 people on board escaped death or injury in the horrific crash, said New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

New York City Police said 13 people died at the scene and one other died at the hospital, bringing the death toll to 14. The Fire Department had said earlier that a 15th person had died, but this information was incorrect.

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Blast at Japan nuke plant; thousands missing

IWAKI, Japan – An explosion shattered a building housing a nuclear reactor Saturday, amid fears of a meltdown, while across wide swaths of northeastern Japan officials searched for thousands of people missing more than a day after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The confirmed death toll from Friday's twin disasters was 686, but the government's chief spokesman said it could exceed 1,000. Devastation stretched hundreds of miles (kilometers) along the coast, where thousands of hungry survivors huddled in darkened emergency centers cut off from rescuers, electricity and aid.

The scale of destruction was not yet known, but there were grim signs that the death toll could soar. One report said four whole trains had disappeared Friday and still not been located. Others said 9,500 people in one coastal town were unaccounted for and that at least 200 bodies had washed ashore elsewhere.

Atsushi Ito, an official in Miyagi prefecture, among the worst hit states, could not confirm those figures, noting that with so little access to the area, thousands of people in scores of town could not be contacted or accounted for.

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Troops kill Tripoli protesters as revolt swells

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – Government forces shot dead two protesters in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Friday, Al Jazeera television reported, as a popular uprising against Muammar Gaddafi closed in on his main power base.

Pro-Gaddafi forces opened fire after hundreds of people in the Janzour district in western Tripoli started a protest march after Friday prayers, a resident, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters in an email.

He said protesters were also shouting anti-Gaddafi slogans in Fashloum in the city's east, and another resident said security forces had fired into the air there.

Al Jazeera said two people had been killed and several wounded in heavy shooting in several districts..

Tripoli and the surrounding area, where Gaddafi's forces had managed to stifle earlier protests, appear to be his last main stronghold as the revolt that has put the east under rebel control has also reportedly advanced through the west.

Zawiyah, an oil refining town on the main coastal highway 50 km (30 miles) west of Tripoli, has on successive nights fought off attempts by government forces to take control, said witnesses who fled across the Tunisian border at Ras Jdir.

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Obama pulls defense for law banning gay marriage

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama's administration will no longer defend a 15-year-old U.S. law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, a major policy shift in favor of gay rights.

The issue of gay marriage has been a major personal conflict for Obama -- he has opposed it and instead favored civil unions -- and his policy reversal drew criticism from conservatives who said the move was a political one.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the change on Wednesday after a detailed review in recent weeks.

He said the government now agreed with a U.S. judge in Boston who ruled in 2010 that banning gay marriages was unconstitutional.

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Carmelo Anthony joins Knicks in nine player deal: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four-time All-Star Carmelo Anthony will join the New York Knicks in a nine-player deal with the Denver Nuggets, the NBA's website reported Tuesday.

"He wanted to be in New York and we worked with him and his people," a Nuggets team source was quoted on NBA.com.

"We worked it out. It's a win-win. You never get fair value for a player like that, but we have to move on as an organization.

"I don't think the fans have gotten the true Nuggets this season" with the constant distractions.

There has been speculation about Anthony's future throughout the season with the Knicks well understood to be his preferred destination.

The 26-year-old, Brooklyn-born Anthony will team up with fellow All-Star Amar'e Stoudemire in what is the latest concentration of power in the NBA.

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Dozens trapped by New Zealand quake that killed 65

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – Office workers trapped under their collapsed buildings sent messages to the outside as rescuers with dogs scrambled to save them and dozens of others following a powerful earthquake that killed at least 65 in one of New Zealand's largest cities.

At least 100 people were reportedly missing and believed buried. Search teams assisted by floodlights and earth movers worked through dawn Wednesday, trying to dig through crumbled concrete, twisted metal and huge mounds of brick.

Medical workers brought the injured to a triage center set up in a park in central Christchurch, while military units patrolled near-empty streets disfigured by the huge cracks and canyons created in Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude quake, the second powerful temblor to hit Christchurch in five months.

The quake toppled the spire of the city's historic stone cathedral, flattened tall buildings and sent chunks of concrete and bricks hurtling onto cars, buses and pedestrians below.

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Libya: Protesters, security clash in capital

CAIRO – Libyan protesters celebrated in the streets of Benghazi on Monday, claiming control of the country's second largest city after bloody fighting, and anti-government unrest spread to the capital with clashes in Tripoli's main square for the first time. Moammar Gadhafi's son vowed that his father and security forces would fight "until the last bullet."

Protesters demanding Gadhafi's ouster planed new marches in the capital's main Green Square and at the leader's residence for Monday evening. That was likely to bring a new round of violence after a similar march the night before prompted clashes that lasted till dawn, with witnesses reporting snipers opening fire on protesters and Gadhafi supporters racing through crowds in trucks and cars, firing automatic weapons and running people over.

During the day Monday, a fire was raging at the People's Hall, the main hall for government gatherings where the country's equivalent of a parliament holds its sessions several times a year, the pro-government news web site Qureyna said. It also reported the first major sign of discontent in Gadhafi's government, saying justice minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil resigned from his post to protest the "excessive use of force against unarmed protesters."

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Researchers identify protein essential for embryo implantation

NIH funded study has implications for understanding disorders of the uterus

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have identified a key step in the establishment of a pregnancy. Their discovery shows how the hormone progesterone suppresses the growth of the uterus’s lining so that a fertilized egg can implant in the uterus.

This key step, the researchers discovered, occurs when a protein called Hand2 suppresses the chemical activity that stimulates growth of the uterine lining, also known as the uterine epithelium.

At the start of each menstrual cycle, levels of the hormone estrogen begin to rise. Estrogen stimulates the cells in the uterine lining to increase in number, causing the epithelium to thicken. However, as the ovary releases an egg, levels of the hormone progesterone begin to rise. The elevated progesterone levels put the brakes on the estrogen-driven growth of the uterine epithelium. In this study, the researchers discovered that Hand2, previously found to increase in uterine cells as progesterone levels rise, is the switch that turns off estrogen’s stimulating effect on the epithelium. 

The finding may contribute to understanding some forms of unexplained female infertility. The finding also has implications for understanding disorders in which growth of the uterine epithelium surges out of control, such as endometrial cancer (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/endometrial) or endometriosis (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/endometriosis.cfm), a disease in which endometrial tissue appears on the ovaries, bowel, or other tissues outside the uterus. 

"Progesterone-like medications are used to treat a wide variety of conditions, such as relieving the symptoms of menopause, as part of infertility treatments, and for preventing preterm birth," said Louis DePaolo, Ph.D., head of the Reproductive Sciences Branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH institute that funded the study. "Understanding how Hand2 exerts its effect on the growth of the uterine lining may lead to the development of new medications and therapeutics that make progesterone treatment more effective but which have fewer side effects. Also, understanding how Hand2 functions might provide insights into disorders like endometriosis, which resist progesterone treatment."

First author Quanxi Li, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was joined on the research team by University of Illinois colleagues Athilakshmi Kannan, Paul S. Cooke, Milan K. Bagchi and Indrani C. Bagchi; Francesco J. DeMayo and John P. Lydon of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; Hiroyuki Yamagishi of Keio University School of Medicine, Japan; and Deepak Srivastava of the University of California, San Francisco. Their findings appear in the Feb. 18 issue of Science.

The research was supported by the NICHD Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproduction and Infertility Research (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/supported/sccpir.cfm), a collaborative network of basic and clinical scientists who study ways of improving reproductive health.

For the current study, the researchers developed a laboratory strain of mice in which the uterus fails to make Hand2.

The researchers found that, after exposure to progesterone halted growth of the uterine epithelium in mice with functioning genes for Hand2. However, despite exposure to progesterone, epithelial growth continued unchecked in the mice without Hand2 genes.

The researchers also discovered that, at the time of implantation, Hand2 was expressed in uterine cells that lie beneath the surface layer of epithelial cells. Through a series of experiments, the researchers determined that estrogen stimulates the production of growth factors, which cause cells in the epithelial layer to multiply and grow. When progesterone is produced, it spurs the release of Hand2, which stops the production of growth factors. The uterine epithelial cells then stop multiplying, mature, and become receptive to the embryo.

"This information helps us understand how the interplay of hormones prepares the uterus to host and support the embryo as it grows,” said Dr. Milan Bagchi. “Our next priority will be to examine whether Hand2 plays a critical role in the human uterus as well." 

The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's Web site at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.