Where Have All the Christians Gone?

The number of people who claim no religious affiliation, meanwhile, has doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent, its highest point in history.

AP

More than a quarter-century after scientists discovered the virus that causes AIDS, researchers have finally shown that an experimental vaccine can block at least some infections, marking the first small but significant step toward eventual control of this lethal pandemic.

The benefits of the vaccine were modest, only a 31% reduction in the number of new infections. But coming on the heels of previous vaccine studies that either showed no benefit at all or actually increased the risk of contracting the disease, the study buoys the hopes of researchers who had nearly given on ever finding an effective way to block the spread of the virus.

The results were released overnight in Bangkok, Thailand, where the research was conducted by a team including Thai researchers, the U.S. Army and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“This is a historic day in the 26-year quest to develop an AIDS vaccine,” Dr. Alan Bernstein, executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, who was not involved in the research, said in a statement.

“We now have evidence that it is possible to reduce the risk of HIV infection with a vaccine,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, in his own statement. “There is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field as all of us begin the hard work to translate this landmark result into true public health benefit.”

The trial, which began in 2003, had been disparaged by many critics as a waste of time and money because each of the two vaccines used in it had been shown in individual trials to produce no benefit. But researchers speculated that using them together, with one vaccine priming the immune system and the second boosting that response, would be more effective, and their optimism about this “prime-boost” combination has been validated.

Experts said that it will be many more years before a vaccine is available for wider use, but the results indicate at last that such a vaccine may, indeed, be possible. “It gives me cautious optimism,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.

The primer in this combo is Alvac, made by Sanofi Pasteur, which uses a defanged canarypox virus to carry three synthetic HIV genes into the body. The boost comes from Aidsvax, originally made by VaxGen and now owned by the nonprofit group Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases. It contains a genetically engineered version of a protein from the HIV surface.

The study involved more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand who had no unusual exposure to the virus, just the normal everyday risk. Half received four priming doses of Alvac and two boost doses of Aidsvax over a six-month period, and half received placebo shots.

After three years of follow-up, new HIV infections were observed in 74 of the 8,198 people who received the placebo, but in only 51 of the 8,197 given the vaccine, a statistically significant 31% reduction.

To the researchers’ disappointment, however, the vaccine did not reduce levels of HIV activity in those who became infected after being vaccinated.

Full details of the study will be released next month at a conference in Paris.

The vaccine was made using strains of virus that circulate commonly in Thailand, so it is not clear whether it would have any benefit elsewhere in the world. The manufacturers have not said whether they will attempt to license their products in Thailand.

At least 33 million people worldwide are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, and 25 million have died, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 7,500 are infected each day.

Aidsvax had failed in two large trials halted in 2003, showing no benefit to recipients. Another trial by Merck & Co. of a different vaccine was halted in 2007 when researchers found that the vaccine might increase the risk of contracting the virus.

Patrick Swayze was a heartthrob for millions after his roles in Ghost and Dirty Dancing brought him to the silver screen. His good looks and simmering performances endeared him to all, but he unfortunately died on Monday aged just 57.

His publicist informed fans and media alike that he died of pancreatic cancer after an almost two year battle.

Swayze’s physician, Dr George Fisher confirmed in March 2008 that the movie star had the disease. He released a statement Monday after the event.

“Patrick Swayze passed away peacefully today, surrounded by family and friends.”

Swayze will always be remembered for his starring role as snake-hipped Johnny Castle in the 1987 blockbuster Dirty Dancing. The role that confirmed his place as the romantic lead of the nineties.

He was a trained dancer, who could also act, but wasn’t the first choice for the role. His performance went on to earn him award nominations and a place in the hearts, and bedroom walls of millions of girls around the world.

Despite his fame, the 57 year old actor avoided publicity where he could and preferred to live the quiet life on his ranch in California with his wife of 34 years Lisa. This attitude was displayed both at work and at home,

He once said: “It’s the cult movies that gave me a career for the last 30 years. It wouldn’t have been worth it if I had been stuck as the leading man or the dance guy.”

He was born Patrick Wayne Swayze in Houston Texas in 1952. Son of a choreographer and engineer. He was a natural at sports and actively participated in ice skating, acting as well as ballet. He went on to study gymnastics, then moved to the Harkness and Joffrey ballet school in New York in 1972.

His first professional dancing job was with Disney, where he played Prince Charming in Disney on Parade before going on to feature in the Broadway version of Grease.

His first movie role was as Ace Johnson in a roller skating movie called Skatetown USA in 1979. His rise to fame began when he secured a role in The Outsiders with Rob Lowe in 1983. This movie saw the birth of the brat pack, and also starred Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez and Matt Dillon.

Swayze then hit our TV screens in the excellent North and South which received critical acclaim, and went on to be one of the most successful TV mini-series of all time.

It wasn’t until 1987 that his career was well and truly launched as he arrived on our screens as the dance instructor Johnny Castle. This low budget movie was only envisaged for a short cinema run but became a global phenomenon that took everyone by surprise. He received a Golden Globe nomination and a number 3 single on the US Billboard Chart for the song “She’s Like The Wind” which he sang and featured in the movie.

Swayze will be sadly missed by family, friends and fans alike.

Eight U.S. airlines will use up to 1.5 million gallons a year of synthetic diesel made from plant waste starting in 2012, the fuel’s manufacturer announced today.

Rentech Inc.’s fuel will be used for ground-service transportation at Los Angeles International Airport and be made primarily from urban woody green waste such as yard clippings, the company said.

Using the renewable fuel will be American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, US Airways, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and UPS Airlines.

Rentech plans to produce the fuel at a new plant in Rialto, Calif., which is slated to open in 2012.

The Air Transport Association of America, the domestic industry trade group that joined Rentech in announcing the deal, called the purchasing agreement the first of its kind and said it could signal an industrywide move toward using lower-carbon fuels.

“This transaction promises to be the first of many such green-fuel purchase agreements by the commercial aviation industry,” said Glenn Tilton, ATA’s chairman.

Likewise, Rentech heralded the agreement as a sign of things to come.

“We expect this agreement to serve as a model for future supply relationships at other airports and for other fuels, including Rentech’s synthetic jet fuel, which was recently approved for commercial airline use,” said D. Hunt Ramsbottom, Rentech’s president and CEO.

by Daniel Saltman / The Post-Standard

Wednesday August 19, 2009, 4:45 PM

An Onondaga County sheriff’s deputy was suspended without pay Wednesday over a traffic stop in which he Tasered a mother in front of her children in January.

After an administrative hearing Wednesday, Deputy Sean Andrews was suspended from his $49,095-a-year job for 30 days, according to Deputy John D’Eredita, a spokesman for Sheriff Kevin Walsh.

Andrews, a deputy for the past four years, was taken off road patrol after he pulled over Audra Harmon and shot her with his stun gun twice in front of her two children on Hopkins Road in Salina. He initially told her he saw her talking on her cell phone while driving, but after she said she could disprove that, he accused her of driving 5 mph over the speed limit, according to Harmon. When she got out of her minivan then did not immediately return at his request, he drew his Taser on her. After she got back in the van, Andrews pulled her out and Tasered her.

Harmon was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and speeding. All the charges were dropped.

The case was reported last week in The Post-Standard and was broadcast on national television and spread across the county via the Internet. The publicity did not lead to Andrews’ suspension, D’Eredita said. Walsh could not be reached for comment.

What happens next with Andrews will be determined by the civil service process, D’Eredita said. If his suspension goes beyond 30 days, his pay must resume, according to state law. If that happens, Andrews would be placed in the sheriff’s “temporary assignment unit,” where deputies facing pending discipline report to a room but are not allowed to do any work.

Neither Andrews, 37, nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.

Harmon, 38, sued the sheriff’s office last week over the incident. Her lawyer, Terrance Hoffmann, said he hopes the sheriff’s office takes more disciplinary action against Andrews. But if the deputy’s record is free from any other misconduct, he should not be fired over the Tasering, Hoffmann said.

“We would like for him to be intensively retrained not only in the appropriate use of Tasers, but also trained in how to appropriately deal with the public,” Hoffmann said. “We would also like an apology.”

John O’Brien can be reached at jobrien@syracuse.com or 470-2187.

Civil rights leaders worried race played a role in death of suicidal neighbor

Daniel Saltman

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Alonzo Heyward carried a rifle around his low-rent Chattanooga neighborhood one day last month, ranting about suicide and ignoring the pleas of friends for hours before six city police officers surrounded him on his front porch and decided it had to end.

His father says Heyward told the officers, “I’m not out here to hurt anybody.”

But police, who tried unsuccessfully to disarm Heyward, fired 59 rounds to kill him on July 18. The medical examiner found 43 bullet wounds in his chest, face, arms, hands, legs, buttocks and groin. Police contend Heyward was a danger to others and threatened the six officers.

Chattanooga police spokeswoman Jerri Weary described the case as “suicide by cop.”

Civil rights leaders concerned
As questions continue to surround the shooting, Heyward’s family and civil rights leaders take issue with the police response. Heyward, a 32-year-old moving company employee, was black. The six officers are white. They were temporarily placed on administrative leave but have since returned to work.

“We have a large concern about the amount of shots fired,” said Valoria Armstrong, president of the Chattanooga branch of the NAACP.

A Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial cartoon asked “IS THIS EXCESSIVE FORCE?” — spelling out the question with letters labeling the wounds in a drawing based on Heyward’s autopsy report.

His father, James Marine, 61, does not believe Heyward really wanted to kill himself or that he was trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

“He just needed somebody to talk to,” Marine said. “I believe he was just depressed at that time.”

A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation inquiry is ongoing. Federal and local authorities are awaiting the TBI report before they do their own examinations of the case. Hamilton County District Attorney Bill Cox said he wants to see the TBI report before deciding whether to pursue a criminal case.

Police: There’s ‘no magic number’
Police spokeswoman Weary said the officers confronted Heyward when they responded to a report of three men wrestling over a gun in the street just after 4 a.m.

Heyward’s father said there was never any wrestling over the .44 Magnum rifle that his son was carrying and sometimes pointing at his chin.

Police said the officers tried but failed to disarm Heyward with a stun gun. Weary said Heyward ignored repeated commands to drop the rifle and officers fired when they felt threatened by the way he moved it.

Police accounts and a patrol car video indicate the shots were fired in three volleys, all within 30 seconds. Each officer used a .45-caliber pistol. Some officers emptied their magazines, reloaded and fired again, while others didn’t fire all their bullets, Weary said.

Some of the gunshots ripped through the unoccupied front room of the house Heyward was renting from his employer, the owner of a local moving company. No one else was injured.

Eugene O’Donnell, a former policeman and prosecutor who is now a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there is “no magic number” when it comes to officers firing at a suspect.

If death is believed to be imminent “there isn’t anybody in the country who can tell the cops 10 shots and no more,” O’Donnell said.

“Unfortunately this is replicated all over the country. When you send the police they bring deadly force with them. They come armed and they come predisposed to use force,” O’Donnell said.

Heyward’s police record
According to court records, Heyward had been charged three times in the past with domestic assault. The first two were dismissed. The third, from a January 2008 incident, remained pending at the time of his death.

He was sentenced in 2005 to 11 months, 29 days in the county workhouse for passing worthless checks, but the sentence was suspended for good behavior and he was given probation.

He also had a few driving-related charges on his record, including a violation of the auto registration law for which he received a 30-day suspended sentence in 1997.

The morning he died, Heyward was distraught after returning from a party where he had been drinking, his father said.

“He didn’t think anybody cared about him,” Marine said.

Heyward also was upset about not seeing his children — a daughter and two sons — according to brother James Heyward.

CONTINUED : Police told Heyward was drunk

Perhaps all those concerns about a negative backlash against the town hall protests that would ultimately inure to the benefit of those pushing ObamaCare were overblown, because it looks like the public is siding with the protesters:

WASHINGTON — The raucous protests at congressional town-hall-style meetings have succeeded in fueling opposition to proposed health care bills among some Americans, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — particularly among the independents who tend to be at the center of political debates.

In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say demonstrations at the hometown sessions have made them more sympathetic to the protesters’ views; 21% say they are less sympathetic.

Independents by 2-to-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now.

(…)

• A 57% majority of those surveyed, including six in 10 independents, say a major factor behind the protests are concerns that average citizens had well before the meetings took place; 48% say efforts by activists to create organized opposition to the health care bills are a major factor.

• There’s some tolerance for loud voices: 51% say individuals making “angry attacks” on a health care bill are an example of “democracy in action” rather than “abuse of democracy.”

• Some actions are seen as going too far. Six in 10 say shouting down supporters of a bill is an abuse of democracy. On that question, unlike most others, there isn’t much of a partisan divide: 69% of Democrats and 58% of Republicans agree.

If these numbers stand up, it would be a significant blow to the Obama Administration and to the fortunes of health care reform in Congress.

Posted on 12 August 2009