WikiLeaks urges US to probe alleged rights abuses

GENEVA (AP) — The founder of WikiLeaks urged U.S. authorities on Thursday to probe possible rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of focusing on tracking down who leaked that information to his group.

Australian-born Julian Assange said the U.S. hadn't opened any probes into the alleged incidents detailed in secret documents published by WikiLeaks since the group began putting them online in July.

"It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up," he told reporters near the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, where on Friday the U.S. will face its first comprehensive human rights review by the global body.

Officials at the U.S. mission in Geneva …

Jurist: Ties to Israel obligated war crimes probe

The internationally renowned jurist who oversaw a U.N. report accusing Israel of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip said Monday that his deep attachment to the Jewish state compelled him to carry out the investigation.

South African jurist Richard Goldstone also faulted Israel for not cooperating with the investigation in an op-ed piece published in the Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli daily. It was the first time he has reached out to the Israeli public since his report was published last month.

Goldstone's report on the three-week winter war has set off an uproar in Israel. Leaders say the document was biased and commissioned by a U.N. body …

Rescuers aid pilgrims in Himalayas

SRINAGAR, India Army helicopters swept into the Himalayas andrescued hundreds of pilgrims stranded last week by torrential rainsand a snowstorm that reportedly killed 160 of their companions.

For two days, rescue teams used helicopters and trucks toevacuate tens of thousands of people, bringing them down to the townof Pahalgam, the starting point of the trek. By Monday, rescueworkers said almost all the pilgrims were safe.

Sixty thousand pilgrims were in Pahalgam, from where they hadbegun their arduous three-day trek to a 13,500-foot-high cavehonoring Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

Rescuers planned to move them to safer areas where there …

Tug pilot sentenced to year and a day in prison for deadly river crash in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Tug pilot sentenced to year and a …

Thai army chief wants elections to end crisis

Thailand's army commander urged protesters Wednesday to leave Bangkok airport and called for elections to end the country's political crisis after a day of chaos in which thousands of travelers were stranded.

A protest spokesman said new elections alone would not solve the crisis, calling for Prime Minister Somchai Wongsarat to resign unconditionally. He added that they would not leave the airport.

All flights were canceled and frustrated passengers bused to hotels, as protesters shut down Suvarnabhumi Airport in a major escalation of their four-month campaign to oust Somchai.

"The government should give the public a chance to decide in a fresh …

Cable board is signing off: City and county officials will take over advisory panel's job

The sun has apparently set on the West Virginia Cable TV AdvisoryBoard.

The board met for its 94th - and possibly final - time Thursdaytohandle housekeeping duties before it goes out of operation June 30.

The Legislature failed to renew the board's operations under thestate sunset law, and a proposal to create a new cable TV consumerprotection agency was vetoed by Gov. Underwood."It's been a lot of fun and a good experience for me," said boardChairman James Sago, who has been a member since the agency wasformed in July 1990."I found out that not all cable operators are bad guys, most areresponsible business people. We have provided a forum to argue anddiscuss …

Desde Washington; Colombia, un Éxito Propio y Bipartidista

Si observamos a Colombia cinco a�os atr�s, habr�a sido justo decir que estaba cayendo en una incontrolable anarqu�a --un gobierno intimidado por una mort�fera mezcla de alas de izquierda y derecha-- grupos terroristas y es de droga pugnando por una, econom�a basada m�s en la coca�na que en el comercio honesto.

La batalla no ha concluido, pero la eliminaci�n del cartel de droga de Cali y la extradici�n de sus l�deres es una gran victoria. La guerra contra el ala izquierdista de las FARC sigue, pero ahora combate agresivamente.

Los �ltimos reportes indican que del 2000 a 2004 Colombia entren� 110,000 nuevos polic�as, redujo una tercera parte del �rea de cultivo de la …

US training Iraqis to defeat deadly roadside bombs

Two Iraqi soldiers acting as insurgents hook up a cellular phone detonator to a 155mm artillery shell with a coiled red wire, bury the mock bomb in a pile of dirt next to a rusty electricity pole and then disappear down the street.

Minutes later, an Iraqi army patrol in Humvees and an armored vehicle with radio-jamming equipment speed into the dusty intersection and disable the bomb remotely with a robot, as U.S. and Iraqi generals observe the training drill from the shade of a tent.

The exercise at this sandy, wind-swept Iraqi military base south of Baghdad is part of U.S. efforts to pass on hard-learned lessons to Iraq's army on how to combat what has long …

BEARS NOTES

If quarterback Jim McMahon can't start the Bears' exhibitionfinale Saturday, coach Mike Ditka said Mike Tomczak will. "He did alot of good things," Ditka said of Tomczak's first NFL start Saturdayin the 14-7 loss to St. Louis. Tomczak didn't match his threetouchdown passes in each of the previous two games, but Ditka wasmore upset about his two interceptions.

Ditka said he didn't know whether McMahon would practice today."I'll expect him to work out but if he can't work out, he won't,"Ditka said. "I don't expect anything but what he does." McMahon, witha pulled upper leg muscle, has missed three games.

Ditka did not want to discuss whether Tomczak had replaced …

Al-Qaida Has Rebuilt, U.S. Intel Warns

WASHINGTON - A new threat assessment from U.S. counterterrorism analysts says that al-Qaida has used its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border to restore its operating capabilities to a level unseen since the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

A counterterrorism official familiar with a five-page summary of the document - titled "Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West" - called it a stark appraisal. The analysis will be part of a broader meeting at the White House on Thursday about an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate.

The official and others spoke to The Associated Press on condition they not be identified because the report remains classified.

The …

Moldovan Parliament fails to elect president

Moldova's Parliament has narrowly failed to elect a president after the opposition boycotted the vote, claiming the April 5 elections were rigged.

Former Prime Minister Zinaida Greceanii, a Communist, won 60 votes in Wednesday's ballot _ one short of the 61 needed. Another candidate did not win any votes.

Three opposition parties …

Grim `Shoah' to air on Channel 11

NEW YORK "Shoah," beginning from 8 to 11 tonight on WTTW-Channel 11,is a critically acclaimed documentary that revives the horror ofAdolf Hitler's death camps without using a single frame of theatrocities.

Instead, "Shoah" tells the story through the recollections ofthe survivors, the townspeople who worked around the camps, and oneof the SS officers.

Airing on PBS during National Holocaust Remembrance Week, thefour-part documentary of the Holocaust will continue from 8 to 10p.m. tomorrow, 8 to 10:30 p.m. Wednesday and 8 to 11 p.m. Thursday.

If one can stomach four nights of hell, "Shoah" is amasterpiece.

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert …

18 South Koreans Abducted in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban gunmen abducted 18 mostly female members of a South Korean church group, and a purported spokesman for the Islamic militia said Friday the group will be questioned about their activities in the country before their fate is decided.

Gunmen seized the bus Thursday as it traveled on the main road from the southern city of Kandahar to the capital Kabul, said Mohammad Zaman, the Ghazni province deputy police chief.

He blamed the kidnapping, which took place in Qarabagh district, on the "enemies of Afghanistan," a usual reference for Taliban and other militants that are active in the area.

Zaman could not say how many people were on the bus. A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said that some Koreans may have been kidnapped, but provided no details.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, the purported Taliban spokesman, said 18 South Koreans, 15 women and three men, were abducted by the militants.

"We are investigating, who are they, what are they doing in Afghanistan," Ahmadi said, speaking on a satellite phone from an undisclosed location. "After our investigation, the Taliban higher authorities will make a decision about their fate."

"Right now they are safe and sound," Ahmadi told The Associated Press.

Ahmadi's claim could not be independently verified.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Friday that the kidnapped Koreans were members of Saemmul Community Church in Bundang, south of the capital, Seoul.

A church official confirmed 20 of its members were in Afghanistan for volunteer work, adding that the church was currently unable to reach them.

"The Foreign Ministry has informed us this morning that the abductees could be our church members, so we are trying to confirm it," the official said on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.

The group left South Korea last Friday and was to return on July 23, she said.

The kidnapping comes a day after two Germans and five of their Afghan colleagues, working on a dam project, were abducted in the central Wardak province.

On June 28, another German man was kidnapped in western Afghanistan, but was released after a week. The kidnappers, using tribal elders as intermediaries, demanded $40,000. It was not clear whether money changed hands.

---

Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Wal-Mart 3Q profit rises; pressure still on in US

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported a 9.3 percent increase in third-quarter net income as the world's largest retailer benefited from cost controls and a robust international business. The company also raised its full-year profit outlook.

The improvements come despite weakness at its U.S. business. Total revenue at U.S. Walmart stores fell as fewer customers visited and spent less when they did. Revenue at stores open at least a year also fell, for the sixth quarter in a row, underscoring the challenges of its U.S. business as many customers struggle economically.

Still, Wal-Mart, armed with free shipping deals and low prices on such basics socks and underwear, remained upbeat about the holiday season and said restocking grocery items it had stopped carrying is starting to pay off. It also maintained it expects revenue at stores open at least a year to turn positive in the critical fourth quarter.

Shares rose almost 2 percent, or 95 cents, to $54.90 in late morning trading.

"Our own surveys and the reports on the recent U.S. election cycle indicate that financial uncertainty still weighs heavily on everyday Americans, including many of our core customers," President and CEO Mike Duke said in a prerecorded address to investors. "Whether it's for everyday groceries, or for discretionary items, Walmart U.S. will be the price leader throughout the holidays, and I remain confident about improving (comparable store sales) trends in the fourth quarter."

Many analysts believe that Wal-Mart is facing an uphill battle to improve its U.S. business substantially for holiday season.

"It's going to be a stretch to get that positive number," said Ken Perkins, president of RetailMetrics, a research firm. "There's a lot of intense competition" from different chains, including dollar-store chains.

Wal-Mart posted net income of $3.44 billion, or 95 cents per share, in the quarter ended Oct. 31. That's up from $3.14 billion, or 81 cents per share, in last year's third quarter.

Excluding a tax benefit, the company earned 90 cents per share, which matched estimates from a survey of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue reached $101.24 billion, below the estimate of $102.25 billion.

Revenue at stores open at least a year slipped 0.7 percent, dragged down by a 1.3 percent drop at U.S. Walmart stores. The decline, which excluded fuel sales, is worse than analysts' estimates for a 0.4 percent decrease. The measure rose 2.4 percent at its Sam's Club chain.

Wal-Mart benefited during the recession as affluent shoppers traded down to cheaper stores, but its main customers have been under increasing financial stress amid an unemployment rate that's still stuck at almost 10 percent.

"(Shoppers) are focusing on necessities and being practical in how they're spending their money," said Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart's chief financial officer, during a call with the media on Tuesday.

Wal-Mart's merchandising missteps also have hurt its U.S. business, and the company is scrambling to rectify those mistakes. That includes restocking thousands of grocery items eliminated as a part of a campaign to declutter its stores last year. Executives said Tuesday the company already seeing improving sales after expanding its assortment of pie fillings and jams. It's also going back to everyday low-pricing strategies after steep rollbacks failed to excite frugal shoppers.

Wal-Mart is also stocking more $1 items and mini-size products such as detergent at the end of the month as it has felt pressure from dollar stores, where financially strapped shoppers turn when they have only a few dollars left.

Bill Simon, president of Walmart's U.S. business, reiterated that the strategies are all aimed at getting its customers with household incomes of under $70,000 to spend more. That group represents 68 percent of its business, and these customers spend about 22 percent of their disposable income at Walmart, so "there remains lot of opportunity," Simon says.

Wal-Mart said it expects revenue at stores opened at least a year for its U.S. Walmart business to be anywhere from down 1 percent to up 2 percent in the fourth quarter. Schoewe told reporters they should focus on the midpoint of that range.

Wal-Mart predicts that earnings per share for the fourth quarter will be in the range of $1.29 to $1.33. Analysts had predicted $1.28 per share. The company also predicted full-year earnings per share ranging from $4.08 to $4.12 per share. That's up from $3.95 to $4.05 per share. Analysts expected $4.02.

Woeful Tigers spoil Rocket's shot at 300, Clemens, Yankee defense explodes to low six-run lead

DETROIT - A record crowd of 44,095 squeezed into Comerica Park ona sunny Sunday afternoon, filling every seat and jamming the standing-room-only concourses above the outfield bleachers, all in hopes ofwitnessing Roger Clemens make history with his 300th victory. Seventeen innings later, after the New York Yankees outlasted theDetroit Tigers, 10-9, in a grueling 5-hour 10-minute marathon thatfeatured 14 pitchers, a seventh-inning stretch and a 14th-inningstretch, Clemens' outing seemed like ancient history.

Staked to a 7-1, fifth-inning lead against baseball's most feeblecollection of hitters, Clemens and the Yankee defense imploded in afive-run, three-error fifth, and the bullpen collapsed in a two-runseventh, leaving Clemens with a no-decision in his second attempt tobecome the 21st player in major league history, and first since NolanRyan in 1990, to reach 300 wins.

Next Rocket stop: Chicago's Wrigley Field, where Clemens willoppose his protege, Cub flame-thrower Kerry Wood, Saturday in anationally televised interleague game that will pit the only twopitchers who have struck out 20 batters in a nine-inning game.

"The pressure is going to build - it's tough to say it's justanother ballgame when you have so much more media here," YankeeManager Joe Torre said. "It's just one thing you have to get throughand get it over with, so we can move on and try to concentrate onwinning a division." That pressure doesn't seem to bother Clemens,who had between 40 and 50 relatives and friends at Sunday's game andexpects another big entourage in Wrigley. Asked if the pursuit of 300victories is beginning to wear on him, the six-time Cy Young Awardwinner said not at all.

"I don't get a chance to see my family together on the road much,so this is good," said Clemens, who gave up six runs and seven hitsin six innings.

"They're seeing some different parks, having a good time. I'm notworried about (the pressure). That has nothing to do with how Iapproach it or how excited I get about it."

The same couldn't be said about his teammates. Left fielder JuanRivera, shortstop Derek Jeter and second baseman Alfonso Soriano eachmade errors during an ugly fifth inning, when Detroit trimmed a 7-1lead to 7-6, and Soriano made another error in the third.

After Todd Zeile's home run gave the Yankees an 8-6 lead in thesixth, Yankee left-hander Sterling Hitchcock gave up singles to RamonSantiago and Dmitri Young in the seventh, and right-hander AntonioOsuna, a former Dodger, gave up an RBI single to Carlos Pena, walkeda batter and gave up a score-tying sacrifice fly to Shane Halter.

"Sure, there's disappointment, no question," Torre said. "That'sprobably what added to our problems in the fifth. You start trying todo it for Roger, and everyone gets a little anxious you start to jabat the ball instead of letting the game come to you. That's the onlyway I can describe it.

"Hitchcock comes in, and he never throws a ball above the waist.Today, he didn't throw a ball under the waist. Everyone's trying toohard to get it done. It was very, very surprising not to hold a 7-1lead."

Soriano and catcher Jorge Posada each hit a home run offfknuckleballer Steve Sparks in the top of the 17th, and starter DavidWells pitched 5 2/3 innings of three-hit, one-run relief to push theYankees past the Tigers, but the victory was bittersweet.

"We were hoping this was Roger's day," Wells said. "He had a 7-1lead, you figure the rest of the day is icing on the cake, and thensome weird things start happening. It's a sad day, but it's also agood day because we won."

Added Jeter: "It's a letdown. Obviously, you want to win for him,and I feel bad that we blew a 7-1 lead Maybe we were pressing alittle bit. He's going to get it eventually. You try to put that inthe back of your mind, but you can't help thinking about it."

Clemens entered with a 24-10 record against Detroit and areputation for toying with players of lesser caliber, but it was the.196-hitting Halter who hit a two-out, RBI single in the second, and.156-hitting Brandon Inge who singled to spark the fifth-inningrally, which included a two-run home run by No. 9 batter GeneKingsale, who had all of two major league home runs entering thegame.

After giving up five runs and five hits in the fifth, Clemensstruck out Halter with his 31st pitch of the inning, and with runnerson second and third, to end the rally.

"I felt like I threw 2 1/2 innings in the fifth," Clemens said.

AP-NY-06-01-03 2244EDT

ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS COMES TO LIGHT

Taking large-scale advantage of intermittent renewable energy such as that produced by wind and sunlight will require storage technology - referred to as massive electricity storage (MES) - for integration with the power grid. Candidates under consideration for MES include batteries, supercapacitors, and flywheels, as well as electrochemical systems.

Several research groups are working on electrochemical storage approaches that they call artificial photosynthesis. Two teams - one from the Univ. of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and the other from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MTT) - have separately come up with ways to mimic a plant's foodproducing process to convert sunlight into chemical energy that can be stored and used at a later time.

Photosynthesis consists of two main steps: water Splitting, and carbon dioxide fixation. The water-splitting step takes energy directly from the sun and uses it to decompose water nito oxygen, hydrogen, and electrons, while the CO2 fixation step uses the electrons produced in the first step to convert CO2 hito carbon monoxide.

The engineers from the Univ. of Illinois partnered with startup company Dioxide Materials and focused on the second step - converting CO2 into CO - with solar panels providing the electrons needed to drive the. reaction.

Normally, metal catalysts are used to form CO from CO2. This process has been stymied, however, because it has a high overpotential and thus requires a large amount of energy input To reduce the overpotential, the engineers used an ionic liquid as a cocatalyst. Ionic liquids consist entirely of positively and negatively charged ions, which under normal conditions would exist as salts rather than as liquids.

"To accomplish this electrochemical conversion without a catalyst present, you need on the order of 2.2 volts; we reduced that potential to 1.5 volts," says chemical and biological engineering professor and chair Paul Kenis. "By lowering the potential that you use to drive this process, you dramatically improve the energetic efficiency, that is, how much energy you have to put in to make the process work," Kenis explains.

In the Illinois process, the ionic liquid, in this case l-ethyl-3-methyIimidazolhim tetrafluoroborate (EMIMBF4), stabilizes the CO2 intermediate (CO2*~X which has been previously identified as the culprit of the high overpotential. The intermediate then reacts with H+ on a silver cathode to produce CO.

The CO can be stored for later use or mixed with hydrogen to produce synthesis gas, which can then be converted into highermolecular-weight hydrocarbons such as liquid fuels via Fischer Tropsch.

The next step will be increasing the throughput of the reaction. 'To have a usefiil process of CO2-to-CO conversion, both the energetic efficiency and the current density have to be high," Kenis says. "The current density relates to the number of molecules you convert per unit of time, which is referred to as turnover number. You can increase that through reactor design, which is typically not as big a challenge as catalysis."

The engineers hope to have a preeommercial prototype process ready in the next 18 months to two years, and will be working on the reactor design under a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE).

At MIT, chemistry professor Daniel Mocera and his team have developed a process that mimics the water-splitting step of photosynthesis. Instead of using electrons produced by a solar cell, this process creates its own electrons by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

"What Mocera tries to do is a much harder process," Kenis says. "He uses semiconductors to catch the energy from the sun and uses those electrons immediately for chemical conversion."

The MIT device, which the team refers to as an artificial leaf, consists of a silicon solar cell sandwiched between catalytic materials. When placed in water and exposed to sunlight, it creates streams of bubbles - hydrogen gas from one side and oxygen bubbles from the other. These streams can be collected and later fed into a fuel cell to produce electricity, or the hydrogen can be used as a fuel.

"Fuel-forming catalysts interfaced with light-harvesting semiconductors afford a pathway to direct solar-tofuels conversion that captures many of the basic functional elements of a leaf," Nocera says.

Devices that use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen have been realized before. However, practical problems have limited their widespread use, Nocera says. Previous methods with reasonable efficiency use prohibitively expensive light-absorbing materials (e.g., gallium arsenide) and fuel-forming catalysts (e.g. , platinum, ruthenium dioxide, and iridium oxide), as well as strongly acidic or basic media, which are expensive to manage.

The artificial leaf relies on earthabundant materials at near-neutral pH conditions. Amorphous silicon, an earth-abundant material prevalent in the electronics and photovoltaic industries, is used as the solar cell, with a cobalt compound as the oxygen-evolving catalyst and a nickel-molybdenum-zinc alloy to release hydrogen from water.

The MIT team has achieved efficiencies of 4.7% for a wired device and 2.5% for a wireless configuration. This compares to an average efficiency of 10% for today's solar cells.

Before the artificial leaf can be used in real-world applications, technology to collect, store, and use the hydrogen and oxygen gases must be developed. In addition, Nocera plans to drive up the efficiency and reduce the costs of the device.

"It's a step," Nocera says. "It's heading in the right direction."

[Sidebar]

The "artificial leaf" can harness sunlight to split water, into hydrogen and oxygen without any external connections. Image courtesy of Dominlck Reuter.

At least 11 dead after crowded Haitian ferry sinks off southern coast

An overloaded ferry capsized off the coast of southern Haiti, killing at least 11 people, U.N. and Haitian authorities said Sunday.

U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman David Wimhurst said most of the 100 people aboard the vessel were able to swim to safety. The boat sank after taking on water about 150 yards (150 meters) from shore late Saturday.

Crews recovered 11 bodies from the water according to Wimhurst and Mayor Evil Lavilette of Pestel, the ferry's departure point. At least five were children.

The boat was on a slow, two-day journey along the top of Haiti's southern peninsula, transporting passengers, food and charcoal to the capital, Port-au-Prince. It made several stops to take on passengers and cargo and was "overcrowded," according to Wimhurst.

Lavilette said a passenger called him in distress as the boat foundered, but emergency crews were not able to reach the ferry quickly because the closest rescue boat was out of gas.

U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police arrived later to help survivors on the western outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Wimhurst said.

Bad roads and a lack of infrastructure force many on the coastline in impoverished Haiti to depend on rickety ferries.

Some 500 to 700 people were killed in 1993 when an overcrowded ferry traveling a similar route sank. At least nine people died last year when a ferry hit a sandbar near the tip of the southern peninsula.

Numbers game

NHL fans are enjoying the playoffs-- all two months of them. The number of playoff days has certainly grown over the years, and so has the economics of hockey.

1902: three days

The Rat Portage [now Kenora] Thistles lose $800 when they travel to Ottawa to challenge the Silver Seven for the Stanley Cup. Last year, the Vancouver Canucks lost $10 million.

1920: 11 days

Fans pay 55 to $2.20 to watch the Ottawa Senators claim the cup. If The Maple Leafs had reached the finals last year, supporters would have paid $90 to $380 per seat.

1933: 20 days

New York Ranger players pocket a $1,500 bonus for winning the cup. In 1998, Detroit centre Sergei Fedorov receives a US$12 million bonus when his team reaches the Western Conference final.

1957: 22 days

Senator Hartland Molson buys the Montreal Canadiens, after the team wins its second consecutive cup, for a reported $1 million. Last year, the Habs sold for $275 million.

1964: 31 days

Toronto wins its third consecutive cup at a time when the NHL minimum salary is $7,000. Today, the minimum is US$165,000.

1975: 41 days

The Philadelphia Flyers win the cup and Kate Smith cuts her fee for singing to US$5,000 from US$25,000 because she loves the Flyers and the "good. clean sport." Flyer forward Dave (The Hammer) Schultz sets the all-time penalty record with 472 minutes.

1988: 51 days

After winning four consecutive cups, Edmonton Oilers' owner Peter Pocklington sells Wayne Gretzky to the LA Kings for US$15 million. In 1926, when the Western Hockey League folded and sold its best players to NHL dubs, owners received $258,000.

2001: 60 days

By missing the finals, the Toronto Maple Leafs lose $4.5 million per home game - in 1994, the gate would have been $950,000.

Calcium-dependent conformational rearrangements and protein stability in chicken annexin A5

ABSTRACT The conformational rearrangements that take place after calcium binding in chicken annexin A5 and a mutant lacking residues 3-10 were analyzed, in parallel with human annexin A5, by circular dichroism (CD), infrared spectroscopy (IR), and differential scanning calorimetry. Human and chicken annexins present a slightly different shape in the far-UV CD and IR spectra, but the main secondary-structure features are quite similar (70-80% alpha-helix). However, thermal stability of human annexin is significantly lower than its chicken counterpart (~8 deg C) and equivalent to the chicken N-terminally truncated form. The N-terminal extension contributes greatly to stabilize the overall annexin A5 structure. Infrared spectroscopy reveals the presence of two populations of alpha-helical structures, the canonical alpha-helices (~1650 cm^sup -1^) and another, at a lower wavenumber (~1634 cm^sup -1^), probably arising from helix-helix interactions or solvated a-helices. Saturation with calcium induces: alterations in the environment of the unique tryptophan residue of the recombinant proteins, as detected by near-UV CD spectroscopy; more compact tertiary structures that could account for the higher thermal stabilities (8 to 12 deg C), this effect being higher for human annexin; and an increase in canonical alpha-helix percentage by a rearrangement of nonperiodical structure or 3^sub 10^ helices together with a variation in helix-helix interactions, as shown by amide I curve-fitting and 2D-IR.

INTRODUCTION

Annexins are a widely distributed multigene family of structurally related calcium binding proteins (for review, see Raynal and Pollard, 1994; Swairjo and Seaton, 1994; Gerke and Moss, 2002). Their main characteristic is the ability to reversibly bind to acid phospholipid-rich membranes in the presence of calcium. Several in vitro functions, including anticoagulatory and antiinflammatory activities, involvement in signal transduction, in membrane fusion, endo and exocytosis, and in calcium channel regulation have been described for these proteins, but little is known about their in vivo role (Raynal and Pollard, 1994; Gerke and Moss, 2002). However, some specific diseases, known as annexinopathies, have been described associated with abnormal expression of annexins A2 and A5; their study may contribute to a better understanding of the physiological role of these proteins (Rand, 1999). Some of these functions are specific for particular annexins, even though there is a high structural homology among them. Moreover, tissue-specific activities and alternatively spliced forms have been described for some particular annexins (Bohm et al., 1994; Sable and Riches, 1999). All members of this family of proteins present a highly conserved core structure composed of four (eight in annexin A6) homologous domains of -70 amino acids showing a similar three-dimensional structure (Liemann and Huber, 1997). The main structural differences are located in their variable N-terminal region that differs greatly in length and amino acid sequence (Raynal and Pollard, 1994; Gerke and Moss, 2002). Annexin A5 crystal structure was the first one resolved (Huber et al., 1990); since then, several other annexins have been crystallized and all of them present an almost identical three-dimensional arrangement in the protein core. The molecules display a slightly bent disk shape where the four repeated domains, each of them comprising a four alpha-helix bundle (helices A, B, D, and E), are organized in a cylindrical way and are capped by a fifth alpha-helix (C).

The arrangement of the four domains allows the appearance of a central hydrophilic pore, which could be responsible for the voltage-dependent calcium channel activity reported for several annexins (A1, A2, A5-A7, B12) (Liemann et al., 1996; Hofmann et al., 1997; Matsuda et al., 1997). The interaction with membranes takes place on the convex side of the molecule where the main calcium-binding sites (one per domain) are located. The calcium ion binds to carbonyl oxygens in the loop connecting the A and B helices, and to a bidentate carboxyl group from a glutamic or aspartic acid residue located around 40 residues downstream in the loop connecting helices D and E. The Nterminal region is located in the opposite concave region of the annexin molecule binding together domains I and IV (Huber et al., 1990), at least in annexins with a short N-terminal domain, as annexin A5.

Taking into account that the main structural differences among annexins appear in the N-terminal extension, the search for specific functions of each annexin has been focused in this region. Annexin AS presents the shortest N-terminal tail among all annexins described so far, only about 15 residues. In fact, it has been described that the truncation of 14 residues of human annexin AS (hA5) induces the loss of the calcium channel activity, suggesting the involvement of this region in the regulation of this channel (Berendes et al., 1993). On this idea, we have obtained and characterized a mutant chicken annexin AS (dnt-cA5) lacking amino acid residues 3-10, being the secondary structure of this mutant almost identical to that of the wild-type protein (Turnay et al., 1995; Arboledas et al., 1997).

Calcium is essential for one of the main properties of annexins, their ability to bind to specific cellular membranes. Calcium requirements for half-maximal binding to phospholipid bilayers is highly variable among this family of proteins, ranging from submicromolar in annexin A2 to 10-100 (mu)M in annexin A5 (Raynal and Pollard, 1994; Gerke and Moss, 2002). These calcium concentrations may be reached intracellularly under certain physiological conditions; however, calcium binding in the absence of phospholipids requires much higher concentrations of this cation (Raynal and Pollard, 1994; Sopkova et al., 1994). The crystal structure of domain III of annexin A5 reveals significant conformational changes upon calcium binding in the absence of phospholipids. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the effect of calcium binding, in the absence of phospholipids, in the stability and structure of annexin A5 and to get further insights into the role of the N-terminus in the maintenance of the overall structure of this protein. We have studied different structural and thermodynamic parameters of chicken annexin A5 (cA5) and dnt-cA5, comparing them with those of hA5.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Protein preparation

Recombinant cA5 and its mutant dnt-cA5 have been produced and purified as previously reported (Turnay et al., 1995; Arboledas et al., 1997). hA5 cDNA was kindly provided by Dr. Pilar FernAndez (University of Oviedo, Spain) and was subcloned as described for the chicken cDNA. Briefly, cDNAs were cloned into the pTrc99A prokaryotic expression vector (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Buckinghamshire, UK) and introduced into JA221 Escherichia coli strain cells. Expression was induced by addition of 1 mM isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) for 16 h after the initial cultures reached 0.5 optical density at 550 nm. Recombinant proteins were purified from bacterial homogenates in the presence of 2.5 mM EGTA and using their ability to interact reversibly with phosphatidylserine-enriched liposomes (prepared from bovine brain extract, Folch fraction III, from Sigma, Alcobendas, Spain) in the presence of 2 mM calcium. A final DEAF-cellulose chromatography in 50 mM Tris, pH 7.4, containing I mM EGTA, was performed to further purify the protein preparations and to eliminate lipids. Pure annexin fractions were pooled and dialyzed against 20 mM Hepes, pH 7.4, containing 0.1 M NaCl and 1 mM EGTA, filtered through 0.22 (mu)m membranes, and stored at 4 deg C until used. Before use, protein samples were dialyzed to equilibrium against buffer with or without calcium.

Circular dichroism measurements

Circular dichroism (CD) spectra were recorded in a Jasco J-715 spectropolarimeter at 25 deg C (Neslab RTE- 111 thermostat). The far-UV CD spectra were monitored between 200 and 250 nm and near-UV CD spectra between 250 and 310 nm using 0.01 or 0.05 cm and 0.5 cm optical pathlength cuvettes for far- and near-UV, respectively. Melting curves were determined monitoring ellipticity changes at 222 nm between 25 and 75 deg C and increasing temperature at 60 deg C/h. Monitoring of ellipticity changes upon cooling from 75 to 25 deg C was also performed at 60 deg C/h. Spectra in the absence of calcium were recorded in 20 mM Hepes, pH 7.4, containing 0.1 M NaCl and 1 mM EGTA; titration of calcium influence in the near-UV was performed by sequential addition of a 0.5 M CaCl2 stock solution (in 20 mM Hepes, pH 7.4, containing 0.1 M NaCI) and correcting the spectra for dilution. Checks were made to ensure that equilibrium was reached after each addition of calcium to the protein preparation. The influence of calcium concentration on the melting temperature was analyzed by preparing different protein samples from the same stock equilibrated at increasing calcium chloride concentrations. Samples with equivalent ionic strength obtained by addition of NaCl were used as controls. All spectra were obtained averaged over five scans (eight at low protein concentration) and were corrected by subtracting buffer contribution from parallel spectra in the absence of protein. The calcium-dependent variation in ellipticity at 292 nm, and in the melting curves recorded at 222 nm, was analyzed using a hyperbolic or logistic nonlinear regression fitting using SigmaPlot software (SPSS, Chicago, IL). Prediction of secondary structure from the far-UV CD spectra was performed using the convex constraint algorithm described by Perczel et al. (1992).

Infrared spectroscopy

Infrared spectroscopy (IR) spectroscopy measurements were performed on a Nicolet Magna II 550 spectrometer (Nicolet Instrument Corp., Madison, WI) equipped with a MCT detector, using a demountable liquid cell (Harrick Scientific, Ossining, NY) with CaF2 windows and 50 (mu)m spacers. A tungsten-copper thermocouple was placed directly onto the window and the cell placed in a thermostatted cell mount. Proteins were concentrated by ultrafiltration using Amicon Centriplus YM-10 membranes (10 kDa cutoff; Millipore, Bedford, MA) up to 20 mg/ml in 20 mM Hepes, pH 7.4, 0.1 M NaCI. Equilibration in D2O buffer was achieved by protein lyophilization in the presence of buffer and reconstitution in D2O with 99.8% isotopic enrichment (Merck, Darmstadt, Germany). Stock calcium solutions and buffer were also lyophilized and reconstituted in D2O.

Thermal analyses were performed by beating continuously from 25 to 85 deg C at a rate of 60 deg C/h. Spectra were taken using a Rapid Scan software under OMNIC (Nicolet). For each degree of temperature interval, 305 interferograms were averaged, Fourier-transformed, and ratioed against a background, obtaining the spectra with a nominal resolution better than 2 cm^sup -1^. Data treatment, band decomposition, and thermal analysis of the original amide I bands were performed as previously described (Arrondo et al., 1993; Arrondo and Goni, 1999). After integrating each component, the corresponding percentages were obtained assuming that the molar absorption coefficients for the different protein structures were the same.

To obtain the 2D-IR maps, heating was used as the perturbation to induce time-dependent spectral fluctuations and to detect dynamical spectral variations on the secondary structure of annexin. Two-dimensional synchronous spectra have been obtained as described elsewhere (Contreras et al., 2001; Paquet et al., 2001).

Differential scanning calorimetry

We are grateful to Dr. M. P. Fernandez (University of Oviedo, Spain), for kindly providing a cDNA clone for human annexin A5, and to Dr J. Villalain (University Miguel Hernandez, Spain) and Dr. M. Pezolet (University Laval, Canada), for providing us the 2D algorithm.

This work was supported by Grants PM98-0083 from the DGES (Spain), 603/98 from the University of Basque Country, and PI 1998-33 from the Basque Government.

[Reference]

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[Author Affiliation]

Javier Turnay,* Nieves Olmo,* Maria Gasset,^ Ibon Iloro,^^ Jose Luis R. Arrondo,^^ and M. Antonia Lizarbe*

*Departamento de Bioquimica y Biologia Molecular, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain; ^Instituto Rocasolano de Quimica-Fisica, CSIC, 28006 Madrid, Spain; and ^^Unidad de Biofisica (Centro Mixto CSIC-UPV) y Departamento de Bioquimica, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Apdo. 644, 48080 Bilbao, Spain

[Author Affiliation]

Submitted April 11, 2002, and accepted for publication May 29, 2002. Address reprint requests to Prof. M. A. Lizarbe, Departamento de Bioquimica y Biologia Molecular I, Facultad de Ciencias Quimicas, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34-91-3944148; Fax: +34-91-3944159; E-mail: lizarbe@bbm.l.ucm.es.

Time to stand up and be counted ; Letters

I WAS brought up in the glorious countryside south of the PreseliHills, where as children we wandered freely over hill and valley.

I never dreamt that one day our beautiful Welsh landscapes wouldbe turned into massed industrial sites bristling with giganticturbines that, like prison bars, sentenced us all to a life ofvisual misery.

Freedom is a precious thing, as some of your correspondents haveimplied, and when it is taken away by governments more interested inmaking vast tax profits in the name of fighting dubious climatechange claims, it is time to stand up and challenge their duplicityand total lack of care for the poor and elderly where they have topay energy bills inflated by their dubious claims; their lack ofinterest in the tourist economy of rural Wales, and their lack ofresponsibility for the well-being of so many country-dwellers.

Unless we all stand up for these vital needs we will becometotally impoverished second-class citizens.

Other countries are beginning to react against this tide of wind-energy hysteria, including Denmark, a country often quoted as "beingat the forefront of wind energy".

We in Wales have much more to lose than Denmark.

David Bellamy Maesmawr, Aberedw, Powys

Entertainment listings for June 7-13: Quick takes

Short films to be shown at S.C. theater

New short films made in West Virginia will be screened at SouthCharleston's LaBelle Theater at 7 p.m. Saturday.

Presented by the South Charleston Museum, the 90-minutepresentation will include introductions and talks from the filmmakersbefore the films are shown.

Dennis Strom, vice president of the West Virginia FilmmakersGuild, will introduce his new short documentary, "Magic in theValley," a 12.5-minute, behind-the-scenes look at the Children'sTheater of Charleston and its production of "Hansel and Gretel."

Other films to be shown include: "Encountering Columbus,""Blenko," "Hillbilly Hotdogs," "ATVs," "After Genocide," "David andGoliath" and "The Seger Report."

Admission is $4. Call 744-9711.

Theater opening its summer season

"Love Letters," a play tracing the lifelong correspondence betweentwo friends, will open the summer season at the Historic FayetteTheater in Fayetteville.

Show times are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. All seats are $5. Theplay features Erin Thompson and Josh Whisman, two veteran performers.

A special dinner Friday with all proceeds going toward Relay forLife will be held at 6 p.m. at the Summit of Hidden Valley, anassisted living and resident care facility in Oak Hill.

Cost of the dinner and theater presentation is $15 with $12 of theprice donated to Relay for Life. Reservations for the dinner may bemade by calling 574-4655.

Rhododendron Festival set for Sunday

The Rhododendron Festival brings plenty of arts and crafts to theCapitol Complex on Sunday, where exhibitors from across the statewill show and sell their creations from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Included are country crafters and artists displaying theirpaintings, photographs, quilts and hand-crafted jewelry.

Food vendors will be selling items ranging from funnel cakes tohot dogs.

Gospel concert on tap in Nitro

The third generation of the gospel group Chuck Wagon Gang will befeatured at a fundraising gospel concert at 7 p.m. Friday at theKathy Mattea Auditorium at the Nitro Community Center.

The Chuck Wagon Gang has 71 years of tradition behind it. Thequartet sings gospel songs the old-time way and still includes in itsprograms many of the early songs recorded in 1936 on old 78 records.

The songs, "The Son Hath Made Me Free," "A Beautiful Life" and"I'll Fly Away," are a part of the group's re-creation of a 1940sChuck Wagon Gang radio program.

Also performing at the concert will be the original Praisemen andHeritage.

The concert is sponsored by Capitol Resource Agency. Tickets forthe concert are $12-$15 with group rates available. Call 720-5413,ext. 106, for more information.

Ohio State sells sports media rights for $110M

Ohio State University says it has sold the media rights for its sports programs in a 10-year deal guaranteeing the school $110 million.

The university said Monday that its partnership with IMG College and RadiOhio gives the companies the rights to manage and market publishing related to Ohio State sports, as well as radio game play-by-play and coaches' shows. The contract also covers television not included in Big Ten Conference and NCAA contracts.

In a statement, athletic director Gene Smith says the arrangement will help maintain the financial stability of Ohio State's 36 sports.

The deal with IMG College and RadiOhio also allows them to seek corporate sponsorships, coaches' endorsements and sign advertising.

Nobody's in the library ; As visitors decline, both traditional libraries and start-ups put catalogues online and begin delivering books at home, says Saranya Kapur.

Once upon a time, before the rise of the Internet and theemergence of hundreds of television channels, the library was wherepeople went for both information and entertainment. It was here theylearnt about global events, or were transported to distant lands.But then the library became a victim of rapidly changing lifestyles,and was on the verge of being wiped out. That is until itrediscovered itself in a new avatar: the online library.

Putting library catalogues online is now a growing trend, withseveral start-ups offering the service, and some traditionallibraries following suit. In February 2010, the British CouncilLibrary, or BCL, at Mumbai's Nariman Point, arguably the best-knownlibrary in the city, opted to close down and focus entirely on itsonline service. With online libraries sprouting all over India, aretraditional libraries becoming obsolete?

Yes, says Hiten Turakhia, one of the founders of the Mumbai-based librarywala. com, the country's first online library service."Due to busy schedules, fewer people are willing to spend theirprecious free time travelling to a library," he says. "This is whereonline libraries come in, where the books are delivered at yourdoorstep."

Librarywala.com started its services in 2007 and soon expanded toBangalore, Pune and Mysore. It stores 25,000 unique titles inEnglish and six regional languages, and has 11,000 active members.After paying a registration fee, members can choose from 19 readingplans, depending on what suits them, and pay a refundable deposit onthe books they borrow.

"Reading has become an expensive habit and we aim to make itaffordable and convenient," says Turakhia. "With free home deliveryand cheap plans, online libraries have the potential to make readingaccessible to everyone." Librarywala.com also plans to start amobile service through which customers can order books by sendingSMSes. "With the rollout of the SMS service, we can reach out tothose people who are not very Net savvy," he adds. A similar modelis followed by doorstepbooks. com, a Kolkata-based startup.

But this one goes one step further - by delivering books to Tier-II cities in West Bengal using courier services. The demand in suchsmall cities, still, is not high, says Vikash Khandelwal, founder ofdoorstepbooks.com. "In small towns life is not as fast-paced as itis in the metros. The options for entertainment are also limited.People still enjoy going to the library and picking up books."

Mobility is also not a problem, compared to the metros, wherepeople may have to put up with heavy traffic or use crowded publictransport to make a trip to the library. Most of his customers arefamilies subscribing to the library for the children, or peopleabove 40.

Khandelwal does not believe online libraries can ever completelyreplace physical libraries even in large cities. "The clienteleonline libraries cater to is different. People have very differentreading habits. Many young working professionals either do not havethe time to read or have moved on to e-books. Similarly, people whotruly enjoy visiting a brick-and-mortar library will continue to doso whether an online option exists or not," he says.

Going Online

librarywala.com

Founded in: 2007

Operating in: Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Mysore

bookmeabook.com

Founded in: 2007

Operating in: Delhi

doorstepbooks.com

Founded in: 2009

Operating in: 29 towns and cities, including metros

iloveread.in

Founded in: 2009

Operating in: ChennaiBoth Turakhia and Khandelwal find that thedemand for online libraries is highest among schoolgoing children.Indeed, Chennaibased iloveread.in even has a special plan to targetsecondary schools in the city, apart from its retail plans forindividuals. It supplements books in the school library and has full-time storytellers on board to run weekly programmes in schoolscomprising activities like storytelling, book readings, alternativestory endings and writing letters to the author, among others. SaysSahil Gore, one of the founders of iloveread.in: "Children pick upreading instantly, if it is introduced to them as fun, and ouractivities are designed to do exactly that."

Mumbai's BCL leads the pack of traditional libraries that havedeveloped a Net presence as well. Abhishek Chandan, Head of'mylibrary', BCL's online initiative, says the reason for goingonline was the topographical constraints Mumbai's residents have todeal with. "The BCL was located in the extreme south, while the citywas growing linearly northward," he says. "The business districttoo, which earlier was concentrated in the south, has now movednorth." This was reflected in BCL's customer base, which has been indecline over the last two decades, from 28,000 in the early 1990s to3,600 in 2009.

After carrying out extensive surveys, BCL launched mylibrary in2010 with the help of Tata Consultancy Services as a softwarepartner. After a year of operation, the online service - availableon www. mylibrary.britishcouncil.org - now has around 3,500 members.Depending on the plan a customer chooses, mylibrary charges aslittle as Rs 35 for a book. It has around 18,000 unique titles,including rare books and e-books.

Even small, mom-and-pop libraries seem to have realised thatextending their presence online is essential. Ram Gopal Sharma andSons, a family-run library in Delhi's Connaught Place, has beenaround since the 1930s. In 2007, however, it decided to open anonline library, bookmeabook.com. Nidhi Verma, who runs the onlineoperation, says: "The library in CP used to be extremely populartill a few decades ago. But as the area's profile changed, ourcustomers began to move to satellite cities like Gurgaon andGhaziabad. It was no longer feasible for them to travel the distanceto the library." Bookmeabook. com currently has between 600 and 800members, most of whom are school children and retired people.

With almost everybody, including companies, today having blogs,facebook pages and twitter accounts, online libraries too depend onsocial media to reach out to their customers and generate buzz.While bookmeabook.com relies on its facebook and twitter pages forannouncements, librarywala.com and mylibrary have an active onlinecommunity where people discuss and review books, thus creating acommunity atmosphere which could otherwise be had only in a physicalspace. Gore of iloveread.in, however, has a different take. "Socialmedia doesn't work as well for reading compared to otherbusinesses," he says. Some like iloveread.in provide links to Amazonand Google Books reviews of its books, and creates community spiritthrough events like its annual 'Mad Librarian's Tea Party', withmusical performances and storytelling sessions, where customers getto know one another and the team.

So, while online libraries may not replace physical librariesaltogether, they are definitely here to stay.

Feel safe PATRIOT and Homeland Security laws

My husband and I vacationed Christmas week among mostly Mexican tourists in Mexico's Pacific coast resort city of Mazatlan. Usually there are more gringos. Perhaps, the little shrubs (WVON's Cliff Kelley's sobriquet for Bush) world destabilization plan kept the gringos on this side of the border.

I yielded to the lure of sun and warmth. Sensitive to terrorist threats from whomever, we flew Mexicana Airlines (and from the length of the check-in line, so did much of Little Village and Pilsen). I avoid domestic airlines for international flights. I have no confidence that the constitutionally repugnant Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT or Homeland Security Acts protect us from terrorist. September 11, 2001, underscored a significant world view of this nation.

Nine-one-one was a mother of a terrorist act, but not the mother (that title is still held by the Atlantic Slave Trade and its residual effects). The failure of the FBI and CIA to connect the dots allowed 9-1-1 to occur. Neither PATRIOT nor Homeland could have prevented 9-1-1 or will stop the next assault.

PATRIOT expanded federal secret arrests, deportations and wiretapping. Homeland created a Cabinet department of the same name, confederated 22 agencies (excluding the CIA and FBI) to prevent another 9-1-1 and authorized the development of a computer network to collate patterns of terrorist activities from searching records of your credit card and prescription purchases and books you borrow from public libraries. It also federalized airport security.

The world scratches its head and watches as this nation's leaders rush hell-bent to repeat past mistakes. Was it so long ago when then President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps to temper the world view of this nation as ugly Americans? If the earth is still revolving when Bush & Ashcroft leave their bully pulpits, we will need much more than a peace corps.

For this nation's leaders have again reached into the past and embraced the bully's big stick unconcerned that no one likes a bully. Bullies are cowards. Their victims are always the weak, helpless. Yet, bullies generally meet their match in the form of those who have nothing to lose. Then things get interesting. Stuff hits the fan. That is what 9-1-1 was about, an in-your-face confrontation with a bully by those with nothing to lose and paradise to gain.

Those on the sidelines watch and hope to avoid being caught in the snarl. Yet life is not like that. The United States sneezed and Mexico caught a cold-- which is why Mazatlan had more Mexican tourists than gringos. Business was down in restaurants, hotels, on tours and for street vendors. Echoing complaints of American retailers, Mazatlan merchants bemoaned their worst ever Christmas season.

So much for the PATRIOT and Homeland Security Acts. Are you feeling secure yet?

Cine a contracorriente

Cine a contracorriente. [Experimental works by various filmmakers, 1933-2008]. Dur.: 166 min.

In Latin America, as elsewhere, experimental film keeps a low profile, at times due to its politics, at others its avant-garde impulse that locates it in what Pierre Bourdieu called a "sub-field of restricted production," those cultural spaces frequented by a relatively limited number of individuals of elevated "cultural capital" who reject the market in favor of artistic freedom. But in Latin America experimental film is a relatively expansive concept, encompassing a surrealist-inflected historical avant-garde, 1960s formal invention in the interest of political militancy, a Super-8 underground of the 1970s, and the contemporary proliferation enabled by video technologies. All of these moments are sampled in a DVD, recently released by Barcelona-based Cameo Media, containing nineteen film and video works made between 1933 and 2008. The release grew out of recent work by the Centre de Cultura Contempor�nia de Barcelona to restore and screen experimental works and provide space for new creativity.

Mention of the medium must be made, since many of the works' makers show great concern for the particular qualities of light as it passes through celluloid onto a screen. For that majority of viewers who will never have the chance to see them projected from film, these exceptionally well-transferred digital simulacra are the best option.

The first two selections on the disk are surrealism-inspired trance-films made by artists known for their work in other media. The Argentine photographer Horacio Coppola made the 138-second Traum (Sue�o) while studying at Bauhaus in the early 1930s. Its dream-logic narrative is presented in a fragmented, quasi-cubist (with a proliferation of unexpected camera angles) variation on classic analytical editing. The somewhat-formulaic Freudianism of the next film - Esta pared no es medianera, made by the Peruvian modernist painter Femando de Szyszlo in 1952 - locates it in the historical avant-garde. Once thought lost, it had to be sourced here from an unfortunate Betamax tape copy.

Ferruccio Musitelli's La ciudad en la playa (1961) throws out the script, and the result is a wonderfully playful observation of the heterogeneity of a day in the life of Montevideo's Playa Potitos, starting with morning walkers, sweepers, then tourists. It abounds in spontaneous beauty and an absurdist Tatiesque humor that results from watching ordinary individuals doing ordinary things.

Jorge Sanjin�s' Revoluci�n (1963) is a call to arms that presages his later experimentations with film form and indigenous audiences. The narrative-documentary hybrid opens with visual testimony of the poverty endured by the indigenous community in La Paz, before the wheels of History begin to turn and revolution breaks out. Santiago Alvarez' 1965 Now!, a found-footage denunciation of U.S. institutional racism, is a montage of photos and film of repressive state violence inflicted on the African-American population, backed by Lena Home's rendition of the title song. This is a foremost example of montage manipulation of sound and image to generate affect and articulate a powerful politics.

With Fome (Carlos Vergare, 1972), a clever conceptual conceit on Super-8 around the theme of hunger and plant growth in the absence of sunlight, the collection moves to the 1970s. Agarrando pueblo (1978) is a self-reflexive parody, by the Columbians Luis Ospina and Carlos May�lo, that critiques the emptying of the Rouchian interactive documentary of its ethical dimension in the production of "porno-miseria" documentaries that sensationalize third-world poverty as a spectacle for first-world consumption. The premise is the filming o� a v�rit� documentary on the streets of Cali for German television, to an extremely effective technique, two gazes are constructed: one, in color, is that of the documentary; the other, in black and white, a "making-of in which the cynical director and cameraman are seen at work, provoking the poor (with cash) to perform self-abasing acts. The two gazes are edited together in continuity, periodically liberating the viewer from the address of the documentary through the demystifying behind-the-scenes gaze.

Two films by solitary Super-8 visionaries of the Argentine underground are included. Ama zona (1979-1983), by Narcisa Hirsch, is an extremely open text that activates the Amazon myth without foreclosing its own meaning. Changes in focus and very tenuous visual rhymes result in an intriguing ten minutes of expansive poetic suggestiveness. Claudio Caldini's four-minute Ofrenda (1978) is an ocular massage consisting of a rush of single-photogram images of daisies, gradually fading light and a hypnotic harp soundtrack by Alice Coltrane.

Chapucer�as (1987, Enrique Colina), uses slapstick montage to formulate an indirect, but sharp critique of the contradictions of Revolutionary Cuban society. Ilha das flores (1989, Jorge Furtado) is an ironic but devastating account of a tomato's journey from cultivation through rejection, landfill, and pigswill, before ending up in the stomachs of the dispossessed. Coraz�n sangrante, Ximena Cuevas' 1993 music video, is an irreverent take on the topos of the willingly suffering Mexican female. Cuevas' heavy-handed early-digital manipulations - superimpositions, digi-morphing visual matches, etc.- result in an aesthetic that Honor� de Balzac might have called kitsch-o-rama. Juquilita, less irreverent with Mexican cultural iconry - that of its titular virgin - is a brief, very well-crafted stop-motion animation made by Elena Pardo in 2004. Carnal (Miguel Alvear, 2001) recodes the genre of the slaughterhouse documentary with high-art poeticity through its somber music track and black and white 16 mm imagery.

Of the remaining films two stand out. In the five-minute Opus (2005), Jos� �ngel Toirac appropriates a speech by Fidel Castro, but subtracts everything except the frequent mentions of numbers. This both neutralizes Castro's discourse and brings out the very personal grain of his voice against a stark black screen on which the corresponding numerals appear in white text, producing a rigorously powerful trigger of mental flight.

Ojo de pez (Gabriel Vargas, 2008) employs the crystal-clear images of high-definition video to great effect. The light narrative burden of its tenuous rural plot is easily carried by off-screen sound, freeing the imagery to explore in close-up a fascination with luminous detail that engages virtually with the entire corporeal sensorium, from the smell of fresh milk to the unnerving prick of a bees' feet on the surface of a living eye.

[Author Affiliation]

Matt Losada, San Diego State University

A Ray of Hope For Abused Pair - And for DCFS

Let's start with some good news, which seems too often in shortsupply these days.

Clifford Triplett, that heartbreakingly abused 5-year-old kidwhose case was so unforgivably mishandled by DCFS, is gaining weight,feeling better and may be getting out of the hospital on Friday, I'mtold.

The idea is for him to spend Christmas with his also-abusedbrother, Willie, and their paternal grandparents in Mississippi, whoseem to be the only people able and eager to give the boys the kindof love all kids have coming.

This temporary holiday arrangement is not official yet, but letus hope the social welfare system that has so far so woefully failedthese two kids doesn't go haywire again.

I asked DCFS Inspector General Denise Kane about thesegrandparents and what might be best for the kids in the coming legaldecision on their custody.

"I would hope the grandmother who wants to adopt both boys" isawarded custody, Kane said. She is a "beatific vision" to Clifford."He keeps her picture with him."

The grandmother, Rebecca Triplett, 48, and her husband alreadyhave Willie, 7, living with them as a consequence of earlier abuse byEddie Lee Robinson, 34, the ex-con boyfriend of their mother, ArethaMcKinney, 25.

And when the grandmother heard about Clifford - beaten, scarred,malnourished, weighing only 18 pounds, his mother and Robinson jailedat last on felony cruelty charges - she immediately drove up toChicago and went to see him at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's MedicalCenter, where he had arrived close to death on Thanksgiving Day.

"He beamed when she came into the room," Kane said. "In everyfamily there's a strength, and in this family it's Rebecca."

The grandmother works in a fish factory, her husband does farmwork, they live in their own two-bedroom home in a "nice middle-classneighborhood," Kane said.

Willie's uncle, a teacher, picks him up every day after school;the boy's getting A's and B's in school, and he's joined the BoyScouts since going to Mississippi after a DCFS investigation intoabuse of him by Robinson.

Kane frankly acknowledged last week that DCFS investigatorsfailed their duty by not taking Clifford into protective custodyafter visits to the McKinney-Robinson South Side apartment last April and again in June.

McKinney relatives living upstairs and aware of the abuse hadcalled DCFS but done nothing else about the case.

I asked Kane about McKinney receiving, along with public aid,monthly federal disability payments for Clifford, who had beendiagnosed in 1990 with a developmental problem.

"You're asking, were they exploiting welfare as well asClifford," Kane said, "Yes. She (McKinney) was a very exploitiveperson."

"All the grandmother (who took in Willie with no help from DCFSand now wants to take care of Clifford, too) gets is food stamps,"Kane noted. "She's solid, she's the hope of that family."

Kane, who has extensive on-the-street experience in socialwelfare work, was appointed to her newly created job by Gov. Edgaronly last spring following an earlier abuse case disaster at DCFS.

She said she believes - would not have taken the job if shedidn't - that DCFS Director Sterling Ryder genuinely "wants to dosomething" to straighten up an agency that too often performs like acollection of crash-dummies.

She spoke again, as she did last week when recommendingsuspension or firing of three DCFS employees on Clifford's case,about the need for "systemic change" in what has become a "culture"of bureaucratic malaise, of better training, higher-qualityrecruiting, sterner discipline.

Kane has a staff of one part-time attorney and fourinvestigators. They already are wrestling with a caseload of "about150" complaints about DCFS performance.

This is not going to be an easy turnaround. Kane knows that.But it has to work, and soon, for all the Cliffords and Willies outthere.

Post-9/11, a security blanket for a wounded nation

MARTINSBURG, W. Va. (AP) — Brian Tolstyka stood at the edge of a giant American flag spread across several tables in the Veterans Affairs hospital gym. Wearing a leather vest with a flag patch and a hat with a flag pin, Tolstyka was about to stitch his place in history.

Gently clasping a threaded needle between thumb and forefinger, Tolstyka, 43, slipped it into the fabric of a red stripe. The 300 people in the West Virginia gym clapped. The Gulf War veteran felt a lump in his throat.

The 30-foot flag flew from a half-destroyed building across from ground zero in New York in those dark days after Sept. 11 — its stripes torn and tattered by debris from the fallen World Trade Center. In 2008, it was mended by 58 tornado survivors in Kansas with remnants of flags from their communities. Dubbed the National 9/11 Flag, it's been traveling the country ever since — a journey for the country's most recognizable symbol that has brought most Americans along, uniting more people in a post-9/11 world than it has divided in other times.

Within hours of the attacks, flags seemed to be everywhere: car windows, T-shirts, front porches. Wal-Mart sold 5 million by the spring of 2002.

Tolstyka, who served in the Army and organizes memorial motorcycle rides for veterans, went out and bought a flag for his car antenna a few days after Sept. 11. "It was a symbol," he says, "of support."

It was also a show of defiance against the terrorists, a rallying cry of unity and a soothing security blanket for a wounded nation.

"Every time there's some kind of national emergency, we put up flags," says Carolyn Marvin, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "The flag represents the life of the country."

The Stars and Stripes hasn't always been as feel-good a symbol, depending on the decade and the politics. Defaced by Vietnam War protesters in the 1960s, invoked by politicians on both sides of debates about war and American values and burned by anti-American protesters overseas, it's been alternately reviled and revered.

Few Americans flew the flag outside of homes or businesses in the first few decades of its existence, says Marc Leepson, who wrote a book called "Flag: An American Biography."

But on April 12, 1861, when Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, "flags started appearing almost overnight," he says. Women wore them in hats, men put them in wagons."

Leepson discovered an advertisement in a copy of a New York newspaper that was published just after the Fort Sumter attack. It mentioned a paint shop that advertised red, white and blue paints, and touted: "These colors are warranted not to run."

After Sept. 11, 2001, the flag took on a larger-than-life symbolism and brought that unity to a grieving country. Bumper stickers with images of the flag and phrases like "these colors don't run" became commonplace in parts of the U.S.

A New Jersey photographer snapped a photo of three city firefighters raising a flag on the ruined trade center site in an image that instantly was compared to the 1945 photo of U.S. Marines raising the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima. Flags spearheaded a patriotic buying boom, appearing outside homes, on office buildings, mugs and pins.

Country Singer Toby Keith wrote "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" one week after Sept. 11. The song led with Americans saluting the flag and described wreaking vengeance upon the country's enemies:

"When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell/And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you/Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue."

In December of 2001, Congress designated Sept. 11 as "Patriot Day" to honor those lost during the attacks — and mandated that all flags should be flown at half-staff each year on that day.

Nearly a decade later, flags aren't hanging from every front porch anymore, but they fill many American blocks, and thousands follow the touring flags to touch something that connects them to Sept. 11.

For West Virginia's Tolstyka, the national flag in Martinsburg — a small city straddling three states in West Virginia's lush green panhandle — directly to ground zero in New York and the attack that tore it shreds.

"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity," he says, grinning through his long, salt-and-pepper goatee.

For Bob McKee of Van Buren, Ohio, the flag symbolizes how much the U.S. has grown and changed over the years, while remaining strong. The 60-year-old flies four U.S. flags outside of his home, a few miles from Findlay, Ohio — a northwest Ohio community that's been known as Flag City since the 1970s.

"People from both political parties, from the left to the right, the one thing they have in common is the love for their country and what represents that is the US flag," he said.

After Sept. 11, McKee draped the flag in black crepe.

The attacks did more than usher a renaissance for the U.S. flag; they have also spawned a cottage industry of entirely new flag designs, mostly sold to raise money for various 9/11 charities.

There's the "Flag of Heroes," which lists the names of all emergency workers who died on Sept. 11. The "Flag of Honor" lists the names of everyone who died in the attacks that day.

There are two flags dedicated to the 40 who died aboard Flight 93 in a Shanksville, Pa., field: It declares, "OUR NATION WILL ETERNALLY HONOR THE HEROES OF FLIGHT 93" at the top three white stripes.

A retired Catholic priest created the "Thunder Flag," comprised of a blue stripe on top, white in the middle, and red on the bottom. On the top blue stripe are four white stars, representing the four planes on 9/11. The other colors represent heaven, courage and American soil.

There's a "9/11 National Remembrance Flag" that is loosely modeled on the POW-MIA flag.

There's a traditional American flag with the New York City skyline, including the twin towers, superimposed on the field of stars.

There's the "9/11 Patriot Flag," created by a Sept. 11 survivor, which depicts the Pentagon, two trident steel columns from the World Trade Center and four stars, one for each hijacked jet that crashed on Sept. 11.

That flag shouldn't be confused with the other "Patriot Flag" — a 75-pound, traditional U.S. flag that's also touring the country to honor the victims. It will be in New England on July 4.

Marvin, the Penn professor, says it's common, especially after such a ground-shifting event like Sept. 11, for flags to take on the status of a "sacred icon."

Or a national quilt. In West Virginia — the 32nd state to host the national flag's tour — folks lowered their voices to describe their feelings about having contact with something that once was near New York's twin towers. Yet when pressed to explain, they fell back on simple phrases about America and pride.

Samuel Boynton, who served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and used a walker to approach the flag, says simply: "It means number one to me. There's no other flag better than the American flag."

A New York construction worker retrieved the flag and stored it at his home in a plastic bag for seven years — then brought it to Kansas when a nonprofit group, the New York Says Thank You Foundation, went to help people there recover from a tornado strike. State by state, Americans are stitching the banner back together, using pieces of fabric from American flags scheduled for retirement.

The flag is in Southport, N.C., this weekend; at the end of its tour, it will be displayed at the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum in New York.

Denny Deters, the president of the New York Says Thank You Foundation, his wife and their tiny Yorkie dog travel with the flag around the country, mostly in the couple's RV — although they occasionally fly. As he did in Martinsburg, Deters often emcee's each stop and introduces the people who lay the first stitches.

But the greying, faded flag that once flew across from ground zero might be most remembered for what it offers: a chance for ordinary Americans to weave a bit of their own history into the fabric.

Mending it, Deters said, "shows that the American people have the resiliency to come back."

In Martinsburg, Dawn Johns, 41, waited patiently in line. She had been there since the beginning, to mend a tiny piece of national history. She said that she could feel the patriotism, the emotion, as she looked at the flag.

"It represents everyone coming together and helping one another after a tragedy," she said.

Two hours later, it was Johns' turn to stitch, She had tears in her eyes as she took the needle in her hand.