KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian soldiers killed 14 suspected Islamist insurgents on Sunday during a dawn raid on a house in the main northern city of Kano, the military said.
Islamist sect Boko Haram wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria. It and other Islamist groups have become the main threat to stability on Africa's top oil-producing state and increasingly menace neighbors like Cameroon.
Boko Haram has killed hundreds in gun and bomb attacks, including 25 in Kano earlier in March, since it intensified an insurgency two years ago.
In Sunday's raid, one soldier was killed and another seriously injured while a suspected suicide bomber was arrested in a car packed with explosives, the army said.
"This operation was conducted following a tip-off from our intelligence. You can see that there are over 10 of the terrorists all dead," Iliyasu Abbah, an officer in the military task force dealing with Islamist rebels, told Reuters.
Task force spokesman Ikedichi Iweha confirmed 14 suspected terrorists had been killed. A witness, who asked not to be named, said he saw a woman and a child among the dead.
Security was stepped up in northern Nigerian cities this weekend to cope with an increased threat posed by Islamist groups during Christian holidays, when churches have been targeted by suicide bombers.
Western governments fear that ties with groups like al Qaeda's North African wing are drawing Nigerian Islamists towards a more explicitly anti-Western agenda.
Such concerns have risen since France launched an operation in January to flush jihadist rebels out of northern Mali.
Al Qaeda-affiliated Nigerian group Ansaru said earlier this month it had killed seven foreign hostages seized on February 7 in the northern state of Bauchi because of attempts to free them.
A French family was kidnapped from north Cameroon last month and is believed to be being held by Boko Haram in Nigeria.
(Reporting by Chukwuemeka Madu and Idris Jibrin; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
VIENNA (AP) ? Austrian police and firefighters have taken on the role of urban cowboys in a two-day round-up of a herd of cattle that broke out of a fenced-off pasture and decided to go into town.
A police statement says the 43 steers defied attempts by police and volunteer firefighters to recapture them after wandering off Thursday and heading toward the Upper Austrian town of Freistadt. After being chased away from the railway station, they endangered motorists by stampeding onto a two-lane highway before running into a town suburb.
Two firefighters who tried to stop them were injured and needed hospital treatment.
The statement says 18 of the animals remain on the loose Friday. The rest have been corralled or tranquilized.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - Search crews in rural Tennessee have found the body of a man who fell an estimated 2,500 feet to his death after the cockpit canopy of his airplane opened, officials said on Saturday.
"They found him in a tree line, not too far off the road," about a half-mile from a volunteer fire station, said Bob Gault, spokesman for the Bradley County Sheriff's Office.
Gault said he would have to wait until the National Transportation Safety Board completes an investigation before confirming reports that the man was not wearing his safety harness and that the plane had gone into a nosedive at the time of the accident late on Friday afternoon.
Emergency personnel from Bradley County as well as a Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter were called into the search for the missing man after his co-pilot was able to fly the plane back to Collegedale Municipal Airport after the accident, according to Gault.
Local reports said that man who died was an experienced pilot who was being trained to fly the plane, which he had recently purchased.
Gault said the single-engine aircraft left Collegedale Municipal Airport just outside Chattanooga between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Friday. The flight path took them over southern Bradley County, a rural area with many farms and few communities.
"There were two pilots on board," Gault said. "At some point during their flight, the canopy on the aircraft malfunctioned and, as a result, one of the pilots was ejected."
Search efforts from the air and on the ground were unsuccessful Friday night and resumed on Saturday morning. Gault said the fact that the body was in a tree line probably kept it from being spotted from the air.
The names of the pilots involved have not been released. A worker at the airport who asked not to be identified said both men were experienced pilots and "real nice guys."
ATLANTA (Reuters) - A grand jury indicted 35 former Atlanta public school educators, including an award-winning former superintendent, on Friday for allegedly conspiring to cheat on standardized test scores to obtain cash bonuses.
Former Superintendent Beverly Hall was named National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009, the same year prosecutors contend widespread cheating took place.
Hall received a $78,000 bonus that year for improving the school system's test scores, prosecutors said.
"The money she received, we are alleging, was ill gotten and it was theft," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said at a news conference.
Besides Hall, those indicted included administrators, principals and teachers. The 65-count indictment said "test answer sheets were altered, fabricated and falsely certified."
Hall was charged with racketeering, making false statements, theft by taking and false swearing. She and others could face up to 45 years in prison if convicted, Howard said.
A state investigation of test results in 2009 found cheating in 44 of the 56 Atlanta public schools examined. The cheating was prompted primarily by pressure to meet targets in a data-driven environment, according to a investigation conducted by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal's office.
The 2009 cheating was said to include teachers erasing incorrect answers on state standardized tests.
The 2011 state report concluded that there was a "major failure of leadership throughout Atlanta Public Schools with regard to the ethical administration" of the 2009 standardized exams known as the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests.
Amid the investigation, Hall stepped down after nearly 12 years as superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools. Her successor, Erroll Davis, said on Friday the school system now has extensive training and other safeguards to prevent cheating.
He said 95 percent of the school system's staff was not implicated in the scandal.
Justina Collins, the mother of an Atlanta public school student, told the news conference her daughter had trouble reading yet scored well on the standardized tests.
Collins said when she asked the superintendent about the discrepancy, Hall told her, "Your daughter is simply the kind of person who tests well."
Collins' daughter is now in the ninth grade but reads on a fifth-grade level, Howard told reporters, adding that the real victims of the cheating scandal were the children.
"Her example points out the plight of many children" in the scandal, said the prosecutor.
Richard Deane, Hall's attorney, could not be reached for comment.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell on Thursday, led by declines in gold shares that followed the bullion price lower and in financial stocks, as weak U.S. economic data and worries about spillover effects of the Cyprus crisis deepened investor gloom.
A rise in BlackBerry after the smartphone maker reported a surprise quarterly profit offset some of the losses.
Cypriots queued calmly at banks as they reopened on Thursday under tight controls imposed on transactions to prevent a run on deposits after the government was forced to accept a stringent EU rescue package to avert bankruptcy.
The banking crisis in Cyprus has weighed on investors for about a week, and some worry that it is an indication of shortcomings in the broader euro zone.
"Cyprus continues to be a problem. The question is, what's the fallout going to be?" said Fred Ketchen, director of equity trading at ScotiaMcLeod.
"Until there's clarification, the worries are the banking industry there will continue to struggle and have a negative effect on the market for a while," he added.
Investors also tracked data that showed a rise in U.S. jobless claims and a sluggish expansion of the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter of 2012.
"It's a mixed picture. We are in a period of stagnation" Ketchen said. "There's more negative emotion in the market than positive."
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> was down 32.06 points, or 0.25 percent, at 12,667.59. Six of the 10 main sectors and the index were higher.
Financials, the index's weightiest sector, lost 0.6 percent, with Royal Bank of Canada giving back 0.8 percent to C$60.23.
The materials sector, which includes mining stocks, was down 0.5 percent, with the price of gold declining. Goldcorp Inc fell 0.6 percent to C$34.06.
Shares of BlackBerry gained 2 percent to C$15.09 and helped the information technology sector rise 0.9 percent.
"There's some relief. The attitude of the market is, maybe this is a sign of a turnaround," Ketchen said.
HPV improves survival for African-Americans with throat cancerPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Krista Hopson khopson1@hfhs.org 313-874-7207 Henry Ford Health System
DETROIT Even though the human papillomavirus (HPV) is a risk factor for certain head and neck cancers, its presence could make all the difference in terms of survival, especially for African Americans with throat cancer, according to a newly published study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
The study shows that African Americans who are HPV-positive have better outcomes than African Americans without HPV.
African Americans who are HPV-negative also fared worse than Caucasians both with and without HPV present in oropharyngeal cancer, a cancer that affects part of the throat, the base of the tongue, the tonsils, the soft palate (back of the mouth), and the walls of the pharynx (throat).
The study is published online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
"This study adds to the mounting evidence of HPV as a racially-linked sexual behavior lifestyle risk factor impacting survival outcomes for both African American and Caucasian patients with oropharyngeal cancer," says lead author Maria J. Worsham, Ph.D., director of research in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford.
The American Cancer Society estimates about 36,000 people in the U.S. will get oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancers in 2013; an estimated 6,850 people will die of these cancers. These cancers are more than twice as common in men as in women. They are about equally common in blacks and in whites.
To compare survival outcomes in HPV-positive and HPV-negative African Americans with oropharyngeal cancer, Dr. Worsham and her team conducted a retrospective study of 118 patients.
Among the study group, 67 are HPV-negative and 51 are HPV-positive. Forty-two percent of those in the study are African American.
The study found that:
African Americans are less likely to be HPV positive
Those older than 50 are less likely to be HPV positive
Those with late-stage oropharyngeal cancer are more likely to be unmarried and more likely to be HPV positive
HPV negative patients had 2.7 times the risk of death as HPV positive patients
The HPV race groups differed with significantly poorer survival for HPV negative African Americans versus HPV positive African Americans, HPV positive Caucasians and HPV negative Caucasians
Overall, the study finds HPV has a substantial impact on overall survival in African Americans with oropharyngeal cancer
###
Along with Dr. Worsham, study co-authors from Henry Ford are Josena K. Stephen, M.D.; Meredith Mahan; Kang Mei Chen, M.D.; Vanessa Schweitzer M.D.; Shaleta Havard, AuD; and George Divine, Ph.D.
Study funding: NIH grant R01 DE 15990
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
HPV improves survival for African-Americans with throat cancerPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Krista Hopson khopson1@hfhs.org 313-874-7207 Henry Ford Health System
DETROIT Even though the human papillomavirus (HPV) is a risk factor for certain head and neck cancers, its presence could make all the difference in terms of survival, especially for African Americans with throat cancer, according to a newly published study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
The study shows that African Americans who are HPV-positive have better outcomes than African Americans without HPV.
African Americans who are HPV-negative also fared worse than Caucasians both with and without HPV present in oropharyngeal cancer, a cancer that affects part of the throat, the base of the tongue, the tonsils, the soft palate (back of the mouth), and the walls of the pharynx (throat).
The study is published online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
"This study adds to the mounting evidence of HPV as a racially-linked sexual behavior lifestyle risk factor impacting survival outcomes for both African American and Caucasian patients with oropharyngeal cancer," says lead author Maria J. Worsham, Ph.D., director of research in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford.
The American Cancer Society estimates about 36,000 people in the U.S. will get oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancers in 2013; an estimated 6,850 people will die of these cancers. These cancers are more than twice as common in men as in women. They are about equally common in blacks and in whites.
To compare survival outcomes in HPV-positive and HPV-negative African Americans with oropharyngeal cancer, Dr. Worsham and her team conducted a retrospective study of 118 patients.
Among the study group, 67 are HPV-negative and 51 are HPV-positive. Forty-two percent of those in the study are African American.
The study found that:
African Americans are less likely to be HPV positive
Those older than 50 are less likely to be HPV positive
Those with late-stage oropharyngeal cancer are more likely to be unmarried and more likely to be HPV positive
HPV negative patients had 2.7 times the risk of death as HPV positive patients
The HPV race groups differed with significantly poorer survival for HPV negative African Americans versus HPV positive African Americans, HPV positive Caucasians and HPV negative Caucasians
Overall, the study finds HPV has a substantial impact on overall survival in African Americans with oropharyngeal cancer
###
Along with Dr. Worsham, study co-authors from Henry Ford are Josena K. Stephen, M.D.; Meredith Mahan; Kang Mei Chen, M.D.; Vanessa Schweitzer M.D.; Shaleta Havard, AuD; and George Divine, Ph.D.
Study funding: NIH grant R01 DE 15990
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
Share ]