92% The Gatekeepers

All Critics (87) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (80) | Rotten (7)

The film and its talking head participants paint the picture in both broad strokes and fine detail.

Whatever one's political stripe regarding Israel, it's hard to dispute the impressions and perspective of the film's six eyewitnesses.

The level of candor here may not satisfy hard-liners of either stripe, but it can help viewers begin to formulate new questions about the philosophical, strategic and moral challenges of conflict, in particular "wars on terror."

Ultimately the movie feels evasive, and its flashy, digitally animated re-creations of military surveillance footage unpleasantly evoke the Call of Duty video games.

It offers startlingly honest insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from some of those who called the shots.

As a political testament, the result is revealing and important.

A riveting but depressing history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It's a depressing movie, yet there is encouragement to be found in the manifest decency and reasonableness of these six honest, articulate men ...

The former heads of Israel's military anti-terrorism agency Shin Bet break their silence in this unnerving, eye-opening documentary.

The film, though based on the exploits of Shin Bet, gives us reason to think about the drones that take out more than just terrorists.

Makes for truly bracing viewing.

A fascinating film offering a startling look inside one of the most tightlipped intelligence agencies on the planet, and providing powerful resonances with the US and UK's "war on terror".

A compelling overview of a modern security agency - bred in a moral grey area, organising state-sanctioned violence, but uncertain of the strength of its political safety net.

While memorable in sometimes unexpected ways (1980 head Avraham Shalom's long unwashed nails), there is always the nagging feeling that any revelations are being pushed or sold a little too hard.

Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary is riveting, haunting and depressing in equal measure, offering a sobering assessment of the Israel-Palestine conflict from a unique perspective.

[T]he Oscar-nominated documentary in which the six living former heads of Shin Bet, the ultrasecretive Israeli domestic security agency, talk about their antiterrorism work...

Although The Gatekeepers may not be quite theatrical nor dramatic enough for it to be highly recommended as a cinematic experience, this does feel like a film that really should be seen.

Many secrets are revealed and examined in director Dror Moreh's mind-blowingly fine film. If I have a quibble, it's that he never reveals the most tantalizing secret of all: how the hell he pulled it off.

[An] absorbing documentary, which charts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Six Day War to the presentday.

Insightful, revelatory and profound, Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary combines riveting interviews, archive footage and - yes - state-of-the-art photographic effects to offer a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine issue.

Both journalistic coup and unsettling confirmation of the idea that 'you can't make peace using military means.'

Much like Errol Morris' "The Fog of War," Dror Moreh's film is a sobering inside look inside history, at mistakes made and opportunities missed.

Moreh employs a direct interviewing style, reminiscent of Errol Morris' work, to get the men to talk about their days leading Shin Bet.

Moreh gets some startling confessions and insights from each man but also misses the opportunity to truly challenge his subjects on their regard for democracy, basic human rights and their own accountability.

Director Dror Moreh doesn't rest on his scoop

A powerful look inside the Israeli defense establishment

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_gatekeepers_2012/

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Israeli airlines stay grounded, strike to shut airport Tuesday

By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Flights at Israeli flag carrier El Al and two smaller airlines remained grounded for a second straight day on Monday due to a strike by workers protesting against a new open skies deal with Europe which they fear could cost them their jobs.

Nearly 50 El Al flights from Tel Aviv were cancelled on Monday, affecting some 15,000 passengers, although the airline's union did allow three flights to take off.

Israel's Manufacturers' Association, concerned over the impact the strike will have on foreign trade, urged the labor court to step in and order airline employees back to work. The court was expected to hear arguments later on Monday.

The Histadrut labor federation said it would shut Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel's main airport, to all incoming and outgoing flights on Tuesday at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) for four hours.

"There is no deadline for the strike to end," said Dafna Cohen-Nouriel, the Histadrut's spokeswoman.

Workers at El Al and smaller rivals Arkia and Israir started an open-ended strike at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Sunday in protest over the cabinet's decision on Sunday to ratify an open skies aviation deal with Europe.

Supporters of the agreement - which goes into effect next April - say its relaxation of restrictions and quotas on flights between Israel and European Union countries will increase competition and help Israel's tourism and economy.

To help airlines prepare for the rise in competition, the agreement will be gradually phased in over the next five years.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid said he had instructed his staff to come up with a solution that would help Israeli airlines adjust to the new reality of open skies.

"Open skies is a done deal," he said. "It's a good agreement for Israel's citizens, the economy and tourism ... This strike has been unnecessary from the start and it still is."

But Israeli carriers and their workers' unions have concerns, mainly over steep security costs Israeli airlines pay which their competitors overseas do not.

The government pays 70 percent of Israeli airlines' security costs and will raise it to 80 percent, but that was not deemed enough. El Al paid $33 million for security in 2012.

"We appealed and are appealing to the Israeli government to act immediately to put in order the various issues that will enable fair and equal competition and above all the government's full participation in security costs for Israeli airlines," said Elyezer Shkedy, El Al's chief executive.

Cohen-Nouriel said that if Israeli carriers had to pay their security costs, El Al, Arkia and Israir's airfares would remain higher than competitors and could lead to their demise.

El Al's shares rebounded 2.5 percent on Monday after sliding 8.5 percent on Sunday.

(Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-airlines-stay-grounded-strike-shut-airport-tuesday-152131616--finance.html

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Syrian activists fear heavy toll near Damascus

This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows members of the free Syrian Army hiding behind scrap metal during an attack against Syrian government forces, in the neighborhood of al-Amerieh in Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, April. 21, 2013. The Syrian opposition called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from the country immediately, as activists said regime troops supported by pro-government gunmen linked to the Lebanese Shiite militant group battled rebels Sunday for control of a string of villages near the Lebanon-Syria border. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)

This citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows members of the free Syrian Army hiding behind scrap metal during an attack against Syrian government forces, in the neighborhood of al-Amerieh in Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, April. 21, 2013. The Syrian opposition called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from the country immediately, as activists said regime troops supported by pro-government gunmen linked to the Lebanese Shiite militant group battled rebels Sunday for control of a string of villages near the Lebanon-Syria border. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bahsar Assad, center, shakes hands with one of the Iran's parliamentary committee on national interest and foreign policy, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 22, 2013. Assad said during the meeting that the Middle East is being subjected to plans that targets its stability and unity of its territories. (AP Photo/SANA)

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bahsar Assad, center right, speaks during a meeting with Alaeddin Boroujerdi, center left, head of Iran's parliamentary committee on national interest and foreign policy, in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 22, 2013. Assad said during the meeting that the Middle East is being subjected to plans that targets its stability and unity of its territories. (AP Photo/SANA)

BEIRUT (AP) ? Six days of fighting near Damascus has killed at least 100 people and possibly many more, activists said Monday, in what both sides say may be a dramatic spike in the Syria's civil war death toll.

The reports came as President Bashar Assad's forces pressed an offensive against rebels closing in on parts of the Syrian capital, and government troops moved to encircle the contested town of Qusair near the Lebanese border.

The exact number dead in the Jdaidet Artouz and Jdaidet al-Fadel districts could not be confirmed. The two adjacent neighborhoods are about 15 kilometers (10 miles) southwest of Damascus.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, put the death toll at 483. It said most of the victims were killed in Jdaidet Artouz.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll, mostly from shelling, could be as high as 250. Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the group has documented 101 names of those killed, including three children, 10 women and 88 men, but he thought the toll would be much higher. The dead included 24 rebels, he said.

Both activist groups, the Observatory and the LCC, rely on a network of activists on the ground in different parts of Syria.

"What is happening in the suburbs of Damascus are war crimes and genocide," said George Sabra, vice president of the main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition. He was appointed as caretaker president of the group Monday, replacing Mouaz al-Khatib, who resigned.

At a news conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Sabra put the number of those killed at "more than 500" and said more than 1,000 were wounded. He did not give a basis for those numbers.

State-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops "inflicted heavy losses" on the rebels in the suburbs.

A government official in Damascus told The Associated Press that rebels were behind the "massacre" in Jdaidet al-Fadel, saying they sought to blame government forces who entered the area after the killings.

"The army discovered the massacre after entering the area," the official said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Jdaidet al-Fadel is inhabited mostly by Syrians who fled the Golan Heights after the area was captured by Israel in 1967. Jdaidet Artouz has a large Christian and Druse population ? two minority communities that have generally stood by Assad or on the sidelines.

The killings appeared reminiscent of violence in the Damascus suburb of Daraya in August. At the time activists said days of shelling and a killing spree by government troops left 300 to 600 dead.

Mohammed Saeed, an activist based near Damascus, said rebels withdrew as soon as the government offensive began last week. After that, he said via Skype, troops and pro-government gunmen stormed the area and over several days killed about 250 people.

Saeed said the area has no electricity, water, or mobile phone service. "There is widespread destruction in Jdaidet al-Fadel, including its only bakery," he said.

Reports of death tolls in Syria's civil war often conflict, especially in areas that are difficult to access because of the fighting. The government also bars many foreign journalists from covering the conflict.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the reports of the massacre underline the urgent need to bring Syria's war to an end.

"I am appalled by the reports of the killing by Syrian Government forces of dozens of people, including women and children, in the town of Jdaidet Al-Fadel, a suburb of Damascus," Hague said in a statement. "This is yet another reminder of the callous brutality of the Assad regime and the terrible climate of impunity inside Syria."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday he shared with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry "a disposition to seek a political outcome as soon as possible and look for ways to transfer this situation into a channel of negotiations between the government and the opposition" in Syria. The two spoke Saturday.

Lavrov said he and Kerry would discuss what the U.S. and Russia could do to "induce those who are currently resisting the peace process to change their position" at the NATO-Russia summit in Brussels on Tuesday.

Lifting the European Union embargo on supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition would violate legal obligations not to arm non-state actors, said Lavrov, whose country is among Assad's strongest supporters.

Also Monday, two bombings targeted an army checkpoint and a military post in a third Damascus suburb, Mleiha, killing eight soldiers, according to the Observatory.

SANA said a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in Mleiha, injuring several people.

The army also pressed its offensive near the Lebanese border, where it has been pushing for two weeks to regain control with the help of a Hezbollah-backed militia known as the Popular Committees. The region is strategic because it links Damascus with the Mediterranean coastal enclave that is the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The fighting around Qusair also points to the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict, which pits a government dominated by the Alawite minority against a primarily Sunni Muslim rebellion, and underscores widely held fears that the civil war could drag in neighboring states.

In Lebanon, there are deep divisions over the Syrian conflict, with Lebanese Sunnis mostly backing the opposition while Shiites support Assad. Lebanese fighters have also traveled to Syria to join either Sunni or Shiite groups, and several have been killed in clashes.

At the news conference, Sabra accused Hezbollah of "occupying Syrian villages, killing civilians and terrorizing them." He called on the Lebanese government to put an end to what he said were Hezbollah incursions into Syrian territory, calling them a "declaration of war" against Syrians.

The man he replaced, al-Khatib, a respected Muslim preacher seen as a moderate unifying figure, tried to step down in March, citing frustration over what he called a lack of international support and constraints imposed on the body. The Coalition rejected his resignation then, and he agreed to stay on temporarily.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-04-22-Syria/id-25340480333e4e218a65d19269f5187d

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Flight of Boston Marathon bombing suspects ended in mayhem

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - As a massive manhunt geared up for the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing on Thursday evening, the brothers wanted in the attack decided to take their chances by venturing into the streets near their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Before the night was out, one of the young men was dead, crushed beneath his own hijacked getaway car, while the other cowered in a boat, bleeding heavily, as police closed in.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, broke their cover hours after authorities released photographs of the suspects. It is unclear why they decided to remain in the area so long after Monday's attack.

The evening began to unravel when the brothers encountered Sean Collier, a 26-year-old police officer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to accounts by police and government agencies.

Collier had been responding to a call of a disturbance at the university's Cambridge campus. Whether that call was connected to the brothers is unclear. Earlier reports that the pair had robbed a nearby convenience store were later withdrawn by the authorities.

In any case, Collier's body was found in his car at about 10.30 p.m. on Thursday. He had been shot multiple times, in what Boston Police Chief Ed Davis described as an assassination-style murder.

The brothers, meanwhile, were fleeing west across Cambridge to the nearby suburb of Watertown in a hijacked car. For a time, the car's owner was an unwilling passenger and listened as the pair told him that they had bombed the marathon earlier in the week.

After about half an hour, the brothers pulled into a gas station and forced the man to withdraw cash from an ATM before leaving him behind. Apparently unknown to them, police were tracking their movements using the man's cellphone, left behind in his car. Somewhere along the way, they stole a second a car.

AT LEAST SIX BOMBS

At about 12:30 a.m. on Friday, a police officer from the suburb of Watertown found the brothers, each now in his own stolen car, on a quiet street. Almost immediately, the brothers emerged from their vehicles and began firing, Edward Deveau, the chief of Watertown police, said in an interview with CNN on Saturday.

He said other officers arrived to find themselves in the middle of a gun battle, including a transit police officer who would be shot in the groin. About 200 rounds were shot in five or 10 minutes.

The brothers, armed with handguns and a rifle, also lobbed explosive devices, some resembling crude grenades, according to Deveau.

Police believe they had at least six bombs, three of which exploded, Deveau said. One was a pressure cooker bomb similar to a device used in the marathon bombing, Boston police said.

Towards the end of the battle, Tamerlan began walking towards the officers, shooting as he approached. Then, a few feet from the officers, his ammunition ran out, Deveau said.

He was tackled by the officers, who attempted to handcuff him in the street. Meanwhile, Dzhokhar had gotten back into a car and raced towards the group.

"One of them yells, 'Look out!', and here comes the black SUV, the carjacked car, directly at them," Deveau said.

The officers were able to dive out of the way. Tamerlan was not. He was hit by his brother's car and dragged a short way down the street, Deveau said, leaving a streak of blood in the asphalt that was still visible on Saturday, according to residents.

Tamerlan would later be pronounced dead at a hospital, while the younger brother disappeared into the night, leaving the car abandoned and fleeing on foot.

As the manhunt dragged on through Friday, residents of the Boston area were urged to stay indoors as officers in combat gear went house to house in a cordoned-off zone of about 20 streets in Watertown.

Even as authorities were announcing that the "stay-indoors" request was being lifted at about 6 p.m., a call came in to the Watertown police that there appeared to be someone hiding in a boat stored in a backyard about half a mile from the earlier shootout.

The hiding place was just outside of the perimeter of the manhunt during the day, police said.

Officers stormed the property around 7 p.m., and once again a flurry of gunfire reverberated on the streets of Watertown. Police lobbed stun grenades in an attempt to immobilize whoever was in the boat.

But police did not immediately rush the boat once the initial gunfire subsided. They said they hoped to take the suspect alive and were concerned that Dzhokhar might be carrying additional explosives or that the boat's half-full gas tank might be ignited.

As the siege dragged on for more than an hour, a police robot moved in to lift a plastic sheeting covering the boat.

An FBI negotiator stared down at the boat from the second floor of the house, relying on a helicopter flying overhead with heat-tracking devices to confirm that someone was still moving beneath the tarpaulin.

It took the negotiator 15 or 20 minutes, but, eventually, a badly injured Dzhokhar emerged from beneath the tarpaulin, lifting his shirt as instructed to show he was unarmed.

Dzhokhar, who had lost a considerable amount of blood, was loaded into an ambulance and rushed under police escort to Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in serious condition.

(This story fixes typo in Deveau in paragraph 15 in April 20 story)

(Additional reporting by Daniel Lovering; editing by Frank McGurty and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flight-boston-marathon-bombing-suspects-ended-mayhem-130400989.html

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Babies Calm Down When Carried [STUDY]

By: Cari Nierenberg, MyHealthNewsDaily Contributor
Published: 04/18/2013 12:45 PM EDT on MyHealthNewsDaily

A new study from Japan confirms what many mothers may know instinctively: Picking up and carrying a fussy baby usually calms down and relaxes the child, making the move a good one for both moms and infants.

When mothers in the study carried their babies while walking around, the infants became noticeably more relaxed and stopped crying and squirming. The babies' rapidly beating hearts also slowed down, evidence that the children were feeling calmer.

"Infants become calm and relaxed when they are carried by their mother," said study researcher Dr. Kumi Kuroda, who investigates social behavior at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan. The study observed strikingly similar responses in mouse babies.

Since carrying (meaning holding while walking) can help stop an infant from crying, Kuroda said, it can offer mothers a way to soothe short-term irritations to their children, such as scary noises or vaccinations.

The findings were published online today (April 18) in the journal Current Biology.

A strong calming effect

For the small study, researchers monitored the responses of 12 healthy infants ages 1 month to 6 months. The scientists wanted to discover the most effective way for mothers to calm a crying baby over a 30-second period ? simply holding the baby or carrying the infant while walking.

Young babies carried by a walking mother were the most relaxed and soothed, compared with infants whose mothers sat in a chair and held them, the study found. As a mother stood up and started to walk with her child cradled close in her arms, scientists observed an automatic change in the baby's behavior.

These results held even after the researchers took into account other factors, such as the child's age and sex, and the mother's age and walking speed.

Kuroda said she was surprised by the strength of the calming effect from maternal holding and walking. In observing experiments on both humans and mice, she was amazed at how quickly the heart rate slowed, and by how much immediately after a mother started walking. (Mother mice pick up their young by the scruff of their neck with their mouths.)

According to the researchers, maternal walking may be more effective in calming infants than other kinds of rhythmic motion, such as rocking.

Advice for parents

When an underlying reason for crying persists, such as hunger or sustained pain, the infant may start crying again soon after the end of carrying.

That's why Kuroda recommended that when a baby starts crying, a brief period of carrying may help parents to identify the cause of the tears. She acknowledged carrying might not completely stop the crying, but it may prevent parents from becoming frustrated by a crying infant.

The findings also have implications for one parenting technique in which parents let babies cry as a way to help them learn to fall asleep by themselves, the researchers said.

"Our study suggests why some babies do not respond well to the 'cry-it-out' parenting method," Kuroda said.

Proponents of the technique advise parents to let infants, after a certain age, cry themselves to sleep ? without mom or dad comforting them ? in the hopes the baby will learn how to soothe himself or herself.

But Kuroda said that calming by maternal carrying, as well as crying during separation, are both built-in mechanisms for infant survival. These behaviors have been hard-wired for millions of years. "Changing these reactions would be possible as infants are flexible, but it may take time," she said.

Although this study looked at a baby's behavior in response to its mother, Kuroda said the effect is not specific to moms, and any primary caregiver for the infant can perform the carrying. The researchers observed the same carrying-induced calming effects when fathers, grandmothers and an unfamiliar female with caregiving experience carried babies who were under 2 months old, Kuroda said.

Pass it on: Picking up and carrying a crying infant will automatically calm the child.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/21/babies-calm-down-when-carried_n_3128115.html

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Genetics defines a distinct liver disease

Apr. 21, 2013 ? Large-scale genetic study defines relationship between primary sclerosing cholangitis and other autoimmune diseases.

Researchers have newly associated nine genetic regions with a rare autoimmune disease of the liver known as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). This brings the total number of genetic regions associated with the disease to 16.

Approximately 70 per cent of people who suffer from PSC also suffer from IBD. The team showed that only half of the newly associated genetic regions were shared with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). For the first time, this definitively proves that PSC, although genetically related to IBD, is a distinct disease.

PSC is a chronic, progressive disease of the bile ducts that channels bile from the liver into the intestines. It can cause inflammation of the bile ducts (cholangitis) and liver scarring that leads to liver cirrhosis and liver failure. There are no effective treatments available. Although PSC affects only one in 10,000 people, it is a leading cause of liver transplant surgery.

?Before our study, it was never quite clear whether PSC was a complication of IBD or a distinct disease in its own right,? says Dr Carl Anderson, lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. ?We have proven it to be a unique disease, and hope that our results will inform the development of more effective treatments, designed to target the biological pathways involved in causing the disease?.

The work involved an international group of scientists from the International PSC study group recruiting patients from 13 countries within Europe and North America. Without this large collaborative effort it would not have been possible to obtain the large number of patient DNA samples necessary for the study.

The team used DNA genotyping technology to survey more thoroughly regions of the genome known to underlie other immune-related diseases to discover if they also play a role in PSC susceptibility.

In addition to the nine genetic regions newly associated, they also saw strong signals at three regions of the genome previously associated with the disease. Of these twelve genetic regions, six are also associated with IBD, while the six other regions showed little to no association in a recent large study of IBD.

?Using the Immunochip genotyping chip, we can pull apart the genetic relationships between these autoimmune diseases and begin to see not only their genetic similarities, but also the differences,? says Jimmy Liu, PhD student and first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. ?As PSC is a rare disorder, sample collection is more difficult than for other, more common, autoimmune diseases. We hope that with more samples from patients, we?ll be able to link more genetic regions to the disease, and it will become easier to identify underlying pathways that could act as therapeutic targets.?

Three of the genetic regions associated with PSC fall within a single biological system that underlies variation in T cells, cells important to our immune response. One gene that controls this pathway, HDAC7, is known to be a key factor in immune tolerance and the new data strongly suggests exploring the possibility that drugs affecting HDAC7 function may serve as future therapeutics in PSC.

In an extended analysis, the team identified an additional 33 genetic regions that are also involved in several common immune-mediated conditions (celiac disease, Crohn?s disease, ulcerative colitis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis and psoriasis). This analysis shows that PSC shares many genetic risk loci with other immune-mediated diseases and opens up the possibility for testing drugs known to be effective in genetically similar diseases for efficacy in PSC.

The next step for the team is to do a high-powered search throughout the entire genomes of PSC patients to find specific regions associated with PSC outside of the regions included on the Immunochip genotyping chip.

?This study has uncovered more about the genetics underlying PSC than any before it, but this is only the first step? says Dr Tom Hemming Karlsen, lead author from Oslo University Hospital, Norway. ?We hope the ongoing scientific and clinical research being conducted through the International PSC study group will help improve the outlook for those currently suffering at the hands of this disease?

?Our study, which is the largest of its type for PSC, would not have been possible without the help of the patients with this rare disorder,? adds Dr Hemming Karlsen.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jimmy Z Liu, Johannes Roksund Hov, Trine Folseraas, Eva Ellinghaus, Simon M Rushbrook, Nadezhda T Doncheva, Ole A Andreassen, Rinse K Weersma, Tobias J Weism?ller, Bertus Eksteen, Pietro Invernizzi, Gideon M Hirschfield, Daniel Nils Gotthardt, Albert Pares, David Ellinghaus, Tejas Shah, Brian D Juran, Piotr Milkiewicz, Christian Rust, Christoph Schramm, Tobias M?ller, Brijesh Srivastava, Georgios Dalekos, Markus M N?then, Stefan Herms, Juliane Winkelmann, Mitja Mitrovic, Felix Braun, Cyriel Y Ponsioen, Peter J P Croucher, Martina Sterneck, Andreas Teufel, Andrew L Mason, Janna Saarela, Virpi Leppa, Ruslan Dorfman, Domenico Alvaro, Annarosa Floreani, Suna Onengut-Gumuscu, Stephen S Rich, Wesley K Thompson, Andrew J Schork, Sigrid N?ss, Ingo Thomsen, Gabriele Mayr, Inke R K?nig, Kristian Hveem, Isabelle Cleynen, Javier Gutierrez-Achury, Isis Rica?o-Ponce, David van Heel, Einar Bj?rnsson, Richard N Sandford, Peter R Durie, Espen Melum, Morten H Vatn, Mark S Silverberg, Richard H Duerr, Leonid Padyukov, Stephan Brand, Miquel Sans, Vito Annese, Jean-Paul Achkar, Kirsten Muri Boberg, Hanns-Ulrich Marschall, Olivier Chazouill?res, Christopher L Bowlus, Cisca Wijmenga, Erik Schrumpf, Severine Vermeire, Mario Albrecht, John D Rioux, Graeme Alexander, Annika Bergquist, Judy Cho, Stefan Schreiber, Michael P Manns, Martti F?rkkil?, Anders M Dale, Roger W Chapman, Konstantinos N Lazaridis, Andre Franke, Carl A Anderson, Tom H Karlsen. Dense genotyping of immune-related disease regions identifies nine new risk loci for primary sclerosing cholangitis. Nature Genetics, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/ng.2616

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/Eq8ub1bLGf0/130421152410.htm

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Suspect alarmed relatives with extremist views

One of the Boston bombing suspects set off alarm bells among his family a year ago during a trip here to visit relatives, ABC News has learned.

According to a family member, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was kicked out of his uncle's house because of his increasingly extremist views.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother Dzhokhar, 19, are believed to have placed bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding 170. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police early Friday and Dzhokhar was badly wounded and captured by police Friday night.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent roughly six months in Russia in 2012, but the relative, who insisted on anonymity to avoid offending other family members, insisted the young man had been radicalized in the United States before his trip.

Dagestan is one of the poorest and most violent regions of Russia, home to an Islamist insurgency that seeks to establish an independent state. So far, no links have tied him to militant groups here.

Members of Congress, however, say those six months last year were a turning point in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's radicalization.

"When he came back he starting posting more radical jihadist YouTube videos and started becoming more of a fundamentalist Muslim," Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC News Friday.

"My concern is that he may have gone over there to visit his father and he received training and then became radicalized and then came back. Something happened in that period of time. He was not like that before," McCaul said.

The FBI, meanwhile, also looked into Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011.

In a statement Friday, the bureau said it investigated Tsarnaev on behalf of a foreign government, though it did not reveal which one.

"The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country's region to join unspecified underground groups," the FBI statement said.

The bureau said that in response to the request it combed through its databases and interviewed the man and members of his family, but did not find any evidence he was tied to terror groups.

"The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government," the FBI statement said.

The family member described Tsarnaev's father and mother as good parents who are distraught at the news. They tried to evade the media today after granting several interviews a day earlier, even instructing family members to tell reporters they had left for Chechnya. The pair were briefly spotted, however, by journalists waiting outside their home.

The relative said he saw them Friday and that the mother was sobbing and the father suffered some sort of panic attack in the evening. Also on Friday, according to a security source, the parents were questioned by security services.

The relative said Tsarnaev's father is a "traditional Muslim" who eschews extremism. He couldn't imagine his son would do such a thing, the family member said.

"Nightmare's end." Boston Globe, April 20, 2013.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bomb-suspect-alarmed-russian-163600980.html

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