Pages of The Bee

Pete Wilson says he'll veto any legislation that would move up the California primary from June to March. He has no problem giving the state more influence in presidential elections but believes an early state primary could disrupt the current reapportionment process required by the 1990 census.
"Beyond watching and waiting, the West must speak with one clear voice on the desired course in the Soviet Union: toward democracy and more freedom of choice for the Soviet peoples." - Bee editorial, lamenting the coup by communist hard-liners who ousted President Mikhail Gorbachev from power

Resident ponders his loss, says fire crews did right thing for the community

Tahoe - Erik Hurst stood guard over his home for two hours Saturday, garden hose in hand and frustration swirling within. Nearby, fire crews fought to quell the flames that quickly devoured one home, then another on Washoe Way.
For a while, he held out hope that his home would survive. Hurst said Sunday as he surveyed the charred rubble of what was once his home.
His street had no hydrants. Tankers hauled in water to battle the blaze. Helicopters armed with buckets joined the fight as an army of firefighters moved into position.
"The fire department had to make a call whether to save my home or sacrifice it for the best interest of the community," Hurst said. In the end, his home was expendable.
His voice gave no hint of bitterness, but his stoic demeanor soon gave way to welled-up emotion. Tears dripped from under his sunglasses, which when removed revealed eyes red with grief. He fisted his hands to rub the tears away, a smear of ash blackening one cheek.
Brisk winds fanned flames up the slope from his home, one of more than 200 in the Sunnyside community two miles south of Tahoe City on the western shore of Lake Tahoe.
Two other homes on Tahoe Woods Boulevard, uphill from Washoe Way, were destroyed.
"It's absolutely amazing how they stopped it before it got bigger than 15 acres," Hurst said. "It was the right call to make. They were looking out for the greater good."
Ash, twisted metal, melted plastic and mounds of debris; the fallen frame of one side of his home lay neatly charred on the ground. He picked up a bicycle from the rubble, its frame ashened, its tires dangling from bent rims.
With the Angora fire still a fresh nightmare across the Tahoe basin, the latest fire was an unsettling reminder of the volatility of fire in the region's parched forests.
"People who live in these communities, who live adjacent to forests, need to realize we still have extreme fire conditions," said Todd Chapanot, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
The cause of the fire -- which was contained by 11 p.m. Saturday -- officially remains under investigation, Chapanot said. Damage estimates from the 20-acre fire were unavailable.
What is known is that the fire began in the backyard of one of the five homes destroyed by the blaze.
One witness said she saw fire dripping from a gas barbecue at the first home engulfed by the fire.
"I think we're really lucky. You never know what's going to take down 200 homes," said Jennifer Merchant, a spokeswoman for Placer County's office of emergency services. "Sometimes, there's no rhyme or reason for the devastation. It could have easily been 200 homes or more."
Officials credit the quick response of fire crews -- a sentiment echoed by residents and vacationers -- and work done earlier this year to remove underbrush and thin out trees from several acres of forestland uphill from the fire's origin.
"That, I have to believe, made a huge difference," said Kris Timberlake, a fire captain with Cal Fire's Amador-El Dorado unit.
Shrubs such as manzanita and low-hanging tree branches allow flames to race along the forest floor, torching entire stands of pine. Flames, fanned by gusts, could then jump from treetop to treetop, Timberlake said.
In June, Timberlake was one of thousands of south-shore residents forced out of their homes because of the Angora fire, which blackened 3,100 acres and destroyed more than 250 homes.
There was a collective sigh of relief that Saturday's fire wasn't worse.
Ed Hirschberg, who is building a house near the lake, arrived from Oakland just as firefighters were arriving, he said. "The firemen told us, 'This could be bad, you need to get out of here.' "
Mandatory evacuations were ordered, but most were lifted Sunday evening as fire crews continued to watch for hot spots and mop up. Utility crews were also busy repairing lines.
On Saturday, residents and vacationers scrambled to find lodging. Some vacationers returned home. Others took refuge at hotels, nearly all filled to capacity. Some nearby lodges opened their doors. So did homeowners who offered their couches and spare beds. As a result, few opted to evacuate to the Fairview Community Center in Tahoe City.
On Sunday, the California Highway Patrol attempted to keep traffic from entering the area. But many motorists found ways in.
Alex McDonald, a San Francisco physician, arrived Sunday to survey his home after recognizing his Tahoe neighborhood in a newspaper photo.
"I came racing up here. Fortunately, it's fine," he said of his second home. He called himself fortunate.
Less fortunate was Hurst, who spent Sunday talking about his loss -- to his insurance agent, neighbors and strangers.
Hurst, who vowed to rebuild, said he knew the risks of living in the woods.
"When the Angora fire happened, you felt fortunate that it wasn't you," he said. "But you know that someday, it's going to happen. You just hope that it's not going to happen anytime soon."

Terrorist attack

A terrorist attack was supposed to be the cause of the derailment of a train traveling from Moscow to Petersburg, which injured 60 passengers late on Monday, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.
The passenger train derailment in Novgorod region "was caused by a homemade bomb explosion," officials of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office at the incident site was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
A criminal investigation has been launched under terrorism charges into the bomb blast that derailed the express train, said Sergei Bednichenko, head of the Northwestern Federal District Prosecutor's Office, at the scene.
Sixty people were injured when the passenger train on the Moscow-Petersburg route derailed in Novgorod region late Monday, and 25 were sent to hospitals, the press service of Russian Railways reported on Tuesday.
The incident occurred at 21:43 Moscow time , at the 179th km of the Oktyabrskaya Railway near Malaya Vishera, the spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, Viktor Beltsov, told Itar-Tass news agency.
Four of the 12 carriages of the high-speed Nevsky Express derailed, but they did not overturn.
"Smoke began to billow, but the nidus of fire was promptly extinguished," Beltsov said.
Sixty people sought medical assistance and 25 of them were rushed to hospitals in Veliky Novgorod, a Russian Railways official said.
According to the official, 231 tickets on the Nevsky Express high-speed train were sold on Monday. There were also 20 crewmembers on the train.
No children were among the injured. Acting chief doctor of the Malaya Vishera hospital Svetlana Dyakonova said the injured people were in "medium grave condition."
No one died in the incident, according to preliminary reports.
Meanwhile, Russian Railways said 12 cars and an electric locomotive derailed in the incident.
"As a result of external impact, several carriages of passenger train No. 166 Moscow-St. Petersburg derailed at the Burga-Malaya Vishra stretch at 21:38 Moscow time," the company's official press release said.
The engine driver claimed he had heard a clap just before the incident.
A special diesel train took passengers of the derailed train to St. Petersburg. It left for Petersburg at 0:44, Moscow time .
President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin cut short his trip to Siberia and flew to Novgorod region. A Russian Railways commission led by the vice-president of the company, Viktor Popov, were heading for the scene. The company also set up a crisis headquarters led by its first vice-president Vadim Morozov, a company official said.

All the News

Got an interesting survey recently from MoveOn.org. The online activist group is considering whether to set up an online news service that's filtered by both journalists and "citizen reviewers" for accuracy, fairness, credibility, and relevance. From the depth of the survey, it appears they're pretty serious. ...
Wes Boyd, MoveOn's cofounder and president, told me it's just an idea for now and may never come to pass. But he says one of the biggest concerns among MoveOn's 2 million members is media news coverage. "People feel traditional media is losing their way," he says. "Chasing entertainment value is the main thing, vs. a journalistic process." At the same time, he notes, with the proliferation of Weblogs and other "citizen media," "it's not clear how journalistic practices become a part of the Internet."
The project, headed by Fabrice Florin, CEO of the cell phone content provider Handtap Communications, would draft what Boyd says would be a nonpartisan, volunteer team of professional journalists and potentially thousands of citizen reviewers. They'd rate each news story and produce a daily selection of "news you can trust" on the Web and by e-mail. Boyd says he was shocked that the survey indicated half the respondents would volunteer, about five times the rate he expected. What's more, a lot of respondents said they'd pay $20 a year for the feed--plus extras such as personalized news feeds and the ability to publish one's own feed to share with others.
Given MoveOn's quite clear stands on many issues, can such a service avoid an echo-chamber effect? Boyd's not sure, though he hopes getting thousands of people involved might help ensure that divergent voices will be heard. No telling if he's right. But it's an interesting stab at using Internet tools to get readers more involved in the news.

Breast Cancer Cells Discovered

When a woman receives a breast cancer diagnosis her entire life may change in the blink of an eye. But the nature of that change is governed by the smallest alterations that take place within the proteins of the tumor cells, determining what treatments she can pursue with a hope of cure and those to which her cancer is resistant.
Scientists from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center announced today the discovery of a new mechanism of resistance to endocrine or anti-hormonal therapies, such as Tamoxifen and Faslodex. This research may allow oncologists to screen women for responsiveness to these treatments, and provides a much-needed clue to reversing resistance. The research, led by Robert Clarke, PhD, DSc, a professor of oncology and of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center, indicates that a gene previously thought to be unrelated to breast cancer may be responsible for some resistance to endocrine therapy.
The gene, called human X-box binding protein-1, is an alternatively spliced transcription factor that participates in a stress-signaling pathway to protect cells from damage. In a paper published online in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology on July 27, Clarke and his colleagues at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center found that over-expression of the spliced variant of the gene in estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells led to reduced sensitivity to Tamoxifen and Faslodex.
According to Lombardi medical oncologist Minetta Liu, MD, it is expected that all hormone receptor positive metastatic breast cancers will eventually develop resistance to endocrine therapies. When this happens, doctors must switch their patients to a different class of drugs – throwing their lives into limbo once again as treatment schedules are changed and new side effects develop.
“When cell lines changed from being sensitive to endocrine therapy to being resistant, we saw an increase in spliced XBP1 inside the cell. So then we took sensitive cells and added spliced XBP1, which made them resistant to the therapy,” explained Clarke, who is interim director of Georgetown’s Biomedical Graduate Research Organization and co-leader of the Breast Cancer Program at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Anti-hormonal therapies are some of the most effective treatments for breast cancer because estrogen, a natural female sex hormone, can drive the growth of the tumor. Tamoxifen and other anti-hormonal therapies cut off the tumor’s access to estrogen, causing the tumor to stabilize and sometimes even shrink. However according to Clarke, many cancers become insensitive to these treatments over time – more than half of all recurring breast cancers lose sensitivity – because they have found a way to keep growing in the absence of estrogen.
Previously, Clarke and his team found that XBP1 is co-expressed with the estrogen receptor in breast tumor cells. This may mean that the effects of XBP1 over-expression occur when the protein is bound to the estrogen receptor, suggesting for the first time that these two proteins interact in the cell. This was the first evidence that the XBP1 protein may play a role in breast cancer pathways.
Through molecular profiling of the downstream effects of the spliced XBP1, Dr. Clarke and his colleagues discovered that expression of several anti-apoptotic genes responsible for programmed cell death – including BCL2 – are altered. While they have not yet determined the exact interactions that take place, the researchers believe that the overexpression of XBP1 promotes cell survival by affecting the activity of the intrinsic apoptosis pathway.
“XBP1 may give us a much-needed clue for better predicting response to anti-estrogen therapies like Tamoxifen,” explained Clarke. “The presence of the activated protein at high levels should predict estrogen independence and thus resistance to these therapies.”
In the future, Clarke also hopes to develop a new therapeutic treatment based on this discovery. He believes that the XBP1 pathway can be targeted in patients receiving treatment to ensure their tumors do not become resistant to the anti-hormonal therapies. Using this discovery, Clarke also hopes to find a way to reverse resistance to anti-hormonal therapies, making it possible for women to continue treatment with first line therapies for longer.
However, Clarke said that the next step in this research will be to conduct a trial to test the predictive power of XBP1 in the clinic.

“Orange” forces to unite in 2007: Lutsenko

In 2007, all so-called "orange" political forces will come together again.
Such is the prognosis of ex-Minister of Internal Affairs and current presidential advisor Yuri Lutsenko. According to him, the common goal of the orange camps is to replace the current parliament. Lutsenko said that both BYuT leader Yulia Tymosheko and Presidential Secretariat head Viktor Baloha support this idea.

Internal Affairs Ministry pleased with “spets-operation”

The Internal Affairs Ministry made its official report on New Year’s activities Tuesday. According to the MIA, out of the four million Ukrainians who took part in New Year’s festivities, none committed any serious crimes.
The Ministry’s spets-operation called “Profilaktyka 2006” was also a success. According to MIA representatives, numerous underground vodka and meat canning operations were uncovered. As for petty holiday crimes, police listed: three thousand arrests for the illegal chopping down of Christmas trees, and 11 traumas from accidents with fire crackers. The only murder – in Rivne oblast – was quickly uncovered. Police are more than pleased with the results of their special operation and have decided to continue it for another two months.