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Reuters

  • Reese Witherspoon named People magazine's 'best-dressed' of 2015

    Witherspoon, the Oscar-winning star of Johnny Cash movie “Walk the Line,” headed a list that includes Hollywood stars Julianne Moore, Kate Hudson, and 15-year-old “Mad Men” actress Kiernan Shipka.

    Witherspoon, 39, has clear ideas about what she likes (bright hues and clean lines) and what she doesn’t (crop tops and puffy dresses).

    “I’d look like a mushroom,” she told People magazine of such styles, saying her height, at 5 ft 2 in (1.58 meters), is a fashion liability. “I always tell my stylist that it’s hard to dress short girls.”

    Witherspoon ironically was one of the women leading an #AskHerMore campaign at the 2015 Oscars ceremony in which reporters were encouraged to ask actresses on the red carpet more about their work in movies than their style choices.

    The actress is often a fashion favorite on red carpets, opting for a pale blue fitted off-the-shoulder Tom Ford gown to this year’s Oscars, a silver beaded strapless Calvin Klein dress for the Golden Globes and a one-shouldered Giorgio Armani gown for the SAG awards.

    People magazine also named some of their best-dressed couples, including actress Gabrielle Union and Miami Heat basketball player husband Dwayne Wade, singer John Legend and his model wife Chrissy Teigen, and “Magic Mike” actor Channing Tatum and his actress and dancer wife Jenna Dewan Tatum.

    People magazine’s 30-page People Style special can be found in the issue on newsstands on Sept. 11, or online at www.people.com/bestdressed.

  • Child death rates cut by half, but U.N. target missed

    Of all under-five deaths, almost half occur during a baby’s first four weeks, said a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Bank and United Nations, with one million babies dying per year on the first day of life.

    “In order to get that further down, we need to focus on neonatal mortality, said Flavia Bustreo, the WHO’s assistant director general.

    This makes early interventions by healthcare professionals to tackle killers like asphyxia and sepsis critical, as well as encouraging breastfeeding and early immunisations, Bustreo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

    The report came as leaders prepare to meet in New York later this month to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new plan of action for ending poverty.

    Covering the next 15 years, the SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which expire this year.

    One of the MDGs was to cut the death rate of under-fives by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. The rate fell by 53 percent, according to Wednesday’s report.

    “We have to acknowledge tremendous global progress,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, deputy executive director of the United Nations’ children’s fund (UNICEF).”

    “But the far too large number of children still dying from preventable causes before their fifth birthday … should impel us to redouble our efforts to do what we know needs to be done.”

    Nearly half of all under-five deaths are associated with malnutrition, said the study, which also said the rate of improvement is accelerating, with child mortality falling quicker since the millennium than it did in the 1990s.

    Under-fives in sub-Saharan Africa are 12 times more likely to die than those in rich countries. Nevertheless, many poor African countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, hit the two-thirds target.

    “We know how to prevent unnecessary newborn mortality,” said the WHO’s Bustreo. “Quality care around the time of childbirth … can save thousands of lives every year.”

    Around 16,000 children under five still die each day.

  • Heart rate in teen boys linked to violent crime in adulthood

    A low resting heart doesn’t necessarily signal a problem. According to the American Heart Association, lower heart rates are common in people who are very athletic, because their heart muscle is in better condition and doesn’t need to work as hard to maintain a steady beat.

    But previous research has also linked a low resting heart rate to antisocial behavior in children and adolescents, the study authors note in JAMA Psychiatry. A slow heart rate may increase risk-taking, either because the teens seek stimulating experiences or fail to detect danger as much as their peers with normal heart rates, researchers say.

    For the current study, a team led by Antti Latvala of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the University of Helsinki in Finland explored the link between young men’s heart rates when they entered military service around age 18 and their odds of later being convicted of crimes as adults.

    The study included 710,000 participants born between 1958 and 1991 who were followed for up to 36 years.

    Compared with about 140,000 young men with the highest resting heart rates (above 83 beats per minute), those with the lowest heart rates (no more than 60 beats per minute) were 39 percent more likely to be convicted of a violent crime and had a 25 percent higher chance of getting convicted of nonviolent crimes.

    “It is obvious that low resting heart rate by itself cannot be used to determine future violent or antisocial behavior,” Latvala said by email. “However, it is intriguing that such a simple measure can be used as an indicator of individual differences in psychophysiological processes which make up one small but integral piece of the puzzle.”

    Researchers are not certain why a slow heart rate might be linked to violence or risk-taking. A low resting heart rate may be an indicator of chronically low physiological arousal – indicating biological underpinnings – and that may cause people to seek stimulating experiences.

    Or, Latvala and colleagues write, the low heart rate could be a sign of blunted psychological responses to situations that usually produce stress or anxiety in others, and this might lead to fearless behavior.

    Over the course of the study, about 40,000 men were convicted of violent crimes after an average follow up of 18 years. In addition, roughly 104,000 men were convicted of nonviolent crimes after an average follow up of 16 years.

    Men who had the lowest resting heart rates during adolescence were also more likely to be killed or injured in assaults or to experience accidents serious enough to merit medical attention or result in death, the study found.

    “This is a novel finding and it provides support for a more general association between low heart rate and risk-taking behavior,” Latvala said.

    The study only focused on men, and the results may not apply to women, the researchers acknowledge. Because the data on crimes was drawn from a registry for convictions, it’s also possible that the results might be different for crimes that don’t result in convictions.

    Even so, the findings raise a host of ethical and legal questions about whether and to what extent the criminal justice system should weigh the potential for low resting heart rate to influence behavior, Adrian Raine, a researcher in criminology and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, noted in an accompanying editorial.

    A low resting heart rate can reflect a lack of fear, Raine told Reuters Health by email.

    “If you lack fear, you’re more likely to commit crime because you’re not concerned about getting caught,” Raine said. “And, if you’re a fearless risk-taker, you’re more likely to put yourself in social contexts where you run the risk of violence victimization, and have more accidents due to a reckless disregard for your own safety.”

    While we might not blame a victim of violence for having a low resting heart rate and ending up in a risky situation, the notion of considering this a mitigating factor in punishing violent criminals is much thornier, Raine added.

    The findings also raise questions such as whether car insurance premiums should be higher for people with low resting heart rates, or whether parents of children with low heart rates might seek help before kids grow up to become violent adults, Raine said.

    “These findings raise some provocative issues,” Raine said.

  • U.S. Open: Djokovic repels net-charging Lopez to advance

    On a hot, humid night at Flushing Meadows, Djokovic waged an entertaining battle with the 33-year-old serve-and-volleyer, before finishing off the 18th seed 7-2 in the fourth set tiebreaker to complete a 6-1 3-6 6-3 7-6(2) victory.

    Lopez won 28-of-41 serve-and-volley points, while Djokovic countered with 33 forays to the net that produced 19 points for the world number one.

    “He’s one of the rare players who actually serves and volleys after the first and second serves,” said Djokovic, winner of this year’s Australian Open and Wimbledon championships. “He’s got a very big serve.”

    Lopez served up 14 aces, while Dojokovic registered nine.

    “It was anybody’s game in the fourth set,” the Serb said. “I’m just glad to get through in four.”

    Djokovic had beaten Lopez in their five previous meetings but the lefty was confident, coming off a Cincinnati hardcourt event where he reached the quarters with wins over Milos Raonic and Rafa Nadal before losing to world number two Roger Federer.

    “My game plan was to be aggressive,” Lopez said. “He was having some trouble reading my serve.

    “The match from my side was great. I have to be satisfied with the match I played with the number one player in the world. I couldn’t do any better today. He just was better in the tiebreaker in the fourth. I think I played a great match.”

    Djokovic, 61-5 with six tournament titles this season, will face defending champion Marin Cilic of Croatia in the semi-finals. The ninth-seeded Cilic advanced with a five-set win over France’s Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

    Nine-times grand slam winner Djokovic reached his ninth successive U.S. Open semi-finals and the 2011 champion expects another challenging match against Cilic, despite owning a 13-0 record against him.

    “He hasn’t lost a match (here), 12 matches in a row, so I’m sure he feels confident,” Djokovic said. “I know him very well. I have played him many, many times. We are great friends.

    “I know what to do and I’m hoping I can execute the game plan.”

  • Hungarian TV journalist fired for tripping up fleeing migrants

    In separate videos, the woman, who was not named by the channel, is seen kicking a girl and tripping up the man carrying a child as hundreds of migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, broke away from police on Hungary’s southern border with Serbia.

    “An employee of N1TV today showed unacceptable behaviour at the Roszke collection point,” N1TV, also known as Nemzeti TV, said in a statement. “We have terminated the contract of the camerawoman with immediate effect today.”

    Szabolcs Kisberk, chief editor at the TV station, told Reuters: “I believe we have done what we had to do in this situation. We don’t understand how this could happen, it is shocking and unacceptable.”

    Hungarian news website 444.hu identified the camerawoman as Petra Laszlo. Reuters was unable to reach Laszlo for comment.

    Hungary’s right-wing government has taken a hard line on the flow of migrants across its borders en route to western Europe, portraying them as a threat to European prosperity and “Christian values”.

    N1TV runs a weekly chat show with Gabor Vona, leader of the far-right, anti-immigration opposition party Jobbik, according to the channel’s website.

    The channel says it stands for “national issues.”

    Over 150,000 migrants, many of them refugees from conflicts in the Middle East, have been recorded entering Hungary so far this year. Police have been trying to round them up and register them in line with European Union rules, but many migrants refuse, fearing that they will then be forced to stay in Hungary.

  • Serena downs sister Venus to reach U.S. Open semis

    Serena entered the match with a 15-11 head-to-head advantage over Venus but the high number of losses to her 35-year-old sibling represented the most posted by any opponent against the world number one, who knew she was in for a tough fight.

    The 33-year-old top seed, winner of 21 grand slam singles titles, took charge of the opening set by securing service breaks in the fifth and seventh games of a match that felt like a heavyweight title bout after a brilliant start by Venus.

    However, Venus looked more like the player who has claimed seven grand slam singles titles in the second set, unleashing her power and drawing groundstroke errors from Serena for two service breaks that sent the match to a third set.

    Serena seized control early in the decider and rode the momentum to the finish in her quest to join Maureen Connolly (1953), Margaret Court (1970) and Steffi Graf (1988) as the only women to win Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens in the same season.

    GREAT MOMENT

    The sisters exchanged a warm hug at the end of the 98-minute battle and Serena was asked about their embrace in the middle of the massive Arthur Ashe Stadium court in an on-court interview.

    “It’s a really great moment,” Serena said. “She’s the toughest player I ever played in my life and the best person I know.

    “So it’s going against your best friend and at the same time going against the greatest competitor for me in women’s tennis, so it was really difficult today.”

    Serena, who belted 12 aces and unleashed 14 winners off her blistering two-handed backhand, said once the match started, she forgot about sibling connections.

    “When I’m playing her, I don’t think of her as my sister, because she’s playing so well, hitting big serves and running a lot of balls down,” Serena said.

    “When you’re in the moment you don’t really think about it. We trained all our lives to be on this court…”

    Before Serena was able to take control of the opening set, she had to contend with a barrage of huge serves and forehands from her big sister. The three-times defending U.S. Open champion said it needed a mighty effort to hang on for the win.

    “Holding serve in the third set was all I could do. She came out hitting so hard, just blasting every shot. I was on defence a lot,” she said of her 23rd-ranked sister.

    “This is a big moment for both Venus and I,” she added. “We both have a chance to be in the semi-finals and it’s a grand slam so we both want to do the best that we can.”

    Next up for Serena will be unseeded Italian Roberta Vinci, who earlier defeated France’s Kristina Mladenovic 6-3 5-7 6-4.

  • Bomb kills 14 Turkish police officers as jets strike PKK in Iraq

    More than 40 Turkish warplanes hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets overnight in northern Iraq, where the group has bases, in response to Sunday’s killing of 16 soldiers near the Iraqi border, the deadliest attack since a two-year-old ceasefire ended.

    Tuesday’s bombing in Igdir province was the latest in a daily stream of attacks by the PKK on soldiers and police in eastern Turkey since fighting resumed in July.

    President Tayyip Erdogan said the PKK had suffered “serious damage” inside and outside Turkey and was now on the back foot.

    “The recent developments are a result of the ensuing panic. The losses inflicted on the organization by (Turkish military) operations can be expressed in the thousands,” he said in a speech to academics at his palace in Ankara.

    The renewed conflict, weeks before polls the ruling AK Party hopes will restore its majority, has shattered a peace process launched by Erdogan in 2012 in an attempt to end an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people over three decades.

    It has also complicated Turkey’s role in the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State. A Kurdish militia allied with the PKK has been battling Islamic State in northern Syria, backed by U.S. air strikes. But Turkey fears territorial gains by Syria’s Kurds will fuel separatist sentiment among its own Kurdish population.

    Dozens of F-16 and F-4 jets took part in the air operation in northern Iraq, which began around 10 p.m. (1900 GMT) on Monday and continued for six hours. They targeted PKK bases in Qandil, Basyan Avashin and Zap, and hit weapons and food stores as well as the militants’ machinegun positions.

    Military operations involving ground troops were continuing in a forested area right on the border, security sources said, but did not confirm Turkish media reports that special forces had crossed into Iraq in a “hot pursuit” maneuver – something they have done during past periods of intense conflict.

    One of the sources said scores of PKK fighters were killed in the bombing raids. The PKK, which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and United States.

    NATIONALIST ANGER

    The Igdir attack came as police traveled in a minibus to a border gate linking Turkey to the autonomous Nakhchivan enclave, sandwiched between Armenia and Iran and controlled by Azerbaijan, the Dogan news agency reported.

    Erdogan said on Sunday that some 2,000 PKK militants had been killed since the conflict resumed in July. Around 100 members of Turkish security forces have been killed, based on information from government officials and security sources.

    The PKK attacks have triggered nationalist anger against Kurds. The Istanbul branch of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said on Twitter that 126 of the party’s buildings around the country were attacked on Monday.

    Crowds near the Mediterranean city of Mersin closed a highway and attacked buses traveling to largely Kurdish regions, breaking windows with rocks, newspapers reported.

    About 2,000 people overran a state construction project in Erzurum province, angry with a group of ethnic Kurdish builders suspected of sympathizing with the PKK, the leftwing daily BirGun said. CNN Turk news channel said Kurdish seasonal farm laborers in the town of Beypazari near the capital Ankara barely escaped a group that attempted to lynch them.

  • Coalition strikes Yemen capital, more foreign troops reported arriving

    The Houthi-run state news agency Saba said that 15 citizens were killed and 77 were wounded in the attacks by warplanes on Sanaa. Medical sources said at least 15 civilians were killed in similar attacks on Monday. It was not immediately possible to independently verify the figures.

    The alliance, made up mainly of Gulf Arab countries,

    has increased air strikes on Sanaa and other parts of the country since Friday, when a Houthi missile attack killed at least 60 Saudi, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates soldiers at a military camp east of Sanaa.

    They were part of a force preparing to assault the capital, which the Iranian-allied Houthis seized last September.

    Friday’s attack was the deadliest yet for Gulf soldiers in the war and may herald a turning point as Saudi-allied countries appear to be committing to a ground war they had so far avoided.

    Qatari-owned Al Jazeera TV reported that the number of forces deployed by the alliance had risen to 10,000.

    A Yemeni military official denied any foreign reinforcements had arrived on Tuesday and a source close to the exiled Yemeni government, now based in Riyadh, said he believed the number of foreign troops reported by al Jazeera might be exaggerated.

    Al Jazeera on Monday said that 1,000 Qatari soldiers had crossed the al-Wadia border crossing from Saudi Arabia.

    “A second contingent of Qatari soldiers has entered the al-Wadia border crossing,” an Al Jazeera correspondent in southern Saudi Arabia was quoted as saying.

    BOMBING, AIR POWER

    A source close to the Qatari military confirmed the report.

    “The operation in Sanaa will use extensive bombing, air power, to support the ground offensive,” the source said.

    Qatari and coalition officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Egyptian officials told Reuters that an unspecified number of Egyptian troops would arrive in Yemen on Tuesday and Saudi-owned Arabiya newspaper quoted sources as saying that 6,000 Sudanese troops would soon join the fight inside Yemen.

    The Sudanese government did not comment on the report but it was corroborated by the source close to the Qatari military.

    In Riyadh, a news agency run by Yemen’s exiled government said that 10,000 loyalist troops were also preparing to take part in an advance on Sanaa.

    The Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled to Riyadh in March as Houthi forces closed in on their last redoubt in Aden, triggering the Saudi-led intervention and fighting which has killed more than 4,500 people, many of them civilians.

    Loyalist Yemeni forces and Gulf soldiers took back Aden and most of Yemen’s south in July but battle lines have barely moved since as the allied forces face stiff resistance in the Houthis’ northern redoubts.

    The Saudi-led alliance sees their campaign as a fight against creeping Iranian influence but the Houthis deny being beholden to Tehran and say the exiled government in Riyadh and the coalition are U.S. puppets. They say they deposed a corrupt government.

  • Smart phone ingredient found in plant extracts

    The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables.

    Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles.

    Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now scientists at Freiburg University of Mining and Technology think they have found a revolutionary way to obtain it from their own soil – with a little help from the natural world.

    Biology professor Hermann Heilmeier is one of the scientists using common plants for this uncommon process.

    “What is being cultivated in this field are various energy crops — for example sunflowers, corn, reed canary grass – but instead of using them for energy purposes we want to use them for phytomining. In German we call it ‘mining with plants’. We want to bring elements that are present in the soil into the roots and shoots of the plants, harvest them and then extract these elements from the plants after they have been used for energy, that is to say fermented,” he said, showing off his field of crops as he measured the moisture levels of the soil.

    The process is still in its early stages, but Heilmeier says they have now identified the plants that could allow them to scale the attempt up. The next stage of the process takes place in a laboratory at the university in Freiburg, where head of industrial chemistry Professor Martin Bertau has been overseeing the project. He said the region is very well-suited to the extraction of germanium due to the composition of the soil.

    “There is zinc ore present here, the ground is very rich in zinc. We have the remains of waste rock piles from mining, which germanium-rich water can drain better through. And when you cultivate plants here and give them that water, they can build up germanium reserves through normal physiological processes. We unlock these reserves through fermentation with the help of bacteria and thus we are able to mobilize the germanium,” Bertau explained.

    Economically, the process is efficient, because the extraction of germanium can happen after plants are processed for use as biogas. Thus many of the costs are already covered in existing biogas plants.

    “We use the normal biogas process, collect the products of fermentation and all there is left to do then is extract the germanium from them. The processing costs of this downstream step are manageable, so even with these low amounts it is still economically viable,” Bertau said.

    The potential for industry could be enormous, but there is still work to do before the benefits can be reaped. At the moment germanium can only be harvested in extremely small quantities, just a few milligrams per liter. Scientists need to achieve at least one gram per liter, which at the moment is only possible through a process of concentrating the extract.

    “It is as it so often is: industry is still waiting because they want to see a facility where everything is already working. Then they say: ‘we’ll have it’. But of course we have to complete the step in between first. Thanks to the support of the BMBF (German ministry for education and research), we have now actually found a solution to an intractable problem and have got to the point where we can upscale the process. So we will be able to work with bigger amounts, with apparatus with a capacity of 1,000 liters or 10 cubic meters instead of 20 liters,” Bertau said.

  • EU still open whether will charge Google over Android

    The Commission, which is in charge of antitrust issues in the European Union, accused Google in April of cheating competitors by distorting Internet search results in favor of its Google shopping service and at the same time opened the Android probe.

    “On the formal investigation when it comes to Android, we still haven’t finalised that. So it is still open whether it will go one way or the other,” Vestager told a news conference.

    “We looked into the case before we formally opened it and of course the reason why we put quite a lot of resources into it is because we have concerns if things are as they should be, if totally by the book.”