Football: West Ham recommended for Olympic Stadium move

LONDON: West Ham United took an important step towards moving into London's Olympic Stadium after being granted 'first bidder' status by the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) on Wednesday.

The Premier League team are competing with third-tier football club Leyton Orient, a football business college and a Formula One racing group to become permanent tenants of the east London arena.

"We had four good bids, as everybody knows. The bid that has been ranked top is West Ham United. I am very pleased about that," said LLDC chairman and London Mayor Boris Johnson.

"It will, if it goes through, mean a football legacy for the stadium but there is still a lot of negotiation to go on between the LLDC and West Ham United about the terms of the deal."

The LLDC board voted unanimously to make West Ham their first choice to occupy the arena.

West Ham's preferred bidder status does not involve the signing of any contracts but it puts the club in pole position to secure the 99-year lease on the stadium.

"In selecting West Ham United, the LLDC have secured a long-term viable financial future for the (Olympic) Park," said West Ham vice-chairman Karren Brady.

"On behalf of West Ham United, I feel privileged to have been granted the responsibility to play a key part in delivering a true Games legacy.

"We are now committed to working closely with our new partners and stakeholders in the Stadium to successfully conclude our discussions and bring our collective ambitions to fruition."

The Olympic Stadium, which cost £486 million ($782.7 million, 598.7 million euros) to construct, has been vacant since the end of the Paralympics in September.

Before West Ham could move in, the stadium would have to be converted into a football ground with retractable or moveable seating over the running track.

As part of a pre-existing legacy agreement, the stadium must continue to be used as an athletics venue.

Any future tenants would therefore have to share the ground with UK Athletics, while the 2017 World Athletics Championships are scheduled to take place at the stadium.

A final agreement would also be dependent on the new tenants securing funding for adjustments to the stadium, gaining planning permission and obtaining approval from the appropriate national governing bodies.

The LLDC, meanwhile, will be keen to make sure that taxpayer investment in the initial construction of the venue is protected so that any future benefits will be equally shared between investors.

"There is no deal-breaker as such," said Johnson.

"It is just a question of making sure that an asset, which is a public asset and something that taxpayers put half a billion pounds into, that the value of that is properly reflected in the commercial deal that is now being done with a private sector entity.

"People will understand that my job is to get the best possible deal for the taxpayer."

The LLDC confirmed earlier this month that the stadium will not re-open until 2015 at the earliest.

West Ham hope that leaving their current 35,000-capacity Upton Park home for the much larger Olympic Stadium would enable them to compete with the leading clubs in the Premier League.

-AFP/ac

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Airlines asked to display the range of fares for each route

MUMBAI: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked domestic airlines to display tariff, slab wise on each route they operate so as to bring transparency in pricing and the consumer will have an idea of the highest and lowest fares on offer for a particular route.

For the sake of transparency, the DGCA has asked scheduled domestic airlines to display established tariff route-wise and fare category-wise on monthly basis and also to notify noticeable changes to DGCA within 24 hours of effecting such a change, said a release issued by the press information bureau.

"The intention behind the above directions is to keep the passengers informed of pricing pattern of airlines. Further, DGCA also monitors tariff on specific sectors on regular basis,'' the release added.

The peak travel season during this Diwali saw airfares on several domestic routes jump to new levels.
"Airfares applicable for domestic passengers are determined by the market forces and are not fixed by the government. Airfares are dependent upon ATF prices, Airport Development Charges, Passenger Services fee, Foreign exchange rates, Service Tax, etc. Fluctuations in any of these components affect the airfares,'' the release added.

"Scheduled airlines offer different fare buckets for each flight and the airfares offered by the airlines in lower bucket are affordable. The airfares increase with the increase in demand for seat, as the lower fare buckets get sold out fast. Random monitoring of domestic airfares revealed that the airfares are remaining within the fare band made available by the scheduled airlines on their respective websites,'' it said.

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Longer tamoxifen use cuts breast cancer deaths

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.

In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.

Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.

About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.

Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.

But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.

The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.

Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.

Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.

Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.

"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.

The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.

The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.

Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.

"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.

Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.

The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Fiscal Cliff: Can Savings Be Found Without Sacrifice?

How does one come up with $4 trillion in revenue and spending cuts?

That's the question members of Congress, the Obama administration and fiscal experts around the country are grappling with as "fiscal cliff" talks continue to stall.

The fiscal cliff is a combination of the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts coupled with a series of deep budgetary cuts to defense and domestic programs- the ultimate goal of which is to help stabilize the deficit going forward. While there is no exact amount of savings and revenue that would stabilize the country's debt- the number varies somewhat depending on who you ask- the generally agreed upon range is around $4 trillion.

Republicans and Democrats are drawing lines in the ideological sand. Democrats want to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the highest income earners, effectively raising tax rates on the top 2 percent of earners, which Republicans oppose. Republicans want to look at entitlement reforms- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, which Democrats oppose. The seemingly staunch stands beg the question--is there any way to reach a deal that would start to generate close to $4 trillion that does not involve raising taxes or reforming entitlement programs?

It's fiscally possible, but it's inconvenient and unlikely.

There are a series of trims that the government could make to the budget that would save a few billion here and there. Ideas that have been suggested include doubling the airline fee for a non-stop flight from $2.50 to $5, reforming our immigration detention programs, and prison reform.

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But those ideas don't generate a great deal of savings in and of themselves. The airline fee increasing for example, it's estimated that raising the non-stop flight fee to $5 would only generate an additional $1 billion a year--$10 billion over the course of 10 years.

Prison reform is another avenue of savings. A study from the Vera Institute of Justice released in January, 2012 showed that in the fiscal year of 2010 the total cost for taxpayers of the nation's federal prisons was $39 billion--which was a little more than $5 billion more than the states' combined corrections budgets that year. The cost of an inmate per taxpayer on average was $31,286.

Reforming the system could trim that cost, but it's a complicated endeavor that lacks a single, or even simple handful of solutions, and at the end of the day wouldn't generate the hundreds of billions of dollars in savings needed to begin approaching the trillions in savings and revenue the government is looking for.

Those big savings, experts point out, are found in entitlements and taxes.

"The high-end Bush tax cuts generate a trillion dollars over 10 years. That's a quarter of the task of stabilizing the debt...That's achievable," said Chuck Marre, director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "If they just pass the tax cuts for 98 percent of the people only, by default that (revenue) happens and that's significant. Then you need to figure out where does the rest of the money come from?"

And a significant area where that money comes from, experts suggest, is entitlement spending.

"I'm sure there are some small programs that could be eliminated or curtailed but it would be a drop in the ocean of spending represented by entitlements," said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, are categorized as mandatory spending in the government's fiscal budget. In the 2010 fiscal year 55 percent of the budget went to mandatory spending. Within that 55 percent, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid made up a total of 71 percent combined, according to figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

It's these avenues that will likely be the quickest and least complicated means of generating the savings necessary to stabilize the debt. Of course, the irony is, these avenues are also the most politically sacred, making a simple and painless fix to the problem effectively impossible.

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Egypt's vice president suggests way out of crisis

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's vice president proposed ideas on Wednesday to defuse unrest over a draft constitution that has polarized the most populous Arab nation, with Islamists fighting opposition protesters near the presidential palace.

Vice President Mahmoud Mekky said amendments to disputed articles could be agreed with the opposition. A written agreement could then be submitted to the next parliament, to be elected after a referendum on the constitution on December 15.

"There must be consensus," he told a news conference, saying opposition demands must be respected to overcome the crisis.

Egyptian opposition leader Amr Moussa said President Mohamed Mursi should make a formal offer for dialogue, rather than what Mekky had presented as personal ideas to resolve the row.

A senior Muslim Brotherhood official said Mekky's proposals needed to be crystallized.

"We are ready when there is something formal, something expressed in definite terms, we will not ignore it, especially if there is something useful," Moussa told Reuters during talks with other opposition figures.

The website of Al-Ahram said opposition leaders were discussing Mekky's proposals.

They have previously urged Mursi to retract a decree widening his powers, defer the plebiscite and agree to revise the constitution, but have not echoed calls from street protesters for his overthrow and the "downfall of the regime".

Mursi had returned to work at his compound a day after it came under siege from protesters furious at his assumption of extraordinary powers via an edict on November 22.

Mursi, narrowly elected by popular vote in June, said he acted to stop courts still full of judges appointed by ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak from derailing a constitution meant to complete a political transition in Egypt, long a strategic ally of Washington and signatory to a 1979 peace deal with Israel.

Rival groups threw stones at each other outside the presidential palace in northern Cairo on Wednesday. Islamist supporters of Mursi tore down tents erected by leftist foes, who had begun a sit-in there.

"They hit us and destroyed our tents. Are you happy, Mursi? Aren't we Egyptians too?" asked protester Haitham Ahmed.

Dozens of opposition supporters streamed away from the palace as hundreds of Islamists arrived, shouting, "God is greatest. The people support the president's decision."

Mohamed Mohy, a pro-Mursi demonstrator who was filming the scene, said: "We are here to support our president and his decisions and save our country from traitors and agents."

Facing the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, Mursi has shown no sign of buckling, confident that Islamists can win the referendum and a parliamentary election to follow.

Many Egyptians yearn for an end to political upheaval that has scared off investors and tourists, damaging the economy.

Mekky said street mobilization by both sides posed a "real danger" to Egypt. "If we do not put a stop to this phenomenon right away ..., where are we headed? We must calm down."

DIALOGUE

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed into Egypt's political debate, saying dialogue was urgently needed on the new constitution, which should "respect the rights of all citizens".

Clinton and Mursi worked together last month to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip.

"It needs to be a two-way dialogue ... among Egyptians themselves about the constitutional process and the substance of the constitution," Clinton told a news conference in Brussels.

Washington is worried about rising Islamist power in Egypt, a staunch security partner under Mubarak, who preserved Cairo's peace treaty with Israel, a pact still bolstered by billions of dollars of U.S. military and economic assistance.

The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Mursi belonged before he was elected, had summoned supporters to an open-ended demonstration at the presidential palace on Wednesday to respond to "oppressive abuses" by opposition parties.

Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan was quoted on its Facebook page as saying opposition groups "imagined they could shake legitimacy or impose their views by force".

Essam el-Erian, deputy head of the Brotherhood's political party, said: "The president will not retreat, and if the state apparatus is weakened by the wounds of the previous period, then the people can impose their will and protect legitimacy."

Leftist opposition leader Hamdeen Sabahy promptly urged his supporters to go to the streets as well, heightening the chances of confrontation between Islamists and their opponents.

Responding to the scuffles at the palace, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei urged Mursi via Twitter to protect protesters there if he wants to keep "what remains of his legitimacy".

About 10,000 protesters had encircled the palace on Tuesday for what organizers dubbed a "last warning" to Mursi. "The people want the downfall of the regime," they chanted, roaring the signature slogan of last year's uprising against Mubarak.

Officials said 35 protesters and 40 police were wounded.

"LEAVE"

The "last warning" may turn out to be one of the last gasps for a disparate opposition that has little chance of scuttling next week's vote on a constitution drawn up over six months and swiftly approved by an Islamist-dominated assembly.

Protesters have scrawled "leave" over Mursi's palace walls, but the president has made clear he is not going anywhere.

Ahmed Kamel, spokesman for the Congress Party led by former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, said Mursi should meet opposition demands, not call for an Islamist counter-demonstration.

Opposition leaders have urged Mursi to scrap his decree, defer the referendum and agree to revise the constitution, but have not echoed protesters' calls for his overthrow.

"The demands of the street are moving faster than those of the politicians," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

State institutions, with the partial exception of the judiciary, have mostly fallen in behind Mursi.

The army, the muscle behind all previous Egyptian presidents in the republic's six-decade history, has gone back to barracks, having apparently lost its appetite to intervene in politics.

In a bold move, Mursi sacked Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the Mubarak-era army commander and defence minister, in August and removed the sweeping powers that the military council, which took over after Mubarak fell, had grabbed two months earlier.

The liberals, leftists, Christians, ex-Mubarak followers and others opposed to Mursi have yet to generate a mass movement or a grassroots political base to challenge the Brotherhood.

Investors have seized on hopes that Egypt's turbulent transition, which has buffeted the economy for two years, may soon head for calmer waters, sending stocks 1.6 percent higher after a 3.5 percent rally on Tuesday.

Egypt has turned to the IMF for a $4.8 billion loan to help it out of a crisis that has depleted its foreign currency reserves. The government said on Wednesday the process was on track and its request would go to the IMF board as expected.

The board is due to review the facility on December 19.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Iran claims US drone captured

TEHRAN: Iran claimed on Tuesday to have captured a small US drone that penetrated its airspace over Gulf waters, but the US Navy in the region denied any of its unmanned spy planes were missing.

The naval arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on the Guards website Sepahnews.com that "the unmanned US drone patrolling Persian Gulf waters, performing reconnaissance and gathering intel, was captured as soon as it entered Iranian airspace."

The statement did not say how the aircraft was captured, nor where or when the incident took place. It said only that the drone had been conducting a mission over "the past few days."

The Guards' naval force, tasked with guarding Iranian assets in the Gulf, said the drone was a Boeing-made ScanEagle, a short-range, propeller-driven surveillance vehicle with a three-metre wingspan that is typically launched from ships and which can fly up to 100 kilometres.

Exactly a year ago, on December 4, Iran claimed to have captured a much bigger and more sophisticated CIA stealth drone, a bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel. Tehran rejected a US request for its return and said it would reverse-engineer that drone to make its own.

At the time, Iran claimed it had brought down the RQ-170 drone electronically, by "spoofing" its GPS guidance system. US officials contended the drone suffered a malfunction.

For the ScanEagle, no explanation was immediately advanced by the Iranians as to how they might have seized it.

A spokesman for US Fifth Fleet, Commander Jason Salata, told AFP that none of the fleet's drones was missing and that "nothing (has been) lost recently, in months."

Salata also said all of the Fifth Fleet's operations in the Gulf "are in compliance with international law," implying that any flights conducted were outside of Iranian airspace.

Several countries apart from the United States use the relatively low-cost ScanEagle drones, including US allies the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Canada, all of which operate in the Gulf. US forces in Iraq also used them before their withdrawal in October 2011.

Iranian State television networks Al-Alam and Press TV showed footage of what they said was the captured ScanEagle drone.

The light-grey, unmarked vehicle was shown suspended inside a hangar and apparently intact, with two Guards officers examining it in front of a poster saying, in English: "We shall trample on the US."

A lawmaker who chairs the Iranian parliament's defence commission, Esmaeel Kosari, boasted to Al-Alam of the drone's capture and warned of "decisive confrontation" if Iranian airspace was violated again.

Foreign Minster Ali Akbar Salehi told state television Iran would protest the incident in international bodies.

"We had officially warned the Americans against violating our territory. Unfortunately they did not listen, and the Guards managed to catch the US drone," Salehi said.

"The captured drone is proof to be used to follow up the American violation at international bodies," Salehi said.

Iran's foreign ministry said last week the United States had violated Iranian airspace eight times in October, and warned of a "serious reaction" if such incursions continued.

On November 1, Iranian fighter jets fired on a US Predator drone in the Gulf but failed to bring it down, according to the US Defence Department.

Iran said the Predator had been on a reconnaissance mission near Bushehr, which hosts its only nuclear power plant, as well as its main oil terminal at Kharg island.

The most recent drone claim adds to military tensions between the two arch-foes in the Gulf.

Iran is subject to US surveillance, notably over its controversial nuclear programme, which the West fears is being used to develop atomic weapons capability.

Iran denies its nuclear activities are anything but peaceful. It refuses to comply with repeated UN Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend uranium enrichment.

- AFP/fa

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India and Pakistan to operationalise new visa agreement during Rehman Malik's Delhi visit

NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan will operationalise new 'liberalized' visa agreement between the two countries during the visit of Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik to New Delhi on December 11-13.

Both the sides had signed it in Islamabad in September, seeking to facilitate more people-to-people contact and trade. Indian home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Tuesday formally invited his Pakistani counterpart for the visit. Islamabad is learnt to have confirmed the three-day visit of Malik who would also like to visit Agra to see Taj Mahal on December 12 which happens to be his birthday. "I have sent the invite (to Malik) through diplomatic channel.

During the visit, the new Indo-Pak visa agreement will be operationalised," Shinde said. He said Malik's birthday falls on December 12 and he had expressed his desire to spend the day at the Taj Mahal and the government would facilitate his visit to the historic city.

Asked whether Malik's wife would also accompany him to Taj Mahal, Shinde said, "We will welcome his visit with family". Operationalisation of the new visa regime almost 10 days before the commencement of the forthcoming India-Pakistan cricket series - beginning December 25 - may turn out to a boon for Pakistani fans as liberalized norms will make it possible for some of them to visit all the five match venues. Under the new visa regime, one can visit five places instead of the three at present. Since the cricket matches will be played in five cities, it may give an opportunity to selected ones on case-to-case basis to avail the benefit of visiting all the five places.

India has already taken decision to issue 3,000 visas, including 1,000 for New Delhi match and 500 each for watching matches in Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Ahmedabad, to Pakistani spectators. Pakistan had initially wanted Malik to visit India on November 11-12.

But, New Delhi turned down the dates suggested by Islamabad due to Diwali on November 13. Both the countries had then discussed about the feasibility of the visit on November 22, but again it could not be confirmed at India's end. Indian officials, later, said that as the government was planning to hang 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab on November 21, the visit was put on hold. Referring to the new visa agreement, sources in the home ministry said that the modalities were, meanwhile, being worked out to bring it into effect simultaneously in both the countries in such a way that it can be formalized jointly by Shinde and Malik. One of the options is to issue 'group' visa to citizens of both countries at the same time and have the first batch of visitors from India and Pakistan welcomed by Shinde and Malik jointly in a function at Wagah border post.

The new visa agreement - introducing for the first time group tourist and pilgrim visas and separate visas for businessmen - was signed in September during the visit of the then Indian foreign minister SM Krishna to Islamabad.

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Tapping citizen-scientists for a novel gut check

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bacterial zoo inside your gut could look very different if you're a vegetarian or an Atkins dieter, a couch potato or an athlete, fat or thin.

Now for a fee — $69 and up — and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what's living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science.

Wait a minute: How many average Joes really want to pay for the privilege of mailing such, er, intimate samples to scientists?

A lot, hope the researchers running two novel citizen-science projects.

One, the American Gut Project, aims to enroll 10,000 people — and a bunch of their dogs and cats too — from around the country. The other, uBiome, separately aims to enroll nearly 2,000 people from anywhere in the world.

"We're finally enabling people to realize the power and value of bacteria in our lives," said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. He's one of a team of well-known scientists involved with the American Gut Project.

Don't be squeamish: Yes, we share our bodies with trillions of microbes, living communities called microbiomes. Many of the bugs, especially those in the intestinal tract, play indispensable roles in keeping us healthy, from good digestion to a robust immune system.

But which combinations of bacteria seem to keep us healthy? Which ones might encourage problems like obesity, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome?

And do diet and lifestyle affect those microbes in ways that we might control someday?

Answering those questions will require studying vast numbers of people. Getting started with a grassroots movement makes sense, said National Institutes of Health microbiologist Lita Proctor, who isn't involved with the new projects but is watching closely.

After all, there was much interest in the taxpayer-funded Human Microbiome Project, which last summer provided the first glimpse of what makes up a healthy bacterial community in a few hundred volunteers.

Proctor, who coordinated that project, had worried "there would be a real ick factor. That has not been the case," she said. Many people "want to engage in improving their health."

Scott Jackisch, a computer consultant in Oakland, Calif., ran across American Gut while exploring the science behind different diets, and signed up last week. He's read with fascination earlier microbiome research: "Most of the genetic matter in what we consider ourselves is not human, and that's crazy. I wanted to learn about that."

Testing a single stool sample costs $99 in that project, but he picked a three-sample deal for $260 to compare his own bacterial makeup after eating various foods.

"I want to be extra, extra well," said Jackisch, 42. Differing gut microbes may be the reason "there's no one magic bullet of diet that people can eat and be healthy."

It's clear that people's gut bacteria can change over time. What this new research could accomplish is a first look at how different diets may play a role, said American Gut lead researcher Rob Knight of the University of Colorado, Boulder.

One challenge is making sure participants don't expect that a map of their gut bacteria can predict their future health, or suggest lifestyle changes, anytime soon.

"I understand I'm not going to be able to say, 'Oh, my gosh, I'll be susceptible to this,'" said Bradley Heinz, 26, a financial consultant in San Francisco. He is paying uBiome $119 to analyze both his gut and mouth microbiomes; just the gut is $69.

"The more people that participate, the more information comes out and the more that everybody benefits," he added.

Participants can sign up for either project via the social fundraising site Indiegogo.com over the next month. They also can send scrapings from the skin, mouth and other sites, to analyze that bacteria. Sign up enough family members or body sites, or be tracked over time, and the price can rise into the thousands. American Gut researchers plan some free testing for those who can't afford the fees, to try to increase the experiment's diversity.

Don't forget the pets: "We sleep with them, play with them, they often eat our food," said American Gut co-founder Jeff Leach, an anthropologist. What bacteria we have in common is the next logical question.

Already, American Gut researchers are preparing to compare what they find in the typical U.S. gut with a few hundred people in rural Namibia, who eat what's described as hunter-gatherer fare. Also, Leach will spend three months living in Namibia next year, and is storing his own stool samples for before-and-after comparison.

But diet isn't the only factor. Your bacterial makeup starts at birth: Babies absorb different microbes when they're born vaginally than when they're born by C-section, a possible explanation for why cesareans raise the risk for certain infections. Taking antibiotics, especially in early childhood, can alter this teeming inner world, and it's not clear if there are lasting consequences.

Then there's your environment, such as the infections spread in hospitals. In February, a new University of Chicago hospital building opens and Gilbert will test the surfaces, the patients and their health workers to see how quickly bad bugs can move in and identify which bacteria are protective.

Whatever the findings, all the research marks "a huge teachable moment" about how we interact with microbes, Leach said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

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Online:

www.indiegogo.com/americangut

www.indiegogo.com/ubiome

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Insiders Reveal 2012 Election Secrets

Pete Souza/White House

The 2012 election cycle came full circle last week when representatives from the Obama and Romney campaigns, as well as top advisers to many of the GOP primary candidates and several influential outside groups, gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a 2012 debrief — finally answering some of the lingering questions about the race.

On neutral ground in Cambridge, Mass., fierce rivals (think Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades and strategist Stuart Stevens and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina and strategist David Axelrod) met for the first time since the election — and many for the first time ever.

The conference, organized by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, featured a who’s who of political bold-faced names from campaign 2012, including senior campaign aides like Romney political director Rich Beeson and pollster Neil Newhouse, Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter and digital director Teddy Goff, Rick Santorum adviser John Brabender, former Rick Perry campaign operatives Rob Johnson and Dave Carney and even Mark Block, who ran Herman Cain’s short-lived but much-talked-about presidential bid.

Representatives from the outside groups that had so much influence — and spent so much money — on the election were also on hand, including Bill Burton, senior strategist for the pro-Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action; Steven Law, head of the pro-Republican group American Crossroads; and Tim Phillips, president of the conservative Americans for Prosperity.

Dozens of campaign 2012 veterans and journalists were on hand for the sessions, which covered the GOP primary, the general election, campaign strategy, the debates, conventions and the emerging power of the super PACS.

Here are some of the highlights from the conference:

Romney’s Campaign Concedes Immigration Position in Primary Was a Mistake

Mitt Romney’s decision to take a hard-line stance on immigration during the GOP primary was considered a big reason for his paltry 27 percent showing among Latino voters. But, the conventional wisdom has suggested that Romney couldn’t have won the primary without drawing a strong contrast with Texas Gov. Rick Perry on this hot-button issue.

Romney campaign manager Matt Rhodes, however, says that his candidate could have won the primary without attacking Perry’s support for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.  When asked by panel moderator Jonathan Martin of Politico whether he “regret[s] trying to outflank Perry on the right on immigration,” Rhoades took a long pause, and then shifted the conversation to Perry’s controversial statements about Social Security. Romney had attacked the Texas governor for calling the popular entitlement program a “Ponzi scheme” and a “failure.”

“In retrospect,” Rhoades said. “I believe we probably could have just beaten Perry with the Social Security hit.”

So while Rhoades never said he wished that Romney had never uttered the words, “self-deportation” he essentially conceded that he regrets the immigration position the governor took in the primary.

The Obama Campaign Only Fully Committed to Florida in Mid-September

If there was one state that the Romney campaign felt confident they were going to win it was Florida. And, until mid-September, the Obama campaign wasn’t convinced that they were going to contest the state. That changed in the aftermath of the strong convention in Charlotte, however, and the Obama campaign decided that they were going to go “full out” to win there.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod:

“One of the things that we had discussed internally was the state of Florida and how we were going to treat Florida. We had made a decision that we were going to wait until mid September and after the conventions to see where we were in Florida before we fully committed. We were in, we had invested a lot, but we hadn’t been in the Miami media market. When we emerged from conventions not only had we gotten a little bump, but we saw Florida remained very competitive and made the decision to go full out in Florida.”

Team Romney Never Read Clint Eastwood Speech

Romney strategist and convention director Russ Schrieffer was asked by panel moderator Ron Brownstein of National Journal if anyone actually read a copy of Eastwood’s speech. The answer: not so much.

Russ Schrieffer: “I said [to Eastwood] are you going to do what we talked about, are you going to talk about what you talked about at these fundraisers. And he looked at me and said.. ‘Yep.’ ”

Laughter followed Schrieffer’s comments to which he replied:

“It’s Clint Eastwood, you argue with him.”

Republicans Are Worried (And Rightly So) About the Technology Gap With Democrats: 

Jon Huntsman’s campaign manager Matt David noted that “one area we should freak out about is technology. The GOP is far behind there.”

The Obama campaign used social media as a means to an end — using technology as a way to recruit, persuade, target and turn out voters.  Obama’s digital campaign guru Teddy Goff pointed to the power of Facebook in helping to find a previously unreachable group of potential voters: the friends of those who were already voting for the President.

In 2008, said Goff, they found that “99 percent of our email list voted.” As such, Goff said, “We entered into this election, with an understanding that anyone we were talking to directly, the vast majority were voting for us. So the question was … how can we serve them with stuff that will make them go out and get their friends.” And, Obama’s Facebook fans were a great place to start. Obama’s 33 million Facebook fans globally are friends with 98 percent of the U.S. Facebook population, Goff said.

Facebook also helped the campaign track down their coveted 18-to-29-year-old cohort. Goff explained that they were unable to reach half of their 18-to-29 GOTV targets by phone because they didn’t have a phone number for them. But, he said, they could reach 85 percent of that group via a Friend of Barack Obama on Facebook. “We had an ability to reach those people who simply otherwise couldn’t be reached,” Goff said.

Was the Romney High Command Really and Truly Shocked on Election Night? 

Neil Newhouse, Romney pollster:

“Here’s what we saw in the data: you have to give credit to the Obama campaign for undercutting it. We saw in the last two weeks, an intensity advantage, a campaign interest advantage, an enthusiasm advantage for Republicans and Mitt Romney. … Just the same as we saw four years ago on behalf of Barack Obama. We thought it would tilt the partisan make-up of the electorate a couple points in our direction.

“We weren’t surprised by racial composition; we were surprised by the partisan composition. … The real hidden story here on our side, the number of white men who didn’t vote in this election compared to four years ago was extraordinary. And these white men were replaced by white women. We were taking a group we won by 27 points and replacing them with a group we won by 12-14 points.”

Perry Should Have Waited Until Late Fall, Not Summer, to Jump In:

Perry strategist Dave Carney said the biggest tactical mistake made by Perry was that “we should have started years ago.” Perry, as governor in a state with a part-time legislature, “had a lot of time on his hands” — he should have used that time, and his role as RGA chair, to meet donors and travel the country before 2011. Once Perry decided to get in, however, Carney argues the Perry should have waited until mid-October or November to get into the race. That extra few months, said Carney, “would have given us more time to be prepared and do the groundwork that was necessary on the issues.”

What Role Did Karl Rove Play With Republican Outside Groups Like American Crossroads, Which He Co-founded?

Steven Law, president and CEO of American Crossroads and president CrossroadsGPS:

“Karl … recognized it was really important to not simply have an organization exist in a particular cycle for a tactical use but to … start to build enduring institutional strength on the right the way that we saw the unions providing that for the Democrats. … And then there were certain other parts that I think Karl really gets credit for. The first is encouraging us to reach out to other center-right groups and to try to start to collaborate where we were legally permitted to do so to share information and encourage people to pull the oars in the same direction. On the fundraising side both he and Ed [Gillespie] and then later on Haley Barbour were all tremendously instrumental in harvesting their Rolodexes and relationships. Karl is a guy that’s got tremendously good ideas, and again, not so much on the tactical side but more kind of broad strategic moments and was a tremendously useful and valuable source of ideas along the way.”

Bill Burton, senior adviser, Priorities USA Action:

“He also helped us raise money. I probably e-mailed out every one of his columns to our donors — our high-dollar list — to point out what they were saying on the Republican side and how confident Rove was. … When he would go on TV bursting with confidence about Romney winning, that little click went around every single time. Karl Rove is an enduring figure for both sides.”

After Rove’s Appearance on Fox News on Election Night, Is He Discredited Within the Republican Party?

Steven Law:

“Absolutely not. We all get our turn in the barrel.”

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NATO warns Syria not to use chemical weapons

BEIRUT (Reuters) - NATO told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday that any use of chemical weapons in his fight against encroaching rebel forces would be met by an immediate international response.

The warning from NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen came as U.S. government sources said Washington had information that Syria was making what could be seen as preparations to use its chemical arsenal.

Syrian forces meanwhile bombarded rebel districts near Damascus in a sustained counter-attack to stem rebel gains around Assad's power base.

Syrian state media said a rebel mortar attack on a school had killed 28 students and a teacher.

International concern over Syria's intentions has been heightened by reports that its chemical weapons have been moved and could be prepared for use.

"The possible use of chemical weapons would be completely unacceptable for the whole international community and if anybody resorts to these terrible weapons I would expect an immediate reaction from the international community," Rasmussen told reporters at the start of a meeting of alliance foreign ministers in Brussels.

The chemical threat made it urgent for the alliance to send Patriot anti-missile missiles to Turkey, Rasmussen said.

The French Foreign Ministry referred to "possible movements on military bases storing chemical weapons in Syria" and said the international community would react if the weapons were used.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday told Assad not to use chemical weapons, without saying how the United States might respond. The Foreign Ministry in Damascus said it would never use such weapons against Syrians.

The U.S. has collected what has been described as highly classified intelligence information demonstrating that Syria is making what could be construed as preparations to use elements of its extensive chemical weapons arsenal, two U.S. government sources briefed on the issue said.

One of the sources said that there was no question that the US "Intelligence community" had received information pointing to "preparations" under way in Syria related to chemical weapons. The source declined to specify what kind of preparations had been reported, or how close the intelligence indicated the Syrians were to deploying or even using the weapons.

Western military experts say Syria has four suspected chemical weapons sites, and it can produce chemical weapons agents including mustard gas and sarin, and possibly also VX nerve agent. The CIA has estimated that Syria possesses several hundred liters of chemical weapons and produces hundreds of tonnes of agents annually.

FLIGHTS SUSPENDED

The fighting around Damascus has led foreign airlines to suspend flights and prompted the United Nations and European Union to reduce their presence in the capital, adding to a sense that the fight is closing in.

The army fightback came a day after the Syrian foreign ministry spokesman was reported to have defected in a potentially embarrassing blow to the government.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 200 people were killed across Syria on Monday, more than 60 of them around Damascus. Assad's forces bombarded districts to the south-east of the capital on Tuesday, near to the international airport, and in the rebel bastion of Daraya to the south-west.

Opposition footage posted on the Internet showed a multiple rocket launcher fire 20 rockets, which activists said was filmed at the Mezze military airport in Damascus.

Reuters could not independently verify the footage due to the government's severe reporting restrictions.

In central Damascus, shielded for many months from the full force of a civil war in which 40,000 people have been killed, one resident reported hearing several loud explosions.

"I have heard four or five thunderous blows. It could be barrel bombs," she said, referring to makeshift bombs which activists say Assad's forces have dropped from helicopters on rebel-dominated areas.

The state news agency said that 28 students and a teacher were killed near the capital when rebels fired a mortar bomb on a school. Rebels have targeted government-held residential districts of the capital.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebel forces have made advances in recent weeks, seizing military bases, including some close to Damascus, from forces loyal to Assad, who is from Syria's Alawite minority linked to Shi'ite Islam.

Faced with creeping rebel gains across the north and east of the country, and the growing challenge around the capital, Assad has increasingly resorted to air strikes against the insurgents.

A diplomat in the Middle East said Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi had left the country and defected, while the British-based Observatory said it had information that he flew from Beirut on Monday afternoon heading for London.

In Beirut, a diplomat said Lebanese officials had confirmed that Makdissi spent several days in Beirut before leaving on Monday, but could not confirm his destination.

"We're aware of reports that he has defected and may be coming to the UK. We're seeking clarification," a Foreign Office spokeswoman in London said.

Makdissi was the public face to the outside world of Assad's government as it battled the 20-month-old uprising. But he had barely appeared in public for several weeks before Monday's report of his defection.

He had little influence in a system largely run by the security apparatus and the military. But Assad's opponents will see the loss of such a high profile figure, if confirmed, as further evidence of a system crumbling from within.

ESCALATED VIOLENCE

The United Nations and European Union both said they were reducing their presence in Syria in response to the escalated violence around the capital.

A spokesman for U.N. humanitarian operations said the move would not stop aid deliveries to areas which remained accessible to relief convoys.

"U.N.-funded aid supplies delivered through SARC (Syrian Arab Red Crescent) and other charities are still moving daily where the roads are open," Jens Laerke told Reuters in Geneva.

"We have not suspended our operation, we are reducing the non-essential international staff."

Three remaining international staff at the European Union delegation, who stayed on in Damascus after the departure of most Western envoys, crossed the border into Lebanon on Tuesday after pulling out of the Syrian capital.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Cairo, Erika Solomon, Oliver Holmes and Ayat Basma in Beirut, Mark Hosenball, Mohammed Abbas and David Cutler in London, and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)

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