Mali crisis: Chad's Idriss Deby announces troop pullout

 

 Chad's soldiers are respected for their experience in desert warfare

Chad, one of the largest supplier of troops battling Islamists in Mali, has started to pull them out, President Idriss Deby has said.

"The Chadian army does not have the skills to fight a shadowy, guerrilla-style war that is taking place in northern Mali," he said.
Three Chadian soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Mali on Friday.
Soldiers from Chad, France and other African countries have ousted Islamist militants from northern Mali's towns.
But fighting continues in some remote parts of the Sahara Desert.
Chad's 2,000 troops were seen as playing a crucial role in the fighting because of their experience in desert warfare.
About 30 have been killed - more than any other nationality, reports the Reuters news agency.
Three of them died in a suicide attack in Kidal on Friday.
Mr Deby told French media that Chad's soldiers had "accomplished their mission".
"We have already withdrawn a mechanised battalion," he said.
But he said Chad would contribute to a proposed 11,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali.
France has also started to withdraw some of its 4,000 soldiers and hopes to have just 1,000 in the country by the end of the year.
France led the intervention in January, saying the al-Qaeda-linked militants were threatened to march on the capital, Bamako.

Scientists make 'laboratory-grown' kidney

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

 

The rat kidney was grown in the laboratory

A kidney "grown" in the laboratory has been transplanted into animals where it started to produce urine, US scientists say.

Similar techniques to make simple body parts have already been used in patients, but the kidney is one of the most complicated organs made so far.
A study, in the journal Nature Medicine, showed the engineered kidneys were less effective than natural ones.
But regenerative medicine researchers said the field had huge promise.
Kidneys filter the blood to remove waste and excess water. They are also the most in-demand organ for transplant, with long waiting lists.
The researchers' vision is to take an old kidney and strip it of all its old cells to leave a honeycomb-like scaffold. The kidney would then be rebuilt with cells taken from the patient.
This would have two major advantages over current organ transplants.
The tissue would match the patient, so they would not need a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system to prevent rejection.
It would also vastly increase the number of organs available for transplant. Most organs which are offered are rejected, but they could be used as templates for new ones.
Scaffolding Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have taken the first steps towards creating usable engineered kidneys.
They took a rat kidney and used a detergent to wash away the old cells.
The remaining web of proteins, or scaffold, looks just like a kidney, including an intricate network of blood vessels and drainage pipes.

This protein plumbing was used to pump the right cells to the right part of the kidney, where they joined with the scaffold to rebuild the organ.

It was kept in a special oven to mimic the conditions in a rat's body for the next 12 days.
When the kidneys were tested in the laboratory, urine production reached 23% of natural ones.
The team then tried transplanting an organ into a rat. Once inside the body, the kidney's effectiveness fell to 5%.
Yet the lead researcher, Dr Harald Ott, told the BBC that restoring a small fraction of normal function could be enough: "If you're on haemodialysis then kidney function of 10% to 15% would already make you independent of haemodialysis. It's not that we have to go all the way."
He said the potential was huge: "If you think about the United States alone, there's 100,000 patients currently waiting for kidney transplants and there's only around 18,000 transplants done a year.
"I think the potential clinical impact of a successful treatment would be enormous."

" Really impressive'

There is a huge amount of further research that would be needed before this is even considered in people.
The technique needs to be more efficient so a greater level of kidney function is restored. Researchers also need to prove that the kidney will continue to function for a long time.
There will also be challenges with the sheer size of a human kidney. It is harder to get the cells in the right place in a larger organ.
Prof Martin Birchall, a surgeon at University College London, has been involved in windpipe transplants produced from scaffolds.
He said: "It's extremely interesting. It is really impressive.
"They've addressed some of the main technical barriers to making it possible to use regenerative medicine to address a really important medical need."
He said that being able to do this for people needing an organ transplant could revolutionise medicine: "It's almost the nirvana of regenerative medicine, certainly from a surgical point of view, that you could meet the biggest need for transplant organs in the world - the kidney."

From BBC.

Chavez heir Maduro wins Venezuela presidential election

Will Grant in Caracas: ''It's a questionable victory from the opposition's point of view''

Socialist Nicolas Maduro, hand-picked successor of the late leader Hugo Chavez, has won a narrow victory in Venezuela's presidential poll.

Mr Maduro won 50.7% of the vote against 49.1% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
Mr Capriles has demanded a recount, saying Mr Maduro was now "even more loaded with illegitimacy".
He said there were more than 300,000 incidents from Sunday's poll that would need to be examined.

Announcing the results late on Sunday night, the National Electoral Council said they were "irreversible".

As the news emerged, celebrations erupted in the capital, Caracas, where Mr Maduro's jubilant supporters set off fireworks and blasted car horns. Opposition voters banged pots and pans in protest.
In a victory speech outside the presidential palace, Mr Maduro, wearing the colours of the Venezuelan flag, told crowds that the result was "just, legal and constitutional".
He said his election showed Hugo Chavez "continues to be invincible, that he continues to win battles''.
Mr Maduro said he had spoken to Mr Capriles on the phone, and that he would allow an audit of the election result.
He called for those who had not voted for him to "work together" for the country.

But Mr Maduro's margin of victory was far narrower than that achieved by Chavez at elections last October, when he beat Mr Capriles by more than 10%.
Almost immediately one member of the National Electoral Council who does not have government sympathies called on the authorities to carry out a recount by hand, a call later echoed by Mr Capriles himself.

At Mr Capriles' campaign headquarters the mood was sombre, as his supporters watched the results on television. Some cried, while others hung their heads in dismay,

Shortly afterwards, Mr Capriles emerged, angry and defiant.
"It is the government that has been defeated," he said. Then, addressing Mr Maduro directly, he said: "The biggest loser today is you. The people don't love you."
The new president faces an extremely complex task in office, says the BBC's Central America correspondent, Will Grant.
Venezuela has one of the highest rates of inflation in the region and crime rates have soared in recent years, particularly in Caracas. Food shortages and electricity blackouts are also common.

But perhaps Mr Maduro's biggest challenge will be trying to govern a country which is so deeply divided and polarised, and where the opposition say they have an increasingly legitimate stake in the decision-making process, our correspondent says.
The closeness of the race has also caused reflection inside Mr Maduro's own United Socialist Party (PSUV).
The man considered to be Mr Maduro's main rival, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, tweeted that the results "oblige us to make a profound self-criticism".

From BBC

Man City against Chelsea, tickets sold out in 15 minutes.

Tickets for an epic soccer match in May sold out within fifteen minutes of going on sale. It has been less than two weeks since it was announced that two rich English premier league clubs; Manchester City and Chelsea will clash in an exhibition match in St Louis Busch stadium at the end of May, but the tickets went out so fast as if people have been waiting for this game for years. St Louis has no soccer team in the MLS. This fact probably made the organizers to not anticipate how popular this game is going to be. Social media was filled with furious posts from the St louisans who could not purchase the tickets. The furry came from the fact that a lot of tickets have surfaced on the internet going for as much as $20,000. The fact that the game sold out so fast may be is going to help getting more soccer games in St Louis or even get St Louis it's own soccer team in MLS.
Sent via the HTC Vivid™, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

Syrian war planes carried attacks on Lebanon

It has been reported that the Syrian war planes have carried out raids across the border in Lebanon. I have no more details on the incident at the moment but if this is true, is it not time for the international community to take military action against Syria?

Sent via the HTC Vivid™, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

Swali la kizushi

Eti Manchester United wanapolia Ba maana yake wamegeuka kondoo?