Noted FYI:

Two American sailors were shot dead and one was critically wounded at the U.S. navy base in Bahrain, but there were no indications of a terrorist attack, the navy said on Monday.

The shootings took place at about 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), the navy said in a statement, adding that initial reports indicated the incident only involved U.S. military personnel.

“Two sailors were pronounced dead at the scene and the third was taken to local hospital for treatment. There are no indications of terrorism or a base intrusion,” the navy said.

The navy gave no explanation for the shootings, which took place in the base’s barracks, and said the names of the sailors were being withheld. Article

Imbalance for power.

Attempts to reduce US dependence on imported oil by adding more ethanol to its gas tanks are only driving up food prices while delivering moot energy benefits, a Canadian bank warned on Monday.

Corn prices have already jumped by 60 percent over the past two years as American ethanol producers expanded capacity, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets.

In 2008, food inflation would top five percent and the following year would approach seven percent, its highest level in more than 25 years, he said.

“This diversion of an ever-increasing share of the American corn crop from human consumption and livestock feed to energy production is putting steady and unrelenting pressure on food prices,” Rubin said in a statement.

“Soaring corn prices not only pass directly into animal feed costs and corn-based food prices like tortillas, but they are spilling over to other grain prices as farmers scramble to expand corn production at the expense of other crops,” he said. Article

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

All seven hostages seized by gunmen from an offshore Nigerian oilfield were released on Monday after two days in captivity, a state government spokesman said.

“All seven have been freed. They are in a government house,” said Ebimo Amungo, a spokesman for Bayelsa state government, where the kidnapping had taken place.

The four Nigerians, a Briton, a Russian and a Croat were all in good health.

[snip]

A spokesman for a prominent militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), claimed responsibility for the abduction.

However, industry and security sources said the claim did not ring true. It was more likely an attempt by a delta warlord to gain relevance with local authorities, they said. Article

Noted FYI:

The knock-out gas that special forces pumped into Moscow’s Dubrovka theater to end the hostage crisis five years ago sent baffled scientists scrambling in their laboratories in the United States and Europe.

Now, five years later, the verdict is in. The mysterious substance appears to have been an FSB-made version of carfentanyl, an artificial, opium-like substance that is 10,000 times more potent than morphine and usually used to immobilize large animals. And, as it turns out, the gas wasn’t really a gas at all but an aerosol — tiny particles that float in the air.

[snip]

Doctors who treated the hostages have said they worked in the dark without knowing what substance had been released in the theater to end the 56-hour siege in the early morning of Oct. 26, 2002. Government officials, who initially described the substance as a gas, still treat its contents as a state secret.

But a first clue about its composition came shortly after the end of the crisis when then-Health Minister Yury Shevchenko said it was a derivative of fentanyl, an artificial opioid about 80 times more powerful than morphine. One of fentanyl’s most potent derivatives is carfentanyl, which is so powerful that a tiny drop can put down an elephant.

Russian and Western scientists who have examined former hostages said their findings point to carfentanyl as the mysterious substance. Lev Fyodorov, a former Soviet chemical weapons scientist who heads the Council for Chemical Security, an environmental group, said it was probably the Federal Security Service-developed narcotic more generally known by the code name Kolokol 1, or Bell 1. Article

A world turned upside-down.

Russia will create an organization to track and monitor human rights abuses in Europe and the US…. Source

The fuller the cup, the faster it drains.

Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer’s disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly, researchers said on Monday.

Their study, published in the journal Neurology, tracked memory loss in a group of elderly people from New York City’s Bronx borough before they were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or another form of old-age dementia.

Every year of education delayed the accelerated memory decline that precedes dementia by about 2-1/2 months, according to the researchers at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

But once this memory loss began, the rate of decline unfolded 4 percent more quickly for each additional year of education, the researchers said.

Someone with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education, based on the findings.

[snip]

“An elderly person who starts to see memory loss might well deteriorate fairly rapidly, particularly if he or she has a high education or high IQ,” Charles Hall, a professor of epidemiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

“And this is important to clinicians to know so they can advise their patients that things might well get very bad very fast, whereas in a lot of other people the decline is relatively gradual over a long period of time,” Hall added.

People with more years of formal education appear to have a greater “cognitive reserve,” Hall said, referring to the brain’s ability to keep working despite damage.

While better-educated people may be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s later than people with less education, it appears they have suffered brain damage but their “cognitive reserve” was able to hide and delay the effects, the researchers said.

The study started in the 1980s, tracking 488 people born from 1894 and 1908 and giving them periodic memory tests. The findings published on Monday were based on 117 of them who eventually developed Alzheimer’s or another dementia.

Most of the participants were followed until either death or diagnosis of dementia. Those diagnosed with dementia were followed for up to about 16 years, with an average of six years.

The study included people with postgraduate education as well as others with fewer than three years of elementary school. Hall noted that levels of education that people received varied much more in the early part of the 20th century than they do now. Article

Noted FYI:

Microsoft finally admitted defeat in its nine-year battle with the European Commission on Monday, agreeing to allow competitors access to technology that Brussels said would create more innovation in the software market.

The US software developer agreed to comply with the EU antitrust regulator’s finding that it was abusing its dominance, upheld by the European Court in 2004. The result would be lower prices and more choice for customers, the Commission said.

“I welcome the fact that Microsoft has finally undertaken concrete steps to ensure full compliance with the 2004 decision,” Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner, said in Brussels. “It is regrettable that Microsoft has only complied after a considerable delay, two court decisions and the imposition of daily penalty payments.” Article