Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey 'in serious condition'

A Scottish nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone last year is in a "serious condition" after being readmitted to an isolation unit in London.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde confirmed that the virus is still present in Pauline Cafferkey's body after being left over from the original infection.
She is not thought to be contagious.
The 39-year-old has been flown back to the isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
Bodily tissues can harbour the Ebola infection months after the person appears to have fully recovered.
Ms Cafferkey, from Cambuslang in South Lanarkshire, spent almost a month in the unit at the beginning of the year after contracting the virus in December 2014.

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NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) said she had been admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow on Tuesday after feeling unwell and was treated in its infectious diseases unit.
She was then transferred to the Royal Free Hospital in the early hours of Friday morning due to an "unusual late complication" in her illness.
Dr Emilia Crighton, NHSGGC director of public health, said: "Pauline's condition is a complication of a previous infection with the Ebola virus.
"The risk to the public is very low. In line with normal procedures in cases such as this, we have identified a small number of close contacts of Pauline's that we will be following up as a precaution."
Government sources have described her transfer to the specialist unit as a "highly precautionary process"

Islamic State closes in on Syrian city of Aleppo; U.S. abandons rebel training effort

Islamic State fighters have seized villages close to the northern city of Aleppo from rival insurgents, a monitoring group said on Friday, despite an intensifying Russian air-and-sea campaign that Moscow says has targeted the militant group.
News of the advance came as the United States announced it was largely abandoning its failed program to train moderate rebels fighting Islamic State and would instead provide arms and equipment directly to rebel leaders and their units on the battlefield.
The Obama administration is grappling with a dramatic change in the four-year-old Syrian civil war brought about by Moscow's intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Pentagon said on Friday it expected to hold new talks with Russia's military on pilot safety in Syria's war as soon as this weekend, as the former Cold War foes seek to avoid an accidental clash as they carry out rival bombing campaigns.
The Russian defense ministry said stepped-up air strikes on rebel positions in Syria killed 300 anti-Assad rebels and that it hit 60 Islamic State targets over the last day. There was no independent confirmation of the death toll.
About 200 insurgents were killed in an attack on the Liwa al-Haqq group in Raqqa province while 100 died in Aleppo, the defense ministry said. Two Islamic State commanders were among the dead in Russia's most intense raids since it launched strikes in Syria 10 days ago. In previous updates Russia has reported hitting 10 targets daily.
However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the fighting, said there had been no significant advances by government forces backed by allied militia in areas where ground offensives were launched this week. "It's back and forth," said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Observatory.
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps said separately that one of its generals had been killed near Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city. Iran, like Russia an Assad ally, says it has advisers in the country.
Islamic State is now within 2 km (1.2 miles) of government-held territory on the northern edge of Aleppo, which has suffered widespread damage and disease during the civil war that erupted in the wake of protests against Assad.
Syria's military, backed by Russia, Iran and allied militias, has launched a major attack in Syria's west to recapture land lost to non-IS rebels near the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect. That area is vital to Assad's survival.
A senior regional official close to the Syrian government said: "The Iranians are at the heart of the battle, with strength and effectiveness. Yes they are participating."
As the government operation in the west pushed ahead, Islamic State said its fighters had captured five villages in its northern offensive and had killed more than 10 soldiers or militiamen. Powerful insurgent group Ahrar al-Sham managed to recapture one of the villages, Tel Suseen, later in the day, the Observatory and online media affiliated with the rebels said, but the others appeared to remain in IS hands.
The British-based Observatory said it was the biggest advance by Islamic State since it launched an offensive against rival rebels in Aleppo near the Turkish border in late August.
"DAESH EXPLOIT RUSSIAN STRIKES"
"Daesh has exploited the Russian air strikes and the preoccupation of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army in its battles in Hama, and advanced in Aleppo," said one rebel commander with fighters in the region, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.
Russian warplanes and warships have been bombarding targets across Syria in a campaign Moscow says is targeting IS fighters, who control large parts of eastern Syria and of Iraq.
But the campaign appears to have mainly struck other rebel groups, some of which had been battling to stop the Islamic State advance across Aleppo province.
U.S. and Russian warplanes are now flying missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two, risking incidents between the two air forces and their fast jets.
Seeking to underline the dangers, U.S. officials said four Russian cruise missiles fired from a warship in the Caspian Sea had crashed in Iran, which drew a swift denial from Russia.
Speaking in London on Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, however, that the United States had indications that Russian cruise missiles malfunctioned.
Washington said it was pulling the plug on a short-lived $580 million program to train and equip units of fighters at sites outside of Syria, after its disastrous launch this year fanned criticism of President Barack Obama's war strategy.
The Pentagon said it would shift its focus to providing weapons and other equipment to rebel groups whose leaders have passed a U.S. vetting process to ensure they are not linked to militant Islamist groups.
France has also been involved in the anti-Islamic State effort, launching its first air strike in Syria on Sept. 27.
French Rafale warplanes attacked an IS training camp in their stronghold of Raqqa overnight. "We struck because we know that in Syria, particularly around Raqqa, there are training camps for foreign fighters whose mission is not to fight Daesh on the Levant but to come to France, in Europe to carry out attacks," said French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
ALAWITE HEARTLAND
The Observatory reported a new wave of Russian air strikes in the west on Friday morning on Hama and Idlib, apparently in support of the ground offensive against anti-Assad rebels.
The offensive has focused around the Ghab Plain, next to Syria's western mountain range which forms the Alawite heartland and the important strategic main north-south highway running north from Hama towards the cities of Idlib and Aleppo.
Securing those areas would help consolidate Assad's control over Syria's main population centers in the west of the country, far from the Islamic State strongholds in the east.
Abu al-Baraa, a fighter with the Ajnad al-Sham rebel group, speaking to Reuters via Internet messenger from the Ghab Plain, said: "The regime has been trying since yesterday to advance ... and tried many times, with Russian jets paving their way, but ... most of the attacks are repelled. Also a number of heavy regime vehicles have been destroyed in the Ghab region."
Alongside the Russian air-and-sea campaign, regional officials have told Reuters that hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria since late September to support the Syrian army and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.
Senior Iranian officials have been in Syria for several years as military advisers. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards said a senior general, Hossein Hamedani, was killed near Aleppo late on Thursday. Hamedani was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and was made deputy chief commander in 2005. Several senior Guard commanders have been killed in Syria.
Turkey said on Friday it was concerned about a possible fresh wave of Syrian migrants arriving at its border as a result of Russian air strikes. The conflict has killed 250,000 people and displaced millions, causing a refugee crisis in neighboring nations and in Europe.

FIFA CORRUPTION CASE

the governing body of association football, futsal and beach soccer.
Near the end of May 2015, fourteen people were indicted in connection with an investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI) into wire fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. The United States Attorney simultaneously unsealed the indictments and the prior guilty pleas by four football executives and two corporations.

'The Martian' just scratches surface of danger on Mars

Martians are not the villains. Mars is. At least, that's the message in the new big-screen space thriller "The Martian."
After an astronaut is stranded alone at a Martian research base, the planet does its best to starve, suffocate, and freeze the puny human. Yet the perils in the movie are just a taste of the challenges that Mars will throw at humans who try to keep themselves alive on the surface.
Space experts say the film, which opens nationwide Friday, paints a plausible vision of Mars exploration – "the best space movie since '2001,' " says Robert Braun, NASA's former chief technologist for NASA – but glosses over some of the worst character traits of by the planet next door.
Some of the dangers brushed off in the movie could ensure that "The Martian" remains solidly in the camp of science fiction for a long time to come. Among the possible hazards:
- Dust. Moon dust made the Apollo astronauts sneeze and gummed up their spacesuits. Mars dust could be even worse. On the moon, dust settles quickly, but on Mars, the winds keep dust aloft, says Braun, now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Even worse, the Martian soil is full of a toxic salt called perchlorate, which causes thyroid malfunction."If the amount of perchlorate that's in the soil of Mars were in your backyard, the EPA would turn your yard into a Superfund site," says Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. The perchlorate level on Mars "is thousands of times higher than the highest limit that's acceptable for human exposure." NASA plans to keep dust at bay by having astronauts leave their spacesuits outside, which would mean a lot less dusting for the crew.
- Radiation. Unlike Earth, Mars has only a wispy atmosphere and no protective magnetic shield. As a result, galactic radiation bombards the planet's surface. The best protection would be a thick layer of water or Martian soil. That glass-walled residence that shelters Matt Damon in "The Martian"? "I wouldn't use it. I'd want a big, deep hole," says planetary Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.
A Mars expedition would expose a crew to more radiation than NASA guidelines permitand would lead to a slightly higher cancer risk, says Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. The trip to and from the planet, rather than the surface sojourn, is the more dangerous phase. But a big solar storm that unleashed a cascade of radioactive particles into space could be lethal to humans on the planet's surface unless they took shelter.- Reduced gravity. Martian gravity is roughly one-third the gravity on Earth. Experiments on the International Space Station show that plants, animals and humans all suffer in weightlessness, but no one knows how living creatures will fare in reduced gravity.
"Maybe plants will be happy, maybe animals will be happy, maybe humans will be happy," McKay says. "Or maybe not." The effect of reduced gravity isn't easily tested ahead of time and though probably not a huge problem, it could be a "showstopper," McKay says.
Mars madness. On Mars, astronauts will cope with long delays in their communication with Earth and the knowledge that if they get into trouble, no one can help them. The sense of isolation will be heightened by what's known as the "Earth-out-of-viewphenomenon: Mars crews will see Earth as a tiny star in the sky, and it's not clear how humans will respond to such a bizarre and unprecedented sight.Studies of polar explorers and other groups show that isolation and confinement can lead to depression, sleep problems and loneliness, which can in turn sap crew members' energy and judgment. In "The Martian," Matt Damon's character maintains a wisecracking good cheer for the duration. Just such a sense of humor will be crucial for humans making a genuine trip to the planet, says human-performance expert Jason Kring of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
Despite the long list of threats posed by Mars, it also boasts soil that could be tilled and, as scientists revealed earlier this week, liquid water. There's plenty of carbon dioxide to supply plants and to be processed to make oxygen.
"We will discover more issues that we need to address, but they're also unlikely to change the basic story," McKay says, "that this is indeed a place where humans can live and work."

Oregon college that left 10 dead

The gunman who killed nine people and injured seven at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. Thursday before being killed by police has been identified as Chris Harper Mercer, two law enforcement sources confirmed to Fox News.

No background on Mercer - or details about any possible motive - were released. However, Fox was told that as a precaution, counterterrorism officials were running his name against watchlists and checking his e-mail history, phone logs, social media profiles and online history to rule out any links to terrorism.

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Roseburg is about 180 miles south of Portland. (Google Maps)

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said that as of Thursday night, "we are reporting 10 fatalities in the shooting (and) seven injuries" who were transported to a local hospital and to a hospital in Eugene. Mercer was included in the death count.

Repeat after me: "Crunches do not burn belly fat." And it's not just crunches. Neither will planks, leg throws, nor the yoga boat pose.
"These exercises can strengthen your abs muscles, but those muscles will still be hidden under a cover of chub," says Chris Piegza, training manager at DavidBartonGym Limelight in Manhattan.
If you want to lose the stomach fat, and actually uncover those abs, you've got to take a more total-body approach.
Follow these five expert-approved tips to finally knock out the fat on your belly (and everywhere else).
1. Skip Cardio for Strength Training

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"Fat mass can be shrunk by cardio and dieting. However, cardio can burn away both muscle and fat leaving you skinny but soft," celebrity trainer Nick Hounslow, personality on E!'s upcoming reality fitness show, Hollywood Cycle.
That's why, when researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health followed 10,500 healthy men over 12 years, the guys who spent 20 minutes a day weight training had a smaller increase in abdominal fat compared to men who completed aerobic exercise for the same amount of time.

2. Complete Compound Moves
Since spot reduction is a myth, you've got to work your whole body to burn fat. While any strength training workout will help you do that (and while burning fat, not muscle), compound moves like squats, deadlifts, and bench presses require moving multiple joints and muscle groups, burning more fat and building more calorie-torching muscle. Think about it: Rep per rep, rows work more muscle than curls do.
"The more muscle you build through proper exercise programming, the more fully-firing your body's engine becomes, and less effective fat is at staying stuck to your stomach," Piegza says.

3. Eat More Protein
Eating whole, healthy sources of protein is vital to building muscle and burning more fat, says Sean W. Meadows R.D., a nutrition and wellness coach with The N.E.W. Program, a weight-loss center in Newport Beach. While a pound of fat burns two calories per day, a pound of fat burns six— and takes up a whole lot less room on your frame.
And in one 2014 Pennington Biomedical Research Center study, when people ate 40 percent more calories than they needed for eight weeks, the people on high-protein diets stored 25 percent of those extra calories as muscle. Those who ate low-protein diets stored 95 percent of them as fat. That's not to say you should up your caloric intake (we'll get to that next), but you should up your protein intake.

4. Cut Some Calories
Fat loss, whether it's centered on your stomach or in your chins, requires achieving a calorie deficit— burning more calories than you're taking in. Exercise can certainly help you achieve that, but a healthy diet is probably going to make the biggest dent in your caloric balance, Meadows says. After all, it might take you an hour to burn 400 calories in the gym, but so can swapping out a greasy burger with a baked chicken sandwich.

5. Chill Out
"While diet and exercise will get you damn close to your physique goals, living a healthier lifestyle is what may finally get you the body you want. Lifestyle factors, such as stress, sleep, and relaxation are so important because they affect your hormonal system, which controls nearly every process in your body," Meadows says.
For instance, too-high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, in response to work demands, a lack of sleep, or zero "me" time, can lead to storage of fat around the mid section. Your move: Learn to more effectively manage what stress you do have, and be willing to cut things out of your life that are constant unnecessary stressors.

Rare ‘sofa shark’ stuns scientists

Marine biologists landed an unusual catch off the coast of Scotland recently – a so-called ‘sofa shark’ or false catshark.
Experts were stunned by the rare shark, which was discovered during a recent deep sea survey by scientists from Marine Scotland. “This is not a species that has previously been found in Scottish waters,” explained the Scottish Shark Tagging Programme, in a statement.
Related:  Scientists discover 'glowing' sea turtle
The elusive creatures can grow up to 10 feet long, but this one was around 6 feet, according to media reports.
The strange-looking shark has drawn unfavorable comparisons to the blobfish, which was dubbed the world’s ugliest animal in 2013.