WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A dozen Republican senators talked about how to reach a "big agreement" on the nation's debt and deficit over dinner with President Barack Obama on Wednesday night, the start of what one of the senators hoped was a new round of intense fiscal discussions.
"It was a really good conversation. It was candid. We really talked about how do we get to a big agreement in terms of the debt and deficit?" Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said after the private dinner with Obama at the Jefferson Hotel near the White House.
Obama also enjoyed the dinner, a senior administration official said in a statement, noting "a good exchange of ideas with the senators."
Hoeven said he felt "genuine desire" among the people in the room to tackle tax and entitlement reform in the next four to five months, as the White House and Congress face a series of deadlines to fund the government and deal with the debt ceiling.
"That really creates pressure to come to an agreement, a big-picture agreement," Hoeven told Reuters.
The meeting came on the heels of the failure of the White House and Congress to agree on how to avert $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts called the "sequester," which has touched off a fight about who was to blame.
Hoeven said he was optimistic that Republicans and Democrats both wanted to work through the issues and avert more congressional gridlock.
"I hope things are changing," he said.
But Hoeven emphasized it would take a lot more talks, led by Obama, to make progress.
"This kind of intense dialogue needs to be continuous," he said.
Obama is slated to meet with the full Republican Senate caucus next week, and will also pay a visit to Republicans in the House of Representatives.
"I think we'll make some progress," Hoeven said. "We have to get there."
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina drew up the guest list for the dinner, the White House said. Other senators there were Bob Corker of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, John McCain of Arizona, Dan Coats of Indiana, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia.
(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Peter Cooney)
FILE - A Thursday Sept. 16, 2010 photo from files showing Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien speaking to the media in Edinburgh, Scotland. Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to marry and have children, Britain's most senior Catholic cleric said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who heads the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, said the requirement for priestly celibacy is "not of divine origin" and could be reconsidered. He told BBC Scotland that "the celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry _ Jesus didn't say that." (AP Photo/Scott Campbell, File)
FILE - A Thursday Sept. 16, 2010 photo from files showing Cardinal Keith Patrick O'Brien speaking to the media in Edinburgh, Scotland. Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to marry and have children, Britain's most senior Catholic cleric said Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who heads the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, said the requirement for priestly celibacy is "not of divine origin" and could be reconsidered. He told BBC Scotland that "the celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry _ Jesus didn't say that." (AP Photo/Scott Campbell, File)
LONDON (AP) ? A Scottish cardinal who stepped down from church leadership after admitting sexual misconduct should apologize to gay people for his years of "vicious and cruel language" about them, Britain's leading gay-rights group said Monday.
Officials in the Vatican refused to say whether they would formally investigate allegations against Cardinal Keith O'Brien. He resigned last week as Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric after being accused of inappropriate behavior by three priests and a former priest.
Until his abrupt resignation as archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, O'Brien had been due to join cardinals from around the world in Rome for a conclave that will elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.
The cardinals met Monday, without O'Brien, for the first of their pre-conclave meetings.
The Scottish Catholic Media Office said the complaints against O'Brien had been reported to the Vatican, and it expected there would be an investigation.
The Vatican refused to confirm or deny Monday whether it was investigating O'Brien, and declined to say when it learned of the allegations against him. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, repeated his statement from last week, which was that the original four accusers had sent their complaint via the papal ambassador to Britain, and the pope had been informed.
Pressed to respond to reports of a purported fifth accuser, who reportedly approached the Vatican directly in October with accusations, another spokesman, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, read O'Brien's statement and said the Vatican would say no more.
O'Brien has not directly addressed the allegations against him, which include "an inappropriate approach" to a seminarian after night prayers and "inappropriate contact" with another priest.
But he said Sunday that "my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal."
"To those I have offended, I apologize and ask forgiveness," he said.
Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights organization Stonewall, said Monday that the group noted "with sadness that the cardinal didn't find it in him to apologize to gay people, their families and friends for the harm his vicious and cruel language caused."
That view was echoed by veteran human rights activist Peter Tatchell, who urged the cardinal "to show true remorse for his homophobia and hypocrisy by saying sorry to the gay community for the hatred and harm he has caused ? and by publicly repenting his homophobia."
O'Brien, 74, had been a staunch advocate of church teaching against homosexuality, calling same-sex marriage "a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right" and saying that British government plans to legalize same-sex marriage would "shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world."
Last year, Stonewall named O'Brien "Bigot of the Year" for his hard line on homosexuality.
Despite his views on same-sex relationships, O'Brien was long known for his relatively liberal stance on some social issues.
Shortly after he was named cardinal in 2003, O'Brien made an unusual public pledge to defend Roman Catholic Church teaching, having previously suggested there should be more open discussion on issues such as the requirement of celibacy for priests and the church's ban on contraception.
The cardinal largely kept those views to himself over the next decade, although he reiterated them in an interview with the BBC just before the allegations against him emerged. O'Brien told the broadcaster that he was open to priests marrying and having children.
"The celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry ? Jesus didn't say that," he said in the interview last month. "When I was a young boy, the priest didn't get married and that was it. I would be very happy if others had the opportunity of considering whether or not they could or should get married."
Another British cardinal, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said Monday that the claims against O'Brien weren't necessarily evidence that the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church ? which has been wracked by scandals over sexual abuse by priests ? was in need of deep reform.
"There's always been sinners in the church but there's always been saints," he told BBC radio from Rome.
Murphy-O'Connor ? who, at 80, is too old to vote in the conclave ? said that while sometimes wrongdoing was the responsibility of the church, "sometimes it is just the weakness of individuals and the wrong that they do."
?"To say that this is all in the church, I just don't think it is true," he said.
___
Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
Reading the human genomePublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab researchers produce first step-by-step look at transcription initiation
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.
"We've provided a series of snapshots that shows how the genome is read one gene at a time," says biophysicist Eva Nogales who led this research. "For the genetic code to be transcribed into messenger RNA, the DNA double helix has to be opened and the strand of gene sequences has to be properly positioned so that RNA polymerase, the enzyme that catalyzes transcription, knows where the gene starts. The electron microscopy images we produced show how this is done."
Says Paula Flicker of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the research, "The process of transcription is essential to all living things so understanding how it initiates is enormously important. This work is a beautiful example of integrating multiple approaches to reveal the structure of a large molecular complex and provide insight into the molecular basis of a fundamental cellular process."
Nogales, who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab, the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), is the corresponding author of a paper describing this study in the journal Nature. The paper is titled "Structural visualization of key steps in human transcription initiation." Co-authors are Yuan He, Jie Fang and Dylan Taatjes.
The fundamental process of life by which information in the genome of a living cell is used to generate biomolecules that carry out cellular activities is the so-called "central dogma of molecular biology." It states that genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. This straightforward flow of information is initiated by an elaborate system of proteins that operate in a highly choreographed fashion with machine-like precision. Understanding how this protein machinery works in the context of passing genetic information from DNA to RNA (transcription) is a must for identifying malfunctions that can turn cells cancerous or lead to a host of other problems.
Nogales and members of her research group used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), where protein samples are flash-frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures to preserve their structure, to carry out in vitro studies of reconstituted and purified versions of the "transcription pre-initiation complex." This complex is a large assemblage of proteins comprised of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) plus a class of proteins known as general transcription factors that includes the TATA-binding protein (TBP), TFIIA, TFIIB, TFIIF, TFIIE and TFIIH. All of the components in this complex work together to ensure the accurate loading of DNA into Pol II at the start of a gene sequence.
"There's been a lack of structural information on how the transcription pre-initiation complex complex is assembled, but with cryo-EM and our in vitro reconstituted system we've been able to provide pseudo-atomic models at various stages of transcription initiation that illuminate critical molecular interactions during this step-by-step process," Nogales says.
The in vitro reconstituted transcription pre-initiation complex was developed by Yuan He, lead author on the Nature paper and a post-doctoral student in Nogales's research group.
"This reconstituted system provided a model for the sequential assembly pathway of transcription initiation and was essential for us to get the most biochemically homogenous samples," Nogales says. "Also essential was our ability to use automated data collection and processing so that we could generate all our structures in a robust manner."
Among the new details revealed in the step-by-step cryo-EM images was how the transcription factor protein TFIIF engages Pol II and promoter DNA to stabilize both a closed DNA pre-initiation complex and an open DNA-promoter complex, and also how it regulates the selection of a transcription start-site.
"Comparing the closed versus open DNA states led us to propose a model that describes how DNA is moved during the process of promoter opening," says He. "Our studies provide insight into how THIIH uses ATP hydrolysis as a source of energy to actually open and push the DNA to the active site of Pol II."
Nogales and her colleagues plan to further investigate the process of DNA loading into Pol II, as well as to include additional transcription factors into the assembly that are required for regulation of gene expression.
"Our goal is to actually build a structural model of the entire - more than two million daltons - protein machinery that recognizes and regulates all human DNA promoters," Nogales says. "For now we have the structural framework that's been needed to integrate biochemical and structural data into a unified mechanistic understanding of transcription initiation."
###
This research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Cancer Institute under NIH grant numbers GM063072 and CA127364.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Reading the human genomePublic release date: 27-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lynn Yarris lcyarris@lbl.gov 510-486-5375 DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley Lab researchers produce first step-by-step look at transcription initiation
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.
"We've provided a series of snapshots that shows how the genome is read one gene at a time," says biophysicist Eva Nogales who led this research. "For the genetic code to be transcribed into messenger RNA, the DNA double helix has to be opened and the strand of gene sequences has to be properly positioned so that RNA polymerase, the enzyme that catalyzes transcription, knows where the gene starts. The electron microscopy images we produced show how this is done."
Says Paula Flicker of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the research, "The process of transcription is essential to all living things so understanding how it initiates is enormously important. This work is a beautiful example of integrating multiple approaches to reveal the structure of a large molecular complex and provide insight into the molecular basis of a fundamental cellular process."
Nogales, who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab, the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), is the corresponding author of a paper describing this study in the journal Nature. The paper is titled "Structural visualization of key steps in human transcription initiation." Co-authors are Yuan He, Jie Fang and Dylan Taatjes.
The fundamental process of life by which information in the genome of a living cell is used to generate biomolecules that carry out cellular activities is the so-called "central dogma of molecular biology." It states that genetic information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins. This straightforward flow of information is initiated by an elaborate system of proteins that operate in a highly choreographed fashion with machine-like precision. Understanding how this protein machinery works in the context of passing genetic information from DNA to RNA (transcription) is a must for identifying malfunctions that can turn cells cancerous or lead to a host of other problems.
Nogales and members of her research group used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), where protein samples are flash-frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures to preserve their structure, to carry out in vitro studies of reconstituted and purified versions of the "transcription pre-initiation complex." This complex is a large assemblage of proteins comprised of RNA polymerase II (Pol II) plus a class of proteins known as general transcription factors that includes the TATA-binding protein (TBP), TFIIA, TFIIB, TFIIF, TFIIE and TFIIH. All of the components in this complex work together to ensure the accurate loading of DNA into Pol II at the start of a gene sequence.
"There's been a lack of structural information on how the transcription pre-initiation complex complex is assembled, but with cryo-EM and our in vitro reconstituted system we've been able to provide pseudo-atomic models at various stages of transcription initiation that illuminate critical molecular interactions during this step-by-step process," Nogales says.
The in vitro reconstituted transcription pre-initiation complex was developed by Yuan He, lead author on the Nature paper and a post-doctoral student in Nogales's research group.
"This reconstituted system provided a model for the sequential assembly pathway of transcription initiation and was essential for us to get the most biochemically homogenous samples," Nogales says. "Also essential was our ability to use automated data collection and processing so that we could generate all our structures in a robust manner."
Among the new details revealed in the step-by-step cryo-EM images was how the transcription factor protein TFIIF engages Pol II and promoter DNA to stabilize both a closed DNA pre-initiation complex and an open DNA-promoter complex, and also how it regulates the selection of a transcription start-site.
"Comparing the closed versus open DNA states led us to propose a model that describes how DNA is moved during the process of promoter opening," says He. "Our studies provide insight into how THIIH uses ATP hydrolysis as a source of energy to actually open and push the DNA to the active site of Pol II."
Nogales and her colleagues plan to further investigate the process of DNA loading into Pol II, as well as to include additional transcription factors into the assembly that are required for regulation of gene expression.
"Our goal is to actually build a structural model of the entire - more than two million daltons - protein machinery that recognizes and regulates all human DNA promoters," Nogales says. "For now we have the structural framework that's been needed to integrate biochemical and structural data into a unified mechanistic understanding of transcription initiation."
###
This research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Cancer Institute under NIH grant numbers GM063072 and CA127364.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
California-based?ListedBy?has?announced that it has eliminated all user registration requirements previously needed to research listings on ListedBy.com.
The company said that the change has been designed to further enhance user experience on ListedBy.com and it affects all residential and commercial listing data categories including public real estate auctions, government real estate auctions, REO auctions, pre-foreclosure and foreclosure listings, and MLS Listings.
Residential real estate auction, luxury real estate auctions, government real estate auctions, public real estate auction, real estate auction sites, commercial real estate auctions, reo auctions, government real estate auctions, real estate auction companies
The shift reinforces ListedBy?s focus on improving efficiencies and productivity in real estate, by optimizing transparency and connectivity between buyers and sellers, and by eliminating all fees associated with access to listing data and real estate auctions, including subscriptions, participation fees and auction buyers? premiums.
?Our vision for real estate is an open, fully transparent and free environment for everyone,? said Stephan Piscano, CEO and Founder, ListedBy. ?By giving residential and commercial property buyers easy access to data, including distressed assets, and by giving sellers a platform to reach and be reached directly by buyers, we?re cultivating a more vibrant, more productive industry.?
Free registration remains a requirement for users who wish to post listings, bid on properties and post in the Forum on LB Social?.
Traffic on ListedBy.com is expected to surpass 30,000 unique visitors for February 2013, with the average stay on the site recorded to date at over five minutes.
Tagged as: California, ListedBy.com, Napa, real estate listing data, realtors, unlocks access, USA
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Variety, the venerable trade paper that has covered Hollywood for more than a century, is dropping its daily print edition and replacing it with a weekly publication starting next month.
The publication also will have a new management structure featuring three editors-in-chief and will remove the paywall that was put up on its website three years ago.
"It was an interesting experiment that didn't work. We look forward to welcoming back longtime Variety readers when the paywall drops March 1," said Jay Penske, the chairman and CEO of Variety's parent company.
Variety's last daily print edition will be published March 18. A Tuesday-only publication will debut March 26 and will be augmented throughout the year by several special editions reporting on the industry's many awards shows and other topics of interest to Hollywood movers and shakers.
"We remain committed to a print edition of Variety and are excited that it will expand in size and scope of coverage," the paper's publisher, Michelle Sobrino, said in a story Tuesday on the paper's website (http://bit.ly/YVaMUr ).
Variety also announced that three veteran Hollywood journalists, Claudia Eller, Cynthia Littleton and Andrew Wallenstein, are assuming the titles editor-in-chief.
Eller joins the paper after 20 years with the Los Angeles Times, where she was most recently entertainment news editor. Littleton was most recently deputy editor of Variety and Wallenstein was the trade paper's television editor.
Executive editor Steven Gaydos will continue to oversee Variety's editorial department. Tim Gray, the current editor-in-chief, will remain in a leadership role, overseeing special projects and expansion of international coverage.
Variety has been a fixture in Hollywood since its founding in 1905, but like other traditional print publications has struggled in recent years as news has moved to other formats.
It was purchased last year for $25 million by Penske Media Corp., which also owns the popular Hollywood website Deadline.
___
Information from: Daily Variety, http://www.variety.com
A White House report stresses the huge impact the sequester spending cuts would have on states. For some states, that might be true. But for others, the cuts might just be a blip.
By Mark Trumbull,?Staff writer / February 25, 2013
Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia (l.) and Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland speak on CBS's 'Face the Nation' in Washington Sunday. McDonnell joined with O'Malley to call for Congress to prevent impending defense cuts that would hit their states hard.
Chris Usher/CBS News/AP
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A White House report released Sunday is designed to send a clear message: If automatic spending cuts take effect, your state will be affected.
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
Correspondent Liz Marlantes with insights into the politics behind the impending spending cuts.
The report on the "sequester" includes 50 state documents ? plus one more for the District of Columbia ? to show ?the devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families across the country if Congressional Republicans fail to compromise to avert the sequester by March 1st.?
But, rather than making the case that the cuts will be devastating, the 51 reports suggest the sequester?s impact would vary widely by state, depending largely on the degree of activity related to the US military. And in many states, defense plays a small role in the economy.
Consider one large Midwestern state, Ohio. The White House report for this state finds that 26,000 civilian employees of the Defense Department would be furloughed, with a new work schedule that reduces their gross pay by $161.4 million during the fiscal year that ends in September.
That sounds large. But, when coupled with $5 million in expected cuts to Army and Air Force operations in Ohio, that amounts to about $14 for each of Ohio?s 11.5 million residents, spread over half a year. Ohio would take an additional hit from a decline in defense contractor work, but that industry (not analyzed in the White House estimates) makes up only about 2 percent of the state?s economy.
By contrast, some states would see much larger defense-related impact from the sequester, either because they have lots of civilian defense workers (Virginia, Maryland) or lots of military operations (Hawaii, Alaska) or lots of defense contractors (Washington, Connecticut) relative to their overall population.
The sequester would also affect a host of non-defense federal activities across the 50 states. Those, also, would be somewhat unevenly dispersed among states. But only in Maryland, Virginia, and New Mexico does non-defense federal spending account for more than 5 percent of economic output, according to research by forecasters at the banking firm Wells Fargo.
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Public release date: 27-Feb-2013
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