3 in US win chemistry Nobel for computer models

US freezes major weapons, cash aid to Egypt Posted: WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Wednesday it had suspended the delivery of major military hardware and cash assistance to Egypt in the wake of a bloody crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.Washington has frozen the delivery of certain large-scale military systems and cash assistance to the government pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically-elected civilian government through free and fair elections, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.Marking a dramatic break with years of unqualified support to Cairo, the decision will halt the delivery of big-ticket items, including Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and M1A1 Abrams tanks, officials told reporters, confirming earlier leaks.The United States, however, will keep up assistance to help secure Egypt's borders and bolster counterterrorism and proliferation, and ensure security in the Sinai, Psaki said. Washington will also continue to provide parts for US-origin military equipment as well as military training and education, along with aid in areas such as health, education, and private sector development, she added.Washington had already effectively frozen deliveries of expensive military hardware since a July 3 coup that ousted president Mohamed Morsi and a subsequent bloody clampdown on his Muslim Brotherhood supporters.After Morsi's overthrow, the Pentagon called off a planned exercise with Egypt and postponed the delivery of four F-16 fighters.Officials stressed that the US government valued its longstanding ties with Egypt would not be cutting off all aid, which amounts to $1.5 billion a year, of which $1.3 billion is devoted to military hardware and training.As a result of the review directed by President (Barack) Obama, we have decided to maintain our relationship with the Egyptian government, while recalibrating our assistance to Egypt to best advance our interests, the statement said.Psaki said that we believe the US-Egypt partnership will be strongest when Egypt is represented by an inclusive, democratically-elected civilian government based on the rule of law, fundamental freedoms and an open and competitive economy.Obama and his deputies have repeatedly appealed to Egypt's military-backed government to hold fresh elections to restore democratic rule, but have so far failed to persuade Cairo to change its approach.The United States continues to support a democratic transition and oppose violence as a means of resolving differences within Egypt, the State Department said. We will continue to review the decisions regarding our assistance periodically and will continue to work with the interim government to help it move toward our shared goals in an atmosphere free of violence and intimidation.In the latest bloodshed on Egyptian streets, Islamist backers of the ousted Egyptian president clashed with police on Sunday, leaving 57 people dead.Israel, anxious about maintaining its 1979 peace accord with Egypt, has reportedly asked Washington to maintain aid to Cairo's military-led interim government.The United States has provided billions in aid to Cairo since the 1979 peace deal, ensuring peace between Egypt and Israel, as well as priority access to the Suez Canal and anti-terrorism cooperation.Picking up and leaving town and walking away from this relationship wouldn't be good for the Egyptian people, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said earlier.The United States had already deposited $584 million in remaining military aid funds for fiscal year 2013 in a federal reserve account pending the outcome of the policy review, according to State Department officials.

US renews nuclear overtures to Iran Posted: UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - A top US official on Wednesday stepped up overtures to Iran to prove that it wants a nuclear proliferation deal with the West.We should be cautious but cognizant of potentially historic opportunities, Rose Gottemoeller, US assistant secretary of state for arms control told a UN disarmament committee.We must continue to push to bring Iran back into line with its international nuclear obligations, Gottemoeller told the forum, which included Iranian diplomats.The United States is ready to talk. We are ready to listen. We are ready to work hard and we hope that every country in this room is ready to do the same, Gottemoeller said.The road toward the next steps might not be familiar and it will require difficult negotiations and complicated diplomacy, said the US official.Western nations say they are waiting for the Iranian government to follow up on statements made by President Hassan Rouhani that his country wants an accord to end western doubts about Iran's nuclear drive.The United States, Britain and France say they believe Iran seeks a nuclear bomb capability. Iran, which is under several rounds of UN sanctions over its uranium enrichment, denies the charge.European foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton -- negotiating for the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China -- is to meet with Iranian negotiators in Geneva next Tuesday.Western diplomats say this will be a first chance to test Iran's intentions. Rouhani said he wanted a deal within a year. US President Barack Obama has insisted though that Iran must follow up with concrete actions.Gottemoeller said North Korea, which like Iran faces UN sanctions over its nuclear program, must also meet its own denuclearization commitments.It too can have an opportunity to reintegrate into the international community if it does so, the US official added.Gottemoeller said there has to be greater international efforts to further arms reductions, increase transparency, ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons use and more.She renewed calls for the immediate commencement of long-delayed negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty at the (UN) Conference on Disarmament.This treaty is the obvious next step in multilateral disarmament and it is time to get to the negotiating table, Goettemoeller said adding to mounting calls made at the meeting for negotiations to start.Pakistan has repeatedly blocked international attempts to start talks on a treaty to control fissile material for nuclear weapons.

3 in US win chemistry Nobel for computer models Posted: NEW YORK (AP) - Three U.S.-based scientists won a Nobel Prize on Wednesday for developing a powerful new way to do chemistry on a computer.They pioneered highly sophisticated computer simulations of complex chemical processes, giving researchers tools they are now using for a wide variety of tasks, such as designing new drugs and solar cells.Today the computer is just as important a tool for chemists as the test tube, the Swedish Academy of Sciences said in announcing this year's $1.2 million chemistry prize. Simulations are so realistic that they predict the outcome of traditional experiments.As academy secretary Staffan Normark put it: This year's prize is about taking the chemical experiment to cyberspace.The prize honored research done in the 1970s by Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel.All three scientists became U.S. citizens. Karplus came to the U.S. with his family as Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. The 83-year-old U.S. and Austrian citizen splits his time between the University of Strasbourg in France and Harvard University.Levitt, 66, was born in South Africa and is a British, U.S., and Israeli citizen. He is a professor at Stanford University. Warshel, 72, was born in Israel and is a U.S. and Israeli citizen affiliated with the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Levitt is a biology professor, while the two other winners are chemistry professors.Levitt told The Associated Press the award recognized him for work he did when he was 20, before he even had his Ph.D.It was just me being in the right place at the right time and maybe having a few good ideas, he said by telephone from his home in California. He joked that the biggest immediate impact of the prize would be his need for dance lessons before appearing at the Nobel banquet.When you go to Stockholm, you have to do ballroom dancing, Levitt said. This is the big problem I have right now.Karplus told the AP the 5 a.m. call from the Nobel judges had him worried that the caller might be bearing bad news. Usually you think when you get a call at 5 o'clock in the morning it's going to be bad news, you know, something's happened, he said.Warshel, speaking by telephone to a news conference in Stockholm, said he was extremely happy to be awakened in the middle of the night in Los Angeles to get the good news.The three men were honored for blending two previous approaches for simulating molecules and chemical reactions on computers. One was quantum physics, which applies on the scale of an atom, and the other was classical Newtonian physics, which operates at larger scales.Classical physics could simulate large molecules but not chemical reactions. Quantum physics could give realistic results for reactions but couldn't be used with large molecules because the equations were too complex to solve.The blended approach, which uses quantum mechanics only for key parts of molecules and classical physics for the rest, provides the accuracy of the quantum approach with manageable computations.Working together at Harvard in the early 1970s, Karplus and Warshel developed a computer program that brought together classical and quantum physics. Warshel later joined forces with Levitt at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and at the University of Cambridge in Britain to develop a program that could be used to study enzymes.Jeremy Berg, a professor of computational and systems biology at the University of Pittsburgh, said the winning work gives scientists a way to understand complicated interactions that involve thousands to millions of atoms.There are thousands of laboratories around the world using these methods, both for basic biochemistry and for things like drug design, said Berg, former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Md.Many drug companies use computer simulations to screen substances for their potential as medicines, an approach that lets them focus their chemistry lab work on those that look promising, he said.James Skinner, director of the Theoretical Chemistry Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the approach pioneered by the winners can be used to analyze such things as how drugs bind to the molecules they target in the body, or how large molecules fold.Beyond that, such simulations can be used to design materials with specific characteristics, such as those used in airplanes, he said.This has led to greater understanding (of) problems that couldn't be solved experimentally, said Marinda Li Wu, president of the American Chemical Society.Earlier this week, three Americans won the Nobel in medicine for discoveries about how key substances are moved around within cells, and the physics award went to British and Belgian scientists whose theories help explain how matter formed in the universe after the Big Bang.The Nobel in literature will be announced on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on Monday.

Scores killed in fighting near Damascus: NGO Posted: BEIRUT (AFP) - Scores of Syrian rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were killed in fierce fighting Wednesday south of Damascus, where the army pressed a major offensive, an NGO said.The fighting, between rebel brigades and regular troops, supported by militia and elements of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, took place in the areas of Husseiniyah, Al-Thiyabiyeh and Bouaydah, as government warplanes pounded the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.At least 22 people, the majority of them rebels, including a commander, were killed, the Britain-based group said, without elaborating. At the same time, it said dozens of regime forces were killed.Earlier, the Observatory had said regular troops had reinforced their control of two villages separating Thiyabiyeh and Bouaydah.For its part, the Local Coordination Committees, a group of militants on the ground, said the Abu Fadel Abbas Brigade composed mostly of Iraqi Shiites, along with Hezbollah fighters and elite troops were carrying out a major offensive.State news agency SANA said government forces had tightened their control over the town of Husseiniyah and the outskirts of Al-Thiyabiyeh.The two towns are located near the Shiite pilgrimage site of Sayyida Zeinab in the southern outkirts of Damascus.Clashes has been reported in the area for months and fighters from Hezbollah, which backs Assad's regime, have been dispatched to protect the site.Separately, rebels seized a guard post on the Jordanian border after a month of fierce fighting, the Observatory said.Rebel fighters took control of the Hajanah border battalion post near the city of Daraa after laying siege to it for two months and fierce clashes around it lasting a month, the NGO said.Some of the border guard battalion had withdrawn, and there was no immediate word on any casualties during the post's capture.The border post is adjacent to an old customs post seized by rebels days earlier.With its capture, opposition forces now control a ribbon of territory along the border from outside Daraa to the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.In the northern city of Aleppo, the Observatory reported fighting in the Salaheddin neighbourhood, where opposition rebels were advancing.Clashes killed 10 troops, and deaths were reported among the rebels as well, the group said.In the central city of Homs, rebel shelling of one of Syria's two main oil refineries set fire to the plant, already working at barely 10 percent of its capacity, the Observatory said.

Death toll in Italy refugee shipwreck rises to 302: official Posted: LAMPEDUSA (AFP) - The death toll in last week's refugee shipwreck off an Italian island rose to 302 with the recovery of more bodies on Wednesday, officials said, while dozens more are still believed missing.The victims included 210 men, 83 women and nine children. A total of 155 survivors were saved on the day of the disaster and their boat is estimated to have had around 500 people on board.

Tennis: Federer overwhelmed by support in China Posted: SHANGHAI (AFP) - Roger Federer said Wednesday that he draws huge motivation from the fervent support he receives in China despite his slip from the pinnacle of the men's game.The Swiss has formed a special bond with fans in Shanghai after regular visits to the city over more than a decade, and the fact that he is no longer world number one barely seems to register. It was crazy in the practice today. I mean, I expected some people to be there, but not sort of hanging over the fence and holding up the banner 'I believe in you', said Federer, who won his opening match at the Shanghai Masters on Wednesday.It was great energy, I must say. It gives me unbelievable motivation, inspires me to train hard, work hard, push further, you know, for that particular day, but also wanting to come back again next year, and again and again.Federer, who is now ranked seventh in the world after a poor season by his own imperious standards, said time spent in China and his success around the world had helped him connect with the fans.The last few years have been an absolute blast on tour, and I hope it continues this way, he said.The Swiss, 32, also spoke about his first few months on Twitter after holding an impromptu question and answer session on the social networking site the previous day.He fielded questions on everything from his travel wish list to his favourite TV shows and shoe size.It's definitely something I wanted to see how it developed, for other players, for the world really. Were people really actually excited about it, didn't care, didn't like it? I just wanted to wait and see, he said.Just a different type of way to connect to the fans, have a good time with it... So far it's been a lot of fun. I hope the fans also enjoy that they can connect with me, he added.

Top-seed Kerber wins Linz opener after false start Posted: LINZ (AP) - Top-seeded Angelique Kerber overcame a poor start to beat Monica Niculescu of Romania 0-6, 6-1, 6-2 in the first round of the Generali Ladies on Wednesday.The 10th-ranked German struggled for rhythm and won just five points on her own serve as she lost the opening set in 22 minutes. Kerber settled after an early break in the second and conceded just three games in the remainder of the match.I just wasn't there in the first set. I was too nervous. Kerber said. I am happy that I managed to turn the match around.Kerber was given a late wildcard entry to replace Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic after the former Wimbledon champion pulled out with a back injury.Kerber leads the competition for the eighth and final spot at the season-ending WTA Championships in Istanbul. She needs a semifinal place this week or a quarterfinal in Moscow next week to secure it.I try not to think about that, Kerber said. I want to focus on my next match and have fun on the court without added pressure.In the second round, Kerber faces another player from Romania, Alexandra Cadantu, who beat Melanie Klaffner of Austria 7-6 (4), 6-2.Two-time former champion Ana Ivanovic reached her fourth quarterfinal of the season by defeating Francesca Schiavone of Italy 6-3, 7-5.In a match between two former French Open champions, the third-seeded Ivanovic was more consistent in her ground strokes, while Schiavone double-faulted nine times.Francesca is a great player and it was a tough match, Ivanovic said. The 2008 and '10 champion next plays seventh-seeded Dominika Cibulkova or Katarzyna Piter of Poland.Earlier, seeded players Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain and Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium also advanced to the quarterfinals.No. 4 Suarez Navarro defeated Elina Svitolina of Ukraine 6-1, 6-4 to reach the last eight for the first time since her 6-0, 6-0 defeat by Serena Williams at the U.S. Open five weeks ago.In her seventh quarterfinal of the season, Suarez Navarro will play No. 5 Flipkens, who routed Camila Giorgi of Italy 6-2, 6-1.In first-round play, Karin Knapp of Italy overcame six double faults to defeat 2007 champion Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia 6-2, 7-6 (6).

CGames: Hoy launches Commonwealth baton ceremony Posted: LONDON (AFP) - Scottish cycling star Chris Hoy carried the Commonwealth Games baton to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday for the start of a relay that will culminate with the opening ceremony of next year's edition in Glasgow.The now-retired rider, who won six Olympic gold medals and a host of world and Commonwealth titles, found himself centre stage again as he took part in an event designed to boost the Games.Queen Elizabeth II, the head of the Commonwealth, has written a message to athletes that will be placed inside the baton before it starts a 248-day journey around 70 nations and territories.The text of the message will remain secret until the Queen reads it at the opening ceremony at Glasgow's Celtic Park on July 23.Scottish sprint legend Allan Wells, the 100 metres champion at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, was the first athlete to receive the baton from the Queen and start it on its journey.Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond said home support would be essential.As you saw with the (London) Olympics last year, you'll have the same thing in Scotland next year, he told BBC TV.Six weeks after the Games, Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to break away from the United Kingdom and become an independent nation.The start of the Queen's Baton Relay, with two of Scotland's greatest-ever athletes, is another step towards what will be a momentous year for Scotland, the pro-independence Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said.David Grevemberg, chief executive of Glasgow 2014, said the start of the relay was a fantastic moment for the organisers.Earlier, asked if Usain Bolt would compete at Glasgow 2014, Grevemberg told BBC radio the Games organisers were negotiating with Jamaica in a bid to persuade the world's fastest man to take part.Bolt, with the notable exception of last year's London Olympics where he defended both his 100m and 200m titles, has often been reluctant to run in Britain for tax reasons.The baton is first set to travel to India later this week despite reports suggesting the country would be unable to host it due to the Hindu festival of Dussehra.However, part of the route is being changed after west African country Gambia recently quit the Commonwealth, saying it will never be a member of any neo-colonial institution.

Nearly 5.5M tickets requested for 2014 World Cup Posted: SAO PAULO (AP) - FIFA says it has received applications for nearly 5.5 million tickets for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, more than five times the number available in the first phase of sales.Fans have until Thursday to place orders in the first phase of ticketing, when about 1 million are on offer. FIFA will hold a random draw for matches where the number of requests exceeds the available tickets. The second phase begins on Nov. 5 on a first-come, first-serve basis.Brazilians made the majority of requests so far, followed by Americans, Argentines and Germans.Organizers expect a total of nearly 3.3 million tickets to be available for the tournament.Most of the applications were for the opener in Sao Paulo and the final at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

Snooker: Lee appeals against record 12-year ban Posted: LONDON (AFP) - England's Stephen Lee has appealed against his 12-year ban from snooker for match-fixing, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) announced Wednesday. Lee, the former world number five, had repeatedly insisted upon his innocence of match-fixing charges relating to seven matches in 2008 and 2009.He was banned last month by an independent tribunal headed by leading English sports lawyer Adam Lewis and Lee's appeal was widely anticipated.The WPBSA has received notice of appeal from solicitors representing Stephen Lee, the world governing body said in a statement issued Wednesday.He is appealing against the finding of the tribunal, the sanction and the costs (40,000 pounds) awarded. The WPBSA has asked Sport Resolutions UK to manage the appeal process and appoint an independent QC to chair the appeals committee.After being handed the ban Lee, who turns 39 on Saturday, said: It's over, isn't it? My career's over. However, he also said he would appeal.Lee's case is the biggest match-fixing scandal to hit snooker since Australia's Quinten Hann was suspended for eight years in 2006 after he was caught in a sting by undercover reporters where he agreed to lose a game at the China Open in return for money.The WPBSA said Lee was in contact with three different groups of people all of whom placed bets on the outcomes of his matches or on the outcomes of frames within his matches or on the exact score of his matches.The total amount bet on these matches was in excess of 111,000 pounds ($176,500, 132,300 euros) leading to winnings of over 97,000 pounds for the persons placing the bets.

Oil drops on US inventories, budget fight Posted: NEW YORK CITY (AFP) - Oil prices Wednesday fell sharply after a weekly government report on US oil inventories showed a surprising build in stocks and the US budget impasse dragged on.US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for November delivery fell $1.88 to $101.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest close since early July.European oil benchmark Brent fell $1.10 to settle at $109.06 in London trade.US oil stocks rose by 6.8 million barrels for the week ending October 4, well above the 1.4 million barrel increase forecast by analysts in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.The week also saw a big drop in refinery use, with US plants processing at just 86 percent of capacity, down from 89 percent the prior week.Gene McGillian, a broker and analyst at Tradition Energy, said this weeks build in crude oil supplies comes on the heels of a similar increase last week.The US production level continues to run at a really robust rate and we have ample supply on oil, McGillian said.Global markets remain jittery over the inability of Washington leaders to agree on a budget compromise that has kept the government partially shut down for the ninth consecutive day.On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced plans to invite all Republican and Democratic lawmakers to the White House to try to work through the conflict.The demand outlook continues to remain weak with the continuing government shutdown in the US seemingly no nearer to resolution, said analyst Joe Conlan at British consultancy Inenco.

Dollar firms as Obama taps Yellen for Fed Posted: NEW YORK CITY (AFP) - The dollar Wednesday advanced against major currencies after President Obama tapped Janet Yellen to lead the US Federal Reserve, signaling a continuation of the Feds easy-money policy.Around 2200 GMT, the euro traded at $1.3523, down from $1.3572 on Tuesday.The greenback bought 97.37 Japanese yen, up from 96.86.The euro also rose against the yen, trading at 131.74 from 131.47.Analysts said Yellens nomination restored a note of normalcy to Washington, where a government shutdown dragged into a ninth day with no sign of political compromise on a budget for the 2014 fiscal year that began October 1.While the selection of Yellen, a known policy dove, would generally be seen as negative for the dollar, an active Federal Reserve could be seen as positive for an economy that could become increasingly vulnerable to fiscal headwinds from a chaotic backdrop in Washington, said Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Forex Exchange.Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solutions, said that Yellens nomination offered a momentary distraction to the only game in town these days, Americas ongoing political crisis in Washington.Obama on Wednesday invited Republican and Democratic lawmakers to the White House to try to work through budget disagreements that have resulted in the partial government shutdown and threatens to cause a debt default if the two sides fail to raise the borrowing limit by an October 17 deadline.Among other currencies, the British pound fell to $1.5954 from $1.6084 Tuesday.The dollar rose to 0.9100 Swiss franc from 0.9037.

Bye Earth: NASA spacecraft barrels toward Jupiter Posted: LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA's Juno spacecraft whipped around Earth on Wednesday, using our home planet as a gravity slingshot to fling itself toward Jupiter.Snapping pictures during the swing past Earth, Juno hurtled 350 miles (560 billion kilometers) above the ocean off the coast of South Africa, the point of closest encounter.Previous missions to the outer solar system have used Earth as a celestial springboard since there's no rocket powerful enough to make a direct flight. The Galileo spacecraft buzzed by Earth twice in the 1990s en route to Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet located 484 million miles (780 million kilometers) from the sun.Launched in 2011, Juno flew beyond the orbit of Mars before looping back toward Earth for a quick visit. Wednesday's flyby boosted Juno's speed from 78,000 mph relative to the sun to 87,000 mph (140,000 kph) enough momentum to cruise past the asteroid belt to Jupiter, where it should arrive in 2016.NASA and the European Space Agency said ground controllers in Australia and Spain picked up a signal from the spacecraft shortly after the pass. But engineers were puzzled by the low data rate and were investigating.During the maneuver, the solar-powered, windmill-shaped Juno briefly slipped into Earth's shadow and emerged over India's east coast. At closest approach, Juno passed over the coast of South Africa where NASA said skywatchers with binoculars or a small telescope may see it streak across the sky, weather permitting. Ham radio operators around the globe were encouraged to say Hi in Morse code a message that may be detected by Juno's radio.By space mission standards, Juno's Earth rendezvous was low-key compared with the Curiosity rover's nail-biting landing on Mars last year, mainly because such flybys have been executed before.Despite a government shutdown that has prevented NASA from updating its website or tweeting, the space agency's missions continue to operate. Earlier this week, NASA's newest spacecraft, LADEE, slipped into orbit around the moon.Since the 1970s, spacecraft have circled or flown past Jupiter including the Voyagers, Pioneers, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini and, most recently, the New Horizons barreling toward Pluto. Missions have beamed back stunning views of Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot, a raging hurricane-like storm, and its many moons.Juno promises to inch closer to Jupiter than previous spacecraft, orbiting the planet for at least a year and studying its cloud-covered atmosphere and mysterious interior to better understand how the giant planet formed.Juno was scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on July 4, 2016, after journeying 1.7 billion miles (2.74 billion kilometers).

Planet found floating without star in space Posted: WASHINGTON (AFP) - Astronomers said Wednesday they have found a lonely planet outside the solar system floating alone in space and not orbiting a star.The gaseous exoplanet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light years from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. Having formed 12 million years ago, the planet is considered a newborn among its peers.We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone, said research team leader Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.The researchers, whose study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, identified the planet from its faint and unique heat signature using the Pan-STARRS 1 wide-field survey telescope on the Haleakala volcano of Hawaii's Maui island.They suggested the newly found planet may have the lowest mass of all known freely floating objects.Other telescopes in Hawaii showed that the planet has similar properties to those of gas giants orbiting around young stars, but PSO J318.5-22 lacks a host star.During the past decade, researchers have found about a thousand extrasolar planets using indirect methods, including planet-induced wobbling or dimming of their host stars.But only a handful of these planets have been observed directly since most are orbiting around young stars less than 200 million years old and thus very bright.PSO J318.5-22 is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth, said co-author Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

South Africa winning malaria fight with DDT help: report Posted: JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - South Africa has turned the tide on malaria, cutting mortality rates by 85 percent over the last 12 years, and hopes to soon eliminate the disease, a report stated Wednesday amid controversy over the use of highly controversial DDT.Last year, only 70 people died from the mosquito-borne disease, compared to 460 deaths recorded in the year 2000, said the report delivered at a Pan African Malaria conference in Durban.The number of people who caught malaria has come down to about a 10th of the cases recorded that same year.South Africa is well on its way to being a malaria-free country, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said.Worldwide the disease kills an estimated 660,000 people each year, 90 percent of them in Africa with the majority being children.Countries severely affected by malaria in the continent include Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Mozambique.Authorities in South Africa believe the continent's wealthiest and most developed country is closer to eradicating malaria, but admit that there was no quick fix.They aim to rid the country of the disease by the year 2018.At the centre of the fight to eliminate infections is the use of the highly contentious insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known by its acronym DDT, to kill the malaria transmitting vectors.The chemical, which is sprayed inside houses, is linked to genital birth defects, infertility and cancer and is banned in many parts of the world. After being halted in 1996, South Africa reintroduced it in 2000 as part of a plan to curb a major malaria outbreak. Authorities say infections soared to more than threefold in 1996 after DDT was halted, rising to 64,500 in 2000.This was rapidly halted by combining DDT and pyrethroids for malaria vector control in the three malaria-endemic provinces.According to the report, the insecticide has been used cautiously in recent years, with targeted spraying only in high risk areas.Its safety has always been questioned, with local authorities maintaining that it is less expensive but more effective amid a spike in insecticide resistant vectors in recent years. Those at the receiving end of DDT are normally impoverished households in the northeastern Limpopo region, which borders Mozambique and the part of the southeastern province of KwaZulu Natal, where malaria is endemic.Prevention has seen cases drop to less than one per 1,000 people in affected districts, according to the report.The report stated that some households refused to have their houses sprayed, saying the chemical left stains on walls --signalling the lack of knowledge about health effects.Strategies need to be well thought out, practical, systematically and robustly implemented, said Motsoaledi.University of Pretoria's professor Tiaan de Jager acknowledged the adverse genetic and hormonal risks linked with DDT, adding however that its efficacy cannot be discounted.We are not saying that people should rather die than using DDT, he said.A combination of factors like improved housing and sanitation and education around the disease should form part of the control strategies.We can't rely on DDT, we should also look at safer methods that can lead to elimination, said De Jager.This week researchers at the Durban conference revealed that a groundbreaking vaccine could be available by 2015.GlaxoSmithKline is seeking approval for the prototype vaccine that reduces the risk of malaria by almost half among children aged between five and 17 months.If it gets the green light, the vaccine is likely to be distributed through agencies such as UNICEF and the GAVI Alliance, a public-private health partnership.