"It's interesting how much people long to fill in the gaps when someone in the public eye doesn't share their personal life. I understand their frustration," the 36-year-old actress shared. "I like how people will post pictures of me with other women that I adore, hugging on red carpets, and say, 'See?' Are we so uncomfortable with love between two people of the same gender that we immediately label it as sexual? But I've never been bothered by the lesbian rumor. There's nothing offensive about it, so there's no reason to be offended."
Washington is notoriously private about her personal life and secretly tied the knot with San Francisco 49ers cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha in late June. As Us exclusively reported on Wednesday, Oct. 30, the couple is expecting their first child together. "She's about four months along," a source told Us of Washington.
The Emmy nominee is a big supporter of marriage equality and says she's proud her ABC political thriller Scandal represents diversity.
"Something that brings me great joy is knowing what Scandal's audience looks like in terms of African-American households and knowing that so many African-American people and families are being introduced to our characters James and Cyrus," she said of a gay couple, Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene (Jeff Perry) and political journalist James Novak (Dan Bucatinsky) on the show. "It's really exciting that millions of viewers each week are living life with this amazing, complex couple, stepping into their gay marriage and adoption experience, which is such a vital storyline in our show."
As proud of the show as she is, the actress isn't afraid to poke fun at her character Olivia Pope. In promo clips for her Nov. 2 hosting gig on Saturday Night Live, the expectant star joked about the "scandalous" show.
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama walks with Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel toward a group photo outside of the Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
FILE This Oct. 29, 2013 file photo shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pausing while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)
This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)
FILE - In this Friday, May 15, 1998 file photo, Jonathan Pollard speaks during an interview in a conference room at the Federal Correction Institution in Butner, N.C. In geopolitics just as on the local playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows. Revelations that the U.S. was monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including close allies, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret _ and suggested the incredible reach of new-millennium technology. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker, File)
In geopolitics, just as on the playground, even best friends don't tell each other everything. And everybody's dying to know what the other guy knows.
Revelations that the U.S. has been monitoring the cellphone calls of up to 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have brought into high relief the open-yet-often-unspoken secret that even close allies keep things from one another — and work every angle to find out what's being held back.
So it is that the Israelis recruited American naval analyst Jonathan Pollard to pass along U.S. secrets including satellite photos and data on Soviet weaponry in the 1980s. And the British were accused of spying on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the lead-up to the Iraq War. And the French, Germans, Japanese, Israelis and South Koreans have been accused of engaging in economic espionage against the United States.
But now the technology revealed by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden has underscored the incredible new-millennium reach of the U.S. spy agency. And it is raising the question for some allies: Is this still OK?
National Intelligence Director James Clapper, for his part, testified this week that it is a "basic tenet" of the intelligence business to find out whether the public statements of world leaders jibe with what's being said behind closed doors.
What might the Americans have wanted to know from Merkel's private conversations, for example? Ripe topics could well include her thinking on European economic strategy and Germany's plans for talks with world powers about Iran's nuclear program.
There is both motive and opportunity driving the trust-but-verify dynamic in friend-on-friend espionage: Allies often have diverging interests, and the explosion of digital and wireless communication keeps creating new avenues for spying on one another. Further, shifting alliances mean that today's good friends may be on the outs sometime soon.
"It was not all that many years ago when we were bombing German citizens and dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese," says Peter Earnest, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and now executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington.
News that the U.S. has tapped foreign leaders' phones was an eye-opener to many — the White House claims that even President Barack Obama wasn't aware of the extent of the surveillance — and has prompted loud complaints from German, French and Spanish officials, among others.
It's all possible because "an explosion in different kinds of digital information tools makes it possible for intelligence agencies to vacuum up a vast quantity of data," says Charles Kupchan, a former Clinton administration official and now a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. "When you add together the Internet, wireless communications, cellphones, satellites, drones and human intelligence, you have many, many sources of acquiring intelligence."
"The magnitude of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a radio interview. "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop, too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."
Protests aside, diplomats the world around know the gist of the game.
"I am persuaded that everyone knew everything or suspected everything," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said of the reports of U.S. monitoring.
And while prime ministers and lawmakers across Europe and Asia say they are outraged, Clapper told Congress that other countries' own spy agencies helped the NSA collect data on millions of phone calls as part of cooperative counterterror agreements.
Robert Eatinger, the CIA's senior deputy general counsel, told an American Bar Association conference on Thursday that European spy services have stayed quiet throughout the recent controversy because they also spy on the U.S.
"The services have an understanding," Eatinger said. "That's why there wasn't the hue and cry from them."
And another intelligence counsel says the White House can reasonably deny it knows everything about the U.S. spying that's going on.
"We don't reveal to the president or the intelligence committees all of the human sources we are recruiting. ... They understand what the programs are, and the president and chairs of the intelligence committees both knew we were seeking information about leadership intentions," said Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. "They both saw reporting indicating what we were getting if not indicating the source."
Still, Claude Moraes, a British Labor Party politician and member of the European Union delegation that traveled to Washington this week for talks about U.S. surveillance, was troubled by the broad net being cast by U.S. intelligence.
"Friend-upon-friend spying is not something that is easily tolerable if it doesn't have a clear purpose," he said. "There needs to be some kind of justification. ... There is also a question of proportionality and scale."
Obama has promised a review of U.S. intelligence efforts in other countries, an idea that has attracted bipartisan support in Congress.
The United States already has a written intelligence-sharing agreement with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand known as "Five Eyes," and France and Germany might be interested in a similar arrangement.
Paul Pillar, a professor at Georgetown University and former CIA official, worries that a backlash "runs the risk of restrictions leaving the United States more blind than it otherwise would have been" to overseas developments.
The effort to strike the right balance between surveillance and privacy is hardly new.
University of Notre Dame political science professor Michael Desch, an expert on international security and American foreign and defense policies, says the ambivalence is epitomized by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson's famous line, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." Stimson, who served under President Herbert Hoover, shut down the State Department's cryptanalytic office in 1929.
"Leaks about NSA surveillance of even friendly countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and now France make clear that we no longer share Stimson's reticence on this score," Desch said. "While such revelations are a public relations embarrassment, they also reflect the reality that in this day in age, gentlemen do read each other's mail all of the time, even when they are allies."
In fact, a database maintained by the Defense Personnel Security Research Center covering Americans who committed espionage against the U.S. includes activity on behalf of a wide swath of neutral or allied countries since the late 1940s. U.S. citizens have been arrested for conducting espionage on behalf of South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Ghana, Liberia, South Africa, El Salvador and Ecuador, according to the database.
___
Associated Press Writers Deb Riechmann and Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.
___
Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac
NASA sees Halloween Typhoon Krosa lashing Luzon, Philippines
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Rob Gutro robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
There's nothing more scary for Halloween than a typhoon, and the residents in Luzon, in the northern Philippines are being lashed by Typhoon Krosa today, Oct. 31.
On Oct. 30 at 0525 UTC/1:25 a.m. EDT NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured a good daytime view of Typhoon Krosa. A rainfall analysis derived from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data was combined into a visible and infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS). TRMM PR data found precipitation falling at a rate of about 81mm/~3.2 inches per hour in strong convective storms near Krosa's center.
On Oct.31 at 0255 UTC, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument known as MODIS that flies aboard NASA"s Terra satellite captured a picture of Tropical Storm Krosa. The MODIS image showed Krosa's western edge over Luzon in the northern Philippines
At 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT, Krosa's center was over land in extreme northern Luzon, and headed for the South China Sea. At that time, Krosa's maximum sustained winds were near 90 knots/103.6 mph/ 166.7 kph. The center of Krosa was located near 18.4 north and 121.2 east, about 227 nautical miles/261 miles/420 km north-northeast of Manila, Philippines. It was headed to the west-northwest at 12 knots/13.8 mph/22.22 kph.
Satellite imagery on Oct. 31 showed that Krosa had an eye 25 nautical miles/28.7 km/46.3 km in diameter at landfall in northern Luzon.
Krosa is expected to re-intensify in the South China Sea and affect Hainan Island, China before making a final landfall in northern Vietnam.
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NASA sees Halloween Typhoon Krosa lashing Luzon, Philippines
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Rob Gutro robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
There's nothing more scary for Halloween than a typhoon, and the residents in Luzon, in the northern Philippines are being lashed by Typhoon Krosa today, Oct. 31.
On Oct. 30 at 0525 UTC/1:25 a.m. EDT NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured a good daytime view of Typhoon Krosa. A rainfall analysis derived from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data was combined into a visible and infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS). TRMM PR data found precipitation falling at a rate of about 81mm/~3.2 inches per hour in strong convective storms near Krosa's center.
On Oct.31 at 0255 UTC, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument known as MODIS that flies aboard NASA"s Terra satellite captured a picture of Tropical Storm Krosa. The MODIS image showed Krosa's western edge over Luzon in the northern Philippines
At 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT, Krosa's center was over land in extreme northern Luzon, and headed for the South China Sea. At that time, Krosa's maximum sustained winds were near 90 knots/103.6 mph/ 166.7 kph. The center of Krosa was located near 18.4 north and 121.2 east, about 227 nautical miles/261 miles/420 km north-northeast of Manila, Philippines. It was headed to the west-northwest at 12 knots/13.8 mph/22.22 kph.
Satellite imagery on Oct. 31 showed that Krosa had an eye 25 nautical miles/28.7 km/46.3 km in diameter at landfall in northern Luzon.
Krosa is expected to re-intensify in the South China Sea and affect Hainan Island, China before making a final landfall in northern Vietnam.
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AGU Fall Meeting: Hotel reservation deadline -- Nov. 8
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Nanci Bompey nbompey@agu.org 202-777-7524 American Geophysical Union
1. Reminder: Hotel reservation deadline Nov. 8
Please note that the deadline for booking hotel rooms at preferential meeting rates is next Friday, Nov. 8. Hotel reservations are accessible via the online press registration site. It is not required to wait for press registration approval before booking a hotel room, nor is it required to book a hotel room when registering to attend the meeting. Important: Please be sure to book your hotel through the press registration site to ease your registration process.
Note: AGU will not be offering shuttle service to/from the Moscone Center.
2. Virtual Press Room and PIO Uploader coming soon
For journalists: Journalists covering the Fall Meeting can find many resources online in the Virtual Press Room. Press releases, press conference materials (including PowerPoint presentations, images, videos, scientific papers, and more, as available), and video recordings of press conferences are added to the Virtual Press Room during the meeting for easy online access.
The Virtual Press Room will launch in the Media Center of the Fall Meeting website in mid-November. Details about the Virtual Press Room and information about press conference web streaming will follow in a later advisory.
For public information officers: PIOs can share press releases online in the Virtual Press Room by directly uploading press releases and other supplemental materials to the site. PIOs must register for access to the Virtual Press Room. Instructions on how to register and access the uploader will be included in a future advisory. For more information, e-mail news@agu.org.
3. Journalism awards ceremony and reception
We invite you to join your Press Room colleagues to honor and celebrate AGU's most recent journalism award winners. During a brief ceremony, we will recognize the outstanding reporting and writing of 2013 Walter Sullivan award winner Tim Folger, 2013 David Perlman award winner Paul Voosen and 2013 Robert Cowen award winners Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Erna Akuginow.
The ceremony will take place in the Press Conference Room, Moscone West, Room 3000, Level 3, from 5:00 5:30 p.m. on Thurs. Dec. 12. A reception will follow across the hall in the Press Room.
4. Northern California Science Writers Association (NCSWA) dinner
[The following notice is provided on behalf of the Northern California Science Writers Association about their holiday dinner]
AGU press are heartily invited to join Bay Area science writers for NCSWA's annual holiday dinner. This year, science journalist Alex Witze will discuss her new book "Island on Fire", written with her husband Jeff Kanipe. "Island on Fire" describes the extraordinary 18th century eruption of Laki, a toxic and explosive Icelandic volcano that darkened Europe and killed thousands of people. Witze, a Boulder-based journalist and contributor to both Science News and Nature, will discuss her research for the book and show images from her travels on Iceland. She'll also talk about the chances that Laki could erupt again. For a sneak preview, see her blog post: http://alexandrawitze.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/laki-the-forgotten-volcano/
The NCSWA holiday dinner will be held at 6 p.m. on Wed. Dec. 11 at Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant, 855 Howard St. (adjacent to the Moscone Center). Registration details will soon be available at: http://www.ncswa.org.
5. Fall Meeting App
The 2013 AGU Fall Meeting App will be available for download soon. The app allows you to browse the scientific program, plan and sync your schedule between devices, receive event alerts, and stay connected on Twitter. Meeting attendees will benefit this year from an improved mobile app that will integrate with the scientific program content and individual schedules created in the Itinerary Planner. The mobile app will offer robust searches for presentations and events, and individual schedules can be synced to Google Calendar and iCal.
6. Press registration information
To register as press and to check eligibility requirements, please see the online press registration page. Members of the news media are encouraged to preregister online to expedite the process of receiving your badges.
Press badges provide complimentary access to any of the meeting's scientific sessions, as well as to the Press Room, Press Conference Room and Quiet Rooms. No one will be admitted without a valid badge.
Eligible members of the press may also register on-site at the meeting. The on-site registration location, badge pick-up location, and Press Room, Press Conference Room and Quiet Room locations will be included in a future advisory.
7. Who's coming
Check here for an online Who's Coming list of journalists and press officers who have preregistered for the meeting. This list gets updated regularly.
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AGU Fall Meeting: Hotel reservation deadline -- Nov. 8
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Nanci Bompey nbompey@agu.org 202-777-7524 American Geophysical Union
1. Reminder: Hotel reservation deadline Nov. 8
Please note that the deadline for booking hotel rooms at preferential meeting rates is next Friday, Nov. 8. Hotel reservations are accessible via the online press registration site. It is not required to wait for press registration approval before booking a hotel room, nor is it required to book a hotel room when registering to attend the meeting. Important: Please be sure to book your hotel through the press registration site to ease your registration process.
Note: AGU will not be offering shuttle service to/from the Moscone Center.
2. Virtual Press Room and PIO Uploader coming soon
For journalists: Journalists covering the Fall Meeting can find many resources online in the Virtual Press Room. Press releases, press conference materials (including PowerPoint presentations, images, videos, scientific papers, and more, as available), and video recordings of press conferences are added to the Virtual Press Room during the meeting for easy online access.
The Virtual Press Room will launch in the Media Center of the Fall Meeting website in mid-November. Details about the Virtual Press Room and information about press conference web streaming will follow in a later advisory.
For public information officers: PIOs can share press releases online in the Virtual Press Room by directly uploading press releases and other supplemental materials to the site. PIOs must register for access to the Virtual Press Room. Instructions on how to register and access the uploader will be included in a future advisory. For more information, e-mail news@agu.org.
3. Journalism awards ceremony and reception
We invite you to join your Press Room colleagues to honor and celebrate AGU's most recent journalism award winners. During a brief ceremony, we will recognize the outstanding reporting and writing of 2013 Walter Sullivan award winner Tim Folger, 2013 David Perlman award winner Paul Voosen and 2013 Robert Cowen award winners Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Erna Akuginow.
The ceremony will take place in the Press Conference Room, Moscone West, Room 3000, Level 3, from 5:00 5:30 p.m. on Thurs. Dec. 12. A reception will follow across the hall in the Press Room.
4. Northern California Science Writers Association (NCSWA) dinner
[The following notice is provided on behalf of the Northern California Science Writers Association about their holiday dinner]
AGU press are heartily invited to join Bay Area science writers for NCSWA's annual holiday dinner. This year, science journalist Alex Witze will discuss her new book "Island on Fire", written with her husband Jeff Kanipe. "Island on Fire" describes the extraordinary 18th century eruption of Laki, a toxic and explosive Icelandic volcano that darkened Europe and killed thousands of people. Witze, a Boulder-based journalist and contributor to both Science News and Nature, will discuss her research for the book and show images from her travels on Iceland. She'll also talk about the chances that Laki could erupt again. For a sneak preview, see her blog post: http://alexandrawitze.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/laki-the-forgotten-volcano/
The NCSWA holiday dinner will be held at 6 p.m. on Wed. Dec. 11 at Buca di Beppo Italian restaurant, 855 Howard St. (adjacent to the Moscone Center). Registration details will soon be available at: http://www.ncswa.org.
5. Fall Meeting App
The 2013 AGU Fall Meeting App will be available for download soon. The app allows you to browse the scientific program, plan and sync your schedule between devices, receive event alerts, and stay connected on Twitter. Meeting attendees will benefit this year from an improved mobile app that will integrate with the scientific program content and individual schedules created in the Itinerary Planner. The mobile app will offer robust searches for presentations and events, and individual schedules can be synced to Google Calendar and iCal.
6. Press registration information
To register as press and to check eligibility requirements, please see the online press registration page. Members of the news media are encouraged to preregister online to expedite the process of receiving your badges.
Press badges provide complimentary access to any of the meeting's scientific sessions, as well as to the Press Room, Press Conference Room and Quiet Rooms. No one will be admitted without a valid badge.
Eligible members of the press may also register on-site at the meeting. The on-site registration location, badge pick-up location, and Press Room, Press Conference Room and Quiet Room locations will be included in a future advisory.
7. Who's coming
Check here for an online Who's Coming list of journalists and press officers who have preregistered for the meeting. This list gets updated regularly.
###
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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.
Magnetic 'force field' shields giant gas cloud during collision with Milky Way
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Charles Blue cblue@nrao.edu 434-296-0314 National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Doom may be averted for the Smith Cloud, a gigantic streamer of hydrogen gas that is on a collision course with the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered a magnetic field deep in the cloud's interior, which may protect it during its meteoric plunge into the disk of our Galaxy.
This discovery could help explain how so-called high velocity clouds (HVCs) remain mostly intact during their mergers with the disks of galaxies, where they would provide fresh fuel for a new generation of stars.
Currently, the Smith Cloud is hurtling toward the Milky Way at more than 150 miles per second and is predicted to impact in approximately 30 million years. When it does, astronomers believe, it will set off a spectacular burst of star formation. But first, it has to survive careening through the halo, or atmosphere, of hot ionized gas surrounding the Milky Way.
"The million-degree upper atmosphere of the Galaxy ought to destroy these hydrogen clouds before they ever reach the disk, where most stars are formed," said Alex Hill, an astronomer at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. "New observations reveal one of these clouds in the process of being shredded, but a protective magnetic field shields the cloud and may help it survive its plunge."
Many hundreds of HVCs zip around our Galaxy, but their obits seldom correspond to the rotation of the Milky Way. This leads astronomers to believe that HVCs are the left-over building blocks of galaxy formation or the splattered remains of a close galactic encounter billions of years ago.
Though massive, the gas that makes up HVCs is very tenuous, and computer simulations predict that they lack the necessary heft to survive plunging through the halo and into the disk of the Milky Way.
"We have long had trouble understanding how HVCs reach the Galactic disk," said Hill. "There's good reason to believe that magnetic fields can prevent their 'burning up' in the halo like a meteorite burning up in Earth's atmosphere."
Despite being the best evidence yet for a magnetic field inside an HVC, the origin of the Smith Cloud's field remains a mystery. "The field we observe now is too large to have existed in its current state when the cloud was formed," said Hill. "The field was probably magnified by the cloud's motion through the halo."
Earlier research indicates the Smith Cloud has already survived punching through the disk of our Galaxy once and -- at about 8,000 light-years from the disk -- is just beginning its re-entry now.
"The Smith Cloud is unique among high-velocity clouds because it is so clearly interacting with and merging with the Milky Way," said Felix J. Lockman, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, W.Va. "Its comet-like appearance indicates it's already feeling the Milky Way's influence."
Since the Smith Cloud appears to be devoid of stars, the only way to observe it is with exquisitely sensitive radio telescopes, like the GBT, which can detect the faint emission of neutral hydrogen. If it were visible with the naked eye, the Smith Cloud would cover almost as much sky as the constellation Orion.
When the Smith Cloud eventually merges with the Milky Way, it could produce a bright ring of stars similar to the one relatively close to our Sun known as Gould's Belt.
"Our Galaxy is in an incredibly dynamic environment," concludes Hill, "and how it interacts with that environment determines whether stars like the Sun will continue to form."
###
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
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Magnetic 'force field' shields giant gas cloud during collision with Milky Way
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Charles Blue cblue@nrao.edu 434-296-0314 National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Doom may be averted for the Smith Cloud, a gigantic streamer of hydrogen gas that is on a collision course with the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered a magnetic field deep in the cloud's interior, which may protect it during its meteoric plunge into the disk of our Galaxy.
This discovery could help explain how so-called high velocity clouds (HVCs) remain mostly intact during their mergers with the disks of galaxies, where they would provide fresh fuel for a new generation of stars.
Currently, the Smith Cloud is hurtling toward the Milky Way at more than 150 miles per second and is predicted to impact in approximately 30 million years. When it does, astronomers believe, it will set off a spectacular burst of star formation. But first, it has to survive careening through the halo, or atmosphere, of hot ionized gas surrounding the Milky Way.
"The million-degree upper atmosphere of the Galaxy ought to destroy these hydrogen clouds before they ever reach the disk, where most stars are formed," said Alex Hill, an astronomer at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. "New observations reveal one of these clouds in the process of being shredded, but a protective magnetic field shields the cloud and may help it survive its plunge."
Many hundreds of HVCs zip around our Galaxy, but their obits seldom correspond to the rotation of the Milky Way. This leads astronomers to believe that HVCs are the left-over building blocks of galaxy formation or the splattered remains of a close galactic encounter billions of years ago.
Though massive, the gas that makes up HVCs is very tenuous, and computer simulations predict that they lack the necessary heft to survive plunging through the halo and into the disk of the Milky Way.
"We have long had trouble understanding how HVCs reach the Galactic disk," said Hill. "There's good reason to believe that magnetic fields can prevent their 'burning up' in the halo like a meteorite burning up in Earth's atmosphere."
Despite being the best evidence yet for a magnetic field inside an HVC, the origin of the Smith Cloud's field remains a mystery. "The field we observe now is too large to have existed in its current state when the cloud was formed," said Hill. "The field was probably magnified by the cloud's motion through the halo."
Earlier research indicates the Smith Cloud has already survived punching through the disk of our Galaxy once and -- at about 8,000 light-years from the disk -- is just beginning its re-entry now.
"The Smith Cloud is unique among high-velocity clouds because it is so clearly interacting with and merging with the Milky Way," said Felix J. Lockman, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, W.Va. "Its comet-like appearance indicates it's already feeling the Milky Way's influence."
Since the Smith Cloud appears to be devoid of stars, the only way to observe it is with exquisitely sensitive radio telescopes, like the GBT, which can detect the faint emission of neutral hydrogen. If it were visible with the naked eye, the Smith Cloud would cover almost as much sky as the constellation Orion.
When the Smith Cloud eventually merges with the Milky Way, it could produce a bright ring of stars similar to the one relatively close to our Sun known as Gould's Belt.
"Our Galaxy is in an incredibly dynamic environment," concludes Hill, "and how it interacts with that environment determines whether stars like the Sun will continue to form."
###
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
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CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
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CWRU researchers aim nanotechnology at micrometastases
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31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Kevin Mayhood kevin.mayhood@case.edu 216-368-4442 Case Western Reserve University
To infiltrate and quash aggressive cancers that survive traditional therapy
CLEVELANDResearchers at Case Western Reserve University have received two grants totaling nearly $1.7 million to build nanoparticles that seek and destroy metastases too small to be detected with current technologies.
They are targeting aggressive cancers that persist through traditional chemotherapy and can form new tumors. The stealthy travel and growth of micrometastases is the hallmark of metastatic disease, the cause of most cancer deaths worldwide.
The group, led by Efstathios Karathanasis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and radiology, will spend the next five years perfecting molecular coatings, called ligands, that enable nanochains injected into a patient's blood to home in on micrometastases. The National Cancer Institute awarded the group $1.6 million to pursue the work.
The Ohio Cancer Research Associates awarded the group another $60,000 to increase the efficiency and rapid dispersal of chemotherapy drugs the nanochains tote inside the metastases.
The grants will build on earlier work by Karathanasis, Mark Griswold, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, and Ruth Keri, professor of pharmacology at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and associate director of research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. They and colleagues invented a nanochain that explodes a barrage of chemotherapy drugs inside a tumor.
"When a patient is diagnosed with cancer, he or she undergoes surgery to remove the primary tumor, then undergoes chemotherapy to kill any residual disease, including distant micrometastases," Karathanasis said.
"Chemotherapy drugs are very potent, but because they are randomly dispersed throughout the body in traditional chemotherapy, they aren't effective with the aggressive forms of cancer," he continued. "You have to give the patient so much of the drug that it would kill the patient before killing those micrometastases."
But delivering the killer drug only to micrometastases is a challenge. They are hidden among healthy cells in such small numbers they don't make a blip on today's imaging screens.
Contrary to traditional drugs, you can control how a nanoparticle travels in the bloodstream by changing its size and shape. "You can think of nanoparticles as a pile of leaves in the back yard," Karathanasis said. "When the wind blows, each leaf has a different trajectory because each has a different weight, size and shape. As engineers, we study how nanoparticles flow inside the body."
The group built a nanochain with a tail made of magnetized iron oxide links and a balloon-like sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The chains are designed to tumble out of the main flow in blood vessels, travel along the walls and latch onto integrins, the glue that binds newly forming micrometastasis onto the vessel wall.
When chains congregate inside tumors, researchers place a wire coil, called a solenoid, outside the animal models. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a radiofrequency field, which causes the magnetic tails on the chains to vibrate, breaking open the chemical-carrying spheres and launching the chemotherapeutic drug deep into a metastasis.
In testing a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the chains killed 3000 times the number of cancerous cells as traditional chemotherapy, extended life longer and in some cases completely eradicated the disease, while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Due to their random dispersal, negligible amounts of a typical conventional chemo drug can reach into a metastasis. In recent testing, a remarkable 6 percent of the nanochains injected in a mouse model congregated within a micrometastatic site of only a millimeter in size. The researchers want even better.
Using the federal grant, the researchers will develop nanochains with at least two ligands, which are molecular coatings designed to draw and link the chains to micrometastases.
The different ligands will seek different locations on cancerous cells, increasing the odds of finding and attacking the target.
Using the Ohio grant, the researchers will find the optimal size of the nanochains, tail and the payload of drugs to make them as efficient and speedy killers as possible. By including fluorescent materials in the nanochains, they will be able to see the chains slip from the blood stream, congregate in micrometastases and explode the drugs inside, and make improvements from there.
Other members of the research group include Vikas Gulani, assistant professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and director of MRI at UH Case Medical Center, Chris Flask, director of the Imaging Core Center in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and an assistant professor of radiology, and William Schiemann, an associate professor at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"Such work would not happen in other places", Karathanasis said. "This is truly interactive research with my lab, the Laboratory for Nanomedical Engineering, the Case Center for Imaging Research and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center."
###
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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.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's highest court has ruled in favor of a hospital that gained court approval to withhold treatment from a terminally ill man despite the family's opposition.
In a unanimous judgment handed down on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeal was correct in allowing Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool to withhold treatment from David James, 68, who suffered colon cancer, organ failure and a stroke, among other problems.
James' doctors estimated he had a 1 percent chance of survival and applied to the Court of Protection for a legal declaration allowing it to discontinue some types of treatment, like restarting his heart if it stopped and a kidney replacement therapy. The court rejected the application on Dec. 6, but 15 days later the Court of Appeal reversed the decision. By that time, James' condition had worsened, and he died on Dec. 31.
Until his death, James had been dependent on a breathing machine, had a tube to provide him with basic nutrition and hydration. His doctors said "daily care tasks" caused him pain and suffering.
James' family argued that his care should have continued.
The Supreme Court judges concluded that where treatment is futile, "it would be in the best interests of the patient to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment," even if this results in the patient's death.
James' family said they believed he would have wanted to continue being treated and that he had not reached the point where treatment was hopeless. But lawyers for the hospital said James had severe physical and neurological damage, was steadily deteriorating and that further invasive treatments would put him at greater risk.
"When you can't consent, the law says we only treat you when it's in your best interests," said Penney Lewis, a professor and medical law expert at King's College London. She said British courts have previously ruled that preserving life is not always in the patient's best interests and that judges must weigh whether treatment would have any benefit for the patient, even if it doesn't cure them.
Though some treatments which result in minimal improvement might be considered worthy for some patients, such as those in intensive care, Lewis said that criterion wasn't met in James' case by the time the case went to the Court of Appeal, which ruled he had no chance of improving.
"The time had indeed come when it was no longer premature to say that it would not be in his best interests to attempt to restart his heart should it stop beating," the judges wrote in their decision.
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, center, walks with Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., right, and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, before their meeting. Earlier, the prime minister met with Vice President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, center, walks with Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., right, and Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, before their meeting. Earlier, the prime minister met with Vice President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki listens during a meeting with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., and the committee's ranking Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, talks with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., right, during a luncheon meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, left, is greeted by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., center, and the committee's ranking Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2013, during a luncheon meeting. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Terrorists "found a second chance" to thrive in Iraq, the nation's prime minister said Thursday in asking for new U.S. aid to beat back a bloody insurgency that has been fueled by the neighboring Syrian civil war and the departure of American troops from Iraq two years ago.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a packed auditorium at the U.S. Institute of Peace that he needs additional weapons, help with intelligence and other assistance, and claimed the world has a responsibility to help because terrorism is an international concern.
"They carry their bad ideas everywhere," al-Maliki said of terrorists. "They carry bad ideas instead of flowers."
The new request comes nearly two years after al-Maliki's government refused to let U.S. forces remain in Iraq, after nearly nine years of war, with legal immunity that the Obama administration insisted was necessary to protect troops. The administration had campaigned on ending the war in Iraq and took the opportunity offered by the legal dispute to pull all troops out.
Al-Maliki will meet Friday with President Barack Obama in what Baghdad hopes will be a fresh start in a complicated relationship that has been marked both by victories and frustrations for each side.
Within months of the U.S. troops' departure, violence began creeping up in the capital and across the country as Sunni Muslim insurgents, angered by a widespread belief that Sunnis had been sidelined by the Shiite-led government, lashed out. The State Department says at least 6,000 Iraqis have been killed in attacks so far this year, and suicide bombers launched 38 strikes in the last month alone.
"So the terrorists found a second chance," al-Maliki said — a turnabout from an insurgency that was mostly silenced by the time the U.S. troops left.
Al-Maliki largely blamed the Syrian civil war for the rise in Iraq's violence. In Syria, rebels — including some linked to al-Qaida — are fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad.
Al-Maliki said he will ask Obama for new assistance to bolster Iraq's military and fight al-Qaida. The Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. said that could include speeding up the delivery of U.S. aircraft, missiles, interceptors and other weapons, and improving national intelligence systems among other things.
Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily did not rule out the possibility of asking the U.S. to send military special forces or additional CIA advisers to Iraq to help train and assist counterterror troops, but noted that if the U.S. doesn't provide the help, Iraq will go where they can, including China or Russia, which would be more than happy to increase their influence in Baghdad at U.S. expense.
The two leaders also will discuss how Iraq can improve its fractious government, which so often is divided among sectarian or ethnic lines, to give it more confidence with a bitter and traumatized public.
The ambassador said no new security agreement would be needed to give immunity to additional U.S. advisers or trainers in Iraq. And he said Iraq would pay for the additional weapons or other assistance.
A senior Obama administration official said Wednesday that U.S. officials were not planning to send U.S. trainers to Iraq and that Baghdad had not asked for them. The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters by name.
U.S. officials were prepared to help Iraq with an approach that did not focus just on military or security gaps, the administration official said. The aid under consideration might include more weapons for Iraqi troops who do not have necessary equipment to battle al-Qaida insurgents, he said.
Administration officials consider the insurgency, which has rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant, a major and increasing threat both to Iraq and the U.S., the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials see a possible solution in trying to persuade insurgents to join forces with Iraqi troops and move away from al-Qaida, following a pattern set by so-called Awakening Councils in western Iraq that marked a turning point in the war. Faily said much of the additional aid — including weapons and training — would go toward this effort.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who opposed the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, said Iraq likely would not get the aid until al-Maliki, a Shiite, makes strides in making the government more inclusive to Sunnis. "The situation is deteriorating and it's unraveling, and he's got to turn it around," McCain said Wednesday after a tense meeting on Capitol Hill with al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki's plea for aid is somewhat ironic, given that he refused to budge in 2011 on letting U.S. troops stay in Iraq with legal immunity Washington said they must have to defend themselves in the volatile country. But it was a fiercely unpopular political position in Iraq, which was unable to prosecute Blackwater Worldwide security contractors who opened fire in a Baghdad square in 2007, killing at least 13 passersby.
James F. Jeffrey, who was the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad when the U.S. troops left, called it a "turnabout" by al-Maliki. He said Iraq desperately needs teams of U.S. advisers, trainers, intelligence and counterterror experts to beat back al-Qaida.
"They could mean all the difference between losing an Iraq that 4,500 Americans gave their lives for," said Jeffrey, who retired from the State Department after leaving Baghdad last year.
Nearly 4,500 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq between the 2003 invasion and the 2011 withdrawal. More than 100,000 Iraqi were killed in that time.
___
Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/larajakesAP
President Barack Obama defended his health-care law, saying the flawed online insurance exchange will get fixed and accusing critics of “grossly misleading” the public about how the program works.
Speaking at a rally in Boston yesterday, Obama said the experience of Massachusetts with the start of its health-care system in 2006 shows that the federal version, passed in 2010, will succeed. He addressed two criticisms from Republicans: that while he promised that people who liked their insurance could keep it, not all can, and that some people’s insurance will get more expensive.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Prospects for comprehensive immigration legislation this year grew murkier on the eve of an all-out push by a coalition of business, religious and law enforcement to persuade the House to overhaul the decades-old system.
At the same time, proponents seized on a California GOP lawmaker's willingness to back a House Democratic plan as a Senate-passed measure remained stalled in the House.
But in a blow to their effort, Sen. Marco Rubio signaled support for the piecemeal approach in the House despite his months of work and vote for the comprehensive Senate bill that would provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living here illegally and tighten border security.
The Florida Republican — son of Cuban immigrants and a potential presidential candidate in 2016 — had provided crucial support for the bipartisan Senate bill.
"Sen. Rubio has always preferred solving immigration reform with piecemeal legislation. The Senate opted to pursue a comprehensive bill, and he joined that effort because he wanted to influence the policy that passed the Senate," Rubio's spokesman, Alex Conant, said Monday in explaining Rubio's backing for limited measures.
Since 68 Democrats and Republicans joined together to pass the Senate bill in June, opponents and many conservatives have stepped up their pressure against any immigration legislation, based not only on their principle opposition but their unwillingness to deliver on Obama's top second-term domestic agenda issue.
The recent budget fight only inflamed conservative GOP feelings toward Obama.
Obama on Monday reiterated his call for Congress to complete action on an immigration overhaul before the end of the year. He said that represented the only way to end the record deportations of immigrants undertaken by his administration, actions he has tried to curtail by allowing young people who immigrated illegally into the United States — so-called Dreamers — to remain in the country under certain conditions.
"That's why my top priority has been let's make sure that we comprehensively reform the whole system so that we're not just dealing with Dreamers, we're also dealing with anybody who's here and is undocumented," he said in an interview with Fusion, a cable channel that is a collaboration of ABC News and Univision.
Most House Republicans reject a comprehensive approach and many question offering citizenship to people who broke U.S. immigration laws to be in this country. The House Judiciary Committee has moved forward with individual, single-issue immigration bills.
Although House Republican leaders say they want to solve the issue, which has become a political drag for the GOP, many rank-and-file House Republicans have shown little inclination to deal with it. With just a few legislative weeks left in the House, it's unclear whether lawmakers will vote on any measure before the year is out.
Among the exceptions are Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida and Darrell Issa of California, who have been working on possible legislation.
Diaz-Balart has said his bill would help those immigrants here illegally to "get right with the law," purposely avoiding the word legalization that he said is interpreted differently in the fierce debate over immigration. Diaz-Balart had been slated to meet with the president on Tuesday, but the meeting was canceled and could be rescheduled, the lawmaker's office said late Monday.
The congressman mentioned the session in an interview with Florida radio station WGCU and his office confirmed the meeting.
Determined to rally support, outside groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bibles, Badges & Business for Immigration Reform are descending on the Capitol Tuesday to lobby lawmakers to vote this year on immigration legislation.
Among those arriving in Washington on Monday was David Gaither, a former Republican state senator from Minnesota who served as chief of staff to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Gaither planned to meet with members of the Minnesota congressional delegation on Tuesday and deliver a simple message on immigration: Just fix it.
He said Monday that they will push for a comprehensive bill but were willing to accept piecemeal changes. The bottom line to lawmakers was "put service over self," Gaither said.
Randy Johnson, senior vice president of the Chamber, told reporters on a conference call Monday that the effort is "about moving votes on the Hill in the right direction."
Johnson said he was hopeful that the House could pass one or two of the single-issue bills before the end of the year, and left open the possibility of action early next year — an election year.
"I don't think it's the end of world if we can't get it done by early February," Johnson said. He said if it drags on until April or May, the prospects are dim.
Separately, Rep. Jeff Denham of California became the first Republican to back the House Democratic bill. Denham represents a swing district in northern California northeast of San Jose. He won his seat in 2012 with 53 percent of the vote.
"I want to fix it, I want to fix it once for my generation, for my children's generation and a pathway to earned citizenship must be included in immigration reform legislation," Denham said on a conference call with reporters.
The Senate bill, strongly backed by the White House, includes billions for border security, a reworked legal immigration system to allow tens of thousands of high- and low-skilled workers into the country, and a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already here illegally.
The bill from House Democrats jettisoned the border security provision and replaced it with the House Homeland panel's version. That bill, backed by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, would require the secretary of Homeland Security to develop a strategy to gain operational control of the border within five years and a plan to implement the strategy. It calls on the Government Accountability Office to oversee the steps being taken.
Denham said House Democrats were willing to incorporate his separate bill that would allow immigrants who are in the county illegally to become legal permanent residents if they enlist in the military and become a citizen after four years of service with an honorable discharge.
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