– Republicans got back into debate mode tonight, with Rick Perry and Mitt Romney trading a series of sharp and sometimes sarcastic barbs at one another over Social Security, immigration, and other issues, reports AP. No fewer than nine candidates were on the stage, thanks to the invite extended to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. (He got perhaps the biggest applause line of the night with this line: "My neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready projects for this country" than Obama.) But Perry and Romney were the main focus, and their back-and-forth on Social Security typified things: Perry said his position on it isn't as radical as his foes say, adding it was "not the first time that Mitt's been wrong on some issues before," notes the New York Times. Romney responded: "There's a Rick Perry out there that's saying the federal government shouldn't be in the pension business. You better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that." Perry then accused Romney of changing views of his Massachusetts health care law in different versions of his book, and later widened the flip-flopping charges to a host of other issues. (Romney used the phrase "nice try" at different times to deflect Perry criticisms.) Immigration also emerged as a main issue, with Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum criticizing the Texas policy of giving in-state tuition benefits to immigrants' kids, notes Politico. Bachmann called such programs "magnets," but Perry said of his critics, "I don't think you have a heart." Catch up with live-blogging and details on the other candidates here.

Expand this summary.

ORLANDO, Fla. — In their third debate in as many weeks, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas engaged in a sometimes heated back and forth over immigration , health care and entitlements, their rivalry dominating a stage that included seven other candidates struggling to catch up in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

 Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry arrived here with a strategic imperative to challenge the other’s consistency and conservative credentials. The tensions only grew as the night wore on, to the point where Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah, joked that Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry were at risk of bludgeoning each other to death.

 Still, after two hours of dueling it was unclear whether Mr. Perry had achieved his goal of knocking Mr. Romney off his fairly unruffled stride. It was similarly not certain that Mr. Romney had made headway in knocking Mr. Perry down a few pegs from what has been a relatively strong opening to his young campaign.

 Mr. Romney sought to capitalize on the concern among many conservatives about Mr. Perry’s position on illegal immigration, harshly criticizing the Texas policy that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges and universities.

 “That just doesn’t make sense to me,” Mr. Romney said, noting that illegal immigrants get as much as $22,000 a year in tuition breaks that out-of-state citizens do not get.

 Offering an impassioned defense of that policy — and receiving boos from a segment of the audience — Mr. Perry did not back down, saying, “If you say that we should not educate children that have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought here by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.”

 The debate, held at the Orange County Convention Center and sponsored by Fox News, Google and the Republican Party of Florida, featured robust audience participation and questions submitted via YouTube. The 5,000 people there responded loudly at times, including boos during a question from a gay solider about the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gay and lesbian service members.

 And while the Fox News moderators sought to engage all of the candidates, the exchanges between Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry — standing side by side — overshadowed the others.

 At one point, Mr. Romney cited a passage from Mr. Perry’s book “Fed Up!” and said the Texas governor had suggested that state or local governments be allowed to run their own Social Security programs. He accused Mr. Perry of running away from his own words.

 “There’s a Rick Perry out there that’s saying the federal government shouldn’t be in the pension business,” Mr. Romney said. “You better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that.”

 Mr. Perry hit back by accusing Mr. Romney of editing his book “No Apologies” between printings to remove a passage saying that the health care plan he instituted in Massachusetts — considered a model for President Obama’s overhaul — was good for the nation.

 “You said that it was exactly what the American people needed to have — that’s Romneycare — given to them as you had in Massachusetts,” he said.

 Mr. Romney responded by saying: “I actually wrote my book, and in my book I said no such thing. And it’s fine for you to retreat from your own words in your own book, but please don’t try and make me retreat from the words that I wrote in my book.”

 As the exchange continued, Mr. Perry, standing to Mr. Romney’s right, joked, “It’s kind of badminton” and swung his arm. But later he set any joking aside, saying of Mr. Romney, “I think Americans don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with.”

 Mr. Romney had managed to emerge relatively unharmed from the past few debates, and the pressure was on Mr. Perry to change that. If Mr. Perry’s key line was meant to be a solid punch to the jaw, he seemed to rush it and stumble a bit.

 “Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against first — Roe v. Wade?” he said. “I mean we’ll wait until tomorrow to see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight.”

 A late attempt at humor seemed to go astray as well, when Mr. Perry was asked which of the candidates on stage he would pick as his vice-presidential nominee. Speaking of Herman Cain, a former business executive, Mr. Perry said he would “mate him up” with the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to make a perfect political partner. Mock wincing, Mr. Romney remarked coolly that the night had produced “a couple of images I’m going to have a hard time getting out of my mind.”

 Mr. Huntsman, who served as ambassador to China in the Obama administration, appeared to express frustration that the night had been so much about Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry. He noted that four years ago the two supposed Republican front-runners were former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York and former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

 “They seemed to disappear altogether,” he said. “I can’t remember where they went.” ||||| ORLANDO — The Republican presidential field strayed away from the central 2012 topic of jobs Thursday night to wage a pitched debate over a pair of far more explosive issues: immigration and Social Security.

 In the Orlando debate’s most dramatic clash, Rick Perry defended himself from a multi-front attack on his immigration record, struggling to fend off rivals he called heartless for their attitude towards the children of undocumented immigrants.

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 reset Perry defends immigration policy POLITICO 44

 Three of Perry’s opponents – including his nearest competitor, Mitt Romney – accused the Texas governor of coddling illegal immigrants with a law allowing young people who broke the law by entering the United States to claim in-state tuition benefits in Texas.

 “That kind of magnet draws people into this country to get that education,” Romney charged. “We have to turn off the magnet of extraordinary government benefits.”

 Under fire from Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann on the same issue, Perry said he didn’t believe in punishing children who entered the country illegally through no fault of their own.

 To candidates who disagree, Perry said: “I don’t think they have a heart.”

 “We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society,” Perry said, drawing boos from the audience.

 The immigration exchange was a rare debate moment that put the staunchly conservative Perry on the defensive by attacks from the right.

 But it was not the only moment in the evening where Perry appeared unsteady or unfocused in his performance.

 Though the Texan has rocketed to a high single-digit lead in most 2012 primary polling, Perry has yet to hand in a commanding debate appearance, and on Thursday gave a conspicuously meandering answer on foreign policy that will reinforce questions about his preparedness as a candidate.

 In general, the debate hosted by Fox News, Google and the Republican Party of Florida followed a familiar script: Perry and Romney attacked each others’ views on Social Security, everybody beat up on the Obama administration and most of the candidates faded into the background.

 In addition to Perry, Romney, Bachmann and Santorum, there were five other candidates on stage: Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich and Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor making his first debate appearance in months.

 For much of the first hour, the debate was a fairly humdrum affair, showcasing an array of high-tech bells and whistles offered by Google, which co-sponsored the debate.

 The first set of questions came from viewers who submitted their questions on YouTube, and largely allowed the candidates to recite talking points without being challenged by moderators.

 And Fox took time away from the candidate forum to share results from instant polls of the debate viewers, who answered questions such as: How much does someone need to make before they are considered rich? ||||| Side by side in confrontational debate, Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Rick Perry sarcastically accused each other Thursday night of flip-flopping on Social Security and health care, flashpoints in their intense struggle for the party nomination.

 Republican presidential candidates Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, share a laugh during a Fox News/Google debate Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. (AP... (Associated Press)

 Republican presidential candidates from left, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, Texas Gov. Rick Perry,... (Associated Press)

 Republican presidential candidates businessman Herman Cain, left, and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, get together prior to a debate Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) (Associated Press)

 Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, listens as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney makes a comment during a Fox NEws/Google debate Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla.... (Associated Press)

 Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, laughs as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney makes a comment during a Fox News/Google debate Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla.... (Associated Press)

 Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney points to the audience with Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn, prior to a debate Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan... (Associated Press)

 In a debate that focused on character and credibility as much as other issues, Perry insisted he had backed off "not one inch, Sir" from what he had written in a campaign-season book published a few months ago.

 Romney vouched for his own steadfastness moments later. "There are a lot of reasons not to elect me," he said. "There are a lot of reasons not to elect other people on this stage. ... But one reason to elect me is I know what I stand for. I've written it down. Words have meaning."

 The two men assailed one another in the third debate in as many weeks in a race for the Republican presidential nomination growing testier by the day.

 Perry runs ahead in national opinion polls, with Romney a close second, and they compete daily for endorsements from members of Congress and other party luminaries in hopes of gaining a permanent edge before the caucuses and primaries begin early next year.

 The other contenders on the stage struggled at times to gain the debate spotlight, even as they struggle to gain traction in the polls.

 The GOP presidential hopefuls all agreed quickly on one point _ that President Barack Obama's handling of the economy was woeful. They said they would cut taxes, eliminate government regulations and take other steps to help create jobs in a nation with 9.1 percent unemployment.

 Yet the two-hour event was marked by clashes over Social Security, health care, immigration, gun rights and more.

 Romney accused Perry of having said the federal government "shouldn't be in the pension business, that it's unconstitutional," a reference to Social Security benefits.

 Noting his rival's denials, Romney mocked him. "You better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that," he said.

 Perry soon returned the favor, saying that Romney switched his position on health care between editions of a book he had published. In one edition, Perry said, Romney advocated expanding to the rest of the country the health care program he signed in Massachusetts. "Then in your paperback you took that line out, so speaking of not getting it straight in your book, Sir."

 "It's like badminton," said Perry.

 The Massachusetts legislation required residents of the state to purchase health coverage or pay a fine, a cornerstone of the law that Obama won from Congress last year that has inflamed conservative voters across the country.

 Perry also accused Romney of flip-flopping his views on the rights of gun owners.

 In fact, both Perry and Romney have sought to blur if not rewrite portions of their own records as they vie for the nomination.

 In Romney's case, that has meant trying to win support from conservative voters despite the moderate positions he held on social issues while he was governor of Massachusetts.

 And for Perry, it has meant trying to fend off criticism that his views on Social Security and other issues do not render him unelectable.

 Perry gave no ground on one issue _ his support for a state law in Texas that gives the children of illegal immigrants reduced tuition to state colleges and universities.

 "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into the state for no other reason than they've been brought there, by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," he said.

 That drew a retort from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. "No one is suggesting that students who are illegal in this country shouldn't go to colleges and universities," he said, adding that he objects to giving them state subsidies to do so.

 "Most folks have to pay the full boat. ... Why should they be given preferential treatment as an illegal in this country?" he said.

 There was relatively little jockeying on the economy.

 "The president's party wants to take from some people and give to others. That isn't the way to lift America," said Romney.

 Perry said his state ranked first in the country five years in the row in attracting businesses looking to relocate. "Something special happened there ... and we plan to keep it that way," he said.

 Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota told one questioner, "You should get to keep every dollar you earn," then backpedaled. "Obviously we have to give money back to the government so we can run the government," she said.

 The two-hour event was sponsored by Fox News and Google, in keeping with an emerging trend in which mainstream media organizations partner with Internet companies .

 Without saying so, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gave an endorsement of sorts to one of the elements of Obama's job proposals. Asked whether he would renew unemployment benefits for those out of work, he said they should be required to participate in a "business led" job training program. "I believe it is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing." He added.

 Obama has called for Congress to extend the current system of unemployment benefits, but he also wants to permit states to experiment with the type of training program that has been used in Gingrich's home state of Georgia.

 Also on stage were Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, businessman Herman Cain and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. |||||


Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE The second-born panda cub born to Mei Xiang died at the Smithsonian National Zoo. The cub went into cardiac arrest and the workers were unable to revive him. The larger cub, born first, appears to be strong and healthy. VPC

 In this handout provided by the Smithsonian's National Zoo, one of two newborn Giant Pandas born August 22 is cared for by a member of the panda team at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute on August 24, 2015, in Washington, DC. (Photo: Getty Images)

 The smaller of twin giant panda cubs born Saturday died Wednesday afternoon at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., officials said.

 Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE One of the twin panda cubs at Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., died just days after its birth. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

 The larger cub, born first, appears to be "strong, robust, behaving normally" and is with its 17-year-old mother, Mei Xiang.

 "We have one healthy panda and we remain optimistic about that panda's future," the zoo's chief veterinarian, Donald Neiffer, said at a news briefing.

 After spending the night with its mother, the smaller cub, which weighed just 3 ounces at birth, appeared weaker Wednesday morning and was having trouble breathing, he said. Veterinarians pumped oxygen into the incubator and gave the cub aerosolized antibiotics and medication to break up mucus in its lungs, to no avail.

 “Despite extreme efforts on the part of our dedicated staff, we weren’t able to change things,” Neiffer said.

 The cub went into respiratory and cardiac arrest at about 2 p.m. Veterinarians performed gentle CPR for a few minutes until Neiffer ordered them to stop.

 He said the cub's death "was very quick.”

 A necropsy will be performed to try to determine exactly why the cub died.

 Mei Xiang, who was artificially inseminated in April, gave birth to the twins five hours apart Saturday. The first cub was born at 5:34 p.m. and weighed 4.8 ounces. The second was born at 10:07 p.m.

 We are sad to report that the smaller of the two panda cubs has died. We will continue to provide updates on social media w/ #Pandastory. — National Zoo (@NationalZoo) August 26, 2015

 After their births, the zoo announced that it would be rotating the cubs so that one could be with the mother at a time. Staffers said they would switch the cubs about every four hours so each had time to nurse and have quality time with Mei Xiang. The other cub would be bottle fed and kept warm inside an incubator.

 The zoo said Sunday that veterinarians tried to swap the cubs around 11 p.m. but that Mei Xiang would not put down her first-born cub. The smaller, second-born cub was cared for until 7:05 a.m. Monday, when they successfully swapped the cubs.

 Tuesday, the National Zoo tweeted that vets hadn't been able to swap the cubs since 2 p.m. Monday, but also reported that the smaller cub's "behaviors are good; still high-risk time."

 Haven’t been able to swap cubs since 2p 8/24.Mei has larger cub.Smaller cub’s behaviors are good;still high-risk time pic.twitter.com/FrEG2lYfEz — National Zoo (@NationalZoo) August 25, 2015

 Officials said earlier that the cub had shown some signs of regurgitation, which could lead to aspiration. Veterinarians were administering antibiotics to prevent possible infection, and keeping the smaller cub hydrated by alternating an infant electrolyte solution with formula and administering fluids under the skin, according to WUSA-TV.

 It was the third time in three years that Mei Xiang has lost a cub. One was stillborn in 2013, and another died in 2012 after six days.

 She has two other surviving cubs, born in 2013 and 2005.

 Contributing: Michael Winter, USA TODAY

 Photos: Giant panda gives birth to two cubs at National Zoo

 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1EkF0f0 ||||| Tweet with a location

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Write a summary.

– A heartbreaking update to the story of Mei Xiang's panda cubs: The smaller twin born to the National Zoo panda has died. The new mom had started ignoring the smaller cub in favor of nursing the bigger one, and the zoo tweeted today, "We are sad to report that the smaller of the two panda cubs has died. We will continue to provide updates on social media w/ #Pandastory." The good news: The zoo says the larger cub seems "strong, robust, behaving normally," USA Today reports. "We have one healthy panda and we remain optimistic about that panda's future," said the zoo's chief veterinarian at a press conference. Click to read about how the zoo had been attempting to swap out the cubs with their mom.


Article:

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Emily Buchanan says rescue teams face a race against time

 Rescue teams in Turkey are continuing to search for people trapped under rubble after a strong earthquake hit the eastern Van region on Sunday.

 Some 265 people died and 1,140 were injured in the 7.2 magnitude quake, according to Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin.

 Nearly 1,000 buildings have been destroyed in the disaster zone, with the town of Ercis the worst hit.

 The death toll is expected to rise as outlying areas are reached.

 Rescuers pulled out several survivors from beneath the ruins of collapsed buildings in Ercis on Monday - including one man who called for help on his mobile phone, Anatolia news agency said.

 Cranes and heavy equipment are lifting slabs of concrete in Ercis and the larger city of Van as rescue crews cut through steel reinforcing bars and shift rubble in the search for more survivors.

 The interior minister said he believed dozens of people were trapped in buildings in Ercis but not as many as initially feared.

 At the scene Ercis occupies a beautiful site overlooking Lake Van, surrounded by snow-capped peaks. It is a beautiful setting, but today it is a scene of great sadness, shock and mourning. At one collapsed building we found four men delicately passing saucepans full of rubble that was being removed from around their 29-year-old brother Murat Saglam. He was alive, trapped on the ground floor, pinned between a car and a wall, with seven storeys collapsed on top of him. Their mother said: "None of the brothers has eaten a single thing since yesterday. We spent the night in the car here. But I won't leave until I see him. When they told me he was still alive I couldn't believe it. And I won't believe it until I see him." At the same building we found Fatih Canpolat waiting for news of his six-year-old niece. All of the rest of her family had been rescued but she had been out playing and has not been seen since the earthquake. This morning Fatih went to his brother-in-law's funeral. He died in another building.

 "There could be around 100 people [in the rubble]," the Associated Press news agency quoted Mr Sahin as saying.

 "It could be more or it could be less but we are not talking about thousands."

 He said 169 people had died in Ercis and 96 in the Van area.

 Up to 80 buildings, including a student dormitory, collapsed in Ercis, about 100km (60 miles) north of Van, while 10 fell in Van itself.

 The office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a total of 970 buildings in the earthquake zone had collapsed.

 The BBC's Daniel Sandford, in Ercis, says some 80 people are still missing at one collapsed apartment block, which once contained 20 flats.

 Search crews and heavy machinery are still at work at some destroyed buildings, but at other sites the recovery effort seems to have stopped altogether, with only a few despairing and shocked relatives sitting around.

 On Sunday, Mr Erdogan visited the area and said he feared for residents of outlying villages that rescue workers had not yet reached.

 "Because the buildings are made of mud brick, they are more vulnerable to quakes," said Mr Erdogan.

 "I must say that almost all buildings in such villages are destroyed."

 Turkish seismologist Polat Gulkan told the BBC that building regulations were often ignored in Turkey.

 'Screaming'

 Some 2,400 rescue workers are involved in the relief effort, as are 680 medics, 12 rescue dogs and 108 ambulances - including seven air ambulances, the prime minister's office said.

 Image copyright AFP In pictures: Quake zone

 Tens of thousands slept outside in freezing conditions.

 "We stayed outdoors all night, I could not sleep at all, my children, especially the little one, was terrified," Serpil Bilici told AP.

 "I grabbed her and rushed out when the quake hit, we were all screaming."

 One woman in Ercis begged rescue workers to find her friend, buried in a collapsed building.

 "She's my friend and she called me to say that she's alive and she's stuck in the rubble near the stairs of the building," the woman told Reuters news agency.

 Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, who is co-ordinating the government's response in the earthquake zone, said tents were being assembled and food distributed.

 Turkey's Red Crescent has set up tents in a sports stadium in Ercis.

 Prime Minister Erdogan thanked other countries for their offers of help, but said Turkey could cope with the disaster on its own.

 Earthquake area One of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones

 Kurdish-populated

 Ercis, an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border, was the worst-hit

 Van, large ancient city of one million on a lake ringed by mountains, less affected

 The earthquake struck at 13:41 (10:41 GMT) at a depth of 20km (12 miles), with its epicentre 16km north-east of Van in eastern Turkey, the US Geological Survey said.

 About 200 aftershocks have hit the region, it added, including one of magnitude 6.0 late on Sunday.

 Turkey is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because it sits on major geological fault lines.

 Two earthquakes in 1999 with a magnitude of more than 7 killed almost 20,000 people in densely populated parts of the north-west of the country. ||||| At least 85 people have been confirmed dead after the quake struck at 1.41pm local time (11.41 BST), with the highest number of casualties coming from the city of Ercis, a city of 90,000 some 13 miles from the epicentre Tabanli and more than 36 miles north of the provincial capital city of Van.

 The state hospital reported 59 people had died and more than 400 injured were being treated four hours after the quake struck. The area was also hit by a series of aftershocks.

 Many patients are being treated in the garden of the hospital because it lacks sufficient capacity for all the wounded.

 Based on the magnitude of the quake and the state of infrastructure in the region however, Turkey's seismology institute estimated the casualty count between 500 and 1,000.

 "We estimate around 1,000 buildings are damaged and our estimate is for hundreds of lives lost. It could be 500 or 1,000," said Mustafa Erdik, the general manager of the Kandilli Observatory.

 In Van city, which has a population of around 500,000, citizens fled to the streets in panic after the first shock, trying to pull trapped people from under collapsed buildings and debris.

 Nefise Taylan, a management student, was in a student dormitory at Van's Yuzuncu Yil University when the quake hit.

 "Everybody ran outside when the ceiling began to fall," she told The Daily Telegraph over the phone. The dormitory she was in collapsed during the quake.

 "The situation is very bad. We have no electricity."

 Teams from the state Search and Rescue Association's branches in surrounding provinces began to reach the area around 5pm. Search and rescue personnel have also been sent to Van from cities as far away as Istanbul and Kocaeli in the country's northwest. Last night they were scrambling to remove people from the body before nightfall, when temperatures drop close to freezing.

 In anticipation of the pending numbers of homeless, more than 1,000 tents, and 500 food packages have been sent to Van by Turkish Red Crescent, the country's largest humanitarian organisation.

 Offers of aid from countries including the United States, Britain, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland and Greece began pouring in hours after the earthquake. Israel, whose relationship with Turkey has deteriorated in the last year, also said they were prepared to offer the Turkish government "any aid they might need".

 Ercis's mayor, Zulfikar Arapoglu, also issued an urgent call for aid on NTV Television.

 "There are so many dead. Several buildings have collapsed, there is too much destruction," he said. "We need urgent aid. We need medics."

 In the district of Celebibag, near Ercis, Mayor Veysel Keser said that countless people were still trapped under rubble.

 "We can hear the screams of people who are under the rubble, in agony," he said. "Student dormitories, hotels and gas stations have collapsed."

 The airport at Van was also damaged, diverting planes to nearby cities and forcing relief teams to travel by road.

 Ercis also experienced the worst infrastructure damage, with 25 to 30 buildings collapsing in the city alone, according to Besir Atalay, the deputy prime minister.

 Sunday's earthquake had a relatively shallow depth of 12.2 miles, according to the US Geological Survey, which is likely to increase the damage wrought.

 Van province lies several hundred miles east of the East Anatolian fault, one of Turkey's most seismically active regions.

 Although the earthquake reportedly affected the surrounding provinces of Diyarbakir and Erzurum, residents in the capital cities of those provinces told The Daily Telegraph they felt nothing when it occurred.

 The earthquake was the largest to strike Turkey since 1999 when two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 hit northwest Turkey, killing 18,000. |||||
What is a summary?

– Though the official death toll in the wake of southeast Turkey's earthquake has hit about 270, officials fear that as many as 1,000 people may have been killed in the 7.2 shaker that toppled scores of buildings yesterday. "We estimate some 1,000 buildings are damaged and our estimate is for hundreds of lives lost. It could be 500 or 1,000," said a spokesman for a Turkish seismology institute, reports the Telegraph. Van, a city of some 500,000, was hit particularly hard; rescuers and neighbors are battling exhaustion to dig out trapped residents, reports the BBC. More than 1,000 tents and hundreds of emergency food packages have been sent to the area by the Turkish Red Crescent humanitarian organization, and offers of aid are pouring in from around the world. "There are so many dead," said the mayor of Ercis, another devastated town. "Several buildings have collapsed, there is too much destruction. We need urgent aid. We need medics. We can hear the screams of people who are under the rubble, in agony."


Jake Bouvy (l.) and Kelsey Halverson squared off to win a summer job in Emmis Digital's "Intern Games." In the end, both were declared victors. View Full Caption DNAinfo/ Mark Konkol

 RIVER NORTH — Getting a job after college once entailed padding your resume, writing a witty-yet-professional cover letter and nailing the job interview.

 My pal M.L. Elrick once tried to win over a Newsday editor by offering a "free set of steak knives" — a catchy line from a popular infomercial back in the day — in exchange for a job interview.*

 These days, however, young adults vying for a shrinking number of white-collar jobs can't rely on a good resume, the power of a well-crafted letter and a charismatic personality alone.

 In this age of digital commerce, young folks preparing to enter the workforce must display ninja-type skills in producing viral videos, attracting social media scrums and communicating to customers, clients and anyone who will listen on Instagram, among other things.

 There's probably no better example of this than Emmis Digital's recent search for interns that pitted applicants against each other in a "Hunger Games"-themed social media contest for the honor of working for no pay.

 More than 25 college kids applied for the one internship available at the River North office. The top 10 candidates were invited in for interviews, and the field was whittled down to three finalists.

 Emmis Digital's Rory Foster and Katlyn Hayes created a contest, the "Intern Games," to determine the finest free summer laborer in the land.

 "At a digital company, innovation is key. We're looking for candidates with a wide variety of skills, and we wound up with three really qualified people on paper," Foster said. "We thought that it would be fun to pit them against each other, test their mettle and see who was the hungriest."

 Plus, Foster said, the contest turned an otherwise boring intern selection process into an event with potential to at least incrementally increase the social media reach of the company's collection of websites.

 Each of the three "tributes" — potential interns, that is — was assigned to drive social media by pushing their friends, family and fans to follow Emmis Digital pages and create a video explaining why they've proved themselves worthy.

 Every day for two weeks they battled for social media supremacy under the hashtag banners — #TeamJake, #TeamKelsey and #TeamKatie.

 Jake Bouvy, a marketing major at Indiana University, was ready to rumble.

 "Once I knew it was a competition I knew I had to give everything," he said. "I'm a competitive guy. I don't like to lose."

 At first, Kelsey Halverson, a journalism major at Iowa State, wasn't really sure what to make of the Intern Games.

 "I hadn't competed in anything since sports in high school, so it was unexpected," Halverson said. "I've never had to do anything like this before."

 Emmis Digital's "Intern Games" master Katlyn Hayes (r.) declared Kelsey Halverson and Jake Bouvy winners of the social media contest to earn a summer job. View Full Caption DNAinfo/ Mark Konkol

 For two weeks, the three finalists battled by constantly pestering everyone in their social media networks — and sending out quirky posts, photos and short videos aimed at driving traffic to Emmis websites — in hopes of avoiding elimination.

 After a week, #TeamKatie had been felled.

 In the end, Halverson and Bouvy went head to head.

 Bouvy appeared to gain an edge with a slick video to a hip-hop beat that showed off his technical skill and social media success promoting indie music videos online.

 But Halverson's #TeamKelsey still had the edge in driving traffic and attracting Facebook "likes" for Emmis.

 "When I saw that she was beating me, and I had been on Twitter and Facebook begging my friends and family to please like this page, I started to think I was doing too much work to end up losing," Bouvy said.

 All the while, Hayes was back at the office keeping tabs on the successes and setbacks of their potential intern tributes in preparation for a final decision.

 "I think it was definitely more fun for me than it was for them," she said. "I got to watch them battle it out every day."

 When time ran out on the Intern Games, #TeamKelsey was the clear winner.

 "Kelsey was the true winner. She had the higher impact on social media," Foster said. "But in the end we decided, much like the 'Hunger Games,' to keep both finalists."

 Hayes said the decision was easy — and not because having two unpaid interns instead of one cost exactly the same. (The interns receive college credit for their summer labor.)

 "I loved how creative Jake was, and loved how professional Kelsey was," she said. "I knew a mix of them would make a super intern, so I wanted both of them to be here."

 On a recent workday, Bouvy reflected on how fortunate he was to be spared elimination and what he learned during the Intern Games.

 "I was worried, but it all worked out. But it speaks to the state of the job market. You have to stand out in the pack," he said. "It's a message to kids coming out of college that you can't just send out a resume, and hope for the best like your parents did."

 * Elrick didn't get that interview at Newsday, but went on to a stellar investigative reporting career that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize, getting Detroit's corrupt former mayor thrown in jail, among other things.

 For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here: ||||| Katlyn Hayes held no fewer than six internships at various agencies during her college career. Today, the ad ops specialist at Emmis Digital explains her thinking succinctly: “Competition breeds excellence.” Like a growing number of companies these days — especially in the digital space — Emmis recently hired a few new interns using some unorthodox social media-heavy methods.

 The potential interns at Emmis had to compete in a “Hunger Games” social media style competition. In the end, a field of 25 was pared down to 10, then to three. Every day for two weeks, the candidates liberally deployed the hashtags #TeamJake, #TeamKelsey, and #TeamKatie in tweets, videos and Facebook posts in order to impress the folks at Emmis.

 The two finalists, Kelsey Halverson and Jake Bouvy, were eventually both offered unpaid internships due to their creative skills in different areas, combining to create what Hayes called “a super intern.”

 Advertisement

 It was a bit surprising to hear about unpaid, often cutthroat, internships in an exciting and positive light, especially in light of the fact that Condé Nast recently settled a lawsuit brought by underpaid interns and ditched their unpaid internship program.

 “Experience is so important in today’s world. Resumes won’t even get glanced at if students don’t leave school with decent real-world experience,” Hayes lamented. “You learn in a very different way than you would in a classroom. Therefore, unpaid internships are, in fact, very important. Everyone has to start somewhere.”

 Employers are even looking beyond the internship when it comes to filling jobs through social media channels. Increasingly, they will engage with potential employees on various online platforms before they even ask them to fill out an application. The days of filling out a piece of paper while you sweat under your tie are disappearing.

 National Public Radio, for example, has created hiring managers out of all their employees, giving prospective hires a better idea of what they are going into. For instance, having employees use a hashtag to talk openly about their jobs.

 “I came up with the idea of #NPRlife at NPR as a simple hashtag employees could use when tweeting, Instragramming, etc. about work-related things that fans or prospects might be interested,” says Lars Schmidt, the Founder of Amplify Talent. “The intent was to create a platform where employees could share their experience, helping prospects get a sense of the culture and people they’d work with if they joined NPR.”

 What this interaction led to was over 2,500 Instagrams and 10,000 tweets from the current NPR staff, a $100,000 a year savings in job board postings and the Twitter handle @NPRjobs becoming one of their top sources of hiring. Not to mention a dedicated Twitter chat (#NPRTwitterChat) that evolved to assist job seekers with their use of social media.

 Schmidt has recently taken this to SpaceX, a current client.

 “I wanted to find a way to capture the excitement of a rocket launch,” Schmidt tells me. “So we decided to record audio of the launch countdown and employee reaction and load it to SoundCloud. We’ll be embedding this in some of our recruiting materials to help prospects get a sense of the excitement surrounding a launch, and they’ll be a part of that cheer.”

 In the social media age of recruiting, all senses are engaged. The choice between using blue or black ink on an application has been replaced by the picking either six- or 15-second video platforms. Employers, especially in the digital space, know that the best talent isn’t just words on a piece of paper. The best talent is 140 characters or less. ||||| Internships have always been competitive, but at one company, they've gotten downright cutthroat.

 Media company Emmis Digital's Chicago branch decided to do something a little different with its intern recruitment process this year, according to DNAinfo. It received over 25 applications from college students for its one unpaid internship spot. The 10 best applicants were interviewed, and then the final three entered the "Intern Games," a contest to land the internship that would earn them some college credit.

 "We thought that it would be fun to pit them against each other, test their mettle, and see who was the hungriest," Emmis Digital's Rory Foster told DNAinfo.

 Every day for two weeks in late April and early May, #TeamJake, #TeamKelsey, and #TeamKatie took to social media with tweets, videos, and Facebook posts to get the most attention for themselves and Emmis.

 In the end, the Emmis team decided to call it a draw between two of the potential interns and recruited both Jake Bouvy and Kelsey Halverson.

 Internships for college students and recent college graduates have been under more scrutiny in the past couple years, after several interns sued their former employers for back pay. Unpaid internships by law are required to provide education and experience that benefits the interns. (The Emmis interns do receive college credit.)

 The research firm Intern Bridge told the Boston Globe that surveys show about a 20% decrease in the number of unpaid internships across the country since the U.S. Department of Labor defined what constituted an unpaid internship in 2010.

 Unpaid internships may be scarcer in 2014, but if Emmis is any indicator, the market is still tough enough that college students are willing to intensely compete for them. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– In today's world, if you want to work for free, you'd better be ready to do a lot of free work—even before you're hired. Especially if you're looking to intern at Emmis Digital in Chicago, DNAinfo reports. The media company narrowed down its pool of applicants to three college students, then made them compete in a Hunger Games-inspired "Intern Games." OK, they weren't trying to kill each other, but the "tributes" faced off against one another to see who could bring the most traffic to the company's social media. They also had to make videos to prove they deserved the unpaid job. "We thought that it would be fun to pit them against each other, test their mettle, and see who was the hungriest," says one of the employees who came up with the idea. In the process, he notes, Emmis stood to boost its social media following; would-be interns were told to badger their friends, family, and followers to follow the company. Two of the three finalists were ultimately given internships. One of the creators of the Intern Games herself had at least six internships during college, Digiday reports. The kids get college credit for their work; as Business Insider points out, unpaid internships legally must offer beneficial "education and experience." (Even Oprah was once an intern.)


Write an article based on this summary:

– One thing you'll want to avoid on Thanksgiving—or at any time in the near future—is romaine lettuce. The CDC issued an alert two days before the holiday warning that no romaine is safe to eat as an E. coli outbreak spreads, reports NBC News. It doesn't matter where the romaine is from or even if you or a loved one has eaten some and not gotten sick. The advice from the CDC is the same: Toss it. A bag of mixed salad that includes romaine? Toss it. In fact, the alert includes advice on how to clean your refrigerator if romaine has been inside it recently. So far, 32 people in 11 states have gotten sick, and 13 required hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. "This advice includes all types or uses of romaine lettuce, such as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad," the CDC said. "If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away." (Tainted water was blamed in a different outbreak involving romaine earlier this year.)

January 9, 2019

 CDC, public health and regulatory officials in several states, Canada, and the FDA investigated a multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 (E. coli O157:H7) infections.

 Public health investigators used the PulseNet system to identify illnesses that might be part of this outbreak. PulseNet is the national subtyping network of public health and food regulatory agency laboratories coordinated by CDC. DNA fingerprinting was performed on E. coli bacteria isolated from ill people by using techniques called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and whole genome sequencing (WGS). CDC PulseNet manages a national database of these DNA fingerprints to identify possible outbreaks. WGS gives a more detailed DNA fingerprint than PFGE. WGS performed on E. coli bacteria from ill people in this outbreak showed that the strains were closely related genetically. This means that the ill people were more likely to share a common source of infection.

 As of January 9, 2019, 62 people infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 were reported from 16 states and the District of Columbia. A list of the states and the number of cases in each can be found on the Map of Reported Cases page.

 Illnesses started on dates ranging from October 7, 2018, to December 4, 2018. Ill people ranged in age from 1 to 84 years, with a median age of 25. Sixty-six percent of ill people were female. Of 54 people with information available, 25 (46%) were hospitalized, including two people who developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a type of kidney failure. No deaths were reported.

 WGS analysis did not identify predicted antibiotic resistance in 51 isolates from 53 ill people. Two isolates contained genes for resistance to ampicillin. Antibiotic resistance testing by CDC’s National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System laboratory is currently underway. This finding does not affect treatment guidance since antibiotics are not recommended for patients with E. coli O157 infections.

 Investigation of the Outbreak

 Epidemiologic, laboratory, and traceback evidence indicated that romaine lettuce from the Central Coastal growing regions of northern and central California was the likely source of this outbreak.

 In interviews, ill people answered questions about the foods they ate and other exposures in the week before they became ill. Thirty (83%) of 36 people interviewed reported eating romaine lettuce. This percentage was significantly higher than results from a survey [PDF – 787 KB] of healthy people in which 47% reported eating romaine lettuce in the week before they were interviewed. Ill people reported eating different types of romaine lettuce in several restaurants and at home.

 Two illness clusters were identified at restaurants where ill people reported eating romaine lettuce. An illness cluster is defined as two or more people who do not live in the same household who report eating at the same restaurant location, attending a common event, or shopping at the same location of a grocery store in the week before becoming ill. In these two clusters, several ill people reported eating at the same restaurant or shopping at the same location of a grocery store. Investigating illness clusters provides critical clues about the source of an outbreak. If several unrelated ill people ate or shopped at the same location of a restaurant or store within several days of each other, it suggests that the contaminated food item was served or sold there.

 Traceback information from the FDA indicated that ill people in this outbreak ate romaine lettuce harvested from specific counties in the Central Coastal growing regions of northern and central California. The FDA, along with CDC and state partners, investigated farms and cooling facilities in California that were identified in traceback. CDC analyzed water and sediment samples from an Adam Bros. Farming, Inc. farm in Santa Barbara County, which was one of the farms identified in the traceback investigation. The outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7 was found in sediment within an agricultural water reservoir on the farm. WGS results showed that the E. coli O157:H7 found in the agricultural water reservoir was closely related genetically to the E. coli O157:H7 isolated from ill people.

 WGS results also showed that the E. coli O157:H7 strain isolated from ill people in this outbreak is closely related genetically to the E. coli strain isolated from ill people in a 2017 outbreak linked to leafy greens in the United States and to romaine lettuce in Canada. The outbreak described here is not related to a spring 2018 multistate outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 infections linked to romaine lettuce. People in the spring outbreak were infected with E. coli O157:H7 bacteria with a different DNA fingerprint.

 FDA is continuing to investigate to learn more about how the E. coli bacteria could have entered the agricultural water reservoir and ways romaine lettuce from the farm could have been contaminated. The FDA is able to confirm that Adam Bros. Farming, Inc. has not shipped romaine since November 20, 2018. Romaine lettuce from Adam Bros. Farming, Inc. linked to this outbreak is no longer available for sale.

 FDA continues its investigation of farms identified in traceback.

 As of January 9, 2019, this outbreak appears to be over. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 Nov. 20, 2018, 8:12 PM GMT By Maggie Fox

 Federal health officials are warning about a fresh outbreak of E.coli linked to romaine lettuce Tuesday and cautioned people not to eat any romaine lettuce.

 At least 32 people are sick, and 13 hospitalized in the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. No one has died.

 “Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick,” the CDC said in a notice on its website.

 “This advice includes all types or uses of romaine lettuce, such as whole heads of romaine, hearts of romaine, and bags and boxes of precut lettuce and salad mixes that contain romaine, including baby romaine, spring mix, and Caesar salad,” the CDC added.

 “If you do not know if the lettuce is romaine or whether a salad mix contains romaine, do not eat it and throw it away.”

 It’s the second outbreak of E. coli in romaine lettuce this year. An outbreak lasting several weeks in the spring killed five people and sickened 210 people in 36 states. It was eventually traced to contaminated canal water in a farming area in Yuma, Arizona.

 This outbreak does not appear to be linked to the Yuma outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration said.

 "While the strain of E. coli 0157:H7 seen in this outbreak is different than the one identified in the large outbreak in spring 2018 linked to romaine from the Yuma growing region, it does appear to be similar to the strain that caused a smaller outbreak linked to leafy greens that occurred in the fall of 2017 in both the U.S. and Canada," the FDA said.

 "Since these prior outbreaks were identified, the FDA has been working closely with the leafy greens industry and other state and federal partners to implement safety practices that can help further reduce the risk of these types of outbreaks. As a direct response to the outbreaks we have seen, the agency will also begin a special effort to sample and test romaine lettuce for contamination throughout the market."

 There's not enough information to identify a specific supplier yet, the FDA said, so it's safest to just thrown out all romaine lettuce for now.

 E. coli is a common bacteria but there is a strain called 0157:H7 that can make people sick. Most patients suffer stomach cramps but the 0157 strain produces a toxin that can damage the kidneys and cause a potentially deadly condition called hemolytic uremic syndrome. ||||| If you have a recalled food item in your refrigerator, it’s important to throw out the food and clean your refrigerator. Germs in the recalled food could spread to drawers or shelves in your refrigerator.

 How to Clean your Refrigerator After a Food Recall

 Items needed to clean your refrigerator:

 Sealed Bags

 Warm, Soapy Water

 Clean Towels

 Optional: Water + Bleach

 STEP 1 – Throw out recalled food

 Throw out the recalled food, and any other foods stored with it or touching it.

 Put it in a sealed bag in the garbage.

 If the recalled food was stored in a reusable container, wash it with warm, soapy water before reusing.

 STEP 2 – Empty your Refrigerator

 Empty the rest of the items in your refrigerator and put them on a counter or table while you clean.

 Take out shelving, drawers, and any other removable parts.

 Don’t leave unrefrigerated food out for more than two hours.

 STEP 3 – Wash Removable Parts

 Wash shelving, drawers, and any other removable parts by hand with warm, soapy water.

 Dry with a clean towel.

 Don’t run cold glass shelves or drawers under hot water – the glass could crack. Let them come to room temperature first.

 STEP 4 – Clean and Sanitize Inside the Refrigerator

 Wipe the inside of the empty refrigerator with warm, soapy water, then wipe with clean water to rinse off soap.

 Dry with a clean towel.

 Don’t forget to wipe inside the doors and any drawers that cannot be removed.

 * Optional Step

 Use a solution of 1 tablespoon of liquid bleach in 1 gallon of water to sanitize your refrigerator. Do this after cleaning it with warm, soapy water.

 STEP 5 – Return Shelves, Drawers, and Food

 Put the shelves, drawers, and other removable parts back in the refrigerator, along with the other items you took out.

 Wipe food and drink containers with warm, soapy water before returning to the clean refrigerator.

 And don’t forget!

 Wash your hands with water and soap once you’ve finished cleaning.

 Use hot, soapy water to wipe kitchen counters that held food, drinks, refrigerator parts and any cleaning materials.

 Wash any towels you used to dry the refrigerator before using them again.

 Stay up-to-date on the most recent food recalls. https://www.foodsafety.govExternal |||||


Article:

As the species with a sequenced genome closest to our most recent aquatic ancestor, the coelacanth provides a unique opportunity to identify genomic changes that were associated with the successful adaptation of vertebrates to the land environment.

 Over the 400 Myr that vertebrates have lived on land, some genes that are unnecessary for existence in their new environment have been eliminated. To understand this aspect of the water-to-land transition, we surveyed the Latimeria genome annotations to identify genes that were present in the last common ancestor of all bony fish (including the coelacanth) but that are missing from tetrapod genomes. More than 50 such genes, including components of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signalling, TGF-β and bone morphogenic protein (BMP) signalling, and WNT signalling pathways, as well as many transcription factor genes, were inferred to be lost based on the coelacanth data (Supplementary Data 7 and Supplementary Fig. 9). Previous studies of genes that were lost in this transition could only compare teleost fish to tetrapods, meaning that differences in gene content could have been due to loss in the tetrapod or in the lobe-finned fish lineages. We were able to confirm that four genes that were shown previously to be absent in tetrapods (And1 and And2 (ref. 29), Fgf24 (ref. 30) and Asip2 (ref. 31)), were indeed present and intact in Latimeria, supporting the idea that they were lost in the tetrapod lineage.

 We functionally annotated more than 50 genes lost in tetrapods using zebrafish data (gene expression, knock-downs and knockouts). Many genes were classified in important developmental categories (Supplementary Data 7): fin development (13 genes); otolith and ear development (8 genes); kidney development (7 genes); trunk, somite and tail development (11 genes); eye (13 genes); and brain development (23 genes). This implies that critical characters in the morphological transition from water to land (for example, fin-to-limb transition and remodelling of the ear) are reflected in the loss of specific genes along the phylogenetic branch leading to tetrapods. However, homeobox genes, which are responsible for the development of an organism’s basic body plan, show only slight differences between Latimeria, ray-finned fish and tetrapods; it would seem that the protein-coding portion of this gene family, along with several others (Supplementary Note 9, Supplementary Tables 12–16 and Supplementary Fig. 10), have remained largely conserved during the vertebrate land transition (Supplementary Fig. 11).

 As vertebrates transitioned to a new land environment, changes occurred not only in gene content but also in the regulation of existing genes. Conserved non-coding elements (CNEs) are strong candidates for gene regulatory elements. They can act as promoters, enhancers, repressors and insulators32, 33, and have been implicated as major facilitators of evolutionary change34. To identify CNEs that originated in the most recent common ancestor of tetrapods, we predicted CNEs that evolved in various bony vertebrate (that is, ray-finned fish, coelacanth and tetrapod) lineages and assigned them to their likely branch points of origin. To detect CNEs, conserved sequences in the human genome were identified using MULTIZ alignments of bony vertebrate genomes, and then known protein-coding sequences, untranslated regions (UTRs) and known RNA genes were excluded. Our analysis identified 44,200 ancestral tetrapod CNEs that originated after the divergence of the coelacanth lineage. They represent 6% of the 739,597 CNEs that are under constraint in the bony vertebrate lineage. We compared the ancestral tetrapod CNEs to mouse embryo ChIP-seq (chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing) data obtained using antibodies against p300, a transcriptional coactivator. This resulted in a sevenfold enrichment in the p300 binding sites for our candidate CNEs and confirmed that these CNEs are indeed enriched for gene regulatory elements.

 Each tetrapod CNE was assigned to the gene whose transcription start site was closest, and gene-ontology category enrichment was calculated for those genes. The most enriched categories were involved with smell perception (for example, sensory perception of smell, detection of chemical stimulus and olfactory receptor activity). This is consistent with the notable expansion of olfactory receptor family genes in tetrapods compared with teleosts, and may reflect the necessity of a more tightly regulated, larger and more diverse repertoire of olfactory receptors for detecting airborne odorants as part of the terrestrial lifestyle. Other significant categories include morphogenesis (radial pattern formation, hind limb morphogenesis, kidney morphogenesis) and cell differentiation (endothelial cell fate commitment, epithelial cell fate commitment), which is consistent with the body-plan changes required for land transition, as well as immunoglobulin VDJ recombination, which reflects the presumed response differences required to address the novel pathogens that vertebrates would encounter on land (Supplementary Note 10 and Supplementary Tables 17–24).

 A major innovation of tetrapods is the evolution of limbs characterized by digits. The limb skeleton consists of a stylopod (humerus or femur), the zeugopod (radius and ulna, or tibia and fibula), and an autopod (wrist or ankle, and digits). There are two major hypotheses about the origins of the autopod; that it was a novel feature of tetrapods, and that it has antecedents in the fins of fish35 (Supplementary Note 11 and Supplementary Fig. 12). We examine here the Hox regulation of limb development in ray-finned fish, coelacanth and tetrapods to address these hypotheses.

 In mouse, late-phase digit enhancers are located in a gene desert that is proximal to the HOX-D cluster36. Here we provide an alignment of the HOX-D centromeric gene desert of coelacanth with those of tetrapods and ray-finned fishes (Fig. 2a). Among the six cis-regulatory sequences previously identified in this gene desert36, three sequences show sequence conservation restricted to tetrapods (Supplementary Fig. 13). However, one regulatory sequence (island 1) is shared by tetrapods and coelacanth, but not by ray-finned fish (Fig. 2b and Supplementary Fig. 14). When tested in a transient transgenic assay in mouse, the coelacanth sequence of island 1 was able to drive reporter expression in a limb-specific pattern (Fig. 2c). This suggests that island 1 was a lobe-fin developmental enhancer in the fish ancestor of tetrapods that was then coopted into the autopod enhancer of modern tetrapods. In this case, the autopod developmental regulation was derived from an ancestral lobe-finned fish regulatory element.

 Figure 2: Alignment of the HOX-D locus and an upstream gene desert identifies conserved limb enhancers. a, Organization of the mouse HOX-D locus and centromeric gene desert, flanked by the Atf2 and Mtx2 genes. Limb regulatory sequences (I1, I2, I3, I4, CsB and CsC) are noted. Using the mouse locus as a reference (NCBI and mouse genome sequencing consortium NCBI37/mm9 assembly), corresponding sequences from human, chicken, frog, coelacanth, pufferfish, medaka, stickleback, zebrafish and elephant shark were aligned. Alignment shows regions of homology between tetrapod, coelacanth and ray-finned fishes. b, Alignment of vertebrate cis-regulatory elements I1, I2, I3, I4, CsB and CsC. c, Expression patterns of coelacanth island I in a transgenic mouse. Limb buds are indicated by arrowheads in the first two panels. The third panel shows a close-up of a limb bud. Full size image (414 KB)

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 Changes in the urea cycle provide an illuminating example of the adaptations associated with transition to land. Excretion of nitrogen is a major physiological challenge for terrestrial vertebrates. In aquatic environments, the primary nitrogenous waste product is ammonia, which is readily diluted by surrounding water before it reaches toxic levels, but on land, less toxic substances such as urea or uric acid must be produced instead (Supplementary Fig. 15). The widespread and almost exclusive occurrence of urea excretion in amphibians, some turtles and mammals has led to the hypothesis that the use of urea as the main nitrogenous waste product was a key innovation in the vertebrate transition from water to land37.

 With the availability of gene sequences from coelacanth and lungfish, it became possible to test this hypothesis. We used a branch-site model in the HYPHY package38, which estimates the ratio of synonymous (dS) to non-synonymous (dN) substitutions (ω values) among different branches and among different sites (codons) across a multiple-species sequence alignment. For the rate-limiting enzyme of the hepatic urea cycle, carbamoyl phosphate synthase I (CPS1), only one branch of the tree shows a strong signature of selection (P = 0.02), namely the branch leading to tetrapods and the branch leading to amniotes (Fig. 3); no other enzymes in this cycle showed a signature of selection. Conversely, mitochondrial arginase (ARG2), which produces extrahepatic urea as a byproduct of arginine metabolism but is not involved in the production of urea for nitrogenous waste disposal, did not show any evidence of selection in vertebrates (Supplementary Fig. 16). This leads us to conclude that adaptive evolution occurred in the hepatic urea cycle during the vertebrate land transition. In addition, it is interesting to note that of the five amino acids of CPS1 that changed between coelacanth and tetrapods, three are in important domains (the two ATP-binding sites and the subunit interaction domain) and a fourth is known to cause a malfunctioning enzyme in human patients if mutated39.

 Figure 3: Phylogeny of Cps1 coding sequences is used to determine positive selection within the urea cycle. Branch lengths are scaled to the expected number of substitutions per nucleotide, and branch colours indicate the strength of selection (dN/dS or ω). Red, positive or diversifying selection (ω > 5); blue, purifying selection (ω = 0); yellow, neutral evolution (ω = 1). Thick branches indicate statistical support for evolution under episodic diversifying selection. The proportion of each colour represents the fraction of the sequence undergoing the corresponding class of selection. Full size image (156 KB)

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 The adaptation to a terrestrial lifestyle necessitated major changes in the physiological environment of the developing embryo and fetus, resulting in the evolution and specialization of extra-embryonic membranes of the amniote mammals40. In particular, the placenta is a complex structure that is critical for providing gas and nutrient exchange between mother and fetus, and is also a major site of haematopoiesis41.

 We have identified a region of the coelacanth HOX-A cluster that may have been involved in the evolution of extra-embryonic structures in tetrapods, including the eutherian placenta. Global alignment of the coelacanth Hoxa14–Hoxa13 region with the homologous regions of the horn shark, chicken, human and mouse revealed a CNE just upstream of the coelacanth Hoxa14 gene (Supplementary Fig. 17a). This conserved stretch is not found in teleost fishes but is highly conserved among horn shark, chicken, human and mouse despite the fact that the chicken, human and mouse have no Hoxa14 orthologues, and that the horn shark Hoxa14 gene has become a pseudogene. This CNE, HA14E1, corresponds to the proximal promoter-enhancer region of the Hoxa14 gene in Latimeria. HA14E1 is more than 99% identical between mouse, human and all other sequenced mammals, and would therefore be considered to be an ultra-conserved element42. The high level of conservation suggests that this element, which already possessed promoter activity, may have been coopted for other functions despite the loss of the Hoxa14 gene in amniotes (Supplementary Fig. 17bc). Expression of human HA14E1 in a mouse transient transgenic assay did not give notable expression in the embryo proper at day 11.5 (information is available online at the VISTA enhancer browser website; http://enhancer.lbl.gov/cgi-bin/imagedb3.pl?form=presentation&show=1&experiment_id=501&organism_id=1), which was unexpected as its location would predict that it would regulate axial structures caudally43. A similar experiment in chick embryos using the chicken HA14E1 also showed no activity in the anteroposterior axis. However, strong expression was observed in the extraembryonic area vasculosa of the chick embryo (Fig. 4a). Examination of a Latimeria BAC Hoxa14-reporter transgene in mouse embryos showed that the Hoxa14 gene is specifically expressed in a subset of cells in an extra-embryonic region at embryonic day 8.5 (Fig. 4b).

 Figure 4: Transgenic analysis implicates involvement of Hox CNE HA14E1 in extraembryonic activities in the chick and mouse. a, Chicken HA14E1 drives reporter expression in blood islands in chick embryos. A construct containing chicken HA14E1 upstream of a minimal (thymidine kinase) promoter driving enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) was electroporated in HH4-stage chick embryos together with a nuclear mCherry construct. GFP expression was analysed at stage approximately HH11. The green aggregations and punctate staining are observed in the blood islands and developing vasculature. b, Expression of Latimeria Hoxa14-reporter transgene in the developing placental labyrinth of a mouse embryo. A field of cells from the labyrinth region of an embryo at embryonic day 8.5 from a BAC transgenic line containing coelacanth Hoxa9–Hoxa14 (ref. 49) in which the Hoxa14 gene had been supplanted with the gene for red fluorescence protein (RFP). Immunohistochemistry was used to detect RFP (brown staining in a small number of cells). Full size image (388 KB)

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 These findings suggest that the HA14E1 region may have been evolutionarily recruited to coordinate regulation of posterior HOX-A genes (Hoxa13, Hoxa11 and Hoxa10), which are known to be expressed in the mouse allantois and are critical for early formation of the mammalian placenta44. Although Latimeria does not possess a placenta, it gives birth to live young and has very large, vascularised eggs, but the relationship between Hoxa14, the HA14E1 enhancer and blood island formation in the coelacanth remains unknown. ||||| In the hope of reconstructing a pivotal step in evolution — the colonization of land by fish that learned to walk and breathe air — researchers have decoded the genome of the coelacanth, a prehistoric-looking fish whose form closely resembles those seen in the fossils of 400 million years ago.

 Often called a living fossil, the coelacanth (pronounced SEE-luh-canth) was long believed to have fallen extinct 70 million years ago, until a specimen was recognized in a fish market in South Africa in 1938. The coelacanth has fleshy, lobed fins that look somewhat like limbs, as does the lungfish, an air-breathing freshwater fish. The coelacanth and the lungfish have long been battling for the honor of which is closer to the ancestral fish that first used fins to walk on land and give rise to the tetrapods, meaning all the original vertebrates and their descendants, from reptiles and birds to mammals.

 The decoding of the coelacanth genome, reported online Wednesday in the journal Nature, is a victory for the lungfish as the closer relative to the first tetrapod. But the coelacanth may have the last laugh because its genome — which, at 2.8 billion units of DNA, is about the same size as a human genome — is decodable, whereas the lungfish genome, a remarkable 100 billion DNA units in length, cannot be cracked with present methods. The coelacanth genome is therefore more likely to shed light on the central evolutionary question of what genetic alterations were needed to change a lobe-finned fish into the first land-dwelling tetrapod.

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 The idea of decoding the coelacanth genome began six years ago when Chris Amemiya, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, acquired some samples of coelacanth tissue. He asked the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T., a biological research institute in Cambridge, Mass., to decode the DNA and invited experts in evolutionary and developmental biology to help interpret the results.

 Dr. Amemiya’s team has sifted through the coelacanth’s genome for genes that might have helped its cousin species, the ancestor to the first tetrapod, invade dry land some 400 million years ago. They have found one gene that is related to those that, in animal species, build the placenta. Coelacanths have no placenta, but they produce extremely large eggs, with a good blood supply, that hatch inside the mother’s body. This gene could have been developed by land animals into a way of constructing the placenta.

 Another helpful preadaptation is a snippet of DNA that enhances the activity of the genes that drive the formation of limbs in the embryo. The Amemiya team focused on the enhancer DNA sequence because it occurred in the coelacanth and animals but not in ordinary fish. They then inserted the coelacanth enhancer DNA into mice.

 “It lit up right away and made an almost normal limb,” said Neil Shubin, meaning that the coelacanth gene enhancer successfully encouraged the mouse genes to make a limb. Dr. Shubin, a member of the team, is a paleontologist at the University of Chicago.

 Present-day coelacanths are ferocious predators that live in a twilight zone about 500 feet deep where light barely penetrates. They lurk in caves during the day and emerge at night to attack surface fish as they descend and deep-sea fish as they rise to the surface. They have no evident need of fins that might help them walk on land.

 “This is probably an unusual habitat for this lineage,” said Axel Meyer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany and a member of the team. “Other coelacanths lived in more shallow, estuarylike environments 400 million years ago, and you can envisage them using the fins more like walking legs.”

 The Amemiya team reports evidence that the coelacanth’s genes have been evolving more slowly than those of mammals, possibly because of “a static habitat and lack of predators.” But its environment must have changed quite considerably over the last 400 million years, Dr. Meyer said. Its principal habitat at present is the caves beneath the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean, but since these are extinct volcanoes a mere 5 million to 10 million years old, they must be a quite recent home for the coelacanth.

 The Amemiya team does not possess a full coelacanth — these are endangered species — and decoded the genome from tissues obtained from Rosemary Dorrington of Rhodes University in South Africa. Dr. Dorrington supplied DNA kits to the Comoro Islands fishermen who occasionally snag coelacanths by accident. When a coelacanth was captured in 2003, they preserved blood and tissues, which were given to Dr. Dorrington and kept frozen, Dr. Amemiya said.

 The specimen was preserved in Moroni, the capital of the Comoro Islands, but Dr. Amemiya has been unable to find out where it is now because of the constant state of civil war in the islands, he said.

 Can he be certain, then, that the tissue came from a coelacanth? “Oh, no question,” Dr. Amemiya said. “We have DNA from several other coelacanths, from Africa and Indonesia, which is very similar to this one.” The one caught in 2003 was identified as a coelacanth by Said Ahamada, a South African expert, Dr. Amemiya said.

 Because the original specimen is not available and the DNA sequencing is incomplete, the Amemiya team does not know its sex.

 Lobe-finned fish like the coelacanth and lungfish are known to zoologists as sarcopterygians, meaning fleshy fins. Tetrapods, including people, are descended from this group, and the coelacanth is more closely related to people than to other fish. “Evolutionarily speaking, we are sarcopterygian fish,” Dr. Meyer said. |||||
What is a summary?

– The coelacanth doesn't just look like a prehistoric fish, it was believed to be one, extinct for some 70 million years—until one turned up at a South African fish market in 1938. Now, scientists have decoded the endangered species' genome, and they say they've found some clues as to how today's land animals evolved from a fish ancestor, reports the New York Times. First, some fascinating backstory: The Times explains that the coelacanth and lung fish—both "lobe-finned fish"—have been duking it out for the title of the closet relative to that first ancestral fish that used its fins to walk on land. Post-decoding, the lungfish emerges as the closer relative, but in the Times' telling, the "coelacanth may have the last laugh"—that's because the lungfish genome is too long to decode using current technology. What scientists learned from the coelacanths' DNA: Even though coelacanths don't have a placenta, they have a gene related to one that allows land animals to grow a placenta. A DNA sequence found in coelacanths, but not ordinary fish, bolsters the genes that helps an embryo grow limbs. Researchers actually injected the coelacanth's sequence into mice; "it lit up right away and made an almost normal limb," says one. You can check out the original article at Nature.


Article:

Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds Spotted on Dinner Date: Are They Reuniting?

 Email This In the immediate aftermath of announcing the end of a marriage, few would expect to see a famous Hollywood couple out together in public. On a dinner date. Laughing and smiling.

 Yet that's what went down on Friday night at Blue Ribbon restaurant in New York City, where

 In their joint

 "They just wanted to connect and have a friendly chat," a source says. "They just wanted to sit down together. The tone was light and fun, despite the untruths that the media is working up. They aren't reconciling. This was just two people who were married being civil and friendly." In the immediate aftermath of announcing the end of a marriage, few would expect to see a famous Hollywood couple out together in public. On a dinner date. Laughing and smiling.Yet that's what went down on Friday night at Blue Ribbon restaurant in New York City, where Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds were spotted sharing "a friendly meal," according to a new report from People.com In their joint statement about their decision to split up, the pair had expressed a mutual intention to show "love and kindness" even as they ended the marriage -- and this weekend, that goal was on full display. But are the two reuniting?"They just wanted to connect and have a friendly chat," a source says. "They just wanted to sit down together. The tone was light and fun, despite the untruths that the media is working up. They aren't reconciling. This was just two people who were married being civil and friendly."

 http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=762708&pid=762707&uts=1273853626 http://www.popeater.com/mm_track/popeater/movies/?s_channel=us.moviespop&s_account=aolpopeater,aolsvc&omni=1&ke=1 http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf Celebrity Splitsville Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry

 Split

 Halle Berry called it quits with her boyfriend, Gabriel Aubry, ending their five-year relationship. The couple has a 2-year-old daughter, Nahla Ariel Aubry. Evan Agostini, AP Evan Agostini, AP Celebrity Splits

 The dinner was so friendly, in fact, that Johannson, 26, and Reynolds, 34, were seen "smiling and laughing the whole time."Busy work schedules in different cities has been cited as one of the main reasons the marriage faltered (not that anyone close to the couple seems to know the full story: a friend of Scarlett's told PopEater this week, "No one had any idea this was coming"). Nevertheless, with Reynolds in New York for a photo shoot during a break from shooting 'The Change Up' (a comedy co-starring Olivia Wilde and Jason Bateman) in Atlanta, he and Johansson clearly wanted to find quality time to see each other.Johansson, who recently returned from a vacation in Jamaica with friends, married 'Green Lantern' star Reynolds in 2008 in a hush-hush ceremony in Canada. The couple have no children. ||||| Scarlett and Ryan's Odd Dinner Date Pays Off

 Email This Just one week after the shocking announcement of

 "They are not getting back together," a friend of Scarlett's tells me. "Rather, this was her way to show the world that you can be friends with your ex and that just because you are getting divorced doesn't mean you can't still be civilized towards each other." Just one week after the shocking announcement of Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds ' split, the two surprised everyone when the were spotted together over the weekend at Blue Ribbon restaurant in New York."They are not getting back together," a friend of Scarlett's tells me. "Rather, this was her way to show the world that you can be friends with your ex and that just because you are getting divorced doesn't mean you can't still be civilized towards each other."

 Scarlett picked one of the nicest restaurants in New York to meet up with Ryan, a stark contrast to the past two years when they rarely went out to dinner (or in public, in general) together. Instead, the pair would eat at home away from cameras and ogling tourists.With this outing, insiders believe Scarlett has confirmed she's a master at controlling her own image."This was 100 percent Scarlett sending a message," an insider tells me. "She knew the two of them would be noticed in the tiny restaurant and wanted to make sure that they were seen to be having a good time together not fighting."Indeed. Now, when we hear her or Ryan's name again, we will think of them enjoying a dinner together post-split. ||||| Exclusive: Ryan Reynolds Told Pals Scarlett "Treated Him Badly"

 Ryan Reynolds didn't feel like such a superhero when the cameras weren't rolling on the set of Green Lantern, which was shot last spring.

 PHOTOS: Scarlett and Ryan, the way they were

 An insider on the comic book flick tells the new Us Weekly that its hunky star, 34, was "open on set that he and Scarlett [Johansson] were having problems."

 Just a year and half into his marriage with 26-year-old Johansson, Reynolds "would say that she treated him badly," the insider explains. "It never seemed like she made him a priority."

 PHOTOS: The year's most shocking splits

 After UsMagazine.com broke the news Dec. 14, the couple confirmed their split in a public statement -- and Reynolds is now "beyond sad and depressed," another pal says.

 Iron Man 2 actress Johansson, meanwhile, is less broken up about the situation. "She was disconnected and disaffected" about the split, the source says. "It was harsh."

 PHOTOS: Scarlett's twin brother!

 For much more on what led to the split and how Reynolds and Johansson are coping, pick up the new Us Weekly, on stands Tuesday. |||||
What is a summary?

– So much for ending their marriage with “love and kindness”: A source happily dishes to Us that Ryan Reynolds would often say Scarlett Johansson “treated him badly” before their split. And while Reynolds was “beyond sad and depressed” about the breakup, says another friend, Johansson “was disconnected and disaffected. It was harsh.” Even so, the pair was recently spotted having dinner together, and PopEater notes that the goal of the dinner was accomplished—click to see what it was.


News article:

Story highlights An environmental group raises concerns over toxic waste reservoir by Danube

 Budapest's mayor says its flood defenses should withstand record high waters

 The swollen River Elbe continues to threaten Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany

 Focus in the Czech Republic shifts to the clean-up operation, fire service says

 Hungary has been warned it could suffer its worst floods ever, as record levels are expected over the next three days from the surging River Danube, which has already inundated parts of Germany, Austria and Slovakia.

 Read more: Swollen rivers bring more flooding in central Europe

 The river is expected to peak near the border with Slovakia, in Nagybajcs, on Saturday morning and in the capital, Budapest, on Monday, according to the European Commission's emergency response center.

 "In both areas, the highest-ever-measured water levels are expected," it said.

 Hungary's Water Management Authority said a new record, 20 centimeters (nearly 8 inches) more than the previous high, had already been set at Nagybajcs as of midday Friday.

 New all-time highs have also been recorded downriver at Komarom, it said.

 The mayor of Budapest, Istvan Tarlos, said he expects a record of 895 centimeters (almost 30 feet) in the capital but he believes its flood defenses should keep the city safe with about a foot to spare.

 Nearly 400 people have been evacuated so far, from a number of villages and an old people's home, according to the Interior Ministry's disaster management directorate. About 70 communities have been hit by flooding.

 The country's military is working on dams along the river's length and is preparing to deploy helicopters and amphibious vehicles if needed.

 One village, Kisoroszi, is already unreachable by road -- although food and help can be brought in by boat and helicopter -- and is expected to remain cut off for at least a week, authorities said.

 Roland Farkas, a Hungarian university student, is among the volunteers who've been filling sandbags day and night in the town of Gyor, near the Danube, to be deployed at vulnerable points.

 He told CNN iReport Friday he feared the country's defenses would fail to hold back the floods in the face of forecast storms.

 Concern is also growing that the surging Danube might break into a reservoir containing toxic waste in Almasfuzito, near Komarom, potentially leading to water pollution.

 Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said in a statement that although the dams should in theory withstand the rising water, a report published by the Hungarian Academy of Science last year suggested some toxic sludge could be washed into the water system through the ground water.

 The reservoir is being closely monitored but the government remains anxious about its safety, the statement said, citing comments by Hungary's prime minister.

 Evacuations along the Elbe

 Meanwhile, the swollen Elbe River menaces the state of Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany, where thousands of people are being evacuated from their homes a day after the flow peaked in Dresden, in Saxony.

 Flood defenses saved the center of the historic city from serious damage.

 JUST WATCHED Germany reeling from record floods Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Germany reeling from record floods 01:52

 JUST WATCHED Health risks from floods Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Health risks from floods 01:12

 But aerial footage taken by CNN showed swaths of the outlying areas and beyond under feet of muddy brown water. Industrial containers are among the debris swept up by the torrent, prompting further concerns over safety.

 The cost of damage to homes, businesses and agriculture is likely to run to hundreds of millions of euros. German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised 100 million euros ($132 million) in emergency aid Tuesday.

 The water is still rising in the Elbe as it makes its way toward the North Sea, according to the European Commission, and it is expected to peak in Saxony-Anhalt on Tuesday.

 Residents are being evacuated from the cities of Halle and Bitterfeld in the state.

 In the state of Saxony, to the south, many areas remain under water, the European Commission said, and transport, electricity and water supply are still disrupted.

 As of Friday, about 12,000 people had been evacuated from their homes in Saxony, it said.

 The cresting Danube, which flooded parts of Bavaria in southern Germany and Austria earlier this week, passed through Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, Thursday without causing significant damage, according to the European Commission.

 An extreme flood alert is still in effect in the western part of Slovakia, including Bratislava, it said.

 Water levels in the Danube and its tributaries in Bavaria are now falling except in the area around Passau, a town that experienced the worst flooding in five centuries this week.

 The flooding has caused at least 15 deaths across the region since last weekend.

 Eight deaths were reported in the Czech Republic, where some 700 communities have been affected by flooding and about 20,000 people evacuated.

 As river levels drop, attention is now turning to the clean-up, said Czech fire service spokeswoman Nicole Zaoralova.

 "The main focus is on draining flooded areas," she said. All the country's large-volume pumps are in use, so offers of help with equipment and manpower from Poland and Slovakia will be taken up, she said.

 Army units have also been deployed to help with the clean-up, she said, with almost 300 troops sent to the affected areas.

 Three deaths occurred Saturday in southwestern Germany, the Interior Ministry for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said. Four people are reported to have died and three are missing in Austria, the European Commission's emergency response center said.

 The floods follow heavy rain in the region last weekend, after a wet spring left the ground saturated.

 Scattered showers are likely over the coming day, according to CNN meteorologist Karen Maginnis.

 Read: Floods bring misery to central Europe ||||| Media caption At least 15 people have already been killed in floods across central Europe

 Hungarians have been warned to prepare for their country's worst floods ever as the Danube is set to reach record levels this weekend.

 "We are facing the worst floods of all time," said PM Viktor Orban.

 Europe's second-longest river is set to hit unprecedented levels in the capital Budapest in the next few days.

 A state of emergency has been declared, and thousands of volunteers have been working to reinforce the banks of the swelling river.

 Water levels are set to reach 8.85m (29ft), some 25cm (10in) higher than the Danube's previous record high in 2006.

 Emergency workers have set up camps along the river as residents packed sandbags around their homes amid an atmosphere of concerned expectation, says the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest.

 Kristalina Georgieva, the EU Commissioner for International Co-operation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, tweeted: "Hungary well prepared for highest ever measured water levels on Danube. We are monitoring & ready to assist."

 Mr Orban, who spent the night at a military barracks in the flooded western city of Gyor, said recent dry weather in Austria and Germany, as well as a hot forecast for Hungary over the weekend, gave reason to hope that Europe's worst river floods for more than a decade could soon be over.

 "The fact is that along the border (where the Danube lies between Hungary and Slovakia) the water level is already above the highest level ever measured," he added.

 Budapest Mayor Istvan Tarlos said that in a worst-case scenario up to 55,000 people may need to be evacuated.

 However, he said he was confident that only the lowest-lying areas would be exposed to the river's expanded flow.

 Nine hundred people have already had to evacuate their homes upstream, the Associated Press news agency reports.

 Mass evacuations

 Widespread flooding in central Europe has inundated swathes of Austria, Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, killing at least 15 people.

 In the Slovak capital Bratislava, the main flood defences held firm against the swelling Danube on Thursday.

 But while river water levels were receding in some areas, the Danube had yet to reach its peak in Slovakia, said the European Commission's newly inaugurated Emergency Response Centre (ERC).

 In northern Germany, workers piled sandbags along the banks of the River Elbe as waters rose, after widespread flooding further south.

 As flood waters receded to the south and east, defence work continued apace near Lueneburg in Lower Saxony.

 Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from threatened areas in Germany, where the flooding is worse than that recorded in 2002.

 The economic impact might be worse than the 11 billion-euro losses caused by the 2002 floods, said Eric Schweitzer, the president of the German chamber of trade and industry,

 "In some regions, the extent of damage is likely to be rather larger than in 2002," wrote Mr Schweitzer in an editorial for the Rheinische Post newspaper.

 On Thursday the Elbe flooded parts of Dresden as it peaked nearly 7m (22ft) above its normal level, but the city's historic centre remained unscathed.

 Upstream along the Elbe in the Czech Republic, emergency workers used boats to shuttle supplies to stranded people as large areas remained under water. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Hungary is in need of an ark. As the Danube swells, record-high levels of 29 feet are expected, with waters peaking near the Slovakian border tomorrow and in Budapest on Monday. PM Viktor Orban isn't mincing words: He says the nation could see "the worst floods of all time." With a state of emergency declared, the BBC reports volunteers numbering in the thousands worked through the night to build up the banks of Europe's second-longest river, while 400 people have already been evacuated, according to CNN. That follows the evacuation of tens of thousands in Germany and some 20,000 in the Czech Republic, which, along with Austria, have seen deadly floods that have thus far killed 15.