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Film Reviews

 Eat Pray Love -- Film Review

 "Eat Pray Love"

 Bottom Line: A heavily idealized journey of self-discovery with a pretty woman (Julia Roberts), pretty scenery and a pretty shallow view of Eastern spirituality.

 In "Eat Pray Love," Julia Robert's character, Liz Gilbert, takes a holiday from her miserable life as a well-respected, financially secure New York writer, loved by men she cannot love back and despairing of her own inner emptiness. She travels the world to seek enlightenment, a journey -- she never hesitates to tell anyone she meets -- outside her own comfort zone. For the viewer though, it's anything but. The film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity.Of course, the Elizabeth Gilbert memoir on which the movie is based also got criticized for its Western fetishization of Eastern thought and the overly self-conscious nature of this journey -- reportedly paid for with a publisher's advance for the book itself. None of that stopped her memoir from becoming a bestseller translated into 40 languages. So with Julia Roberts making one of her increasingly rare starring appearances and the sensual beauty of Italy, India and Indonesia as backdrop for the romanticized navel-gazing, "Eat Pray Love" should attract a substantial female audience, a demographic ill-served by the summer's mostly testosterone-fueled movies.Working from a screenplay he wrote with Jennifer Salt, director Ryan Murphy, the creator of TV series "Nip/Tuck" and "Glee," never loses track of the story's bestseller attributes: foreign landscapes photographed at sunset or sunrise, food displayed with mouth-watering intensity, peripheral characters bursting with vitality, all men unnaturally gorgeous -- or at least interesting -- and female self-discovery as the unwavering central focus.Reeling from a divorce and an affair that didn't do the trick either, Liz tells her best friend and publisher (Viola Davis, not given nearly enough to do) that she intends to chuck everything for a year to research herself in exotic foreign climes. Everyone including her ex (Billy Crudup) and new boy toy (James Franco) pull long faces, but this gal makes a career out of thinking of nobody but herself.Several months are spent in Rome to enjoy food and life (Eat), then off to India for meditation in an ashram (Pray) and finally to Bali, Indonesia, to search for "balance" but finding herself off-balance instead with a Brazilian divorcee (Love).Each segment is thoroughly enjoyable in a touristic sort of way. And Roberts throws herself wholeheartedly into the role of the inner-truth seeker.There, of course, lies the problem. One can line a bookcase with memoirs, novels and DVDs about urban malcontents discovering food and life in Mediterranean climes. At least another bookshelf could be devoted to popular entertainments where Westerners seek spirituality in the East, dating back to Somerset Maugham's "The Razor's Edge" if not the earlier works of Hermann Hesse. Bali is a bit off the beaten path for such self-help entertainments, but after those terrorist bombings the place could use positive publicity.In each segment, Liz is given role models. In Rome, a Scandinavian (Tuva Novotny) and local language coach (the absurdly handsome Luca Argentero) show Liz how to embrace life through cuisine. The girls even nip away to Naples for a pizza sequence! Her Roman lesson: Don't be afraid to attack life.In an unnamed Indian ashram, Richard Jenkins plays a Texan who struggles to forgive himself for his alcoholic past. He mocks and kids Liz to cajole her to do likewise. Then a young girl (Rushita Singh), who dreads her arranged marriage, reminds Liz of her own unarranged marriage and its failure. Her Indian lesson: God dwells within me.In Bali, two healers (Indonesian screen legend Christine Hakim and newcomer Hadi Subiyanto) provide Liz with medicine for her ailing soul. Her Bali lesson: If you're a good girl, you may get Javier Bardem.As Liz literally sails off into a sunset, you imagine that last lesson will be the one that sticks.There is an undeniable attractiveness to all this, however doubtful the self-realization lessons may be. One can imagine whiling away pleasant hours watching this movie again as a late-night DVD or in-flight movie. The charms of each location and the vigor of the film's supporting players cast a romantic glow. No, travel -- and certainly self-realization -- is never quite like this with Robert Richardson's iridescent landscapes and loving portraits of colorful bystanders, the brilliant, exotic sets and costumes by Bill Groom and Michael Dennison and nicely unhurried pace of Bradley Buecker's editing. But it should be. ||||| Food, serenity and kisses  what's not to like? Absolutely nothing, that's what, as millions of readers of Elizabeth Gilbert's phenomenally successful 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love will attest. The high-concept structure of Gilbert's confessional story is surely a draw: After a painful divorce, the author ships off on a yearlong international odyssey to pick up the pieces of her shattered self, touching down in Italy to eat, India to pray, and Bali to fall in love. (The love part was not on the author's agenda until the irresistible Brazilian man she calls Felipe in the book, whom she has since married, changed her Indonesian plans.) But what's even more seductive than the exoticism of Gilbert's passport stamps is her ability to describe her moment-to-moment, meal-to-meal feelings with such warm, chatty, deprecating self-awareness that even her episodes of dithering, obsessing, or Where's the rest of me? boo-hooing sound kind of...endearing. On the page, Liz Gilbert comes across as a cool friend, a smart sister, a snappy pal who seems to promise, ''If I can get myself together, so can you.'' And you want to believe her. Or at least you want to chew what she's chewing.

 Eat Pray Love, the movie, directed by Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy, can't muster the sound of Elizabeth Gilbert being Liz. It just can't, no matter how dutifully Murphy and co-screenwriter Jennifer Salt stitch phrases from the page into the screenplay, because the very nature of movies  images come to life, words spoken out loud  is antithetical to Gilbert's distinctive literary style, with words passed privately, silently, between the writer and her reader.

 On the other hand, Eat Pray Love, the movie, has Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert! Which is a nice choice. If anyone can make chowing down on a plate full of spaghetti look like a joyful, sensual prelude to enlightenment, it's Roberts, who offers herself as Our Julia as generously as Gilbert connects with readers as Our Liz. Roberts' relaxed gracefulness, whether she's spooning gelato, folding her long legs in meditation, or bicycling through the Balinese countryside to study at the feet of a revered medicine man, is the movie's greatest asset. Also, she wears a really pretty dress-like-the-locals wardrobe. Maybe she can travel light because she restocks her suitcase each time her plane lands.

 If only Roberts' warmth, coupled with Javier Bardem's scruffy sexiness as Felipe, were enough to compensate for the folded-map flatness of this production. If only this glossy Eat Pray Love  an armchair journey for these staycation times  didn't amount to a whole lot of navel-gazing about problems that, absent the author's unique narrative language, don't nearly fill up the 133-minute space the movie version allots. A prelude establishes the disintegration of Liz's marriage (to a warring spouse played by Billy Crudup), which falls apart for reasons never satisfactorily explained (in the book, the author didn't even try  the mess just was). Then it's on to Liz's less-than-convincing pre-divorce romance (with James Franco as a  what else?  cute young actor), which disintegrates under similar circumstances of who-knows-what. And then, All aboard!, the movie chugs from country to country, port of enlightenment to port of enlightenment, with a kind of dogged, tour-group energy. Touchdown in each locale is announced via touristic world-music selections; we know, for example, that Liz is about to meet Felipe when the samba music cues up. The director also favors ambiance shots of gesticulating Italians, scrambling street-urchin Indian kids, and gentle farming Indonesians. And he falls for a tacky, chick-flick sequence (or maybe it's a fat-free-yogurt commercial) in which Liz and a new European girlfriend, bound by a vow to forget calorie counts and love carbs, try to zip up new jeans.

 Under the circumstances, Roberts' scenes with Six Feet Under's (yet again) great Richard Jenkins as a fellow meditation student at her Indian ashram are almost jarring in the passionate naturalism Jenkins brings to the role  a passion that brings out Roberts' best work here. Where Felipe and the rest of the folks Liz meets are types  the handsome Italian teacher, the unhappily betrothed Indian girl, the toothless Indonesian guru  Jenkins turns Richard From Texas into a specific soul in search of redemption. Even spouting guru-type aphorisms such as ''You want to get to the castle, you've got to swim the moat'' (huh?), he's a man worth circling the globe to spend time with. The rest of the passengers? After you land, you won't keep in touch. C+

 See all of this week's reviews |||||

– Eat, Pray, Love looks lovely but lacks both the spice and the depth of the best-selling memoir it's based on, say critics. Julia Roberts stars as a jaded New York divorcee traveling the world to seek enlightenment. Roberts' Liz says she wants to move outside her comfort zone, writes Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter, but as she journeys through Italy, India, and Indonesia, "the film never ventures, even once, into a situation that does not reek of comfy familiarity." The movie "is shameless wish-fulfillment, a Harlequin novel crossed with a mystic travelogue," complains Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times, though he notes that the overwhelmingly female audience he watched it with appeared quite moved. Roberts manages to make the "2 hours and 15 minutes of eating, praying and loving pleasant enough," writes Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel, who decides Eat, Pray, Love "isn’t a bad movie, just a spiritually dead one." Roberts is a great choice to play Liz but "her warmth, coupled with Javier Bardem's scruffy sexiness" as love interest Felipe, aren't enough to compensate for "the folded-map flatness of this production," writes Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly.


First off, use your imagination. We're going to be pouring a tonne of glitter into an envelope with a folded up piece of paper. You know what's going to happen when that special someone opens the envelope & pulls out the letter? The craft herpes will be released & will go everywhere. By Far the most effective and easiest prank ever. ||||| Site which offered to send foes ‘the herpes of the craft world’ sells after owner asks users to ‘stop buying this horrible product’

 The founder of Ship Your Enemies Glitter, a single-purpose website that lets customers anonymously ship their enemies glitter, has sold his business for US$85,000 less than two weeks after starting it.

 Mathew Carpenter, a 22-year-old Australian, launched the site with little but a PayPal account and some well-written advertising copy. But a week later, he was swamped by orders, leading him to put the whole thing up for sale in an attempt to rid himself of what he described as a “horrible product”.

 The site was sold on Flippa, an online marketplace where entrepreneurs can trade in start-ups, domains or toolkits for building a business from scratch. Bidding rapidly rose to $70,000 in the first days on sale, before stalling until the last hours, when a further $15,000 was added on the price.

 The buyer, who is currently anonymous, is believed to be legitimate, having spent $83,000 on the site previously.

 In the four days Carpenter ran the site, he says he took more than $20,000 in sales, far beyond what he was expecting for a website launched “as a bit of a joke”. As a result, he closed the ability to make new orders, and later decided to be shot of the whole site.

 The site gained fame, in part, because of its tone. “We fucking hate glitter,” is how its pitch opens. “People call it the herpes of the craft world. What we hate more, though, are the soulless people who get their jollies off by sending glitter in envelopes.”

 Shortly before closing orders, he took to start-up news site Product Hunt to ask potential users to stop. “Hi guys, I’m the founder of this website. Please stop buying this horrible glitter product — I’m sick of dealing with it. Sincerely, Mat.”

 In the meantime, he is continuing to fulfil older orders, although, in an email sent to customers, he warned that “there will be a bit of a delay with delivery times, as the site somehow got popular.”

 Whoever has bought the site will find themselves with more competition than Carpenter experienced, however. A number of copy-cat sites have sprung up since he closed orders, including British-based Glitterbombs and America’s “Mat Won’t But We Will”. ||||| Less than two weeks ago, 22-year-old Mathew Carpenter started a snarky site that sold a single service: It would ship your enemies glitter for a mere $9.99. Today, he's apparently sold the fledgling business for a casual $85,000.

 The catchy idea – simple, clever, provides a great instant visual –and the spot-on nature of Carpenter's copy (glitter is so obviously, as he writes, "the herpes of the craft world") combined to elevate the bare-bones website into a viral sensation.

 Orders began flooding in. Having started the service "as a bit of a joke" Carpenter was apparently ill-prepared for the onslaught. "I'm a 22-year-old dude that has too much free time apparently because now my plans for the next few weeks will consist of sending stupid glitter to terrible people," he told The Daily Mail Australia.

 So he decided to shut it down; in a post on the startup news site Product Hunt, he implored potential buyers to stop ordering "this horrible glitter product" because he was "sick of dealing it."

 Related: 4 Kickstarter Campaigns You Won't Believe Actually Succeeded

 Here at Entrepreneur, we took him to task for committing the "cardinal sin in the entrepreneurial world," namely squandering an opportunity, "the eighth deadly sin of business" and "snatching failure from the jaws of victory."

 And it's true: With more commitment and seriousness Carpenter probably could have had an actual successful business on his hands. (He claims he took in more than $20,000 in orders before he stopped taking them.) Instead, he decided put up ShipYourEnemiesGlitter up for sale on Flippa, a marketplace for buying and selling websites. It just sold for $85,000, The Guardian reports, so despite his lackadaisical attitude no one can say he's not walking away with a pretty profit.

 In the meantime, real-life aspiring entrepreneurs have stepped in to fill where Carpenter left off. Still want to ship your enemies glitter? You're in luck, because a host of new sites will now do it for you.

 Meanwhile, on the ShipYourEnemiesGlitter website, you'll now find this:

 Purchasing has been temporarily suspended. You guys have a sick fascination with shipping people glitter. We've received all orders & working through them. There was a ton so be patient. You can spam me on Twitter for updates@matcarpenter or like the website on Facebook.

 Related: We Should Never Forgive the Horror of ShipYourEnemiesGlitter ||||| About the seller:

 Name: Mathew Carpenter

 Location: Newcastle, Australia

 Background: I’m a 22 year old entrepreneur that has been building websites for the past 5 years.

 Site Description

 ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com is a website that allows users to purchase an envelope filled with glitter that is sent to one of their enemies for only $9.99. Although the idea is a bit farfetched, it’s caught on in a big way. After being launched on January 12th of this month it has seen over 2,500,000 visitors, received over 415,000 mentions on Facebook & Twitter & has been featured all over the world both online, in print, on the radio, on TV & even on late night talkshows.

 After being online for only a few hours, the website had received over 2,000 orders generating just over $20,000AUD. Somewhat overwhelmed, I then decided to take the ability to order down despite receiving thousands of emails & tweets from people wanting to purchase.

 Business Model

 The website’s purpose is for people to send glitter to people they dislike or people they just want to play a funny prank on. A user comes onto the website, fills out a very simple form, pays the $9.99 fee via PayPal & I receive the recipient’s name & address. From there, I print out an A4 letter which basically tells the person receiving the glitter that they’re a terrible person. I then fold up the letter with glitter sprinkled all over it, put it in an envelope & ship it off to the recipient.

 The new owner may decide to print out the A4 letters wholesale and improve the margins, same deal with the envelopes & glitter – however, I’ve just been purchasing everything from a local store.

 Monetization

 The website makes money every time a user purchases a glitter filled envelope. Each purchase is worth $9.99AUD. I’ve calculated that the total cost of shipping an envelope filled with the glitter & the A4 letter to most places in the world from Australia ranges anywhere from $2-$4. That leaves $5.99 to $7.99 profit on each order.

 Time Requirement

 The new owner will have to decide whether or not they want to ship the envelopes themselves or outsource to a 3rd party. I have received hundreds of emails from people who would like to ship for us for a small fee. I’ve also received emails from manufacturers & factories that have the capabilities to do this on a very large scale. I’ll share these with the new owner, and if the new owner decides to outsource, the monthly time requirement will be close to 0.

 If the new owner wants to ship the envelopes themselves, then the monthly time requirement will be a bit more and will be based on the speed of putting glitter into envelopes, sending at the post office etc.

 Marketing

 The only marketing that has been done was when I launched which included sending out a Tweet from my own personal Twitter account. I also posted the website to Product Hunt. From there, coverage of the site exploded. The great thing about this website & the marketing surrounding it is that the readers on the publications that post about the site love it! On most of the publications the story has been their most popular of the day & many outlets have continued reporting about the site multiple times.

 Just a few of the major online media publications that have written about the site include:

 What is being included in the sale?

 Included in the sale are the website & all of its files, the domain name & I’ll also forward the emails from people requesting interviews & asking when the site will be taking orders again.

 Future Opportunities

 This website & brand have a lot of potential. The new owner will be able to reopen the floodgates by putting the order form back up on the website. They will also be able to respond to the many press enquiries. That’s short term though. In the long-term introducing other annoying products for users to send is something that could be done. There’s also the opportunity to allow users to send customized notes for an additional charge – there really is a lot to explore here.

 In the a4 letter that's included in each envelope, the URL is at the very bottom of it. For the new owner they can add their own message, so say they add "get revenge by shipping glitter to your own enemies at ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com." - basically, there's branding on each letter which will keep people coming back for more again and again. Finally, with the coverage the site has received, and the media contacts I've accumulated, the new owner will be able to test things on a large scale.

 What makes this website better than its competitors?

 When the website was launched we had 0 competitors. After a day or two the clones started to appear which I find hilarious. The majority of the clones are terribly designed, lack any sort of entertaining copy & mention my website. Simply put, we’re the leader in this space, and the media coverage of our site proves it.

 Why is the business being sold?

 I launched this website as a bit of a joke not expecting this level of attention. Heck, I launched this website whilst I was on holiday! For the past few days it has been stressful dealing with all of the media attention & even more so because this was only intended to be a small side project. It’s taken on a life of its own, and I want to watch it continue to grow under a new owner.

 Post Sale

 I’m willing to sign a 3 year non-compete contract. I’ll also be happy to provide 30 days of after sale support & training to ensure that the buyer is able to fully take over the website and there is a smooth transition.

 Closing Remarks

 The website is less than a week old & has received press from virtually every major online publication. If you do a search in Google for “shipyourenemiesglitter.com” despite only being a few days old, the site already garners “About 1,620,000 results”.

 Along with the online websites, we’ve been featured on a ton of radio stations, TV shows, podcasts, print & my favorite so far: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

 Serious bidders only! Happy bidding! |||||

Write a summary.

– Not a bad Internet success story: Step one: A 22-year-old creates a goofy website that allows you to have glitter sent to "people you hate." Step two: It explodes in popularity, so much so that Australian Mathew Carpenter stops taking orders and pleads with people to please, God, stop asking him to handle glitter. Step three: Carpenter just sold the website, called ShipYourEnemiesGlitter, for $85,000, reports the Guardian. A decent result for sure, though Entrepreneur thinks Carpenter committed the "eighth deadly sin of business" by squandering a genuine opportunity: "With more commitment and seriousness, Carpenter probably could have had an actual successful business on his hands." Before he bailed, Carpenter wrote that he had taken more than 2,000 orders at $7.99 a pop, and he estimated a profit of up to $6.50 on each one, reports CNBC. (A woman is accused of using a glitter bomb, among other things, to get back at her former boss.)


Article:
The entrance to Rikers Island is seen in New York, Tuesday, May 17, 2011. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, spent Monday night at infamous Rikers Island, after he was... (Associated Press)

 Guards at New York City's massive Rikers Island jail complex are taking unusual precautions to make sure IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn doesn't come to any harm behind bars.

 The 62-year-old banker and diplomat has a whole jail wing to himself, a medical device to make sure he doesn't stop breathing during the night and guards checking him 24 hours a day to make sure he doesn't kill himself.

 Since his arraignment Monday on charges that he tried to rape a hotel maid, Strauss-Kahn has been held at Rikers Island, home to thousands of prisoners serving short sentences or inmates awaiting trial.

 Because of his stature, Strauss-Kahn has been assigned to a facility at the jail that normally houses inmates with very contagious diseases, like measles or tuberculosis.

 Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello said Strauss-Kahn has been placed in a wing with about 14 cells, all of which are empty except for his. He has his cell to himself, and there is a toilet and sink in the cell. He takes his meals there as well, with breakfast at 5 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m. and dinner at 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.

 All inmates arriving at Rikers Island are given a mental health assessment to determine whether they might pose a suicide risk.

 Norman Seabrook, president of the union that represents corrections officers, said Strauss-Kahn did or said something during that evaluation that made doctors concerned. As a result, he is being monitored day and night.

 A law enforcement official confirmed that Strauss-Kahn had been placed on a suicide watch.

 The official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of prisoner medical information, said Strauss-Kahn had not tried to harm himself and appeared to be in good condition.

 Seabrook said Strauss-Kahn has also been issued a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, or CPAP, because he suffers from sleep apnea, a common condition that can cause a person to stop breathing for short periods during the night. The patient wears a mask that delivers extra air while they sleep.

 Morello said Strauss-Kahn will be free to leave his cell from time to time and wander the wing, and can leave the building for an hour each day for recreation outdoors, if he chooses. When he does, he will be accompanied by guards and won't encounter other inmates.

 As a pre-trial detainee, Strauss-Kahn isn't required to wear a prison uniform. He may bring his own clothing and wear what he chooses in his cell, whether it be designer suits, or something more casual. There are two exceptions: First, he has had to give up his shoes. All prisoners are required to wear standard-issue, lightweight, slip-on sneakers (although he is allowed to don regular dress shoes for court appearances, if he wishes). Secondly, to see visitors, he is required to put his civilian garb aside and don a gray jumpsuit, specially designed without pockets or other hiding places where contraband could be stashed.

 Prisoners at Rikers Island are not given an inmate number like in the movies, but are identified by a statewide criminal justice system code that sticks with them for life, even if they are incarcerated later somewhere else. Strauss-Kahn's NYSID number is 09132366L.

 ___

 Associated Press video producer Matt Friedman in Washington contributed to this report. ||||| The International Monetary Fund chief accused of sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid is on suicide watch in his Rikers Island cell, NBC New York has learned.

 The special designation for Dominique Strauss-Kahn means he is checked every 15 to 30 minutes and has been given a special prison jumpsuit and shoes that have no laces, a source tells NBC New York.

 The source says a Rikers medical official ordered the suicide watch as a precaution because of his mood and the delicate nature of the case; Strauss-Kahn has not made statements about hurting himself, the source said.

 "While inmate health records are confidential under the law... the Department of Correction follows the same protocol for safety and security of all inmates and that protocol dictates that every inmate is assessed for risk of harm to himself and risk of harm to others," a correction department spokesman said.

 Famous Feuds: Gwyneth vs. Martha

 Strauss-Kahn was arraigned Monday on charges including attempted rape, sex abuse, a criminal sex act, unlawful imprisonment and forcible touching.

 His lawyer denies the charges and says there is no evidence of a forced encounter.

 Strauss-Kahn is being held without bail before his next court appearance, scheduled for Friday.

 Rock Stars: Then and Now

 The maid's lawyer told NBC New York on Tuesday that her life has been turned "upside down" from the ordeal and says she is in hiding.

 Strauss-Kahn is a member of France's Socialist party and was widely considered the strongest potential challenger to President Nicolas Sarkozy next year.

 Follow Jonathan Dienst on Twitter

 @Jonathan4NY

 and us @NBCNewYork, and on Facebook/NBCNewYork, and sign up for breaking news SMS alerts on your phone by texting "NYBREAKING" to 639710. |||||Summary:

– It's a long way from the hotel suites he's used to, but Dominique Strauss-Kahn still has plenty of space to himself. The IMF chief is being held at Rikers Island on sexual assault charges in an empty 14-cell wing of the massive jail, reports AP. He has been placed on suicide watch and issued a medical device to make sure he doesn't stop breathing during the night. The suicide watch was ordered as a precaution, not because Strauss-Kahn seems likely to harm himself, a source tells NBC. Because of his status, the Frenchman was assigned to a facility usually used to house inmates with extremely contagious diseases. Officials say Strauss-Kahn is free to leave his cell and wander the wing from time to time. He is allowed to go outside for recreation for an hour once a day, accompanied by guards, in a spot where he won't encounter other inmates. As a pre-trial detainee, he is not required to wear a prison uniform.


Article:
A 40-year-old DreamWorks animator pleaded not guilty Thursday to beating a neighbor’s muzzled dog with a hammer, an incident that was captured on video.

 The man, Young Song, allegedly climbed the fence into a yard in the 1900 block of Navarro Avenue in Pasadena, where a 16-month-old German shepherd was muzzled but untied. Surveillance camera video shows the beating but does not reveal what Song did with the dog, which is missing and presumed dead.

 According to authorities, Young shot the dog with a pellet gun, then returned with a hammer and began chasing and striking the defenseless animal until it lay senseless.

 Industry sites identify Young as a "surfacer," an artisan who creates the look and surface qualities for animated characters, props and environments. Young's credits on animal-themed films include "Kung Fu Panda," "Shark Tale," "Bee Movie" and "Madagascar 2".

 “When our officers first viewed the videotape, one of our officers had tears in his eyes. He’d never seen anything like this before,” said Steve McNall, who heads the Pasadena Humane Society and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “In my 31 years at this animal shelter I’ve never seen anything like this.” ||||| Animator who worked on children's movies accused of brutally beating, shooting a puppy

 Matthew Roberts for News A German Shepherd puppy, like the one above, was allegedly brutally beaten with a hammer.

 LOS ANGELES - A southern California DreamWorks animator is accused of beating a puppy with a hammer so badly that Humane Society workers are calling it one of the worst cases of animal abuse they've ever seen.

 Young Song, 40, of Pasadena, appeared in court Thursday and pleaded not guilty to felony animal cruelty, but authorities say they have surveillance video of the heinous crime.

 They claim Song scaled a fence into a neighbor's backyard April 20 and chased and beat a muzzled 1-year-old German shepherd to a bloody, motionless pulp.

 Song also allegedly shot the defenseless animal with a pellet gun.

 "It's extremely shocking and heartbreaking," Hillary Gatlin, a community relations associate with the Pasadena Humane Society told the Daily News.

 "It's one of the worst cases we've ever seen. We're all very upset. It's been a long, sad day," she said.

 The Humane Society is investigating the crime with local police.

 "We believe it was an ongoing dispute between the neighbors, but we don't know what brought it to this point," Gatlin said.

 The dog is now missing and presumed dead.

 Song, whose credits include "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar 2," was also charged with theft of the animal.

 If convicted, he could face several years in state prison.

 ndillon@nydailynews.com |||||Summary:

– An animator who helped bring lovable creatures to life in movies like Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar 2 has been arrested for what Humane Society workers describe as one of the worst cases of animal abuse they've ever seen. DreamWorks employee Young Song is accused of shooting his neighbor's muzzled German Shepherd puppy with a pellet gun and then beating it to death with a hammer, reports the New York Daily News. Song has pleaded not guilty to a felony count of animal cruelty that carries up to four years in jail, though the incident was captured on surveillance video. "When our officers first viewed the videotape, one of our officers had tears in his eyes. He'd never seen anything like this before," the head of the Pasadena Humane Society tells the Los Angeles Times. "In my 31 years at this animal shelter I've never seen anything like this."


Article:
A Palestinian teen was reportedly abducted and killed near his home in Jerusalem on Wednesday, apparently in revenge for the deaths of three kidnapped Jewish Israelis buried just hours earlier.

 The crime, which brought strong condemnations from the Obama Administration and European officials, threatened to throw the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians beyond the control of leaders who were calculating how to respond to the last outrage without further escalating tensions on the ground. But in the space of a few hours, the mood shifted from communal grief over the deaths of the young Israelis to fears of ascending communal violence.

 The abduction followed a night of mayhem by Jewish extremists, about 200 of whom marched through Jerusalem chanting “Death to the Arabs” and assaulting Arab Israelis found on the streets. A few hours later, shortly before 4 a.m., Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, 16, was forced into a car by two men on a sidewalk not far from his home in Shuafat, a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem. An hour later police discovered a charred body in a forest on the outskirts of the city. Family members said it was Muhammad, who had been on his way to dawn prayers, as was customary during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

 “The settlers killed my son, they kidnapped him and killed him,” his father, Hussein Saed Abu Khdeir, told TIME after returning from Jerusalem’s main police station.

 He reached for his Samsung smartphone, tapped the screen and pulled up a photo of two young men on a sidewalk. He said the image had been taken from a surveillance camera at a candy store around the corner that recorded the abduction.

 “These are the ones who kidnapped my son,” he said.

 A few yards away, dozens of young men flung stones at Israeli riot police assembled two blocks downhill. The riot began shortly after the body was discovered, and went on all day. Police fired foam-tipped bullets and sound grenades. Youths twirled slingshots and the occasional Molotov cocktail. The pavement between the two sides might have been gravel, so littered was it with stones.

 A row of ambulances stood by a hundred feet behind the tin barricades protesters had erected beside the building containing the Khdeirs’ home. As an ambulance driver reported that more than 60 people had been wounded by 5 p.m., another injured youth arrived, slung across the shoulders of a heavyset man in an orange medic’s vest.

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement urging both sides “not to take the law into your own hands” and promising to “uncover quickly who is behind this despicable murder and what motivated it.” A relative of one of the Jewish Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, who also held U.S. citizenship, was quoted as saying “If a young Arab man was murdered for nationalistic reasons then it is a horrifying and disgusting act. There is no distinguishing blood from blood. Murder is murder, whatever the nationality or age may be. There is no justification, no forgiveness and no atonement for any murder.”

 But the distance between the sides grows with each incident. At the political level, Palestinian leaders leaped at the opportunity to turn the tables on Israel, which used the teens’ disappearance as a pretense to arrest more than 400 West Bank activists, most of them with the militant Islamist group Hamas that Netanyahu blames for the teens’ deaths.

 “Israel bears full responsibility for this incident,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement, which concluded with a threat to drag Israel before U.N. courts, the most militant course Abbas has been willing to chart. “The Palestinian leadership will continue its discussions following this escalation, including joining international organizations.”

 On the ground, pessimism ruled. Hussein Abu Khdeir was asked if he had faith in the Israeli police he had spent most of the day with. “No,” he said. Why not? “Because we’re Arab.”

 “They are not concerned,” volunteered Yousef Mkhemer, a community activist seated across the crowded porch. Alluding to Netanyahu’s historic support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, he said, “The boss of the settlers is the boss of the government. So he cannot shame himself.”

 The distrust runs beyond political leader, however, to alternate realities. Many if not most Palestinians refuse to say that the three Israeli teens were abducted at all. Their disappearance is widely regarded as an excuse to force apart the newly minted unity government supported by both Hamas and Abbas’ secular Fatah party — a reconciliation polls show has been enthusiastically embraced by Palestinians, but condemned by Netanyahu, who has repeatedly invoked the teens’ kidnapping as reason for dismembering it.

 “It’s a lie,” said Amjad Dweik, 18, of the Israeli teens’ kidnapping and murder. “As soon as the two parties Fatah and Hamas began the reconciliation, Israel began to make up all kinds of things to ruin the unit.” Hussein Abu Khdeir agreed: “They did it,” he said, referring to Israel.

 In the next breath, the skeptics describe the abduction of Muhammad as vigilante vengeance for the death of the Jewish teens. Residents say young Jewish Israelis had been stalking Shuafat since the bodies were discovered on Monday. Dweik and others spoke of a boy of 9 pulled away from his mother by young Jews a day earlier on the same street where Muhammad was taken. The boy was saved, they say, when passersby intervened.

 “He was scratched,” said Hussein Abu Khdeir, referring to the child, who local residents say had been holding his mother’s hand. “They grabbed him by his neck.”

 His own son’s abduction and apparent death were likewise revenge.

 “Yes, of course,” he said. “There’s no other explanation.” ||||| Media caption Mohammed Abu Khdair's mother: "My son wasn't answering"

 The funeral of a Palestinian teenager abducted and killed in Jerusalem has been delayed so that a post-mortem examination can be completed.

 Mohammed Abu Khdair's father says he hopes his son's burial can still take place on Thursday.

 The 17-year-old's murder raised tensions amid claims it was in revenge for the killing of three Israeli youths.

 Meanwhile, Israel has begun reinforcing forces on its border with Gaza.

 Israel says the move, which follows air strikes against the Palestinian territory early on Thursday that injured 10 Palestinians, is part of its response to mortar and rocket fire from Palestinian militants.

 Barrages struck two homes in the southern Israeli border town of Sderot overnight. There were no reports of injuries.

 Image copyright AFP

 Analysis: Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem

 Israel's air attacks on Gaza should not be seen as part of any action it may be planning to take against Hamas for the kidnapping and murder of the three young Israelis buried earlier this week.

 They were an immediate response to a wave of attacks from Gaza in which rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel.

 Israeli military sources say the targets were weapons manufacturing facilities and training sites used by [the militant groups] Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

 But the exchange of fire comes at a time of rising tension in Israel and the occupied territories.

 'Father detained'

 The funeral of Mohammed Abu Khdair had been due to take place after noon prayers at about 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT).

 As the time for the burial approached, the family appeared to accuse the Israeli authorities of holding the body unnecessarily - something denied by police.

 Later, Mohammed Abu Khdair's father, Hussein Abu Khdair, said he had been told a post-mortem examination was still taking place. Relatives nevertheless hoped the funeral could take place on Thursday, he added.

 Media caption Two cousins of Mohammed Abu Khdair spoke to Yolande Knell about his death

 The post-mortem, which is being conducted by Palestinian and Israeli doctors, is reported to be taking longer than expected because the body was burnt.

 In another development, Hussein Abu Khdair said he was held by police for eight hours and put under pressure to say his son's killing was unlikely to be an attack to avenge the deaths of the Israeli youths. Israeli police have denied this.

 One of the dead teenager's cousins, Dimah Abu Khdeir, said of Israelis: "They don't care about us... We're not considered citizens. We're garbage. They killed us."

 There are fears the funeral, when it does take place, will be followed by more clashes like those which erupted outside the teenager's home on Wednesday. Then, protesters threw stones at police officers, who responded by firing sound bombs, tear gas and rubber bullets.

 Image caption The Palestinian boy's father said he was told a post-mortem examination of his son's body was still taking place

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Israel says its air strikes against targets in Gaza on Thursday were in response to Palestinian militant mortar attacks

 Image copyright AP Image caption Two homes were damaged by Palestinian rocket fire in the southern Israeli town of Sderot

 Image copyright AFP Image caption The murder of Mohammed Abu Khdair sparked protests in East Jerusalem on Wednesday

 The Palestinian boy was seen being forced into a car in Shufat, East Jerusalem, early on Wednesday.

 His body was later found, bearing marks of violence, in West Jerusalem.

 Media caption Murdered Israeli teen's uncle: "Violence is not the path"

 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Jewish settlers of killing the boy, calling for the "strongest punishment against the murderers".

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the murder was "despicable" and that he had ordered police to work "as quickly as possible to find out who was behind the heinous murder of the youth".

 Israeli and Palestinian media reaction

 Ben-Dror Yemini in mass circulation Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot: "The Jewish majority hope, pray, that Jews did not murder the youth from Shufat... but there is a fear that we are in denial...that a cancer of racist right is nesting among us."

 Dan Margalit in free, pro-Netanyahu Yisrael Hayom: ""Certainly every decent Israeli wants to get rid of the murderers of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Shaer. There is a blood debt with the two Palestinians who murdered them...the IDF and the Shabak must hunt them, not wild groups who operate outside public life."

 Pro-Fatah Palestinian daily Al-Quds: "We say once again that peace is the only way leading to the suspension of violence, fanaticism and tension."

 Dr Isam Shawir in Hamas-run, Gaza-based Filastin: "The threats made by the occupation are worthless and do not scare Hamas, particularly in the Gaza Strip."

 The family of one of the three murdered Israeli teenagers also issued a statement condemning the latest killing.

 "If the Arab youth was murdered because of nationalistic motives, then this is a horrible and horrendous act," the statement from the family of Naftali Frenkel said.

 Israeli police have urged caution over the motives for the killing, saying they are still investigating.

 The bodies of the three Jewish seminary students were found near the city of Hebron on Monday, two-and-a-half weeks after they were abducted. Their funerals took place on Tuesday. ||||| The body of a slain Palestinian teen was burned beyond recognition, forcing his parents to provide DNA samples to confirm his identity, his father told NBC News on Wednesday. Hussein Abu Khader criticized police for responding too slowly to his report that his 17-year-old son Mohammed had been seen being bundled into a van in east Jerusalem on Tuesday, and for not launching a manhunt immediately. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that he has asked for a priority investigation and vowed that the culprits will be punished severely, a State Department spokeswoman said.

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 The father said Mohammed's cellphone rang for 30 minutes after neighbors saw him being forced into the vehicle as the teen headed to a mosque for morning prayers at 4 a.m. Speculation is swirling that the Palestinian teen was kidnapped and murdered in retribution for the killings of three Israeli teens, whose bodies were found on Monday, nearly three weeks after they were abducted in the occupied West Bank. Israel says Palestinian Hamas militants killed them, although the Islamist group has not taken responsibility.

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 July 2, 2014 | Shufat, Occupied East Jerusalem. Spray painted graffiti under a Jerusalem Municipality… http://t.co/cO6Zu1gOGu — Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) July 2, 2014

 - Ayman Mohyeldin, with Reuters |||||Summary:

– Mohammed Abu Khudair was heading to morning prayers at 4am yesterday when neighbors saw him forced into a van in east Jerusalem, his father says. They called his cell phone but "my son wasn't answering," his mother adds, per the BBC. An hour later, the Palestinian teen was found dead in an apparent revenge killing, so burned beyond recognition that DNA samples were needed to confirm his identify, father Hussein Abu Khudair tells NBC News, adding, per Time, "The settlers killed my son, they kidnapped him and killed him." More developments: The teen's funeral, originally set for today, has been delayed as authorities perform an autopsy, his father says. Khudair adds he doesn't have faith in the Israeli police "because we're Arab" and says young Jews pulled a 9-year-old boy away from his mother after Mohammed's death. Though he was saved, "he was scratched," Khudair says. "They grabbed him by his neck." Another relative of Mohammed adds "the hatred has increased" instantly in the family's neighborhood. "I've never seen such racism, even in the first and second intifada," he tells the New York Times. "We are entering a very dark time." Meanwhile, police are investigating what could be a third kidnapping after a girl called police from northern Israel. "She said that she was abducted and then the line went dead," an Israeli spokesman tells the Times. "We're searching the area. Helicopters are trying to track. We'll see what's going on there." In response to mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza, "the Israeli Air Force attacked 15 terror sites in Gaza early Thursday," an Israel Defense Forces official notes. "The targets included weapons manufacturing sites as well as training facilities." Some 10 Palestinians were reportedly injured.


– Ebola doesn't always show itself through fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. A new PLOS study finds that some people with the virus show mild or no symptoms at all—a potential concern for preventing its spread. Researchers who visited the village of Sukudu in Sierra Leone, a hot spot in the recent West African Ebola outbreak, found up to 25% of Ebola infections "may have been minimally symptomatic," meaning "a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected" in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, NBC News reports. At least 28,000 people are known to have been infected during the epidemic, at least 11,000 of whom died. In Sukudu, there were 34 known Ebola cases, including 28 deaths among 900 residents, reports Gizmodo. A year after the worst of the outbreak was over, Stanford University researchers tested the blood of 187 people in Sukudu who'd lived with or shared a toilet with someone infected with Ebola, per a release. They found 14 had Ebola antibodies, suggesting they'd previously been infected, while 12 said they didn't recall feeling sick or having a fever. Believing them to be truthful as health workers kept an eye on villagers during the outbreak, researchers now plan to visit other villages "so we can begin to answer the question of what was the true burden of disease," the study author says. "We expect to find a lot more undocumented survivors." It's not clear if asymptomatic patients are contagious. "They were not passing it along in the usual way, through vomiting or diarrhea," he says. "It's unclear if they can pass it along sexually." (This Ebola-like disease can shut down organs.)

Expand this summary.

Scientists have learned that upwards of 25 percent of all people who become infected with Ebola show none of the typical symptoms. The finding suggests the recent West African Ebola Epidemic was more widespread than previously thought, and that new methods need to be developed to diagnose and contain the dreaded virus during an outbreak.

 Typically, Ebola produces a panoply of symptoms, including fever, unexplained bleeding, headache, muscle pain, rash, vomiting, diarrhea, breathing problems, and difficulty swallowing. As is well documented, this virus is particularly deadly, killing between 10 to 80 percent of people who exhibit these symptoms (the statistical spread reflects the divide between those who have access to intensive care and those who don’t).

 But as a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases shows, a significant portion of people who contract Ebola don’t show any of the typical signs, meaning they’re asymptomatic, or their symptoms are relatively mild and not wholly reflective of how the virus affects most people. In other words, they have “minimally symptomatic infections.”

 Prior to the new study, scientists suspected that Ebola, like many other viruses, might not always manifest in the same predictable way. The new study, led by Gene Richardson, a PhD candidate in anthropology at Stanford University and a former fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, now confirms this suspicion, while providing an actual estimate for the rate of asymptomatic and minimally symptomatic infections in Ebola patients.

 Following the recent West African Ebola Epidemic, Richardson and his colleagues went back to the rural village of Sukudu in Sierra Leone, a major hotspot for the outbreak. The village, which is home to 900 residents, recorded 34 cases of Ebola during the epidemic, including 28 deaths. Working with a local physician, Richardson’s team tested 187 men, women, and children from Sukudu who had likely been exposed to Ebola, either because they lived in the same household or shared a public toilet with a person known to have had the disease.

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 Of these, 14 were found to carry an antibody to Ebola—a sure sign that they were infected at some point. A dozen of these villagers said they had no symptoms of the disease, while two recalled having a fever at the time of the outbreak.

 It’s now certainly possible that some of these villagers had full-blown symptoms but were fearful of admitting the truth to doctors. Consequently, more research with a larger sample pool will have to be performed. However, Richardson and his colleagues think they’re onto something, and that the villagers were probably telling the truth.

 Importantly, the researchers aren’t sure if an asymptomatic person with Ebola can transmit the virus. “They were not passing it along in the usual way, through vomiting or diarrhea,” noted Richardson in a statement. “It’s unclear if they can pass it along it sexually.”

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 More research is needed to determine if Ebola can be spread by a person who shows no or very few symptoms, but it’s a very distinct possibility. A person with an infection still has Ebola particles in their body, which could find a way to “jump” to another person. But without the typical symptoms, it’s certainly much more difficult. As Richardson noted, the virus might be transmitted sexually, though that still needs to be proven in an asymptomatic individual.

 Richardson and his colleagues are now working in other villages in Sierra Leone to get a better handle on the true number of people affected during the crisis. But if the figure of 25 percent is correct—and if Ebola can spread via asymptomatic people (that’s still a big if)—that presents a massive headache for health officials.

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 Adding insult to injury, the Ebola virus mutated into a deadlier form during the last outbreak, showing an ability to quickly adapt to human biology and become even more virulent. Taken together, these new findings show that Ebola spreads more rapidly and more broadly through a population, highlighting the need for new detection and containment techniques for when the next outbreak hits.

 [PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases] ||||| By using ELISA to measure Zaire Ebola virus antibody concentrations, we identified a significant number of individuals with previously undetected EBOV infection in a ‘hotspot’ village in Sierra Leone, approximately one year after the village outbreak. The findings provide further evidence that Ebola, like many other viral infections, presents with a spectrum of clinical manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection. These data also suggest that a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected during the outbreak. Further studies are needed to understand the potential risk of transmission and clinical sequelae in individuals with previously undetected EBOV infection.

 We conducted a cross-sectional serosurvey in Sukudu, Kono District, Sierra Leone, from October 2015 to January 2016. A blood sample was collected from 187 study participants, 132 negative controls (individuals with a low likelihood of previous exposure to Ebola virus), and 30 positive controls (Ebola virus disease survivors). IgG responses to Ebola glycoprotein and nucleoprotein were measured using Alpha Diagnostic International ELISA kits with plasma diluted at 1:200. Optical density was read at 450 nm (subtracting OD at 630nm to normalize well background) on a ChroMate 4300 microplate reader. A cutoff of 4.7 U/mL for the anti-GP ELISA yielded 96.7% sensitivity and 97.7% specificity in distinguishing positive and negative controls. We identified 14 seropositive individuals not known to have had Ebola virus disease. Two of the 14 seropositive individuals reported only fever during quarantine while the remaining 12 denied any signs or symptoms during quarantine.

 Evidence for minimally symptomatic Ebola virus (EBOV) infection is limited. During the 2013–16 outbreak in West Africa, it was not considered epidemiologically relevant to published models or projections of intervention effects. In order to improve our understanding of the transmission dynamics of EBOV in humans, we investigated the occurrence of minimally symptomatic EBOV infection in quarantined contacts of reported Ebola virus disease cases in a recognized ‘hotspot.’

 With over 28,000 reported cases, the 2013–16 West African Ebola virus disease epidemic is the largest and longest on record. This study provides further evidence that Ebola, like other viruses, causes a spectrum of clinical manifestations that may include minimally symptomatic infection. The findings also suggest that many episodes of human-to-human transmission of Ebola virus in West Africa may have gone undetected in the recent outbreak. This has implications for the definition of Ebola virus disease survivorship, delineation of transmission chains, and future vaccine studies.

 In order to improve our understanding of the transmission dynamics of EBOV in humans, we investigated the occurrence of minimally symptomatic EBOV infection in a recognized Ebola ‘hotspot’ [ 11 ], which we defined as an area with a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)-confirmed EVD attack rate above 2% in a two-month period.

 Evidence for minimally symptomatic EBOV infection is limited. During the 2013–16 outbreak in West Africa, it was not considered epidemiologically relevant to published models or projections of intervention effects [ 7 – 10 ]. Moreover, it is not known if clinical sequelae seen in survivors of EVD (e.g., uveitis) exist in individuals who had minimally symptomatic EBOV infection.

 Despite over 28,000 reported cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the 2013–16 pandemic as of March 27, 2016 [ 1 ], we are only beginning to trace the complex biosocial processes that have promoted spread of the virus [ 2 , 3 ]. Important questions remain, including how to best use tools such as new vaccines [ 4 ] and rapid diagnostic tests [ 5 ] to contain future outbreaks, the extent to which symptomatic individuals do not present for care, how to identify and manage clinical sequelae of EVD [ 6 ], and the incidence and transmission dynamics of minimally symptomatic Ebola virus (EBOV) infection.

 In addition to the 16 confirmed EBOV infections with a fatal outcome, the 12 probable deaths from EVD, and 6 confirmed EBOV infections who survived (34 total cases), our serosurvey identified an additional 14 individuals who were anti-GP ELISA IgG-positive. Two of these individuals reported fever during the quarantine period, and 12 were classified as minimally symptomatic, contributing 25% (binomial exact 95% CI, 14% to 40%) to the total caseload. After including the 2 undocumented symptomatic cases with the 34 reported by the DERC, we calculated a 78% symptomatic case fatality ratio (binomial exact 95% CI, 61% to 90%).

 Data analyses. We considered participants to have had minimally symptomatic EBOV infection if they 1) had an anti-GP ELISA above the cut-off as determined in the validation sub-study and 2) denied symptoms consistent with EVD during the period of active transmission in the village.

 Laboratory analyses. Of the 187 exposed individuals tested, none of whom were previously known to have EVD, we identified 14 (7.5%) who tested positive by anti-GP ELISA ( Fig 3 ). Two (14.3%) of these 14 reported fever during quarantine while the remaining 12 denied any signs or symptoms during quarantine.

 Table 1 shows that 57.8% of participants were male, 35.8% were less than 15 years of age, 48.6% worked outside the home (mostly as farmers or miners), and 79.1% had completed primary school or less. Among exposed participants who were quarantined, 50.2% shared a public latrine with a confirmed case, and 49.8% slept in the house of a confirmed case.

 Survey. We collected the following data from study participants: age, gender, occupation, education level, whether or not they shared a room with a confirmed case of EVD, and whether they had signs or symptoms consistent with EVD that were severe enough to prompt seeking of care during the time of their village outbreak. Specifically, these included fever or unexplained bleeding or any three of the following: headache, myalgia, rash, vomiting, diarrhea, hiccups, breathing problems, or difficulty swallowing [ 13 ]. Other household members verified signs and symptoms.

 Of 193 individuals from Sukudu who were quarantined for sharing a public latrine or living quarters with a confirmed case, only 4 declined to participate. Ten individuals were initially excluded because of fever at the time of initial contact; none of these met the case definition for EVD. On reassessment one week later, all but one had defervesced and were able to provide blood samples. Two participants had failed venipuncture attempts for blood draw. We thus sampled a total of 187 individuals for anti-GP in 24 of 25 previously quarantined houses as defined above (the members of 1 quarantined household could not be located).

 We recruited healthy children and adults age 4 and older who had been placed under quarantine during the period of active Ebola transmission in Sukudu. None of these individuals had participated in an Ebola vaccine trial. Each potential participant was screened for fever or symptoms consistent with EVD, and he/she was excluded if any were present. Medical referral to a nearby Partners In Health-supported clinic (which provides free medical care to those unable to pay) was provided.

 Study population. We conducted a serosurvey in Sukudu, a village of approximately 900 inhabitants (100 households) that was one of three major ‘hotspots’ in Kono District. We obtained a list of quarantined houses and EVD cases from the Kono DERC and verified it with the town chiefs and youth leaders. We also interviewed members of all of the affected households and discussed the identification of EVD cases with them to triangulate DERC records. We defined potential participants as having been exposed to EBOV if they stayed in a house that was quarantined based on sharing a public latrine with a confirmed case or based on a confirmed case living there. All homes were geolocated using a remotely sensed image ( Fig 2 ).

 Fig 1 provides ROC curves and AUCs for the individual and combined ELISA assays. AUCs for the anti-GP, anti-NP, and combined assays were 0.992 (SE = 0.005, 95% CI = 0.983–1.000), 0.975 (SE = 0.010, 95% CI = 0.956–0.995), and 0.997 (unable to determine CIs as the combined ROC was generated through logistic regression), respectively, suggesting that these three tests were statistically equivalent. The cutoff for the anti-GP ELISA that yielded optimal sensitivity (96.7%) and specificity (97.7%) was 4.7 U/mL.

 To determine overall accuracies for the two ELISAs in combination and individually, we generated receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and compared the areas under the curve (AUCs) for the individual and combined anti-GP and anti-NP tests [ 12 ]. The cutoff for a positive test was established by ROC analysis, defined as the point along the ROC curve that gave the highest sum of sensitivity (%) and specificity (%).

 We assessed anti-glycoprotein (anti-GP) and anti-nucleoprotein (anti-NP) responses to EBOV by means of commercial ELISA kits (AE 320620–1 and AE 320520–1, respectively) from Alpha Diagnostic International (ADI), San Antonio, TX, USA. These were processed according to the manufacturer’s instructions, with plasma diluted at 1:200. Optical density (OD) was read at 450 nm (subtracting OD at 630nm to normalize well background) on a ChroMate 4300 microplate reader (Awareness Technologies, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA). Values are reported in units per milliliter (U/mL) with the use of reference antibody provided by the manufacturer.

 We recruited 30 EVD survivors as positive controls by contacting the director of the Kono Survivors’ Group and requesting that she identify individuals interested in participating in a serosurvey. Using Kono DERC records, we verified that survivors had been admitted to an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU) and had a documented RT-PCR positive result for EBOV. To identify a group of people whom we considered at very low risk of previous EBOV infection to serve as negative controls, we used Kono DERC records to locate three villages in Kono District in which no Ebola cases had been reported: In the villages of Tombodu, Wardu, and Njagbwema, we recruited 132 individuals who denied contact with Ebola cases both inside and outside of their communities.

 Kono is a diamond-rich district in eastern Sierra Leone which reported 301 cases of EVD (that is, RT-PCR confirmed individuals who presented for isolation or were identified by surveillance teams) between August 2014 and February 2015 (Kono District Ebola Response Centre (DERC), personal communication). Several of the authors worked closely with the Kono DERC, British military, and International Federation of the Red Cross on containment, isolation, and surveillance during the time of active transmission in the district. Parts I and II of this study were conducted from October 2015 to January 2016 by a team consisting of two physicians, a physician-anthropologist, a laboratory technician, and two community health workers.

 The study protocol was approved by the Sierra Leone Ethics and Scientific Review Committee and the Stanford University Institutional Review Board (Protocol ID: 33882). We held meetings with Paramount, Sectional, and Town Chiefs to discuss the proposal and supply them with written information. We then held town meetings to describe the project and answer community questions. Individuals provided written informed consent or placed a thumbprint after hearing a consent script read in the Krio or Kono languages (both ethics committees approved the use of an oral script and thumbprint for those participants who could not read or write); parents signed for children under the age of 18, and children and adolescents provided verbal assent. Subjects received 50,000 Leones (~$10 US) for their participation in the study.

 Discussion

 One year after the peak of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, we identified positive IgG responses to Zaire-EBOV in 14 individuals not known to have had EBOV infection from a village classified as a hotspot for Ebola transmission. Of these, the majority reported having had no symptoms consistent with EVD during the epidemic while two reported only fever. Thus, we provide further evidence that Ebola, like many other viral infections, presents with a spectrum of clinical manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection. In addition, our data suggest that a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected during the epidemic.

 Although it was difficult to verify symptoms through our retrospective interviews (given the considerable denial of EVD during the outbreak due to stigma and the fear of being admitted to an ETU where those admitted were seldom discharged), our data indicate that 25% of EBOV infections may have been minimally symptomatic, which is similar to the data from empiric studies and to recent modeled estimates [14].

 The phenomenon of previously undetected, minimally symptomatic EBOV infection was evident around the discovery of the virus in 1976. Using an immunofluorescence assay, the World Health Organization/International Study Team found that 19% of contacts of EVD cases—very few of whom gave any history of illness—had antibodies to the virus [15]. In 2000, Leroy and colleagues published a study (based on ELISA/Western blot) and found that of 24 asymptomatic close contacts of Gabonese patients with EVD, 11 developed both IgM and IgG responses to Ebola Zaire antigens, indicating viral infection [16]. Other investigators have found evidence of seropositive individuals in areas without large outbreaks using ELISA and postulate that there may have been active circulation of filovirus without apparent clinical manifestations [17,18]. Heffernan and colleagues also used ELISA in Gabon and found that 1% of individuals in an epidemic zone had IgG antibodies to Ebola Zaire virus, yet no history of exposure [19]. In another study in Gabon, Becquart and colleagues found a 15.3% Ebola Zaire IgG seroprevalence in 220 randomly selected villages and concluded that most of the seropositive persons identified “probably had mild or asymptomatic infection” [20]; however, they used uninfected individuals in France as negative controls. We found that unexposed expatriates (not included as negative controls) had a significantly lower mean log anti-GP (M = 5.25 U/mL, SD = 0.54, N = 12) than unexposed Sierra Leoneans (M = 6.40 U/mL, SD = 1.06, N = 132) using the two-sample t-test for unequal variances, t(20.05) = 6.40, P< = 0.001 (see Fig 3), potentially due to cross-reactivity of our assay with closely related pathogens circulating in the region.

 Our study has several possible limitations. First, if asymptomatic EBOV infection is a common occurrence, it is possible that some of the “true negatives” used for the validation of our ELISA assays could have been infected with EBOV. We did not use a microneutralization assay for comparison purposes, nor did our pool of EVD survivors represent all of the possible antibody titers in the regional population. Although the serologic assay conferred sensitivity and specificity greater than 95%, the assay protocol produced antibody titers that were considered qualitative in nature. Second, we relied on study participants and their household contacts’ memories of events that had taken place up to a year prior when we classified them as symptomatic or asymptomatic (potential recall bias); however, during the outbreak, most quarantined households were monitored daily by surveillance teams that conducted symptom screens and measured temperatures, and individuals were brought to treatment facilities for EBOV testing if they screened positive. Third, our IgG assays indicate previous infection but provide no information on when that infection took place. The 3 negative controls with positive tests either represent false positives due to cross-reactive antibodies or previously infected individuals. (We did not perform IgM ELISAs, as other investigators have demonstrated that Ebola IgM titers largely diminish within 60 to 90 days of symptom onset [21,22].) Fourth, we did not ascertain whether there were non-quarantined individuals who had minimally symptomatic infection.

 Our study focused on the quarantined population of one village. Extrapolation of our findings to other villages and generalizability to the epidemic should be approached with caution. Although many of the study participants were followed by surveillance teams during the time of active EBOV transmission in their village, the timing of the possible infection cannot be known from IgG data, and it is improbable that surveillance teams followed each individual throughout the duration of the outbreak in Sierra Leone. Thus, the concern that IgG positive persons indeed had but denied symptoms cannot be excluded.

 Despite these limitations, our serosurvey provides a deeper perspective on EBOV transmission, and more village-level serosurveys could enhance our understanding of undetected EBOV transmission at the epidemic level. Furthermore, our findings suggest there would be value in exploring the interaction of seropositive persons and EVD cases to improve our understanding of exposure risk. As a result, we may learn more about how efforts at containment can be improved. The data also have important implications for future vaccine studies that rely on detecting antibody to EBOV. Lastly, the findings support the World Health Organization’s interim guidance on clinical care for survivors of EVD, which defines a survivor as a person:

 With a confirmed positive result on RT-PCR testing for EBOV on any body fluid who subsequently recovered;

 And/or

 And/or Who is IgM and/or IgG positive on serological testing for EVD and has not been vaccinated against EBOV [23].

 There is ongoing discussion in West Africa over the definition of survivorship, usually specified by having a positive EBOV RT-PCR result and discharge from an ETU. Plans are underway to develop national registries and provide ID cards to such survivors, so as to delineate individuals eligible for free social and medical support services. Should the notion of survivorship be extended to all those who are IgG positive, including those who had minimally symptomatic infection or who were sick but were never tested at the time of illness? How we define a community of suffering is always problematic and should be revisited given that this definition has implications for identity, stigma, and access to social and medical services.

 In conclusion, by using ELISA to measure Zaire-EBOV antibody concentrations, we identified a significant number of individuals with previously undetected minimally symptomatic EBOV infection in a ‘hotspot’ village in Sierra Leone, approximately one year after the village outbreak. Further studies are needed to understand the potential risk of transmission and clinical sequelae in individuals with minimally symptomatic EBOV infection. ||||| Between 2013 and 2016, tens of thousands of people in West Africa contracted Ebola virus disease, making the epidemic the largest and longest on record. But the number of reported cases -- roughly 28,000 -- may be an underestimate of the total number of people infected, since it includes only people who showed symptoms of disease. Researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have discovered individuals in Sierra Leone who showed no signs of the disease but have evidence of prior Ebola infection in their immune systems.

 An estimated 10-80 percent of people who show symptoms of Ebola virus disease (EVD) die, depending on their access to intensive care. However, researchers have also seen some evidence that a minority of people may catch the Ebola virus without developing symptoms. During the 2013-2016 outbreak, however, these so-called "minimally symptomatic infections" were not considered epidemiologically relevant to models, projections, or intervention efforts so were not studied or tracked in detail.

 From October 2015 through January 2016, a year after the peak of the Ebola epidemic, Eugene Richardson, of Partners In Health, and colleagues conducted a survey of people living in Sukudu, Kono District, Sierra Leone, a village of 900 inhabitants which had been a major "hotspot" of Ebola. The team identified 193 adults and children over age 4 who had lived with or shared a latrine with a confirmed case of Ebola during the period of active transmission but were never identified as EVD cases. The researchers collected blood from 187 of these individuals. They then tested the blood samples -- as well as positive and negative controls from known Ebola cases and people not exposed to the virus -- for Ebola glycoprotein antibodies, the presence of which indicates a past Ebola infection.

 Of the 187 exposed individuals, none of whom were previously known to have Ebola virus disease, the researchers identified 14 who tested positive for Ebola antibodies. Two of these 14 admitted having a fever while being quarantined, while the other 12 denied any signs or symptoms. However, the study could not pinpoint the timing of any past infection, nor guarantee that any individuals were not prevaricating about a lack of symptoms. The results also can't be extrapolated to other villages affected by the outbreak without more data.

 "The findings provide further evidence that Ebola, like many other viral infections, presents with a spectrum of clinical manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection," the researchers write. "These data also suggest that a significant portion of Ebola transmission events may have gone undetected during the outbreak."

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 Please contact plosntds@plos.org if you would like more information about our content and specific topics of interest.

 All works published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases are open access, which means that everything is immediately and freely available. Use this URL in your coverage to provide readers access to the paper upon publication: http://dx. plos. org/ 10. 1371/ journal. pntd. 0005087 (Link goes live upon article publication)

 Funding: This study was funded by Stanford University Center for Innovation in Global Health, UCSF Emergency Ebola Response, Abundance Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

 Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. |||||


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Daniele Santos, 29, holds her son Juan Pedro who is 2-months old and born with microcephaly, at their house in Recife, Brazil, February 9, 2016. REUTERS/Nacho Doce

 CHICAGO (Reuters) - Researchers on Wednesday reported new evidence strengthening the association between Zika virus and a spike in birth defects, citing the presence of the virus in the brain of an aborted fetus of a European woman who became pregnant while living in Brazil.

 An autopsy of the fetus showed microcephaly or small head size, as well as severe brain injury and high levels of the Zika virus in fetal brain tissues, exceeding levels of the virus typically found in blood samples, researchers in Slovenia from the University Medical Center in Ljubljana reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 The findings help “strengthen the biologic association” between Zika virus infection and microcephaly, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, wrote in an editorial that accompanied the paper.

 Researchers in Brazil are scrambling to determine whether the arrival of the Zika virus in that country has caused a major rise in microcephaly, with more than 4,000 suspected cases of the condition reported to date. Brazil has confirmed more than 400 of those cases as microcephaly, and identified the presence of Zika in 17 babies, but a link has yet to be proven.

 The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes. There is no treatment or vaccine.

 Professor Tatjana Avšič Županc, who led the researchers in Slovenia, said in an email her team’s findings “may present the most compelling evidence to date” that birth defects associated with Zika infection in pregnancy may be caused by replication of the virus in the brain.

 For definitive proof, however, she said more studies are needed.

 In the NEJM paper, the mother showed signs of Zika infection during her 13th week of pregnancy, but ultrasounds during her 14th and 20th week were normal.

 It was not until the woman returned to Europe that researchers found ultrasound evidence of severe fetal abnormalities during an ultrasound in her 29th week.

 That suggests that ultrasounds may pick up signs of severe fetal abnormalities “only very late in gestation - in many cases too late to terminate the pregnancy,” Drs. Eric Rubin, Michael Green and Lindsey Baden wrote in the editorial.

 In the Slovenian case, the woman also noticed reduced fetal movement and was told the fetus had a poor prognosis. She requested an abortion, which was approved by state and hospital ethics boards and performed at 32 weeks gestation. A normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

 Aside from obvious microcephaly, the fetus showed no other deformities. The woman had no family history of genetic abnormalities that could have caused the microcephaly.

 Researchers did an autopsy, and instead of normal grooves formed in the brain during growth, the surface of the brain was smooth and there were numerous calcifications, which are suggestive of inflammation.

 Brain samples tested positive for the Zika virus, and no other viruses in the same class, such as dengue, yellow fever or West Nile virus. The doctors also ruled out many other potential infectious causes of microcephaly, including rubella, cytomegalovirus and toxoplasmosis.

 From the brain samples, the team was able to identify the complete genetic sequence of the Zika viral genome, which most closely matched a Zika virus strain isolated from a patient from French Polynesia in 2013 and a Zika virus strain isolated in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2015.

 Importantly, the team found no presence of the virus and no other defects in any fetal organs other than the brain, which suggests the virus selectively attacks nerve tissue, Avšič Županc and colleagues wrote. But exactly how the virus does this is not clear.

 The discovery of viral particles and a high load of Zika virus RNA in the brain samples, coupled with the absence of other possible pathogens, and a complete viral genome present “strong evidence” of the Zika virus’ potential for causing birth defects, Avšič Županc said in an email.

 In January, a team of researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that they, too, found evidence of Zika virus in brain samples from Brazil taken from two miscarriages and two newborns who died shortly after birth.

 CDC published full results of their findings earlier on Wednesday. ||||| Brazilian babies born with a birth defect blamed on the Zika virus may also often have serious eye problems on top of brain damage, doctors reported Tuesday.

 They found troubling eye defects in more than a third of the babies they examined in December, and say they ruled out other known potential infections that could have caused them.

 Fundus Photographs of a 20-Day-Old Infant. The right eye has optic disc hypoplasia, peripapillary nasal atrophy, and an excavated nasal round lesion with a hyperpigmented halo, with a colobomatous-like aspect (A), and the left eye has optic disc hypoplasia, peripapillary nasal atrophy, and a retinal nasal lesion with a similar pattern (B). Bruno de Paula Freitas, MD, et al of the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil / The Jama Network

 The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the babies suffering microcephaly in Brazil have a serious and unusual pattern of brain and nerve damage. Doctors and scientists are working to measure just how bad the surge in microcephaly cases in Brazil really is, and whether Zika is directly causing it.

 But officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say there’s no doubt something unusual is happening with microcephaly in Brazil, and it coincides with the arrival and explosive spread of Zika virus.

 And it’s clear that, whatever has happened to the newborns in Brazil with brain damage, the effects will be lifelong and and severely disabling.

 The findings only involve 29 infants, but they were carefully examined and have had a battery of tests, Dr. Bruno de Paula Freitas and colleagues at Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil reported.

 The babies all had microcephaly, defined as having a head that’s 32 cm or less in circumference. When babies have such small heads, their brains are also underdeveloped.

 “Twenty-three of 29 mothers (79.3 percent) reported suspected Zika virus infection signs and symptoms during pregnancy, 18 in the first trimester, four in the second trimester, and one in the third trimester,” the team wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Ophthalmology.

 “Of the 29 infants (58 eyes) examined ocular abnormalities were present in 17 eyes (29.3 percent) of 10 children (34.5 percent).”

 “We are concerned that these lesions are going to have an effect on vision as the babies get older."

 Dr. Lee Jampol, a professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, said it’s not clear how much the lesions will affect the children's vision as they grow.

 “It is very difficult to measure visual function in a newborn baby,” Jampol told NBC news. “We are concerned that these lesions are going to have an effect on vision as the babies get older. There is a lot of testing that not been done yet.”

 On top of the lesions, found in several parts of the babies’ eyes, the damage done by the microcephaly itself could affect their vision, Jampol said.

 “If you look at some of the images, you will see little clumps of black pigment. Those shouldn’t be there,” said Jampol, who with his colleague Dr. Debra Goldstein wrote a commentary on the JAMA Opthalmology paper.

 Some of the babies have scarred retinas, and that will affect their vision as they grow, he said.

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 It’s not unexpected. The eyes are an extension of the brain, Jampol said. Other viruses known to damage the brains of developing babies, such as West Nile virus, cytomegalovirus and rubella, can also affect the eyes.

 And sometimes adults infected with dengue virus, a close relative of Zika, also suffer damage to the retina, Jampol said.

 “We don’t know with 100 percent certainty that the virus is causing retinal lesions, but we think it likely,” Jampol said.

 Dr. William Dobyns, a geneticist at Seattle Children's Hospital, has said his examinations of some brain scans of kids with microcephaly from Brazil show “very severe, destructive injury to the brain".

 Related: Answers to Your Questions About Zika

 The CDC has advised pregnant women to stay away from countries where Zika is newly spreading; the World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of microcephaly to be a global public health emergency and Brazilian authorities are working to eradicate as many of the mosquitoes that carry Zika as possible.

 Scientists are also teaming up to see what connection there is between Zika and microcephaly and whether the infection is causing a paralyzing neurological condition called Guillain-Barre syndrome in some patients.

 There’s no specific treatment and no vaccine for Zika, which was considered an extremely mild infection before Brazil called the alarm last year. About 80 percent of people who are infected don’t even know it. Symptoms in the other 20 percent are usually mild and include a rash and fever,

 One thing De Paula Freitas and colleagues noticed was that the mothers they’ve interviewed seem not to have had many instances of conjunctivitis, or pinkeye, which was considered a classic symptom of Zika. ||||| Zika virus was found in the brain of a fetus, the strongest evidence yet that the virus causes abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine. This is the first documented case of virus transmission from mother to child, though it is not a definitive link between Zika and fetal abnormalities — a connection first suggested by the Brazilian minister of health.

 This is the strongest evidence to date that Zika causes incomplete brain development The Zika virus appeared to particularly favor neurons, today's case report found. Damage from the virus may have halted brain development at 20 weeks, though it's not clear how the virus was infecting nerve cells. Some structures found at autopsy showed that the virus was reproducing in the fetus's brain.

 In early 2015, a Zika outbreak was identified in northern Brazil, where other viruses spread by mosquitoes (like dengue) were circulating. By September, doctors began reporting an unusual number of babies born with microcephaly, a condition where infants are born with unusually small heads and underdeveloped brains. Zika has spread to many countries in the Americas, though Brazil bears the heaviest caseload, with estimates of 440,000 to 1.3 million infected as of December. The number of newborns with microcephaly has increased twentyfold in the northern part of Brazil, the health minister has said. That led to the suspected link — and five public health agencies in multiple countries have advised women not to get pregnant as a result. Until now, though, there was no evidence of virus transmission from a pregnant woman to her fetus.

 "This is the critical point: you have a mother who's infected, a fetus that's abnormal, and in the fetus, you have the genetic signature of the virus," says Andrew Pekosz, director of the Center for Emerging Viruses and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "This is clear data showing Zika can infect the fetus." Today's case report isn't proof that Zika is causing microcephaly, but it makes the link much likelier, Pekosz says.

 Today's report isn't proof Zika causes microcephaly — but it makes the link likelier The woman was a 25-year-old European volunteer who had been working in Natal, Brazil, on the country's northeast tip. She got pregnant in February 2015; at the 13th week of pregnancy, she had a fever and rash consistent with Zika infection. Ultrasounds at 14 weeks and 20 weeks were normal.

 Then, she returned to Europe at 28 weeks pregnant. An ultrasound in her 29th week showed the first signs of abnormalities. At 32 weeks, an ultrasound showed that the fetus was abnormally small — in the third percentile for fetal weight — and its head was below the second percentile for circumference. There were calcium buildups in the brain and placenta. The woman chose to get an abortion, and doctors performed an autopsy, where they found viral replication of Zika in the fetus's brain. The fetus was negative for 13 other viruses that may cause fetal abnormalities; the woman had no history of genetic abnormalities in her family.

 The autopsy also showed severe structural abnormalities in the fetus's brain, said study author Tatjana Avšič Županc, a microbiologist at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. There was a total absence of brain folds; fluid had also built up in the brain. "Our evidence means a certain danger to pregnant women, especially those in the first trimester," Županc says. "Particularly for those who reside in or visit areas with highly endemic Zika virus."

 the case provides support for the brazilian minister of health The case provides support to the Brazilian minister of health, who first suggested the link between Zika and microcephaly. But microcephaly can be caused by a number of viruses, including rubella and toxoplasmosis, as well as by malnutrition or maternal alcoholism. Some scientists have suggested the growth in cases is due to doctors keeping an eye out for microcephaly, as well as its relatively broad diagnosis criteria. That's why the Slovenian team tested for so many other viruses — to make sure Zika wasn't accompanied by another infection.

 There are still a lot of questions to be answered about Zika's effects on fetuses. For instance, about 80 percent of infections are asymptomatic, says Nikos Vasilakis, a pathologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. No one yet knows if asymptomatic infections can cause fetal abnormalities. Animal models could provide hints about these questions — but there are no animal models for Zika, says Johns Hopkins' Pekosz. Studies proving casuality and allowing doctors to begin assessing risks of birth defects will take years, Vasilakis says. And no one knows if infection in the first trimester — a crucial developmental period — is more dangerous than in later trimesters. "It's quite a challenge to figure out what happens," Vasilakis says. "It's going to take a lot of money and scientific discipline."

 Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly identified the woman as Slovenian. She is European, according to the NEJM report, which does not specify a home country. |||||

– The Zika virus' apparent effect on fetuses is on shocking display in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine that was rushed to publication given the virus' spread. Though it offers no definitive link between Zika and fetal abnormalities, the study does produce the first evidence of virus transmission from mother to child and "the strongest evidence yet that the virus causes abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development," reports the Verge. The study centers on a 25-year-old Slovenian woman who became pregnant while volunteering in Brazil in February 2015. She developed a high fever and rash during her 13th week of pregnancy, but ultrasounds at 14 and 20 weeks showed no issues. When she returned to Slovenia in October, however, doctors found extensive brain damage in the fetus and the pregnancy was aborted, per NBC News. An autopsy found the full genome of the Zika virus exclusively in the fetus' unusually smooth and scarred brain, suggesting the virus only attacked nerve tissue, per Reuters. The mother had no family history of genetic abnormalities and the fetus tested negative for 13 other viruses known to cause birth defects. "You have a mother who's infected, a fetus that's abnormal, and in the fetus, you have the genetic signature of the virus," says an infectious disease expert. "This is clear data showing Zika can infect the fetus." An epidemiologist adds "it sounds like a pretty clear case of extreme microcephaly." Scientists suspect brain development may have stopped around 20 weeks, leading one doctor to suggest that Zika, like other viruses linked to birth defects, may be most dangerous in the early stages of pregnancy. (The virus has been linked to other health problems.)


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In an age when big-ticket trials are a rarity, plaintiffs lawyers and Big Tobacco continue to battle ferociously in courts across the Sunshine State.

 More than 7,000 lawsuits claiming injuries and death due to smoking are pending in state and federal courts in Florida, the legacy of the state Supreme Court’s 2006 “Engle” ruling, which required jurors in future smoking cases to be bound by certain factual findings, including that tobacco companies sold cigarettes that were “defective” and “unreasonably dangerous.” (Here’s a previous LB post on the litigation.)

 The supreme court ruling has given smoking plaintiffs in Florida a huge leg up; they have so far amassed more than $250 million in damages in so-called Engle progeny cases.

 The latest news comes out of Bronson, Florida (pop. 1,049), where a jury yesterday awarded $80 million — $72M of which was in punitive damages — to the daughter of James Cayce Horner, a two-pack a day smoker who died in 1996 of lung cancer.

 The jury found that Horner was was 10% responsible for his death and that the defendant, R.J. Reynolds, was 90% at fault.

 “People need to be reminded, again and again, of the true cost—in precious human life—that R.J. Reynolds has imposed and continues to impose on our society,” plaintiffs’ counsel David Sales said in a statement.

 An attorney for R.J. Reynolds declined to comment.

 The Horner verdict reverses a recent winning streak for the tobacco industry. They had won defense verdicts in eight straight Engle cases, the most recent on Friday, when a Miami jury decided in favor of Philip Morris USA in a smoking trial. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. |||||

– The daughter of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking for 60 years has been awarded $80 million by a Florida jury. The jury decided that tobacco giant RJ Reynolds was 90% responsible for the man's death at the age of 76, and ordered the company to pay $8 million in compensatory damages and $72 million in punitive damages, BusinessWeek reports. The woman's lawyer expects the appeals process to last up to 3 years if the company appeals to Florida's Supreme Court, which he fully expects it to do. "Tobacco always appeals," he said. More than 7,000 smoking-related lawsuits are pending in Florida, and the verdict against RJ Reynolds marks the end of an 8-case winning streak for the tobacco industry, the Wall Street Journal notes.