Harvard Medical School has announced that it is to close down its primate research center. The move appears not to be motivated by concerns about animal testing (despite recent criticisms), but rather a consequence of a lack of funding. Harvard Medical School has stated that the New England Primate (NEPRC) Research Center in Southborough, Massachusetts will close within the next two years. This is when the center’s 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) expires. The reason for closing down the center is due to economic factors and based on assumption that the next forthcoming federal grant will be insufficient to maintain current operations. According to a statement from the school: "Driving the decision was the fact that the external funding environment for scientific research has become increasingly challenging over the past decade. Recent funding pressures have added uncertainty to this already-challenging fiscal context. As Harvard Medical School leadership evaluated the long-term need to use its resources in the most effective manner across all of its missions, they came to the conclusion that winding down the operations of the NEPRC was more beneficial to the School than investing further resources in maintaining and renewing the NEPRC grant. NIH and the University have been supportive of this decision." The center currently holds around 2,000 monkeys, mostly rhesus macaques and cotton-top tamarins. The monkeys will be sent to other NIH funded research centers. The center received $27 million from NIH this year and has 20 faculty members, 32 postdocs and graduate students, and 150 staff members, according to Science Insider. Gina Vild, a spokeswoman for the medical school,is quoted by the New York Times as saying: "We are in the early stages and focusing our attention on working with our faculty, staff, and the NIH in order to assure a transition that is orderly and respectful to all concerned, including the animals." The Harvard facility has been operational for around fifty years and has undertaken research, using primates, into Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. However, since 2010, the Boston Globe reports, it has been cited several times by the United States Department of Agriculture for failing to comply with the Animal Welfare Act. Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/348926#ixzz2Rgg34qJx

Omar Borkan Al Gala, deported from Saudi for being too handsome

Riyadh - Meet Omar Borkan Al Gala, the hunk from UAE deported from Saudi Arabia because officers of the country's morality police, fearing for the safety of their women, thought he was too handsome to be allowed to stay. According to Jezebel, Omar Borkan Al Gala, a Dubai-based actor, photographer and poet, was one of three men from the UAE attending the Jenadriyah Heritage and Cultural Festival in Riyadh as delegates. Digital Journal reported that he and his colleagues were kicked out Saudi Arabia because they were just too handsome to be allowed to stay and expose modest Saudi Arabian women to unaccustomed carnal temptations. News that some UAE men were kicked out of the conservative Sunni kingdom out of fear of exposing women to spiritual dangers of carnal lust first appeared in the Arabic newspaper Elaph. According to Elaph: "A festival official said the three Emiratis were taken out on the grounds they are too handsome and that the Commission members feared female visitors could fall for them." Both Elaph and Sky Dancing Blog reported that Al Gala was at the UAE's pavilion at the Riyad festival when an incident involving a well known UAE female singer, Aryam, led to the feared religious morality police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, storming the UAE pavilion and unceremoniously bundling him and his colleagues out of the festival and out of the kingdom entirely! Sky Dancing Blog confirmed Aryam went to the UAE pavilion but the artiste explained she visited the pavilion as a delegate of the UAE. According to Sky Dancing Blog, Aryam said she was invited by the Abu Dhabi Culture and Tourism Authority. Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/348796#ixzz2RgdkVhyd

What is Death? R.I.P Carlos Peter

I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU IN ALL MY LIFE ( ISMAIL MUSSA ) Billions of human beings have walked on the surface of this earth. They all belonged to different nations and cultures. A few of them made history, for which they were remembered, whereas others were never to be mentioned again. Although each one was personally different from every other, their habits, thinking and tastes were different and they all had two things in common. First, they were all delivered from their mothers womb and secondly, they all tasted death. What is death? Death is when the soul is separated from the body; it receives reward and punishment and the separation of the soul from the body means loss of power of the soul over the body. The soul uses the body in its works; it catches by the hand, hears by the ears, sees by the eyes and acquires the knowledge of all things. Every soul shall taste death Every soul will taste death.” From this verse we know that death is such a thing that you can’t escape from even if you are in a house, which is built with metal walls, and has a massive padlock. Death will not only come when hair and the beard turn white, but it can come at any time, even when you are a baby, or an old person or a teenager or of middle age. Even if you are a king, a Prime Minister or a leader of one of the tribes. Death also came to the Prophet and to the companions of the Prophet , so if death can come to such great personalities, who are we to be so unmindful of it? Thinking of death Know O’ brothers that death is terrible because people are unmindful of death. The person who does remember death does not think of it with his whole heart. The mode of thinking of death is to free your mind from all thoughts and only put his mind on death. Be like the one who embarks on dangerous sea voyage. When the thought of death fills his mind and becomes one shadow, his worldly happiness decreases and his heart breaks. The best method of thinking of death is to remember the death of friends, family and neighbours, their bodies buried under the ground and their conditions in the graves. How their beautiful faces have become food for worms and insects! How their wives have become widows and their children orphans! How stricken by extreme poverty, they are passing their days miserably one by one! Think how death overtook them suddenly without any notice and warning! How unprepared they were for death and the hereafter! So O’ brothers! Remember death as often as you can in the 24 hours of your daily life and make this your habit. It could be your turn next then your friends, family and neighbours will place you under the ground. Start now before if it is too late!

G8 ministers strongly condemn N Korea

Foreign ministers from G8 group urge North Korea to "refrain from further provocative acts". Foreign ministers from the G8 group of rich countries have condemned "in the strongest possible terms" North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. North Korea's threats of war topped the agenda of the foreign ministers' talks in London on Wednesday and Thursday. In a communiqué issued after the meeting, foreign ministers from the US, Britain, France,Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia urged North Korea to "refrain from further provocative acts". "They condemned DPRK's (North Korea's) current aggressive rhetoric and confirmed that this will only serve to further isolate the DPRK," it said. Earlier South Korea called for negotiations with North Korea over the future of the Kaesong joint industrial zone, which the North has threatened to shut down permanently after suspending operations. "Normalisation of the Kaesong industrial complex must be solved through dialogue," the South's Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-Jae said on Thursday. "I urge North Korea to come to the dialogue table." North Korea announced the withdrawal of its 53,000 workers and the suspension of operations at Kaesong at the beginning of the week, as military tensions on the Korean peninsula soared. A rare symbol of cross-border economic cooperation, Kaesong is a crucial hard-currency source for the impoverished North, through taxes and revenues, and from its cut of the workers' wages. There are 123 South Korean companies operating in Kaesong, which lies 10km inside North Korea. Turnover in 2012 was reported at $469.5m with accumulated turnover since 2004 standing at $1.98bn. 'Very disappointing' Park Geun-Hye, South Korea's new president, described the suspension of operations as "very disappointing" but North Korea said on Thursday that her administration was personally responsible. "Needless to say Kaesong industrial district will cease to exist should the Park Geun-Hye regime continue pursuing confrontation," a spokesman for the North's Bureau for Central Guidance to the Development of the Special Zone said. "The current powerholder in the South can never be able to shake off responsibility for having Kaesong, which survived even the traitor Lee Myung-Bak's term in office, all but closed." During her presidential campaign, Park had said she would be more flexible in dealing with the North than her predecessor Lee, who took a hardline stance towards Pyongyang. But the North's recent statements and actions have led to a cycle of escalating tensions that have put rapprochement on the far back-burner. The North Korean spokesman said South Korean "war-mongering" had been responsible for the decision to shut Kaesong. North Korea had been angered by Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin's remarks that the South had a "military" contingency plan to ensure the safety of its people working in the zone. It was also angered by South Korean media and analysts saying that the North would not dare to close Kaesong.