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Obama Administration's Filings On Asylum For Abused Foreign Women Brings 'Overdue Dose Of Clarity,' Editorial Says
The Obama administration recently laid out "a clear but narrow pathway" toward asylum for foreign women who have experienced severe physical or sexual abuse, a New York Times editorial states, noting that the U.S. government has debated the issue for 15 years. According to the editorial, the "question is not the fact of persecution, but whether the women would qualify for protection under the law, which limits asylum to those who suffer due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group."" It adds that attorneys general under former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush "have gone both ways and in circles" in their decisions.Although "[n]ot all victims will qualify," the Obama administration "made it clear that some could," the editorial states. "A petitioner would have to demonstrate to a judge that domestic violence was widely tolerated by society and government in her country, that women were viewed as subordinate to men and that she had no place within its borders to find a safe haven," the editorial adds.Department of Homeland Security lawyers say the new definition could apply to a severely abused Mexican woman, identified only by her initials, whose asylum petition is before a San Francisco immigration court. The editorial notes that DHS "did not immediately recommend asylum" for the woman, but "it did urge that she be allowed to continue to gather evidence and to refine her case according to the standards it proposed." The editorial concludes, "Advocates who have fought for years to advance women"s rights are celebrating the department"s action, which brings reasoned compassion, and an overdue dose of clarity, to an issue of anguish and difficulty" (New York Times, 7/19).

Early Combination Of Enbrel(R) (etanercept) And Methotrexate Halts Radiographic Progression In 90% Of Patients During Second Year Of The COMET Study
New data presented this week during the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Annual Meeting in Copenhagen demonstrated that sustained combination therapy (etanercept and methotrexate) was consistently superior to continuous methotrexate monotherapy in providing clinical remission and radiographic non-progression over two years in patients with early active rheumatoid arthritis.1 These new data add to the body of evidence supporting the benefits of early intervention with a biologic treatment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
News of the day
Senators Say Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor Committed To Rule Of Law,
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday met individually with 10 senators in an initial round of closed-door meetings in preparation for her confirmation hearing, which is yet to be scheduled, the New York Times reports. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said that during his meeting with Sotomayor she expressed her belief that ""ultimately and completely" a judge has to follow the law no matter what their upbringing has been" (Herszenhorn/Hulse, New York Times, 6/3). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who also met with Sotomayor, said that she believes that Sotomayor would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Feinstein added that Sotomayor "is a woman who is well-steeped in law and well-steeped in precedent. I believe that she has a real respect for precedent and that she was not just saying that" (Isenstadt, Politico, 6/2). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said of Sotomayor, "We have the whole package here," adding, "We could not have anyone more qualified" (New York Times, 6/3).However, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who also met with Sotomayor, said that he is concerned about whether Sotomayor would be an "activist" judge who believes her role is to create policy rather than to judge matters in accordance with it. Sessions said that "the question is, what is the law? How does a judge find the law, and what approach to statutory construction do they utilize?" (Hirschfield Davis, AP/Washington Times, 6/2). According to the Times, because Republicans likely do not have the votes to use a filibuster to block Sotomayor"s confirmation, their strategy "seems to be to play for time," in the hope that "something unexpected" will surface as a threat to her confirmation. Democrats currently have 59 of the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster, and seven Republicans voted to confirm Sotomayor to the appeals court (New York Times, 6/3). The Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative judicial group, on Tuesday sent a letter to every senator criticizing Sotomayor"s judicial record and saying that she "challenges the belief that the law needs to be knowable and predictable." JCN Director Gary Marx said that the organization does not agree with other conservative groups that have called for a filibuster but that it supports "a long and vigorous and thorough, healthy debate" (Palmer, Roll Call, 6/2). Leahy, Sessions To Discuss Hearing Schedule Leahy said that he and Sessions will meet Wednesday to discuss a schedule for Sotomayor"s confirmation hearing, specifically with regard to whether it will come before or after the August congressional recess. Leahy said that he favors holding the hearing in July. However, Sessions and other Republicans are asking that the hearing be conducted after the break, citing the need to read through the approximately 3,000 opinions Sotomayor wrote as an appellate court judge (Friedman, CongressDaily, 6/2). Meanwhile, Sotomayor on Wednesday will meet with 10 more senators, including seven Democrats and three Republicans (Koffler, Roll Call, 6/2). Poll Shows Public SupportFifty-four percent of U.S. residents would like to see Sotomayor confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. The poll shows that 28% of those surveyed opposed the confirmation and 19% had no opinion. The poll was conducted between Friday and Sunday, questioning 1,015 adults (Silva, Los Angeles Times, 6/2).Broadcast CoverageNPR"s "All Things Considered" on Tuesday reported on Sotomayor"s meetings with senators. The segment includes comments from Leahy (Seabrook, "All Things Considered," NPR, 6/3).
Diagnostics

Virus Avoids Degradation And Turns Pathway Into A Helping Hand For Virion Production

Not satisfied with simply thwarting its host"s defensive maneuvers, HIV actually twists one to its advantage, based on new findings from Kyei et al. in the July 27, 2009 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology. Vojo Deretic and colleagues suggest that autophagy - a stress response process - helps HIV to proliferate and that conversely, blocking autophagy lessens HIV production. Reduced HIV levels were accompanied by a blockade in the processing of Gag - a key precursor protein for HIV assembly. Gag in fact localized to complexes containing an autophagy protein, LC3. "It looked paradoxical," says Deretic. "But only if you didn"t know something else. And that is a finding in yeast that autophagy is not only degradative, but can also serve in some biosynthetic pathways," including the trafficking of the Cvt protein to the vacuole. Together, the results suggest that Gag may piggyback on autophagosomes or their components, perhaps for locomotive services, to complete its maturation. The group then sought the viral agitator that blocks autophagosome maturation and allows Gag processing. Their primary candidate was HIV protein Nef, which interacts with the vacuolar proton ATPase and might thereby block acidification steps necessary to make a degradative organelle. Using a mutant virus, the group showed that HIV lacking Nef no longer profited from increased autophagy and was instead degraded. It is not yet clear exactly how Nef blocks autophagosome maturation. Clinical applications may be far down the road. If the idea is to kill the virus using drugs such as rapamycin, which induces autophagy, it will first be necessary to block Nef, notes Deretic. The idea is not without natural support. "There were cases in Australia involving HIV strains that lacked Nef," he says. "And these people would not progress to AIDS, meaning the virus is disabled." Deretic has other exciting ideas. Highly active anti-retroviral therapy often does a smashing job clearing viral loads from the blood. But the pathogen can persist in particular locales such as gut lymphoid tissue. "My hope," says Deretic, "is to go after these reservoirs and chew up the virus that for some reason is not readily accessible or susceptible to the anti-retroviral therapy. I have great hope that autophagy will help us with that. This is something we didn"t have on our radar screens just five years ago." Rita Sullivan Rockefeller University Press


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