Dozens of pro-Dorner protesters rally at LAPD HQ

LOS ANGELES Dozens of protesters rallied outside Los Angeles police headquarters Saturday in support of Christopher Dorner, the former LAPD officer and suspected killer of four who died after a shootout and fire this week at a mountain cabin following one of the biggest manhunts in recent memory.

Protesters told the Los Angeles Times they didn't support Dorner's deadly methods, but objected to police corruption and brutality, and believed Dorner's claims of racism and unfair treatment by the department. Many said they were angered by the conduct of the manhunt that led to Dorner's death and injuries to innocent bystanders who were mistaken for him.

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New details of Dorner's final hours

Michael Nam, 30, who held a sign with a flaming tombstone and the inscription "RIP Habeas Corpus," said it was "pretty obvious" police had no intention of bringing Dorner in alive.

"They were the judge, the jury and the executioner," Nam said. "As an American citizen, you have the right to a trial and due process by law."

During the hunt for Dorner, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called for Dorner's surrender and said he didn't want to see the suspect or anyone else injured.

Dorner was already believed to have killed three people when he was cornered Tuesday at the cabin near Big Bear Lake, and during the standoff shot and killed a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy, authorities said.

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Reporter records gunfight in Dorner capture effort

Only after calls for surrender and use of milder tear gas did deputies launch pyrotechnic gas canisters into the cabin, and the subsequent fire was not intentional, the Sheriff's Department said.

Dorner died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the end of the standoff, sheriff's officials said.

The 33-year-old has already inspired a burgeoning subculture of followers. While most don't condone killing, they see him as an outlaw hero who raged against powerful forces of authority, and some even question whether he really died.

Tributes include a ballad titled "El Matapolicias," or "The Police Killer," penned by a Mexican crooner with lyrics paying homage to Dorner, and a YouTube clip showing excerpts from a video game titled "Christopher Dorner's Last Stand Survival Game" whose opening frame declares him "A True American Hero."

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Gun Ban Would Protect More Than 2,200 Firearms

Congress' latest crack at a new assault weapons ban would protect more than 2,200 specific firearms, including a semi-automatic rifle that is nearly identical to one of the guns used in the bloodiest shootout in FBI history.

One model of that firearm, the Ruger .223 caliber Mini-14, is on the proposed list to be banned, while a different model of the same gun is on a list of exempted firearms in legislation the Senate is considering. The gun that would be protected from the ban has fixed physical features and can't be folded to be more compact. Yet the two firearms are equally deadly.

"What a joke," said former FBI agent John Hanlon, who survived the 1986 shootout in Miami. He was shot in the head, hand, groin and hip with a Ruger Mini-14 that had a folding stock. Two FBI agents died and five others were wounded.

Hanlon recalled lying on the street as brass bullet casings showered on him. He thought the shooter had an automatic weapon.

Both models of the Ruger Mini-14 specified in the proposed bill can take detachable magazines that hold dozens of rounds of ammunition. "I can't imagine what the difference is," Hanlon said.

President Barack Obama has called for restoring a ban on military-style assault weapons and limiting the size of ammunition magazines.

Gun Owners Rally State Capitals Across Country Watch Video

A bill introduced last month by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. would ban 157 specific firearms designed for military and law enforcement use and exempt others made for hunting purposes. It also would ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Yet there are firearms that would be protected under Feinstein's proposal that can take large capacity magazines like the ones used in mass shootings that enable a gunman to fire dozens of rounds of ammunition without reloading.

Feinstein said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press that the list of more than 2,200 exempted firearms was designed to "make crystal clear" that the bill would not affect hunting and sporting weapons.

The December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 students and educators dead forced Washington to focus on curbing gun violence, a risky political move not tried in decades.

The gun industry, which is fighting any sort of ban, says gun ownership in the U.S. is the highest it's ever been, with more than 100 million firearms owners.

Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden have traveled around the country in an effort to gain support for new laws. Feinstein's proposal is the only sweeping piece of legislation designed to ban assault weapons currently being considered.

But some gun experts say the lists of banned and exempted firearms show a lack of understanding and expertise of guns.

"There's no logic to it," said Greg Danas, president of a Massachusetts-based expert witness business and firearms ballistic laboratory. "What kind of effect is it going to have?"

Feinstein's bill defines an assault weapon as a semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine that has one of several military characteristics that are specified in her legislation. Examples of those characteristics include a pistol grip, which makes a firearm easier to hold, and a forward grip, which makes the firearm easier to stabilize to improve accuracy. The definition is similar to the one in Congress' original ban on assault weapons, which went into effect in 1994 and was widely criticized for outlawing firearms based on cosmetic features.

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

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PM Lee urges couples to have confidence in S'pore's future

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said it is important for couples to have confidence in Singapore's future and ultimately want Singapore to be the best place to settle down and raise children.

He was speaking at the Lunar New Year dinner at his Teck Ghee ward on Saturday evening.

He said: "Here, your children will get good education, will have good opportunities, that here we can build a home together. A home where we feel Singaporean, a home where we can have opportunities, a home where we can help look after one another, and make tomorrow better than today."

The government recently announced a Marriage and Parenthood package that aims to help Singaporeans settle down and raise children.

However, Mr Lee noted that parents are worried about childcare arrangements.

He said: "It's not easy because a lot of couples now, both parents are working and cannot always rely on grandparents to look after their kids because the grandparents may be older, may no longer be in good health, may not have the strength to take care of the grandchildren anymore. So, we need infant care and childcare facilities."

Mr Lee said building more childcare facilities will take time. He also said the centres can be set up quickly, but good teachers take time to train.

He added what is most important is to make it easier for parents to spend time with their children.

Mr Lee said: "So, we have paternity leave, we have shared parental leave, and these are big steps forward. We are also promoting good work-life balance, flexible work arrangements, and I think if we can do that, then that's the best hong bao which parents can give their children - our love and attention. I hope these measures will encourage couples to marry and to have more children."

Mr Lee said he is confident that Singapore can be transformed into a better place and next generation will do its part to improve it.

- CNA/xq

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Russia starts meteor clean-up

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Divers find no trace of meteorite in a frozen lake near Chelyabinsk, state media report


• NEW: Witness says flash shone "like 10 suns," felt shock wave pass through his body


• More than 4,000 buildings, mostly apartment blocks, were damaged, reports say


• The meteor released a 500-kiloton blast, NASA officials say

Chelyabinsk, Russia (CNN) -- A day after a spectacular meteor blast shook Russia's Urals region, the clean-up operation got under way Saturday in the hard-hit Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

Although some buildings were unscathed when the sonic waves from the Friday morning explosion reverberated through the region, others lost some or most windows.

More than 1,000 people were injured, including more than 200 children, according to news reports. Many of them were hit by flying glass.

Most of those hurt were in the Chelyabinsk region; the majority of injuries are not thought to be serious.

Altogether more than 4,000 buildings, mostly apartment blocks, were damaged and 200,000 square kilometers (77,220 square miles) of glass were broken, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited the Chelyabinsk regional emergencies ministry as saying Saturday.

Local officials have estimated the damage at more than 1 billion rubles (more than $33 million), RIA Novosti said.

With temperatures dipping well below freezing at night, the need to fix windows left gaping by the blast is urgent.

The city of Chelyabinsk was functioning normally Saturday as the repair work began.

Many believe it was a lucky escape as fragments of the meteor came raining down.

West of the city, authorities sealed off a section of a frozen lake where it's believed a sizable meteorite crashed through the ice.

But a team of divers has found no trace of any meteorite in the lake, an emergencies ministry spokeswoman told Itar-Tass on Saturday.

Opinion: Don't count 'doomsday asteroid' out yet

The meteor was a once-in-a-century event, NASA officials said, describing it as a "tiny asteroid."

The space agency revised its estimate of the meteor's size upward late Friday from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass from 7,000 tons to 10,000 tons.

The space agency also increased the estimated amount of energy released in the meteor's explosion from about 300 to nearly 500 kilotons. By comparison, the nuclear bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 released an estimated 15 kilotons of energy.

The whole event, from the meteor's atmospheric entry to its disintegration in the air above central Russia, took 32.5 seconds, NASA said.

About 20,000 emergency response workers were mobilized Friday, RIA Novosti reported.

Russian Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov arrived in Chelyabinsk on Friday evening to take stock of the situation, Itar-Tass reported.

Hospitals, kindergartens and schools were among the buildings affected by the blast, said Vladimir Stepanov of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry.

Saving Earth from asteroids

The national space agency, Roscosmos, said scientists believe one meteoroid entered the atmosphere, where it burned and disintegrated into fragments.

Amateur video footage showed a bright white streak moving rapidly across the sky before exploding with an even brighter flash and a deafening bang.

The explosion occurred about 9:20 a.m. local time, as many people were out and about.

Russians captured vivid images, many using dash cameras inside their vehicles.

Dash cameras are popular in Russia for several reasons, including possible disputes over traffic accidents and the corrupt reputations of police in many areas. Drivers install the cameras for their own protection and to document incidents they could be caught in.

Denis Kuznetsov, a 23-year-old historian from Chelyabinsk, told CNN via e-mail that he had heard and felt the shockwave despite being far from the center of the city.

At first there was a blinding flash lasting several seconds, which made him want to shut his eyes. The light shone "like 10 suns," he said. "This is no exaggeration."

Then he experienced what felt like "a push," as a sound wave passed through his body. "For some seconds I simply stood," amid the sound of breaking glass, he said.

After calming his parents, Kuznetsov tried to call friends, but all cellphone coverage was down. The internet still worked, however, and he managed to reach a friend in the city center who told of emergency responders heading into the streets.

At first, confusion was widespread, Kuznetsov said, with many people believing the boom had to do with a satellite or plane. But within an hour or so, news broadcasts declared it was a meteorite.

"There was no panic. All behaved quietly," he said.

Schools and many offices closed. Kuznetsov monitored the news, as the reported number of victims "grew hour by hour," he said. "Thank God no one died."

CNN iReporter Max Chuykov saw the meteor trail from the city of Yekaterinburg. He shared on Instagram that it was close to the ground.

Ekaterina Shlygina posted to CNN iReport and wrote on Instagram: "Upon Chelyabinsk a huge fireball has exploded. It wasn't an aircraft."

When the Quadrantid meteor shower hit its peak

Five regions of Russia, one of them Chelyabinsk, are thought to have been affected, Itar-Tass said. RIA Novosti cited emergencies ministry officials as saying three regions and Kazakhstan

NASA said on its website that the meteor was the largest reported since 1908, when the famous Tunguska event took place in remote Siberia.

In that incident, an asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded, leveling about 80 million trees over an area of 820 square miles -- about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island -- but leaving no crater.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"When you have a fireball of this size, we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface, and in this case there were probably some large ones."

NASA estimates 4,700 'potentially hazardous' asteroids

In what astronomers said was an unrelated coincidence, a larger asteroid, called 2012 DA14, passed relatively close to Earth around 2:24 p.m. ET Friday.

Stargazers in Australia, Asia and Eastern Europe could see the asteroid with the aid of a telescope or binoculars, but it never got closer than 17,100 miles to the planet's surface.

The Russian meteor was about one-third the size of the asteroid. The two bodies were on very different trajectories, scientists said.

CNN's Phil Black reported from Chelyabinsk and Laura Smith-Spark wrote and reported in London.

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Chicago calls for tougher gun laws, but has no room for more prisoners

(CBS News) CHICAGO - Last December, minutes after he allegedly shot at a neighbor, Julian Gayles was caught by Chicago police. Gayles, 22, already had a record of gun crimes and parole violations, but had spent little time behind bars. Since 2009, he has been sentenced to seven years in jail, but has served just two.

WATCH: Obama mourns "a Newtown every four months," below

Gayles was on parole when CBS News witnessed his arrest by police commander Leo Schmitz and is now in custody again, awaiting trial.

Chicago police superintendent Gary McCarthy wants such offenders to face a mandatory minimum sentence.

"This has to stop," McCarthy said. "Gun offenders have to do significant jail time."

Chicago already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. This week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for making them even tougher, with minimum mandatory sentences for gun violations.

Cook Country Sheriff Tom Dart

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CBS News

But Cook Country Sheriff Tom Dart says he doesn't have the cells to hold more inmates.

"I mean, we are at capacity right now," Dart said. "The state prison system is beyond capacity. You talk to them right now, they haven't had a population like this in decades. And there's no place to put 'em."

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VIDEO: Will Congress act on gun control?

Dart runs the largest county jail in the country. Nearly 10,000 inmates -- including 300 prisoners -- living in a former cafeteria and some sleeping on the prison hospital's floor.

"This is not something that you would design, " said Dart. "Frankly at this time this should be a building that we should have empty right now at this time of the year. There should be no one in it. But because of our population explosion, this is full."

Experts say the prison population would swell by thousands if mandatory minimum sentences came to pass for gun violations.

"We can't have this irrational type of notion that there's magic jail cells all over the place that are all sitting there empty, " said Dart. "It's as if all of a sudden we just raise penalties and these people get shipped off to the moon or something. It's like, 'No, we know where we need to put 'em,' and we need money to fund that."

But Illinois doesn't have the money and has actually been closing prisons to save money so it can reduce the $9 billion it owes in unpaid bills.

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Budget Cut Warnings Harsher Than Reality?

Get ready for two weeks of intensifying warnings about how crucial, popular government services are about to wither — including many threats that could eventually come true.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans made no progress last week in heading off $85 billion in budget-wide cuts that automatically start taking effect March 1. Lacking a bipartisan deal to avoid them and hoping to heap blame and pressure on GOP lawmakers, the administration is offering vivid details about the cuts' consequences: trimmed defense contracts, less secure U.S. embassies, furloughed air traffic controllers.

Past administrations have seldom hesitated to spotlight how budget standoffs would wilt programs the public values.

When a budget fight between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to two government shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, some threats came true, like padlocked national parks.

Others did not.

Clinton warned that Medicare recipients might lose medical treatment, feeding programs for the low-income elderly could end and treatment at veterans hospitals could be curtailed. All continued, thanks to contractors working for IOUs, local governments and charities stepping in and the budget impasse ending before serious damage occurred.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

This time, at stake is not a federal shutdown but a so-called sequester. Between March 1 and Sept. 30 — the remainder of the government's budget year — it would mean reductions of 13 percent for defense programs and 9 percent for other programs, according to the White House budget office.

The cuts, plus nearly $1 trillion more over the coming decade, were concocted two years ago. Administration and congressional bargainers purposely made them so painful that everyone would be forced to reach a grand deficit-cutting compromise to avoid them.

Hasn't happened.

A look at the sequester and the chilling impact the administration says it would have, based on letters and testimony to Congress:

—A key reminder: Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits, Medicaid and a host of other benefit programs are exempted. The cuts take effect over a seven-month period; they don't all crash ashore on March 1. And if a bipartisan deal to ease them is ever reached, lawmakers could restore some or all of the money retroactively.

—On the other hand: Left in effect, these cuts are real even though their program-by-program impact is unclear. The law limits the administration's flexibility to protect favored initiatives, but the White House has told agencies to avoid cuts presenting "risks to life, safety or health" and to minimize harm to crucial services.

—Defense: Troops at war would be protected, but there'd be fewer Air Force flying hours, less training for some Army units and cuts in naval forces. A $3 billion cut in the military's Tricare health care system could diminish elective care for military families and retirees. And, in a warning to the private defense industry, the Pentagon said it would be "restructuring contracts to reduce their scope and cost."

—Health: The National Institutes of Health would lose $1.6 billion, trimming cancer research and drying up funds for hundreds of other research projects. Health departments would give 424,000 fewer tests for the AIDS virus. More than 373,000 people may not receive mental health services.

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Brecht's Galileo is a play for our times

Tiffany O'Callaghan, Opinion editor

Ian McDiarmid as Galileo (left) and James Tucker as the Bursar (Image: Ellie Kurtz)

It has been more than 400 years since Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope toward the night sky and observed the movement of the moons around Jupiter, providing proof that all things do not revolve around the Earth - and drawing the ire of the Catholic church.

And it has been nearly 80 years since playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote the first version of A Life of Galileo while living in Denmark after fleeing Germany when Hitler took power.

Yet the latest retelling of this famous tale by the Royal Shakespeare Company underscores the emphatically contemporary nature of the struggle between static world views and dynamic knowledge.

This is reinforced by using the familiar, modern clothing of tweedy dishevelment among Galileo and his colleagues and pupils, and sets featuring the lab-staple whiteboard and a large blue backdrop that resembles a wall of solar panels.

But of course this is not simply an old story with modern accoutrements and gimmicky staging. Portrayed by Ian McDiarmid, Galileo’s compulsive curiosity, his sheer joy when his pupil grasps a new concept for the first time, and his bewildered frustration when adversaries refuse to observe the evidence literally in front of them feel both timely and timeless. “All I ask is for them to believe their eyes!” exclaims poor Galileo.

In a moment when 46 per cent of US citizens believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and four US states are weighing up bills that would challenge the teaching of evolution, the tension remains strong between theologies that carve out a creation story for humans and the evidence that we are the serendipitous result of millions of years of evolution.

There are strong reminders of these tensions in the play, for example, when a cleric bullies Galileo to keep his heliocentric ideas to himself, crystallising the church’s terror at the implications of his ideas: “Is no one watching us?" asks the cleric. "Has no one imagined a part for us to play other than this one?”

Galileo is cowed into compromise. His new ideas may be used to help seafarers better navigate by the stars, but not to upend the understanding of the order of things. They may answer practical questions, but not existential ones. “We may research, but we may not draw conclusions.”

He accepts the new conditions in word only. His experiments continue, and when given the slimmest opening his feverish curiosity breaks out into the light of day. When he learns that his friend and science enthusiast Cardinal Barberini may ascend to the papacy, he lauds the arrival of an era of reason. Too soon, of course.

In the second act, we meet the new pope in his undergarments. As he debates the use of torture and threats to force Galileo to renounce the Copernican ideas laid out in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Barberini dons layer upon layer of vestments. Crimson robes, a glittering great cape, and finally the mitre: when he is cloaked in the power of his office, Barberini assents to the threat of torture.

The scene parallels the opening scene of the play, in which Galileo, also in only his undergarments, is bathing and getting ready for the day. The contrast is evident: in the flesh, they are both ageing men. But their power to spread ideas is proportional to the grandeur of their garments. When Galileo is threatened and ultimately abjures his earlier assertions, he returns beaten and bare-legged in a crumpled white gown.

The legacy of Galileo’s recantation is left open. Brecht rewrote aspects of the play following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when he was living in the US. “Overnight the biography of the founder of the new system of physics read differently,” he wrote in an introduction to the new version. “The infernal effect of the great bomb placed the conflict between Galileo and the authorities of his day in a new sharper light.”

Brecht never saw the stage production of his later version in New York, as he left the country after being questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

By the end of the play, Galileo is wary of science shaped by interests more nefarious than the quest for truth. He sees a danger in scientists being reduced to little more than “inventing pygmies” for sale to the highest bidder, their ideas open to be used for cruel ends. Galileo’s public recantation and private pursuit of truth and Brecht’s ambivalence about the responsibility of scientists to shape the use of their research for the benefit of humankind are not necessarily two sides of the same coin, it seems.

But it isn’t clear that in publicly defying the church Galileo would have reshaped the way that scientific knowledge is applied. And in real life, as in the play, in sneaking his final, influential publication Discourse and Mathematical Demonstrations About Two New Sciences out under the noses of the church which held him under house arrest for the final years of his life, Galileo seems vindicated in his decision to live to think another day.

As New Yorker critic Adam Gopnik recently put it, “the best reason we have to believe in the moons of Jupiter is that no one has to be prepared to die for them in order for them to be real”.

It may be an excruciatingly slow process, but the truth has a way of emerging into the light eventually. It was just two decades ago - and 350 years after Galileo’s death - that the Catholic church finally admitted that it had been wrong to condemn him.

A Life of Galileo is on at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, until 30 March.

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TCM slowly gaining popularity in Middle East

EAST JERUSALEM: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is slowly gaining popularity in North Africa and the Middle East.

But advocates still face an uphill task of convincing governments to accept it as an alternative form of medical treatment.

Dr Adi Fromm's hospital ward is well known throughout Israel.

Patients disheartened with Western painkillers come here looking for relief.

An example is a man who suffered from pain in his legs for years.

Nothing helped until Dr Adi introduced him to Chinese "magic needles" or acupuncture.

Dr Fromm, who is the head of the TCM Association Israel, said: "The first challenge is to make the Western medicine profession understand that TCM is a valid tool in what I call the 'health basket' that we can give to people...we are still fighting for our legitimacy (among practitioners of) Western medicine."

TCM dates back more than 5,000 years, but it is now slowly being embraced as a holistic alternative to Western medicine in many countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

In Israel, it was only formally recognised in the early 1990s.

Despite its popularity, it is still not widely used by the mainstream healthcare system.

In places like Tunisia in North Africa, there is even less awareness.

Practitioners here face an uphill battle in seeking acceptance of TCM.

Twenty years ago, the first Chinese doctors visited these shores. Since then, the number of acupuncturists has been steadily growing.

Dr Mohammed Juaied, a TCM doctor in Tunis, said: "A lot of people are asking for this type of medicine and we are hoping that more doctors here will be trained in this type of treatment."

Suspicion and lack of knowledge mean it is hardly practised at all.

Dr Abbas Elias Yousef Zaro, an alternative medicine practitioner, is trying to change all this.

From his modest clinics in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, he brings hope to dozens of Palestinian patients frustrated with modern medicine.

He said: "When I finished my studies and came back to Palestine, I opened a clinic in Ramallah. For the first five years, people did not accept it very much but things have changed since then. Still, the government has no plans to bring alternative medicine to the hospitals."

This echoes Dr Layla Abu Ahmmad Esmaeel's experience across the border.

Although her clinic sees a steady stream of well-to-do Egyptians, she is lobbying her government for greater recognition of this ancient science.

Dr Layla, from the Acupuncture Clinic at the National Research Centre, said: "We are working hard with the Egyptian government to approve this kind of medicine because the Minister of Health (has) not (approved) TCM. A lot of doctors are practising this kind of medicine without...enough knowledge."

Elsewhere in the world, TCM has been more readily accepted.

There are laws in countries as far afield as Australia and South Africa that regulate and protect it.

This is an encouraging sign for its advocates in the Middle East.

TCM has come a long way in overcoming the misunderstandings and criticisms of the Western world. In recent years, its popularity, especially in the Middle East, has grown, allowing it to be used more frequently in treating the pains and stresses of the region.

- CNA/ms

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iPhone security flaw found

By Doug Gross, CNN updated 3:21 PM EST, Thu February 14, 2013 | Filed under: Mobile

In a YouTube video, a user shows how a nearby phone can be used to bypass an iPhone password to access limited functions.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• YouTube video appears to show a way to bypass an iPhone password lock


• The hack lets someone access your phone, contacts list and listen to messages


• NEW: Apple says it's aware of the problem and a fix is coming

(CNN) -- The passwords on iPhones can be hacked, giving someone the ability to make calls, listen to your recent messages and tinker with your contact list, according to a new video posted to YouTube.

The apparent security flaw is shown on an iPhone 5 and can be exploited on phones running Apple's iOS 6.1, the most recent version of its mobile operating system, and some earlier versions.

The technique was posted by a Spanish-speaking user with the account name "videosdebarraquito," who has posted other videos that show what appear to be ways to tweak settings on the iPhone. CNN is not linking to the video, which was published January 31 but recently discovered by tech bloggers.

It involves using another phone placed nearby to make a call to the phone, canceling it, then answering with the targeted phone and fiddling with the power button.

According to the user who posted the video, it can't be used to access other parts of the phone. And he urged anyone who used it to play nice.

Use the bypass "to joke with your friends. To do a magic show. To win a harmless bet among friends in a PUB. Perhaps, to retrieve a phone number in case you don't remember the password, or just to be warned that exists," the user wrote.

"Use it as you want, at your own risk, but... please... use responsibly, do not use this trick to do evil !!!"

The company said Thursday that it's at work on the problem.

"Apple takes user security very seriously," said spokeswoman Trudy Muller. "We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update."

The folks at tech blog The Verge tried out the technique, and said they were also able to access photos on the phone by attempting to add a photo to a contact. They were able to access an iPhone 5 that was running iOS 6.1 in the UK, they said.

Similar bugs have been pointed out in previous versions of Apple's mobile operating system. Usually, the company issues a quick update to fix the problem.

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