WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk. >

Once, maybe.

But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country's capitals of obesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well be not sickly skinny, but excessively fat.

Call it the Bronx Paradox.

"Hunger and obesity are often flip sides to the same malnutrition coin," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. "Hunger is certainly almost an exclusive symptom of poverty. And extra obesity is one of the symptoms of poverty."

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2010) -- When cells move about in the body, they follow a complex pattern similar to that which amoebae and bacteria use when searching for food, a team of Vanderbilt researchers has found.

The discovery has a practical value for drug development: Incorporating this basic behavior into computer simulations of biological processes that involve cell migration, such as embryo development, bone remodeling, wound healing, infection and tumor growth, should improve the accuracy with which these models can predict the effectiveness of untested therapies for related disorders, the researchers say.

"As far as we can tell, this is the first time this type of behavior has been reported in cells that are part of a larger organism," says Peter T. Cummings, John R. Hall Professor of Chemical Engineering, who directed the study that is described in the March 10 issue of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

The discovery was the unanticipated result of a study the Cummings group conducted to test the hypothesis that the freedom with which different cancer cells move -- a concept called motility -- could be correlated with their aggressiveness: That is, the faster a given type of cancer cell can move through the body the more aggressive it is.

A new synagogue was opened to the public in a city in western Germany this Sunday. The last synagogue in Herford closed during Adolf Hitler's rule of Germany. 

After over 70 years, the city of Herford has an official Jewish place of worship once again. The state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Juergen Ruettgers, and the president of the Germany's Central Council of Jews, Charlotte Knobloch, celebrated along with the congregation at the opening ceremony.

"I hope for you - and for us all - that Jewish life here in North Rhine-Westphalia bears fruit - that it is present, changes, initiates change, and invigorates," Rüttgers said.

"We must, and we will, do everything to ensure there is never another Auschwitz."

Charlotte Knobloch said how Jewish history in Herford stretches back seven centuries, although after the holocaust only a handful of the roughly 200 former inhabitants returned.

The former synagogue was destroyed during "Kristallnacht" ("the Night of Broken Glass") on November 9, 1938, one of the Nazis' most widespread and brutal single purges on Jewish society within Germany.

NB: AFAIK, "Kristallnacht" is today often referred to as "Pogrommnacht".

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Fifty years after Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's arrest by the Israeli Mossad in Argentina, basic details about his 15 years as a fugitive remain a government secret. The files kept by Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, remain classified today -- allegedly for reasons of national security. A German journalist is now suing in a federal court for the release of the files.

Fifty years have passed since Adolf Eichmann's arrest, but the German foreign intelligence agency, the BND, is still hoping to prevent the release of files detailing his post-war movements. A Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig is currently examining almost 4,500 pages of secret documents on Eichmann, a leading architect of Hitler's plans to murder Europe's Jews. The court is soon expected to rule whether the BND's justifications for concealing the files are still applicable and in line with the country's freedom of information laws.

The court is using closed "in camera" proceedings in which the three judges considering the case are the only people with access to the files.

"What's especially interesting is the sheer amount of paperwork that the government is concealing," says lawyer Remo Clinger, whose law firm Geulen & Klinger is representing German journalist Gabriele Weber in her case before the Leipzig court.

According to paperwork filed with the court, the BND maintains that secrecy is necessary because much of the information contained in the files was provided by an unnamed "foreign intelligence service." If the information were released, the BND argues, it would deter other nations from sharing intelligence with Germany in the future. "It would adversely affect future cooperations between foreign intelligence services and German security agencies," the agency's lawyers argue. The fact that the files are classified has prompted considerable speculation over the origins of the intelligence. The BND has clarified that the intelligence did not come from an American source, and it is widely assumed that it came from Israel's Mossad, whose agents captured Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960. He was subsequently brought to trial in Israel, where he was convicted and hanged.

The Digital Dales Colloquium was held at Timico HQ in Newark on Friday and packed out the main lecture theatre. With the focus of how to get rural areas onto the internet much of the meeting was spent debating the lack of level playing field when it comes to bidding for projects that involve European funding.

From a third party perspective BT appears to have much of this stitched up because their existing deal on rates paid for their network infrastructure is based on a volume play. This means that BT can assume lower costs for fibre runs where new market entrants putting fibre in the ground perhaps for the first time incur much higher charges.

The chart below, pinched from network provider Vtesse Networks MD Aidan Paul's presentation, shows how the rates applied to fibre vary depending on how many fibres you have in the ground on a given route.

In just over a year, Glenn Beck's blinding burst of stardom has often seemed to overshadow the rest of Fox News.

And that may not be a good thing for the top-rated cable news channel, as many of its staffers are acutely aware.

With his celebrity fueled by a Time cover story, best-selling books, cheerleading role at protest rallies and steady stream of divisive remarks, Beck is drawing big ratings. But there is a deep split within Fox between those -- led by Chairman Roger Ailes -- who are supportive, and many journalists who are worried about the prospect that Beck is becoming the face of the network.

By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a "cancer," Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel's efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization. Beck has become a constant topic of conversation among Fox journalists, some of whom say they believe he uses distorted or inflammatory rhetoric that undermines their credibility.