Israel and Turkey agree to restore diplomatic ties

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel and Turkey agreed to restore full diplomatic relations on Friday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized in a phone call for a deadly naval raid against a Gaza-bound international flotilla in a dramatic turnaround partly brokered by President Barack Obama.

Joint interests between the two countries, including fears that the Syrian civil war could spill over their respective borders, and some cajoling by Obama made the time ripe to repair the frayed relations after nearly three years of acrimony over the deaths.

It was a surprising turnaround for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had long rejected calls to apologize. He announced the breakthrough after a 20-minute phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Obama helped broker the fence-mending while visiting Israel, but the sides had been reaching out to each other before.

"They agreed to restore normalization between Israel and Turkey, including the dispatch of ambassadors and the cancellation of legal steps against Israeli soldiers," a statement from Netanyahu's office said. Netanyahu "regretted the recent deterioration of relations between Israel and Turkey and expressed his commitment to overcoming their differences in order to advance peace and stability in the region," it said.

The statement stressed that the bloodshed was not intentional and suggested that relatives of those killed would get compensation. In light of an Israeli investigation into the shootings that pointed to a number of operational missteps, Netanyahu apologized to the Turkish people for "any mistakes that might have led to the loss of life or injury and agreed to conclude an agreement on compensation (and) non-liability," the statement said.

It said Netanyahu appreciated Erdogan's interview with a Danish paper in which he said he was misunderstood in remarks at a U.N. conference in Vienna. Erdogan said Islamophobia should be considered a crime against humanity "just like Zionism, like anti-Semitism and like fascism." His comments drew wide condemnation. Erdogan later told Politiken that he was misunderstood and was criticizing Israeli policy.

Erdogan's office said: "Our prime minister accepted the apology in the name of the Turkish people."

Erdogan "expressed that it was saddening that relations, which are of vital strategic importance for peace and the stability of the region, have been soured in recent years," the statement said.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies. Relations began to decline after Erdogan, whose party has roots in Turkey's Islamist movement, became prime minister in 2003. Erdogan has embarked on a campaign to make Turkey a regional powerhouse in an attempt to become the leading voice in the Muslim world and distanced from Israel.

Tensions raged after Erdogan attacked Israel for the high Palestinian death toll in an Israeli campaign aimed at stopping daily rocket fire from Gaza on Israel in the winter of 2008, at one point storming off a stage he shared with the Israeli president at the high-profile World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Relations gradually worsened.

A Turkish TV show that demonized Israeli soldiers prompted Israel's then deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, in early 2010 to reprimand the Turkish ambassador. He seated Ahmet Oguz Celikkol on a sofa lower than his own chair and wouldn't shake his hand in televised images of the meeting.

Animosity peaked on May 31, 2010, when Israeli commandos stormed a ship named Mavi Marmara while stopping an international flotilla trying to breach an Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has been branded a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. Gaza militants have fired thousands of rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli border communities and towns during the past decade. The latest rocket was fired at the Israeli town of Sderot on Thursday while Obama was visiting Jerusalem.

Eight Turks and a Turkish-American were killed, and dozens of activists were wounded. On the Israeli side, a total of seven soldiers were wounded.

Israel blockaded the coastal strip in 2007, in cooperation with Egypt, after Hamas violently overran the territory from the secular Palestinian Fatah party. Israel said the blockade was a move to weaken Hamas and keep militants from moving weapons into the enclave.

But pro-Palestinian activists say it amounts to collective punishment of Gaza's residents and have launched numerous attempts to reach the territory by boat to draw attention to their cause.

Israel previously blamed the activists on the Mavi Marmara for the bloodshed that occurred during the raid, saying its naval commandos were attacked when they went aboard. Israel released videos showing armed activists brandishing iron rods and clubs attacking the soldiers as they slowly rappelled onto the deck from a helicopter. Soldiers were overpowered as they landed. They were surrounded by men with clubs. One soldier was tossed onto a lower deck.

The military later said the soldiers were not expecting trouble and had paintball guns as their primary weapons while handguns were only for an emergency. Two activists grabbed the handguns away from soldiers and shot two of them, the military said at the time. Both activists were then shot and killed.

Israel insisted that its soldiers acted in self-defense and later showcased knives, slingshots and clubs they said were found onboard the ship. Some activists had military-style gear, including bullet-proof vests and night-vision goggles. Israel said this indicated that the activists had planned for violence. The activists also said they acted in self-defense.

Following the flotilla incident, NATO-member Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel and greatly scaled back military and economic ties. But relations were never broken completely.

Erdogan phoned Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, to update him Friday. In a statement, Hamas commended Turkey for holding firm on demanding an apology from Israel, which it refers to as the "Zionist entity."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the restoration of normal relations between the two countries and expressed appreciation for Obama's role.

"Assisting Israel and Turkey in restoring their good relations had been a core objective of the Secretary-General's efforts in the aftermath of the May 2010 flotilla incident," U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said. "Today's announcement is an important and hopeful signal for the stability of the region."

Alon Liel, a former Israeli diplomat to Turkey, said the time was right for reconciliation because of the new Israeli government and because of Obama's involvement. Liel said Turkey and Israel share the same concerns that violence from the Syrian civil war reaching their countries plus there are possible gas deals that would be impossible without reconciliation.

Hasan Koni of Istanbul's Bahcesehir University said the Arab Spring uprisings forced the two former allies to repair their strained ties.

"Developments in the Middle East aren't progressing in a favorable way for the Western world," Koni said. "For the West, it is now time to maintain some level of stabilization."

The U.S. welcomed the development as a means to advance regional peace and security.

Speaking at a news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II in Amman Friday, Obama said the timing on his trip to Israel was right for Turkey and Israel to start restoring normal diplomatic relations.

Obama said he has long argued that it's in the interests of both Turkey and Israel to restore normal relations, noting that they have historically had good ties and are both "extraordinarily strong partners and friends of ours."

"They don't have to agree on everything in order for them to come together around a whole range of common interests and common concerns," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman in Washington, Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Matthew Lee aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-turkey-agree-restore-diplomatic-ties-205031955.html

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UK, France press EU on giving arms to Syria rebels

DUBLIN (AP) ? European Union foreign ministers displayed their divisions Friday over whether to start shipping weapons to rebels in Syria, with Britain and France isolated in their efforts to boost the opposition's firepower.

The two-day talks opened in Dublin Castle just hours after a suicide bomb killed at least 49 people in a Damascus mosque, including a senior cleric loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Both Assad and the major opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned the attack.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said the European Union's policy of providing only non-lethal equipment to the National Coalition must end if Syria's primary opposition forces are to oust Assad from power.

"In order to support a diplomatic and political settlement which is essential for peaceful transition, it will be necessary for us to increase the support that we give to the National Coalition on the ground," Hague said in comments mirrored by his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius.

Fabius said EU governments must agree on "how to stop Bashar Assad from continuing to bomb and massacre the Syrian population and the opposition."

But the other 25 EU ministers rallied behind the cautionary views of Germany, which argues that increased aid to rebel-held areas should be confined to improving their access to water, power, food and medical care.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he accepted that Britain, France and the U.S. had "good reasons" for wanting to increase the ability of opposition forces to defeat Assad's military following two years of civil war.

But he warned that sending weapons was likely to have unintended and negative consequences. He said more civilians would be killed in crossfire, and Western-supplied weapons could end up in the hands of anti-Western jihadists, who are being blamed for Thursday night's mosque bombing.

"We are still reluctant on lifting the arms embargo," Westerwelle said, adding, "We have to avoid a conflagration and we have to prevent that aggressive offensive weapons come into the wrong hands."

Several other foreign ministers publicly backed Westerwelle's reservations as they entered the Dublin Castle talks, which conclude Saturday. All emphasized that the EU would not consider easing its arms embargo on Syria until the end of May, when the existing restrictions are due to expire.

Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore of Ireland, the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, said European governments should focus on providing humanitarian aid, particularly medical help, to opposition-held parts of Syria.

"I think that the further militarization of the environment in Syria would certainly not be helpful. The more guns that go into Syria ... the more casualties there will be," Gilmore said.

Hague said Britain and France reserved the option of moving ahead on their own, but would greatly prefer to have a united EU position.

EU foreign ministers last month did amend the bloc's embargo rules on Syria to permit shipments of non-lethal equipment to rebels. Britain and France have begun shipping armored cars, night-vision goggles, body armor and other overtly military equipment under terms of that amendment.

The relatively lightly armed anti-Assad forces say they most desperately need ground-to-air weapons to deter Syrian government air strikes and helicopter gunships, as well as increased access to anti-tank weaponry. Iran is considered Syria's primary arms supplier.

The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed in the past two years of fighting in Syria, a country of more than 22 million. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

___

Online:

EU meeting in Dublin, http://bit.ly/14gnBQT

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-france-press-eu-giving-arms-syria-rebels-155809854.html

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Assad says Syria will wipe out mosque attackers

By Dominic Evans

BEIRUT (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad vowed on Friday to purge Syria of "extremist forces" he accused of assassinating a leading Sunni Muslim cleric who backed his two-year battle against rebels and protesters.

Assad made the pledge in a message of condolence over the death of Mohammed al-Buti, who was killed along with dozens of worshippers by an explosion in a Damascus mosque on Thursday.

State media put the death toll from the blast at 49, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors violence across the country said 52 people died and the final figure was likely to be more than 60.

The mass killing inside a place of worship shocked many Syrians, long accustomed to the daily bloodshed of a conflict which has killed 70,000 people, displaced millions of others and devastated whole districts of Syria's ancient cities.

Authorities announced a day of mourning on Saturday, when a funeral is expected to be held for Buti, who often delivered his sermons in the historic Umayyad Mosque.

"Your blood ... and that of all Syrian martyrs will not be shed in vain," Assad said. "We will adhere to your thinking to eliminate their darkness and extremism until we purge our country of them."

The mosque bombing took place in the same Mazraa district of central Damascus where a car bomb killed more than 60 people one month ago, another sign that Syria's civil war had penetrated to the heart of Assad's capital.

Assad's artillery positions on the northern edge of Damascus pounded the rebel-held southwestern towns of Derayya and Moadamiya on Friday and a Damascus resident said the smell of gunpowder hung over the center of the city.

The 47-year-old president has deployed air strikes, artillery barrages and Scud-type missiles to hit rebel fighters who control swathes of eastern and northern Syria and have challenged his hold over most of the country's main cities.

His government and the rebels accused each other of using a chemical weapon in clashes near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in which 26 people were killed.

The United Nations has promised to investigate the incident, though a U.S. official has said it increasingly appeared a chemical weapon was not used.

U.N. CONDEMNS ATTACK

The United Nations Security Council "condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in a mosque in Damascus", but added that any steps to combat terrorism must comply with international law on human rights and refugees.

Opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib, himself a former preacher at the Umayyad Mosque, said the killing of a Muslim scholar in a religious sanctuary was "a crime in every sense of the word".

"We could not agree with him politically, and believed he was wrong to stand with the rulers, but his killing opens up the gates to an evil that only God knows," he said in a statement.

Buti was a Sunni Muslim like most Syrians and the great majority of Syrian rebels, who were angered by his support for a president from the country's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

In one of his televised speeches, Buti described those fighting to topple Assad as 'scum'. The frail, 84-year-old preacher also used his position to call on Syrians to join the armed forces and help Assad defeat his rivals in the rebellion.

State television rebroadcast what it called Buti's last sermon at the Umayyad Mosque a week ago, in which he said Syria was under attack from the United States, Europe and al Qaeda, which he described as a Western creation.

But Alkhatib said there had been signs Buti was questioning his support for Assad and suggested he may have been killed by authorities "who feared that if he took a courageous decision it could overturn the whole balance (of power)".

Opposition activists have frequently blamed Syrian authorities in the immediate aftermath of major bombings in Damascus, many of which have subsequently been claimed by the Nusra Front - a rebel group which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/assad-says-syria-wipe-those-behind-mosque-attack-134704502.html

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Study reveals how serotonin receptors can shape drug effects from LSD to migraine medication

Study reveals how serotonin receptors can shape drug effects from LSD to migraine medication

Friday, March 22, 2013

A team including scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has determined and analyzed the high-resolution atomic structures of two kinds of human serotonin receptor. The new findings help explain why some drugs that interact with these receptors have had unexpectedly complex and sometimes harmful effects.

"Understanding the structure-function of these receptors allows us to discover new biology of serotonin signaling and also gives us better ideas about what biological questions to probe in a more intelligent manner," said TSRI Professor Raymond Stevens, who was a senior investigator for the new research. The studies were published in two papers on March 21, 2013 in Science Express, the advance online version of the journal Science.

Pioneering Important Molecular Structures

Stevens's laboratory at TSRI has pioneered the development of techniques for determining the 3D atomic structures of cellular receptors?particularly the large receptor class known as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). GPCRs sit in the cell membrane and sense various molecules outside cells. When certain molecules bind to them, the receptor's respond in a way to transmit a signal inside the cell.

"Because G protein-coupled receptors are the targets of nearly 50 percent of medicines, they are the focus of several major National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiatives," said Jean Chin of the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which partly funded the work through the Protein Structure Initiative. "These detailed molecular structures of two serotonin receptor subfamilies bound to antimigraines, antipsychotics, antidepressants or appetite suppressants will help us understand how normal cellular signaling is affected by these drugs and will offer a valuable framework for designing safer and more effective medicines."

In the past several years, using X-ray crystallography, the Stevens laboratory has determined the high-resolution structures of 10 of the most important GPCRs for human health?including the ?2 adrenergic receptor, the A2a adenosine receptor (the target of caffeine), HIV related CXCR4 receptor, the pain-mediating nociceptin receptor, S1P1 receptor important for inflammatory diseases, H1 histamine receptor (antihistamine medications) and the D3 dopamine receptor which is involved in mood, motivation and addiction.

Serotonin receptors are no less important. "Nearly all psychiatric drugs affect serotonin receptors to some extent, and these receptors also mediate a host of effects outside the brain, for example on blood coagulation, smooth muscle contraction and heart valve growth," said Bryan Roth, a collaborator on both studies who is professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina (UNC).

Untangling Two Serotonin Receptors

Roth's laboratory teamed up with Stevens's as part of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Protein Structure Initiative. For this project the two labs also worked with the laboratories of Professors Eric Xu and Hualiang Jiang at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "By collaborating with the Chinese teams we were able to complete a much more thorough study and get the most out of our fundamental structural results," said Stevens.

In the first of the new studies, co-lead author Chong Wang, a graduate student in the Stevens laboratory, and his colleagues determined the structure of the serotonin receptor subtype 5-HT1B, the principal target of several drug classes. (5-HT, or 5-hydroxytryptamine, is a technical term for serotonin.) The team produced the 5-HT1B receptor while it was bound by either ergotamine or dihydroergotamine?two old-line anti-migraine drugs that work in part by activating 5-HT1B receptors.

With the help of the special fusion protein, nicknamed BRIL (apocytochrome b562RIL), Wang and colleagues were able to stabilize these structures and coax them to line up in a regular ordering known as a crystal. X-ray crystallography revealed, at high resolution, an atomic structure of 5-HT1B with a main binding pocket and a separate, extended binding pocket.

Harmful Off-Target Effects

In the second study, TSRI graduate student and lead author Daniel Wacker and colleagues used similar techniques to determine the structure of the 5-HT2B receptor bound to ergotamine. The 5-HT2B receptor was chiefly of interest because drug developers want to avoid activating it.

"Drugs that are meant to target other serotonin receptors in the brain can have harmful off-target effects on 5-HT2B receptors, which are found abundantly on heart valves, for example," said Roth. The weight-loss drug fenfluramine and closely related dexfenfluramine were withdrawn from the US market in 1997 after being linked to heart valve disease. Roth's laboratory later showed that this side effect was mediated by heart valve 5-HT2B receptors.

Analyses of the 5-HT1B and 5-HT2B receptor structures revealed a subtle difference between them. "Although their main binding pockets look very similar, their extended binding pockets are not as similar?the one for 5-HT2B is narrower and in a slightly different position," said Wang.

With the two receptor structures in hand, the Xu and Jiang team simulated the bindings of various drugs. They showed, for example, that anti-migraine drugs called triptans should bind well to 5-HT1B receptors but poorly to 5-HT2B receptor structures, in which the extended binding pocket is less accessible. Similarly, the team's calculations confirmed that fenfluramine's active metabolite should bind very tightly to the 5-HT2B receptor.

Delving Deeper

In the second study, the researchers used the 5-HT2B and 5-HT1B structural data to better understand a recently discovered GPCR signaling pathway.

When a neurotransmitter such as serotonin binds to its GPCR receptor and triggers the primary, G protein-mediated activation signal, it also usually triggers another signal, often mediated by a protein called ?-arrestin. This second signaling cascade may simply have the effect of "arresting" or inhibiting the primary, G protein-mediated signaling. But it can also have other effects on the cell, and although most molecules bind to their target GPCRs in a way that activates these primary and secondary signals equally, others preferentially activate one or the other. "Such functional selectivity, as we call it, adds another layer of complexity to drug effects on GPCRs," said Roth, a co-senior author of the study.

Roth's laboratory produced several 5-HT receptor subtypes in test cells, and compared the strength of G-protein and ?-arrestin signaling when these receptors were bound by ergotamine or various other drugs, including the ergotamine-derived hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide). Most of the tested drugs showed no bias. However, ergotamine, LSD and some of their relatives turned out to be clearly biased in favor of ?-arrestin signaling at the 5-HT2B receptor. Comparison of the ergotamine-bound 5-HT2B structure with the ergotamine-bound 5-HT1B structure revealed the likely reason. "We could see that when ergotamine is bound to the 5-HT2B receptor it stabilizes the receptor structure in a conformation that interferes with G protein signaling," said Wacker.

The findings allow scientists to start probing this arrestin-mediated signaling pathway and its downstream effects in a more targeted manner. "These structural data are teaching us to ask better questions about receptor biology," said Stevens.

###

Scripps Research Institute: http://www.scripps.edu

Thanks to Scripps Research Institute for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127402/Study_reveals_how_serotonin_receptors_can_shape_drug_effects_from_LSD_to_migraine_medication

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Do I know you? Memory patterns help us recall the social webs we weave

Friday, March 22, 2013

With a dizzying number of ties in our social networks ? that your Aunt Alice is a neighbor of Muhammad who is married to Natasha who is your wife's boss ? it's a wonder we remember any of it. How do we keep track of the complexity? We cheat, says a Cornell University sociologist in Scientific Reports.

Humans keep track of social information not by rote memorization but with simplifying rules, as you might remember a number sequence that always increases by two, according to author Matthew Brashears, assistant professor of sociology. People recall social ties that both involve at least three people who know each other and kinship labels such as "aunt" twice as well as they remember ties that do not, even though triad kinship networks are far more complex, he said.

"Humans are able to manage big, sprawling, complicated social networks essentially because we don't remember big, sprawling, complicated social networks. We remember simplified, regular structures that bear a reasonable similarity to what those networks look like," Brashears said. In cases where the relationships don't fit the pattern, we remember the pattern and the few exceptions, instead of remembering all the ties simultaneously, he added.

About 300 study participants read paragraphs describing a group of people and how they relate to each other. Some paragraphs included kinship labels and some didn't. Other paragraphs included closed triads ? where three people each know each other ? while other paragraphs did not. The participants were then asked to recall as many of the ties as possible.

When the paragraphs contained both kinship labels and closed triads, the participants' recall improved by 50 percent compared with participants whose paragraphs included neither ? even though the kinship and triad paragraphs contained nearly twice as many relationships.

"That's a pretty substantial improvement," Brashears said. Moreover, participants did worse when trying to recall paragraphs that had kin relationships but no triads. "It's like trying to remember a random number sequence by using the 'increase by two' rule," he said.

The study helps explain how humans actively manage so many more social ties compared with other primates ? a key question in the field of sociology. The answer is that we evolved the capacity to spot and use social patterns.

"Our ability to remember and manage socials ties ? and build bigger groups of people ? had to do with coming up with new and interesting ways of compressing that information. It's about how we structure our groups and how that allows us to remember them, as opposed to just sheer cognitive horsepower," he said.

The research may help also explain some peculiarities of human networks, such as transitivity: If George is my friend and Susan is my friend, then Susan and George are likely to be friends. Brashears suspects that some social networks are easier to remember than others, and individuals who build groups that conform to those rules were more evolutionarily successful.

"Some of the reasons why human networks look the way they do is because they have to, in order for us to process them, to manage it cognitively," he says.

Medical researchers may benefit from the research as they seek to understand why some people don't grasp social intricacies as well as others. "We may have a better ability to understand social anxiety and autism spectrum if we understand how we're compressing and reconstructing social information using these mechanisms," Brashears said.

###

Study: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130321/srep01513/full/srep01513.html

Cornell University: http://pressoffice.cornell.edu

Thanks to Cornell University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 26 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127412/Do_I_know_you__Memory_patterns_help_us_recall_the_social_webs_we_weave

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Achebe inspired generations of Nigerian writers

This undated photo provided by Brown University shows Chinua Achebe at his home in Warwick, R.I. Achebe, an internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident, has died at age 82. Achebe's 1958 novel, "Things Fall Apart," is widely regarded as the first major work of modern African fiction and inspired others to tell the continent's story through the eyes of those who lived there. He joined Brown University in 2009 as a professor of languages and literature. (AP Photo/Brown University, Mike Cohea)

This undated photo provided by Brown University shows Chinua Achebe at his home in Warwick, R.I. Achebe, an internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident, has died at age 82. Achebe's 1958 novel, "Things Fall Apart," is widely regarded as the first major work of modern African fiction and inspired others to tell the continent's story through the eyes of those who lived there. He joined Brown University in 2009 as a professor of languages and literature. (AP Photo/Brown University, Mike Cohea)

FILE - This is a Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 file photo of Chinua Achebe, Nigerian-born novelist and poet as he speaks about his works and his life at his home on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York where he is a professor . Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, who wrote the classic "Things Fall Apart," has died. He was 82. Achebe's publisher confirmed his death Friday March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

This 2010 photo provided by Brown University shows Chinua Achebe, left, with his wife Christie Achebe on campus in Providence, R.I. Achebe, an internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident, has died at age 82. Achebe's 1958 novel, "Things Fall Apart," is widely regarded as the first major work of modern African fiction and inspired others to tell the continent's story through the eyes of those who lived there. (AP Photo/Brown University, Mike Cohea)

In this Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008 photo, Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian-born novelist and poet, poses at his home as he reflects on his works and life at his home on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he is a professor. Achebe, an internationally celebrated Nigerian author, statesman and dissident, has died at age 82. Achebe's 1958 novel, "Things Fall Apart," is widely regarded as the first major work of modern African fiction and inspired others to tell the continent's story through the eyes of those who lived there. He joined Brown University in 2009 as a professor of languages and literature. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

FILE - Chinua Achebe, Nigerian-born novelist and poet poses his life at his home on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York where he is a professor in this Jan. 22, 2008 file photo. Achebe, who wrote the classic "Things Fall Apart," has died. He was 82. Achebe's publisher confirmed his death Friday, March 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) ? Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was just 10 years old when she first read Chinua Achebe's groundbreaking novel "Things Fall Apart."

She devoured the rich use of Igbo proverbs in his book, which forever changed Africa's portrayal in literature.

That inspiration carried over into the creation of a pivotal character in her debut work, "I Do Not Come to You by Chance," which pulls readers into the dark and greedy world of Nigerian Internet scam artists.

"Like many contemporary Nigerian writers, I grew up on a literary diet that comprised a huge dose of Achebe's works," she said. "My parents were so proud of his accomplishments, and quoted the Igbo proverbs in his books almost as frequently as they quoted Shakespeare."

Achebe's death at the age of 82 was announced Friday by his publisher. His works inspired countless writers around the world, though the literary style of "Things Fall Apart," first published in 1958, particularly transformed the way novelists wrote about Africa.

Adewale Maja-Pearce, a literary critic who succeeded Achebe as the editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series, called him a pioneer whose "contribution is immeasurable."

In breaking with the Eurocentric lens of viewing the continent through the eyes of outsiders, Achebe took readers to a place full of complex characters who told their stories in their own words and style.

Achebe once wrote that a major goal "was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent."

He resisted the idea that he was the father of modern African literature, recalling a rich and ancient tradition of storytelling on the continent. Still, his influence on younger writers of the late 20th and early 21st century, particularly those from his homeland, was undeniable.

"Achebe's influence has been completely seminal and inspirational, and there are writers that have been called the School of Achebe who have imitated his style," said Chukwuma Azuonye, professor of African and African Diaspora Literatures at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

A newer crop of successful novelists with ties to Nigeria has broken away from Achebe's mode, Azuonye said, developing their own modernist style of writing that focuses on clashes of cultures and other issues facing Nigerians abroad.

Nigerian novelist Lola Shoneyin, whose works include "The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives," says Achebe's fiction gives her something new each time she reads his work.

"In the last five decades, just about every post-colonial African author, one way or another, has been engaged in a creative call-and-response with Chinua Achebe," she said.

Igoni Barrett, the author of a collection of stories called "From Caves of Rotten Teeth," said Achebe had achieved a "saintly status among Nigerian writers" through his pioneering involvement in the African Writers Series.

"Chinua Achebe was an inspiration to me not only for his singular talent and his dedication to truth in art and life, but also because he had the fortitude to overcome the countless disappointments of the Nigerian state," he said.

One of Senegal's best-known novelists, 66-year-old Boubacar Boris Diop, was in high school when he read "Things Fall Apart." He says that in it, he found "the real Africa."

"I systematically advise young authors to read Chinua Achebe. I've often bought copies of 'Things Fall Apart' and offered them to young writers. It's well written ? in the sense that it's not written at all. In it, you won't find any great lyrical phrases. That's the great force of this book. It's written in simple language," said Diop.

"He wrote about a continent that is far from perfect, but which at the same time has things within it that fill you with wonder."

___

Larson reported from Dakar Senegal. Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi also contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-22-AF-Nigeria-Achebe's-Influence/id-fb541bebe619432c8015967c82a19e27

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Senate set to approve huge 2013 spending bill

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate appears set to approve a huge, bipartisan spending bill to keep the government running through September and ruling out the chance of a government shutdown later this month.

The meatpacking and poultry industries seemed likely to win a vote offering relief from furloughs of inspectors that threaten to intermittently shutter plants as the measure moves ahead through the Senate and back to the House. A vote in the House Thursday would send the measure to President Barack Obama for his signature.

The developments come as the House resumed debate on the budget for next year and beyond. Republicans are pushing a plan that promises sharp cuts to federal health care programs and domestic agency operating budgets as the cost of balancing the budget in a decade.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-03-20-Budget%20Battle/id-14995581df7e4259a1ab177b5b8599b0

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