Cuando salgas a bailar, deja la pistola en casa

­by the El Reportero’s staff

SFPD investigate a shooting in the Mission­.

A peaceful and cool night outside and a joyful dancing event inside were interrupted on Wednesday, Feb. 3, when two African American men started a brawl at a local night club near Mission and 22nd St. at approximately 1 a.m. After they were removed from the club by security guards, the issue didn’t end there, one of the individuals pulled a gun and shot the other in a leg, according to witnesses.

While the wounded man was taken to the hospital, the police cordoned the area of 22nd and Capp to Bartlett streets, and on Mission from 22nd to 23er Street, searching for the bullet shell and questioning witness who gave vague accounts of the incident (see photo above).

According to Mission Police Station’s officer Ortega, the suspect was still at large. A woman in handcuffs was questioned. A couple of Muni buses remained unmoving as the street was closed with police yellow tape for approximately one and half hour.

­by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A protein acting as a switch to activate the cell death process may prove to be an effective targeted treatment for killing cancer cells.

University of Michigan researchers discovered that the protein called RIP plays a role in mediating both the life and death of squamous cell carcinoma cancer cells, said Yvonne Kapila, associate professor, Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine at the School of Dentistry.

This is key because cancer cells elude the normal cell death process. If that process could be activated artificially by a targeted introduction of RIP into cancer patients, those cells could be destroyed before they circulate out of control in the body, Kapila said.

The findings are promising but still a long way from being used as a therapy, Kapila said. Researchers still need to show that introducing RIP is safe before it can be tested in humans.

Kapila’s lab set out to find a mechanism that activates cell life and death. “The cell must analyze multiple signals and say, ‘OK, am I going to die or am I going to live,’” Kapila said. “We felt there must be some kind of communication between pathways of life and death otherwise the cell will be confused and not know what to do.”

­Researchers looked at squamous cell carcinoma cells from head and neck tumors and also fibroblasts from mice, but the findings could apply to other cancers as well since the death process is largely the same. They found that RIP was indeed the communicator, interacting with a cell death protein called FAS and with a protein called FAK during cell survival conditions.

Normal cells usually need to attach to a matrix to survive, and die if detached, Kapila said. This unique type of cell death caused by detachment from the matrix is called anoikis. Cancer cells can detach from a matrix but elude anoikis and circulate freely, which allows them to spread and metastasize in the body.

“This is a great advantage,” Kapila said. “They can go wherever they like and find a happy home and set up shop there.”

Next, researchers modified, or knocked out, portions of RIP to see which parts were critical in each process, Kapila said.

“In the future if one were to use this for therapy, if we know which pieces of the protein are important for each function, we know where to focus,” Kapila said.

The next step is to study the process in mice and analyze patient samples of RIP at different levels.

In a separate project, Kapila’s group is examining a separate molecule and its success in shrinking tumors, and how it interacts with RIP.

­

by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

Just over a year ago, critics of President Hugo Chávez forecast that the oil price collapse would mark the beginning of the end for him, but were disappointed when he turned the crisis to his advantage, taking the opportunity to ‘accelerate’ the Bolivarian Revolution and consolidate his increasingly autocratic grip on power (after a successful referendum to repeal the two-term limit on elected posts) with fresh nationalisations, fast track approval of new legislation (including controversial new Electoral and Education Laws) and a renewed assault on the opposition media. For a while, it seemed as though Chávez could ride out a year of recession without too much difficulty. From late 2009, however, it suddenly looked as though the tide was turning against the wily Venezuelan leader.

Morales sworn in as Bolivia’s fi rst “plurinational” president

Declaring the birth of the new “plurinational” state of Bolivia and death of the old “colonial” republic, President Evo Morales assumed offi ce for a second term on Jan. 22. There is some substance to his claims. The new legislature is transformed beyond all recognition, leaving him free rein to achieve his main priority – the implementation of the new “plurinational” constitution. The executive has also been overhauled with the most extensive cabinet reshuffle since Morales first came to power in 2006. Meanwhile the judiciary, the one branch of government still nominally aligned with the white minority elite (albeit while in a state of collapse) is set to be transformed in elections later in the year.

What Mexico’s record drop in remittances means

On Jan. 27 the Banco de México reported that the remittance infl ows fell 15.7 percent year-on-year in 2009 to US$21.2bn. This is the biggest ever annual fall in what has become a crucial support for some of the poorest communities in Mexico. What is truly worrying about the fall in remittances to Mexico is that the fall is greater than to other countries, both in the region and around the world.

­U.S. kid kidnappers in Haiti arrested

Washington, Feb 1 (Prensa Latina) Ten US citizens were detained in Haiti, accused of kidnapping children to take them out of the country, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The detainees will face judicial charges for being alleged members of a people smuggling network that is taking advantage of the chaotic situation in Haiti.

Those U.S. citizens were captured when trying to cross the border, heading for the Dominican Republic. They said to be members of a religious group called New Life Children’s Refuge.

According to Haitian authorities, they are five men and five women, and the 33 kidnapped children range from 2 months to 12 years of age.

The majority of the detainees belong to a non-governmental congregation in Idaho, and had no legal documents to take the children out of the country.

by José de la Isla

HOUSTON — Did you ever attend a party and no one noticed you were there, and when you left no one noticed that you weren’t?

That is how I interpreted Long Island University professor José R. Sánchez’s New Year’s observation about the media’s oversight of some important passings.

He counted up the year-end recognitions of notable people who passed away in 2009 and noted next to no recognition of Latinos. The “treatment of Latino deaths is symptomatic of a wider neglect of Latinos,” he wrote in an essay for the National Institute for Latino Policy.

The New York Times included a chimpanzee among the 23 important “people” who died during the year, but not one Latino. The Chicago Tribune mentioned two Latinos out of 104 people: Argentine grammy winner Mercedes Sosa and Nicaraguan boxer Alex Arguello. Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, doesn’t count.

The Los Angeles Times mentioned only three Latinos out of 120 notable deaths.

It included actor Ricardo Montalbán, Mexican- American jockey Ismael Valenzuela, and one other person already mentioned. The Baltimore Sun also only listed three out of 134, with two-time Venezuelan president Rafael Antonio Caldera and baseball manager Preston Gómez, new to those already mentioned.

The 91 notable death listed by The Associated Press only included Montalbán. Sánchez concluded that a “group that is either not seen or that draws little interest will find its contributions minimized or dismissed.” And he relates this invisibility to powerlessness.

Sánchez might be right to a certain extent. When power, politics, fame and status are considered the purpose of life, getting recognized means everything. Getting overlooked is insulting.

Yet other trends, civic ones, might also suggest another path, one away from complaint, regret and grievance.

Only during the past decade did the U.S. Census results sink in about the exponential growth of the Latino population. It came as news to many, even though it’s been obvious for three decades. And for many it was a revelation similar to Columbus “discovering” America.

Ashamedly, this happened just during the past decade. Even though the Census Bureau reported in July 2001 that Hispanics already outnumbered African Americans by one million persons, the press and public alike regularly comment that Latinos “will soon become the nation’s largest minority population.

But “minority” status is nothing to aspire to. It is a quasi-legalisic designation and not one that comes out of conflating history, tradition, language, culture, world view and life, in general. It is what some sociologists call a “huristic,” a useful designation. But it is not useful when it stigmatizes or is used to suggest people who are outside the major currents of national life.

In fact, the revelation by the Census served to show just how out of touch so many persons are about knowing their own country.

Few people have formed a context for understanding other major events of the past decade.

A grassroots Hispanic enfranchisement movement began long before, in 1976, which validated that civil rights is not about color alone. The 2004 national election validated Hispanics as a national electorate. In 2006, the largest civil right marches in the nation’s history, over immigration reform, validated the Hispanic stake in the nation’s policy direction. That was the organiz- ing tipping point in several key states for the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

These events still aren’t registering in the national consciousness, even though

they are the result of civic participation by millions.

Sometimes nobody notices when you arrive at the party alone. But it’s hard to ignore when 50 million of you do. The work to be done is simple. Take the world as you find it, as did those few Hispanic notables who were mentioned in the media, and make this a more interesting place for everyone.

­Now that’s something to have on your tombstone.