Genome Hazard: Busan Review

The Bottom Line

A polished and professional entertainment.

Venue

Busan International Film Festival

Director

Kim Sung-su

Cast

Nishijima Hidetoshi, Kim Hyo-jin, Hamada Manabu, Maki Yoko, Nakamura Yuri, Ibu Masatoh, Lee Kyeong-young

When the word “genome” is in a film title expectations for challenging and somehow terrifying science fiction romp are high. Images of evil corporate entities meddling in the very essence of our collective selves or the twisted mutations that will be our future spring to mind. Genome Hazard, based on Tsukasaki Shiro’s award-winning novel, is neither of those. One part science fiction adventure, one part conspiracy thriller and one part, bafflingly, romance, Genome Hazard can’t settle on what it wants to be and so is none of those completely successfully. The Korea/Japan co-production should find moderate success in its home territories where the cast of familiar, if not superstar, faces will attract attention, as will the book’s built-in audience, and the curiosity factor will carry it a reasonably long way. This kind of sci-fi isn’t that common in the region, where traditional monsters, ghosts and robots still carry the day. Any success on the festival circuit will be centered on genre events.

Writer-director Kim Sung-su, for whom Genome Hazard is the second medical science thriller this year after The Flu, is a workmanlike filmmaker that rarely gets fancy and lets his conventional pictures tell the story. That works here, where the height of stylistic innovation is the washed out color of a dying man’s last hours—both physically and mentally — contrasted with the saturated brightness of the so-called present. Genome Hazard starts strong: Ishigami Taketo (Nishijima Hidetoshi, Kitano Takeshi’s Dolls, Cut) is an average salaryman, toiling away as an illustrator at a design firm and freshly married to Miyuki (Maki Yoko) — or so he thinks. He gets home one night to find his wife dead but receives a phone call from her while he stares at her corpse. So far so good for classic mess-with-your-head sci-fi. Next thing he knows a gang of thugs claiming to be cops bust in to take him away and the chase to unravel the mystery is on. This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Ishigami’s confusion at the circumstances he finds himself in forms the basis of a great thriller, where the hero is the victim of some kind of technological nefariousness he or she can’t prove. It’s not Philip Dick level paranoid, but it’s close. The little details compound each other and create a compelling enough mystery with steady forward momentum, aided by a hoary but effective countdown clock. The wheels start to wobble a bit when Ishigami, with the help of Seoul reporter Kang Ji-won (Kim Hyo-jin), discovers he’s actually a genius Korean biochemist called Oh Jin-woo who’s researching Alzheimer’s for Japanese biotech giant Sugusawa Research.

To this point Genome Hazard has been shaping up as a pharmacological conspiracy thriller pivoting on an examination of the nature of memory, identity, the connection between the two and the question of what would happen could any be manipulated genetically (answer: bad things). And not even some of the most ridiculous science to grace screens in years can really kill the story. That’s down to a misplaced romance that brings the sci-fi to a screeching halt, and, sadly, Nishijima’s histrionics. Kim spend half her screen time looking stunned, but it’s hard to determine if it’s because of Ishigami’s wild tale or Nishijima’s OTT performance. Genome Hazard looks great and frequently visually trumps the characters’ stupid behavior, but it would be a leaner, more focused film at 90 minutes — and without the extra wives.

Production company: Apollon Cinema

Sales: Lotte Entertainment

Producers: Yang Kwang-duk, Lee Geun-wook, Satani Hidemi

Director: Kim Sung-su

Cast: Nishijima Hidetoshi, Kim Hyo-jin, Hamada Manabu, Maki Yoko, Nakamura Yuri, Ibu Masatoh, Lee Kyeong-young

Screenwriter: Kim Sung-su, from the novel by Tsukasaki Shiro

Executive producer: Cha Won-chun

Director of photography: Choi Sang-mul

Production Designer: Lee Zinho, Lee Ji-yeon

Music: Kawai Kenji

Editor: Park Kyoung-sook

No rating, 120 minutes  

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/reviews/film/~3/7050_t6lj_A/genome-hazard-busan-review-647164
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Obama presenting Medal of Honor to Afghan war vet

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Army captain hailed for bravery during combat in Afghanistan in 2009 is adding the Medal of Honor to his list of military decorations.

President Barack Obama will bestow the nation's highest military honor on William D. Swenson on Tuesday. Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama will also attend the ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

The White House says Swenson is being recognized for courageous actions while he was an embedded trainer and mentor with the Afghan National Security Forces in Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan on Sept. 8, 2009.

Swenson retired from the military in February 2011. He has a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal and lives in Seattle.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-15-US-Obama-Medal-of-Honor/id-d653b0116b62418ea7f99f42a3cfa1ad
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Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar On Monday's Hill Negotiations

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Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=234234146&ft=1&f=1014
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Review: iPhone 5s offers better security today, a peek at Apple of tomorrow

Smartphone
Apple iPhone 5s

The iPhone 5s, like its cheaper sibling the iPhone 5c, has been available for a few weeks now, earning plaudits from most reviewers and igniting ignorant online discussions around mobile security and application performance. Some of that ignorance is intentional FUD from Android fanboys and security purveyors.

The truth is straightforward: The iPhone 5s lays the groundwork for the next generation of Apple mobile devices, introducing the 64-bit architecture to its processor, operating system, and applications as well as making it easier to secure mobile devices, thanks to its fingerprint reader. (As for the iPhone 5c, it's last year's iPhone 5 in a nice-looking and nice-feeling colored plastic case updated with an improved camera and support for more LTE frequencies, which is great for international travelers, and it runs iOS 7 -- enough said.)

[ Also at InfoWorld: iOS 7 tips and tricks you need to learn | The 7 best new features in iOS 7 | 7 hidden gems in iOS 7 | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobilize newsletter. ]

The Touch ID fingerprint reader in the iPhone 5s is the most visible improvement in the new Apple smartphone compared to last year's version, the iPhone 5. Apple calls attention to the reader with the metallic ring that now encircles the Home button. You may also notice a second, amber LED on the back of the iPhone 5s, which helps produce more accurate skin tones when taking photos with the flash.

Except for these two clues, the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 look, feel, and weight about the same. (The iPhone 5s also comes in a surprisingly subtle gold finish, a new color option that the iPhone 5 did not have.) This strong similarity reflects the fact that the iPhone 5s is at heart an upgraded iPhone 5.

Yet it also obscures how the iPhone 5s sets the scene for future waves of Apple mobile devices. You can bet your bottom dollar that at least some of the new iPads expected later this month will sport both the 64-bit A7 processor and the Touch ID fingerprint reader that debuted in the iPhone 5s.

Because the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 are so similar in many respects, I won't go into detail on where they overlap. Suffice to say you get the same 802.11n Wi-Fi, low-power Bluetooth, as in the iPhone 5; the same high-quality, balanced-color screen; the same buttons; the same high-quality speakers (with only slight distortion despite their small size); and the same ability to use a GSM SIM card even on CDMA models (for use when traveling abroad). The LTE radio supports more bands than the iPhone 5's radio, so the 5s should work on more LTE networks for those who travel interationally.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/review-iphone-5s-offers-better-security-today-peek-apple-of-tomorrow-228427?source=rss_infoworld_top_stories_
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Ellis and Fowlie shine but London Irish exit JP Morgan Premiership 7s

Impressive displays by Academy youngsters Gerard Ellis and Tom Fowlie failed to prevent holders London Irish from slipping out of the JP Morgan Premiership 7s.
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Exiles finished third in Group C at Allianz Park on Saturday after losing to hosts Saracens and first-placed Harlequins before beating Wasps in their final game.
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In the first game of the night, guest player James Greenwood scored two tries and David Treharne converted as Irish hit back to level after going 12-0 down.
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But Saracens pulled away again to seal a 24-12 victory, thanks to tries by Jack Watson, Nils Mordt, Ben Ransom and Tim Streather and a conversion apiece for Mordt and Streather.
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Skipper Ellis got Irish off to the perfect start against Quins in their second game when he charged his way over.
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But Quins responded with six tries in a 42-19 victory, courtesy of Patrice Agunda (2), Ollie Lindsay-Hague (2), Harry Sloan and Charlie Walker, along with conversions by Jeremy Manning (4) and Louis Grimoldby (2).
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Treharne weighed in with a try and two conversions for Irish, while 18-year-old Fowlie showed an explosive turn of pace in the final minute, running in from his own 22.
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Coach Peter Richards' youthful side saved their best performance until last as they battled it out with Wasps to avoid bottom spot.
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Although Irish knew qualification was beyond them, guest player Juliano Fiori quickly scored the first of their five tries in an impressive 31-19 win.
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Fowlie then showed his electric acceleration again as he raced down the touchline to score, while an Ellis try and a couple of Treharne conversions ensured a 17-0 half-time lead.
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Will Smith added Irish's fourth try, also converted by Treharne, before Wasps responded through Oskar Hirskyj-Douglas and George Eastwell. Both those tries were converted by Liam O'Neill.
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Greenwood produced a cracking individual effort, which he also converted for Irish, before Wasps' Sam Egerton went over for the final try of the match.
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Quins beat Saracens 24-21 in the final match of the night, but both teams had already secured the top two spots to guarantee their qualification for Friday's finals at Bath's Recreation ground.
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They will now battle it out with Newcastle Falcons, Leicester Tigers, Worcester Warriors and Gloucester.
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Final standings: Harlequins 15pts, Saracens 10, London Irish 5, Wasps 2.
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Results: London Irish 12 Saracens 24, Harlequins 26 London Wasps 19, Harlequins 42 London Irish 19, Saracens 21 London Wasps 17, London Irish 31 London Wasps 19, Harlequins 24 Saracens 21.
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Harlequins: 1 Ollie Lindsay-Hague, 2 Dave Ward, 3 Patrice Agunda, 4 Harry Sloan, 5 Jeremy Manning, 6 James Chisholm, 7 Sam Arnold, 8 Jack Clifford, 9 Jordan Burns, 10 Louis Grimoldby, 11 Ross Chisholm, 12 Charlie Walker.
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London Irish: 1 Gerard Ellis (c), 2 Juliano Fiori, 3 Geoff Griffiths, 4 Ed Tellwright, 5 Will Smith, 6 James Greenwood, 7 Jack Walsh, 8 Tom Fowlie, 9 Ed Hoadley, 10 Tom Rees, 11 Gerhard Wessels, 12 David Treharne.
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Saracens: 1 Eoin Sheriff, 2 Jack Wilson, 3 Scott Spurling, 4 Tim Streather, 5 Nils Mordt (c), 6 Chris Ashton, 7 Aaron Morris, 8 Ben Ransom, 9 Luke Baldwin, 10 Michael Tagicakibau, 11 Sam Stanley, 12 Matt Hankin.
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Wasps: 1 Matt Everard, 2 Guy Thompson, 3 Sam Egerton, 4 Jack Moates, 5 Oskar Hirskyj-Douglas, 6 George Eastwell, 7 Tom Howe, 8 George Saunders, 9 Tom Varndell (c), 10 Will Rowlands, 11 Gus Jones, 12 Liam O?Neill.

Source: http://www.getreading.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/ellis-fowlie-shine-london-irish-5586956

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House approves student loan compromise, reducing interest rates

Now both houses of Congress have passed a compromise bill lowering a recent interest rate hike on student loans. Under the new legislation, which will now move to President Obama's desk, politicians will no longer be responsible for setting the rates.?

By Elvina Nawaguna,?Reuters / July 31, 2013

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., front right, with Reps. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., from left, Luke Messer, R-Ind., and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., obscured, talk about student loans in Washington. Congress passed a bill reducing student loan interest rates on Wednesday.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Enlarge

U.S. college students will likely pay a reduced interest rate of 3.86 percent on their student loans for the new school year, after lawmakers on Wednesday finally passed a compromise bill that would reverse a recent rate hike.

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The?House of Representatives?voted 392-31 in support of a bipartisan deal to lower interest rates on millions of new federal student loans. The?Senate?passed the bill on July 24 and President?Barack Obama?is expected to sign it into law.

The action followed months of partisan bickering, with Democrats and Republicans blaming each other for a politically embarrassing delay that had the potential to cost students and their parents thousands of dollars.

The legislation replaces a system in which?Congress?fixed interest rates every year and substitutes it with a market-based mechanism tied to the government's cost of borrowing and capped to protect borrowers in the event of a severe spike in rates.

The legislation passed just two days before?Congress?recesses for five weeks, after several failed efforts in the House and?Senate.

Interest rates on student loans automatically doubled on July 1 to 6.8 percent after?Congress?failed to meet the deadline to prevent the rate increase.?Congress?has since incorporated a retroactive fix that would keep borrowers of loans originated since July 1 when rates had doubled from paying the higher rate.

The measure passed Wednesday pegs interest rates on student loans to the 10-year Treasury note plus 2.05 percentage points for undergraduates, and plus 3.6 percentage points for graduate student loans.

The interest rate would roughly work out to 3.86 percent this year for undergraduates and 5.42 percent for graduates.

Supporters of the bill say it gets politicians out of the business of setting student loan?rates and provides certainty for students and their families.?

'Long-term fix'

Critics of a market-based system say it fails to offer enough protection against increasing rates as the economy improves.

"This bill provides American college students immediate debt relief on upcoming student loans," said?California?Representative?George Miller, the senior Democrat at the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. "Families battered by the recent recession should have received this relief over a month ago."

In 2007,?Congress?lowered the interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent. That lower rate was due to expire last year, but?Congress?extended it for another year rather than argue about a replacement for it during an election year.

Under the caps in the new plan, if market rates rise, undergraduates could pay as high as 8.25 percent and graduates as much as 9.5 percent. The rate could go to 10.5 percent for PLUS loans for parents who borrow to pay for their children's college.

"We wanted to get out of the partisan squabbling that has been happening in this city every year - let the market do it in a way that is fair to students and the taxpayer," said?Education Committee?Chairman Representative?John Kline, a?Minnesota?Republican.

"After months of great uncertainty, students can finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that interest rates on subsidized federal loans for college won't double from last year and a long-term fix will be in place to avoid these annual political chess matches over the loan program," said Peter McPherson, president of the?Association of Public?and Land-grant Universities.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/pDG-N0WFWZI/House-approves-student-loan-compromise-reducing-interest-rates

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Millions Wrongly Treated for 'Cancer,' National Cancer Institute Panel Confirms

A devastating new report commissioned by the National Cancer Institute reveals that our 40-year long ?War on Cancer? has been waged against a vastly misunderstood ?enemy,? that in many cases represented no threat to human health whatsoever.

If you have been following our advocacy work on cancer, particularly in connection with the dark side of breast cancer awareness month, you know that we have been calling for the complete reclassification of some types of ?breast cancer? as benign lesions, e.g. ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), as well as pointing out repeatedly that x-ray based breast screenings are not only highly carcinogenic but are also causing an epidemic of ?overdiagnosis? and ?overtreatment? in US women, with an estimated 1.3 million cases in the past 30 years alone.

This week, a National Cancer Institute commissioned panel?s report published in JAMA online confirmed that we all ? public and professionals alike ? should stop calling low-risk lesions like DCIS and high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN) ?cancer.?

There are wide-reaching implications to this recommendation, including:?

• Millions of women in this country have been diagnosed with DCIS, and millions of men with HGPIN, and subsequently [mis]treated. Are they now to be retroactively reclassified as ?victims? of iatrogenesis, with legal recourse to seek compensation?
• Anyone engaged in a cancer screening will now need to reconsider and weigh both the risks and benefits of such a ?preventive? strategy, considering that the likelihood of being diagnosed with a false positive over 10 years is already over 50% for women undergoing annual breast screening.
• The burgeoning pink ribbon-bedecked ?breast cancer awareness? industry will be forced to reformulate its message, as it is theoretically culpable for the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of millions of US women by propagating an entirely false concept of ?cancer.?

As reported by Medscape:

The practice of oncology in the United States is in need of a host of reforms and initiatives to mitigate the problem of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancer, according to a working group sanctioned by the National Cancer Institute.

Perhaps most dramatically, the group says that a number of premalignant conditions, including ductal carcinoma in?situ and high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia, should no longer be called ?cancer.?

Instead, the conditions should be labeled something more appropriate, such as indolent lesions of epithelial origin (IDLE), the working group suggests. The Viewpoint report was published online July?29 in JAMA.

Fundamentally, overdiagnosis results from the fact that screen-detected ?cancers? are disproportionately slower growing ones, present with few to no symptoms, and would never progress to cause harm if left undiagnosed and untreated.

As you can see by the graph above, it is the fast-growing tumors which will be more difficult to ?detect early,? and will progress rapidly enough to cause symptoms and perhaps even death unless treated aggressively. But even in the case of finding the tumor early enough to contain it through surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation, it is well-known that the minority subpopulation of cancer stem cells within these tumors will be enriched and therefore made more malignant through conventional treatment. For instance, radiotherapy radiation wavelengths were only recently found by UCLA Jonnsson Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers to transform breast cancer cells into highly malignant cancer stem-cell like cells, with 30 times higher malignancy post-treatment.

What this means is that not only are millions of screen-detected abnormalities not ?cancer? in the first place but even those which can be considered fast-growing are often being driven into greater malignancy by the conventional chemotherapy, radiation and surgery-based standard of cancer care itself.

Our entire world view of cancer needs to shift from an enemy that ?attacks? us and that we must wage war against, to something our body does, presumably to survive an increasingly inhospitable, nutrient-deprived, carcinogen- and radiation-saturated environment, i.e. Cancer As An Ancient Survival Mechanism Unmasked.

When we look at cancer through the optic of fear and see it as an essentially chaos-driven infinitely expanding mass of cells, we are apt to make irrational choices. The physiological state of fear itself has been found to activate multidrug resistance proteins within cancer cells, explaining how our very perception of cancer can influence and/or determine its physiological status and/or trajectory within our body.

The NCI panel report opined:

?The word ?cancer? often invokes the specter of an inexorably lethal process; however, cancers are heterogeneous and can follow multiple paths, not all of which progress to metastases and death, and include indolent disease that causes no harm during the patient?s lifetime.?

For more details on what our founder Sayer Ji calls the ?Cancer Malignancy Meme,? see his video presentation at the Mind Body Week DC conference, wherein he discuss the ?Rise of Biomedicine? within the context of the mind-body connection, and breast cancer overdiagnosis in particular.

We must keep in mind that this proposed redefinition of cancer is no small academic matter, but will affect the lives of millions of women. Consider that every year, approximately 60,000 women in this country are diagnosed with DCIS, a diagnosis so traumatic that it results in significant psychiatric depression 3 years after even a ?false positive? diagnosis. For those less fortunate women, numbering in the millions over the past 30 years, who were told they had ?cancer? and needed to undergo lumpectomy, radiation, chemotherapy and/or mastectomy, the NCI panel?s recommendation is a hard pill swallow after the damage has already been irrevocably done.

So, what?s the solution? There is a growing movement towards the use of thermography as a primary diagnostic tool, as it uses no ionizing radiation, and can detect the underlying physiological processes that may indicate inflammation, angiogenesis, cancer-specific metabolic changes, etc., many years before a calcified lesion would appear within an x-ray mammogram. Also, the mainstay of any truly preventive strategy against cancer is diet, nutrition, exercise and avoiding chemical and radiation exposures ? the things that we can do? in our daily lives to take back control of and responsibility for our health.

For related research read ?Hidden Dangers? of Mammograms Every Woman Should Know About

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/millions-wrongly-treated-for-cancer-national-cancer-institute-panel-confirms-2/54827/

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