Cross Fire Research Articles

Rooibos tea-in the cross fire of ROS, mitochondrial dysfunction and loss of proteostasis-positioned for healthy aging.

Impaired mitochondrial function and loss of cellular proteostasis control are key hallmarks of aging and are implicated in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. A common denominator is the cell's inability to handle reactive oxygen species (ROS), leading to major downstream oxidative damage that exacerbates neuronal dysfunction. Although we have progressed in understanding the molecular defects associated with neuronal aging, many unanswered questions remain. How much ROS is required to serve cellular function before it becomes detrimental and how does the cell's oxidative status impact mitochondrial function and protein degradation through autophagy? How does ROS regulate autophagy? Aspalathus linearis, also commonly known as rooibos, is an endemic South African plant that is gaining globally acclaim for its antioxidant properties and its role as functional medicinal beverage. In this article we dissect the role of rooibos in the context of the cell's ROS handling capacity, mitochondrial function and autophagy activity. By addressing the dynamic relationship between these critical interconnected systems, and by evaluating the functional properties of rooibos, we unravel its position for preserving cell viability and promoting healthy aging.

SARS-CoV-2 Causes Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Mitophagy Impairment.

Mitochondria, which is essential for adequate innate immune response, energy metabolism and mitochondria reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, might be in the cross fire of Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and host cell defense. However, little is known about interactions between mitochondria and SARS-CoV-2. We performed fluorescent microscopy and found an enrichment of SARS-CoV-2 replication products double stranded RNA (dsRNA) within mitochondria. The entry process of dsRNA might be mediated by Tom20 as observed by reduced mitochondrial localization of SARS-CoV-2 dsRNA in Tom20 knockdown cells. Importantly, decreased mitochondrial localization of dsRNA, as well as mitochondrial membrane stabilizers mdivi-1 and cyclosporin A, inhibited viral load in cells. Next, we detected mitochondrial dysfunction caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, including mitochondrial membrane depolarization, mitochondrial permeability transition pore opening and increased ROS release. In response to mitochondrial damage, we observed an increase in expression and mitochondrial accumulation of Pink1 and Parkin proteins, as well as Pink-1-mediated recruitment of P62 to mitochondria, suggesting initiated mitophagy for mitochondrial quality control and virus clearance. Nevertheless, we observed that mitophagy was inhibited and stayed in early stage with an unchanged Hsp60 expression post SARS-CoV-2 infection. This might be one of the anti-autophagy strategies of SARS-CoV-2 and we used co-immunoprecipitation to found that SARS-CoV-2 infection inhibited P62 and LC3 binding which plays a critical role in selective envelopment of substrates into autophagosomes. Our results suggest that mitochondria are closely involved in SARS-CoV-2 replication and mitochondrial homeostasis is disrupted by SARS-CoV-2 in the virus-cell confrontation.

Cross Fire: BTK Inhibitors Alone or in Combination are the Best Frontline Therapy for CLL.

BTK (Bruton's tyrosine kinase) inhibitors are highly effective front-line therapy for CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia) due to high response rates and prolonged progression-free survival, even in patients with high-risk disease features. They are also generally well tolerated, with the newer BTK inhibitors demonstrating better tolerability than ibrutinib while maintaining efficacy. Adverse effects such as bleeding or infections are usually manageable with supportive care or dose adjustments. Orally administered BTK inhibitors do not require intensive or inpatient monitoring and improve quality-of-life outcomes. Moreover, the established activity of venetoclax in the setting of BTK inhibitor failure is also reassuring as a salvage option. Nevertheless, the advantage of venetoclax as a time-limited treatment option is substantial, despite its inferior progression-free survival, since these patients can get another challenge with a reasonable chance of success. BTK inhibitors after venetoclax may be effective, but long-term data is limited. Given these reasons, BTK inhibitors remain the preferred treatment option as initial therapy for patients with CLL, especially those with del17p or TP53 mutations.

Cross fire: Daratumumab-based therapies are standard of care in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

Cross fire: Daratumumab-based therapies are standard of care in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma

Truth, Justice, and Expertise in 1980s Britain: the Cultural Politics of the New Cross Massacre

Abstract This article examines the movement, led by prominent black British activists, which was established in the aftermath of the 1981 New Cross fire. The campaign showed how the racism long experienced by black urban communities eroded trust in state institutions, and it contested the official narrative of the police investigation and a coroner’s inquest through protests and the deployment of alternative forms of expertise. This was not an isolated case. The 1980s was a decade of disasters which led people in marginalized communities to engage in long-running disputes with the state, eroding trust in the truths presented by he state.

Simulation on smoke re-circulation transition in an urban street canyon for different fire source locations with cross wind

When a fire occurs inside an urban street canyon, the pollutant evolution is particular as a result of the fire-induced high buoyancy. Controlled by the competition of cross wind inertia force and fire plume buoyancy, the presence of fire smoke re-circulation in the street canyon has significant threat on human safety. Previous research mostly reported the re-circulation when fire locates in the center position, but the fire location variation effect has not been taken into consideration. In this paper, a street canyon model of 18 m wide and 18 m high is built with a constant heat release rate of 5 MW, while ten fire distances to the leeward building from 3 to 15 m are simulated. Results show that the smoke re-circulation is distinguished into three regimes for different fire locations. The re-circulation does not exist at the first regime, but it appears with its critical wind velocity slightly increases at the second regime, then the critical velocity increases sharply at the third regime. Besides, the flow patterns, and CO concentrations are presented and discussed as references to such re-circulation transition. Correlations are proposed to predict the critical wind velocity and the corresponding Froude Number for various fire locations.

Exposing EJKs and the State—A Collaborative Review of <em>Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte's Republic</em>

Convergence 2 Codex Nerissa S. Balce and Sarita Echavez See Exposing EJKs and the State— A Collaborative Review of Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte’s Republic In May 2016, the Philippines began a new era of state-­sanctioned death documented by a new visual technology: the digital camera. Under the leadership of the nation’s sixteenth president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, a drug war was launched as part of Duterte’s plan to end illegal drug use and drug trade. The new Philippine president believed that criminals , such as drug users and drug pushers, were “animals” who should be killed without due process (Berehaluk 2016; Goodman and Liwanag 2017). The elimination of criminal elements has been rationalized as a purging necessary for creating the new strongman’s version of the modern republic. Since its unleashing, Duterte’s drug war has claimed more than thirty thousand deaths, with more than 40 percent of the killings committed in Manila, the Philippine capital. Scholars have described this humanitarian crisis as a genocide of the poor (Coronel et al. 2018; Simangan 2018). Most of the dead are from the urban slums—­ men, women, teenagers, and children who were shot or killed in the cross fire, their bodies found in sewers; on dimly lit side streets; at busy intersections; by sari-­sari (corner) stores; and in jeepneys, on motorcycles, and in cars. Some corpses bear the marks of torture; some have their heads wrapped in duct tape so that identifying them has been impossible. Corpses have been found with handwritten signs in Filipino that say “I am a drug pusher.” Since the drug killings, a new generation of Filipino photographers, in the tradition of journalists during the Marcos dictatorship, have emerged Codex 3 to record the horror of the Philippine state. The essays for this Codex discuss the work Manila-­ based photographers Eloisa Lopez, Br. Ciriaco Santiago III, Ezra Acayan, and Raffy Lerma. The new photographs of the drug war return us to the camera’s old intimacies with death and state violence. The photographs of extrajudicial killings—­what Filipinos refer to asEJKs—­appearnotonlyinprintbutalsoonsocialmedia,thusexpanding the reach of the photographs to millions of Filipinos and, by extension, a global audience (Gonzales 2019). These young men and women are the eyes of “The Night Shift” (Fenton 2017). Their grueling schedules begin at nightfall. They rush to the site of a murder or multiple murders, hurrying to photograph the corpses in the dark, before the police take the dead to morgues or funeral parlors that charge the victims’ families tens of thousands of pesos with a significant cut for the police who give them business. They work in near-­impossible conditions—­low lighting; the smell of blood, sewage, and fear; and the hostility of some Philippine police—­ but they continue to share their photographs of EJKs on various media. They have won international accolades for what we have dubbed their “dark lens.” With the assistance of Manila-­based video producer Rica Concepcion, we reached out to the photographers in March 2018, and they agreed to be part of an online exhibition that would bring attention to the drug war killings. As an academic and artistic response to the violence of the Philippine state, we launched Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino CamerainDuterte’sRepublic, on the website of SUNY Stony Brook’s Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice, and Policy, in October 2018. The photographs were accompanied with original brief captions and poems by forty scholars, poets, and artists from the Philippines and North America. We co-­curated Dark Lens with literature and translation studies scholar Pia Arboleda (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) and Manila-­based writer Francine Marquez. The editors were Clare Counihan and Sarita See from the Center for Art and Thought. For this Codex, we invited four scholars from the Philippines and North America to expand the captions they had written for the DarkLens exhibition : literary critic John Labella (Manila) on Lopez; art historian Caroline Baicy (Honolulu) on Santiago; political scientist Ethel Tungohan (Toronto) on Acayan; and cultural studies scholar Gary Devilles (Manila) on Lerma. As we know from the history of photography, the camera is...

Foreword

Foreword Louis A. Pérez Jr. (bio) Few deficiencies of the colonial regime rankled creole sensibilities more than the deplorable state of education. Simply in terms of numbers—the number of teachers and number of schools for the number of students—the colonial education system was unable to meet even the minimum needs of the school-age population. Schools were poorly funded and ill equipped; teachers were often inadequately trained and always poorly paid. “We have been left without schools, without books, without teachers, and without students,” complained Manuel Valdés Rodríguez in 1891. Education was in wretched condition, suffering equally from neglect and negligence, from mismanagement and malfeasance, as well as inadequate instruction and insufficient funding. And of course, as Bonnie Lucero writes with understated emphasis, for Cubans of color the prospects of “limited access to formal education” served to make everything worse. Acts of omission were exacerbated by deeds of commission, for pedagogy was not without a point of view, or, perhaps more correctly, not without a politics. Raquel Otheguy is correct to call attention to the use of “education as a forum to express anxieties [of whites] about the racial situation in Cuba, and they used segregation in educational policy as a tool to limit Afro-descendants’ access to education and thus their participation in society.” These were only some of the most egregious deficiencies of colonial education, and only part of the problem. In fact, and more to the point, colonial education had ceased to meet Cuban needs. The specialization of the economy had reached the point whereby social diversity was derived from production and distribution, access to which was increasingly possible only by mastery of new forms of knowledge and new types of skills. The colonial university and colegio curricula, with their traditional emphasis on law, philosophy, and letters, under the direction of Catholic religious orders, did not admit change easily, if at all. Captain General José G. de la Concha did not fail to appreciate the deepening contradictions within an education system failing to meet the needs of a changing economy, noting in 1853 that while the island had five educational institutions offering a full curriculum in law studies, it lacked even one school to train sugar masters, mechanics, chemists, and engineers—“all so necessary for the principal industry of the country.” Cuban needs had changed, but the colonial curricula had not. New fields of learning, new bodies of knowledge, and especially technical training, science programs, business law, and commerce—all of which had to do with precisely [End Page 149] the forces transforming the physiognomy of daily life in Cuba—were not readily available on the island, which meant, too, that the skills and knowledge Cubans required to make the transition and guarantee a place for themselves in a rapidly changing global market environment could be obtained only abroad. The War of Independence (1895–1898) made everything worse. Nearly four years of war laid waste to the existing colonial educational capacities, such as they were. Funding came to a near halt. Schools were caught between the cross fire of contending armies. The reconcentration policy relocated tens of thousands of boys and girls in overcrowded urban centers in which the importance of schooling was eclipsed by the imperatives of survival. The population scattered from the countryside into the cities and, for many, from the cities to exile. A disproportionate number of teachers were among the many thousands of Cubans who abandoned the island in search of refuge abroad. Conditions were frightful. It had been a close and intimate war. Many tens of thousands of men, women, and children, as shattered families and broken households, as widows and orphans, the aged, the ill, and the infirm, the maimed and the marred, crowded into towns and cities across the island, there to expand into a swelling itinerant population of supplicants and mendicants, to confront an uncertain future, not quite certain how, or where, or with what, to begin anew. These years were never made up. The losses were never recovered. ________ Education was a matter of priority during the US military occupation (1899– 1902). What was especially remarkable about North American imperial administration in Cuba...

Procesamiento del arte y política: La España de la Guerra Civil vista desde El Laberinto Mágico de Max Aub

Durante la Guerra Civil Española, Max Aub fue parte de ese colectivo republicano que huyó de la muerte exiliándose tras la llegada de Franco. En calidad de escritor, Aub utilizó todas sus energías para recopilar en una serie de seis novelas -El Laberinto Mágico- eventos relacionados con esos tres años previos a la dictadura. En medio de la crónica sobresale un tema vital: los efectos de la guerra en la producción, recepción y preservación del arte. Los escritores, pintores, músicos, se ven, de repente, en medio de un fuego cruzado donde parece imposible no tomar partido. Al menos así lo expresa Aub en su Historia de la Novela Española Contemporánea, donde se desmarca de su maestro, Ortega y Gasset, abandona la línea de la deshumanización del arte y se enfoca en una literatura realista que nos muestra al artista en medio de la guerra.

Abstract 994: Combining ruthenium metallo-intercalators and targeted radionuclide therapy for EGFR-overexpressing oesophageal cancer

Abstract Targeted radionuclide therapy (TRT) combines the specificity of molecular targeting with the potent cytotoxicity of ionising radiation. An emerging question is how to most effectively integrate TRT with radiosensitizing small molecules [1]. Auger electron-emitting radionuclides such as 111In are well-suited as the therapeutic radionuclide as their short-range reduces “cross fire” damage to neighbouring cells. As a novel chemical class of radiosensitizing agent, we have found ruthenium polypyridyl complexes (RPCs) that intercalate between DNA base pairs such as Ru(phen)2(tpphz)2+ (phen = 1,10 phenanthroline, tpphz = tetrapyridophenazine) act to stall replication forks and impede mitotic progression in human oesophageal cancer cells [2,3]. This dual mechanism of action results in preferential growth inhibition of rapidly-proliferating oesophageal cancer cells with elevated mitotic indices. In contrast to cisplatin and other DNA-damaging agents, relatively low DSB levels are generated in response to RPC metallo-intercalation and reduced cytotoxicity towards non-cancer cells is observed. In addition to this, treatment is able to enhance cancer cell sensitivity to IR by increasing IR-induced DNA double-strand break (DSB) damage, decreasing cell survival in a synergistic manner. Based on these discoveries, we explore how nanoparticle-mediated delivery of Ru(phen)2(tpphz)2+ and the Auger electron emitting radionuclide 111In can achieve localised cytotoxicity enhancement specifically in EGFR-overexpressing oesophageal cancer cells, thereby demonstrating both a combinational effect alongside molecular targeting for this novel combination [4].

US-China trade war heats up

The US and China are escalating their trade war, and the US chemical industry is caught in the cross fire. In September, the Trump administration imposed 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods—among them 1,364 chemicals—adding to tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods levied earlier in the year. On May 10, the Office of the US Trade Representative raised the 10% tariffs to 25% as US officials expressed frustration over negotiations with China. They accused their Chinese counterparts of retreating from “specific commitments” made in earlier negotiation rounds. Ratcheting up the pressure further, the US is putting into motion a plan to impose tariffs of up to 25% on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. That list is laden with consumer items, such as cell phones and textiles. It also contains chemicals like vinyl chloride, vanillin, and sucralose. In retaliation for the May 10 action, China

Re-direction of smoke flow in inclined tunnel fires

The re-direction of smoke flow in inclined tunnel fires refers to the phenomenon that the smoke flow direction suddenly changes due to the changes of thermal buoyancy or outside pressure or the activation of fans. This poses special risk for fire rescue services fighting fires in tunnels. Both small-scale tunnel fire tests (28 scenarios) and numerical simulations of full-scale tunnel fires (31 scenarios) were conducted to study this special phenomenon. A one-dimensional model was used to predict the flow velocity in the inclined tunnels, based on two different methods for calculating the mean smoke temperature (Method I and Method II, respectively). Results show that the smoke flow direction could be well predicted by the model with Method II. When the ventilation velocity is relatively large and the flow tends to be one dimensional, both methods produce similar results. Further, the influences of important factors on the re-direction of smoke flows were systematically analyzed. These factors include heat release rate, tunnel slope, tunnel length, friction factor, tunnel cross sectional area and fire source location.

Memory Segment Matching Network Based Image Geo-Localization

Humans and other animals can easily perform self-localization by means of vision. However, that remains a challenging task for computer vision algorithms with traditional image matching methods. In this paper, we propose a memory segment matching network for image geo-localization that is inspired by the discovery of the place cell in the brain by using artificial intelligence. The place cell becomes active when an animal enters a particular location, where the external sensory information in the environment matches features stored in the hippocampus. In order to emulate the operation of the place cell, we employ a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a long-short term memory (LSTM) to extract the visual features of the environment. The extracted features are stored as segmented memory bounded with a location tag. A matching network is utilized to calculate the cross firing probability of the memory segment and the current input visual data. The final prediction of the location is obtained by sending the cross firing probability to an inference engine that uses a hidden Markov model (HMM). According to the simulation results, the localization accuracy reaches up to 95% for the datasets tested, which outperforms the state-of-the-art by 17% in localization detection accuracy.

Hybrid dose calculation: a dose calculation algorithm for microbeam radiation therapy

Microbeam radiation therapy (MRT) is still a preclinical approach in radiation oncology that uses planar micrometre wide beamlets with extremely high peak doses, separated by a few hundred micrometre wide low dose regions. Abundant preclinical evidence demonstrates that MRT spares normal tissue more effectively than conventional radiation therapy, at equivalent tumour control. In order to launch first clinical trials, accurate and efficient dose calculation methods are an inevitable prerequisite.In this work a hybrid dose calculation approach is presented that is based on a combination of Monte Carlo and kernel based dose calculation. In various examples the performance of the algorithm is compared to purely Monte Carlo and purely kernel based dose calculations.The accuracy of the developed algorithm is comparable to conventional pure Monte Carlo calculations. In particular for inhomogeneous materials the hybrid dose calculation algorithm out-performs purely convolution based dose calculation approaches. It is demonstrated that the hybrid algorithm can efficiently calculate even complicated pencil beam and cross firing beam geometries. The required calculation times are substantially lower than for pure Monte Carlo calculations.

Victimized Twice: Promoting Accountability and Justice for Survivors of Wartime Rape in South Sudan

In December 2013, South Sudan plunged into a massive scale of violence because of the outbreak of conflict between the Sudan Liberation Army and the Sudan People Liberation Movement. The fight took an ethnic turn as soldiers from the country's largest groups, the Dinka, and Nuer, divided their loyalties to either President Kiir or Mr. Machar respectively. While some civilians were caught in the cross fire, others were deliberately targeted along ethnic lines. Women are the immediate victims of this conflict because of rampant sexual abuse perpetrated against them.

GAME ONLINE DAN AGRESIVITAS ANAK USIA SMP DI SIDOARJO

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of online games towards aggressiveness of junior high school students in Sidoarjo Regency. This research used a quantitative research through an explanatory approach. The sampling technique in this study was a random sampling of 100 students in the Krian District, Sidoarjo Regency. Analyzing data used linear regression. The results showed that the online games that is currently booming in Sidoarjo Regency were Game Action Adventure (78.2%), Game action "lostaga" (77.2%), FPS (first person shooter) "Cross Fire" (73, 4%). Aggressiveness that was the most often done by the respondent did not serve the conversation (75.4%) did not prevent others to hurt those who have hurt him (71.2%), and did not talk the person who has hurt him (69.2%). Based on research showed that, the study of online games did not affect to the aggressiveness of the child.

Changes do happen - but slowly.

Mike Paynter's career began in emergency departments in London, dealing with issues such as the King's Cross fire in the 1980s. He is now in Somerset, where he is a consultant nurse for community urgent care.

Guest Editorial: SPE Provides Support During Industry Downturn

Guest Editorial SPE has served members through the ebbs and flows of the oil and gas industry since 1957. The exploration and production business is inherently cyclical. Our current E&P industry downturn is a result of our industry’s relentless effort to find new oil and natural gas resources and develop the technology to unlock these resources from challenging reservoirs. Through every industry cycle, SPE is steady and supportive. I know this to be true because I was a member long before I became the CEO. When the industry experiences a downturn, companies react. That can result in layoffs, budgets tightening, mergers and acquisitions ramping up, and similar responses. All that sounds logical, but when you are the one caught in the cross fire, the obstacles can seem insurmountable. I know that all too well since I found myself in that dilemma in 1987 when I was unemployed during an industry downturn. At a time when petroleum engineering job openings were scarce, I turned to the contacts I gained as an SPE member. I attended the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE), networked with fellow colleagues, and was able to find another opportunity through these contacts. I appreciated my membership in SPE and viewed its benefits as tangible and valuable then. Years later, now as SPE’s CEO, I strive to assure the commitment the Society has to serve its members in broad and specific ways. SPE exists to serve you, our members, throughout your career. We are here for you whether you are a seasoned engineer, a young professional, or a student member. As the industry reacts, we want you to know that your Society is proactive with resources and programs to serve your needs. At times like these, there are a few specific things you should know about: SPE is launching a new job board that will include jobs in the oil and gas industry that may be of interest to members who are out of work. Members can request a dues waiver if unemployed or for other financial hardship reasons. SPE offers health insurance for members, including a private health exchange for US members. Members who are out of work will receive a free one-day registration to attend the exhibition and special programs designed for them during the last day of ATCE in Houston in September. SPE offers approximately 100 free webinars annually for members on topics that help them improve their skills. E-mentoring programs are available for young professionals who have not experienced a downturn previously. PetroWiki is an ideal way for retired or unemployed members to stay engaged and demonstrate their expertise. SPE offers a free, online competency management tool for members to assess their current professional capabilities utilizing 22 key E&P job competency models covering geosciences, reservoir engineering, well engineering, production engineering and operations, project and facilities engineering, and HSE. Members will be able to use the self-assessment results to generate an individual development plan to address competency gaps. Access.to a tailored development plan can serve as an ongoing resource for members who want to keep their skills current and credentials consistent with prevailing standards. Rig counts may decline, but the demand for innovation in oil and gas E&P is increasing. As the industry constricts, SPE is here for our members, providing services and resources efficiently and effectively. The risks and rewards of a career in energy may be unpredictable at times, but know that you can always count on SPE. If you have additional ideas about ways SPE can help our members during the downturn, send me an email at ceo@spe.org. JPT

Marikana: bold recommendations embedded in timidity

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 6 Volume 22 Issue 3 2015 The Inquiry demonstrated repeated police mendacity: evidence was withheld, doctored and planted and senior police lied in the witness box AMCU’s poaching of NUM members was found to be inaccurate. The Inquiry discredited police witness Mr X, a striker claiming to be part of the strike committee, who accused AMCU president Joseph Mthunjwa of planning violence against NUM members. In fact Mthunjwa was cited in the report as the one person, who if people had listened to his advice, could have prevented the Marikana massacre. The Commission also revealed how police leadership manufactured a narrative before the Inquiry to which all police witnesses adhered even if it meant committing perjury. The narrative was that muti (drug) crazed mineworkers attacked the police who had no option but to shoot. The Commission showed this narrative to be false. The inquiry was also able to garner substantial information on what happened at Scene 2. In essence several police tactical units pursued the workers and in a chaotic operation, believing workers were armed, began shooting at each other whilst workers were caught in the cross fire. It also exposed that some workers were assassinated at point blank range whilst attempting to surrender. Further, the Inquiry uncovered wider truths which a court case would not have revealed. It importantly exposed a chain of command from top politicians to senior police leadership down to armed tactical response teams in a plan to disperse and disarm strikers even if this meant bloodshed. However although this was uncovered the inquiry was not able to prove that direct orders were given by police minister Nathi Mthethwa so the report is ambivalent on his role. The Inquiry was also able to prove repeated police mendacity. It exposed that evidence was withheld, doctored and planted and that senior police lied in the witness box. So, for example, a year into the Commission, under cross examination, a senior policeman revealed that a hard drive submitted to the Inquiry had been doctored. The original contained a conversation between the provincial police commissioner and a Lonmin executive on how the strike must be immediately ended on Ramaphosa’s instructions. The reason being that a rival political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, was gaining workers’ support which would impact on the ANC’s 2014 election results. Thus a hastily assembled police plan resulted in 34 deaths. The Inquiry also exposed the existence of a police National Management Forum meeting the night before the massacre where the decision to end the strike the next day was taken. Minutes of this meeting however mysteriously disappeared. The Report includes detailed recommendations on the reform of public policing. These include that the national and provincial police commisT he South African President recently released the Marikana Commission of Inquiry findings . These relate to events between 9 - 16 August 2012 when 34 striking mine workers were gunned down by police and a further 78 seriously injured at Lonmin Plc’s Marikana mine in the North West province. At Scene 1 where 17 people died the events were broadcast globally. Twenty minutes later, hidden from the media, a further 17 workers were killed as they attempted to hide, flee or surrender at Scene 2. In mop up operations over 200 workers were arrested and bizarrely charged with killing their co-workers. In the eight days prior to the massacre, a strike led by rock drill operators had resulted in the killings of ten others: two SAPS (South African Police Service) members, two Lonmin security guards, a Lonmin supervisor and five mineworkers. These were also investigated by the Commission. The brutality of the events shocked postapartheid South Africa and assumed a political face as the ANC government distanced itself from the events, including ANC national executive (now South Africa’s vice-president) and Lonmin board member, Cyril Ramaphosa. The events were further complicated by strikers shifting their allegiance before, during and after the strike from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in alliance with the ANC to the non-aligned AMCU (Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union) claiming the NUM was a sweetheart union. A judicial inquiry in South Africa is appointed by...

Twitter in the cross fire--the use of social media in the Westgate Mall terror attack in Kenya.

On September 2013 an attack on the Westgate mall in Kenya led to a four day siege, resulting in 67 fatalities and 175 wounded. During the crisis, Twitter became a crucial channel of communication between the government, emergency responders and the public, facilitating the emergency management of the event. The objectives of this paper are to present the main activities, use patterns and lessons learned from the use of the social media in the crisis. Using TwitterMate, a system developed to collect, store and analyze tweets, the main hashtags generated by the crowd and specific Twitter accounts of individuals, emergency responders and NGOs, were followed throughout the four day siege. A total of 67,849 tweets were collected and analyzed. Four main categories of hashtags were identified: geographical locations, terror attack, social support and organizations. The abundance of Twitter accounts providing official information made it difficult to synchronize and follow the flow of information. Many organizations posted simultaneously, by their manager and by the organization itself. Creating situational awareness was facilitated by information tweeted by the public. Threat assessment was updated through the information posted on social media. Security breaches led to the relay of sensitive data. At times, misinformation was only corrected after two days. Social media offer an accessible, widely available means for a bi-directional flow of information between the public and the authorities. In the crisis, all emergency responders used and leveraged social media networks for communicating both with the public and among themselves. A standard operating procedure should be developed to enable multiple responders to monitor, synchronize and integrate their social media feeds during emergencies. This will lead to better utilization and optimization of social media resources during crises, providing clear guidelines for communications and a hierarchy for dispersing information to the public and among responding organizations.