Is Fat Good?

Is being slightly overweight a reason to be jolly?

Stockbyte/Thinkstock.

Fat is bad for you, right? That?s what doctors tell us. But a review of nearly 100 studies, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, confirms previous indications that the story is more complex. Being overweight or even mildly obese, as measured by body mass index, doesn?t make you more likely to die than a person of normal weight. It makes you slightly less likely to die.

How can this be? Is fat good for you?

That?s the wrong conclusion, according to epidemiologists. They insist that, in general, excess weight is dangerous. But then they have to explain why the mortality-to-weight correlation runs the wrong way. The result is a messy, collective scramble for excuses and explanations that can make the new data fit the old ideas. Here?s what they?ve come up with:

1. The difference is barely significant. In the JAMA analysis, overweight people were just 6 percent less likely to die than normal-weight people. ?It's probably only statistically significant because of the large number? of people in the combined data set, says one skeptic. Maybe. But if the correlation had gone in the other direction?showing a marginally higher death rate among the overweight?you wouldn?t hear scientists arguing that what?s statistically significant isn?t really significant.

2. Death risk is the wrong standard. So what if fat doesn?t correlate with mortality? It still correlates with many diseases, which may ultimately affect mortality. Some studies covered by the JAMA review tracked people for up to 15 years. Others tracked them for as few as five years. Anyone who made it to that point counted as a survivor, regardless of diabetes, heart disease, or other conditions that may have contributed to death after the study ended.

3. Overweight is too close to obese. We used to think that being overweight gave you a higher risk of death. Then we collected data that suggested overweight might be OK but obesity was still deadly. Now we have data that suggest even mild obesity may be OK. To account for this, weight-control advocates are adding another link to their long-standing sermon: If you?re overweight, you?re on the road not just to mild obesity but eventually to morbid obesity, which the JAMA analysis validates as a huge mortality risk (with a 29 percent higher likelihood of death). So don?t gloat that you?re a measly 6 percent healthier than thinner people. Focus on the big picture: avoiding morbid obesity.

4. The dangers of being underweight hide the dangers of being overweight. A JAMA editorial notes that people in the thinner half of the ?normal? BMI range have a higher mortality rate than those in the plumper half. This thinner subset inflates the normal-weight group?s mortality rate, which makes the mortality rate among overweight and obese people look good by comparison. The solution is to shift the whole scale to the right, so that these thin people are recognized as underweight, while people presently labeled overweight are redefined as normal weight. Once we?ve completed this reallocation, it will be clear once again that overweight people?now defined to include many whose BMI would previously have put them in the obese category?are at higher risk of death than the newly reclassified normal-weight people are. The value of weight control will be reaffirmed, but the thresholds will have changed.

5. Some kinds of fat are worse than others. At the moment, scientists seem to agree that while belly fat is bad for you, butt and thigh fat might be safe or even beneficial. So instead of focusing on BMI, we should measure your waist-to-hip ratio, body-fat percentage, blood pressure, blood lipids, glucose, and cardio-respiratory fitness.

6. Fat helps you survive some diseases. The JAMA editorial points out that among people suffering ?a wasting disease, heart disease, diabetes, renal dialysis, or older age,? higher BMI correlates with a lower mortality rate. ?Even in the absence of chronic disease, small excess amounts of adipose tissue may provide needed energy reserves during acute catabolic illnesses.? That doesn?t mean fat makes you healthy. It means that once you?re unhealthy, fat might keep you alive, at least for a while.

7. Fat protects you against injury. Many old people die from falls. Chubbier people ?have more padding to protect the bones should a patient take a tumble, lowering the risk of a life-endangering hip fracture,? notes the Los Angeles Times.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=c987159d4152a87f3d19f29e805e38ae

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U.N. lifts Syria death toll to "truly shocking" 60,000

AMMAN/GENEVA (Reuters) - More than 60,000 people have died in Syria's uprising and civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday, dramatically raising the death toll in a struggle that shows no sign of ending.

In the latest violence, dozens were killed in a rebellious Damascus suburb when a government air strike turned a petrol station into an inferno, incinerating drivers who had rushed there for a rare chance to fill their tanks, activists said.

"I counted at least 30 bodies. They were either burnt or dismembered," said Abu Saeed, an activist who arrived in the area an hour after the 1 p.m. (1100 GMT) raid in Muleiha, a suburb on the eastern edge of the capital.

In the north, rebels launched a major attack to take a military airport, and said they had succeeded in destroying a fighter plane and a helicopter on the ground.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said in Geneva that researchers cross-referencing seven sources over five months of analysis had listed 59,648 people killed in Syria between March 15, 2011 and November 30, 2012.

"The number of casualties is much higher than we expected and is truly shocking," she said. "Given that there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013."

There was no breakdown by ethnicity or information about whether the dead were rebels, soldiers or civilians. There was also no estimate of an upper limit of the possible toll.

Previously, the opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group had put the toll at around 45,000 confirmed dead but said the real number was likely to be higher.

FATAL RUSH FOR PETROL

Video footage taken by activists at the scene of the air strike on the petrol station showed the body of a man in a helmet still perched on a motorcycle amid flames engulfing the scene. Another man was shown carrying a dismembered body.

The video could not be verified. The government bars access to the Damascus area to most international media.

The activists said rockets were fired from a nearby government air base at the petrol station and a residential area after the air raid.

"Until the raid, Muleiha was quiet. We have been without petrol for four days and people from the town and the countryside rushed to the station when a state consignment came in," Abu Fouad, another activist at the scene, said by phone.

President Bashar al-Assad's forces also fired artillery and mortars at the capital's rebellious districts of Douma, Irbin and Zamlaka, activists living there said.

After nightfall there was shelling in the Jobar and Assali districts, and fighting occurred in the northern suburb of Harasta, on the highway leading north, Syria's main artery.

Assad's forces control the centre of the capital, while rebels and their sympathizers hold a ring of southern and eastern suburbs that are often hit from the air.

The Observatory said a separate air strike killed 12 members of a family, most of them children, in Moadamiyeh, a southwestern district near the centre of Damascus where rebels have fought for a foothold.

The rebels hold wide swathes of the north and east of the country, but have been unable to protect the areas they control from Assad's air power. Their main targets in recent months have been air bases, with a goal of preventing the government from using its jets and helicopters.

The rebels launched a major attack on Wednesday on Taftanaz, a northern air base which they hope to seize. A statement by the northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said they had battled their way to the airport's main command building but were not yet in control of the site.

The statement said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the Taftanaz airport grounds and destroyed a helicopter.

A rebel speaking from near the airport told Reuters the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but rebels had destroyed a fighter jet as well as the helicopter.

The family of an American freelance journalist, James Foley, 39, said on Wednesday he had been missing in Syria since being kidnapped six weeks ago by gunmen. No group has publicly claimed responsibility for his abduction.

Syria was by far the most dangerous country for journalists in 2012, with 28 killed there.

The conflict began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule and turned into an armed revolt after months of government repression.

"FOR GOD'S EYES"

Both sides have been accused of committing atrocities in the 21-month-old conflict, but the United Nations says the government and its allies have been more culpable.

In the latest evidence of atrocities, Internet video posted by Syrian rebels shows armed men, apparently fighters loyal to Assad, stabbing two men to death and stoning them with concrete blocks in a summary execution lasting several minutes.

Reuters could not verify the provenance of the footage or the identity of the perpetrators and their victims. The video was posted on Tuesday but it was not clear where or when it was filmed. However it does clearly show a summary execution and torture, apparently being carried out by government supporters.

At one point, one of the assailants says: "For God's eyes and your Lord, O Bashar," an Arabic incantation suggesting actions being carried out in the leader's name.

The video was posted on YouTube by the media office of the Damascus-based rebel First Brigade, which said it had been taken from a captured member of the shabbiha pro-government militia.

The perpetrators show off for the camera, smiling for close-up shots, slicing at the victims' backs, then stabbing them and bashing them with large slabs of masonry.

Syria's civil war is the longest and deadliest conflict to emerge from uprisings that began sweeping the Arab world in 2011 and has developed a significant sectarian element.

Rebels, mostly from the Sunni Muslim majority, confront Assad's army and security forces, dominated by his Shi'ite-derived Alawite sect, which, along with some other minorities, fears revenge if he falls.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Michael Roddy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-rebels-attack-military-airport-northwest-101534845.html

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Taste the bubbly science of Champagne

Francois Nascimbeni / AFP - Getty Images

French researcher Gerard Liger-Belair works on a glass of champagne in his laboratory in Reims, located in the Champagne region in eastern France.

By Alan Boyle

If you really want to impress your bubbly-sipping friends tonight, be sure to chill a big bottle of Champagne to somewhere between 39 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit (4 to 9 degrees Celsius), bring out the narrow glasses (not those wide plastic cups!) and pour the stuff gently down the angled side of the glass like beer.

This is the scientific way to treat Champagne sparkling wine, based on research conducted over the years by Gerard Liger-Belair, a physicist at the University of Reims in France's Champagne region. His studies on the behavior of bubbly?? including high-speed photography of popping bubbles and infrared imaging of carbon dioxide flow?? have made him the world's highest-profile expert on Champagne science.

It's a tough job?? but somebody's gotta do it.

"I love the beauties behind bubble science," Liger-Belair said in an email. "Since I became a scientist, many people have remarked that I seem to have landed the best job in all of physics, since my research on bubbles requires that I work in a lab stocked with top-notch Champagne ??and I'd be inclined to agree."

---

For Liger-Belair and his colleagues, it's mostly about the bubbles. To be sure, there's much more to sparkling wine than the sparkle: As many as 80 different vintages of wine may be blended together to create one batch of Champagne using the traditional process. A small amount of yeast and sugar is added, and the bottles are sealed up for fermentation. Months later, the yeast sediment is blown out through the bottle's neck ? and then the bottle is quickly corked up and wired shut.

Liger-Belair's research focuses on what happens next, when the cork is popped off. The CO2 that was created through the fermentation process bubbles out of the wine???tickling the nose with a fizzy aerosol of alcohol and flavorful ingredients known as volatile organic compounds. The more CO2 that can be liberated after the champagne is poured into the glass, the better.

That's where science comes into play. Liger-Belair and his colleagues recently reported that larger bottles of Champagne retain more CO2 in the wine as it's being poured into the glasses. So if you have a choice between several small bottles and fewer big bottles, go for the big ones. But be sure those bottles are well-chilled: Warm champagne loses its CO2 quickly as it's being poured, leaving less to fizz up out of the glass.

Ray Isle, executive wine editor of Food & Wine, shares five ways to get the most out of your New Year's bubbly.

Speaking of the glass: Liger-Belair's team determined that tall, narrow-rimmed flutes produce a better effect than the wide-rimmed "coupes" that folks more typically associate with sparkling wine. That's because the CO2 rises out of a wide-rimmed glass too quickly, over a wider surface area. Also, glass flutes are better than plastic cups, and not just for aesthetic reasons: The plastic material is hydrophobic?? that is, liquid-repellent?? which means the bubbles are more likely to adhere to the sides of the cup and less likely to contribute to a nice fizz.

If you really want to get your fizz on, wash your glasses before the party and dry them with a towel rather than letting them air-dry: The microscopic fibers of cellulose that are left inside the glass actually contribute to bubble production. Some glass-makers add tiny scratches to their Champagne glasses to create pleasing patterns of bubbles, and you can feel free to experiment with the same technique. (Just not with the expensive glassware.)

When it comes to the pouring, don't splash the Champagne straight down into the bottom of the glass. Instead, trickle it down the side, like beer. That preserves more of the carbon dioxide for the bubbles that rise while you're drinking the wine. "The beer-like way of serving champagne much less impacts its dissolved CO2 concentration than the Champagne-like way of serving it, and especially at low Champagne temperatures (4 degrees C and 12 degrees C)," Liger-Belair reported.

Liger-Belair has laid out many more findings about Champagne in a decade's worth of research papers?? and in his book, "Uncorked: The Science of Champagne," which is being updated with the latest revelations for a new edition. One of his recent papers, an 88-page survey written for the European Physical Journal, is available for free download today.

Here's a sampling of sparkling facts:?

• There are six bottles' worth of gaseous CO2 packed into every bottle of Champagne.
• A significant amount of that CO2 leaks out of the bottle through the cork. Liger-Belair's study of Champagne bottled in the 1990s suggested that almost a third of the CO2 could be lost over the course of 15 years. "Because the size of bubbles is linked with the level of dissolved CO2 in Champagne, bubbles get thinner over time when Champagne ages," Liger-Belair said.
• The higher the wine's temperature, the bigger the "pop" when the cork is released. That's because the CO2 pressure increases with temperature. Some folks might keep their Champagne warm to maximize the pop, but be careful: A popped cork can travel as fast as 50 mph (80 kilometers per hour). Every year, the American Academy of Opthalmology warns that sparkling-wine corks rank among the top holiday-related eye hazards ? and provides tips for proper cork removal.
• Only 5 percent of the pop goes toward the cork's kinetic energy. Most of the rest goes toward generating the popping sound's shock wave.?The pattern of CO2 that's set loose when the cork is popped is similar to the mushroom cloud created by an exploding atom bomb.
• If you see a white wisp of mist rising from a just-popped bottle, that's not carbon dioxide. That's a fog of ethanol and water vapor, triggered by the sudden drop in gas temperature when the pressure is released. (That's what's known as adiabatic expansion.)?

It might seem frivolous to devote so much attention to the physics of fizz, but Liger-Belair said his research is about much more than your single bottle of bubbly on New Year's Eve.

"In fact, bubbles are a fantastic example of bubble dynamics in general, and studies dealing with champagne bubbles can be extended to many other areas where bubbles play a role, in natural as well as industrial processes. For example, marine aerosols created by bursting bubbles behave like champagne's bursting bubbles. ... The scales are different, but the basic principles are identical," he said in his email.

Liger-Belair's research at the University of Reims is generally funded by enological and agricultural programs in France and Europe ??such as L'Association Recherche Oenologique Champagne et Universit

?, which was created to boost the Champagne region's best-known industr

y.

"As far as champagne is concerned, 350 million bottles sold per year all over the world deserve particular attention. The job may seem fun indeed, as any job made with passion should be," Liger-Belair said. "I am aware that devoting so much energy to studying champagne bubbles may seem 'weird,' but the implications of bubble dynamics are universal."

So just before you take a sip of cool, sparkling beverage from your towel-dried flute, raise a toast to Liger-Belair ... and the science of champagne.

Update for 12:45 p.m. ET:?Legend has it that the wide-rimmed, bowl-like champagne coupe was modeled after the breast of Marie Antoinette (or the Empress Josephine, or Helen of Troy ...), but Snopes.com says?there's no truth to the legend.?

More about the science of alcoholic drinks:

---

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Source: http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/31/16255128-the-science-of-champagne-bubbles-up-again-for-new-years-eve?lite

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Student Loans ? The Giant Scam That Robs The Nation | Think Left

?Peter Kellow writes

It was one of the grand projects of current JP Morgan Director, Tony Blair, in one of his previous employments as British Prime Minister: make university education open to the many. The many here was meant to be 50% of the young now going through education. The plan included making students pay for their higher education through loans. In the earlier years of the project, they paid just a little, then a lot, then practically the whole of the cost of the education.

Students now going through university will emerge up to their eyes in debt and this debt will dog them for years. Debt is not a superficial aspect of life. It drags you down. R.W. Emerson whom I cited in?Newsletter 109?put it aptly when he said back in 1836 ?Debt, grinding debt ?? which disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base..? Debt is a scourge of our lives.

.

Leaving aside the question of whether we really need 50% of our young going to higher education, let us ask whether there is any alternative to making people pay for higher education and let us ask whether it might be more sensible for the nation to pay for it. All the four main parties (we have to say ?four? now with UKIP at 10% in the poles) support the current system, the only debate being about whether former students should pay for the education with loans or whether they will should do it through taxation ? the so-called ?graduate? tax.

Education is an investment. Everyone is agreed on that. An investment, let us remind ourselves, is simply this. You place money in a certain way by purchasing a good or a service and you expect to see a return, a payback, at some later date on the money you placed. If the investment is sound, the payback will cover, or more than cover, the costs involved in the investment, that is, the money placed and the charges (interest, fees, etc.) incurred. In short, a good investment shows a profit.

Let us consider education as an investment in two ways:

one, as an investment by an individual
two, as an investment by the state.

At present, it is the individual who makes the substantial investment in higher education, with the state just contributing some financial support through capital expenditure and some fixed costs. Essentially it is the student who buys his or her education by taking out a ?student loan? and then has to repay that loan during their working life. The payback comes, in theory, in the form of higher salaries than would have been the case without the education. If that does not happen the investment loses money and the individual has debts that will be difficult to pay off.

Thus, at present, the state invests relatively little in higher education. The investment is seen purely as an individual matter.

Now look at education as a different kind of investment: an investment by the state, ie, by the nation. In this, the government finances the education of students itself and also gives the student a grant to enable them to support themselves during the period at university. In any current discussion by the main parties on the subject, that situation would be considered as a straight loss for the government with no payback of any kind in the future. Thoughts would be directed only to the increase in government debt today. That is all. It was not so in Britain in the past and it is not so in other countries today (eg. France).

Investment, as I said, is where you place a sum of money today in order to see a payback and a profit in the future. So how does a government investing in education today get its money back? Simple. Through future taxation. The economy needs an educated workforce in order to compete and prosper in the future. Without that, we will go into decline and as the economy falters so will government tax revenues. But can we be sure that the money invested in education will be recovered in the future through taxation? For,if it is not recovered the government will be out of pocket and the national debt will rise.

Well, clearly we will never be able to carry out a watertight accountancy exercise to show that investment in education is a ?good deal? for the government. Any attempt to put figures on the matter is foolhardy. You cannot estimate the benefits that ensue from having a well educated population. But equally you cannot?overestimate them. If you want to appreciate all the benefits you have also to put into the equation that free education means social mobility and so the nation benefits from talent that would otherwise be wasted. The social mobility also creates a financial benefit for the nation by reducing isolated deprived communities that nurture delinquency and crime. I could go on. The associated benefits are as enormous as they are unquantifiable.

But leaving aside the larger societal perspective, the strong likelihood is that the government will collect sufficient returns on its investment simply and visibly through taxation. After all, if it works for the individual, it must also work for the government, and for this reason. By the government investing it has one big advantage over the individual ? the interest rate on the loan. Under the present economic model the government would finance the education through bond issues which would attract a much lower interest rate that the individual student loans.

Now a Democratic Republican Party government will do better than that. It will change the whole financial system and the government will not raise the money through bonds issues but through direct money creation. This will eliminate the interest charges so making the investment much more profitable for the government. Once this system is in place, there will overall be no increase in the money supply, as collection of taxation directly and indirectly will pay back the investment. (It is, by the way, vital to control the money supply because too big an increase would result in economic damage.)

We now come back to the question: why do the current parties favour putting people into debt in order to take higher education? To answer this we have to bring in our old friends that feature so often in these newsletters: the banks and the non-taxpaying global superrich. These are the real drivers behind the current policy of massive student indebtedness. They have an insatiable need for debt that they can buy and profit from and the JP Morgan Director we mentioned at the beginning of this piece was an enthusiastic promoter of their interests when a holder of political office, prior to taking up his ?1 million per year official position among their ranks.

It works like this. It is all down to the magic of securitisation, the financial instrument dreamed up in the 1960s but that really took off in the 1980s and reached stratospheric proportions in the noughties. All, yes,?all, student loans are now subject to securitisation. The high street bank that offers you the loan is just an agent collecting the fees for ?originating? the loan.

The student signs up for the loan and is then in long term debt. This makes this individual?s financial life perfect for securitisation. The banks transfers a big bundle of student loans to a company called a special purpose entity (SPE) so they are shifted off its balance sheet, freeing it up to make more similar loans. The SPEs are located in tax havens, usually, the British Cayman Islands, and the fact that they are in tax havens is integral the high profitability of the deal. The SPE then performs the ?securitisation? process, whereby it takes the bundled up loans and divides them up into sellable units called collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). These are then offered on the global market. Many will be bought by individuals who avoid tax in a variety of way such us by hiding behind shell companies registered in tax havens or secretive low tax countries like Switzerland. Meanwhile the student tries to get on with his or her life and in doing so supports the global banks and their superrich clients.

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Flag of the Cayman Islands?

Many people think that the reason for students paying for their education is to avoid government debt. But this is not the real driver and never was. JP Morgan Director Blair, expanded the student population and at the same time forced them all into debt. This was neither an educational programme nor a social mobility programme but part of the ongoing process of ?the ?financialising? all of our citizens lives burdening them with grinding debt that can be securitised so transferring ?wealth from working people to the superrich.

But there is a further major aspect to student loans that has to be emphasised. Financing higher education through student loans means that the government effectively abrogates any responsibility to direct education into areas where is it likely to be needed and away from those where it is not. If it is the state that invests in higher education then it has an interest in making sure that its investment will result in good employment for the graduates so that it can recoup the investment through taxation. With the individual funding their own education this direct line between investment and return does not exist. The state simply washes its hands of the matter.

Also universities are forced to design their courses to attract students and increase their income. Long term interests of the nation are therefore not a part either of the students? or the universities? calculations as to the choice of subjects and syllabuses. While it is desirable for the universities to have a good degree of independence they should not be forced to have to make choices simply to increase student intake. If they are then those courses are likely to be ill-conceived in relation to their likely usefulness.

As an example to illustrate this, I can cite my own profession of architecture. A few years ago there was a glut of students doing architecture. There were fees at the time but they were affordable for many. Architecture was popular amoung the young as a future career and so the universities provided a lot more places in order to collect lots of fees. This increase was quite unrelated to the demand for architects in the profession and so a glut of recently qualified graduates was produced and many could not find jobs. This meant they could not advance their experience and in many cases the resulting big ?hole? in their CV meant that their career was in ruins before they started. As they aged employers would take the more recently qualified and they could be left ?on the shelf?.

Now the situation is the reverse whereby not enough are studying architecture, especially because it is a five year course and so you emerge with huge debts. Coupled with this is the thought that if you do no complete the five years (many don?t) you will have incurred a debt for nothing.

This argument has no traction with any of the main parties. It is just part of the competitive market for them. The waste of lives and resources does not enter into their thinking.

The proposal, I put forward here, that the state must see education as an investment in the nation is not in any way radical. It used to be received opinion. The Conservatives started to reverse policy under Thatcher but it was with the demand for securitised debt in the 1990s that began the big spur to more and more student debt. Since then, it has ballooned unstoppably as the financial markets have cried out for more and more financialisation of every aspect of our lives. Their servants in politics have contrived to deliver exactly what they want. ?Regardless.

Think Left agrees with the Democratic Republican Party on the need to?change the whole financial system, and specifically, that government should raise the money not through bonds issues but through direct money creation. ?As Peter says of student loans:

?This was neither an educational programme nor a social mobility programme but part of the ongoing process of ?the ?financialising? all of our citizens lives burdening them with grinding debt that can be securitised so transferring ?wealth from working people to the superrich.? ?

The 99.9% must join together to take back that wealth for the good of the global population and the natural world.

Source: http://think-left.org/2012/12/31/student-loans-the-giant-scam-that-robs-the-nation/

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Israeli Supreme Court shortens whistleblower's prison term

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's Supreme Court on Monday shortened by a year the 4-1/2-year prison term of a soldier who gave a journalist classified military documents, some relating to operations against Palestinian militants.

Ruling on Anat Kamm's appeal against the length of her sentence, the court said it was disproportionate to the penalty of four months of community service imposed on Uri Blau, a reporter for Haaretz, an Israeli left-wing daily.

Some of the 700 classified documents copied by Kamm, a clerk in a general's headquarters during her 2005-2007 army service, were the basis for reports by Blau that some assassinations of Palestinian militants authorized by senior officers may have violated Israeli law.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled the military had the right to assassinate members of Palestinian groups that Israel classifies as terrorist organizations. But the court said planners must have "strong and convincing" information that a killing is necessary and always try to avoid harming bystanders.

Although Blau's reports were submitted to the military censor, who approved their publication, he was accused of illegally possessing classified documents and agreed to a plea bargain in July.

Kamm, who cited ideological motives for her actions, admitted in a plea bargain to charges of espionage, collection and possession of secret information and passing it onwards. She began serving her sentence in November 2011.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-supreme-court-shortens-whistleblowers-prison-term-121723383.html

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