Ghana election, test of democratic reputation

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Voters in Ghana were selecting their next president and a 275-seat parliament in elections Friday, solidifying the West African nation‘s reputation as a beacon of democracy in the region.

Some 14 million people are expected to turn out. President John Dramani Mahama, in office for only five months, is running against seven contenders. A former vice president, Mahama became president in July after the unexpected death of former President John Atta Mills. The 54-year-old is also a former minister and parliamentarian and has written an acclaimed biography, “My First Coup d’Etat.”

His main challenger is Nana Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister and the son of one of Ghana’s previous presidents. The contender lost the 2008 election to Mills by less than 1 percent. Both men are trying to make the case that they will use the nation’s newfound oil wealth to help the poor.

Ghana, a nation of 25 million, is one of the few established democracies in the region as well as the fastest-growing economy. But a deep divide still exists between those benefiting from the country’s oil, cocoa and mineral wealth and those left behind financially.

In an interview on the eve of the vote, Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press that the first thing he will do if elected is begin working on providing free high school education for all. “It’s a matter of great concern to me,” he said, adding that he plans to use the nation’s oil wealth to educate the population, industrialize the economy and create better jobs for Ghanaians.

Policy-oriented and intellectual, Akufo-Addo is favored by the young and urbanized voters. He was educated in England and comes from a privileged family. The ruling party has depicted him as elitist, which Akufo-Addo calls “a little PR construct.”

“The idea that merely because you are born into privilege that automatically means you are against the welfare of the ordinary people, that’s nonsense,” he said.

Ghana had one of the fastest growing economies in the world in 2011. Allegations of corruption against the ruling party are rife.

Akufo-Addo said that if elected, he would not be able to weed out corruption in the government overnight.

“It’s a long fight,” he said. “But we build the institutions that can fight it.”

He said that in 30 years in politics he has never been accused of corruption.

Many analysts believe Mahama and Akufo-Addo are neck-and-neck.

Results are expected to be announced by Sunday, but could be delayed. If no one wins an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on December 28.

All candidates have signed a peace pact and have promised to accept the results of Friday’s poll.

Ghana, a nation of 25 million, has previously held five transparent elections in a row. Nearby Mali, which was also considered a model democracy, was plunged into chaos this March following a military coup.

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Associated Press writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report from Accra, Ghana.

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Brazil government denies media reports of 2010 mad cow case

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil‘s Agriculture Ministry said on Friday that the country had registered no cases of mad cow disease, denying reports on some local media websites that said the disease had cropped up in the southern state of Parana two years ago.

In a statement on its website, the ministry said a cow that died in Parana in 2010 had tested positive for prions, the proteins believed to cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy, as the disease is formally called.

But the statement went on to say that the animal did not die of BSE and did not have symptoms of the disease.

“The World Animal Health Organization (OIE) in an official communication maintains the classification of Brazil as a country with insignificant risk of BSE,” the statement said.

In 2010, the ministry had also denied reports of a case of mad cow disease after news agencies picked up on the story. The government said it would provide further details on the case later on Friday at a news conference.

A story posted on the website of financial newspaper Valor Economico early on Friday said the cow in Parana had probably died of mad cow disease.

The outbreak of mad cow disease in Europe, North America and Japan a decade ago prompted beef importers to embargo shipments and caused temporary chaos in the industry. Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter.

(Reporting by Reese Ewing and Gustavo Bonato; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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South Africa military plane crashes in mountains

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African military aircraft on an unknown mission to an area near the village where former President Nelson Mandela lives crashed in a mountain range, officials said Thursday. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.

The Douglas DC-3 Dakota, a twin-propeller aircraft, had taken off from Pretoria’s Waterkloof Air Force Base on Wednesday night, said Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, a military spokesman. On Thursday morning, soldiers found the wreckage of the airplane in the Drakensberg mountains near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of the air base, Mabanga said.

Mabanga said soldiers had been sent to the scene to look for survivors. Mabanga said he did not know what the mission of the aircraft was, though it had planned to land in Mthatha in the country’s Eastern Cape. Siphiwe Dlamini, a Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to immediately comment Thursday morning.

Mthatha is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu, the village where Mandela now lives after retiring from public life. South Africa‘s military remains largely responsible for the former president’s medical care. However, military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.

In November, another South African military flight crash landed at Mthatha, sending several people to the hospital with injuries. However, at that time, the military denied that those on board had anything to do with Mandela’s care.

Mandela, 94, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s president in the country’s first fully democratic vote in 1994.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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“Community”: Jason Alexander filming “Crazy” guest spot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Community” might be losing a Chevy Chase, but it’s gaining a Jason Alexander.

Former “Seinfeld” star Alexander, who played neurotic bumbler George Costanza on the series, will guest-star on the beleaguered NBC comedy, and while the actor is tight-lipped on the details, he promises that the episode will be a doozy.

“Filming a crazy episode of ‘Community’ this week,” the actor tweeted early Tuesday. “Can’t say much about it but it’s a fun one.”

It is not known what role Alexander, who guest-starred on “Two and a Half Men” earlier this year, will play on the series, or if he will appear on more than one episode. A spokeswoman for the NBC series has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.

Last month, news broke that Chevy Chase – who plays Pierce Hawthorne on the series – is leaving “Community,” following an ugly standoff with the show’s creator and former showrunner, Dan Harmon, and an incident when he reportedly tossed out the N-word, after complaining about his character’s racism. Chase will appear in most of the episodes of the upcoming fourth season.

“Community” returns to the air February 7.

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When Microorganisms Control the Mind

Reported by Dr. Lauren Browne:

By the time famed Victorian artist Louis Wain was committed to the pauper ward of Springfield Mental Hospital in South London in 1924, he had painted and sketched thousands of cats.

His early works depicted humorous wide-eyed human-like cats, but his later feline creations were abstract figures exploding in fiery kaleidoscopes of geometric shapes, thought to mirror his own mental deterioration.

The exact nature of Wain’s mental illness is still debated, but many agree that he suffered from schizophrenia, becoming hostile and delusional prior to hospitalization.  And some speculate further that it was a parasite from one of his beloved cats that ultimately triggered his schizophrenic break.

Bugs that hijack the brain and manipulate behavior are now the focus of a special newly released edition of The Journal of Experimental Biology.  This collection of review articles tips its hat to the ever-growing body of research devoted to the field of neuroparasitology, a field where “science meets science fiction,” according to journal editor Michael Dickinson.

Wain’s psychosis was thought to be caused by Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that infects humans after exposure to cat feces, and is well known for causing dementia and delirium in people with weak immune systems, like in advanced AIDS.  Yet even in relatively healthy individuals, it appears that the parasite can manipulate human behavior.

Silent, or asymptomatic, infections have been linked to increased risk of traffic and workplace accidents as well as mood and neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and even suicide, according to several studies reviewed by Joanne Webster and colleagues of the Imperial College of London.

“Some studies have shown that when you look at people who have a history of some sort of mental illness, a higher percentage of them have a higher exposure to toxoplasmosis.  That’s an intriguing thing,” said Dr. Anthony Fiore, director of science for the CDC’s Division of Parasitic Diseases.

No studies have yet proven that the infection actually causes mental illness and in all likelihood it is a combination of factors that trigger schizophrenia or other illnesses, said Fiore.

But toxoplasma is just one of many microorganisms that have the potential to manipulate the human brain.

The rabies virus, which is largely transmitted through dog bites and is responsible for over 55,000 human deaths around the world each year, is particularly fond of infecting the brain.  It has the ability to catapult its victims into a downward psychotic spiral of delirium, hallucinations, and aggression that almost uniformly ends in death.

“A patient in Manila went on a rampage and attacked multiple people, beating people with wood, and causing quite a lot of physical destruction,” said Dr. Charles Rupprecht, a leading rabies expert and director of research of The Global Alliance for Rabies Control.

The rabies virus is just one member of a group of deadly, brain-loving viruses known as Lyssaviruses, named after the Greek goddess of madness, rage, and frenzy.   These almost universally lethal viruses are currently only transmitted to humans through animals and, with the exception of rabies, all occur outside of the United States.  Yet, without proper control measures, the viruses have the potential to hop from one location to the next and thrive in countries that were not previously infested, explained Rupprecht.

Prior to the development of modern medicine, rampant infections like rabies inspired tales of vampires, zombies, and werewolves.  Today, these tales persist in the form of movies like “Contagion,” and in the TV show ‘”The Walking Dead.”

But the journal’s new special edition highlights that brain-invading bugs are anything but fiction.

Though vaccines and medicine have helped to control these infections, there is still much to be done.   The collection calls on researchers to adopt new methods for understanding these manipulative parasites, which may ultimately shed light on the basic underpinnings of human and animal behavior.

“These infections are preventable things and if more efforts could be focused on this research, there could be quite an impact,” said Fiore.

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U.S. and Russia to meet on Syria amid chemical weapons fears

DUBLIN (AP) — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats will hold a surprise meeting Thursday with the United Nations' peace envoy for Syria, signaling fresh hopes of an international breakthrough to end the Arab country's 21-month civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will gather in Dublin on the sidelines of a human rights conference, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. She provided few details about the unscheduled get-together.

Ahead of the three-way meeting, Clinton and Lavrov met separately Thursday for about 25 minutes. They agreed to hear Brahimi out on a path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The two also discussed issues ranging from Egypt to North Korea, as well as new congressional action aimed at Russian officials accused of complicity in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The former Cold War foes have fought bitterly over how to address Syria's conflict, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow of shielding its Arab ally. The Russians respond by accusing the U.S. of meddling by demanding the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime and ultimately seeking an armed intervention such as the one last year against the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

But the gathering of the three key international figures suggests possible compromise in the offing. At the least, it confirms what officials describe as an easing of some of the acrimony that has raged between Moscow and Washington over the future of an ethnically diverse nation whose stability is seen as critical given its geographic position in between powder kegs Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

The threat of Syria's government using some of its vast stockpiles of chemical weapons is also adding urgency to diplomatic efforts. Western governments have cited the rising danger of such a scenario this week, and officials say Russia, too, shares great concern on this point.

On Thursday, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused the United States and Europe of using the issue of chemical weapons to justify a future military intervention against Syria. He warned that any such intervention would be "catastrophic."

In Ireland's capital, one idea that Brahimi could seek to resuscitate with U.S. and Russian support would be the political agreement strategy both countries agreed on in Geneva in June.

That plan demanded several steps by the Assad regime to de-escalate tensions and end the violence that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011. It would then have required Syria's opposition and the regime to put forward candidates for a transitional government, with each side having the right to veto nominees proposed by the other.

If employed, the strategy would surely mean the end of more than four decades of an Assad family member at Syria's helm. The opposition has demanded Assad's departure and has rejected any talk of him staying in power. Yet it also would grant regime representatives the opportunity to block Sunni extremists and others in the opposition that they reject.

The transition plan never got off the ground this summer, partly because no pressure was applied to see it succeed by a deeply divided international community. Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who drafted the plan, then resigned his post in frustration.

The United States blamed the collapse on Russia for vetoing a third resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would have applied world sanctions against Assad's government for failing to live by the deal's provisions.

Russia insisted that the Americans unfairly sought Assad's departure as a precondition and worried about opening the door to military action, even as Washington offered to include language in any U.N. resolution that would have expressly forbade outside armed intervention.

Should a plan similar to that one be proposed, the Obama administration is likely to insist anew that it be internationally enforceable — a step Moscow may still be reluctant to commit to.

In any case, the U.S. insists the tide of the war is turning definitively against Assad.

On Wednesday, the administration said several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

The comments came a day after the United States and its 27 NATO allies agreed to send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria. The deployment, expected within weeks, is meant solely as a defensive measure against the cross-border mortar rounds from Syria that have killed five Turks, but still bring the alliance to the brink of involvement in the civil war.

The United States is also preparing to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida, as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, officials said Wednesday.

Word of the move came as the State Department announced Clinton will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week for high-level meetings on the situation in Syria and broader counter-terrorism issues. She is likely then to recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, according to officials.

The political endorsement is designed to help unite the country against Assad and spur greater nonlethal and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the rebels.

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Apple to return some Mac production to U.S. in 2013: report

(Reuters) – Apple Inc is planning to bring back some of its production of Mac computers to the United States from China next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said, according to a report published Thursday.

The company will spend more than $ 100 million to build the computers in the United States, Cook was cited as saying in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

“This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money,” Cook said.

He told NBC in an interview to be aired late Thursday that only one of the existing Mac lines would be manufactured exclusively in the United States.

Higher-tech products are largely made overseas, often in subcontracted factories not owned by the brands whose products they are making.

Cheaper labor costs have been key in encouraging U.S. manufacturers to have move production to China, but with Chinese wage and transport costs increasing, the advantage against the U.S. has narrowed in recent years.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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U.S. and Russia to meet on Syria amid chemical weapons fears

DUBLIN (AP) — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats will hold a surprise meeting Thursday with the United Nations' peace envoy for Syria, signaling fresh hopes of an international breakthrough to end the Arab country's 21-month civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will gather in Dublin on the sidelines of a human rights conference, a senior U.S. official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. She provided few details about the unscheduled get-together.

Ahead of the three-way meeting, Clinton and Lavrov met separately Thursday for about 25 minutes. They agreed to hear Brahimi out on a path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The two also discussed issues ranging from Egypt to North Korea, as well as new congressional action aimed at Russian officials accused of complicity in the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

The former Cold War foes have fought bitterly over how to address Syria's conflict, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow of shielding its Arab ally. The Russians respond by accusing the U.S. of meddling by demanding the downfall of President Bashar Assad's regime and ultimately seeking an armed intervention such as the one last year against the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

But the gathering of the three key international figures suggests possible compromise in the offing. At the least, it confirms what officials describe as an easing of some of the acrimony that has raged between Moscow and Washington over the future of an ethnically diverse nation whose stability is seen as critical given its geographic position in between powder kegs Iraq, Lebanon and Israel.

The threat of Syria's government using some of its vast stockpiles of chemical weapons is also adding urgency to diplomatic efforts. Western governments have cited the rising danger of such a scenario this week, and officials say Russia, too, shares great concern on this point.

On Thursday, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad accused the United States and Europe of using the issue of chemical weapons to justify a future military intervention against Syria. He warned that any such intervention would be "catastrophic."

In Ireland's capital, one idea that Brahimi could seek to resuscitate with U.S. and Russian support would be the political agreement strategy both countries agreed on in Geneva in June.

That plan demanded several steps by the Assad regime to de-escalate tensions and end the violence that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011. It would then have required Syria's opposition and the regime to put forward candidates for a transitional government, with each side having the right to veto nominees proposed by the other.

If employed, the strategy would surely mean the end of more than four decades of an Assad family member at Syria's helm. The opposition has demanded Assad's departure and has rejected any talk of him staying in power. Yet it also would grant regime representatives the opportunity to block Sunni extremists and others in the opposition that they reject.

The transition plan never got off the ground this summer, partly because no pressure was applied to see it succeed by a deeply divided international community. Brahimi's predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who drafted the plan, then resigned his post in frustration.

The United States blamed the collapse on Russia for vetoing a third resolution at the U.N. Security Council that would have applied world sanctions against Assad's government for failing to live by the deal's provisions.

Russia insisted that the Americans unfairly sought Assad's departure as a precondition and worried about opening the door to military action, even as Washington offered to include language in any U.N. resolution that would have expressly forbade outside armed intervention.

Should a plan similar to that one be proposed, the Obama administration is likely to insist anew that it be internationally enforceable — a step Moscow may still be reluctant to commit to.

In any case, the U.S. insists the tide of the war is turning definitively against Assad.

On Wednesday, the administration said several countries in the Middle East and elsewhere have informally offered to grant asylum to Assad and his family if they leave Syria.

The comments came a day after the United States and its 27 NATO allies agreed to send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria. The deployment, expected within weeks, is meant solely as a defensive measure against the cross-border mortar rounds from Syria that have killed five Turks, but still bring the alliance to the brink of involvement in the civil war.

The United States is also preparing to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with alleged ties to al-Qaida, as a foreign terrorist organization in a step aimed at blunting the influence of extremists within the Syrian opposition, officials said Wednesday.

Word of the move came as the State Department announced Clinton will travel to the Mideast and North Africa next week for high-level meetings on the situation in Syria and broader counter-terrorism issues. She is likely then to recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, according to officials.

The political endorsement is designed to help unite the country against Assad and spur greater nonlethal and humanitarian assistance from the United States to the rebels.

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“Zero Dark Thirty” wins best film award a second time

NEW YORK (Reuters) – “Zero Dark Thirty,” filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow‘s action thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was named best film of 2012 on Wednesday by the National Board of Review – the second accolade for the movie in one week.

Bigelow was named best director and Jessica Chastain, who plays the starring role of a young CIA officer pursuing bin Laden, was named best actress by the NBR.

Bradley Cooper took home best actor honors for his portrayal of a bipolar, former teacher in the film “Silver Linings Playbook.”

” ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ is a masterful film,” NBR President Annie Schulhof said in a statement. “Kathryn Bigelow takes the viewer inside a definitive moment of our time in a visceral and unique way. It is exciting, provocative and deeply emotional.”

Wednesday’s awards for the Hollywood treatment of the decade-long operation to hunt and kill bin Laden, based on firsthand accounts, boosts the prospects for the movie to win an Oscar in February. The film, not yet publicly released, also took the top award from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday.

Leonardo DiCaprio won best supporting actor from the NBR for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s new slavery era drama, “Django Unchained,” while Ann Dowd took the best supporting actress honors for her role in “Compliance,” as a fast-food restaurant manager duped by a prank caller scam.

The NBR, a 100 year-old U.S.-based group of movie industry watchers and film professionals, gave its original screenplay award to Rian Johnson for “Looper,” and adapted screenplay to David O. Russell for “Silver linings Playbook.”

“HOBBIT,” “LIFE OF PI” OVERLOOKED

“Les Miserables,” the first big movie adaptation of the popular stage musical featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway was named best ensemble, and the group gave its best animated feature prize to “Wreck-It-Ralph.”

Each year the board also issues a list of top 10 movies, which this year besides Bigelow’s film included Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage thriller “Argo,” “Django Unchained,” “Les Miserables,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” and “Looper.”

“Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg’s biopic of President Abraham Lincoln, the mystical indie film “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” Gus van Sant’s fracking drama “Promised Land,” and coming of age film “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” rounded out the list.

Absent from the list were some films that had been touted for honors ahead of awards season, including Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit,” Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” indie film “The Sessions” starring Helen Hunt, and Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi.”

In other categories, NBR gave its best documentary award to “Searching for Sugarman,” and chose Austrian director Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” as best foreign language film.

Child-actress Quvenzhane Wallis from “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and “The Impossible” actor Tom Holland each won awards for breakthrough performances.

Benh Zeitlin received the award for best debut director for “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” while documentary “Central Park Five” and drama “Promised Land” were both honored with the Freedom of Expression award.

The National Board of Review was formed in New York in 1909 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting movies as an art form and entertainment.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Leslie Gevirtz)

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South Africa military plane crashes in mountains

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African military aircraft on an unknown mission to an area near the village where former President Nelson Mandela lives crashed in a mountain range, officials said Thursday. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.

The Douglas DC-3 Dakota, a twin-propeller aircraft, had taken off from Pretoria’s Waterkloof Air Force Base on Wednesday night, said Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, a military spokesman. On Thursday morning, soldiers found the wreckage of the airplane in the Drakensberg mountains near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of the air base, Mabanga said.

Mabanga said soldiers had been sent to the scene to look for survivors. Mabanga said he did not know what the mission of the aircraft was, though it had planned to land in Mthatha in the country’s Eastern Cape. Siphiwe Dlamini, a Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to immediately comment Thursday morning.

Mthatha is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu, the village where Mandela now lives after retiring from public life. South Africa‘s military remains largely responsible for the former president’s medical care. However, military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.

In November, another South African military flight crash landed at Mthatha, sending several people to the hospital with injuries. However, at that time, the military denied that those on board had anything to do with Mandela’s care.

Mandela, 94, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s president in the country’s first fully democratic vote in 1994.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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