Thursday, 6 January 2011

10 websites to watch in 2011

Hipmunk is fixing everything that's wrong with flight searches with a tool whose usefulness is immense.
Hipmunk is fixing everything that's wrong with flight searches with a tool whose usefulness is immense.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform for creative endeavors
  • Grooveshark might be the next big thing in online music
  • Diaspora is an open source social network platform

(Mashable) -- There are more than a trillion URLs in Google's index. Yes, that's a one with twelve zeros after it. And Google crossed that milestone two and a half years ago. With so many sites on the web in 2011, how do you know which to pay attention to?

Mashable's editors haven't quite visited a trillion pages, but we've checked out a lot in the past year, and we've compiled a list of 10 websites we think are poised to have big years in 2011.

Some of these are relatively new sites we think will catch the mainstream's attention next year and others are older sites that we think will finally hit the big time in 2011.

Check out our list below and let us know in the comments which websites you have your eye on for the coming year.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform for creative endeavors, was founded in April 2009 and had what many would consider a break-out year in 2010. But the site could be poised for an even bigger 2011.

The unique all-or-nothing approach to funding has struck a chord with both creators and funders and is allowing enterprising individuals to bypass traditional establishments to create films, music albums, events, products and even new companies.

Kickstarter helped hundreds of projects raise millions of dollars in 2010. Look for that number to continue going up in the next year.

OpenLeaks

OpenLeaks may very well be the WikiLeaks alternative in 2011, not as a destination, but as an enabler for media organizations to do the same as WikiLeaks.

OpenLeaks, unlike WikiLeaks, seeks to be an intermediary between whistleblowers and other organizations and includes former members of WikiLeaks, most notably, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

The site will focus more on being a technological service for news organizations, likely enabling them to make it easier for their readers to submit such leaks to their own sites.

This may keep the scrutiny from politicians and officials -- something WikiLeaks has had to battle with this year -- away from OpenLeaks, as they won't be the ones publishing the material.

Klout

As social marketing starts to surpass traditional marketing methods, companies will look for influential individuals who can rep their product well. Klout is one of the tools that companies use to gauge who the social influencers are. Look for them to make some big moves in 2011.

Hipmunk

Hipmunk is fixing everything that's wrong with flight searches with a tool whose usefulness is immense. Once people get used to the interface and start telling their friends about it, Hipmunk's popularity will skyrocket.

Gilt Groupe

Gilt Groupe, which hired its 500th employee in 2010, is rapidly expanding into new verticals (such as location-specific group buying deals, a la Groupon) and territories (like Japan).

Its next target? Full-priced retail. It's launching a men's e-commerce site in February. Expect to see further development in that area and the geographical expansion of its existing products in 2011.

Diaspora

Diaspora, the open source social network platform, released its code and opened up to private alpha invites recently. The platform was dubbed the alternative to Facebook, during Facebook's privacy fiasco, and generated a lot of buzz.

But as the platform opens up to more users in 2011, we'll see how people react to it and whether it's something that will actually be an alternative option to the social networking giant.

Quora

Quora has clearly found its place with the early adopter set and a number of active, high profile users who make the service interesting to engage with. In 2011, it will be interesting to see if the company is able to expand its audience while maintaining the quality Q&A that has made it so attractive to users thus far.

In turn, we'll see if it's the next big thing or has a destiny more like that of FriendFeed, a community that was initially popular with early adopters but never found a mainstream audience (but ultimately found a home at Facebook).

Grooveshark

Among the many music streaming services in existence today, Grooveshark is one of the few that is both free and available to Europeans.

It has a sleek, Google-like interface and a database with a huge amount of music (the service lets anyone upload music, so you can find many obscure, unknown, local or upcoming bands there).

It also has an interesting array of features, such as skinnable interface, playlists, music sharing and promotions that don't feel like ads, and it relies on a freemium business model that offers just enough to entice users to subscribe.

Barring possible problems with copyright holders and cash flow issues, which always threaten to shut down services like this, Grooveshark might be the next big thing in online music.

Drupal

WordPress might get most of the love in the open source CMS space (for good reason), but Drupal provides a powerful option for individuals, organizations and brands that want to power complex, robust sites.

With Drupal 7 set for release in early 2011, the Drupal team is actively addressing the one area the CMS has always received criticism: Usability.

Thanks to shops like Development Seed and Lullabot, the Drupal ecosystem is becoming extremely impressive. Acquia, the commercial company from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, continues to raise funding and offer an array of commercial and support services that better enhance the platform as a whole.

Foursquare

I expect Foursquare to scale to an even bigger level in 2011. I won't be surprised if it starts to acquire smaller companies or make a major move to Silicon Valley, in order to make that happen.

Egypt beefs up security for Coptic Christmas Eve

By Salma Abdelaziz, CNN
January 6, 2011 -- Updated 1058 GMT (1858 HKT)
Click to play
Coptic churches on alert in Europe
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Hundreds of supporters gather outside a university in support
  • The suspected bomber was in his early 20s, a newspaper says
  • Officials: The explosives may have gone off prematurely in the car
  • Coptic Christians make up 9 percent of Egyptian population

(CNN) -- Egyptian authorities beefed up security Thursday as Coptic Christians warily ushered in Christmas Eve after a New Year's Day bombing in front of a church that killed nearly two dozen of their members.

The Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar and therefore will observe it Friday.

"Police plan a large-scale security operation for tonight to protect Egypt's Coptic Christians and their churches." Col. Alla Mahmoud of the interior ministry said.

In addition, hundreds of supporters gathered outside the prestigious Al-Azhar University on Thursday in a show of solidarity for the Coptic community.

On Wednesday, Egyptian authorities released a sketch of a man they think may be responsible for the attack.

"The man in the picture is unknown and authorities are trying to confirm his identity," said Col. Alla Mahmoud of the interior ministry.

Outrage over Egypt's church attack
Egypt church bombing heightens tensions
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The interior ministry used forensic technology to recreate the face of the suspected suicide bomber responsible for killing 23 people when he detonated a car bomb outside The Church of the Two Saints in the city of Alexandria, the al-Ahram newspaper reported Wednesday.

The newspaper, which is majority-owned by the government, said the forensic experts estimate the suspected bomber was in his early 20s.

Citing officials, the newspaper also said that the bomber had packed about 20 to 25 kilograms (40-55 lbs) of explosives in a traveling bag, indicating that he may have been planning to enter the church or wait for congregants to come out when the explosives went off prematurely in the car.

About 9 percent of Egypt's 80 million residents are Coptic Christians, according to the CIA's World Fact Book.

The Coptic Church bases its theology on the teachings of the Apostle Mark, who introduced Christianity to Egypt, according to St. Takla Church in Alexandria, the capital of Coptic Christianity.

The religion is known for its rift with other Christians in the fifth century over the definition of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Journalist Ian Lee contributed to this report from Cairo

Historic day ahead after decades of war

By Mark Bixler, CNN
January 6, 2011 -- Updated 1246 GMT (2046 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Southern Sudanese will vote soon on whether to create the world's newest nation
  • Warfare and famine have ravaged the south for much of the last half-century
  • A 'yes' vote on secession would create an independent nation in July
  • Major problems remain, and renewed violence will be a real possibility

Mark Bixler is a supervising editor at the CNN Wire and the author of "The Lost Boys of Sudan: An American Story of the Refugee Experience." This story is based on his reporting as well as reporting by journalists Nima Elbagir and Shannon Jensen and CNN's Ingrid Formanek in Sudan and CNN's Jim Clancy in the United States.

(CNN) -- Several million people will decide in the next week or so whether to give birth to the world's newest nation.

They will cast ballots on whether to declare independence at polling stations sprinkled across the vast, flat plains of Southern Sudan, an East African landscape long riven by chaos.

War and famine have ravaged generations in the south for as long as anyone can remember. Fighting forced more people from their homes than in any other nation on earth. Hope remained elusive.

Yet the vote has given many southerners the rare sense of exhilaration that is borne of new beginnings.

From January 9 to January 15, the black Christians and animists in the autonomous region of Southern Sudan will vote on whether to declare independence from a northern government dominated by Arab Muslims. The two sides fought a war that killed 2 million people from 1983 to 2005, when a peace treaty set the stage for the upcoming vote.

Nearly 4 million have registered to cast ballots. Few doubt the outcome.

"I have not encountered a single Southern Sudanese who is interested in voting for unity. I would say at least 98 percent of them will vote for separation," says Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, a former foot soldier in the southern rebel force who now leads the Southern Sudan's mission in the United States. "This is what we have been fighting for for more than 50 years."

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What's the deal with Sudan's referendum?
Challenges that face Sudan
When your wife is pregnant, sometimes you wait for the baby to be born. We are still debating what to call this new baby
--Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth, on naming the new country

Jeremiah Awin says he spent more than 10 years fighting with southern rebels. He has no desire to pick up a gun again.

"Now is the time for peace," he says in the bustling southern capital, Juba. "I will vote safely for separation."

Daniel Akot, another southerner in Juba, agrees. "I need separation to be peaceful because I have grown up in the war, and I don't want my children to grow up in the war," he says.

Voters will receive a ballot with two pictures: One hand signifies independence; two hands, a unified Sudan.

Most everyone agrees that the majority of southerners will choose independence, but there is less certainty about what will happen after the votes are tallied.

The new nation would face daunting obstacles, from a desperate need for development to the lack of a robust educated class to control the new levers of power.

A flood of refugees, eagerly returning to an independent homeland, could complicate matters in a place that already lacks enough schools and clinics and has few paved roads.

Long-standing grievances among rival southern groups could erupt in violence -- several hundred southerners already have been killed in such fighting in the last year or two. Or the north could decline to accept the results or stir tensions by trying to pit one southern faction against another.

The concerns run so deep that last February Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, warned the U.S. Congress of possible genocide.

"A number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing" in the next five years, he said. "Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan."

Looming over concerns about the future is a suspicion that many in the south harbor of Sudan's rulers in the north.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes after mass killings and rape in the country's western Darfur region, says that a southern vote for independence would be like "cutting off a part of the nation's body but not the end of the world."

"We are a civilized people," he said this week in a rare visit to Juba. "Regardless of how painful the results are, we will greet the result with forgiveness, and patience, and acceptance, and an open heart, God willing."

Al-Bashir also has said that his government will not hesitate to accept the results "because peace is our ultimate goal in our relationship with our southern brothers, even if they choose a path other than unity."

Yet many worry that the northern-based government will interfere with the referendum, decline to recognize its outcome or stoke tensions between rival southern factions.

The possibilities concern Abdullahi An-Na'im, a native of northern Sudan who teaches law at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a former executive director of Human Rights Watch for Africa and an expert on Islamic law, or sharia. Authorities in Sudan imprisoned him in the 1980s for opposing the imposition of Islamic law in all of Sudan.

He looks to the past for clues to the future.

"The history of Sudan is such that I cannot expect the northern government to have the grace and humanity to let the south go peacefully," he says.

A troubled history

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People in Southern Sudan -- and their ancestors -- have long felt dominated by the north.

One of the first known instances of contact between the two regions, historians say, came when slave-raiding parties from the north penetrated a vast swamp between northern and southern Sudan around 1840.

The slave raids so terrified the largest southern tribe, the Dinka, that some refer to this period as the "spoiling of the world," a time when outsiders violently transformed everyday life, writes Francis Deng, a Sudanese diplomat, author and historian who is the United Nations' special adviser on the prevention of genocide.

The slave raids instilled a collective hostility toward northerners that successive generations in the south nursed until they erupted in open war.

Britain ruled Sudan from 1899 through 1955 and administered north and south as separate entities, preventing travel from one region to the other. As a result, people in the north, home to about two-thirds of Sudan's land and population, saw more development and formal education, while the south remained, Deng writes, "largely a museum of nature."

That imbalance sparked southern fears of northern domination when the British announced plans to leave. Southerners took up arms against the north in August 1955, six months before Sudan's independence.

Most jobs in the new national government did, in fact, go to northerners. The north also dominated the process of drafting a constitution.

An-Na'im sees in many northerners a "deep-rooted racism and imperial attitude" and a "sense of superiority" toward southerners.

Deng agrees.

Many northerners have a mix of Arab and black ancestry but "deny the strongly African elements in their skin color and physical features. They associate these features with the negroid race and see it as the mother race of slaves, inferior and demeaned..." he writes in his 1995 book "War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan."

The insurgency that started in 1955 killed several hundred thousand people and forced many more from their homes until a peace deal silenced the guns in 1972. Barely a decade later, though, war resumed after the Sudanese president split the south into three regions and sought to impose Islamic law on non-Muslims.

A 1989 coup that brought al-Bashir to power let him steer the ship of state by the compass of Islamic extremism. He praised the 1979 Iranian revolution and offered shelter to many groups the United States views as terrorist organizations.

Osama bin Laden arrived in Sudan in 1991, long before he became a household name. The United States added Sudan to its list of state sponsors of terrorism two years later.

Meanwhile, the north-south war raged on.

Human-rights groups would document a catalog of horrors, from the widespread killing of civilians to the forced recruitment of child soldiers, but the carnage and misery attracted relatively little attention in the West.

'Separation is the only way out'

History proves that the north and south are not supposed to be together
--Simon Garang, refugee

About 10 years ago, neighbors in East Africa and the West pushed both sides toward the negotiating table.

Some of the pressure came from the United States, where President George W. Bush made ending the war in Sudan a top foreign policy priority in Africa. Bush was responding to political pressure from conservative evangelical Christians, who have empathized with Christians in Southern Sudan.

Peace talks were well under way in 2003 when a mostly unrelated conflict erupted in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Marginalized non-Arab Muslims there rebelled against the government by attacking a military garrison.

The Sudanese government responded by arming and cooperating with Arab militias that killed, tortured and raped thousands, mainly targeting tribes from which the rebels drew strength, according to the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organizations.

The United Nations says 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur, though the government of Sudan says the toll is lower.

Al-Bashir's role in Darfur led the International Criminal Court to indict him for war crimes in 2009.

Even as the killing continued unabated in Darfur, al-Bashir's government made progress in negotiations with southern rebels.

That progress resulted in a landmark agreement in January 2005 between the Sudanese government and the main rebel group in the south, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement called for the referendum that is to begin in a few days.

It also envisioned a vote in Abyei, an oil-rich area that the British transferred to northern Sudan in 1905. The agreement says people in Abyei should vote on whether to remain part of the north or return to the south.

Both sides were to have worked out many details by now, but that has not happened, delaying the referendum in Abyei.

One unresolved issue involves who should vote: Should it only be members of the Ngok Dinka ethnic group, who tend to have more in common with southerners, or also the Misseriya, a nomadic Arabic tribe that comes in and out of the region and whose sympathies would most likely tilt toward northern Sudan?

Despite the delay in Abyei, there is little question that the independence vote in Southern Sudan will happen as planned.

While most of the voters will cast ballots in Southern Sudan, about 120,000 southerners in northern Sudan have registered to vote, Gatkuoth said. Another 55,000 -- mostly refugees -- have signed up to vote in Australia, Canada, Egypt, Ethiopia, Great Britain, Kenya, Uganda and the United States.

A few thousand people from Southern Sudan will cast ballots in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, Omaha, Phoenix, Seattle and Washington.

One is Simon Garang, a 28-year-old college graduate who earns money parking cars at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlanta. He drove to Nashville recently to register to vote and plans to return to cast his ballot.

"It is really important for me to vote because Southern Sudanese will have the chance to live as a free country," he says. "The reason I am going to vote is to express my will for the freedom of Southern Sudan."

Garang was separated from his parents during the war in the south in the 1980s and came to the United States as a refugee in 2001, after a childhood and adolescence spent dodging death and disease on treks from one refugee camp to another.

"History proves that the north and south are not supposed to be together," he says. "I think separation is the only way out of the current crisis."

The world is watching

(Oil wealth) is literally billions and billions of dollars over the next decade
--John Prendergast, Africa expert

A successful election would represent a triumph for Southern Sudan, but also for world leaders who have exerted pressure on both sides.

They include President Barack Obama, who discussed Sudan at the United Nations in September.

"At this moment, the fate of millions of people hangs in the balance," Obama said then. "What happens in Sudan in the days ahead may decide whether a people who have endured too much war move towards peace or slip backwards into bloodshed."

The U.S. has raised the possibility of removing Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if the government recognizes the referendum results, senior State Department officials have said.

It also has sounded the alarm about possible calamity in the south -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the situation in Southern Sudan "a ticking time bomb of enormous consequence" in September.

Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, arrived in Southern Sudan this week on his fourth trip to Sudan.

"The United States played an important role in ending the civil war in Sudan and making the vote this Sunday possible," he said. "Our commitment to the Sudanese people will extend beyond the referendum, whatever its outcome, as we work to improve economic and humanitarian conditions in the region."

An-Na'im sees the referendum as a turning point. "It is historic, but in a negative sense to me," he says. "I regret that the Sudanese of the north have failed to make unity attractive enough for Sudanese from the southern part of the country."

He's sad about the possibility of his country dividing, he says, but he doesn't blame southerners. If he could vote, he says, he'd choose independence, too.

After the voting

We were second-class citizens in the north
--Thatiosis Misantuta, returnee

Both sides will have a lot to figure out if the south elects independence.

For one thing, the northern-based government would lose tremendous oil revenues.

As much as 70 to 80 percent of Sudan's known oil reserves are in the south, says John Prendergast, an Africa expert and frequent critic of the Sudanese government. He also co-founded the Enough Project, which seeks to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

"It's literally billions and billions of dollars over the next decade," he says. "It's the lifeblood of the economic growth and prospects for economic development in northern Sudan as well as in Southern Sudan."

Losing a share of that oil revenue could cause economic hardship in the north. The government also could face criticism for "losing" the south, possibly making al-Bashir's political position more tenuous, says Jennifer G. Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"There is still such a deep layer of mistrust between the north and south," she says.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti says his government will respect the results no matter the outcome -- as long as it and other bodies, such as the African Union and the United Nations, are "convinced that it (the referendum) has been done the right way.

"We have been engaged in a civil war for 60 years. We sat down (and) signed an agreement ... well aware that such self-determination may or may not end in secession."

Yet the foreign minister also accused the south of hosting rebels from Darfur.

"This is a declaration of war, and we will not at all accept it," he said. "For them to have a new state, to celebrate that ... is good, but to host leaders of the rebels of Darfur and even give them some ammunition, cars and everything, that is not acceptable at all."

In response, Gatkuoth said the government of Southern Sudan "is not in any way supporting militarily the rebels from Darfur." The government and the former rebel force, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, he said, "are committed to peace and we are working with all parties involved to bring peace to Darfur."

Formal results from the referendum are to be announced February 2, Gatkuoth says.

If the south chooses independence, north and south would enter a six-month negotiating period before the south emerged as an independent nation on July 10.

Before then, negotiators would wrestle with an array of thorny questions.

Are the several million southerners who have lived in northern Sudan for years, for example, citizens of Sudan or the new nation?

They also would have to decide what share of the national debt the south should inherit, Cooke says.

Perhaps most tricky of all is the question of how to share oil revenues, which account for about 90 percent of the south's budget. The two sides depend on each other when it comes to oil -- most oil in Sudan comes from wells in the south but must flow through pipelines in the north for export.

"Many of these issues should have been resolved by now, but they have not," Cooke says. "Both sides have been playing a bit of brinksmanship."

Would the new nation be called Southern Sudan, as the autonomous region is known? Or perhaps New Sudan, as the main southern rebel leader, John Garang, sometimes called the region? Maybe something else altogether?

Gatkuoth laughs off the question.

"When your wife is pregnant, sometimes you wait for the baby to be born," he says. "We are still debating what to call this new baby."

He knows obstacles will linger long after the exuberance of creation fades.

Southern Sudan lacks basic infrastructure and strong institutions of government. There is no banking system, Cooke says, no currency. The challenge is to maintain security while also trying to breathe life into a nascent economy where military service has long represented one of the few solid career choices.

"You're really talking about transforming what has been for many years a rebel movement into a government," Cooke says.

Exacerbating the challenges is the flood of southerners returning home. About 95,000 returned in the last two months, about five times the number that arrived in all of 2009, according to the United Nations Mission in Sudan.

Sarah Bony and Thatiosis Misantuta are two of the many returning southerners. They were born in Khartoum in 1992, during some of the most intense fighting in the south, and spent their whole lives there, amid hundreds of thousands of other displaced southerners. A week or so ago, however, they said goodbye to the only home they'd ever known and flew to what they consider their native land.

"We were second-class citizens in the north," Misantuta says through a translator under a searing sun in Juba. "We are willing to undergo anything as long as we are separated."

He is optimistic about the future. "I think there will be peace," he says.

Bony is not so sure. She worries that disagreements over borders or sharing oil wealth or disputes between rival groups in the south could plunge the south back into an abyss of misery.

It happened in 1991, when rival factions of the southern rebel force turned on each other in the midst of the north-south war, killing scores and weakening the collective southern position against the north.

Now, with the referendum approaching, north and south have been spending money buying weapons.

"While a renewed conflict could be limited to proxy fighting or skirmishes focused around individual oilfields, both sides' arms purchases indicate their anticipation of more widespread conflict," Blair, the former U.S. intelligence director, said in a report to Congress last year.

"The southern government is spending a large amount of its revenues on military force modernization while failing to provide basic services, curb rampant corruption or curtail escalating tribal clashes," he continued. "Some international observers have suggested the south will become a failed state unless the international community assumes a significant role in development, security and governance."

Gatkuoth has heard the warnings, but says the south will fare better than some analysts predict. After decades of near-constant carnage, he says, southerners are standing, at last, on the cusp of something new.

He says he believes his countrymen will surmount the vexing challenges that await without returning to the cycle of war and displacement that have scarred generations.

Southerners don't want to go back to war, he says. They just want to live in peace.

Doctor defends retracted autism study

By the CNN Wire Staff
January 6, 2011 -- Updated 1248 GMT (2048 HKT)
Click to play
Autism-vaccine study author defends work
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Journalist who wrote article says Andrew Wakefield should face criminal charges
  • Wakefield says his work has been "grossly distorted"
  • British journal BMJ accuses Wakefield of faking data for his 1998 paper
  • The study was retracted and Wakefield lost his license in 2010

(CNN) -- A physician accused of an "elaborate fraud" in a now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines is defending himself, telling CNN his work has been "grossly distorted."

Speaking on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," Dr. Andrew Wakefield said Wednesday he has been the target of "a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns."

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes Wakefield misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study -- and that there was "no doubt" Wakefield was responsible. The journalist who wrote the BMJ articles said Thursday he believes Wakefield should face criminal charges.

The medical publication says the study has done long-lasting damage to public health.

"It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."

Britain stripped Wakefield of his medical license in May.

'No evidence' for autism-vaccine link
Ruling: No autism-vaccine link
Author of autism study questioned
Autism group defends study

"Meanwhile, the damage to public health continues, fueled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals and the medical profession," BMJ states in an editorial accompanying the work.

Wakefield dismissed Brian Deer, the writer of the British Medical Journal articles, as "a hit man who has been brought in to take me down" by pharmaceutical interests. Deer has signed a disclosure form stating that he has no financial interest in the business.

On CNN's "American Morning" Thursday, Deer did not deny he was paid by the BMJ. "I was commissioned by BMJ to write the piece," he said. "That's what journalists do."

He said he is also paid by the Sunday Times of London, where he has been employed since the early 1980s. "I was being paid as a journalist," he told CNN's Kiran Chetry. "Like you are. You're being paid to do your job."

"The point you have to remember about all this, firstly, it's not me saying this. It's the editors of the BMJ," Deer said. "... Secondly, this material has been published in the United Kingdom in extraordinary detail. If it is true that Andrew Wakefield is not guilty as charged, he has the remedy of bringing a libel action against myself, the Sunday Times of London, against the medical journal here, and he would be the richest man in America."

He said Wakefield's remarks amount to a smear campaign against him, noting that Wakefield has previously sued him and lost.

The autism assignment was a "routine assignment" given to him in 2003, he said, adding that he expected it to be finished in a week or two. However, "when you're a journalist and you see that somebody you're dealing with is lying to you," it must be pursued, he said.

Wakefield, he said, is attempting to "cloud the picture... Some people say he's a liar and he says I'm a liar. What he's basically trying to do is split the difference."

Allegations that he is in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry are "another one of Andrew Wakefield's concoctions," Deer said. "He knows it's not true."

Asked whether he thinks Wakefield should face criminal charges, Deer said, "I personally do." In addition, he said the Department of Homeland Security should take a close look at Wakefield's visa application and how he got into the United States, "how he's been able to export his mischief."

Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association, defended Wakefield in a CNN interview.

"I cannot imagine for a second that Dr. Wakefield would have any reason to falsify data," she said. "He's a man of integrity and honesty and truly wants to find the answers for millions of children who have been affected by autism."

Fournier accused pharmaceutical companies of trying to protect their turf.

"You can't question vaccines without being destroyed," she said. "There's too much money at stake here."

J.B. Handley, the father of an 8-year-old with autism and a co-founder of Generation Rescue -- a group that believes there's a connection between autism and vaccinations -- also questioned the motivation behind the investigation into Wakefield's work.

"Children are given 36 vaccines in the U.S. by the time they reach the age of five," he said. "This is an attempt to whitewash, once and for all, the notion that vaccines cause autism."

The now-discredited paper panicked many parents and led to a sharp drop in the number of children getting the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella.

Vaccination rates dropped sharply in Britain after its publication, falling as low as 80% by 2004. Measles cases have gone up sharply in the ensuing years.

In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90% of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.

"But perhaps as important as the scare's effect on infectious disease is the energy, emotion and money that have been diverted away from efforts to understand the real causes of autism and how to help children and families who live with it," the BMJ editorial states.

Wakefield has been unable to reproduce his results in the face of criticism, and other researchers have been unable to match them.

Most of his co-authors withdrew their names from the study in 2004 after learning he had had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose.

After years of controversy, the Lancet, the prestigious journal that originally published the research, retracted Wakefield's paper last February.

Actress Jenny McCarthy, founder of Generation Rescue and whose son also has autism, declined to comment on Wednesday's developments, but has previously supported Wakefield.

"It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction," she said after the Lancet retraction.

Deer said Wakefield "chiseled" the data before him, "falsifying medical histories of children and essentially concocting a picture, which was the picture he was contracted to find by lawyers hoping to sue vaccine manufacturers and to create a vaccine scare."

According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers.

Godlee, the journal's editor-in-chief, said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism.

"It's always hard to explain fraud and where it affects people to lie in science," Godlee said. "But it does seem a financial motive was underlying this, both in terms of payments by lawyers and through legal aid grants that he received but also through financial schemes that he hoped would benefit him through diagnostic and other tests for autism and MMR-related issues."

But Wakefield told CNN that claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism "came from the parents, not me," and that his paper had "nothing to do with the litigation."

"These children were seen on the basis of their clinical symptoms, for their clinical need, and they were seen by expert clinicians and their disease diagnosed by them, not by me," he said.

Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, said the reporting "represents Wakefield as a person where the ends justified the means." But he said the latest news may have little effect on those families who still blame vaccines for their children's conditions.

"Unfortunately, his core group of supporters is not going to let the facts dissuade their beliefs that MMR causes autism," Wiznitzer said. "They need to be open-minded and examine the information as everybody else."

Wakefield's defenders include David Kirby, a journalist who has written extensively on autism. He told CNN that Wakefield not only has denied falsifying data, he has said he had no way to do so.

"I have known him for a number of years. He does not strike me as a charlatan or a liar," Kirby said. If the BMJ allegations are true, then Wakefield "did a terrible thing" -- but he added, "I personally find it hard to believe that he did that."


Crops, coal and steel inundated by Australia's flooding

By the CNN Wire Staff
January 6, 2011 -- Updated 1202 GMT (2002 HKT)
Click to play
Australia deals with flood disaster
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Fitzroy River is expected to remain above the "major flood" level for another week.
  • At least 10 people have died in flooding since November 30
  • The floodwaters cover an area the size of France and Germany combined

Rockhampton, Australia (CNN) -- Major flooding across eastern Australia is putting a squeeze on the region's farmers, destroying crops and cutting off routes to market.

"Across the state ... agricultural and primary producers in particular are really feeling the impact of the flood waters," CNN's Phil Black reported Thursday. "A lot of agricultural producers have suffered major crop loses -- vegetable producers, fruit growers, as well as grain growers and sugar cane growers."

Those farmers who haven't lost their crops are having trouble getting them to market over washed-out roads, bridges and rail lines. The flooding also has affected the global transport of commodities such as coal and steel out of Queensland.

The Fitzroy River crested at 9.2 meters (about 30 feet), or more than 2 meters (7 feet) over flood stage, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. It's expected to remain above the "major flood" level for another week.

Thousands flee flooding in Australia
Queensland flood exodus continues

The forecast calls for isolated rain, which isn't expected to change the situation much.

"Here in Rockhampton, it is residential areas, some small businesses that have very much felt the impact of these rising flood waters," Black reported.

Some authorities have put damage estimates across Australia as high as AUS $2 billion, while Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Friday that the flooding in Queensland will cost "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars."

The seasonal flooding in the state of Queensland intensified last month after monsoon rains caused rivers to spill over their banks and reach record levels. The floodwaters cover an area the size of France and Germany combined and now stretch into the state of New South Wales.

Images from CNN affiliate Seven Network Australia showed residents traveling down the streets in boats. From the sky, the tops of houses and trees poked out from seas of murky brown water. Snakes whipped about from under the water's surface.

Neil Roberts, Queensland minister for police, corrective services and emergency services, said Wednesday that 1,200 to 1,500 people had to be evacuated in parts of Queensland. Roberts said some residents probably can't return to their homes for at least another week.

He said the recovery could take "many months, and potentially over a year."

Roberts said the government had an emergency cabinet meeting Wednesday and appointed a major general to lead a recovery task force.

Police said 10 people have died as a result of flooding since November 30 -- many of them swept away by swift waters.

An airport in Rockhampton, a city of about 75,000 people, closed Sunday and was expected to remain closed for weeks, according to Emergency Management Queensland.

At least 200,000 people have been affected by prolonged flooding, police have said.

Journalist Michael Best contributed to this report.