Raging fire guts Kabul market

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Firefighters battled through the night to contain a raging fire that swept through a market in the Afghan capital.

No injuries were reported, but the blaze destroyed hundreds of stores and millions of dollars worth of merchandise, Afghan police and firefighters said at the scene. 

Dealers at the neighboring currency exchange, the city’s largest, said they evacuated cash, computer equipment and records from their shops as the flames approached during the night. But in the morning, the market was jammed with people haggling over thick stacks of notes as smoke billowed overhead.

Col. Mohammed Qasem, general director of the Kabul fire department, said he suspected an electrical short was to blame for the fire. 

Gas canisters used to heat the stores propelled the flames, along with the cloth and clothing sold by many of the vendors, Qasem said. “It made it very big in a short time.”

Firefighters from the Afghan defense department and NATO forces were sent to assist. But the city’s notorious traffic and the market’s narrow lanes made it difficult for responders to maneuver their vehicles, Qasem said.

Abdulrahman, who like many Afghans has only one name, squatted near a fire truck with his head in his hands  as responders aimed a hose at the blackened ruins of a building still smoldering at noon Sunday, more than 12 hours after the fire broke out.

He said the building had contained three shops that he owned and a warehouse full of glassware, crockery and kitchen utensils. 

“I lost everything,” he said.

Shirali Khan complained that police hadn't allowed him to remove the goods from his four clothing stores.

“They thought we were all robbers,” he said.  “There’s only ashes left.”

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Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash contributed to this report.

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Hourglass Nebula

This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula, reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls. A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star.

The results are of great interest because they shed new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter that accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars. According to one theory on the formation of planetary nebulae, the hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud, which is denser near its equator than near its poles.

Image: Raghvendra Sahai and John Trauger (JPL), the WFPC2 science team, and NASA [high-resolution]

Caption: Hubble Heritage site

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‘Hobbit’ extends No. 1 journey with $36.7 million

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins is running circles around some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” took in $ 36.7 million to remain No. 1 at the box office for the second-straight weekend, easily beating a rush of top-name holiday newcomers.

Part one of Jackson’s prelude to his “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the Warner Bros. release raised its domestic total to $ 149.9 million after 10 days. The film added $ 91 million overseas to bring its international total to $ 284 million and its worldwide haul to $ 434 million.

“The Hobbit” took a steep 57 percent drop from its domestic $ 84.6 million opening weekend, but business was soft in general as many people skipped movies in favor of last-minute Christmas preparations.

“The real winner this weekend might be holiday shopping,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.

Tom Cruise‘s action thriller “Jack Reacher” debuted in second-place with a modest $ 15.6 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday. Based on the Lee Child best-seller “One Shot,” the Paramount Pictures release stars Cruise as a lone-wolf ex-military investigator tracking a sniper conspiracy.

Opening at No. 3 with $ 12 million was Judd Apatow’s marital comedy “This Is 40,” a Universal Pictures film featuring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprising their roles from the director’s 2007 hit “Knocked Up.”

Paramount’s road-trip romp “The Guilt Trip,” featuring “Knocked Up” star Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, debuted weakly at No. 6 with $ 5.4 million over the weekend and $ 7.4 million since it opened Wednesday. Playing in narrower release, Paramount’s acrobatic fantasy “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away” debuted at No. 11 with $ 2.1 million.

A 3-D version of Disney’s 2001 animated blockbuster “Monsters, Inc.” also had a modest start at No. 7 with $ 5 million over the weekend and $ 6.5 million since opening Wednesday.

Domestic business was off for the first time in nearly two months. Overall revenues totaled $ 112 million, down 12.6 percent from the same weekend last year, when Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” debuted with $ 29.6 million, according to Hollywood.com.

Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” opened at barely half the level as “Ghost Protocol,” but with a $ 60 million budget, the new flick cost about $ 100 million less to make.

Starting on Christmas, Hollywood expects a big week of movie-going with schools out through New Year’s Day and many adults taking time off. So Paramount and other studios are counting on strong business for films that started slowly this weekend.

“‘Jack Reacher’ will end up in a very good place. The movie will be profitable for Paramount,” said Don Harris, the studio’s head of distribution. “The first time I saw the movie I saw dollar signs. It certainly wasn’t intended to be compared to a ‘Mission: Impossible,’ though.”

Likewise, Warner Bros. is looking for steady crowds for “The Hobbit” over the next week, despite the debut of two huge newcomers — the musical “Les Miserables” and the action movie “Django Unchained” — on Christmas Day.

“We haven’t reached the key holiday play time yet,” said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. “It explodes on Tuesday and goes right through the end of the year.”

In limited release, Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden manhunt saga “Zero Dark Thirty” played to packed houses with $ 410,000 in just five theaters, averaging a huge $ 82,000 a cinema.

That compares to a $ 4,654 average in 3,352 theaters for “Jack Reacher” and a $ 4,130 average in 2,913 cinemas for “This Is 40.” ”The Guilt Trip” averaged $ 2,217 in 2,431 locations, and “Monsters, Inc.” averaged $ 1,925 in 2,618 cinemas. Playing just one matinee and one evening show a day at 840 theaters, “Cirque du Soleil” averaged $ 2,542.

Since opening Wednesday, “Zero Dark Thirty” has taken in $ 639,000. Distributor Sony plans to expand the acclaimed film to nationwide release Jan. 11, amid film honors and nominations leading up to the Feb. 24 Academy Awards.

Opening in 15 theaters from Lionsgate banner Summit Entertainment, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor’s tsunami-survival drama “The Impossible” took in $ 138,750 for an average of $ 9,250.

A fourth new release from Paramount, “The Sopranos” creator David Chase’s 1960s rock ‘n’ roll tale “Not Fade Away,” debuted with $ 19,000 in three theaters, averaging $ 6,333.

Universal’s “Les Miserables” got a head-start on its domestic release with a $ 4.2 million debut in Japan.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” $ 36.7 million ($ 91 million international).

2. “Jack Reacher,” $ 15.6 million ($ 2.5 million international).

3. “This Is 40,” $ 12 million.

4. “Rise of the Guardians,” $ 5.9 million ($ 13.7 million international).

5. “Lincoln,” $ 5.6 million.

6. “The Guilt Trip,” $ 5.4 million.

7. “Monsters, Inc.” in 3-D, $ 5 million.

8. “Skyfall,” $ 4.7 million ($ 9 million international),

9. “Life of Pi,” $ 3.8 million ($ 23.2 million international).

10. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” $ 2.6 million ($ 6.6 million international).

___

Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

1. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” $ 91 million.

2. “Life of Pi,” $ 23.2 million.

3. “Rise of the Guardians,” $ 13.7 million.

4. “Skyfall,” $ 9 million.

5. “Wreck-It Ralph,” $ 7.3 million.

6. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” $ 6.6 million.

7. “Pitch Perfect,” $ 6 million.

8. “Les Miserables,” $ 4.2 million.

9. “Love 911,” $ 3.2 million.

10. “De L’autre Cote du Periph,” $ 3.1 million.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

http://www.rentrak.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

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In Brazil's cracolandias , roving hordes of lost souls

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Between the high-rises in the dark center of this megacity, a swarm of people covers an entire block. They are in constant, aimless motion, glazed eyes and dirty faces illuminated repeatedly by small flashes of fire.

This is cracolandia, or crack land, and the horde is one of many moving settlements of homeless drug addicts that dominate this part of town. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, live here, sleeping and sometimes dying on the streets as other Paulistanos, residents of the fast-moving and gritty city, step past and over them on the way to work or Christmas shopping.

The men beg, hustle or recycle trash, while many of the women sell their bodies. Some shelters are available, but many of the addicts prefer not to go. Police might claim a nearby corner, then stand by and watch without making arrests.

"I had always heard about cracolandia, that you could always get high there, you could live your life and get whatever you wanted," says Tiago Bussulom Moraes, 23, who gave up on treating his addiction two years ago and took a bus here from his nearby hometown of Campinas.

"I could go back to treatment, or home, but I'm staying here," he says. "Crack, it takes hold of you. It makes you do things you don't want to do. And I regret it. But this is the life I've chosen."

Brazil is dealing with what officials call a crack epidemic, affecting Brazilians of all ages and confounding government efforts to deal with it. Almost a year after a high-profile police effort to clean up Sao Paulo's cracolandia as part of a revitalization program for the historic center, the outposts remain, but in a number of shifting locations rather than one large one.

"I've seen no improvements and some things are getting worse," said William Damiao Quirino, who has been working as a doorman and security guard downtown for six years. "Trying to clean up this or that corner isn't working. The only thing I think can work is a concerted community effort, involving residents too, to try to get these people treatment."

Crack is cheap and readily available in Brazil, as is cocaine, the drug from which it is made. Compared with other parts of the world, homeless addicts here can meet their basic needs relatively easily. Some restaurants provide food and water. There is community. And it's rarely so cold that sleeping outside is intolerable.

As crack has taken hold in Brazil over the last decade, cracolandias have popped up all around the country, from the Amazon jungle in the distant northwest to nearby Rio de Janeiro.

The best estimates are that there were about 1.5 million crack users in Brazil in 2005 and many more now.

Like cocaine and marijuana, crack is illegal in Brazil, but authorities are dealing with it more as a public health crisis than a criminal matter. Health specialists look to treatment techniques developed abroad, including in the United States, but have also learned that a "war on drugs" approach can be expensive and ineffective, said Telmo Ronzani, a specialist in drugs and public health at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.

In 2011, President Dilma Rousseff announced a $1.9-billion plan to battle crack, largely through expanded treatment and education. The local government in Rio de Janeiro has forced underage users into treatment, and some drug traffickers there even halted crack sales, claiming to be concerned about the effect on the community. But addicted children and adults remain on the streets.

"This is a serious and difficult public problem, and could never be solved quickly. At best, it can be attacked in the medium and long term," Ronzani said. "But if we actually want the situation to improve, authorities need to enact an immediate and effective public solution that involves expanding availability to treatment and improving it."

Free treatment does exist. Adelson Pereira, 48, spends most of his nights in a public shelter a few miles from the city center that offers Narcotics Anonymous-type treatment. But tonight he is in cracolandia, going through trash looking for cans to sell, his eyes yellow and bulging.

"I made a mistake," he says sadly, referring to his decision to ditch the shelter for a few days and slip back into drugs. "It's good there, there's food, there's a bed, there's classes, and you can't use drugs inside. But it's 2,500 men, and a lot of people don't want to spend time in a place like that."

He worked as a welder and took his first hit of crack eight years ago, he says. "I passed out. It was too much. And after that" — he pronounces his words slowly — "it started to dominate me." He no longer speaks to his ex-wife but sometimes gets to see his daughters, ages 5 and 7, no younger than some residents of cracolandia.

"I've seen 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds, many of whom are forced to beg by their parents, and then there are the runaway teens that may have been beaten at home," he says.

The life is ugly, and cheap. A rock of crack, which can weigh about a quarter of a gram, costs less than $2.50; a prostitute can be had for as little as $5.

Though cracolandia has some of the city's most beautiful architecture, and sits alongside up-and-coming neighborhoods downtown, the persistence of a community of addicts, as well as access to relatively valuable trash, keeps the area attractive to the homeless.

Police have started arriving at certain corners from time to time, shifting the groups around, but life goes on largely as usual.

"When I see a 15-year-old girl, pregnant, and smoking crack, as a doctor I just can't say that's OK," said Dr. Arthur Guerra at the University of Sao Paulo. "In that kind of case, implementing involuntary internment might be the best option … but the population shouldn't expect magical solutions from the government. This also has to involve the city, families, NGOs, schools and companies. And we need prevention and education programs for the long term."

Locals live in tense harmony with the homeless, as the area fills up during the business day and then empties out to grim scenes at night. Feet from where Pereira rifles for cans, commuters coming out of the subway station step around a barefoot man on his knees, hands outstretched, wailing in despair.

"It's horrible. It's really difficult, because we see these people going through this and there's nothing we can do," says Dalva Assis, who runs a construction and electricity company downtown and spends her days walking between work sites. "They've taken over a plaza in front of one of my projects, and so I'm waiting to hear back on a request we've filed for the police to set up a base there."

Moraes says a friend who moved here with him was killed for robbing the wrong people in an attempt to get a fix. He agrees that if treatment were better, more people might accept it.

"But you're never going to solve the problem of those of us who want to keep using drugs. Crack is too powerful," Moraes says.

"What they should do is take us and just put us all in one area and let us be, so the population doesn't have to watch us using. People shouldn't have to see us living like this."

Bevins is a special correspondent.

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Maker Mom Builds Cookie-Cutter Empire With 3-D Printers

Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers.

The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them.

After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition to keeping active in the computer graphics industry, she also created a wildly successful Etsy shop, where she sells 3-D printed cookie cutters based on nerd culture favorites Pokemon, Dr. Who and Super Mario Brothers.

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Americans answer D.C.’s siren song of employment, strong economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thirteen years ago the band The Magnetic Fields crooned that the U.S. capital city is “the greatest place to be,” in the indie love song “Washington, D.C.”

Recently, a growing number of Americans are singing along as they move to the District in search of jobs, economic opportunity and cultural attractions.

In a study on migration provided exclusively to Reuters that is set to be released next month, United Van Lines found the District of Columbia tops all 50 states for the number of people moving in during 2012.

The city has held that spot for five years running, with 64 percent of the household moves in Washington coming from outside the city in 2012.

United Van Lines is the largest moving company in the country for households.

Oregon ranked second, followed by Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina. Washington is a city that does not belong to a state, but is subject to loose control from the federal government.

“Washington, D.C., is unique because over the last five years its unemployment rate was not hit as hard by the Great Recession,” said Michael Stoll, chair and professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles about the study. “But I think the other thing is that the city has remade itself from the one we knew 10 to 15 years ago.”

Washington has shed its reputation as the crime capital of the country, and it has developed a high technology corridor and other businesses that are both stable and hiring, said Stoll.

Also, many members of the Baby Boom generation are moving in as they retire, taking advantage of the free museums, monuments and cultural events the city has to offer, he said.

The rising popularity could yield a result also unthinkable less than two decades ago.

“D.C. will not just be a place of tourism. It will be a major economic engine, which many of us haven’t thought of it as being before,” Stoll said.

A U.S. Census report released on Thursday also showed the city is gaining new residents. Washington’s population increased 2.15 percent between July 2011 and July 2012, a rise second only to North Dakota.

The District’s population increase of 5.1 percent from 2010 to 2012 was the biggest in the country, the Census found. It had had 632,323 residents as of July 1.

The city has a large international community, largely due to the presence of foreign embassies and organizations such as the World Bank. The Census found people from other countries made up 32 percent of the net migration from 2011 to 2012.

According to a Labor Department report released on Friday, the District’s unemployment rate fell in November to 8.1 percent from 10.1 percent the year before. Local political leaders point to a development boom and one of the highest median incomes in the country – $ 63,124 – as other draws to the city.

On a national level, Stoll said, the migration patterns show Americans are seeking economic opportunity in places where new manufacturing and technology enterprises are building up. The patterns reveal a swelling group of aging people who are retiring and looking for affordable and comfortable places to live, as well.

He added that many people who wanted to move to California, but were put off by the state’s economic woes, turned their moving vans north to Oregon.

New Jersey topped states for outward moves, in 2012, the United Van Lines study showed, largely due to a shrinking factory sector. It was followed by Illinois, West Virginia, Michigan and New York.

Washington’s popularity surge recently created a paradox in the city’s economic success story. Last month, the Brookings Institution concluded three U.S. metropolitan areas are in economic recovery, but did not include Washington because its population burst drove down its gross domestic product on a per capita basis.

(Reporting By Lisa Lambert; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

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Prime Minister Mario Monti of Italy steps down

LONDON — Prime Minister Mario Monti, the technocrat who guided Italy through economic turbulence for 13 months after scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi left office, resigned Friday to make way for new elections.

Monti, a former economics professor and European Union commissioner, was appointed to the office, with a Cabinet of academics and economists and broad support to bring the country back from the brink of financial disaster.

"A year ago this government was launched, and today — not because of a Maya prophecy — we must bring it to an end," Monti quipped as he spoke to colleagues at an annual reception.

His resignation was provoked in part by Berlusconi's announcements this month that he was withdrawing his center-right Freedom Party's support for Monti's budget reforms and would return to the political arena, leading the party into elections.

Berlusconi's attempt to regain the prime minister's post comes despite his conviction in a corruption case and his ongoing trial on charges of paying for sex with a 17-year-old girl.

Monti's resignation followed Parliament's final approval of the last of his budgetary measures. He and his Cabinet will remain in power as caretakers until the elections, expected in mid-February.

The short run-up to the elections is fraught with questions. Monti, now a senator for life, could seek an active role in the coming government, though he has said that he has no such ambition.

He has not shown his hand yet but recently met with a new group of centrist and pro-European parties. However, such an alliance is expected to command no more than about 15% of an electorate fast losing faith in Monti's austerity cuts, seeing only Italy's rising unemployment and lack of growth.

He is expected to announce his decision Sunday.

The probable favorite in the upcoming election is a left-wing coalition under former communist politician Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party, who is not opposed to Monti's reforms but must answer to powerful labor unions. According to recent polls, Bersani's coalition could attract support from about 30% of the voters.

The dwindling but still strong center-right vote is largely divided between the maverick anti-austerity Five Star Alliance movement led by TV comedian Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi's Freedom Party.

In a meeting with ambassadors Friday morning, Monti said that he thought Italy's standing had improved both economically and internationally in the last year and that he saw "an increase in Italy's authority and credibility on the international scene."

Stobart is a news assistant in The Times' London bureau.

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NimbleTV Promises Cable TV From Anywhere on All Your Devices

Cutting the cord may save you money, but the reality is that cable and satellite TV are incredibly convenient. Yet that convenience stops when you try to watch some of those channels on anything other than the cable-box-connected TV. One startup thinks it has a work around.

NimbleTV started accepting beta applications on Friday for its rather intriguing service. To give users access to their cable TV subscriptions on everything with a screen and an internet connection, NimbleTV will sign you up for a new cable account, host your cable hardware, and push your shows into the cloud. Your content is then accessible from any HTML 5-compatible internet-connected device anywhere.

But while most mobile devices have HTML 5-compatible browsers, most TVs do not. NimbleTV is looking into building apps for TVs and set-top boxes. But in the meantime, AirPlay for Apple TV that stream and set-top boxes with HTML 5 browsers will have to do.

Still, the most exciting aspect of the service is that if NimbleTV can get ramped up to a full launch, you’ll be able to subscribe to a pay-TV service from anywhere. International customers and expats could sign up for cable in the United States and stay on top of their favorite shows from anywhere in the world.

There’s a big question, however, of how the cable companies will react. NimbleTV CEO Anand Subramanian told Wired that conversations with providers have been very positive. Subramanian notes that placeshifting content isn’t new: “SlingBox has been around for 10 years and people placeshift all the time. This is very similar.”

Plus, the ability to subscribe to pay TV anywhere could also save you money. To lure subscribers, a cable company in a rural area could lower prices to undercut cable companies in large cities, and vice versa. It could effectively work to break up the natural monopolies some cable companies enjoy in certain markets. Not happy with the local provider? Switch to a provider a few towns over.

NimbleTV is currently in beta in New York City and plans on charging about an additional $20 (the company is still working on a pricing structure) above the cost of pay TV subscription for its service.

Roberto is a Wired Staff Writer for Gadget Lab covering augmented reality, home technology, and all the gadgets that fit in your backpack. Got a tip? Send him an email at: roberto_baldwin [at] wired.com.

Read more by Roberto Baldwin

Follow @strngwys on Twitter.

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