NORTON META TAG

30 September 2014

First U.S. Case Of Ebola Confirmed In Dallas & (VIDEO) CDC’s Frieden confirms first U.S. case of Ebola is in Dallas & This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science 30SEP14

THERE will be a host of conspiracy theorist, doomsday preppers and right wing fanatics that will seen this case of Ebola in the U.S. as a government plot orchestrated by Obama to wipe out the elderly, the vets, the poor, and to distract from the economic and political problems of the nation and an illegal war in Iraq and Syria. I bet there is already a hot time on the internet tonight. And stupid people will believe some or all of their rants and ramblings and pass them on adding to fear and near panic in some communities. For those who want to know what is actually going on consider these from +NPR and the +PBS NewsHour .....
A patient at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has a confirmed case of Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. He is being treated and kept in strict isolation.
A patient at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has a confirmed case of Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. He is being treated and kept in strict isolation.
LM Otero/AP
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that the first case of Ebola has appeared in the U.S.
A man in Dallas has tested positive for the virus, the agency said. The man flew to the U.S. from Liberia, arriving on Sept. 20, NPR has learned. He wasn't sick on the flight, and had no symptoms when he arrived.
He first developed symptoms on Wednesday, Sept. 24, according to the CDC, and first sought care on Friday. On Sunday, he was placed in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Health officials have already started reaching out to people who may have come into close contact with the man. The virus is spread only through direct contact of bodily fluids, and it isn't contagious until a person starts showing symptoms.
Update at 7:15 p.m. ET. Handful Of People Exposed
A "handful" of people may have been exposed to the virus, the CDC's Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Tuesday at a news conference. These include several family members of the man and a few people in community, Frieden said.
The man could have passed Ebola to these people during the four days when he was sick but not yet isolated.
But passengers on the plane with the man were not exposed to Ebola, Frieden said. "There is zero risk of transmission on the flight. He was checked for fever before getting on the flight."
The CDC has been planning for an Ebola case in the U.S, Frieden said. And the agency, together with state health departments, has successfully dealt with similar viruses — Lassa and Marburg — on five previous occasions.
"The bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this importation, or case of Ebola," he said, "so that it does not spread widely in this country."
Our Original Post Continues:
This isn't the first time somebody has been treated for Ebola in the U.S. Several American aid workers in recent months caught the virus while working in West Africa and were flown back to the U.S. for treatment.
But it's the first time the disease has been diagnosed in a person in the U.S. The CDC is sending a team to Dallas to work with state and local health officials.
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to grow rapidly. As of Thursday, there have been more than 6,500 cases across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. More than 3,000 people have died of the disease, the World Health Organization says.
Specialists studying infectious diseases have predicted for weeks that a few Ebola cases would likely turn up in the U.S. And hospitals around the country have been preparing to diagnose and treat such cases.
Because Ebola only spreads through body fluids, officials say that any case like this will likely be quickly identified and contained, and not lead to a widespread outbreak like the one happening now in West Africa.
 A mock patient is wheeled in an isolation pod during a drill at the biocontainment unit in the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Goats and Soda

How Do You Catch Ebola: By Air, Sweat Or Water?

Medical workers with the nonprofit Doctors Without Borders treat a patient for Ebola in Gueckedou, Guinea. Despite their protective gear, the workers try to maintain human contact with patients by talking with them and getting close enough to look into their eyes.

Goats and Soda

Ebola 101: The Facts Behind A Frightening Virus

Air traffic connections from West Africa to the rest of the world: While Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone don't have many flights outside the region, Nigeria is well-connected to Europe and the U.S.

CDC’s Frieden confirms first U.S. case of Ebola is in Dallas

BY Ellen Rolfes  September 30, 2014 at 6:53 PM EDT
 

Watch Tuesday’s CDC news conference discussing the first diagnosed U.S. case of Ebola
The first ever case of Ebola in the U.S. has been diagnosed in Dallas.
Centers for Disease Control Director Tom Frieden confirmed the diagnosis in a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
The patient, only identified as a male, traveled from Liberia and arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20, but did not start showing symptoms until four days later. The patient was later admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on Sunday, Sept. 28, and put under isolation and treatment.
The patient had traveled to Texas to visit family members living in the U.S., Frieden said.
There was no other information released as to the identity or the status of his conditon, other than that he was critically ill at this point and under intensive care.
While all other patients treated for Ebola have been sent to Emory University in Atlanta, Frieden said there were no plans to transfer the most-recent patient from the Dallas hospital.
The CDC, along with Dallas County Health and Human Services, will now follow procedure for contact tracing in order to identify all possible persons who may be at risk for Ebola infection because of direct contact with the Dallas patient.
Since the patient did not start exhibiting symptoms until four days after flying to the U.S. on a commercial airliner, Frieden said there was “zero risk of transmission on the flight.”
“Ebola is a scary disease because of the severity of the illness,” Frieden said. “At the same time we are stopping it in its tracks.”

This is how you get Ebola, as explained by science

BY Ruth Tam  September 30, 2014 at 8:24 PM EDT
A colorized, magnified electron microscope image of the Ebola virus growing out of an  infected VERO 46 cell. Image by NIAID
A colorized, magnified electron microscope image of the Ebola virus growing out of an infected VERO 46 cell. Image by National Institute of Allerfy and Infectious Diseases
This post was originally published on Aug. 21 and updated on Sep. 30 to reflect the latest numbers from the World Health Organization.
As of Sep. 30, the Ebola virus had killed more than 3,000 people in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, according to the latest numbers released by the World Health Organization.
As the virus spreads and medical workers feverishly battle to contain it, we wanted to know, how exactly is this virus transmitted from human to human?
What is Ebola?
Illustrations by Ruth Tam
Illustrations by Ruth Tam
Ebola is one of the world’s most virulent diseases. It comes from an extended family of viruses called Filoviridae, which also include the deadly Marburg virus. It is a swift and effective killer, known to kill up to 90 percent of those it infects. And it is a “hemorrhagic fever virus,” which means it causes fluid to leak from blood vessels, resulting in a dangerously low drop in blood pressure.
Understanding Ebola requires an understanding of viruses and how they work. “Viruses,” science writer Carl Zimmer writes in his book “A Planet of Viruses”, “can replicate themselves, despite their paltry genetic instructions, by hijacking other forms of life. They… inject their genes and proteins into a host cell, which they [manipulate] into producing new copies of the virus. One virus might go into a cell, and within a day, a thousand viruses [come] out.”
All viruses contain “attachment proteins,” which, as the name suggests, attach to host cells through the cells’ “receptor sites.” This is how they invade healthy human cells.
EbolaWhile some virus particles are shaped like spheres, the particles that make up Ebola are filament-like in structure, giving them more surface area to potentially attack a greater number of cells. Each Ebola virus particle is covered in a membrane of these attachment proteins, or glycoproteins.
“[The virus] has a tremendous number of glycoproteins, which can increase its ability to affect cells,” said Richard Cummings, chair of Emory’s Dept. of Biochemistry and director of the National Center for Functional Glycomics. “It’s extremely infectious in that regard.”
Imagine Ebola’s glycoproteins as giant oak trees with branches and leaves, said Erica Ollmann Saphire, a structural biologist at the Scripps Research Institute. The Ebola virus has its own critical receptor site, which lies beneath these branches and leaves to avoid detection from the immune system. Each glycoprotein can attach itself to a host cell in a number of different ways, but once its branches fasten themselves to a host cell’s molecules, that host cell pulls in the attachment protein, slicing off its leaves and branches and exposing the trunk, the virus’s receptor site.
“The previously hidden receptor rearranges itself and spring loads like a spear fishing rod,” said Saphire. “It uncoils, springs forward and penetrates the membrane, driving itself into the cytoplasm.”
science-wednesday
The cells then internalize the virus, and Ebola’s race against the human immune system begins.
How Ebola moves from person to person
Ebola spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or tissue. The virus can be transmitted when an infected person’s vomit, blood or other fluids contact another person’s mouth, eyes or openings in their skin, said Dr. Ameesh Mehta, an infectious disease doctor at Emory University.
Even after a person has died, the virus persists. In West Africa where funeral rites include washing, touching and kissing corpses by family members, putting the dead to rest can be just as deadly as caring for a living patient.
“Contact with any aspect of it is considered very dangerous,” Cummings said. “Any physical contact.”
BloodEbola’s sucker punch is its speed of replication. At the time of death, a patient can have 1 billion copies of the virus in one cubic centimeter of blood. In comparison, HIV, a similar virus, has the same rate at the time of death. But unlike HIV, which only infects two types of immune cells, Ebola first infects white blood cells that disable the body’s ability to destroy foreign substances,  then seizes nearly every cell type.
“It’s a systemic viral infection throughout your body as opposed to an infection of just your immune system,” Saphire said. “Patients may die before they’re able to mount much of an immune response.”
This process takes anywhere from two to 21 days (though it’s typically between four to 10 days). When the immune system begins breaking down, the symptoms begin to show.
Patients experience fevers, headaches and fatigue early on. After the virus overwhelms healthy cells, they burst, causing a chemical release leading to inflammation. Their remains are taken over by other cells, perpetuating the virus. As the symptoms worsen, patients suffer from bloody diarrhea, severe sore throat, jaundice, vomiting or loss of appetite.
Infected cells that haven’t yet burst carry the virus through the bloodstream to invade different parts of the body like the lymph nodes, spleen and liver. When infected cells attach themselves to the inside of blood vessels, it weakens them, causing fluids to leak. This triggers the uncontrollable bleeding for which Ebola is known, though it only happens for about 50 percent of patients and occurs mostly inside the body.
In fatal cases, blood pressure plummets after blood vessel damage, and death from shock or multiple organ failure occurs within six to 16 days.
The path ahead
Saphire is part of a large, multi-site team made up of 25 laboratories that’s mapping Ebola’s glycoprotein to better understand and defeat the virus. Among the potential strategies they’re studying is an antibody cocktail called ZMapp, an experimental drug that drew media attention after its use on two U.S. aid workers and three Liberian doctors. First developed by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases a decade ago, this “Ebola serum” potentially works to neutralize the virus by preventing its rearrangement and flagging it for destruction by the immune system.
Clinical trials for ZMapp are set to begin in 2015, but according to Saphire, doses for “experimental compassionate therapy,” treatment provided to critically-ill patients before the drug has been approved, could be ready in three months.
“The central dogma of molecular biology is that sequence dictates fold, which dictates function,” Saphire said. “But Ebola does more with less. While the human genome has 20,000 kinds of genes, Ebola has seven, and by rearranging its protein structure, it can carry out far more than seven functions.”
Transformers
Ebola, Saphire explained, remodels its molecules “like a Transformer: those toys that unfold and refold to change between a robot and a truck,” she said. “We don’t typically expect molecules in biology to do that. We expect proteins to have one particular form – just the robot. If you didn’t know that the Ebola robot would also refold into a truck, you would design all your drugs against the robot structure.”
In addition, due to its extreme nature, there are far fewer human studies on Ebola than other similar viruses.
“Ebola patients are often too sick to consent to research,” Mehta said. These cases are occurring in poor environments where it’s hard to collect the samples to really understand the pathogens. But hopefully science catches up with the clinical phenomenon.”
While the recent outbreak is not expected to reach far beyond West Africa, researchers like science writer Richard Preston fear the beginning of a more deadly and longer-lasting epidemic if the virus finds its way to metropolitan areas like Lagos, Nigeria, which has a population larger than the state of New York.
Despite Ebola’s pervasive spread, Cummings says the biggest misconceptions are that Ebola is easily transmitted and that the outbreak in West Africa could reach global levels.
While one should still exercise caution, Cummings says the requirement of transmission of fluids makes the disease more difficult to get if you’re not directly treating patients.
“It is more controllable than people realize.”

组图:天安门抗议者凄美年轻,认真,快乐和这些疯狂照片显示这到底是在香港4JUN&29SEP14破天

还有在1989年东欧从苏联被解放的春天这么多希望对中国来说,glastnost在整个苏联所有的嗡嗡声,现在有一个和平的学生带领的亲民主运动获得过共产主义的支持,统治中国。然后传来的恐怖天安门大屠杀。请问香港是1989年的重演?在一点是肯定的,香港的人不能指望他们支持争取自由和民主的西方资本主义民主国家。这些民主国家的人民会假装惊恐另一个血腥镇压,当它发生在香港,然后他们会继续买中国制造的产品,支持和非常相同的政府,谋杀它自己的人继续执政的资金。对不起,我们中的绝大多数都那么以自我为中心和虚伪,我们把我们自己的自私欲望的东西比别人的人权。我祈祷,我错了,香港市民赢得他们的斗争,并成为光的灯塔,并希望中国和世界各地受压迫的人。从+母亲琼斯 .....

组图:天安门抗议者凄美年轻,认真,快乐

二十五年前,中国领导人暴力镇压北京学生起义。这些照片记录了之前和之后。

|星期三06月04日,2014年上午6时00 EDT。
二十五年前,中国共产党领导暴力镇压学生示威在北京天安门广场,杀死无数的和平示威者。示威活动开始于四月自发集会纪念胡耀邦的政治家谁的学生视为开明和亲改革的使用寿命。但很快,抗议活动已经成为一个全国性的呼吁增加民主权利,政府的透明度和新闻自由。移动威胁的最高领导层的核心,并在1989年6月3日的晚上,6月4日上午,部队清除了广场上。这些照片追查的示威短弧及其破坏性后果。
1989年4月21日: 据编制正式的政府文件,在天安门文件,详尽说明的示威,在广场的情绪就这一天了“白热化”。在这张照片中,4月21日拍摄,周围的人纪念碑人民英雄,在那里,数天前,一群艺术学生已经把他们的英雄,胡耀邦,反毛泽东的肖像,肖像羊群(你可以看到在背景中)。占10所大学的学生游行当天拍下的广场上,循环请愿,要求竞争性的选举和政治改革。根据正式的官方账号,他们高呼:“民主万岁!” 和“反对独裁!” (三上真定之/美联社)

1989年5月: 王丹20岁的大一学生学习历史的北大,上升到突出的学生占领了广场,似乎持有“的影响最大,”根据纽约时报的分布提起当时。对王某的头带字符写着“绝食”,因为绝食是抗议活动的一个关键因素。镇压后,王某是21人,政府认定为抗议活动的主要领导人之一,在那些谁被抓了起来,并送进监狱。他在1993年发行,只待再次被捕,1995年被判处11年以上
加拿大记者黄扬写道,在他在监狱的时候,王丹标志着大屠杀的每个周年日以24小时绝食:“我计划这样做的每一个6月4日我的余生,“王说。这些天来,王丹形容自己是“一个不可救药的理想主义者”  在他的Twitter个人资料(美联社照片)

1989年5月17日: 这张照片拍摄的早期抗议活动,这是喧闹的,并吸引了来自当地居民和媒体的广泛支持的精神。1989年事件的国际覆盖面可能会导致您认为只发生在北京的学生抗议活动。但在5月17日独自一人,27个省份报告有大规模的示威游行,16其中包括10,000或更多示威者,据天安门文件。广泛的不安放在领导的压力,拿出一个解决方案,并在权力的中国走廊,四面楚歌,并划分为中央政治局达成的结论是,戒严是放下了抗议活动的一个必要步骤。(三上真定之/美联社)

周五5月19日:赵紫阳,中共总书记谁开创了市场化改革,满足空腹的学生在北京呼吁他们停止绝食。赵,谁曾推动一个更宽松的反应,抗议,后来被政府赶下台。“我们来得太晚了,” 他说,给学生的那一天,在意见  在电视上播出。“对不起,同学们,不管你怎么批评我们,我认为你必须这样做的权利。我们不来这里请您原谅我们。” 后与学生谈判失败,共产党领袖下令北京和解放军部队的部队接管开始占据北京。(记者/美联社)

1989年5月21日:  大学的学生挥舞的拳头和旗帜的五家中国军用直升机在北京飞在黎明。人们在广场上的人数扩大至约30万在这一天。报道说,当地人恳求军官以武拒,并到达方形防止地面部队。(美联社照片)

1989年5月22日:一对年轻夫妇跳舞人群,已被占领天安门广场九天此时之中。是什么令我对这张照片是多么的不同方和年轻人们的关系在政治,就是今天。一代人的,年轻的中国人被剥夺了天安门的文化记忆。许多年轻的中国人从来就没有学到关于6月4日各地发生的事件如果他们听说过什么美其名曰的“事件”,它往往是,这是在共产党统治的完美无瑕,否则历史上的雷达昙花一现什么。当然,消毒的版本是与事实不符......路易莎林,NPR的驻京记者,称今天的中国人民失忆的共和国 (马克艾利/美联社)

1989年5月30日:。抗议者占领的民主女神像,性和统一性的自由女神像为蓝本石膏象征的雕像天安门广场工作(杰夫·威得恩/美联社)

1989年6月3日:这张照片描绘了一下之前的政府回应示威演变成暴力冲突。6月3日,大批群众聚集在北京的交集。血腥镇压即将开始。这一次,部队有严格的命令:清除广场(杰夫·威得恩/美联社)

1989年6月4日: 死亡平民的尸体休息广场附近错位的自行车之一。(美联社照片)

1989年6月5日: 在北京东部,在地下通道坦克一对中国夫妇在自行车上隐蔽滚过去的开销。(刘香成/美联社)

1989年6月5日: “这家伙是怎么回事搞砸了我的照片”,美联社摄影师杰夫·威得恩认为作为一个男人出现在四辆坦克在天安门前。“我真的以为我已经错过了篮球场上的篮筐,”威得恩告诉我,在2009年接受采访时解释说,他拍下了这张照片,同时俯身在北京饭店的阳台,所有的错误相机设置,从脑震荡流浪的岩石,并患上了感冒。“我想我是多么接近来没有得到的图片,”他补充说。
威得恩能够与一个年轻游客的帮助下偷渡电影走出酒店。第二天,他来到北京在AP处得知他的照片是在世界上报纸的头版。它的功率只有明白了他后来:“这是一个有点像大卫和歌利亚,”他说。“这只是让压倒性的,这就像对大象的蚂蚁。”
我们仍然不知道坦克人的身份。“很多人想知道他是谁,就个人而言,我的感觉是是,它是种整齐的,我们不知道他是谁,因为他是那种有代表性的无名战士的,”威得恩说。这张照片是“我的一部分,”他补充说。“我负责了,并一遍又一遍地讲述它的故事。” (杰夫·威得恩/美联社)

1989年6月5日:。军队镇压结束在天安门广场的7周亲民主示威(杰夫·威得恩/美联社)

Photos: Tiananmen Protesters Were Heartbreakingly Young, Earnest, and Happy & These Insane Photos Show What the Hell Is Happening in Hong Kong 4JUN&29SEP14

THERE was so much hope for China in the Spring of 1989. Eastern Europe was being liberated from the Soviet Union, glastnost was all the buzz throughout the USSR and now there was a peaceful student lead pro democracy movement gaining support across communist ruled China. And then came the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Will Hong Kong be a repeat of 1989? On thing is certain, the people of Hong Kong can not count on support of the Western capitalist democracies of their struggle for freedom and democracy. And the people of these democracies will feign horror at another bloody crackdown when it happens in Hong Kong, and then they will continue to buy products made in the prc, supporting and funding the very same government that murders it's own people to stay in power. I am sorry the vast majority of us are so self centered and hypocritical that we put our own selfish desire for things over the human rights of others. And I pray I am wrong, and the people of Hong Kong win their struggle and become a beacon of light and hope for the prc and oppressed people the world over. From +Mother Jones .....

Photos: Tiananmen Protesters Were Heartbreakingly Young, Earnest, and Happy

Twenty-five years ago, Chinese leaders violently suppressed a student uprising in Beijing. These photos document the before and after.

| Wed Jun. 4, 2014 6:00 AM EDT
Twenty-five years ago, the Communist Party leadership of China violently suppressed student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, killing countless peaceful protesters. The demonstrations began in April as spontaneous rallies commemorating the life of Hu Yaobang, a politician whom students regarded as open-minded and pro-reform. But soon, the protests had become a nationwide call for increased democratic rights, government transparency, and freedom of the press. The movement threatened the top leadership to its core, and during the night of June 3, 1989, and the morning of June 4, troops cleared the square. These photos trace the short arc of the demonstrations and their devastating aftermath.
April 21, 1989​: According to official government documents compiled in the Tiananmen Papers, an exhaustive account of the demonstrations, emotions in the square reached a "fever pitch" on this day. In this photo, taken on April 21, people flock around the Monument to the People's Heroes, where, several days earlier, a group of art students had placed a portrait of their hero, Hu Yaobang, opposite Mao's portrait (which you can see in the background). Students representing 10 universities marched on the square on the day photographed, circulating petitions demanding competitive elections and political reforms. According to an official government account, they chanted: "Long live democracy!" and "oppose dictatorship!" (Sadayuki Mikami/AP)

May 1989: Wang Dan, a 20-year-old freshman studying history at Beijing University, rose to prominence in the student occupation of the square, seeming to hold "the greatest influence," according to a New York Times profile filed at the time. The characters on Wang's headband read "hunger strike," because hunger strikes were a key element of the protests. After the crackdown, Wang was one of 21 people the government identified as key leaders of the protests, and was among those who were rounded up and sent to prison. He was released in 1993, only to be rearrested in 1995 and sentenced to 11 more years.
Canadian journalist Jan Wong wrote that during his time in prison, Wang Dan marked each anniversary of the massacre with a 24-hour hunger strike: "I plan to do so every June 4th for the rest of my life," Wang said. These days, Wang Dan describes himself as "an incorrigible idealist" on his Twitter profile. (AP Photo)

May 17, 1989: This photo captures the spirit of the early protests, which were raucous and attracted broad support from locals and the media. International coverage of the 1989 events might lead you to believe the student protests only happened in Beijing. But on May 17 alone, 27 provinces reported large-scale demonstrations—16 of which included 10,000 or more protesters, according to the Tiananmen Papers. The widespread unrest put the pressure on leaders to come up with a solution, and in the Chinese corridors of power, the embattled and divided Politburo was reaching the conclusion that martial law was a necessary step in putting down the protests. (Sadayuki Mikami/AP)

Friday May 19: Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party General Secretary who had pioneered market reforms, meets with fasting students in Beijing to urge them to stop their hunger strike. Zhao, who had pushed for a more lenient reaction to the protests, was later ousted from government. "We have come too late," he said to the students that day, in comments broadcast on television. "I am sorry, fellow students. No matter how you have criticized us, I think you have the right to do so. We do not come here to ask you to excuse us." After negotiations with the students failed, Communist Party leaders ordered a troop takeover of Beijing, and People's Liberation Army troops began to occupy Beijing. (Xinhua/AP)

May 21, 1989: University students wave fists and flags as five Chinese military helicopters fly over Beijing at dawn. The number of people in the square swelled to some 300,000 on this day. Reports said that locals pleaded with army officers to resist using force, and prevented troops on the ground from reaching the square. (AP Photo)

May 22, 1989: A young couple dances among a crowd, which had been occupying Tiananmen Square for nine days at this point. What strikes me about this photo is how different the square—and young peoples' relationship to politics—is today. A generation on, young Chinese have been deprived of the cultural memory of Tiananmen. Many young Chinese have never learned about the events around June 4. If they have heard anything about what is euphemistically called the "incident," it's often that it was a blip on the radar in the otherwise unblemished history of Communist rule. Of course, the sanitized version is far from the truth…Louisa Lim, NPR's Beijing correspondent, calls today's China The People's Republic of Amnesia. (Mark Avery/AP)

May 30, 1989: Protesters occupying Tiananmen Square work on the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, a plaster symbol of resistance and unity modeled after the Statue of Liberty. (Jeff Widener/AP)

June 3, 1989: This photo depicts a moment just before the government's response to the demonstrations turned violent. On June 3, huge crowds gathered at a Beijing intersection. The bloody crackdown was about to begin. This time, the troops had strict orders: Clear the square. (Jeff Widener/AP)

June 4, 1989: The bodies of dead civilians rest among mangled bicycles near the square. (AP Photo)

June 5, 1989: In eastern Beijing, a Chinese couple on a bicycle take cover at an underpass as tanks roll past overhead. (Liu Heung Shing/AP)

June 5, 1989: "This guy's going to screw up my picture," Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener thought as a man appeared in front of four tanks in Tiananmen Square. "I really thought I'd missed the hoop on that basketball court," Widener told me in a 2009 interview, explaining that he took this photo while leaning over a balcony of the Beijing Hotel, with all the wrong camera settings, concussed from a stray rock, and suffering from a cold. "I think about how close I came to not getting the picture," he added.
Widener was able to smuggle the film out of the hotel with the help of a young tourist. The next day, he arrived at the AP offices in Beijing to learn that his photo was on the front pages of the world's newspapers. Its power only dawned on him later: "It's a bit like David and Goliath," he said. "It's just so overpowering—it's like an ant against an elephant."
We still don't know the identity of Tank Man. "Many people would like to know who he is, and personally, my feeling is is that it's kind of neat that we don't know who he is, because he's sort of representative of the unknown soldier," Widener said. This photo is "part of me," he added. "I'm responsible for telling its story over and over and over again." (Jeff Widener/AP)

June 5, 1989: The military crackdown ended the seven week pro-democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square. (Jeff Widener/AP)