Asia shares up despite Fed uncertainty, fiscal fears

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged up to a 16-month high on Tuesday and the euro firmed, but prices were capped as investors waited for the U.S. Federal Reserve's policy decision this week and any progress in U.S. budget talks.

European shares were likely to crawl higher too, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> will open as much as 0.3 percent higher. But a 0.2 percent drop in U.S. stock futures hinted at a soft Wall Street open. <.l><.eu><.n/>

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> nudged up 0.3 percent to a 16-month high. The index has hit successive 16-month highs since December 5.

Australian shares <.axjo> gained 0.4 percent to a seven-week high, supported by higher commodities prices on bets that the Fed will adopt fresh economic stimulus measures.

"It seems the Christmas rally (in commodities prices) is about getting ahead of the FOMC meeting and staying ahead of any potential Chinese stimulus early next year," said Ben Taylor, sales trader at CMC Markets.

Hong Kong shares <.hsi> added 0.2 percent, after earlier hitting a 16-month high. Shanghai shares <.ssec> were little changed as investors turned cautious ahead of the Fed and also took profits from Monday's rally, partly in response to data showing China's banks lent more slowly than expected in November and the pace of total financing eased.

Japan's Nikkei share average <.n225> was the region's laggard, closing down 0.1 percent but staying above a key 9,500 level. Investors booked profits on signs that the market is overbought after a 10 percent rally in the past month. <.t/>

"The 9,500-level is still an important psychological line for both support and resistance purposes," said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.

After a two-day meeting ending Wednesday, the Fed is expected to announce it will buy $45 billion per month of longer-dated Treasuries beginning in January on top of the $40 billion in mortgage-backed security purchases it announced in September. The new buying will replace the Fed's current program, Operation Twist, which expires at the end of December.

Under Operation Twist, the Fed sells shorter-dated U.S. government debt and buys longer-dated Treasuries to extend the duration of its balance sheet.

The prospects of Fed stimulus weighed on the dollar and helped to underpin the euro, which traded up 0.1 percent at $1.2956, following a Monday low of $1.2880.

The dollar steadied at 82.32 yen. The yen has also been pressured by expectations for more easing from the Bank of Japan, which meets next week.

The euro rose from Monday's lows after Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti played down market fears over his decision to resign. He said there was no danger of a vacuum ahead of an election in the spring.

"I think people at this point are not sure whether there really will be the risk of Italy not pursuing its fiscal reforms pursued under Monti. So it's hard to really price that news in yet," said Takao Hattori, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo.

FISCAL WORRIES

European partners urged the next Italian government on Monday to stick to Monti's reform agenda, after his decision to resign early and Silvio Berlusconi's return to frontline politics rattled financial markets.

Monti had earned market confidence over the past year in indebted Italy, as he spearheaded a reform agenda to rescue the euro zone's third-largest economy from the threat of a Greek-style collapse.

The prospects that Italy's reform agenda could move off track in the absence of Monti at the helm have weighed on markets. Investors also worry about the impact on neighboring Spain, which is struggling with high debt and studying the need for outside help.

Economists have warned that a failure by the U.S. Congress to avert the "fiscal cliff," some $600 billion of tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to start in January, could send the economy into recession and weigh on the fragile global economy.

The White House and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's office held more negotiations on Monday on ways to break the budget stalemate. The talks picked up pace after Boehner met with President Barack Obama on Sunday, raising hopes of progress.

U.S. crude futures inched up 0.1 percent to $85.65 a barrel and Brent also rose 0.1 percent to $107.40.

(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo and Victoria Thieberger in Melbourne; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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Putin Rehabilitates Labor Award Harking Back to Soviet Glory

MOSCOW — When secretaries, financial analysts and the like spilled onto the streets of Moscow in antigovernment protests last winter, Vladimir V. Putin took one look and dismissed them as a crowd of “office plankton.”

And then he set about burnishing his credentials as a champion of real, working-class Russians, a project that continued on Monday with his decision to dust off a relic of Soviet heraldry: the set of lapel pins called the Hero of Socialist Labor award, now conspicuously shortened in these capitalistic times to the Hero of Labor.

Mr. Putin, who was elected this year to his third term as president, has brought back the Soviet anthem, military parades and political repression. But until now he had not set about restoring the grandeur of the Soviet lapel pin collection for civilians — awards marked by the heads of Lenin and ribbons that once caused jackets to sag.

“Of course, I think that it would be good for us to revive the Hero of Labor award, only we need to think — we shouldn’t make a complete copy of it from the Soviet times,” Mr. Putin told a meeting of political supporters, the Interfax news agency reported Monday. “We need to be sure it covers working people, no matter where they work, and those who work with their heads and their hands.”

Igor Kholmanskikh, a rough-hewed, working-class former tank factory foreman who started a pro-Putin movement in the Ural Mountain industrial area, first proposed reviving the award in August.

Mr. Putin is believed to be swiveling to the political left through the embrace of movements like Mr. Kholmanskikh’s. The intention is to co-opt expected discontent in industrial regions, where support is still stronger than in the urban centers, in case the price of oil, the mainstay of the Russian economy, declines in coming years.

As wages level off, medals and awards that raise status without costing hard currency might substitute as compensation, as practiced in the Soviet period, beginning principally in the 1930s, when such status symbols, rather than salaries, measured accomplishment.

By the 1980s, medal inflation had rendered such awards all but meaningless, as nearly everybody had some, and they became the objects of near universal derision — eventually sold by the hundreds in canning jars on the sidewalks of East bloc countries.

The Hero of Socialist Labor award was created in 1938. It went to coal miners, milkmaids, tractor drivers and others who applied more than the typical amount of elbow grease to their work, thus contributing to “the growth of the might and glory of the U.S.S.R.,” according to an entry about the award in the Big Soviet Encyclopedia.

The award came in the form of two pins — a ribbon and a medal with a cameo of Lenin.

A revision of the rules in 1949 clarified that workers who received the award three times would also have a bronze bust made in their likeness, along with the six pieces of chest decoration. Mr. Putin did not say whether the new award would lead to any busts for repeat winners.

Other awards went to so-called shock workers who took on difficult jobs. Mothers who had 10 children or more were called Hero Mothers.

But in the late 1980s, after the devaluation of lapel pins under Leonid Brezhnev, the government scaled back to ban multiple awards to the same person, then abolished the Hero of Socialist Labor award altogether with the Soviet Union’s demise.

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Royal phone scandal highlights new media risks

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Back in 2007, as investigations were gathering strength into the UK phone hacking scandal involving journalists working under the umbrella of the Murdoch media empire, a comedy show based around prank telephone calls made a low-key debut in Britain.

‘Fonejacker’ proved such a hit with the British public that the next year the program, in which a masked caller bamboozles hapless victims, won a coveted BAFTA award for best comedy, underscoring the attraction of the prank call amid a blurring of a ceaseless news cycle with social media and entertainment.

But just such a prank telephone call, to a London hospital where Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate was being treated, has sparked a firestorm in traditional and social media after the apparent suicide by the nurse who put the call through.

Much of the fury has been directed at laying blame for the nurse’s death on the Australian DJs who made the prank call, or the media in general, with the most vitriolic comments appearing on the public domains of Facebook and Twitter.

The social media outrage has become a story of its own, outlasting the original news value of a prank call, and has seen advertising pulled from the program which broadcast the hoax call and the suspension of the two radio announcers.

Shares in radio station 2DayFM’s owner, Southern Cross Austero fell 5 percent on Monday as the public backlash gathered strength.

Media commentators and analysts warn the rapidly changing traditional and social media worlds may have given people greater freedom of expression, but can unleash a genie which can have destructive or negative repercussions, without responsible behavior by both mainstream and social media operators.

“It’s all changing so fast that societal norms have retreated in confusion,” said veteran newspaper columnist Jennifer Hewett in the Australian Financial Review.

“What is clear is that we will soon look back to count the mounting costs and destructive force, as well as the great benefits, of the explosion of communication in an all-media, all-in, all-the-time world,” Hewett said.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found dead in staff accommodation near London’s King Edward VII hospital on Friday after putting the hoax call through to a colleague who unwittingly disclosed details of Kate’s morning sickness to 2DayFM’s presenters.

Her death, still being investigated, followed still simmering outrage in Britain over phone hacking, as well as Australian anger over the power of radio announcers to plump ratings with a diet of shock, including a 2Day announcer who sparked fury by calling a woman journalist rival a “fat slag”.

And while in Britain the popular press were quick to seize the moral high ground and point the finger “Down Under”, Australian commentators pointed blame the other way, or at confusion over the changing role of media and voracious public demand for not only information, but increasingly titillation.

Australian newspaper columnist Mike Carlton said while 2Day FM and its parent company made good money by “entertaining simple minds”, for tabloid British papers to point “Down Under” over a ‘gotcha’ news genre they created was “towering hypocrisy”.

CHANGING MEDIA ETHICS

The social media condemnation of Saldanha’s death should prompt a re-think of ethics in the era of celebrity news, said Jim Macnamara, a media analyst from Australia’s University of Technology, Sydney.

“There is a lesson in this for media organizations everywhere, and for journalists and media personalities, and that is that they need to look at community standards and better self regulate,” said Macnamara.

The tragic fallout from the radio stunt has rekindled memories of the death of William’s mother Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 and threatens to cast a pall over the birth of his and Kate’s first child.

Public amusement at the prank started turning when British media reported the call as a major security breach of the royal family’s privacy, despite the call never reaching Kate’s room and the information revealed by a nurse was already public.

But news of Saldanha’s death is what sparked the Internet firestorm, that once unleashed could not be controlled.

Hypocritically, some of the harshest criticism was on Twitter and Facebook, where people unleashed fury on Australian and British media, after having themselves publish news of Saldanha’s error under a Twitter topic #royalprank, which was repeated more than 15,000 times.

“When the twitterverse goes into meltdown, we all react with a chain reaction any nuclear plant would be proud of. I hope, in time, the world will learn to splash cold water on itself when these stories break and cool down, before we all get dragged into the mud of our own making,” Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a Glasgow-based journalist wrote in a blog on www.firstpost.com

(Editing by Michael Perry)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hayden Panettiere Splits with Scotty McKnight

12/10/2012 at 07:50 PM EST

Hayden Panettiere and Scotty McKnight

Splash News Online

Is there a tear in her beer?

Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.

This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years.
– Julie Jordan

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New tests could hamper food outbreak detection

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.

Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.

The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.

"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.

"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.

That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.

It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.

Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.

Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.

There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.

But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.

What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.

This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.

PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.

Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.

To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.

But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.

A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.

Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.

"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Shares crawl higher as China, U.S. data brighten outlook

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian shares touched a 16-month high on Monday as investors took heart from rising factory output growth in China and a falling unemployment rate in the United States that raised hopes about the outlook for the world's top two economies.

The positive mood was tempered by Chinese trade data that saw both exports and imports come in below forecasts, but equities and commodities such as copper and oil remained in the black. European shares were seen opening flat-to-higher.

"At this point, bad data is not as much of a surprise for the market as good data is," said Christian Keilland, head of trading at BTIG in Hong Kong.

The euro was under pressure, having been knocked by the prospect of a recession in Germany and political uncertainty in Italy after Prime Minister Mario Monti, an investors' favorite, said at the weekend he intended to resign early.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> inched up 0.2 percent and Tokyo's Nikkei share average <.n225> firmed 0.1 percent.

Financial spreadbetters called London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> to open up about 0.1 percent. <.t><.l><.axjo/>

The MSCI index rose more than 1 percent last week, its third successive weekly gain, taking it to levels not seen since early August 2011. There was a further boost for regional markets on Sunday when China reported a November pick-up in factory output and retail-sales growth to eight-month highs.

However, data released by China on Monday showed exports rose in November at a much weaker pace than expected, while imports were flat.

"The export slowdown shows external demand faces uncertainty due to concerns over the fiscal cliff in the US," said Zhang Zhiwei, chief China economist at Nomura in Hong Kong. "Nonetheless it does not change our view that growth is on track for a strong recovery in Q4, as (growth) is mostly domestically driven."

On Wall Street, the Dow <.dji> and S&P 500 <.spx> had risen modestly on Friday after an unexpected fall in the U.S. jobless rate. S&P 500 futures were flat on Monday. <.n/>

MARKETS WATCH ITALY

In Europe, investors will be hoping the weakness in external demand evident in the Chinese export number is not a pointer for German trade data due later on Monday.

The euro slid in early trading towards a two-week low of $1.2876 plumbed on Friday, before popping back above $1.29. Investors had sold the euro after Germany's central bank on Friday warned that the euro zone's biggest economy could soon enter recession.

Italian Prime Minister Monti's surprise announcement at the weekend came a few days after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi abruptly withdrew support for Monti's technocrat government, formed over a year ago in an effort to restore Italy's credibility with investors.

"If Monti's pro-euro stance is to back off, that should raise concerns about the euro," said Junya Tanase, chief currency strategist at JPMorgan Chase in Tokyo.

Italian bond yields will be closely watched on Monday. The 10-year yield, the main barometer of investor confidence, stood at 4.5 percent at the end of last week, 323 basis points higher than the yield on the lower risk German equivalent but well below the 7.3 percent peak hit last year, when the spread over German Bunds hit 550 points.

The U.S. dollar rose about 0.3 percent against a basket of major currencies <.dxy>.

Commodity markets were also generally firmer, with copper, which draws strength from expectations of Chinese industrial demand, rising 0.9 percent to around $8,105 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) and oil rising around 0.5 percent.

Brent crude traded around $107.60 a barrel and U.S. crude fetched about $86.40.

"Investors are slightly more optimistic about China's economic recovery than before and that is supportive for oil," said Ken Hasegawa, a commodity sales manager at Newedge Japan.

The easy outlook for monetary policy continued to support gold, with the U.S. Federal Reserve expected to signal this week it will continue to pump money into the economy in 2013. Also, there was talk of a possible rate cut next year by the European Central Bank.

Spot gold firmed 0.2 percent to around $1,707 an ounce.

(Additional reporting by Thuy Ong in Sydney and Manash Goswami in Singapore; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

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India Ink: A Conversation With: Human Rights Activist Binayak Sen

Binayak Sen, 62, is no ordinary doctor. Few doctors, after all, spend three decades working in a region threatened by what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the “single biggest internal security challenge ever faced” by the country. And that was before Dr. Sen was jailed on charges of “waging a war against the state,” which prompted a group of Nobel laureates to petition for his release.

Dr. Sen was released in 2009, after spending two years in jail, but still faces charges of supporting the Maoists, also referred to as Naxalites, which he denies.

The Maoists have been leading an armed movement to capture political power in 13 states in India over four decades, and claim to be fighting for the poor, dispossessed and marginalized. Dr. Sen ran mobile clinics in the interior of Chhattisgarh, one of the states most affected by the Maoist insurgency. In 2005, he led a 15-member team that published a report criticizing the Salwa Judum, which  Human Rights Watch calls “a state-supported vigilante group aimed at eliminating Naxalites.”

The Chhattisgarh state government alleged that his work, and in particular his association with the Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal,  amounted to helping wage “a war against the state.” Although that charge was dismissed, he was found  guilty of sedition and conspiracy, and sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court in Chhattisgarh in 2010. He was granted bail by the Supreme Court in 2011 and an appeal against the conviction is pending in the Chhattisgarh High Court.

A group of 40 Nobel laureates described him as “an exceptional, courageous, and selfless colleague, dedicated to helping those in India who are least able to help themselves,” in a 2011 letter appealing for his life sentence to be overturned.

India Ink had several conversations with Dr. Sen, both over the phone and e-mail, to discuss how human rights activism grew from his work as a doctor.

Describe your journey from being a doctor in rural areas to being labeled a Maoist sympathizer.

My work in Chhattisgarh was with village communities, some of the poorest in India, and training health workers to look after their needs. Earlier, I had helped establish a hospital for mine workers in the area. As a logical outcome of my work, I was involved with human rights work, and was the general secretary of the state unit of the Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties.

In this capacity I was instrumental in documenting and exposing deaths due to hunger and malnutrition, and to the displacement of over 600 tribal villages by the state-sponsored militia called Salwa Judum, or S.J., in southern Chhattisgarh. Last year, the S.J. was banned by the Supreme Court of India.

But it was in 2007 that I was labeled a Maoist supporter, for reasons best known to the Chhattisgarh state government. I was arrested in 2007 and charged with sedition, as well as under internal security acts, spent two years in jail during the trial, was released on bail by the Supreme Court,  convicted and sent to jail again, before again being released on bail in 2011. My appeal against the conviction is still pending in the state high court.

What was your association with the Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal?

I was approached by Narayan Sanyal’s family to help him with his legal cases and his health needs. In my capacity as a P.U.C.L. activist, I visited him in jail several times in the presence of senior jail officials, as they testified at my trial.

Could you tell us about your time in prison?

My time in prison was a time of deep despair, as I was unable to figure out the logic of the juridical action against me. At the same time it gave me an opportunity to know the stories of many fellow prisoners who were undergoing the same trauma as myself.

I came across many such instances where people had spent substantial amounts of time and were later let go. In some instances the judges have indicted the police for fabrication of evidence and illegal detention, but nothing has happened.

I did not do anything that was, to the best of my knowledge, wrong or illegal.  I didn’t expect anything like this happen to me; I had in fact worked with the government to provide essential services in these areas. After coming out of jail, I have been part of a nationwide process for the repeal of unjust and oppressive laws.

There was no physical intimidation that I faced in jail. However, I was kept in solitary confinement. Life in jail is itself a form of mental intimidation.

Do you consider yourself fortunate that you received a great deal of media attention when you were arrested?

I faced a virulent media trial in Chhattisgarh in the print and electronic media, as well as on the Internet. The ordinary journalist in Chhattisgarh relies to a large extent on government (including police) handouts. It was the contribution of dedicated national journalists who turned their spotlight on the real story.

It was only over a period of time that a campaign against the patent injustice in my case built up, and many prominent citizens at the national and international levels besides sections of national media took a positive view about me.

What is your understanding of the Maoist problem in India? Does their use of violence overshadow the issues they are fighting for?

It is surprising that so much of the public discourse is about the issue of violence. Large sections of the population in the “affected areas” are living in a state of perpetual hunger, to the point of famine, and lack appropriate and basic health care. Their access to common property resources, essential for their survival, is denied to them as a result of state action, to a point where the very survival of entire communities is called into question – but this does not become the center of the discourse.

I have clarified on many occasions that I do not condone the violence either of the agencies of the state or of those who oppose the state.

You were recently part of a conference called “Resist the Silent Emergency” in Delhi; what is the “silent emergency” in India?

The conference to which you refer was mainly devoted to documenting and chronicling widespread fabrication of cases and the use of sedition-like laws to suppress dissenting voices across the country. The silent emergency refers to the suppression of fundamental rights to freedom of thought and expression, without the declaration of an actual internal emergency as in 1975.

You have spoken about the need to establish alternative agencies and systems. What has given rise to the need?

First of all, I want to clarify that I have always engaged with the state to help it function better. I was recently part of the steering committee for health in the 12th five-year plan, and earlier part of the advisory group on structural reforms in health care for government of Chhattisgarh.

However, recent developments make it plain that the planning commission is unlikely to carry out its stated commitments to the universalization of health care. The alternative strategies that most public health workers are advocating, is the universalization of health care and for increased resource allocation in the health and nutrition sector.

Some suggest we need to involve international bodies in improving health care. Does that signal a lack of faith in the country’s own systems of checks and balances?

The distress due to chronic hunger, lack of health care and widespread displacement of the people, who constitute one sixth of mankind, cannot be constrained only by questions of national identity. These are matters of concern for the entire world community.

(This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.)

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RIM offers biggest clients incentives to adopt BB10

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Thursday outlined a program of incentives to encourage its biggest customers to run its soon-to-launch line of BlackBerry 10 devices, seeking to persuade corporations and government users to stick with its secure smartphones.

RIM is betting that the devices, to be launched on January 30, will revive its fortunes. That will depend to a large extent on the response from RIM’s enterprise customers — the business users who value BlackBerry’s strong security features.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, once a smartphone pioneer, has bled market share to Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s market-leading Android operating system, even among the business customers who once used BlackBerry exclusively.

RIM says its new devices will be faster and smoother than previous BlackBerry phones and will have a large catalog of apps, which are crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.

It now plans to phase in a BlackBerry 10 Ready Program for enterprise customers, initially offering online training and webcasts, and then providing free trade-ups of licenses and services.

“We will be aggressively reaching out to our customers to make sure they are aware of this program,” said Bryan Lee, senior director of enterprise at RIM. “We see this as really the linchpin for helping our customers to transition to BB10.”

Early adoption of BlackBerry 10 by government and corporate clients will go a long way in easing the concerns of both RIM’s clients and investors. Many fear that a lackluster market reception to BB10 could seal RIM’s fate.

RIM, which does not say what percentage of its business comes from the enterprise customers, said its online training and webcast series are already in place. Trade-ups, including free upgrades on the licenses for BB10 operating system, will be available ahead of the January 30 launch.

Evercore Partners analyst Mark McKechnie said RIM’s step-by-step program to woo enterprise customers was a positive move, though it highlights the challenges RIM faces.

“We are encouraged with an ‘all out’ marketing campaign with the right incentives to motivate enterprises to upgrade,” he said in a note to clients. “Our take is that this will remove a roadblock for those already planning to upgrade, but likely won’t push too many who prefer to wait.”

McKechnie, who has an “equal-weight” rating on RIM’s stock, said the move is unlikely to tempt back customers who have already abandoned the BlackBerry in favor of iPhones and Android devices. RIM offers support for the rival devices, but needs corporates to update to Blackberry Enterprise Service 10 so they can power and run BB10 devices on their networks.

BB10 READY

RIM’s Lee said he sees tremendous excitement from enterprise customers who want to use the new platform, but he would not speculate on how many would be ready to transition to the new platform come launch day.

RIM said last month that its BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the devices on corporate networks, is in beta testing with around 20 key government agencies and corporates.

Feedback on the BB10 devices and platform has been largely positive from both carriers and developers. Financial analysts remain divided.

Some have upgraded their ratings and targets on RIM’s share price in anticipation of a successful launch of BB10, while others believe the new platform has little chance of succeeding.

TD Securities analyst Scott Penner on Wednesday raised his price target on RIM to $ 12 from $ 9.50, but said RIM still faces significant hurdles.

RIM’s stock has surged over the last two months from multi-year lows around $ 6 as the launch date for the new devices nears. The stock is still more than 90 percent below the 2008 all-time high around $ 148.

The latest TSX data indicates that short positions in RIM shares have fallen dramatically in the last two weeks. The total short positions in RIM, a bet that the stock price will fall, on the TSX fell to 15.2 million as of November 30, down from 20.6 million in the prior two weeks.

RIM shares slipped 0.4 percent to $ 11.89 on the Nasdaq on Thursday. The Toronto-listed shares ended down 0.3 percent at C$ 11.81.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Jeremy Laurence, Janet Guttsman and Leslie Adler)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Tim McGraw and Faith Hill Kick Off Special Series of Las Vegas Shows

By Mark Gray

12/09/2012 at 05:00 PM EST

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill

Denise Truscello/WireImage

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill looked at each other, their hands on each others knees and shared a passionate kiss just after midnight Sunday morning.

The moment was a long time coming – it capped off their first weekend as a Las Vegas headlining act.

Earlier in the 90 minute show, McGraw told the crowd at the Venetian that he and his wife were going to "have fun tonight" and it genuinely seemed like they did, singing with each other for several songs while still letting the other perform their solo hits. Though the show – called the Soul2Soul series – is technically not the same "residency" show Las Vegas is known for, the couple will perform for 10 weekends through April.

At a press conference several months ago, McGraw and Hill promised a "personal" show, and they delivered in a big way. In fact, it got very personal as McGraw complimented his wife on her flowing black dress, saying, "It's gonna look good on the floor later."

The duo also took a moment to sit down and speak with the crowd. Though they didn't field any questions, they spoke about the most common questions they get asked. "We always get asked what was the music we heard first, who influenced us," Hill said.

Rather than answer it, the duo then sing a few of their main influences – Hill sang George Strait; McGraw sang The Eagles.

"I love doing other people's music, better than my own," McGraw joked.

With few bells and whistles, the show puts the focus squarely on it's two superstars, and considering the rousing ovations McGraw and Hill received Saturday, that's perfectly fine with their fans.

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Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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