Israel moves on reservists after rockets target cities

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli ministers were on Friday asked to endorse the call-up of up to 75,000 reservists after Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day.

The rocket attacks were a challenge to Israel‘s Gaza offensive and came just hours after Egypt‘s prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited the enclave and said Cairo was prepared to mediate.

Israel’s armed forces announced that a highway leading to the Gaza Strip and two roads bordering the enclave would be off-limits to civilian traffic until further notice.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area on Friday, and the military said it had already called 16,000 reservists to active duty.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior cabinet ministers in Tel Aviv after the rockets struck to decide on widening the Gaza campaign.

Political sources said ministers were asked to approve the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, in what could be preparation for a possible ground operation.

No decision was immediately announced and some commentators speculated in the Israeli media the move could be psychological warfare against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. A quota of 30,000 reservists had been set earlier.

Israel began bombing Gaza on Wednesday with an attack that killed the Hamas military chief. It says its campaign is in response to Hamas missiles fired on its territory. Hamas stepped up rocket attacks in response.

Israeli police said a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Jerusalem area, outside the city, on Friday.

It was the first Palestinian rocket since 1970 to reach the vicinity of the holy city, which Israel claims as its capital, and was likely to spur an escalation in its three-day old air war against militants in Gaza.

Rockets nearly hit Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired them during the 1991 Gulf War. An air raid siren rang out on Friday when the commercial centre was targeted again. Motorists crouched next to cars, many with their hands protecting their heads, while pedestrians scurried for cover in building stairwells.

The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv strikes have so far caused no casualties or damage, but could be political poison for Netanyahu, a conservative favored to win re-election in January on the strength of his ability to guarantee security.

“The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza,” Netanyahu said before the rocket attacks on the two cities.

Asked about Israel massing forces for a possible Gaza invasion, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “The Israelis should be aware of the grave results of such a raid and they should bring their body bags.”

Officials in Gaza said 28 Palestinians had been killed in the enclave since Israel began the air offensive with the declared aim of stemming surges of rocket strikes that have disrupted life in southern Israeli towns.

The Palestinian dead include 12 militants and 16 civilians, among them eight children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday. A Hamas source said the Israeli air force launched an attack on the house of Hamas’s commander for southern Gaza which resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.

SOLIDARITY VISIT

A solidarity visit to Gaza by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, whose Islamist government is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, had appeared to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy.

Kandil said: “Egypt will spare no effort … to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce.”

But a three-hour truce that Israel declared for the duration of Kandil’s visit never took hold. Israel said 66 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip hit its territory on Friday and a further 99 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Israel denied Palestinian assertions that its aircraft struck while Kandil was in the enclave.

Israel Radio’s military affairs correspondent said the army’s Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defence preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stoked the flames of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to leap across borders.

It is the biggest test yet for Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, a veteran Islamist politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after last year’s protests ousted military autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, seen in the West as the cornerstone of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

Mursi has vocally denounced the Israeli military action while promoting Egypt as a mediator, a mission that his prime minister’s visit was intended to further.

A Palestinian official close to Egypt’s mediators told Reuters Kandil’s visit “was the beginning of a process to explore the possibility of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve”.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

Tunisia’s foreign minister was due to visit Gaza on Saturday “to provide all political support for Gaza” the spokesman for the Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, said in a statement.

The United States asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the Islamist movement to stop its rocket attacks.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas’s supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an “observer state” rather than a mere “entity” at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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GameStop profit beats forecast; cautiously eyes holiday

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – GameStop Corp, the world’s largest retailer of videogame products, reported a stronger-than-expected profit on Thursday but lowered its sales forecast for this year due to uncertainty around the holiday shopping season as the video game market struggles.

Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop forecast same-store sales in 2012 would drop 6 percent to 9 percent, compared with a 2 to 10 percent decline projected previously.

“We’ve continued to find new ways to drive revenues and margins in our stores and that’s enabled us to hold on to some earnings in these difficult times,” Chief Financial Officer Rob Lloyd said in an interview.

“We’re still a little bit cautious in that it’s a difficult environment in which to forecast because the industry has been down,” Lloyd said. “And we’ve got uncertainty surrounding what the supply of the (Nintendo)Wii U is going to be.”

Nintendo Co Ltd is gearing up to launch its Wii U video game console on November 18. It is the first new home console device to be sold by a major gaming company in more than six years.

GameStop hopes the start of a new console cycle with the Wii U launch and just-released high quality games like Microsoft Corp’s “Halo 4″ and Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops II” will boost hardware and software sales this holiday season.

GameStop’s shares rose 4.25 percent to $ 24.48 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said investors seem more comfortable now with the company’s recent efforts to drive profitability.

In the last two years, the company has been tackling decelerating video game sales in a tough market by diversifying its revenue sources, selling electronics like tablets, digital video games and used games.

The games retailer said it had repurchased stock worth $ 76.8 million in the third quarter and announced that its board had approved a new $ 500 million share buy-back plan to replace its existing $ 242 million repurchase plan. It also announced a quarterly dividend of 25 cents, same as last quarter.

The company reported adjusted net earnings per share of 38 cents in the third quarter, beating analysts’ expectations of 32 cents.

“Earnings per share was quite impressive, driven by gross margins being strong and cost control,” Sterne Agee’s Bhatia said.

GameStop said it expects comparable store sales to range between down 7 percent and up 1 percent in the fourth quarter. It forecast earnings per share between $ 2.07 to $ 2.27 for the period.

Sales of traditional videogame products such as consoles have been pressured globally by lower-priced online offerings and gamers spending more time on tablet computers and cell phones.

Total U.S. sales of videogame software in October dropped 25 percent from a year ago, following a similar trend throughout the third quarter, according to a report by market research firm NPD.

GameStop said sales fell 8.9 percent to $ 1.77 billion. Analysts were expecting sales of $ 1.79 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Adjusted earnings were $ 47.2 million, compared with $ 53.9 million a year ago. The company maintained its previously announced full-year earnings outlook of between $ 3.10 per share to $ 3.30 per share.

(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; editing by John Wallace, Maureen Bavdek, David Gregorio and Dan Grebler)

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ABC Adapting Disney Theme-Park Ride for “Big Thunder Mountain” Pilot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – ABC found ratings success by adapting Disney‘s finest fairy tales into the one-hour drama series “Once Upon a Time,” so it’s not surprising that the network has turned to a theme-park ride from its parent company for inspiration as well.

Popular roller coaster Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is being adapted for a television pilot by the Disney-owned network, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “Fast Five”) will co-write the story with “Ice Age: Continental Drift’s” Jason Fuchs, who will write the teleplay. ABC has ordered a script from ABC Studios, the individual said.

No word on what the show will have in common with the ride, but if it sticks with the theme presented to visitors at parks in California, Florida, Paris and Tokyo, it should have something to do with a mining town being destroyed by a natural disaster after settlers desecrate sacred Native American land.

Two other film projects have been developed based on Disney rides, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and 2003′s not-equally-successful “The Haunted Mansion.”

Morgan is represented by ICM Partners and McKuin Frankel, while Fuchs is repped by WME and Brookside and Bloom Hergott.

The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news on “Big Thunder Mountain.”

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Kids with Down syndrome twice as likely to be heavy

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – More than one in four children with Down syndrome in The Netherlands is overweight, a rate double that of Dutch youth without the developmental disability, according to a new study.

“We were alarmed by the high prevalence of overweight in children with Down syndrome,” said Dr. Helma van Gameren-Oosterom, the lead author of the study from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in Leiden.

“Of course we knew that the prevalence of overweight is rising; for Dutch standards a twofold level, however, was not expected.”

Previous studies have suggested children with Down syndrome are especially prone to being heavy. But researchers still aren’t sure why that is, according to Dr. Sheela Magge, an endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was not part of the new study.

Theories have ranged from physiological differences in metabolism or the way the body suppresses appetite to behavioral differences, such as in how much exercise children get, she said, but no studies have been able to pin down the definitive cause.

About 6,000 babies – or one in every 691 – are born with Down syndrome each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the latest study, the researchers compared growth patterns among 659 children with Down syndrome and no other health problems to general data on youth in The Netherlands.

By calculating kids’ weight relative to their height – a unit called body mass index (BMI) – the research team determined which children were overweight and which were obese. The BMI cutoffs for obesity and overweight are different for each age in children.

Magge said they’re not a perfect measure for children with Down syndrome because their body proportions are different than those of other children, but it’s the best available yardstick for now.

Gameren-Oosterom and her colleagues found 25.5 percent of boys with Down syndrome were overweight and 4.2 percent were obese.

Among girls with the condition, 32 percent were overweight and 5.1 percent obese, they report in the medical journal Pediatrics.

In comparison, children in the rest of the Dutch population had much lower rates: for boys, 12.3 percent were overweight and 1.7 percent obese; for girls, 14.7 percent were overweight and 2.2 percent were obese.

Magge said researchers have also observed higher rates of overweight among children with Down syndrome in the U.S.

Gameren-Oosterom wrote in an email to Reuters Health that she and her colleagues suspect lifestyle has something to do with that pattern. Because it’s harder for young people with Down syndrome to develop their motor skills, they may be less active.

Low muscle tone and poor coordination often accompany the disability as well, Magge told Reuters Health.

Her concern with so many kids being overweight is that as people with Down syndrome are living longer, “we may start seeing more complications and comorbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease (and) hypertension, all those things that we worry about in all of our obese adolescents.”

Gameren-Oosterom said it’s difficult to develop a prevention or treatment strategy to target overweight and obesity in children with Down syndrome, given that the causes are unknown.

But like all youth, she added, those children will benefit from a healthy diet and sufficient exercise.

Magge said people with Down syndrome tend to prefer keeping strict routines, which could be something parents can take advantage of to help instill healthy habits.

“In adults it might be that if they get into a routine of eating healthy it’s more likely to stick,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/SnWv05 Pediatrics, online November 12, 2012.

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Wal-Mart 3Q profit up but sees sales shortfall

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported a 9 percent increase in net income for the third quarter, but revenue for the world’s largest retailer fell below Wall Street forecasts as its low-income shoppers continue to grapple with an uncertain economy.

The discounter issued a fourth-quarter profit outlook that fell short of Wall Street expectations, and the company’s stock price slid more than 3 percent.

Wal-Mart is considered an economic bellwether because the retailer accounts for nearly 10 percent of nonautomotive retail spending in the U.S. The company’s latest results show that many low-income Americans — it’s estimated that the typical Wal-Mart customer has an average household income of between $ 30,000 and $ 60,000, rents their homes and doesn’t own stock — continue to struggle even as the housing and stock markets are improving.

The disappointing revenue comes as Wal-Mart, like other retailers, is preparing for the busy winter holiday shopping season in the U.S. next week. The period, which runs roughly from November throughout December, is a time when stores can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. Wal-Mart has said that it plans to offer deeper discounts and a broader assortment of merchandise during this year’s season to draw in shoppers.

“Macroeconomic conditions continue to pressure our customers,” said Charles Holley, Wal-Mart’s chief financial officer. “The holiday season is predicted to be very competitive but we are well prepared to deliver on the value and low prices our customers expect.”

The disappointing revenue results come a year after Wal-Mart’s U.S. namesake business turned a corner by reemphasizing low prices and restocking stores with thousands of basic items that it had gotten rid of in an overzealous bid to reduce clutter.

During the third quarter of last year, the division reversed nine straight quarters of declines in revenue at stores opened at least a year, which is considered a key measure of a retailer’s health. The U.S. namesake business has recorded five consecutive quarters of gains since the division rebounded, including a 1.5 percent increase in the third quarter.

But the third-quarter gain is just shy of the 1.8 percent increase analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting. It’s also a slowdown in growth from the 2.2 percent gain the business posted in the second quarter and the 2.6 percent increase it had in the first quarter.

Analysts say that Wal-Mart’s previous results had benefited from the increase in prices shoppers were paying for groceries due to inflation for some items, a trend that is now subsiding. They also say that Wal-Mart is facing tougher revenue comparisons from a year ago when its business first began to rebound.

Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a research company, said Wal-Mart’s revenue is headed in the right direction. But he cautioned that the company will need to continue to keep prices low in order to compete with rivals that have stepped up discounting.

“Overall, it’s a relatively good report,” he said. “But it shows that its consumer is still struggling.”

In the third quarter, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart earned $ 3.63 billion, or $ 1.08 per share, in the quarter ended Oct. 31. That compares with $ 3.33 billion, or 96 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Net revenue, excluding Sam’s Club membership fees, rose 3.4 percent to $ 113.2 million. Excluding the currency impact, net revenue would have been $ 114.9 million. Analysts were expecting $ 1.07 per share on net revenue of $ 114 billion.

Nearly all areas, including food and clothing, registered gains. However, the company’s entertainment category, which includes gaming, suffered a decline, dragged down by price deflation. Part of the weakness is also due to the company’s layaway business, which winds up deferring sales to the fourth quarter.

For the entire U.S. business, sales at stores opened at least a year rose 1.7 percent, below the 2.1 percent Wall Street estimate. At Sam’s Club, the figure was up 2.7 percent, below the 3.8 percent increase Wall Street expected and the 4.2 percent gain it posted in the second quarter.

The company said its business members at Sam’s Clubs are being hurt by the economic downturn, and are switching to less-expensive chicken from beef. To boost sales, Sam’s Club is increasing its offering of rotisserie chicken, and has reduced prices in several varieties of apples and beauty products.

“Our business members continue to experience economic pressure and uncertainty,” said Rosalind Brewer, president of Sam’s Clubs.

For the full year, Wal-Mart now said it expects earnings per share to be between $ 4.88 per share and $ 4.93 per share. It originally expected earnings per share of $ 4.83 to $ 4.93. For the fourth quarter, it forecasts earnings per share to be $ 1.53 per share and $ 1.58 per share. Analysts had expected $ 1.59 per share.

Separately, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Wal-Mart said Thursday that it was looking into potential violations related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Brazil, China and India. This comes after Wal-Mart initially began investigating its Mexico operations following report that surfaced in April that the retailer allegedly failed to notify law enforcement when company officials authorized millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico to speed building permits and gain other favors. The company continues to work with government officials in the U.S. and Mexico on that investigation.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart’s stock fell $ 2.61 to close at $ 68.70. Over the past 52 weeks, Wal-Mart stock has been trading between $ 56.26 and $ 77.60.

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France urges Mali to step up talks with rebels

PARIS (AP) — France‘s president called Thursday for stepped-up talks between Mali’s government and any leaders from its breakaway north “who reject terrorism,” even as African nations geared up for a possible military operation against Islamic extremists there.

President Francois Hollande‘s comments suggested a growing openness to dialogue with the extremists, but he remained committed to supporting the military planning effort.

Northern Mali fell to Islamic extremists in April, after coup leaders toppled the government in Bamako, Mali‘s capital. Fearing that northern Mali could become the latest hotbed of terrorism, France has been a driving force in international efforts to bolster Mali’s army to drive the Islamists from power.

Hollande spoke with interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore by phone on Thursday, partly to detail European efforts to help strengthen Mali’s army.

In recent days, representatives from the most moderate of three al-Qaida-linked groups that control northern Mali have been meeting with Burkina Faso‘s president, appointed as a mediator.

“France reiterates its wish that political dialogue will intensify between Malian authorities and representatives of northern populations who reject terrorism,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. “The acceleration of this dialogue must accompany the progress in African military-planning efforts.”

Earlier this week, the African Union approved a plan that calls for 3,300 African troops to be deployed in order to win back Mali’s north. European countries including France and Germany have expressed a willingness to provide military trainers and logistics support, but have stopped short of committing combat troops.

France, like many European countries, fears that the arid, northern Sahel region of Mali could become a breeding ground for terrorism, where al-Qaida and its allies could plot hostage-takings and attacks in Europe or beyond.

France has millions of people whose families hail from former French colonies in north and west Africa. Authorities have long been concerned that French-born militants could travel abroad for terrorism training and return home later to possibly carry out attacks.

French authorities are already investigating two French citizens who were arrested in Mali and neighboring Niger and are suspected of seeking to join up with the al-Qaida-linked extremists, a judicial official told The Associated Press.

Ibrahim Ouattara, a 24-year-old native of the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers who has dual French and Malian nationality, was arrested inside Mali this month and remains in custody there, the official said.

Separately, a 27-year-old Frenchman was arrested in August in Niger and has since been handed over to authorities in France, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss terrorism cases publicly.

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NASCAR’s Keselowski can’t tweet in car anymore

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Brad Keselowski became a social media darling after hopping on Twitter during a lengthy delay in the Daytona 500.

Keselowski was the center of attention, and NASCAR seemed trendy and hip — a description its executives surely adored.

Turns out, tweeting from the car isn’t cool with NASCAR.

Keselowski was fined $ 25,000 on Monday for tweeting during the red flag at Phoenix International Raceway. The punishment was confusing to fans who vented on Twitter, of course, wondering why Keselowski was punished for Sunday’s tweets when he was celebrated by NASCAR for doing the exact same thing in February’s season-opening race.

Some alleged the Sprint Cup Series points leader was actually being disciplined for his profanity-laced outburst after Sunday’s crash- and fight-marred race.

NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp on Tuesday dismissed the conspiracy theories, and said drivers had been told after the Daytona 500 that electronic devices — including cellphones — could not be carried inside the race cars going forward.

“Brad’s tweeting at the Daytona 500 was really our first introduction to the magnitude of the social media phenomenon at the race track, especially how we saw it unfold that evening,” Tharp said. “We encourage our drivers to participate in social media. We feel we have the most liberal social media policy in all of sports, and the access we provide is the best in all of sports.

“But we also have rules that pertain to competition that need to be enforced and abided by. Once the 500 took place, and in the days and weeks following the 500, NASCAR communicated to the drivers and teams that while social media was encouraged and we promoted it, the language in the rule book was clear and that drivers couldn’t carry onboard their cars electronic devices, like a phone.”

Keselowski, who takes a 20-point lead over Jimmie Johnson into Sunday’s season finale in his quest to win his first Sprint Cup Series title, has not commented on his penalty.

But with the championship on the line, his crew chief indicated Tuesday he’ll be doing his best to keep the phone out of the No. 2 Dodge this weekend.

“Never even crossed my mind, to be honest with you,” Paul Wolfe said. “We get so involved in worrying about how to make the race car go around the track that, obviously, Brad’s cellphone is not on my mind a whole lot. I’ll definitely remind him this weekend.”

The Daytona 500 was stopped for nearly two hours when Juan Pablo Montoya crashed into a jet dryer that was cleaning the track during a caution period. The crash caused a fuel explosion, and Keselowski used his phone to tweet pictures, answer questions and give updates on the cleanup during the delay.

The race, which had been rained out for the first time in 54 runnings, was being aired on Monday night in prime time for the first time in history and Keselowski’s tweeting drew worldwide headlines.

Afterward, NASCAR specifically said Keselowski did not violate a rule barring onboard electronic devices and would not be penalized.

“Nothing we’ve seen from Brad violates any current rules pertaining to the use of social media during races,” NASCAR said the day after the race. “We encourage our drivers to use social media to express themselves as long as they do so without risking their safety or that of others.”

NASCAR did not issue a technical bulletin to clarify phones could no longer be inside cars, and the clarification to drivers was apparently done quietly. In fact, Keselowski tweeted from Victory Lane at Bristol in March, and from inside his car parked on pit road during a rain delay at Richmond in September. It’s possible someone could have handed him his phone both times.

A year ago, the outspoken Penske Racing driver was fined $ 25,000 headed into the finale for criticizing electronic fuel injection. At the time, NASCAR had been privately punishing drivers for making disparaging remarks about the series, but word of Keselowski’s fine leaked and forced NASCAR to change its policy during the offseason.

Still, many fans were convinced this week’s fine against Keselowski was actually for his post-race comments about the aggressive racing at Phoenix.

He’d been criticized by several drivers for racing Johnson hard over a pair of late restarts at Texas a week earlier, and felt his aggressive driving paled in comparison to Jeff Gordon intentionally wrecking Clint Bowyer with two laps to go on Sunday. Gordon’s retaliation also collected Joey Logano and Aric Almirola, and forced Keselowski to weave his way around the accident.

“It just drives me absolutely crazy that I get lambasted for racing somebody hard without there even being a wreck and then you see stuff like this … from the same people that criticized me,” he said. “It’s OK to just take somebody out. But you race somebody hard, put a fender on somebody and try to go for the win, and you’re an absolute villain. We can just go out and retaliate against each other and come back in and smile about it, and it’s fine. That’s not what this sport needs. It needs hard racing, it needs people that go for broke, try to win races and put it all out there on the line. Not a bunch of people that have anger issues.”

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Judge tosses anti-paparazzi counts in Bieber case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A law aimed at combating reckless driving by paparazzi is overly broad and should not be used against the first photographer charged under its provisions, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed counts filed under the law against Paul Raef, who was charged in July with being involved in a high-speed pursuit of Justin Bieber.

The judge cited numerous problems with the 2010 statute, saying it was aimed at newsgathering activities protected by the First Amendment, and lawmakers should have simply increased the penalties for reckless driving rather than targeting celebrity photographers.

Attorneys for Raef argued the law was unconstitutional and wasn’t meant to protect the public.

“It’s about protecting celebrities,” attorney Brad Kasierman said. “This discrimination sets a dangerous precedent.”

Prosecutors argued that the law, which seeks to punish those who drive dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain, could apply to people in other professions, not just the media.

“The focus is not the photo. The focus is on the driving,” Assistant City Attorney Ann Rosenthal argued.

While the media is granted freedom under the First Amendment, its latitude to gather news is not unlimited, Rosenthal argued.

“This activity has been found to be particularly dangerous,” she said of chases involving paparazzi.

Raef still faces traditional reckless driving counts and has not yet entered a plea,

Prosecutors claim he chased Bieber at more than 80 mph and forced other motorists to avoid collisions while trying to get shots of the teen heartthrob on a Los Angeles freeway.

The chase prompted several 911 calls from scared motorists and led to Bieber being pulled over.

Rubinson cited hypothetical examples in which wedding photographers or even those rushing to do a portrait shoot with a celebrity could face additional penalties if charged under the new statute.

Rosenthal also argued that the judge should look at factors specific to Raef’s case, not hypothetical scenarios.

Kaiserman said the ruling only applies to Raef’s case but could lead to the law being struck down if prosecutors appeal.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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U.S. Congress takes aim at FDA over meningitis outbreak

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Members of a congressional committee investigating the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak accused the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday of failing to prevent the crisis by moving too slowly against a Massachusetts pharmacy.

Tainted steroids from the pharmacy, New England Compounding Center (NECC), have so far killed 32 people and sickened 461 in 19 states, according to updated figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers are expected to rise with as many as 14,000 people having been exposed to the drugs injected to ease back pain.

“After a tragedy like this, the first question we all ask is: could this have been prevented? After an examination of documents produced by the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the answer here appears to be yes,” Cliff Stearns, Republican chairman of the oversight and investigations panel, said at the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The panel aims to learn why regulators took no action against the Framingham, Massachusetts-based compounding pharmacy that manufactured the tainted drug – despite repeated problems dating back to 1999, including adverse patient reactions to a sterile steroid treatment from as early as 2002.

In a highly contentious hearing that lasted four hours, committee members repeatedly accused FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg of failing to answer questions about FDA authority and a lack of action against NECC. Hamburg in turn insisted that the FDA lacks clear authority to regulate compounding pharmacies due to conflicting court rulings and other regulatory ambiguities.

She said new laws must be passed that give the FDA clear authority to regulate compounding pharmacies as it does large drug manufacturers.

“This isn’t, sadly, an isolated incident. This is the worst and most tragic. It should be the last wakeup call for us,” Hamburg said of the deadly meningitis outbreak.

“We really need a strong, clear and appropriate legislation. We cannot have a crazy quilt where different parts of the country are subject to different legal frameworks,” she told the committee.

UNREGULATED COMPOUNDING

Drug compounding is a little-known practice in which pharmacists traditionally alter or recombine drugs to meet the special needs of specific patients with a doctor’s prescription. It is overseen primarily by state authorities that are often ill-equipped for the job.

But in some cases, as with NECC, compounding has evolved to include large-scale production that some experts view as drug manufacturing that should be subject to FDA regulation.

FDA and Massachusetts officials inspected the NECC more than 10 years ago after patients were hospitalized with meningitis-like symptoms and identified contamination in the same drug at issue in the current outbreak.

“Ten years later, we are in the midst of an unthinkable, worst-case scenario – the body count is growing by the day – and hundreds, hundreds – have fallen ill. Inexcusable,” said Fred Upton, Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Upton criticized FDA for not providing all the documents related to NECC or a clear timeline of events. He said his committee requested both more than a month ago.

However, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, defended the FDA and turned his ire toward NECC.

“Let’s not lose sight of the wrongdoers as we go around blaming regulators,” Waxman said.

He noted that the FDA knew 10 years ago that there could be a meningitis outbreak due to practices at NECC “and it wasn’t corrected by the company.”

He said the agency met with “stubborn refusals and a challenge to FDA’s authority” from NECC officials.

Waxman called for bipartisan legislation that gives FDA clear and effective authority to prevent compounders from becoming dangerous drug manufacturers like NECC.

HAMBURG IN HOT SEAT

But Republican committee members repeatedly, and sometimes angrily, challenged Hamburg’s contention that FDA lacked the authority to oversee compounders that had grown into defacto manufacturers.

“We’re just not buying it Ms. Hamburg,” said Representative Michael Burgess of Texas, an obstetrician by profession.

“Go look in the eyes of the victims and try to tell them that,” said Republican Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania.

Nebraska Republican Lee Terry was extremely combative with Hamburg, repeatedly asking for specific statutes that prevented FDA oversight of compounders and cutting off her attempts to respond. Terry went as far as accusing the commissioner of deliberately providing written testimony in the middle of the night so committee members had little time to review it.

“I know that you’re frustrated with my answers and I’m sorry. I can’t just give ‘yes or no’ answers. This is complex,” Hamburg told Murphy at one point.

Murphy shot back that what victims were going through was complex. “Leadership is easy if you’re willing to accept it. You are not.”

Florida Democrat Kathy Castor rose to Hamburg’s defense in describing current laws on regulating compounders as varying from region to region, creating conflicting enforcement issues.

“There is ambiguity. There is great ambiguity,” she said.

Waxman also attempted to rescue Hamburg, accusing Republican counterparts of playing politics. “I have a feeling, Dr. Hamburg, that you’re being picked on by Republicans because you’re with the Obama administration,” he said.

He pointed out that past FDA failures being referred to took place under a different commissioner during the Bush administration.

The panel also heard testimony from the widow of one of the victims, as well as Massachusetts Department of Public Health interim Commissioner Dr. Lauren Smith, to whom congress members were respectful and complimentary, and NECC co-owner Barry Cadden, who refused to answer any questions from the committee.

Cadden, a short, middle-aged man flanked by two attorneys, appeared before the committee with spiky close-cropped hair and wearing a dark gray business suit. He repeatedly cited his right to not incriminate himself under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution when asked to explain breakdowns in sanitary conditions at NECC that led to the meningitis outbreak.

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, which does have oversight of NECC, failed to carry out sanctions against the company despite repeated problems that culminated in this year’s outbreak.

Several lawmakers questioned Smith about relations between NECC and the Massachusetts pharmacy board, some saying reports of close ties among individuals could have encouraged state regulators to favor the interests of pharmacies over patients.

Waxman noted that weak sanctions to which NECC previously agreed occurred when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts.

The committee heard emotional testimony from the 78-year-old widow of a Kentucky judge who was among the first to die in the meningitis outbreak.

“It was such a useless thing that happened to my husband,” Joyce Lovelace said, testifying from a wheelchair.

“I can’t begin to tell you what I have lost,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I’ve come here begging you to do something about it.”

Democrat Edward Markey, whose congressional district includes the town where NECC is located, said Congress would take action.

“I commit to you and all the victims that we will not stop until this industry is safe,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler, Andrew Hay and Maureen Bavdek)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bank predicts protracted recovery

14 November 2012 Last updated at 12:35 ET

Bank of England cuts UK growth forecast for 2013

The Bank of England has cut its growth forecast for next year to about 1% from nearer 2%, and said recovery will be “slow and protracted”.

It now thinks that the economy will not get back to pre-crisis levels until 2015, two years later than it previously predicted.

The Bank also believes inflation will remain higher for longer.

Governor Sir Mervyn King also welcomed the latest jobs figures which showed a continued fall in unemployment.

He was presenting the Bank’s quarterly Inflation Report, which forecast that inflation would not now fall towards the government’s 2% target until mid-2013, rather than in the first half of next year as previously thought.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

This is going to be a long and challenging recovery from a very substantial crisis”

End Quote David Gauke Treasury Minister

The report said the UK could be stuck in a “low-growth” environment, with economic problems in the eurozone and the rest of world continuing to have an impact domestically.

As the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders put it: “The Bank hasn’t just lowered its growth forecasts for the next year or so – it has more or less given up hope of being pleasantly surprised.”

Sir Mervyn warned that growth from quarter to quarter would continue to fluctuate. In the April-June quarter growth was depressed by one-off factors such as the unseasonably bad weather and had given a misleadingly weak picture of the economy.

Similarly, growth in the July-September period was boosted by one-off factors including ticket revenue from the Olympics and Paralympics and gave “an overly optimistic impression of the underlying trend,” he said, adding that the data was not necessarily “a reliable guide to the future”.

He said: “Continuing the recent zig-zag pattern, output growth is likely to fall back sharply in Q4 [between October and December] as the boost from the Olympics in the summer is reversed. Indeed, output may shrink a little this quarter,” he said.

The Bank has previously predicted that inflation might fall towards the government’s 2% target in the first half of next year.

But it now expects inflation to stay higher for longer. “We face the rather unappealing combination of a subdued recovery, with inflation remaining above target for a while,” Sir Mervyn said.

“The road to recovery will be long and winding, but there are good reasons to suggest we are travelling in the right direction,” he said.

‘Long process’

Treasury minister David Gauke said he recognised that these were tough times, but insisted that the economy was “moving in the right direction”.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

What is new is that the Bank now thinks that the UK economy will not get back to where it was at the start of 2008 until well into 2015”

End Quote

Asked on BBC Radio 4′s The World At One if he agreed with Sir Mervyn’s warning about a potential sharp fall in output, Mr Gauke said: “The independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts growth in the economy in the autumn statement in three weeks’ time. I’m not going to pre-judge that.

“Clearly, there are international pressures on our economy that mean that this is going to be a long and challenging recovery from a very substantial crisis. That is what we are going through at the moment. I think the British people understand that this is going to be a long process,” he said.

However, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: “This sobering report shows why David Cameron and George Osborne’s deeply complacent approach to the economy is so misplaced.

“Their failing policies have seen two years of almost no growth and the Bank of England is now forecasting lower growth and higher inflation than just a few months ago.

“Britain needs a plan to create the jobs and growth we need to get deficits down, including using funds from the 4G auction to build 100,000 affordable homes and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Mr Balls said.

The Bank’s report came on the day that the Office for National Statistics said that the UK unemployment rate fell to 7.8% in the July-September quarter, down from 8% in the previous three months.

The 49,000 fall in number of jobless, to 2.51 million, was almost entirely due to a fall in youth unemployment, the ONS said. It means that the jobless total is now 110,000 lower than for the July-September quarter last year.

Continue reading the main story

However, the claimant count went up in September, leading some economists to suggest that the recent resilience of the jobs market was beginning to weaken. And the number of people unemployed for longer than a year also rose.

Sir Mervyn told the news conference: “I don’t think one would say that the data released this morning were weak.

“This is still a pretty strong labour market and, of course, it is not easy to reconcile that with the picture of underlying growth being still so weak,” he said.

Sir Mervyn also told a press conference that he had not “lost faith” in quantitative easing as a way to stimulate economic growth.

The Bank has kept the amount it injects into the economy by buying up government bonds at £375bn since July this year.

Some have questioned its effectiveness, but the Bank said it had not ruled out further asset purchases to try to stimulate growth.

He said that with the global economy still struggling, “there are limits to the ability of domestic policy to stimulate private sector demand as the economy adjusts to a new equilibrium”.

“But the [Monetary Policy] Committee has not lost faith in asset purchases as a policy instrument, nor has it concluded that there will be no more purchases.”

BBC News – Business

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