Factbox: Key elements of U.S. “fiscal cliff” post-elections

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After the November 6 elections, Congress and the White House will face tough decisions on tax rates, tax breaks and budget cuts in a convergence of high-stakes deadlines that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dubbed a ‘massive fiscal cliff.’

The most urgent U.S. economic issue will be finding a way down from the ‘fiscal cliff’ without plunging the U.S. economy over the edge.

Failure to safely negotiate it could trigger another recession, economic studies have forecast. Here are key deadlines and issues facing lawmakers:

TAX MEASURES

*Bush ordinary income tax cuts. On December 31, low individual income tax rates enacted in 2001 under former President George W. Bush are set to expire. President Barack Obama and Republicans extended them at the end of 2010 for two years.

If Congress does nothing, the income tax brackets will change to 15, 28, 31, 36 and 39.6 percent, from the present levels of 10, 15, 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent.

Obama wants to extend the Bush rates for everyone, except for annual income that rises above $ 200,000 per individual, or $ 250,000 per family. For income above that $ 200,000/$ 250,000 threshold, he backs a return to the higher, pre-2001 tax rates.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wants to preserve the Bush-era income tax rates on all income levels.

*Bush investment income tax cuts. Bush and Congress in 2003 cut taxes on capital gains and dividends, which mostly affect high-income taxpayers. These cuts are set to expire at year-end.

If no action is taken, the long-term capital gains tax rate will rise to 20 percent from 15 percent for the top four tax brackets. At the bottom, they will rise to 10 percent from zero.

Obama wants to let the capital gains tax rise to 20 percent from 15 percent for income above the $ 200,000/$ 250,000 level. Tax on gains below that would still top out at 15 percent.

Romney wants to keep the 15-percent gains tax cap for high-earners and end the tax entirely for income below $ 200,000.

Without action from Congress, the dividend tax rate will rise to the ordinary income tax rates for each tax bracket, or as high as 39.6 percent for top earners. Dividends are now taxed at 15 percent for the top four brackets and zero at the bottom.

Obama would hold the 15 percent dividend rate cap for most people, but let it rise on income above the $ 200,000/$ 250,000 threshold, to the 36 percent or 39.6 percent rates.

Romney wants to eliminate completely the dividend tax on individual income below $ 200,000, while preserving the Bush top rate of 15 percent on income exceeding that.

*Obama healthcare tax. Regardless of what happens with the fiscal cliff, investment income above $ 200,000/$ 250,000 will be subject to a new 3.8 percent tax under Obama’s health care law.

*Alternative minimum tax. The AMT – which ensures rich people pay some tax – expired at the end of 2011. That has not had an impact yet because 2012 tax returns have not been filed. The tax is not indexed for inflation. So it is routinely “patched” to prevent tens of millions of upper-middle-class taxpayers from having to start paying it. Both Republicans and Democrats agree on the need for another patch soon.

*Tax extenders. Dozens of individual and business tax breaks expired at the end of 2011, including the popular research and development tax credit. There is wide support for extending them again, but businesses will be watching for any faltering.

*Payroll tax. A cut in the payroll tax that funds the Social Security pension program was extended earlier this year, in an effort to boost the economy. The current 4.2 percent rate paid by about 160 million workers, down from the previous 6.2 percent rate, expires on December 31. Bipartisan support for letting the tax cut expire seemed solid on Capitol Hill weeks ago, but may be softening among some Democrats who are talking about extension.

*Estate tax. The estate tax, which applies to assets passed onto heirs, currently stands at 35 percent, after an exemption level of $ 5 million. With no action, the tax will rise to 55 percent, after excluding the first $ 1 million of value.

Obama wants to raise the tax to 45 percent, with a $ 3.5 million exemption; Romney wants to eliminate the tax completely.

BUDGET MEASURES

*Automatic spending cuts. In a deal last year to raise the federal debt ceiling, Obama and Congress agreed to $ 1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts in federal programs if lawmakers failed to reach a deficit-cutting deal by January 2. They failed.

Now lawmakers fear the cuts, known as a “sequester,” could harm the economy and many are working to prevent them.

*Unemployment benefits. Millions of people have been exhausting their government jobless benefits during the economic downturn. Congress has extended the benefits several times. Another deadline comes at year-end. Many Republicans want the extensions to stop, saying they discourage job-hunting.

*”Doc fix.” Because of an outdated formula in the law, government payments to doctors who treat patients on Medicare, the U.S. health program for the elderly and disabled, are routinely underestimated. If Congress doesn’t fix the situation by the end of the year, these doctors face a double-digit cut to their payments, which could lead them to drop Medicare patients.

DEBT CEILING

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has said the United States will likely hit its $ 16.4 trillion borrowing limit after the presidential elections, but before the end of the year.

Geithner has said the Treasury has tools to push out that deadline some time into early 2013 and analysts expect these measures could last until sometime in February. That could force the Treasury to again use special accounting measures to delay the increase, which could draw further attacks from Republicans. After months of drama that exasperated voters and markets, Congress in August passed a deal to raise the ceiling. (Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Mexico’s Day of Dead brings memories of missing

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Maria Elena Salazar refuses to set out plates of her missing son’s favorite foods or orange flowers as offerings for the deceased on Mexico‘s Day of the Dead, even though she hasn’t seen him in three-and-a-half years.

The 50-year-old former teacher is convinced that Hugo Gonzalez Salazar, a university graduate in marketing who worked for a telephone company, is still alive and being forced to work for a drug cartel because of his skills.

“The government, the authorities, they know it, that the gangs took them away to use as forced labor,” said Salazar of her then 24-year-old son, who disappeared in the northern city of Torreon in July 2009.

The Day of the Dead — when Mexicans traditionally visit the graves of dead relatives and leave offerings of flowers, food and candy skulls — is a difficult time for the families of the thousands of Mexicans who have disappeared amid a wave of drug-fueled violence.

With what activists call a mix of denial, hope and desperation, they refuse to dedicate altars on the Nov. 1-2 holiday to people often missing for years. They won’t accept any but the most certain proof of death, and sometimes reject even that.

Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says 24,000 people have been reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012, and that nearly 16,000 bodies remain unidentified.

But one thing is clear: just as there are households without Day of the Dead altars, there are thousands of graves of the unidentified dead scattered across the country, with no one to remember them.

An investigation conducted by the newspaper Milenio this week, involving hundreds of information requests to state and municipal governments, indicates that 24,102 unidentified bodies were buried in paupers’ or common graves in Mexican cemeteries since 2006. The number is almost certainly incomplete, since some local governments refused to provide figures, Milenio reported.

And while the number of unidentified dead probably includes some indigents, Central American migrants or dead unrelated to the drug war, it is clear that cities worst hit by the drug conflict also usually showed a corresponding bulge in the number of unidentified cadavers. For example, Mexico City, which has been relatively unscathed by drug violence, listed about one-third as many unidentified burials as the city of Veracruz, despite the fact that Mexico City’s population is about 15 times larger.

Consuelo Morales , who works with dozens of families of disappeared in the northern city of Monterrey, said that “holidays like this, that are family affairs and are very close to our culture, stir a lot of things up” for the families. But many refuse to accept the deaths of their loved ones, sometimes even after DNA testing confirms a match with a cadaver.

“They’ll say to you, ‘I’m not going to put up an altar, because they’re not dead,” Martinez noted. “Their thinking is that ‘until they prove to me that my child is dead, he is alive.”

Martinez says one family she works with at the Citizens in Support of Human Rights center had refused to accept their son was dead, even after three rounds of DNA testing and the exhumation of the remains.

“It was their son, he was very young, and he had been burned alive,” Martinez said by way of explanation.

The refusal to accept what appears inevitable may be a matter of desperation. Martinez said some families in Monterrey also believe their missing relatives are being held as virtual slaves for the cartels, even though federal prosecutors say they have never uncovered any kind of drug cartel forced-labor camp, in the six years since Mexico launched an offensive against the cartels.

But many people like Salazar believe it must be true. “Organized crime is a business, but it can’t advertise for employees openly, so it has to take them by force,” Salazar said.

While she refuses to erect an altar-like offering for her son, she does perform other rituals that mirror the Day of the Dead customs, like the one that involves scattering a trail of flower petals to the doorsteps of houses to guide spirits of the departed back home once a year.

Salazar and her family still live in the same home in Torreon, though they’d like to move, in the hopes that Hugo will return there. They pray three times a day for God to guide him home.

“We live in the same place, and we try to do the same things we used to,” said Salazar, “because he is going to come back to his place, his home, and we have to be waiting for him.”

Mistrust of officials has risen to such a point that some families may never get an answer they’ll accept.

The problem is that, with forensics procedures often sadly lacking in Mexican police forces, the dead my never be connected with the living, which is the whole point of the Mexican traditions.

“As long as the authorities don’t prove the opposite, for us they’re still alive,” Salazar said. “Let them prove it, but let us have some certainty, not just the authorities saying ‘here he is.’ We don’t the government to just give us bodies that aren’t theirs, and that has happened.”

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Flamboyant Megaupload founder unveils file-sharing sequel

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Like a good Hollywood sequel, Megaupload is back.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of the shuttered file-sharing site that housed everything from family photos to blockbuster films, on Thursday announced a new online storage service called Mega that will give users direct control – and responsibility – over their files.

Mega will launch in January 2013, just before the internet entrepreneur is scheduled to face an extradition hearing to the United States where he and other Megaupload operators face charges of online piracy, fraud and money laundering.

In a snub to U.S. prosecutors, the site will not utilize U.S.-based hosting companies as partners in order to avoid being shut down by U.S. authorities.

The U.S. government alleges that Megaupload, once one of the world’s most popular websites, was directly responsible for illegally uploaded content on the site and that it netted $ 175 million from unlawful activities.

“The new Mega will not be threatened by U.S. prosecutors,” Dotcom told Reuters in an interview, adding that he was confident Mega would avoid violating U.S. law.

“The new Mega avoids any dealings with U.S. hosters, U.S. domains and U.S. backbone providers and has changed the way it operates to avoid another takedown,” he said.

ENCRYPTION KEYS

Mega is the follow-up to Megaupload, which was shut down in January this year when New Zealand police helicopters swooped into the flamboyant Dotcom’s mansion outside Auckland to seize computers and other evidence at the request of U.S. authorities.

Users of the new cloud-based service will be able to upload, store and share photos, text files, music and films, encrypt those files and grant access using unique decryption keys.

“You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us,” a statement on the Mega website said.

While the new site will operate faster and boast a bigger storage capacity, the encryption technology marks a major change from Megaupload as Mega operators will not have access to files and will therefore be immune to content liability.

Ensuring that files are not pirated will be the job of content owners, a major change from Megaupload, which the U.S. film industry says was directly responsible for taking down illegally uploaded content.

“Content owners can still remove infringing material and they will even get direct delete access if they agree not to make us responsible for actions of users,” Dotcom said.

Dotcom’s announcement comes just weeks after a U.S. federal judge ruled that Washington’s criminal case against Megaupload will go forward for now.

Dotcom, a German national who holds New Zealand residency, faces an extradition hearing in March even though a New Zealand court ruled that the January raid and seizure were unlawful, while the nation’s spy agency was found to have illegally spied on Dotcom.

Thursday’s announcement was delayed for about one hour after the website was overloaded by users. According to Dotcom, much of the traffic was driven by U.S. authorities.

“FBI agents pressing reload…We see their IP addresses,” he said on his Twitter feed.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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“The Details” Review: airless all-star comedy is devilishly dull

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The devil is in “The Details,” but only in that this smug and airless comedy feels like 91 minutes in hell. The first few minutes promise a Rube Goldberg whirligig of bad behavior, unhappy coincidences and plain old rotten luck, but all writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes (“Mean Creek”) can deliver is a group of jerks acting like jerks.

If there were any recognizable human beings on screen, this might have delivered the sort of squirmy, uncomfortable laughs that have sustained “Curb Your Enthusiasm” through multiple seasons, but the perpetrators and victims here are all such smug, dull caricatures that none of the intended satirical barbs have anywhere to land.

Tobey Maguire stars as Jeff, a doctor who’s seemingly got the perfect house and perfect nuclear family with his wife Nealy (Elizabeth Banks) and their young son. Unfortunately, their newly-sodded backyard attracts the attention of (metaphor alert!) raccoons. Things get worse when the couple tries expanding the house to accommodate a new child, since the noise, dust and code violations all stoke the mania of their crazy-cat-lady neighbor Lila (Laura Linney).

Over the course of the film, Jeff commits horrible acts (including cheating on his wife with two different women and accidentally poisoning one of Lila’s cats) and generous ones (donating a kidney to a friend in need), and Estes delights in showing the universe punishing and rewarding Jeff purely at random, with no connection to either his sins or his good deeds.

Estes fails, however, to write any real characters, so we have a cast of talented performers trying to breathe life into people with all the depth of chess pieces. Besides Maguire (whose tendency to recede into himself is in full effect here), Banks and Linney, there’s also Kerry Washington, Dennis Haysbert and Ray Liotta trying valiantly to be more than pegs in this plot (which is less elaborate than we’re led to believe) but ultimately they are given nothing to play, nothing to do, no one to inhabit.

Ultimately, “The Details” feels frenetic when it wants to be fast-paced, and facile when it aims for some grand statement about the randomness of existence and the bitter irony of the good falling short while the evil flourish. Rarely funny, never deep and consistently exasperating, it’ll have you cheering for the raccoons.

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Insight: Crunching the numbers to boost odds against cancer

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Software engineers are moving to the fore in the war on cancer, designing programmes that sift genetic sequencing data at lightning speed and minimal cost to identify patterns in tumors that could lead to the next medical breakthrough.

Their analysis aims to pinpoint the mutations in our genetic code that drive cancers as diverse as breast, ovarian and bowel. The more precise their work is, the better the chance of developing an effective new drug.

Ever since James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists have been puzzling over how genes make us who we are. The confluence of computing and medicine is accelerating the pace of genetic research.

But making sense of the swathes of data has become a logjam.

That, in turn has created an opportunity for computer geeks and tech firms such as Microsoft, SAP and Amazon.

Oncology is the largest area of therapy in the global drugs market with market researcher IMS predicting it will increase to $ 83-$ 88 billion by 2016 from $ 62 billion in 2011. Computational genomics – using computers to decipher a person’s genetic instructions and the mutations in cancerous cells – is emerging as the driver of this growth.

Life Technologies Corp and Illumina Inc are among firms developing equipment that can extract a person’s entire genetic code – their genome – from a cell sample.

The newest machines are about the size of an office printer and can sequence a genome in a day, compared with six to eight weeks a few years ago. They can read the 3.2 billion chemical “bases” that make up the human genetic code for $ 1,000, compared with $ 100,000 dollars in 2008.

Growing numbers of software engineers are needed to help make sense of all this data.

“Many labs can now generate the data but fewer people or labs have the expertise and infrastructure to analyze it – this is becoming the bottleneck,” said Gad Getz, who heads the Cancer Genome Analysis group at the Broad Institute in Boston, jointly run by MIT and Harvard.

Getz is one of a new generation of computational biologists who develop algorithms to parse data from tens of thousands of cell samples, shared with research institutes around the globe.

He and his team of 30 are trying to establish recurring patterns in the mutations and how they are linked to tumor growth. They are using some 1,200 processing units, each with 4-8 gigabytes of random access memory – about the computing power that comes with most desktop PCs.

HARVESTING KNOWLEDGE

Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter sees potential for progress.

“We are starting to harvest the knowledge that we gained through the sequencing of the human genome, our understanding of human genetics, disease pathways. We’ve got new tools that we can use in the laboratory to help us get to an answer much, much faster,” said Lechleiter, whose firm is co-owner of the rights to bowel cancer drug Erbitux.

Approved drugs that take genetic information into account include Amgen’s Vectibix and AstraZeneca’s Iressa. But both these drugs derive from a single mutation. Sequencing has laid bare many more mutant genes – often hundreds in any given tumor – and highlighted the need for a subtler approach to cancer treatment.

Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer medicines, has spent several million euros on information technology for a pilot scheme examining how cancer cells in petri dishes react to new drugs. The scheme involves crunching hundreds of terabytes of gene sequences.

“It’s the first large-scale in-house sequencing project for Roche and we expect more to follow in the near future,” said Bryn Roberts, Roche’s head of informatics in drug research and early development.

Roberts said the project, which uses processing power equivalent to hundreds of high-end desktop PCs, was self contained but there were plans to draw in external data. This would require advances in cloud computing – using software and computing power from remote data centers – but Roberts said the technology would soon be available.

“The scale of the problem means the solution will be on an international collaborative scale,” he said.

OPPORTUNITIES IN CLOUDS

The trend of using cloud computing networks to allow commercial and public researchers to share cancer data is promising for the likes of IBM and Google which according to GBI Research are already established providers of cloud computing to drug makers’ research efforts.

Amazon, with its cloud computing unit AWS, said it is benefiting as life science researchers rethink how data is stored, analyzed and shared. “We are happy with the growth we are seeing,” a spokesman said, declining to provide figures.

Microsoft said it was dedicating “significant resources” to the expansion of cloud computing in the health and life sciences markets.

“Pharma R&D will be working with other technology companies, like Microsoft, in developing new algorithms, methodologies and indeed even therapies themselves,” said Les Jordan, chief technology strategist at Microsoft’s Life Sciences unit.

The world’s largest business software company SAP has teamed up with German genetic testing specialist Qiagen. They are modifying SAP database software so that certain cancer diagnostic tests, which now keep a network of super computers busy for days, can be run on a desktop PC within hours.

Genetic analysis has revealed that types of cancer, now treated as one because they are in the same organ and look the same under the microscope, are driven by different genetics.

Hans Lehrach at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin says every single tumor should be seen as an “orphan disease”, using a term for rare illnesses that typically prompt drug regulators to make drug approval easier.

He has designed a software he describes as a virtual patient. It suggests a drug or a mix of drugs based on each tumor’s genetic fingerprint. A single case can take several days to be processed.

Lehrach, a geneticist who says he has written software code throughout his scientific career, likens his approach to that of a meteorologist who regards every day’s set of readings as unique.

Taking the analogy further, he says the convention of stratifying cancer patients is equivalent to a weather forecast based on simple rules such as ‘red sky in the morning, sailor take warning’.

At a unit of Berlin’s Charite university hospital, 20 patients left with no other treatment options for their aggressive type of skin cancer are being diagnosed based on Lehrach’s computer model.

The trial is exploratory and there are no results yet on the overall treatment success, but the project, like many others, is driven by the hope that cancer can be wrestled down by sheer computing power.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Janet McBride)

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Ahead of the Bell: US consumer confidence

WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of Americans’ confidence in the economy likely rose for a second straight month on expectations that business conditions will improve and hiring will pick up.

Economists forecast that the Conference Board, a private research group, will report that its monthly consumer confidence index rose to 72 in October from 70.3 in September, according to a survey by FactSet.

The September reading was the highest since February. That’s when employers added 259,000 jobs and the economic recovery was thought to be strengthening.

The confidence index is widely watched because consumer spending drives about 70 percent of the U.S. economy.

A separate survey issued Friday by the University of Michigan showed that U.S. consumer confidence rose in October to the highest level since September 2007. That was three months before the Great Recession began.

The Conference Board is to issue its report at 10 a.m. Eastern time Thursday. The report had been scheduled for release earlier this week but was delayed because of Superstorm Sandy.

A further gain in consumer confidence could be an encouraging sign for President Barack Obama, who faces re-election Tuesday at a time when the economy is the top issue for most voters.

In September, the survey showed that consumers were more optimistic about the availability of jobs and the outlook for hiring over the next six months.

The government’s employment report for September, issued Oct. 5, showed that employers added a modest 114,000 jobs. But it also showed that job growth in July and August was stronger than first thought.

Economists note some key reasons why consumers have grown more confident. They say higher stock prices and the early stages of a recovery in the housing market have helped boost optimism.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has surged 12 percent this year. Gasoline prices have leveled off after rising for several months.

And a broad increase in home prices is likely giving would-be buyers more confidence. When prices rise, buyers don’t worry so much that a home might lose value after they bought it.

Some economists question whether the higher level of confidence is sustainable. But others note that even a weak economy doesn’t feel so bad to many consumers once it begins to make steady improvement.

Consumers’ confidence might have been rattled by this week’s Superstorm Sandy. Disruptions across U.S. industries will slow the economy temporarily, and some stores and restaurants will draw fewer customers. Some of those losses won’t be made up.

The consumer confidence index has fluctuated sharply this year. It’s fallen five times in the past nine months, hitting a low for the year of 61.3 in August before rising in September.

The index remains well below the reading of 90 that indicates a healthy economy — a level it hasn’t touched since the Great Recession began in December 2007. But it’s far above the all-time low of 25.3 touched in February 2009.

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Syrian air force on offensive after failed truce

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian warplanes bombed rebel targets with renewed intensity on Tuesday after the end of a widely ignored four-day truce between President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces and insurgents.

State television said “terrorists” had assassinated an air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi, in a Damascus suburb, the latest of several rebel attacks on senior officials.

In July, a bomb killed four of Assad‘s aides, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and the defense minister.

Air strikes hit eastern suburbs of Damascus, outlying areas in the central city of Homs, and the northern rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, activists said.

Rebels have been attacking army bases in al-Hamdaniya and Wadi al-Deif, on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan.

Some activists said 28 civilians had been killed in Maarat al-Numan and released video footage of men retrieving a toddler’s body from a flattened building. The men cursed Assad as they dragged the dead girl, wearing a colorful overall, from the debris. The footage could not be independently verified.

The military has shelled and bombed Maarat al-Numan, 300 km (190 miles) north of Damascus, since rebels took it last month.

“The rebels have evacuated their positions inside Maarat al-Numaan since the air raids began. They are mostly on the frontline south of the town,” activist Mohammed Kanaan said.

Maarat al-Numan and other Sunni towns in northwestern Idlib province are mostly hostile to Assad’s ruling system, dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded in an air strike on al-Mubarkiyeh, 6 km (4 miles) south of Homs, where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility.

Opposition sources said the facility had been used to shell Sunni villages near the Lebanese border.

“WE’LL FIX IT”

The army also fired mortar bombs into the Damascus district of Hammouria, killing at least eight people, activists said.

One video showed a young girl in Hammouria with a large shrapnel wound in her forehead sitting dazed while a doctor said: “Don’t worry dear, we’ll fix it for you.”

Syria’s military, stretched thin by the struggle to keep control, has increasingly used air power against opposition areas, including those in the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Insurgents lack effective anti-aircraft weapons.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he will pursue his peace efforts despite the failure of his appeal for a pause in fighting for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

But it is unclear how he can find any compromise acceptable to Assad, who seems determined to keep power whatever the cost, and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels equally intent on toppling him.

Big powers and Middle Eastern countries are divided over how to end the 19-month-old conflict which has cost an estimated 32,000 dead, making it one of the bloodiest of Arab revolts that have ousted entrenched leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The United Nations said it had sent a convoy of 18 trucks with food and other aid to Homs during the “ceasefire”, but had been unable to unload supplies in the Old City due to fighting.

“We were trying to take advantage of positive signs we saw at the end of last week. The truce lasted more or less four hours so there was not much opportunity for us after all,” said Jens Laerke, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva.

The prime minister of the Gulf state of Qatar told al-Jazeera television late on Monday that Syria’s conflict was not a civil war but “a war of annihilation licensed firstly by the Syrian government and secondly by the international community”.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said some of those responsible were on the U.N. Security Council, alluding to Russia and China which have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad.

He said that the West was also not doing enough to stop the violence and that the United States would be in “paralysis” for two or three weeks during its presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Panasonic’s red ink grows, forecasts loss for year

TOKYO (AP) — Panasonic Corp.‘s losses ballooned to 698 billion yen ($ 8.7 billion) for the fiscal second quarter as sales plunged in flat-panel TVs, laptops and other gadgets, and restructuring costs to turn itself around were proving bigger than initially expected.

The red ink, announced Wednesday, proved far worse than the 105.8 billion yen loss racked up for the July-September period last year.

The Osaka-based maker of Viera TVs and Lumix digital cameras revised its full year forecast from an earlier projection for a 50 billion yen ($ 625 million) profit to a massive annual loss of 765 billion yen ($ 9.6 billion).

Panasonic sank into a record loss of 772.2 billion yen ($ 9.6 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2012 — among the biggest in Japan‘s manufacturing history.

Its problems are emblematic of the overall Japanese electronics industry. Panasonic’s longtime rival Sony Corp. racked up a record annual loss of 457 billion yen ($ 5.7 billion) in its fourth straight year of red ink. Sony reports fiscal results on Thursday.

Panasonic’s quarterly sales sank 12 percent to 1.82 trillion yen ($ 22.8 billion) as a global slowdown, the falling price of electronics products and competition from cheaper Asian makers chipped away at sales. Sales in Japan dipped 11 percent, while overseas sales shrank 14 percent.

Panasonic has been trying to expand operations that cater to other businesses, instead of consumers, by beefing up its solar panel and battery divisions, including auto batteries.

But such shifts are expected to take some time, and those sectors have also been slammed by price declines.

Panasonic lowered its sales forecast for the full year through March 2013, to 7.3 trillion yen ($ 91.3 billion), down from an earlier 8.1 trillion yen ($ 101 billion). Even the more pessimistic number falls short of last year’s sales at 7.85 trillion yen.

The company also said it expects to book restructuring expenses of 440 billion yen ($ 5.5 billion) for the year, bigger than the originally estimated 41 billion yen ($ 513 million).

Panasonic and other Japanese makers have struggled despite the popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices as the market, including Japan, has been dominated by Apple Inc. of the U.S. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.

Also Wednesday, Panasonic said it will boost the efficiency of its operations by merging three group companies focusing on mobile phones and network systems.

During the first fiscal half, Panasonic’s sales grew in appliances and automotive systems, but declined in TVs, digital cameras, Blu-ray recorders, mobile phones, printers and semiconductors, according to the company.

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“Neighbors,” “Scandal” get full-season orders

NEW YORK, Oct 30 (TheWrap.com) – ABC has given full season orders to the aliens-next-door drama “The Neighbors” and the political drama “Scandal.”

“Neighbors,” a freshman comedy, has benefitted from a Wednesday time slot between “The Middle” and “Modern Family,” ABC’s biggest hit.

“Scandal,” a Shonda Rhimes series that stars Kerry Washington (pictured) as a crisis management specialist, debuted in midseason last year and returned last month for its second season.

The two series are the first to receive full-season pickups from ABC this fall.

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British Medical Journal moves to flush out secret trial data

LONDON (Reuters) – The respected British Medical Journal (BMJ) will refuse to publish research papers on drugs unless the clinical trial data behind these studies is made available for independent scrutiny.

The requirement to make anonymised patient-level data available “on reasonable request” will apply to all clinical trials of drugs and medical devices from January 2013, the BMJ said in an editorial.

The move increases the pressure on drug companies to lift the lid on data secrets amid growing criticism that lack of disclosure hampers the ability of doctors and medical researchers to assess the true value of products.

Patient-level data, which sits behind the published results of clinical trials, is a potential treasure trove for scientists wanting to test drug company claims and expose product deficiencies.

Companies have been reluctant to release this information, but GlaxoSmithKline set a precedent this month by announcing that it would make such data available from its trials.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Goodman)

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