Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.

Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.

At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley when Typhoon Bopha lashed the region Tuesday, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre said.

Disaster-response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.

About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited the town, said 319 others remained missing.

“These were whole families among the registered missing,” Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. “Entire families may have been washed away.”

The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha’s ferocious winds.

Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging flood waters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.

A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother, meanwhile, went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. “I have three children,” she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.

Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.

Dionisia Requinto, 43, felt lucky to have survived with her husband and their eight children after swirling flood waters surrounded their home. She said they escaped and made their way up a hill to safety, bracing themselves against boulders and fallen trees as they climbed.

“The water rose so fast,” she told AP. “It was horrible. I thought it was going to be our end.”

In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished, mostly in three towns that were so battered that it was hard to find any buildings with roofs remaining, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.

“We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs,” Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $ 4.8 million to help people directly affected by the typhoon.

The sun was shining brightly for most of the day Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soaked clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.

But as night fell, however, rain started pouring again over New Bataan, triggering panic among some residents who feared a repeat of the previous day’s flash floods. Some carried whatever belongings they could as they hurried to nearby towns or higher ground.

After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared quickly across the southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and plantations damaged. More than 170,000 fled to evacuation centers.

As of Wednesday evening, the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.

The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III’s government to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.

Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region where sprawling export banana plantations have been planted over the decades because it seldom experiences strong winds that could blow down the trees.

A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless.

The United States extended its condolences and offered to help its Asian ally deal with the typhoon’s devastation. It praised government efforts to minimize the deaths and damage.

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Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.

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U.S. agency backs Apple in essential patent battle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Google unit Motorola Mobility is not entitled to ask a court to stop the sale of Apple iPhones and iPads that it says infringe on a patent that is essential to wireless technology, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

In June, Judge Richard Posner in Chicago threw out cases that Motorola, now owned by Google, and Apple had filed against each other claiming patent infringement. Both companies appealed.

In rejecting the Google case, Posner barred the company from seeking to stop iPhone sales because the patent in question was a standard essential patent.

This means that Motorola Mobility had pledged to license it on fair and reasonable terms to other companies in exchange for having the technology adopted as a wireless industry standard.

Standard essential patents, or SEPs, are treated differently because they are critical to ensuring that devices made by different companies work together.

Google appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The FTC said in its court filing that Posner had ruled correctly.

The commission, which has previously argued against courts banning products because they infringe essential patents, reiterated that position on Wednesday.

“Patent hold-up risks harming competition, innovation, and consumers because it allows a patentee to be rewarded not based on the competitive value of its technology, but based on the infringer’s costs to switch to a non-infringing alternative when an injunction is issued,” the commission wrote in its brief.

The case is Apple Inc. and NeXT Software Inc. V. Motorola Inc. and Motorola Mobility Inc., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, no. 2012-1548, 2012-1549.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz)

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Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer dies, aged 104

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Oscar Niemeyer, a towering patriarch of modern architecture who shaped the look of modern Brazil and whose inventive, curved designs left their mark on cities worldwide, died late on Wednesday. He was 104.

Niemeyer had been battling kidney ailments and pneumonia for nearly a month in a Rio de Janeiro hospital. His death was confirmed by a hospital spokesperson.

Starting in the 1930s, Niemeyer’s career spanned nine decades. His distinctive glass and white-concrete buildings include such landmarks as the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Communist Party headquarters in Paris and the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Brasilia.

He won the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize of Architecture” for the Brasilia cathedral. Its “Crown of Thorns” cupola fills the church with light and a sense of soaring grandeur despite the fact that most of the building is underground.

It was one of dozens of public structures he designed for Brazil’s made-to-order capital, a city that helped define “space-age” style.

After flying over Niemeyer’s pod-like Congress, futuristic presidential palace and modular ministries in 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut and first man in space, said “the impression was like arriving on another planet.”

In his home city of Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer’s many projects include the “Sambadrome” stadium for Carnival parades. Perched across the bay from Rio is the “flying saucer” he designed for the Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art.

The collection of government buildings in Brasilia, though, remain his most monumental and enduring achievement. Built from scratch in a wild and nearly uninhabited part of Brazil’s remote central plateau in just four years, it opened in 1960.

While the airplane-shaped city was planned and laid out by Niemeyer’s friend Lucio Costa, Niemeyer designed nearly every important government building in the city.

BECAME NATIONAL ICON

An ardent communist who continued working from his Copacabana beach penthouse apartment in Rio until days before his death, Niemeyer became a national icon ranking alongside Bossa Nova pioneer Tom Jobim and soccer legend Pelé.

His architecture, though, regularly trumped his politics.

Georges Pompidou, a right-wing Gaullist former French president, said Niemeyer’s design for the Communist Party of France headquarters in Paris “was the only good thing those commies ever did,” according to Niemeyer’s memoirs.

Prada, the fashion company known for providing expensive bags and wallets, thought the Communist Party building in Paris so cool it rented it for a fashion show.

Even the 1964-1985 Brazilian military government that forced Niemeyer into exile in the 1960s eventually found his buildings congenial to their dreams of making Brazil “the country of the future.”

His work is celebrated for innovative use of light and space, experimentation with reinforced concrete for aesthetic value and his self-described “architectural invention” style that produced buildings resembling abstract sculpture.

Initially influenced by the angular modernism of French-Swiss architect Le Cobusier, who worked with Niemeyer and Costa on a visit to Brazil in the 1930s, his style evolved toward rounded buildings that he said were inspired by the curves of Rio’s sunbathing women as well as beaches and verdant hills.

“That is the architecture I do, looking for new, different forms. Surprise is key in all art,” Niemeyer told Reuters in an interview in 2006. “The artistic capability of reinforced concrete is so fantastic – that is the way to go.”

Responding to criticism that his work was impractical and overly artistic, Niemeyer dismissed the idea that buildings’ design should reflect their function as a “ridiculous and irritating” architectural dogma.

“Whatever you think of his buildings, Niemeyer has stamped on the world a Brazilian style of architecture,” Dennis Sharp, a British architect and author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture, once said of Niemeyer.

LIFELONG COMMUNIST

Niemeyer’s legacy is heavily associated with his communist views. He was a close friend of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and an enemy of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship.

“There are only two communists left in the world, Niemeyer and myself,” Castro once joked.

Niemeyer remained politically active after returning to Brazil, taking up the cause of a militant and sometimes violent movement of landless peasants. He said in 2010 that he was a great admirer of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former labor leader who was Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010.

Niemeyer once built a house in a Rio slum for his former driver and gave apartments and offices as presents to others.

Despite his egalitarian views, Niemeyer had no illusions that his buildings were helping to improve social justice.

Far from the model city Niemeyer had envisioned, Brasilia today is in many ways the epitome of inequality. Planned for 500,000 people, the city is now home to more than 2.5 million and VIPs keep to themselves in fenced-in villas while the poor live in distant satellite towns.

“It seemed like a new era was coming, but Brazil is the same crap – a country of the very poor and the very rich,” he said in another Reuters interview in 2001.

In a 2010 interview in his office, he was quick to blame Costa for things many dislike about Brasilia, such as its rigid ordering into homogenous “hotel,” “government,” “residential” and even “mansion” and “media” districts that can make finding a newspaper or groceries a chore.

“I just did the buildings,” he said. “All that other stuff was Costa.”

Despite Niemeyer’s atheism, one of his first significant early works was a church built in homage to St. Francis, part of a complex of modern buildings in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

That work won the confidence of the city’s mayor Juscelino Kubitschek. When he became president, he tapped Niemeyer to help realize the dream of opening up Brazil’s interior by moving the capital from coastal Rio to the empty plains of central Brazil.

Despite years of bohemian living, Niemeyer remained married for 76 years to Annita Baldo, his first wife. He married his second wife, long-time aide Vera Lucia Cabreira, in 2006 at the age of 99. She survives him, as do four grandchildren.

Niemeyer’s only daughter, an architect, designer and gallery owner, Anna Maria, died on June 6 at the age of 82.

(Additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Todd Benson and Kieran Murray)

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Fast-growing fish may never wind up on your plate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Salmon that’s been genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal could soon show up on your dinner plate. That is, if the company that makes the fish can stay afloat.

After weathering concerns about everything from the safety of humans eating the salmon to their impact on the environment, Aquabounty was poised to become the world’s first company to sell fish whose DNA has been altered to speed up growth.

The Food and Drug Administration in 2010 concluded that Aquabounty’s salmon was as safe to eat as the traditional variety. The agency also said that there’s little chance that the salmon could escape and breed with wild fish, which could disrupt the fragile relationships between plants and animals in nature. But more than two years later the FDA has not approved the fish, and Aquabounty is running out of money.

“It’s threatening our very survival,” says CEO Ron Stotish, chief executive of the Maynard, Mass.-based company. “We only have enough money to survive until January 2013, so we have to raise more. But the unexplained delay has made raising money very difficult.”

The FDA says it’s still working on the final piece of its review, a report on the potential environmental impact of the salmon that must be published for comment before an approval can be issued. That means a final decision could be months, even years away. While the delay could mean that the faster-growing salmon will never wind up on American dinner tables, there’s more at stake than seafood.

Aquabounty is the only U.S. company publicly seeking approval for a genetically modified animal that’s raised to be eaten by humans. And scientists worry that its experience with the FDA’s lengthy review process could discourage other U.S. companies from investing in animal biotechnology, or the science of manipulating animal DNA to produce a desirable trait. That would put the U.S. at a disadvantage at a time when China, India and other foreign governments are pouring millions of dollars each year into the potentially lucrative field that could help reduce food costs and improve food safety.

Already, biotech scientists are changing their plans to avoid getting stuck in FDA-related regulatory limbo. Researchers at the University of California, Davis have transferred an experimental herd of genetically engineered goats that produce protein-enriched milk to Brazil, due to concerns about delays at the FDA. And after investors raised concerns about the slow pace of the FDA’s Aquabounty review, Canadian researchers in April pulled their FDA application for a biotech pig that would produce environmentally friendly waste.

“The story of Aquabounty is disappointing because everyone was hoping the company would be a clear signal that genetic modification in animals is now acceptable in the U.S.,” said Professor Helen Sang, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who is working to develop genetically modified chickens that are resistant to bird flu. “Because it’s gotten so bogged down — and presumably cost AquaBounty a huge amount of money — I think people will be put off.”

AGAINST THE CURRENT

The science behind genetic modification is not new. Biotech scientists say that genetic manipulation is a proven way to reduce disease and enrich plants and animals, raising productivity and increasing the global food supply. Genetically modified corn, cotton and soybeans account for more than four-fifths of those crops grown in the U.S., according to the National Academies of Sciences.

But there have always been critics who are wary of tinkering with the genes of living animals. They say the risk is too great that modified organisms can escape into the wild and breed with native species. Not that we don’t already eat genetically altered animals. Researchers say the centuries-old practice of selective breeding is its own form of genetic engineering, producing the plumper cows, pigs and poultry we eat today.

“You drive a hybrid car because you want the most efficient vehicle you can have. So why wouldn’t you want the most efficient agriculture you can have?” asks Alison Van Eenennaam, a professor of animal science at University of California, Davis.

Aquabounty executives say their aim is to make the U.S. fish farming industry, or aquaculture, more efficient, environmentally friendly and profitable. After all, the U.S. imports about 86 percent of its seafood, in part, because it has a relatively small aquaculture industry. Aquaculture has faced pushback in the U.S. because of concerns about pollution from large fish pens in the ocean, which generate fish waste and leftover food.

Aquabounty executives figure that the U.S. aquaculture industry can be transformed by speeding up the growth of seafood. The company picked Atlantic salmon because they are the most widely consumed salmon in the U.S. and are farmed throughout the world: In 2010, the U.S. imported more than 200,000 tons of Atlantic salmon, worth over $ 1.5 billion, from countries like Norway, Canada and Chile.

Using gene-manipulating technology, Aquabounty adds a growth hormone to the Atlantic salmon from another type of salmon called the Chinook. The process, company executives say, causes its salmon to reach maturity in about two years, compared with three to four years for a conventional salmon.

Aquabounty executives say if their fish are approved for commercial sale, there are several safeguards designed to prevent the fish from escaping and breeding with wild salmon. The salmon are bred as sterile females. They also are confined to pools where the potential for escape would be low: The inland pens are isolated from natural bodies of water.

And the company says that these pens would be affordable thanks to the fast-growing nature of Aquabounty’s fish, which allows farmers to raise more salmon in less time. Overall, the company estimates that it would cost 30 percent less to grow its fish than traditional salmon.

TOUGH SALE

But getting the fish to market hasn’t been easy.

The company began discussions with the FDA in 1993. But the agency did not yet have a formal system for reviewing genetically modified food animals.

So Aquabounty spent the next decade conducting more than two dozen studies on everything from the molecular structure of the salmon’s DNA to the potential allergic reactions in humans who would eat it. By the time the FDA completed its roadmap for reviewing genetically modified animals in 2009, Aquabounty was the first company to submit its data.

After reviewing the company’s data, the FDA said in a public hearing in September of 2010 that Aquabounty’s salmon is “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon.” The FDA also said the fish “are not expected to have a significant impact” on the environment.

But as the company has inched toward FDA approval it has faced increasing pushback from natural food advocates, environmentalists and politicians from salmon-producing states. In fact, following the FDA’s positive review of the fish, the House of Representatives passed a budget that included language barring the FDA from spending funds to approve a genetically engineered salmon.

“Frankenfish is uncertain and unnecessary,” said Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who authored the language. The Senate did not adopt the measure.

Despite such opposition, environmental groups such as the Food and Water Watch say that FDA approval seems inevitable. “We think there is a clear bias toward approving genetically modified animals within the FDA,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit that promotes environmentally friendly fishing and farming practices. “This thing is trapped in a regulatory process that is predisposed toward approving it.”

But the delay could cause Aquabounty to go bankrupt before its salmon reaches supermarkets.

Aquabounty, which started in 1991 focusing on proteins used to preserve human cells, changed direction after acquiring the rights to gene-manipulation technology from researchers at the University of Toronto and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Initial financing came from Boston-area investors and biotech-focused venture capital funds, but the company has burned through more than $ 67 million since it started.

According to its mid-year financial report, Aquabounty had less than $ 1.5 million in cash and stock. And it has no other products besides genetically modified salmon in development.

In February, the cash-strapped company agreed to sell its research and development arm to its largest single shareholder, Kakha Bendukidze, a former Republic of Georgia finance minister turned investor, in return for his help raising $ 2 million in cash to stay afloat. Aquabounty’s CEO Stotish fretted that Bendukidze, who controlled nearly 48 percent of Aquabounty’s public stock, would move the company overseas. But in October Bendukidze’s investment fund sold its shares to Intrexon, a biotech firm headquartered in Germantown, Md.

Stotish views the sale as a positive development, but he still worries that the U.S. government is unwilling to approve the technology at the heart of his company’s work.

“This is about more than Aquabounty and more than salmon,” Stotish says. “And shame on us if we allow this to slip away because of partisan bickering and people who oppose new technology.”

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WestJet embraces tech to woo business travelers

TORONTO (Reuters) – WestJet Airlines Ltd will use technological innovation, including a new Internet ticket booking system, to help it transform from a no-frills carrier to a lower-cost full-service airline courting lucrative corporate travelers, its chief executive said on Monday.

Canada’s second-biggest airline plans to launch a series of technology systems, most notably the new online booking engine, which will sell three tiers of tickets, in the next two months.

“Companies evolve or they die,” Chief Executive Gregg Saretsky told Reuters in a phone interview from the company’s Calgary head office.

“We’re 16 and going on 17 years old and we can’t stay just as we were 17 years ago. The world has changed. And we are changing to be more relevant for a broader segment of guests.”

The new Internet booking system, which WestJet hopes to launch in late January, will sell economy, mid-tier and premium tickets. That is a major shift from its current system, which sells only the lowest-priced ticket available.

Economy tickets under the new system will continue to sell the lowest available fare, but the cancellation fee for them will jump to C$ 75 ($ 75.48) from C$ 50. Mid-tier tickets will have a C$ 50 cancellation fee.

Premium tickets, unavailable until late March when WestJet finishes reconfiguring its 100 Boeing 737 planes to allow more leg room, will include priority screening and boarding, free cancellations and flexibility on ticket changes.

Pricing for those tickets, which may include free meals and drinks and an extra baggage allowance, has not yet been determined. Fares will be well below half the price for business class at WestJet’s bigger competitor, Air Canada, Saretsky said.

“It’s time for us to be more serious with respect to going after business travelers because frankly, they’re the ones who are booking last-minute and are happy to pay for the conveniences,” Saretsky said.

WestJet will launch its premium economy service with 24 seats per plane, but will consider expansion if it proves “wildly successful,” he added.

POISED FOR CHANGE

WestJet, which has spent about C$ 40 million over the past two years on technology projects, is poised for major changes in 2013 as it readies to launch a new regional airline, Encore.

Saretsky hopes that WestJet’s switch in coming weeks to a new Internet phone system will allow ticket reservation agents to work from home and help make room for Encore staff.

Some 750 reservation agents work at WestJet’s Calgary offices, which house about 2,400 staff. Space will be needed for Encore employees over the next 18 months while their office, hangars and maintenance stores are constructed at the WestJet campus.

Encore will be launch in the second half of 2013, “probably closer to July than December,” Saretsky said, with seven Bombardier Q400 planes.

While WestJet won’t announce Encore’s schedule until Jan 21, the carrier will initially serve only “a handful” of new cities, with ticket prices up to 50 percent below Air Canada’s, he added.

Over the next two months, WestJet will also roll out a guest notification system that alerts travelers via email about their flights, allowing them to check in remotely.

Such self-service technology will be critical as WestJet faces increasing labor costs, Saretsky said.

Wage and benefit costs, which represent about a third of operating costs, have climbed 50 percent since WestJet was founded in 1996.

“You can see that creates a little bit of drag on earnings,” Saretsky said. “We’ve got to find ways of reducing our component costs.”

If WestJet can increase self service options for travelers, that could limit the need for new employees, Saretsky said. Management also wants to improve attendance management, so that fewer employees book off sick around long weekends, and more quickly clean and process planes between flights, he said.

(Reporting By Susan Taylor; Editing by Peter Galloway)

(This story was corrected to show that WestJet is replacing its Internet booking engine, not entire reservation system, in the first and second paragraphs)

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iOS users generate double the Web traffic of Android users

According to the latest numbers from Chitika Insights, iOS users generate more than twice the amount of Web traffic as Android users. The six-month study found that while the two operating systems were nearly tied when it came to smartphone Web traffic, Apple (AAPL) has a substantial lead with its iPad tablet. Despite Android’s commanding share of the overall mobile market, the Cupertino-based company’s platform totaled 67% of Web traffic measured in the past six months, compared to Android’s 35% share.

“Despite all the new Android and Apple devices that have been released over the past six months, little has changed in the overall Web traffic distribution between iOS and Android,” the research firm wrote. “iOS’s share has hovered around 65%, while Android largely has stayed around 35%, the OS hit a peak of 40% in late August thanks partially to strong Samsung Galaxy S III sales. Apple then regained some share with the release of the iPhone 5 in the September timeframe.”

To qualify for the study Chitika Insights analysed billions of ad impressions coming from iOS or Android devices from May 27th to November 27th.

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Huston’s “Infrared” wins Bad Sex fiction prize

LONDON (AP) — It’s the prize no author wants to win.

Award-winning novelist Nancy Huston won Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction award Tuesday for her novel “Infrared,” whose tale of a photographer who takes pictures of her lovers during sex proved too revealing for the judges.

The choice was announced by “Downton Abbey” actress Samantha Bond during a ceremony at the Naval & Military Club in London.

Judges of the tongue-in-cheek prize — which is run by the Literary Review magazine — said they were struck by a description of “flesh, that archaic kingdom that brings forth tears and terrors, nightmares, babies and bedazzlements,” and by a long passage that builds to a climax of “undulating space.”

Huston, who lives in Paris, was not on hand to collect her prize. In a statement read by her publicist, the 59-year-old author said she hoped her victory would “incite thousands of British women to take close-up photos of their lovers’ bodies in all states of array and disarray.”

The Canada-born Huston, who writes in both French and English, is the author of more than a dozen novels, including “Plainsong” and “Fault Lines.” She has previously won France’s Prix Goncourt prize and was a finalist for Britain’s Orange Prize for fiction by women.

She is only the third woman to win the annual Bad Sex prize, founded in 1993 to name and shame authors of “crude, tasteless and … redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels.”

Some critics, however, have praised the sexual passages in “Infrared.” Shirley Whiteside in the Independent on Sunday newspaper said there were “none of the lazy cliches of pornography or the purple prose of modern romantic fiction” — though she conceded the book’s sex scenes were “more perfunctory than erotic.”

Huston beat finalists including previous winner Tom Wolfe — for his passage in “Back to Blood” describing “his big generative jockey” — and Booker Prize-nominated Nicola Barker, whose novel “The Yips” compares a woman to “a plump Bakewell pudding.”

Previous recipients of the dubious honor, usually accepted with good grace, include Sebastian Faulks, the late Norman Mailer and the late John Updike, who was awarded a Bad Sex lifetime achievement award in 2008.

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Online: http://www.literaryreview.co.uk

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Drug industry treading water on R&D productivity

LONDON (Reuters) – Drug companies are becoming more efficient in hunting for new treatments, though this has yet to be reflected in improved investment returns, according to a report on Tuesday.

Low productivity in research labs is the biggest single challenge facing the global pharmaceutical industry, which is struggling to replenish its medicine chest after a wave of patient expiries that peaked this year.

While companies are getting more compounds into late-stage development – reflecting a smarter and more targeted approach to research and development (R&D) – turning those new products into big commercial winners is an uphill struggle.

That reflects growing caution among governments about buying costly new drugs, as well as the arrival of more specialist products that address relatively small patient populations.

The latest annual study of R&D productivity by Deloitte and Thomson Reuters found that the number of new drug approvals increased by around 30 percent, yet the expected revenue from these medicines actually fell by a similar amount.

In total, the world’s 12 top pharmaceutical companies had 41 new drugs approved, with combined forecast revenues of $ 211 billion, while the year-earlier tally was 32 products with expected revenues of $ 309 billion.

In effect, the industry is treading water in the fight to deliver better returns on the billions of dollars ploughed into the hunt for new drugs each year.

With an average internal rate of return (IRR) from R&D in 2012 of 7.2 percent – against 7.7 percent and 10.5 percent in the two preceding years – Big Pharma is barely covering its average cost of capital, estimated at around 7 percent.

Nonetheless, there are some encouraging signs. In particular, 10 of the 12 companies tracked in the report showed an improvement in replenishing their stock of late-stage experimental drugs.

“We’ve seen returns stabilizing and there are signs on the horizon that the situation might turn around, depending on how successful the industry is at commercializing new assets as they come through,” said Julian Remnant, head of Deloitte’s European R&D advisory practice.

At $ 1.1 billion, the average cost of developing a new medicine has remained fairly constant, although it varies hugely between companies, since this figure includes money spent on drugs that ultimately fail.

For the most successful company in the group, the average cost of developing a drug was just $ 315 million, while at the other extreme one firm spent $ 2.8 billion.

The companies analyzed in the study were Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Merck & Co, Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Takeda and Amgen.

The study calculated IRRs for these companies by estimating the future value of sales from products in final-stage Phase III clinical trials, or those submitted for regulatory approval, using standard industry benchmarks for success rates.

(Editing by Louise Heavens)

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UK economy ‘not as bad in 2012′

3 December 2012 Last updated at 19:07 ET

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has increased its forecast for UK growth for 2012, but still expects the economy to shrink.

The UK will shrink by 0.1% this year, less than the 0.4% contraction it had predicted previously, the BCC said.

That is “entirely due to the stronger-than-expected” growth in the last quarter, helped by the Olympic Games.

But it now sees growth of 1% for the whole of 2013, down from the 1.2% it had forecast in September.

“As we wait in anticipation for the chancellor to deliver his Autumn Statement tomorrow, our new forecast highlights the challenges still facing the UK economy over the months and years ahead,” said John Longworth, director-general of the BCC.

“The fact remains that growth is still too weak. Thankfully, we have businesses here in the UK that are ambitious, determined and resilient.”

Chancellor George Osborne gives the Autumn Statement on Wednesday. Over the weekend, he admitted that curbing the UK’s financial deficit was “taking longer” than planned.

The BCC said that public sector borrowing would be £104.1bn for 2012/13 – more than £12bn higher that it had predicted in March.

“Many firms are expanding exports, investing, and creating jobs, but more must be done to support the aspirations of growing companies that will be the wealth creators of tomorrow,” Mr Longworth said.

Last month, it emerged that the UK economy had bounced back from recession in the three months to September.

The economy grew by 1.0%, after contracting for the previous nine months. The UK has still not recovered the levels of output seen before the financial crisis in 2008.

For 2014, the BCC cut the forecast to 1.8%, from 2.2%.

The BCC said that the lower GDP growth forecasts for 2013 and 2014 were due to the fact that the “international environment has worsened, as growth forecasts for world trade, for the eurozone, and for other major economies have been revised down in recent months” and that more spending cuts were likely in the UK.

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Official: Syria moving chemical weapons components

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday, as the Obama administration strongly warned the Assad regime against using them.

A senior defense official said intelligence officials have detected activity around more than one of Syria‘s chemical weapons sites in the last week. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, reiterated President Barack Obama‘s declaration that Syrian action on chemical weapons was a “red line” for the United States that would prompt action.

“We have made our views very clear: This is a red line for the United States,” Clinton told reporters. “I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”

Syria said Monday it would not use chemical weapons against its own people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Syria “would not use chemical weapons — if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances.”

Syria has been careful never to confirm that it has any chemical weapons.

The use of chemical weapons would be a major escalation in Assad’s crackdown on his foes and would draw international condemnation. In addition to causing mass deaths and horrific injuries to survivors, the regime’s willingness to use them would alarm much of the region, particularly neighboring states, including Israel.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said, “We are concerned that in an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. And as the president has said, any use or proliferation of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line for the United States. “

Administration officials would not detail what that response might be.

Although Syria is one of only seven nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, it is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol that bans the use of chemical weapons in war. That treaty was signed in the aftermath of World War I, when the effects of the use of mustard gas and other chemical agents outraged much of the world.

Clinton didn’t address the issue of the fresh activity at Syrian chemical weapons depots, but insisted that Washington would address any threat that arises.

An administration official said the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons or movement with the intent to use or provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking on condition of anonymity this person was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

The senior defense official said the U.S. does not believe that any Syrian action beyond the movement of components is imminent.

An Israeli official said if there is real movement on chemical weapons, it would require a response. He didn’t say what that might be and spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal government response to the reports of the latest activities.

Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.

Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads.

Its arsenal is a particular threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria’s rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.

Clinton said that while the actions of President Bashar Assad‘s government have been deplorable, chemical weapons would bring them to a new level.

“We once again issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behavior is reprehensible, their actions against their own people have been tragic,” she said. “But there is no doubt that there’s a line between even the horrors that they’ve already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons.”

Activity has been detected before at Syrian weapons sites, believed to number several dozen.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.

Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence related to the weapons.

Senior lawmakers were notified last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept informed.

“I can’t comment on these reports but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles,” said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world,” he added.

Syria is believed to have one of the world’s largest chemical weapons programs, and the Assad regime has said it might use the weapons against external threats, though not against Syrians. The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria’s chemical and biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.

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Klapper reported from Prague. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Kimberly Dozier, and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

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