MTV awards bring pop glitz to Frankfurt
Label: LifestyleFRANKFURT (Reuters) – The MTV Europe Music Awards bring the pop circus to Frankfurt on Sunday, with Barbadian R&B singer Rihanna leading the nominations and the late Whitney Houston to be honored with a Global Icon award.
Houston, who was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel bathtub on February 11, will be the third artist to be given the award, following Bon Jovi and Queen in 2010 and 2011.
“Whitney Houston may be gone, but her legend lives on,” the organizers said.
MTV said it would transform the inside of the 100-year-old Festhalle venue into a circus arena, and host Heidi Klum said she may swing from a trapeze.
“It will be a magical, visual feast,” the German model and presenter promised ahead of the event.
One of this year’s most eagerly anticipated performances is dance sensation Psy with his record-breaking hit “Gangnam Style“. He will become the first South Korean artist to perform at the annual awards, one of the pop industry’s biggest nights outside the United States.
The song, which is up for the Best Video award, has been viewed more than 670 million times on YouTube and received a record-breaking 4.9 million “likes” on Facebook since being released in mid-July.
Klum, who this year filed for divorce from singer husband Seal, is ready for the horse riding-inspired dance.
“Now I know how to dance Gangnam Style!” she posted on Twitter on Saturday, with a picture of herself and Psy in matching blue tuxedo jackets.
ROCKING THE RED CARPET
Despite being billed as the Europe Music Awards, the majority of nominees are traditionally North American, and 2012 is no exception.
Alongside Psy, acts due to take the stage at the show include country singer Taylor Swift, 14-time Grammy winner Alicia Keys, the Killers, newly reformed No Doubt and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Before the show kicks off, stars taking to the red carpet will include rapper Ludacris, who will debut his new video “Rest of My Life”.
Heading the nominations is party-loving Rihanna, with nods in six categories, including Best Song and Best Video for “We Found Love”.
Following close behind with five nominations is country star Swift, Katy Perry with four, while Lady Gaga, who cleaned up last year with four prizes, is in the running for three awards.
Teen heartthrob Justin Bieber, who has reportedly just broken up with girlfriend Selena Gomez, is up for four awards, including Best Male and Best Pop.
Rihanna is favorite for Best Song and Best Female, according to odds offered by British bookmakers William Hill, while Gangnam Style is tipped to win Best Video.
The EMA awards were last held in Frankfurt in 2001. Last year’s awards in Belfast attracted 23 million viewers on all platforms and 158 million votes worldwide.
Following are the main nominations in 2012:
BEST SONG: Carly Rae Jepsen/Call Me Maybe; Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris/We Found Love; Gotye/Somebody That I Used To Know; Pitbull feat. Chris Brown/International Love; fun. feat. Janelle Monáe/We Are Young
BEST NEW: Rita Ora; fun.; One Direction; Lana Del Rey; Carly Rae Jepsen
BEST FEMALE: Rihanna; Katy Perry; P!nk; Taylor Swift; Nicki Minaj
BEST MALE: Justin Bieber; Kanye West; Flo Rida; Pitbull; Jay-Z
BEST POP: Justin Bieber; No Doubt; Katy Perry; Taylor Swift; Rihanna
BEST LIVE: Taylor Swift; Lady Gaga; Jay-Z & Kanye West; Green Day; Muse
BEST HIP HOP: Jay-Z & Kanye West; Nas; Rick Ross; Drake; Nicki Minaj
BEST ROCK: Linkin Park; Green Day; Muse; The Killers; Coldplay
BEST ELECTRONIC: David Guetta; Swedish House Mafia; Avicii; Skrillex; Calvin Harris
BEST ALTERNATIVE: Jack White; The Black Keys; Arctic Monkeys; Florence + The Machine; Lana Del Rey
BEST VIDEO: M.I.A./Bad Girls; Lady Gaga/Marry The Night; Katy Perry/Wide Awake; Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris/We Found Love; PSY/Gangnam Style.
(Reporting by Victoria Bryan and Maria Sheahan; editing by Mike Collett-White)
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Novartis drug helps patients with rare inflammatory diseases
Label: HealthZURICH (Reuters) – Novartis‘ Ilaris helps reduce patients’ symptoms and the frequency of attacks in two rare inflammatory diseases, mid-stage studies showed, as the Swiss drugmaker looks to expand the use of the medicine.
Results of two separate studies on Sunday in patients with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) and TRAPS – rare genetic diseases which can cause fever, rash and joint pain – both met their primary endpoints, Novartis said in a statement.
Both studies are being presented at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) meeting in Washington D.C.
Ilaris or ACZ885, which blocks a protein called interleukin-1 beta that is thought to increase inflammation, is already sold for treating cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes, a rare inflammatory disorder.
Novartis is also hoping to file the drug this year for regulatory approval in systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA), a debilitating disease that can affect a child’s growth.
Results of the phase II study showed the drug helped 100 percent of FMF patients reduce the frequency of attacks by at least 50 percent during three months of treatment.
Eight of the nine patients in the trial did not have an attack during the three months and blood markers of inflammation also normalized.
There are currently no approved treatments for FMF or TRAPS, rare genetically-inherited anti-inflammatory diseases, which can affect both children and adults.
Novartis is hoping to show the drug can be beneficial in treating rare inflammatory diseases after receiving a setback last year when U.S. health regulators rejected Ilaris for use in gout over concerns about side effects.
New data from a mid-stage study on the use of Ilaris in TRAPS showed that patients who came off therapy after being treated with the drug did not have a relapse for three months on average.
Earlier data from the study showed that 90 percent of patients experienced a significant improvement in symptoms after just one week of treatment with Ilaris. This rose to 95 percent after two weeks.
(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Israel kills Gaza rocket crewman in second day of clashes
Label: WorldGAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian militant in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip on Sunday as a surge in cross-border violence entered its second day, local officials said.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller faction than Hamas which often operates independently, identified the dead man as one of its own, saying he was a member of a rocket crew hit by an Israeli missile in Jabalya, northern Gaza.
The Israeli military confirmed carrying out an air strike in the area. The death brought to six the number of Palestinians killed by Israel since four of its troops were hurt in a missile attack on their jeep along the Gaza boundary fence.
Islamic Jihad said it had fired 70 short-range rockets and mortar bombs across the border since Saturday, salvoes which drove Israeli residents to blast shelters. At least one Israeli, in the town of Sderot, was wounded, ambulance workers said.
Israel described the jeep ambush as part of a Palestinian strategy of trying to curb its countermeasures against possible cross-border infiltration. Israeli forces often mount hunts for tunnels and landmines on the inside of the Gaza boundary, creating a no-go zone for Palestinians.
“Of course we don’t accept their attempt to change the rules,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s Army Radio.
“The essence of the struggle is over the fence. We intend to enable the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) to work not just on our side but on the other side as well.”
Palestinians said four of Saturday’s dead were civilians hit by an Israeli tank shell while paying respects at a crowded mourning tent in Gaza’s Shijaia neighborhood. Israel denies targeting civilians.
The bloodshed puts internal pressure on Hamas, which, though hostile to the Jewish state, has sat out some of the recent rounds of violence as it tried to consolidate its Gaza rule and reach out to neighboring Egypt and other foreign powers.
Israel blames Hamas for any attacks emanating from Gaza, but has shown little appetite for a major sweep of the territory which might strain its own fraught ties to the new Islamist-rooted government in Cairo.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Todd Eastham)
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Google says multiple services blocked in China
Label: TechnologySAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc said several of its online services have been blocked in China.
Traffic to Google’s services in China dropped sharply beginning Friday evening there, according to an online “Transparency Report” website operated by Google, which provides updates about access to its services in different parts of the world.
Among the sites affected were Google’s search engine and its Gmail web email product.
The disruptions come as China’s once-in-a-decade meeting to appoint new leadership gets underway.
A Google spokeswoman said the company did not know why the disruption was happening. Google said in a statement that it had “checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.”
Google’s YouTube video service has been inaccessible in China since 2009, while access to other services in China are blocked sporadically.
In 2010 Google relocated its Chinese search engine to Hong Kong after a spat with authorities over censorship and cyber-attacks that Google said originated in China.
(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by John Wallace)
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“Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence will not diet for role
Label: LifestyleLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “The Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence will not be dieting for a role any time soon.
Lawrence, 22, who plays the famished Katniss Everdeen in the life-or-death thriller series, told Elle magazine in an interview to be published on November 13 that dropping a few pounds will not be part of her script.
“I’m never going to starve myself for a part,” Lawrence said, a view out of step with many in diet-obsessed Hollywood.
Lawrence’s figure in “The Hunger Games” raised eyebrows of some critics, who believed the actress looked a little too healthy for a character struggling to eat.
“I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner,” Lawrence said. “That’s something I was really conscious of during training…I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong – not thin and underfed.”
Suffering for a role by rapidly losing or gaining weight is part of Hollywood lore.
Natalie Portman was applauded for dropping some 20 pounds for her Oscar-winning role as a ballerina in 2010′s “Black Swan”. Likewise Robert De Niro nabbed an Oscar after packing on 60 extra pounds in 1980 boxing film “Raging Bull”.
Lawrence’s figure did not hurt the first installment of the “The Hunger Games” series, which was released in March and has grossed some $ 670 million worldwide. The actress has signed on for three sequels.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by David Gregorio)
Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Nutella maker says will brave French tax hike
Label: HealthPARIS (Reuters) – The makers of the renowned Nutella food spread say they will not change the lucrative recipe even if France, its biggest market, endorses proposals to quadruple tax on a key ingredient of the gooey mix, palm oil.
Senators in France, where a left-wing government is hiking tax generally to help slash a bloated debt, have proposed a 300 percent tax hike on palm oil on the grounds that its production harms the environment and its consumption fuels obesity.
Frederic Thil, French director for Ferrero, the Italian firm that makes the sugary, chocolate-colored paste, sounded a defiant note in Le Parisien daily.
“The arguments are unfair and the repercussions would be catastrophic,” he told the newspaper.
More than 100 million jars of Nutella were sold in France alone in 2008, according to Ferrero, whose website says the recipe sold in large quantities across the Western world was invented in the backroom of an Italian pastry shop in 1944.
The main ingredients are sugar, milk powder, hazelnuts, cocoa, emulsifier, flavoring and palm oil, on which a tax of almost 100 euros per metric tonne is levied in France at the moment.
That tax would rise to 400 euros a tonne if the proposal floated by a Senate committee earlier this month secures majority backing in the Senate and in the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.
France, which is keen to find other funding sources for a generous healthcare system in cash-strapped times, has already raised tax on sugary drinks and recently hatched plans to hike tax on beer to help plug the hole in public welfare finances.
Thil said the maker of Nutella, popular in many countries as a breakfast fare smeared onto slices of bread, would do all it could to limit the hit from any tax rise for consumers.
Palm oil, also extensively used in margarine, biscuits and crisps, makes up about 20 percent of the Nutella mix. The 300 percent tax rise, if passed on, would raise the cost of a 1-kilo jar or the spread by 0.06 euros, according to ASEF, an association of doctors that backs the tax hike proposal.
The other argument made for a tax increase is that it will encourage a shift away from intensive production methods that have prompted destruction of forests in countries such as Malaysia, a major exporter of palm oil.
(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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Greece in bid for bridge finance
Label: Business9 November 2012 Last updated at 14:04 ET
Greece is to make an urgent bid to raise funds from the financial markets in case it does not get another tranche of bailout aid in time to repay debts.
On Tuesday, it plans to issue bonds, repayable in one and three months, to cover debt repayments due on Friday.
The bond issue is to raise 3.12bn euros ($ 4bn; £2.4bn), to help the country repay creditors owed about 4bn euros.
Greece is negotiating to secure aid worth 31.5bn euros from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
Without the aid, heavily-indebted Greece would face bankruptcy.
Manos Chatzidakis, an analyst at Beta Securities in Athens, said the four-week treasury auction was an unusual but necessary step.
It would keep Athens afloat until leaders of the eurozone meet on 26 November to approve payment of the latest rescue loans. Despite the Athens Parliament passing the hugely unpopular austerity cutbacks, the EU, IMF and European Central Bank are still reviewing the country’s finances.
“This is bridge financing ahead of the November 26 decision, to ensure that there is no problem with [repaying] bondholders. It is unorthodox, but it’s a form of bridge financing and not the beginning of regular such issues. It has a purely technical role,” Mr Chatzidakis said.
The news came as Cyprus began a new round of talks about a bailout to support the country’s ailing banks and service its debt payments.
Negotiators from the EU, ECB and the IMF – collectively known as troika – held talks with senior government officials from Cyprus’s finance ministry and central bank. The talks are expected to continue into next week.
Cyprus has been unable to tap international financial markets for money since last year because of its junk credit rating. The country has been negotiating with Russia for money, but the talks are thought to have stalled.
BBC News – Business
Social media shakes up solitary online FX trading
Label: TechnologyLONDON (Reuters) – The solitary world of online foreign exchange trading is emerging from the shadows as solo investors turn to specialist social media networks to link up with their peers and seek market-beating strategies.
Individual or retail trading, estimated at 8-10 percent of the $ 2.5 trillion daily spot FX market, used to conjure an image of a lone trader with little contact with the outside world.
But that is changing. Thanks to specially tailored websites known as social trading networks, users are able to see and even copy the trades of top-ranked rivals, swap ideas and gauge the market mood in online chat with a community of contacts.
“In the world of trading there are a lot of signals but social media gives us the market sentiment and it is ideal for chatting to people across the world for trade ideas,” said Patrick Orini, who has been trading FX online since 2004.
Retail forex traders make their deals using personal accounts through brokers such as Alpari, FxPro and IronFX. Increasingly, traders are hooking up their broker accounts with social trading networks, such as eToro, Currensee and Tradeo.
Traders usually pay a subscription to use the service while the social network and the broker might share revenue on trades.
In a system reminiscent of microblog network Twitter, top players who make their trades visible can gather thousands of followers, some of whom pay to copy their strategies.
Orini’s trading account on a social trading network called Tradeo has 500 followers, of whom around 20 copy his trades.
If online investors do well in their trades, they will attract more followers and will be ranked higher on the trader “leaderboard” posted on the site.
Retail FX has grown over the last decade as brokers allow individual traders to take highly leveraged positions previously accessible only to institutional investors. The largest group of market players is based in Japan.
eToro, one the world’s largest social trading platforms has processed more than 20 million trades since it went live at the beginning of 2012.
Tradeo, a social network for forex traders based in Tel Aviv, launched three months ago and, according to its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Adest, the site has posted up to half a billion dollars of trades from around 10,000 traders since then.
“It’s not a broker, but a network for brokers — a bit like an online trading room,” Adest said.
He said Tradeo also combats a key hazard of online trading — inaccurate or bogus information. Traders often swap ideas on comment boards, but anonymity and low security makes it difficult to weed out spam.
“The idea of creating a niche social network for forex traders is to help verify commentators usually found in chat rooms and comment boards,” Adest said.
In its increased use of social media, online forex trading is catching up with developments in the equities market.
Retail equities trading is estimated to account for up to half of trade in UK small companies. Retail FX’s smaller share of the overall market reflects the fact that most trade is over-the-counter and lack of volatility that make it harder to turn a profit.
In the equities market, analysis of Twitter postings and news headlines has been used to predict stock price movements.
London-based hedge fund firm Derwent Capital is launching a new spread betting application for retail traders in January that will use Twitter’s 350 million daily tweets to create a sentiment indicator covering currency pairs and other assets.
Social media makes existing currency market sentiment models more effective, said John Hardy, head of FX strategy at Saxo Bank.
“It would be a new way to measure “sentiment” in real time, something that banks can do already via how people are actually trading…but the Twitter measures might be able to bring new nuances and sophistication,” he said.
Arguably, solo traders who hook up to social trading networks are seeking an edge in the “wisdom of crowds”.
“The reason why so many people, like myself, do share their activity and ideas is to help each other and build the community,” Orini said. “I got so many valuable ideas from other traders, that I’m more than happy to share my ideas as well.”
(Editing by Nigel Stephenson)
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Andy Summers film documents surviving the Police
Label: LifestyleLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Police guitarist Andy Summers has always been a multifaceted artist – musician, songwriter, photographer and author. Now he can add filmmaker to his extensive resume.
“Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police,” Summers’ 90-minute documentary film that chronicles his musical career and life with supergroup, has its world premiere at the DOC NYC festival in New York on Friday.
Summers, who narrates the film, describes it as “a musical journey” that uses live footage from the 2007-2008 Police reunion world tour, along with lots of archival material from both the early Police days and the London punk scene.
“But it’s not done as a chronological story,” he told Reuters. “We establish the fact we’re doing the reunion tour early on, and then it dips in and out of live Police concert footage, and then starts going back to the earlier days.”
Based on his 2006 memoir “One Train Later,” the documentary also incorporates rare footage dating back to the 1960s, when Summers, now 69, was involved with the early British rock scene and seminal artists including British vocalist and keyboard player Zoot Money and Eric Burdon. The film also features many still photographs that the rock star took along the way.
“I was always interested in photography, so it was very natural for me to document everything, whether it was backstage at some grungy club or on early tours with the Police,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of intimate moments and interesting shots and archival stuff, especially in the first 25 minutes of the film, with the Sex Pistols appearing and so on.”
BUMPING INTO FAME
Following his book’s lead, the film also documents the serendipitous nature of the formation of the Police, one of the biggest bands in rock history, when Summers “just happened to bump into” drummer Stewart Copeland in a London Underground station one day in 1977.
The two decided to have coffee and discuss forming a new band with a then-unknown singer called Sting, whom they had just met.
“One train later, and it all might never have happened,” recalled Summers, “which is why I titled the book ‘One Train Later.’”
He would have preferred that title for the documentary. “It’s much hipper and doesn’t pander to the obvious Police connection,” he said, “so I’m hoping at some point we’ll change it to that.”
Inevitably, the film also focuses on the breakup of the always-combustible and often acrimonious trio.
“It’s obviously a very painful and poignant moment, when we all realize, ‘Well, that’s it,’” Summers said of the 2008 footage documenting the band’s final dissolution.
“The camera lingers on all our faces, and you can see the raw emotion there. It’s very bittersweet.”
As for rumors that the Police may re-form yet again for another tour, Summers does not think that is likely, even though their 30th reunion tour grossed more than $ 350 million.
“But then I never thought we’d get back together to do the last tour, so I never shut the door on anything,” he said. “I personally think that my book was somewhat of a provoking agent in getting the Police reunited, so maybe this film will do the same thing again.”
(Reporting by Iain Blair, Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Lisa Von Ahn)
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