Clarke’s 218 puts Australia on front foot

BRISBANE (Reuters) – Australia captain Michael Clarke scored a brilliant unbeaten double century to give the hosts a remarkable 37-run first innings lead on the fourth day of the first test against South Africa on Monday.

Supported first by a maiden century from opener Ed Cowan in a record stand of 259, and then by Mike Hussey‘s 86 not out, Clarke’s 218 helped lift Australia from 40 for three when he took to the crease on Sunday to 487 for four when stumps were drawn.

It was Clarke’s sixth test century, and his third double hundred, in the 15 tests since he was named captain last year in the wake of the Ashes humiliation and Australia’s quarter-final exit at the World Cup.

Although by no means a chanceless knock, the 31-year-old played with patience when South Africa’s vaunted pacemen got anything out of the Gabba track before punishing anything loose with some fine shot-making.

When he carried his bat back to the pavilion at the end of the day to the raucous cheers of a sparse crowd at the famous Brisbane ground, Clarke had faced 350 balls over 504 minutes and scored 21 fours.

“I’m very happy with that,” Clarke, who accumulated his 1,000 test run of the year during the innings, said in an interview on the boundary.

“I didn’t feel great at the start and I think Ed Cowan batted beautifully.

“We’re in a great position with a 30-odd lead. I’d like another 70 odd runs in the morning and then I want to have a crack with the ball. We’ll see what happens.”

Cowan departed for 136 in heartbreaking fashion just before tea, run out at the non-striker’s end when Dale Steyn got a finger to a Clarke drive that hit the stumps and the opener was caught out of his crease backing up.

RECORD PARTNERSHIP

His partnership with Clarke was an Australian record for the fourth wicket at the Gabba, beating the 245 Clarke and Mike Hussey made against Sri Lanka in 2007.

Cowan’s wicket was the only wicket to fall on the day and Hussey started pouring on the runs as if determined to get the record back for his own partnership with his captain.

The 37-year-old bucked his poor recent form against South Africa by reaching his half century off just 68 balls with a drive through long-off and was closing on a century of his own when play ended.

It was Hussey’s cut four off Morne Morkel with which Australia overhauled South Africa’s first innings tally of 450 and put themselves in with an unlikely chance of even winning a test which lost an entire day to rain on Saturday.

Clarke’s negotiation of the “nervous nineties” for his century had been fraught and he was nearly run out going for a second run that would have brought him to the hundred mark.

There were no such jitters on his approach to the two hundred mark, which he passed by slapping the ball through mid-on for two runs before giving the badge on his helmet another kiss.

Cowan’s century was a retort to those critics who have consistently questioned his place in the team since he made his debut in last year’s Melbourne test against India.

The 30-year-old lefthander reached the mark two overs after lunch by pulling a short Vernon Philander delivery for four to the square leg boundary, beginning his joyous celebrations before the ball hit the rope.

South Africa’s number one test ranking is on the line in the series, which continues with matches in Adelaide and Perth after Brisbane.

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Probe into alleged gas price fix

12 November 2012 Last updated at 14:25 ET

Allegations of manipulation of UK wholesale gas prices are being investigated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Ofgem.

The investigations by the FSA, the UK’s financial watchdog, and energy regulator Ofgem follow claims by a whistleblower.

Energy Secretary Edward Davey said he was “extremely concerned about the allegations”.

“The government takes alleged abuse in our markets very seriously,” he added.

Two of the UK’s big six energy suppliers have released statements to deny any involvement.

EDF Energy said it “does not participate in loss-leading trading activity and considers it to be against existing market regulation”.

It added: “We make information likely to impact market price formation publicly available on our website in compliance with the European Union’s regulation on energy market integrity and transparency.”

NPower said: “There is an explicit commitment in our code of conduct to comply with all laws and regulations.”

Mr Davey said he would keep in close contact with the two investigations.

He will make a statement on the issue in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

The whistleblower worked at ICIS Heron, a financial information company that publishes energy price reports.

ICIS Heron said it “detected some unusual trading activity on the British wholesale gas market on 28 September 2012, which it reported to energy regulator Ofgem in October”.

It added: “The cause of the trading pattern, which involved a series of deals done below the prevailing market trend, has not yet been established.”

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Firms to speak on tax avoidance

12 November 2012 Last updated at 02:58 ET

Executives from some of the world’s most-recognised companies are due to give evidence before Parliament on Monday on the issue of tax avoidance.

The head of Google UK, as well as top managers from Starbucks and Amazon, will speak before the Public Accounts Committee on taxing multinationals.

All have been accused of paying little or no tax on their UK earnings.

Many global firms create corporate entities in low-tax jurisdictions for the purposes of paying tax.

For example, a firm may design a product or an app for a smartphone in the US, have it made in Asia and sell it in the UK. But the company – or a regional unit – may be legally incorporated in a fourth place with less onerous tax laws.

The question is then which country’s tax authorities should get the tax receipts and over what share of the sales.

Taxed in the UK

Matt Brittin, the chief executive of Google UK, as well as Starbucks chief financial officer Troy Alstead and Amazon’s director of public policy Andrew Cecil, will speak before the committee, which is headed by Margaret Hodge.

In recent months, many multinationals have been subjected to bad publicity over their tax arrangements:

Continue reading the main story

Corporation tax for [multinationals] operating in the UK is close to being a voluntary payment”

End Quote Lord Myners

Most of the firms have said that they meet all their legal obligations on tax in the UK and around the world.

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) is holding a public consultation in Paris this week on international tax systems and has received 1,400 pages of comments on the subject.

Marlies de Ruitter, tax expert at the OECD, says there is a problem: “We have seen countries creating tax incentives to attract investment.

“We have also seen that countries are hesitant to introduce strict anti-avoidance rules, because if they are stricter than others, businesses will leave. An international, co-ordinated effort is needed.”

The former City minister, Lord Myners, said the current system did not work. “Corporation tax for [multinationals] operating in the UK is close to being a voluntary payment,” he said.

“You either shrug your shoulders and say you get benefits from secondary effects though employment taxes, VAT, the multiplier effect, and so on. Or alternatively, you look for some other form of taxation.”

Lord Myners recommended considering some form of sales tax.

BBC News – Business

Read More..

Study tentatively links flu in pregnancy and autism

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Kids whose mothers had the flu while pregnant were slightly more likely to be diagnosed with “infantile autism” before age three in a new Danish study. But the children’s overall risk for the developmental disorder was not higher than that of other kids.

Researchers said it’s possible that activation of a mother’s immune system – such as by infection with the influenza virus – could affect a fetus’s developing brain. But they urged caution with the new findings, especially because of statistical limitations in their number-crunching.

“I really want to emphasize that this is not something you should worry about,” said lead author Dr. Hjordis Osk Atladottir, from the University of Aarhus.

“Ninety-nine percent of women with influenza do not have a child with autism,” she told Reuters Health. “If it were me that was pregnant, I wouldn’t do anything different from before, because our research is so early and exploratory.”

Her team’s data came from a study that originally recruited more than 100,000 pregnant women in Denmark between 1996 and 2002. The women were called multiple times during their pregnancies, and once afterward, to ask about any new infections they had or medications they had taken.

The new report includes 96,736 kids born from that initial cohort who were between 8 and 14 years old at the time of the analysis.

Using a country-wide register of psychiatric diagnoses, Atladottir and her colleagues found that 1 percent of all kids were diagnosed with autism, including 0.4 percent with infantile autism – in which the main symptoms all show up before age three.

There was no link between a range of infections in pregnancy – including herpes, coughs and colds and cystitis – and the chance a baby would develop autism or infantile autism, according to the report published Monday in Pediatrics.

And among 808 women who reported having the flu while pregnant, there was no increased risk of autism in their children. However, seven of those babies, or 0.87 percent, were diagnosed with infantile autism, compared to the rate of 0.4 percent among kids in general.

There was also an increased – albeit sometimes borderline – risk of both autism and infantile autism in babies of women who had fevers for a week or more during pregnancy, as well as mothers who took some types of antibiotics.

Atladottir said there is some research in rodents suggesting women’s activated immune cells can cross the placenta and affect chemicals in a fetus’s brain. But how those findings apply to humans is still a question mark.

“It’s all very unsure now – we don’t really know anything,” she said.

In the United States, about one in 88 children is now diagnosed with autism or a related disorder.

One limitation of the new study, the researchers noted, is that they did 106 statistical tests comparing the risk of autism or infantile autism with various infections and drugs.

In medical research, a significant finding is typically considered one where there is less than a five percent likelihood the result would have occurred by chance.

But when so many calculations are done, scientists would expect that at least some would pass this test of significance, even if there is no real link between the pregnancy variables and autism.

In addition, women’s flu reports weren’t confirmed by doctors – and the frequency of mistaking the flu for another infection, or vice versa, is “likely to be considerable,” the researchers noted.

Because of those limitations, Atladottir said the findings could encourage future research, but shouldn’t be at the front of pregnant women’s minds.

“We don’t want to create panic,” she said.

Still, one expert who wasn’t involved in the new study thought the researchers were “soft peddling” their conclusions.

“It is highly recommended that women avoid infection during pregnancy, and there are a variety of very practical ways to decrease the likelihood of this,” Paul Patterson, who studies the immune system and brain development at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Reuters Health by email.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend all women get a flu vaccine during pregnancy – in part because serious flu complications are more common in pregnant women.

But, said Patterson, “It is also worth emphasizing that even though the risk (of infantile autism) is significantly increased, the risk is still quite low.”

SOURCE: http://bitly.com/kSEGVh Pediatrics, online November 12, 2012.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

10 Adorable Clips of Sesame Street Satire

Read More..

MTV awards bring pop glitz to Frankfurt

FRANKFURT (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)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Novartis drug helps patients with rare inflammatory diseases

ZURICH (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

Read More..

Israel kills Gaza rocket crewman in second day of clashes

GAZA (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)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Google says multiple services blocked in China

SAN 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)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..