PM greets Jayalalithaa on 65th birthday

CHENNAI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday greeted Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on her 65th birthday.

A statement issued by the state government here said the prime minister greeted Jayalalithaa over the phone on her birthday.

Tamil Nadu governor K Rosaiah, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, Communist Party of India national secretary D Raja, many MPs, members of the Tamil Nadu assembly, industrialists and others also greeted Jayalalithaa.

At the AIADMK party headquarters here, senior leaders, state ministers and others were present when a cake weighing 65 kg was cut and distributed.

Across the state, AIADMK leaders and cadres celebrated Jayalalithaa's birthday. The chief minister is also the general secretary of the AIADMK.

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.


The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.


Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.


"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."


Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.


The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.


The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.


Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.


FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.


Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.


FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer


Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.


Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.


Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.


Read More..

Las Vegas Strip Shooting Suspect ID'd












Las Vegas police identified a suspect today in a shooting on the strip that caused a Maserati to hit a taxi and burst into flames, killing three people.


Ammar Harris, 26, has been named a suspect in the Thursday skirmish that killed three people, including rapper Kenny Clutch.


The altercation between Harris and Clutch, 27, whose legal name was Kenneth Cherry Jr., is believed to have originated in the valet area of a Las Vegas hotel, police said.


Police said Harris fired several rounds into a Maserati that was being driven by Cherry as both vehicles continued northbound on glitzy Las Vegas Boulevard.


The rapper's expensive sports car careened out of control after he was shot, slamming into several cars, including a taxi. The impact caused the cab to burst into flames, killing the driver, Michael Boldon and a female passenger. Witnesses said it looked like the car exploded.


"He was a number one guy," Carolyn Jean Trimble, Boldon's sister, told ABC News.








California Man's Carjacking Spree Takes 3 Victims Watch Video









Chicago Teen Killed Day of Obama's Anti-Violence Speech Watch Video









Dallas Courthouse Shooting Manhunt Intensify Watch Video





"I looked out my window and I could see one vehicle down here on the corner of the intersection totally engulfed in flames," witness John Lamb told ABC News.


Boldon, 62, and his passenger, who has not yet been identified, were both killed, as was Clutch.


Timble said her brother loved driving his taxi around Vegas.


"He came to live with me in Las Vegas last year to help take care of our mother, and the first day he got here he said, 'I have to get a job.' The second day, I came home from work, and he said he got a job," she recalled.


"He says, 'You'll never guess what it is,' and I said, 'what,' and he said, 'taxi cab driver,' and we both fell out laughing," Trimble said. "He loved that job. He never complained. He'd come home and tell me stories about what happened, who he picked up."


Boldon was a single father who raised a 36-year-old son and was a new grandfather. His grandson was named after him, Trimble said.


"Of all the people to take from this earth," she said. "But I guess the Lord needed him."


A passenger in the Maserati was hit and sustained only a minor injury to his arm. Clutch died at University Medical Center.


His father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., expressed his grief for the loss of his son while speaking with ABC News.


"This is something you never really, really ever want to experience as a parent, to lose a child before you go," he said.


Harris is described as 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Las Vegas Metro Police Department's homicide division.



Read More..

Hockey: Five-a-side format to make debut in S'pore






SINGAPORE: A new format of hockey introduced by the International Hockey Federation is set to make its international debut in Singapore.

The Boys U-16 Asia Cup competition, which will take place in April, will be the first official hockey tournament to use the five-a-side format.

Since October, 15 boys from the Singapore team have been training at the Sengkang Hockey stadium and they are looking forward to competing on a smaller pitch.

National U-16 player Ahmad Faris said: "In five versus five, we are allowed to shoot from anywhere so there are definitely going to be more goal scoring opportunities, we can expect higher scorelines."

For goalkeeper Wee Wei Xuan, the new format will make his job slightly tougher.

"In the 11-a-side format, the goal keeper gets to rest and like walk around but this five-a-side is a lot more challenging which makes it more fun," said Wee.

Ten nations are lining up to do battle at Sengkang in early April and powerhouses like Pakistan will be leading the Asian charge.

The tournament will also function as the Asian qualifiers for next year's Youth Olympic Games.

Only two teams will make the cut but host Singapore remains optimistic due to the new format of play.

National U-16 coach Coen Van Putten said: "It is new for everybody. What we do is we focus on our own performance and we hope we are prepared well. I think we are prepared well but it's always interesting to see what other teams come up with."

Fans are expected to take to the new format too.

The Singapore Hockey Federation is expecting a full-house here at the Sengkang Hockey stadium during the Asia Cup.

A carnival like atmosphere will be created similar to the buzz during the 2009 Junior World Cup and 2010 Youth Olympic Games.

- CNA/fa



Read More..

15 special teams constituted to crack Hyderabad blasts case, Andhra govt hopeful

HYDERABAD/MUMBAI: Two days after twin blasts rocked the city, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday claimed to have got "vital clues" to crack the case soon with the needle of suspicion zeroing in on banned terror outfit Indian Mujahideen.

"We have already gathered vital clues in the case. We are confident we will crack the case soon," state home minister P Sabita Indra Reddy said after a high-level review meeting chaired by chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy.

Thursday's serial blasts left 16 dead and over 117 injured.

The modus operandi adopted by the perpetrators like ammonium nitrate and splinters-laden aluminium containers fitted to bicycles used in the blasts pointed the needle of suspicion towards Indian Mujahideen.

Reddy said 15 special teams of Andhra Pradesh police, each having 10-15 personnel, have been constituted to probe the case and bring the culprits to justice.

Director General of National Investigation Agency S C Sinha discussed with state police officials the ongoing investigation.

Amid reports that some CCTV cameras at the blast sites were not functioning, the state home minister said 3500 closed-circuit cameras would be installed at vital locations under Hyderabad and Cyberabad police commissionerates to improve vigil.

Meanwhile, Abdul Wasey Mirza, a 23-year-old unemployed youth who fell victim to terror attack for a second time on Thursday in the Dilsukhnagar blasts, has been questioned by police which clarified he is not being treated as a suspect.

"As part of the investigations we only recorded his statement as a witness along with others," Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma said.

"Nothing like that," Sharma said when asked whether the police suspected Mirza's involvement in the attack after a media report suggested the fact that he survived both 2007 Mecca Masjid and Dilsukhnagar blasts had aroused suspicion about his possible role in the explosions.

Looking for clues to track down the perpetrators, Cyberabad and Hyderabad police have questioned some local youths but made it clear that nobody has been detained so far.

"Media reports that we have detained some persons are totally baseless. We only called some people for questioning, which is a normal investigating procedure," a top police official said.

Investigators said they were following some leads from CCTV footages, including of a man seen coming to the blast site on a bicycle with a bag. Mobile call records from the area at the time of the explosions were also being examined.

Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency have obtained details about persons lodged in the Chanchalguda jail here with suspected terror links and some of them were also questioned, informed sources said.

In Mumbai on a private visit, senior BJP leader L K Advani squarely blamed Pakistan for the Hyderabad blasts accusing it of launching a "proxy war" against India.

"There is no doubt that there is the hand of the neighbouring country in Hyderabad blasts. The neighbouring country has not been successful in waging a war against India in the last few decades, so it has resorted to a proxy war," he told reporters.

The BJP parliamentary party leader demanded that Pakistan abide by its commitment made during the meeting between the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf that it would not allow its soil to be used for terror acts against India.

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.


The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.


Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.


"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."


Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.


The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.


The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.


Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.


FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.


Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.


FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer


Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.


Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.


Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.


Read More..

Cyberattacks Bring Attention to Security Reform











Recent accusations of a large-scale cyber crime effort by the Chinese government left many wondering what immediate steps the president and Congress are taking to prevent these attacks from happening again.


On Wednesday, the White House released the administration's Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets as a follow-up to the president's executive order. The strategy did not outwardly mention China, but it implied U.S. government awareness of the problem.


"We are taking a whole of government approach to stop the theft of trade secrets by foreign competitors or foreign governments by any means -- cyber or otherwise," U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel said in a White House statement.


As of now, the administration's strategy is the first direct step in addressing cybersecurity, but in order for change to happen Congress needs to be involved. So far, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is the most notable Congressional legislation addressing the problem, despite its past controversy.


Last April, CISPA was introduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md. The act would allow private companies with consumer information to voluntarily share those details with the NSA and the DOD in order to combat cyber attacks.






Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images







The companies would be protected from any liabilities if the information was somehow mishandled. This portion of the act sounded alarm bells for CISPA's opponents, like the ACLU, which worried that this provision would incentivize companies to share individuals' information with disregard.


CISPA passed in the House of Representatives, despite a veto threat from the White House stemming from similar privacy concerns. The bill then died in the Senate.


This year, CISPA was reintroduced the day after the State of the Union address during which the president declared an executive order targeting similar security concerns from a government standpoint.


In contrast to CISPA, the executive order would be initiated on the end of the government, and federal agencies would share relevant information regarding threats with private industries, rather than asking businesses to supply data details. All information shared by the government would be unclassified.


At the core of both the executive order and CISPA, U.S. businesses and the government would be encouraged to work together to combat cyber threats. However, each option would clearly take a different route to collaboration. The difference seems minimal, but has been the subject of legislative debates between the president and Congress for almost a year, until now.


"My response to the president's executive order is very positive," Ruppersberger told ABC News. "[The president] brought up how important information sharing is [and] by addressing critical infrastructure, he took care of another hurdle that we do not have to deal with."


Addressing privacy roadblocks, CISPA backers said the sharing of private customer information with the government, as long as personal details are stripped, is not unprecedented.


"Think of what we do with HIPAA in the medical professions; [doctors do not need to know] the individual person, just the symptoms to diagnose a disease," Michigan Gov. John Engler testified at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in an attempt to put the problem into context.






Read More..

Iran appears to advance in construction of Arak nuclear plant


VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to be advancing in its construction of a research reactor Western experts say could offer the Islamic state a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb, if it decided to embark on such a course, a U.N. report showed.


Iran has almost completed installation of cooling and moderator circuit piping in the heavy water plant near the town of Arak, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states late on Thursday.


Nuclear analysts say this type of reactor could yield plutonium for nuclear arms if the spent fuel is reprocessed, something Iran has said it has no intention of doing. Iran has said it "does not have reprocessing activities", the IAEA said.


In its previous report on Iran, in November, the Vienna-based U.N. agency said installation work at Arak was continuing, without giving any indication of how far advanced it was.


Iran rejects Western allegations it seeks to develop a capability to assemble nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is entirely peaceful and that the Arak reactor will produce isotopes for medical and agricultural use.


Iran says it plans to begin operating the facility in the first quarter of 2014, the IAEA said. Tehran last year postponed the planned start-up from the third quarter of 2013, a target that Western experts said always had seemed unrealistic.


The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said late last year that it was questionable whether Iran would be able to meet the new target date as well, in view of "significant delays and impeded access to necessary materials" because of international sanctions imposed on Iran.


Western worries about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb. But experts say Arak may also be a proliferation issue.


The Arak facility is a "growing source of concern", said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and disarmament program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think-tank.


Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, sees Iran's nuclear program as a serious danger and has threatened to attack its atomic sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to resolve the decade-old dispute.


If it does, the nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Arak in central Iran are likely to be targets. Fitzpatrick said it could be Arak that triggers a conflict because attacking it after it is launched could cause an environmental disaster.


TESTING FUEL FOR ARAK REACTOR


Thursday's quarterly IAEA report showed Iran expanding its uranium enrichment program in defiance of tightening Western sanctions, installing advanced centrifuge machines at its main enrichment plant near the town of Natanz.


The report, issued just a few days before six world powers and Iran are due to resume negotiations after an eight-month hiatus, underlined the tough task facing the West in seeking to pressure Tehran to curb its nuclear activities.


Cliff Kupchan, Middle East director at the Eurasia consultancy, said Iran had adopted a defiant policy of pressing ahead with its nuclear program, despite harsh sanctions.


"As a result, Israel and the U.S. Congress will press a receptive U.S. administration to move forward with new and even harsher sanctions," he said in a research note.


Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated aim, but also provide the explosive core of a nuclear weapon if refined much further. Making plutonium from spent fuel is a second way of obtaining potential bomb material.


The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a U.S. think-tank, noted that Iran planned to use a medical research reactor in Tehran, known as TRR, to test fuel for Arak.


"The TRR is now more than a medical isotope production reactor, Iran's stated use for the reactor, and is necessary for the operation" of Arak, it said in a report.


If operated optimally, the heavy-water plant could produce about nine kilograms (20 pounds) of plutonium a year, or enough for about two nuclear bombs annually, ISIS has said previously.


"Before it could use any of the plutonium in a nuclear weapon, however, it would first have to separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel," it added on its website.


Iran has repeatedly declared it has no plans to reprocess the spent fuel. But, "similarly sized reactors ostensibly built for research" have been used by India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan to make plutonium for weapons, Fitzpatrick said.


(Editing by Mark Heinrich)



Read More..

Eurozone facing recession right through 2013: EU






BRUSSELS: The eurozone faces another full year of recession in 2013 with unemployment likely to surge above the 20-million mark, and French and Spanish state spending badly overshooting targets, the EU said on Friday.

Economic output across the 17-state currency area is set to shrink by 0.3 percent this year after a 0.6-percent contraction last year, the European Commission said.

That means that millions more people are likely to lose their jobs, with already record unemployment expected to rise markedly right into 2014.

The EU's winter economic forecast said there would not be a return to growth for the debt-laden monetary union -- home to about 340 million people -- until 2014, when growth would return at a rate of 1.4-percent from this low base.

As a result, the unemployment rate would hit 12.2 percent for 2013 after 11.4 percent last year -- which left the number of people unemployed already at nearly 19 million.

Much of the attention was on France where the public deficit is set to be worse than expected in 2013 and 2014, veering up to 3.7 percent of output this year and 3.9 percent next year.

France, with the eurozone's second-biggest economy, was due this year to get back within the European Union's deficit ceiling of 3.0 percent of output, and had been expected to show a deficit of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product.

The gap leaves Socialist President Francois Hollande looking for special leeway from Brussels.

Spain's public deficit meanwhile exploded to 10.2 percent of output in 2012, the Commission said two days after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it had fallen below 7.0 percent of GDP.

The figure for 2014 in the EU's latest economic forecasts would be 7.2 percent, Brussels also said -- although these figures may pre-date those of Rajoy, who said Madrid had avoided an economic "shipwreck" last year.

"We must stay the course of reform and avoid any loss of momentum," EU Economy and Euro commissioner Olli Rehn told a press conference, arguing that the drag on growth and uptick on joblessness was a natural consequence of "the ongoing rebalancing of the European economy."

Across the full, 27-state EU, which also includes Britain and Poland, growth is expected to be 0.1 percent this year and 1.6 percent next year, with the non-eurozone part doing better on unemployment too.

- AFP/al



Read More..

Hyderabad blasts: Shinde 'totally disappointing', opposition and UPA allies say

NEW DELHI: Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Friday came under sharp attack from opposition as well as UPA allies SP and DMK, which trashed his statement on Hyderabad blasts as "totally disappointing" and "devoid of any concrete and meaningful plan of action". Shinde made a statement in the House on Thursday's blasts saying government will make all possible efforts to apprehend the perpetrators and masterminds.

The opposition was, however, dissatisfied with the statement and accused the government of treating the issue of terror in a "very casual" manner. Leading the attack, BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu said, "Government's policy seems to be condolence for the dead and compensation for those who survived."

Naidu also said that being a member of the House, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have come to the Rajya Sabha and made a statement taking the issue seriously.

The Rajya Sabha earlier witnessed acrimonious scenes as opposition members insisted on a debate before the home minister's statement on the issue. After the home minister read out his statement amid noisy scenes, the House witnessed a verbal spat between Shinde and Naidu with the BJP leader telling the minister that had he been serious on the issue, he would have rushed to the spot immediately after the occurrence last night and come to Parliament in morning.

Shinde countered it saying that after monitoring the issue for the whole night, he went to the spot at 4am drawing angry reactions from Naidu. "You have not done any favour to us. You have done your duty. The incident had happened at 7pm on Thursday. You should have gone there at 8 pm and come back by the morning. That shows your seriousness," Naidu said, who later staged a walkout for a brief period.

Read More..