Investors face another Washington deadline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large.

Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling.

Talks on the U.S. budget crisis began again this week leading up to the March 1 deadline for the so-called sequestration when $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.

"It's at this point a political hot button in Washington but a very low level investor concern," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon. The fight pits President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats against congressional Republicans.

Stocks rallied in early January after a compromise temporarily avoided the fiscal cliff, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index <.spx> has risen 6.3 percent since the start of the year.

But the benchmark index lost steam this week, posting its first week of losses since the start of the year. Minutes on Wednesday from the last Federal Reserve meeting, which suggested the central bank may slow or stop its stimulus policy sooner than expected, provided the catalyst.

National elections in Italy on Sunday and Monday could also add to investor concern. Most investors expect a government headed by Pier Luigi Bersani to win and continue with reforms to tackle Italy's debt problems. However, a resurgence by former leader Silvio Berlusconi has raised doubts.

"Europe has been in the last six months less of a topic for the stock market, but the problems haven't gone away. This may bring back investor attention to that," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

OPTIONS BULLS TARGET GAINS

The spending cuts, if they go ahead, could hit the defense industry particularly hard.

Yet in the options market, bulls were targeting gains in Lockheed Martin Corp , the Pentagon's biggest supplier.

Calls on the stock far outpaced puts, suggesting that many investors anticipate the stock to move higher. Overall options volume on the stock was 2.8 times the daily average with 17,000 calls and 3,360 puts traded, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert.

"The upside call buying in Lockheed solidifies the idea that option investors are not pricing in a lot of downside risk in most defense stocks from the likely impact of sequestration," said Jared Woodard, a founder of research and advisory firm condoroptions.com in Forest, Virginia.

The stock ended up 0.6 percent at $88.12 on Friday.

If lawmakers fail to reach an agreement on reducing the U.S. budget deficit in the next few days, a sequester would include significant cuts in defense spending. Companies such as General Dynamics Corp and Smith & Wesson Holding Corp could be affected.

General Dynamics Corp shares rose 1.2 percent to $67.32 and Smith & Wesson added 4.6 percent to $9.18 on Friday.

EYES ON GDP DATA, APPLE

The latest data on fourth-quarter U.S. gross domestic product is expected on Thursday, and some analysts predict an upward revision following trade data that showed America's deficit shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years.

U.S. GDP unexpectedly contracted in the fourth quarter, according to an earlier government estimate, but analysts said there was no reason for panic, given that consumer spending and business investment picked up.

Investors will be looking for any hints of changes in the Fed's policy of monetary easing when Fed Chairman Ben Bernake speaks before congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Shares of Apple will be watched closely next week when the company's annual stockholders' meeting is held.

On Friday, a U.S. judge handed outspoken hedge fund manager David Einhorn a victory in his battle with the iPhone maker, blocking the company from moving forward with a shareholder vote on a controversial proposal to limit the company's ability to issue preferred stock.

(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

Syrian Flood Into Lebanon Stirs Fear of Looming Disaster

QAA, Lebanon — Quietly but inexorably, a human tide has crept into Lebanon, Syria’s smallest and most vulnerable neighbor.

As Syrians fleeing civil war pour over the border, the village priest here, Elian Nasrallah, trudges through muddy fields to deliver blankets. His family runs a medical clinic for refugees. When Christian villagers fret about the flood of Sunni Muslims, he replies that welcoming them is “the real Christianity.”

But the priest and his parishioners cannot keep up. The United Nations counts more than 305,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon, but local officials and aid workers say the actual number is about 400,000, saturating this country of four million.

The Lebanese government — by design — has largely left them to fend for themselves. Deeply divided over Syria, haunted by memories of an explosive refugee crisis a generation ago, it has mostly ignored the problem, dumping it on overwhelmed communities like Qaa.

So far, Lebanon’s delicate balance has persevered, but there is a growing sense of emergency.

Sectarian tensions are rising. Fugitive Syrian rebels in border villages have clashed with Lebanese soldiers. The government’s anemic response has delayed international aid. Local volunteers are running out of cash and patience.

And the battle for Damascus, Syria’s capital, has barely begun. Should fighting overwhelm that religiously and politically mixed city of 2.5 million a half-hour drive from Lebanon, the Lebanese fear a cataclysm that could sweep away their tenuous calm.

“There is a limit to what the country can handle,” said Nadim Shubassi, mayor of Saidnayel, a Sunni town now packed with Syrians. “Maybe we have reached this limit now.”

Lebanon’s refugee crisis does not match the familiar image of vast, centralized tent camps and armies of foreign aid organizations. It is nowhere, and everywhere. Displaced Syrians seem to fill every nook and cranny: half-finished cinder block houses, stables, crowded apartments.

It is easy to miss them, until a second glance. Drying laundry peeks from construction sites. Bedsheets hang in shop windows, concealing stark living spaces. Daffodil sellers, shoeshine men, women and children begging in Beirut — all incant, “Min Suria.” From Syria.

At first, most refugees — mainly Sunnis, like most of the rebels fighting Syria’s government — headed for friendly Sunni areas. Now, those communities are swamped and resentful, and Syrians are spreading to places where they fit less comfortably, from Christian mountain villages to the Mediterranean city of Tyre in the southern Shiite Muslim heartland.

They are moving, with some trepidation, into Qaa, in the northern Bekaa Valley, the territory of the powerful Shiite militia Hezbollah, which is allied with Syria’s government and, to many refugees, just as fearsome.

As they flee increasingly sectarian killing, Syrians layer their fears onto those of a country deeply scarred by its own generation-long sectarian civil war. They are testing, yet also relying on, the fragile yet flexible balance that has endured here, punctured by occasional fighting, since Lebanon’s war ended 22 years ago.

In Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold where a poster of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, grins down on a busy street, refugees turn to Sawa, a community group that views helping them as embodying its nonsectarian mission. Still, they rattle Abbas Othman, a Sawa member.

“We are worried they will bring their civil war here,” he said.

One recent evening in Qaa, Mr. Nasrallah, the priest, stood outside a burlap shack that sheltering a Syrian family of 12. They clamored around him; they had eaten only potatoes that day. Cold crept in as a blue dusk fell. One man implored, “You are responsible for us!”

The priest threw up his hands.

“It’s wartime,” he said. “Is the government doing its job or not?”

Lebanese decision-makers wanted it this way, at first. A year ago, just 5,000 Syrians had fled here, and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful political party, denied any sense of crisis.

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad, Hania Mourtada, Ben Solomon and Lynsey Addario.

Read More..

Predict the Oscar Winners!

• Facebook


• Tweet

• Facebook


• Tweet

Cast your vote for who will be the night's big winners Click here to download a printable ballot.

Click here to download a printable ballot.

Polls
completed:

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..

Wall Street rebounds on HP results, Fed officials' views

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Friday as Dow component Hewlett-Packard surged on strong results and comments from Fed officials allayed fears that the central bank would curtail its stimulus measures.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke downplayed worries that the Fed has fueled asset bubbles that could hurt the economy in a private meeting with bond dealers and investors earlier this month, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Bernanke's view helped ease fears that the central bank may end its easy money policies. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting hit markets on Wednesday as investors interpreted divergent opinions on the benefit of stimulus as a sign the measures may be halted sooner than thought.

"They are in uncharted territory with divergent views," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago. "I could see some pretty heated opinions on what the ultimate outcome is, so I do believe there is dissension."

Hewlett-Packard Co shares jumped more than 12 percent and gave one of the biggest boosts to both the Dow and the S&P 500 after the personal computer maker's quarterly revenue and forecasts beat expectations. Hewlett-Packard's stock rose to $19.20 at the close, up 12.3 percent for the day.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 119.95 points, or 0.86 percent, to 14,000.57 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 13.18 points, or 0.88 percent, to 1,515.60. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 30.33 points, or 0.97 percent, to end at 3,161.82.

With Bernanke's reported comments much on their minds in Friday's session, investors will want the Fed chairman to reiterate his remarks publicly when he speaks before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. That would echo comments made by two top Fed officials on Friday.

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and Fed Governor Jerome Powell both defended the U.S. central bank's asset-buying program, arguing that the policy helps the U.S. economy.

The S&P 500 shed 1.9 percent over the previous two sessions, its worst two-day drop since early November, following the release of the Fed's minutes on Wednesday. The selloff marked the end of seven back-to-back weeks of gains for stocks.

For the week, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq lost nearly 1 percent. Only the Dow ended the week with a gain - up just 0.1 percent.

HP's results come near the end of a relatively strong earnings season in which 70 percent of S&P 500 companies beat analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data.

"Overall, the earnings supports were better than expected in this cycle," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. "We may see the market rising during the month of March."

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

But with only a handful of companies left to report earnings, investors are looking ahead to the possibility of hefty automatic budget cuts that could happen on March 1.

A large option investor appeared to be adjusting a bearish view on the SPDR S&P 500 Trust fund while locking in previously established gains, in a possible hedge ahead of the automatic budget cuts that are set to take effect at the beginning of next month. The play involved weekly puts, expiring next Friday.

"An institutional investor appears to be rolling down and increasing in size a defensive hedge timed to match the March 1 deadline for the sequester," said Henry Schwartz, president of options analytics firm Trade Alert.

The trader sold 132,000 $149 to $150 weekly put spreads for 22 cents as shares of the exchange-traded fund had traded near $151.14 on Friday morning. The transaction entailed the sale of $150 weekly puts to buy the $149 weekly puts. In addition, the investor purchased another 42,000 $149 weekly puts, which increases the size of the hedge to 174,000 contracts.

"It is likely this large position protects an existing underlying long position in a portfolio," Schwartz said.

In another political risk factor, Italians go to the polls this weekend in an election that could threaten reforms in the indebted country. Silvio Berlusconi's resurgence has thrown the vote wide open, with deep uncertainty over whether the poll can produce the strong government the country needs.

Inconclusive Greek elections last year sparked a protracted selloff and a period of uncertainty in markets.

In the tech sector, Marvell Technology Group Ltd forecast results this quarter that were largely above analysts' expectations. Marvell gained market share in the hard-disk drive and flash-storage businesses. The stock rose 4.4 percent to $9.89.

Texas Instruments Inc raised its dividend by a third and boosted its stock-buyback program, driving its stock up 5.2 percent to $34.18.

The PHLX semiconductor index <.sox> gained 2.1 percent.

"Dividends growing are another way the market's level is justified, if not especially attractive at these levels," said Rex Macey, chief investment officer of Wilmington Trust in Atlanta, who manages about $20 billion in assets.

On the downside, Abercrombie & Fitch dropped 4.5 percent to $46.86 after the youth-oriented clothing retailer reported a drop in fourth-quarter comparable sales, even as its latest quarterly earnings topped estimates.

Insurer American International Group Inc posted fourth-quarter results that beat analysts' expectations. AIG's stock advanced 3.1 percent to $38.45.

About three stocks rose for every one that fell on both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

Around 5.8 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the 20-day moving average of around 6.51 billion shares.

(Additional Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica and Doris Frankel; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Jan Paschal)

Read More..

Danica Patrick Opens Up About Dating Competitor Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.

By Dahvi Shira

02/22/2013 at 07:25 PM EST

Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Tom Pennington/NASCAR/Getty

Danica Patrick knows mixing business with pleasure isn't wise, but it's not stopping her.

"I don't think it was a good idea. [But] there was nothing I could do about it," she tells menshealth.com of getting into a relationship with fellow NASCAR racer, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., 25. "You can't tell your heart who to like and not like. It just happened."

Patrick, 30, isn't worried about running into a future ex-boyfriend on the racetrack.

"I know I'm setting myself up for that," she says with a laugh. "But I choose not think about that possibility right now. I'm going to be positive."

For now, the competition is friendly between the history-making superstar – who announced her split from husband Paul Hospenthal in November – and her new beau.

"Ricky and I have always had that situation where we give each other room [on the track]," Patrick says. "We respect each other on the track. I don't see any reason for that to change."

But despite the relationship, business is still business, and if something happened to her man mid-competition, she'd leave his care to handlers and continue on with the race.

"We both understand that this is a dangerous sport," she says. "We know that things will happen, and we have faith in the safety of the cars and the tracks and the medical staff. If something did happen to him, there's nothing I could do to help. I'd just have to remember that everything that needed to be done to make him safe was being done."

Patrick, meanwhile, is set for the coveted pole position for her second turn in the Daytona 500 Sunday.

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..

Wall Street ends lower on growth worries

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell for a second straight day on Thursday and the S&P 500 posted its worst two-day loss since November after reports cast doubt over the health of the U.S. and euro-zone economies.

But a late-day rally helped stocks erase some of their losses with most of the pullback concentrated in the technology- heavy Nasdaq. The move suggested investors were still willing to buy on dips even after the sharp losses in the last session.

In Europe, business activity indexes dealt a blow to hopes that the euro zone might emerge from recession soon, showing the downturn across the region's businesses unexpectedly grew worse this month.

"The PMI numbers out of Europe were really a blow to the market," said Jack De Gan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. "The market was expecting signs that recovery is still there, but the numbers just highlighted that the euro-zone problem is still persistent."

U.S. initial claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week while the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its index of business conditions in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region fell in February to the lowest in eight months.

Gains in Wal-Mart Stores Inc shares helped cushion the Dow. The shares gained 1.5 percent to $70.26 after the world's largest retailer reported earnings that beat expectations, though early February sales were sluggish.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 46.92 points, or 0.34 percent, to 13,880.62 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 9.53 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,502.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 32.92 points, or 1.04 percent, to close at 3,131.49.

The two-day decline marked the U.S. stock market's first sustained pullback this year. The Standard & Poor's 500 has fallen 1.8 percent over the period and just managed to hold the 1,500 level on Thursday. Still, the index is up 5.3 percent so far this year.

The abrupt reversal in markets, which started on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting suggested stimulus measures may end earlier than thought, looks set to halt a seven-week winning streak for stocks that had lifted the Dow and the S&P 500 close to all-time highs.

Wall Street will soon face another test with the upcoming debate in Washington over the automatic across-the-board spending cuts put in place as part of a larger congressional budget fight. Those cuts, set to kick in on March 1 unless lawmakers agree on an alternative, could depress the economy.

Semiconductor stocks ranked among the weakest of the day, pressuring the Nasdaq as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index <.sox> fell 1.8 percent. Intel Corp fell 2.3 percent to $20.25 while Advanced Micro Devices lost 3.7 percent to $2.60 as the S&P 500's biggest percentage decliner.

The Dow also got a helping hand from personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co , which rose 2.3 percent to end the regular session at $17.10. The company was scheduled due to report first-quarter results after the closing bell.

Shares of Boeing Co rose 1.6 percent to $76.01 as a senior executive was set to meet with the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday and present a series of measures to prevent battery failures that grounded its 787 Dreamliner fleet, according to a source familiar with the plans.

In other company news, shares of supermarket operator Safeway Inc jumped 14.1 percent to $22.97 after the company reported earnings that beat expectations.

Shares of VeriFone Systems Inc tumbled nearly 43 percent to $18.24 after the credit-card swipe machine maker forecast first- and second-quarter profits well below expectations.

Of the 427 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results so far, 69.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.9 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Berry Petroleum Co jumped 19.3 percent to $46.02 after oil and gas producer Linn Energy LLC said it would buy the company in an all-stock deal valued at $4.3 billion, including debt. Linn Energy shares advanced 2.8 percent to $37.68.

About two stocks fell for everyone that rose on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 7.64 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well above the 20-day moving average of around 6.6 billion shares.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

Read More..

The Lede: Police Brutality, Catalyst for Egypt’s Revolution, Continues Under Morsi

More than two years after tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Police Day to demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and an end to impunity for the security forces, activists report that civilians continue to be raped, tortured and killed in police custody.

As one of the protesters who marched that day, Adel Abdel Ghafar, recalled in a post for The Lede last year, anger over routine police brutality was a catalyst from the first day of Egypt’s revolution. “Several groups were mobilizing on this day, including fellow members of the Facebook page We Are All Khaled Said,” Mr. Ghafar wrote. “Khaled Said had been brutally murdered by policemen in Alexandria on June 6, 2010 in broad daylight, and it disgusted me how the Mubarak regime had so blatantly tried to cover up his death.”

On Thursday, Sherief Gaber, a member of Cairo’s Mosireen film collective, drew attention to a harrowing new video report from the group, presenting vivid testimony from minors about the violence they endured and witnessed after they were arrested during recent protests.

A Mosireen video report on the violent abuse of minors by the Egyptian police.

Later on Thursday, the Egyptian activist Wael Eskandar posted a link on Twitter to a compilation of graphic, disturbing video clips documenting incidents of police brutality since the election of President Mohamed Morsi last year put the security forces nominally under civilian control. Mr. Morsi, who was in jail on Jan. 25, 2011, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group whose members endured brutal treatment by the police during the Mubarak era.

A summary of the most important police violence clips under #Morsi’s regime in #Egypt lest we forget http://t.co/nSxyc0WKmv

— Wael Eskandar (@weskandar) 21 Feb 13

Last weekend, as the rights activist Hossam Bahgat noted, police officers beat a suspect to death at the funeral of a colleague they accused him of killing.

Egyptian police publicly beat to death man suspected of killing officer http://t.co/t1zA568O via @ahramonline

— hossam bahgat (@hossambahgat) 16 Feb 13

After listening to Mr. Bahgat describe some of the continuing abuse documented by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, in an interview this week on a private television channel, the journalist Rawya Rageh was moved to ask what the point of Egypt’s revolution had been.

In over a decade I have not seen as many cases of male activists fully raped in police custody as in the past few weeks #Egypt

— hossam bahgat (@hossambahgat) 16 Feb 13

@hossambahgat to ONTV: I have no faith there’ll be genuine police reform #Egypt

— Rawya Rageh (@RawyaRageh) 19 Feb 13

Listening to all the cases of police brutality, torture in detention – is this really a post-revolution #Egypt? What was the point really?

— Rawya Rageh (@RawyaRageh) 19 Feb 13

Read More..

NZ’s Telecom lowers profit guidance, sees job cuts

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand’s Telecom Corp Ltd lowered its earnings guidance for the year and warned of hundreds of job cuts as the country’s biggest telecommunications company struggles to compete on broadband pricing and in its business operations.

The top-10 firm warned that ongoing restructuring would result in more job losses down the line and could see full-year adjusted earnings come in at NZ$ 1.04 billion to NZ$ 1.06 billion, lower than its previous forecast of flat to a low single-digit percentage fall from NZ$ 1.09 billion in 2012.

“It is pretty apparent that it will be well into the hundreds (of staff cuts) over the next few months,” Telecom Chief Executive Officer Simon Moutter told reporters, adding that it would announce details in May.

The job losses would follow roughly 350 cuts to date.

The top-10 firm’s adjusted net profit was NZ$ 162 million, slightly higher than market expectations as growth in its mobile business offset low margins on its broadband price plans, while fixed-line businesses also suffered.

Forecasts had been for profits of NZ$ 157 million, according to a Reuters poll of three analysts.

Profits were significantly down from NZ$ 240 million in 2012, reflecting significant one-off gains made last year from its demerger in late 2011, when it split off its fixed-line network operations into Chorus Ltd.

Telecom offers retail fixed-line and Internet services, using Chorus’s network but sells mobile services using the network infrastructure it retained.

It announced a dividend of 8 cents per share, down from 9 cents last year.

Despite Telecom’s downgraded outlook, its shares rose 1.1 percent to a session high of NZ$ 2.23, on optimism that restructuring will help the firm compete with Vodafone, in the broadband market after it bought Telstraclear’s operations last year.

“There’s some anticipation of the restructuring potential coming through,” said Shane Solly, portfolio manager at Mint Asset Management in Auckland.

But he added that Telecom could face a rocky future, adding, “The restructuring announcement will be very influential in how people consider the company going forward.”

Earlier this week Telecom said it would join Vodafone and Australia’s Telstra to build a submarine cable between New Zealand and Australia, offering increased capacity and speeds.

(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: NZ’s Telecom lowers profit guidance, sees job cuts
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/nzs-telecom-lowers-profit-guidance-sees-job-cuts/
Link To Post : NZ’s Telecom lowers profit guidance, sees job cuts
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..