‘Fiscal cliff’ woes could extend into 2014-BofA

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – If the United States goes off the “fiscal cliff” and stays there for too long, the economy could suffer into 2014, Bank of America Corp’s head of commercial banking says.

Concern about the so-called fiscal cliff is already causing mid-sized businesses to pause activity and to issue special dividends ahead of possible tax increases, Laura Whitley said in an interview this week.

“It will push you into planning season when people are thinking about not 2013 but 2014,” Whitley said.

The “fiscal cliff” is a $ 600 billion combination of steep tax hikes and deep spending cuts that will kick in next year unless Congress intervenes.

Whitley remains confident that her business will continue to increase total loans, a bright spot for a bank still struggling to recover from the financial crisis.

“We will finish the year strong,” she said.

In some cases, the “fiscal cliff” is actually providing a boon to the bank because customers are using debt to finance their dividend payments. Whitley’s group works with public and private companies.

Bank of America‘s total loans in the third quarter fell 4 percent from a year ago to $ 893 billion as the No. 2 U.S. bank by assets continued to shed unwanted consumer mortgages. But commercial loans, including ones made to large corporations, climbed 7 percent to $ 330.8 billion.

After a year of building capital to meet new international requirements, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at an investor conference this week that he is pushing his team to make more loans.

Whitley, 51, has led Bank of America’s commercial banking business since the fall of 2011, when the previous head, David Darnell, became co-chief operating officer, overseeing consumer banking and wealth management.

Over a nearly 30-year career at the bank and predecessor companies, she has held posts in middle-market banking, investment banking and wealth management. In 2011, she was also one of the leaders steering a company-wide cost-cutting program called Project New BAC.

Whitley’s unit provides mid-sized businesses with loans, cash management services and other products. In a presentation this week, the bank said lending and treasury management services for commercial customers with revenues between $ 50 million and $ 2 billion brought in $ 6.1 billion in revenue in the first nine months of the year, nearly one-tenth of the company’s total.

The growth comes in a year in which the bank eliminated an undisclosed number of jobs in the commercial lending unit as part of New BAC. The unit, which has just under 5,000 employees, is not planning any more cuts and is now adding 50 lenders in key markets such as Colorado, Georgia and Florida, she said. The bank is also adding staff in sectors such as new media and energy.

Commercial lending has been a growth area for many banks, so Bank of America has faced competition for loans and for employees. Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase & Co hired some of its bankers as part of an expansion into Bank of America’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.

“At that time I think we were more vulnerable because it was the middle of New BAC and people were concerned about what would that mean for our business,” Whitley said. “The business was very sound.”

(Reporting by Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Protesters surge around Egypt’s presidential palace

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters surged around the presidential palace on Friday and the opposition rejected President Mohamed Mursi‘s call for dialogue to end a crisis that has polarized the nation and sparked deadly clashes.

The Islamist leader’s deputy said he could delay a December 15 referendum on a constitution that liberals opposed, although the concession only partly meets a list of opposition demands that include scrapping a decree that expanded Mursi‘s powers.

“The people want the downfall of the regime” and “Leave, leave,” crowds chanted after bursting through barbed wire barricades and climbing on tanks guarding the palace of Egypt‘s first freely elected president.

Their slogans echoed those used in a popular revolt that toppled Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Vice President Mahmoud Mekky said in a statement sent to local media that the president was prepared to postpone the referendum if that could be done without legal challenge.

The dialogue meeting was expected to go ahead on Saturday in the absence of most opposition factions. “Tomorrow everything will be on the table,” a presidential source said of the talks.

The opposition has demanded that Mursi rescind a November 22 decree giving himself wide powers and delay the vote set for December 15 on a constitution drafted by an Islamist-led assembly which they say fails to meet the aspirations of all Egyptians.

The state news agency reported that the election committee had postponed the start of voting for Egyptians abroad until Wednesday, instead of Saturday as planned. It did not say whether this would affect the timing of voting in Egypt.

Ahmed Said, leader of the liberal Free Egyptians Party, told Reuters that delaying expatriate voting was made to seem like a concession but would not change the opposition’s stance.

He said the core opposition demand was to freeze Mursi’s decree and “to reconsider the formation and structure of the constituent assembly”, not simply to postpone the referendum.

The opposition organized marches converging on the palace which elite Republican Guard units had ringed with tanks and barbed wire on Thursday after violence between supporters and opponents of Mursi killed seven people and wounded 350.

Islamists, who had obeyed a military order for demonstrators to leave the palace environs, held funerals on Friday at Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque for six Mursi partisans who were among the dead. “With our blood and souls, we sacrifice to Islam,” they chanted.

“ARM-TWISTING”

In a speech late on Thursday, Mursi had refused to retract his November 22 decree or cancel the referendum on the constitution, but offered talks on the way forward after the referendum.

The National Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, said it would not join the dialogue. The Front’s coordinator, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate, dismissed the offer as “arm-twisting and imposition of a fait accompli”.

Murad Ali, spokesman of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said opposition reactions were sad: “What exit to this crisis do they have other than dialogue?” he asked.

Mursi’s decree giving himself extra powers sparked the worst political crisis since he took office in June and set off renewed unrest that is dimming Egypt’s hopes of stability and economic recovery after nearly two years of turmoil following the overthrow of Mubarak, a military-backed strongman.

The turmoil has exposed contrasting visions for Egypt, one held by Islamists, who were suppressed for decades by the army, and another by their rivals, who fear religious conservatives want to squeeze out other voices and restrict social freedoms.

Caught in the middle are many of Egypt’s 83 million people who are desperate for an end to political turbulence threatening their precarious livelihoods in an economy under severe strain.

“We are so tired, by God,” said Mohamed Ali, a laborer. “I did not vote for Mursi nor anyone else. I only care about bringing food to my family, but I haven’t had work for a week.”

ECONOMIC PAIN

A long political standoff will make it harder for Mursi’s government to tackle the crushing budget deficit and stave off a balance of payments crisis. Austerity measures, especially cuts in costly fuel subsidies, seem inevitable to meet the terms of a $ 4.8-billion IMF loan that Egypt hopes to clinch this month.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Mursi on Thursday of his “deep concern” about casualties in this week’s clashes and said “dialogue should occur without preconditions”.

The upheaval in the most populous Arab nation worries the United States, which has given billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

The conflict between Islamists and opponents who each believe the other is twisting the democratic rules to thwart them has poisoned the political atmosphere in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, Mahmoud Ghozlan, told Reuters that if the opposition shunned the dialogue “it shows that their intention is to remove Mursi from the presidency and not to cancel the decree or the constitution as they claim”.

Ayman Mohamed, 29, a protester at the palace, said Mursi should scrap the draft constitution and heed popular demands.

“He is the president of the republic. He can’t just work for the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mohamed said of the eight-decade-old Islamist movement that propelled Mursi from obscurity to power.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy; Writing by Edmund Blair and Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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No Grammy love for Justin Bieber, One Direction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Irate fans of Justin Bieber and boy band One Direction took to social media on Thursday to voice their outrage after being snubbed by the Grammys for a chance to win the biggest honors in the music industry.

Indie-pop band fun and rapper Frank Ocean led the 2013 nominations, tying with The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z and Kanye West for six nods. But The Recording Academy overlooked some of the year’s biggest and most commercially successful artists in Wednesday’s nominations.

While Bieber, 18, who won three American Music Awards in November, stayed quiet on his omission, his manager Scooter Braun took to Twitter.

“Grammy board u blew it on this one. the hardest thing to do is transition, keep the train moving. The kid delivered. Huge successful album, sold out tour, and won people over. … This time he deserved to be recognized,” Braun posted in a series of tweets.

Many of Bieber’s 31 million Twitter fans quickly followed suit, with hashtags such as #BieberForGrammys trending on the micro-blogging service.

The Canadian singer, who has never won a Grammy, in June released album “Believe,” showcasing a more grown-up image. The album, which produced top 10 hits “Boyfriend” and “As Long As You Love Me,” has sold more than 1.1 million copies.

British boy band One Direction was also left empty-handed despite their debut album “Up All Night” having topped the Billboard 200 album chart.

The quintet has performed sold-out shows across the world and won three MTV video music awards earlier this year.

The Grammy Awards are voted on by members of The Recording Academy and recognize achievement in 81 categories.

Lady Gaga, rapper Nicki Minaj and Korea’s Psy also failed to snag any nominations.

While Gaga hasn’t released new music this year, focusing on her global tour, Minaj released “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded,” which topped the Billboard 200 chart and spawned singles such as “Starships.”

Psy may have YouTube’s most watched video ever with “Gangnam Style,” – over 897 million views – but he missed out on becoming the first Korean artist to receive a Grammy nod.

The Grammy Awards will be handed out at a live performance show and ceremony on February 10 in Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; editing by Jill Serjeant and Todd Eastham)

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Actor Stephen Baldwin charged in NY tax case

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Actor Stephen Baldwin was charged Thursday with failing to pay New York state taxes for three years, amassing a $ 350,000 debt.

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Baldwin, of Upper Grandview, skipped his taxes in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was freed without bail. His lawyer, Russell Yankwitt, said Baldwin should not have been charged.

“Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crimes, and he’s working with the district attorney‘s office and the New York State Tax Department to resolve any differences,” Yankwitt said.

The district attorney said Baldwin could face up to four years in prison if convicted. The actor is due back in court on Feb. 5.

Zugibe said Baldwin owes more than $ 350,000 in tax and penalties.

“We cannot afford to allow wealthy residents to break the law by cheating on their taxes,” the district attorney said. “The defendant’s repetitive failure to file returns and pay taxes over a period of several years contributes to the sweeping cutbacks and closures in local government and in our schools.”

Thomas Mattox, the state tax commissioner, said, “It is rare and unfortunate for a personal income tax case to require such strong enforcement measures.”

Baldwin, 46, starred in 1995′s “The Usual Suspects” and appeared in 1989′s “Born on the Fourth of July.” He is scheduled to appear in March on NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.”

His brothers Alec, William and Daniel are also actors.

A bankruptcy filing in 2009 said Stephen Baldwin owed $ 1.2 million on two mortgages, $ 1 million in taxes and $ 70,000 on credit cards.

In October, Baldwin pleaded guilty in Manhattan to unlicensed driving and was ordered to pay a $ 75 fine. Earlier this year, he lost a $ 17 million civil case in New Orleans after claiming that actor Kevin Costner and a business partner duped him in a deal related to the cleanup of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The actors and others had formed a company that marketed devices that separate oil from water.

Baldwin co-hosts a radio show with conservative talk figure Kevin McCullough.

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Amarin raises funding for heart drug, partnership worries pull down shares

(Reuters) – Biopharmaceutical company Amarin Corp Plc said it raised $ 100 million in non-equity financing that will help it form a sales force to launch its heart drug Vascepa, but disappointed investors hoping for a sale or partnership.

Amarin shares fell 22 percent in extended trade, after closing at $ 11.95 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

“(Strategic) discussions are still quite active but at some point we’ve got to move forward,” CEO Joseph Zakrzewski said on a conference call with analysts.

Israel’s Calcalist financial daily said in November that the world’s largest generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and British drugmaker AstraZeneca were both looking to buy the company.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in July approved Vascepa capsules alongside diet to reduce triglyceride levels — a blood fat that contributes to heart disease — in adult patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia.

Amarin said Thursday it will hire 250 to 300 sales professionals to launch Vascepa in the first quarter of 2013.

The decision to hire a sales force implied that Amarin is ready to go it alone, analyst Jon LeCroy of MKM Partners said, adding that this is being viewed negatively by investors.

“With the backing of a major pharmaceutical company, there will be sales reps available as well as more dollars to market the product. So the assumption would be that it could be a much bigger product if a bigger company sells it,” LeCroy said.

WAITING ON EXCLUSIVITY

Amarin had earlier indicated that the FDA decision on Vascepa’s marketing exclusivity would have an impact on whether the company gets acquired, forms a partnership on the drug, or sells the heart pill on its own.

Amarin is awaiting a decision from the regulator regarding a new chemical entity (NCE) status for Vascepa, which will grant the company marketing exclusivity for five years. The pill is also patent protected until 2030.

LeCroy said with an NCE most major pharmaceutical companies would be interested in Amarin, given that the status guarantees some minimum exclusivity compared with patents that can be challenged.

The company is planning to price Vascepa on par with GlazoSmithKline’s competing Lovaza, CEO Zakrzewski said on the call.

He added that reimbursement for the drug will be available to most managed care clients by the time of its launch.

The financing deal for the hybrid debt-like instrument was made with an investment fund managed by Pharmakon Advisors.

(Reporting By Vrinda Manocha and Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian and Anthony Kurian)

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Negotiators see glimmers of progress on farm bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With a week left to act, agricultural leaders in Congress are still deadlocked on two major issues for a new U.S. farm bill, cuts in crop subsidies and reductions in food stamps, said two of the four key negotiators on Thursday.

But the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees suggested that recent talks had yielded at least some progress.

Without reauthorization, U.S. farm policy would revert to the provisions of the Agricultural Act of 1949, the last “permanent” farm bill and one crafted for an entirely different U.S. economy.

Among other things, if lawmakers do not agree on a new bill, milk prices in U.S. grocery stores could double next month under terms of the fall-back statute which would also limit plantings while pushing up farm subsidies by billions of dollars.

A new farm bill would now likely be absorbed into an overall budget-cutting bill that could avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts. Farm spending cuts of $ 23 billion to $ 35 billion have been floated.

In speeches at a farm policy conference in Washington on Thursday, the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees were adamant the final version of the five-year, $ 500 billion bill must include elements that are lightning rods for controversy.

Congress is scheduled to adjourn for the year on December 14, although top Republicans have said it will not adjourn until a solution to the fiscal cliff has been announced.

“I would rather have nothing” than a farm bill that does not give farmers the option of price supports, said House Agriculture chairman Frank Lucas. “You need to give our producers a choice.”

The Senate version of the farm bill, passed in June with proposed spending cuts totaling $ 23 billion, would replace traditional farm subsidies with an insurance-like program that compensates grain and oilseed growers when revenue from a crop is more than 11 percent below average.

Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow said on Thursday that there were strong differences between the House and Senate versions.

“I would never accept what the House did” in slashing $ 16 billion in funding for food stamps, the steepest cuts in a generation for a program that helps millions of lower-income Americans keep food on the table.

The Senate bill would cut food stamps by $ 4 billion.

Nonetheless, Lucas and Stabenow said a compromise may be agreed upon in time to become part of a must-pass deficit bill.

An Oklahoma Republican, Lucas said “a lot of progress” has been made in closed-door discussions among the four leaders of the committees. Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, echoed that sentiment.

“I am very encouraged by the negotiations … If people of good will sit around the table, you can work it out,” she said.

There are some areas of agreement. Both sides would cut conservation spending by $ 6 billion and crop subsidies by more than $ 13 billion, partly by ending direct-payment subsidies now issued regardless of need.

They also would expand the federally subsidized crop insurance system, now the largest strand in the farm safety net, and convert cotton subsidies to an insurance program, which would resolve a World Trade Organization ruling against the U.S. cotton program.

Still, farm subsidies and food stamps are the chief disputes. And Lucas said a transition period may be needed to allow time to put the new law into effect.

He left open the possibility of another round of the $ 5 billion-a-year direct payment program, depending on the savings demanded by congressional leaders.

The precise target for farm spending cuts may be determined as part of high-level deal-making between the White House and Congress. The White House has suggested cuts of $ 32 billion, for example, including reduction in crop insurance.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; editing by Ros Krasny and Jim Marshall)

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Toronto mayor to stay in power pending appeal of ouster

TORONTO (Reuters) – Toronto Mayor Rob Ford can stay in power pending an appeal of a conflict of interest ruling that ordered him out of his job as leader of Canada’s biggest city, a court ruled on Wednesday.

Madam Justice Gladys Pardu of the Ontario Divisional Court suspended a previous court ruling that said Ford should be ousted. Ford’s appeal of that ruling is set to be heard on January 7, but a decision on the appeal could take months.

Justice Pardu stressed that if she had not suspended the ruling, Ford would have been out of office by next week. “Significant uncertainty would result and needless expenses may be incurred if a by-election is called,” she said.

If Ford wins his appeal, he will get to keep his job until his term ends at the end of 2014. If he loses, the city council will either appoint a successor or call a special election, in which Ford is likely to run again.

“I can’t wait for the appeal, and I’m going to carry on doing what the people elected me to do,” Ford told reporters at City Hall following the decision.

Ford, a larger-than-life character who took power on a promise to “stop the gravy train” at City Hall, has argued that he did nothing wrong when he voted to overturn an order that he repay money that lobbyists had given to a charity he runs.

Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland disagreed, ruling last week that Ford acted with “willful blindness” in the case, and must leave office by December 10.

Ford was elected mayor in a landslide in 2010, but slashing costs without cutting services proved harder than he expected, and his popularity has fallen steeply.

He grabbed unwelcome headlines for reading while driving on a city expressway, for calling the police when a comedian tried to film part of a popular TV show outside his home, and after reports that city resources were used to help administer the high-school football team he coaches.

The conflict-of-interest drama began in 2010 when Ford, then a city councillor, used government letterhead to solicit donations for the football charity created in his name for underprivileged children.

Toronto’s integrity commissioner ordered Ford to repay the C$ 3,150 ($ 3,173) the charity received from lobbyists and companies that do business with the city.

Ford refused to repay the money, and in February 2012 he took part in a city council debate on the matter and then voted to remove the sanctions against him – despite being warned by the council speaker that voting would break the rules.

He pleaded not guilty in September, stating that he believed there was no conflict of interest as there was no financial benefit for the city. The judge dismissed that argument.

In a rare apology after last week’s court ruling, he said the matter began “because I love to help kids play football”.

Ford faces separate charges in a C$ 6 million libel case about remarks he made about corruption at City Hall, and is being audited for his campaign finances. The penalty in the audit case could also include removal from office.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Russ Blinch, Nick Zieminski; and Peter Galloway)

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U.S. agency backs Apple in essential patent battle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Reporting By Diane Bartz)

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Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer dies, aged 104

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BECAME NATIONAL ICON

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

His architecture, though, regularly trumped his politics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIFELONG COMMUNIST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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U.S. House Democrats introduce new meningitis legislation

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at bolstering federal oversight of compounded drugs like the tainted steroid injections blamed for a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.

But the legislation is not likely to move forward in the Republican-controlled chamber. In fact, aides from both parties said neither the House nor the Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote on meningitis legislation this year, given the little time remaining and the overarching focus on so-called “fiscal cliff” deficit-reduction talks.

Some Democratic lawmakers have warned that enacting tighter federal standards for compounded drugs could become more difficult in the new year, as the meningitis outbreak wanes and loses public attention.

The outbreak, linked to steroid injections from the Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center, has sickened 541 people, 36 of whom have died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The public health disaster has also spawned several investigations including a U.S. grand jury probe.

Drug compounding is a traditional pharmacy practice in which pharmacists alter or recombine drugs to meet the special needs of individual patients with a physician’s prescription. The practice is regulated mainly by state pharmacy boards that do not impose the stringent safety and efficacy standards that the Food and Drug Administration requires of drug manufacturers.

But in the past few decades, some compounding pharmacies, such as NECC, have become large operations selling thousands of drug doses to clinics, hospitals and other healthcare providers across state lines.

Critics say those operations rival drug manufacturers in scale and should be subjected to strict FDA standards. But past attempts to strengthen federal regulation has been defeated by industry lobbying and legal maneuvering.

FDA has lately come under fire in Congress, mainly from Republican lawmakers who say it has the authority to act against problem compounders but failed to take effective action against NECC despite problems dating back ten years.

Public Citizen, an advocacy group that tracks drug safety issues, has called for an investigation of FDA’s failures and urged the agency to inspect other compounders where problems have also surfaced over the past several years.

The legislation introduced on Wednesday by Democratic representatives Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Nita Lowery of New York is the second House Democratic measure to emerge since the outbreak first surfaced in mid-September.

The bill, known as the SAFE Compounding Drugs Act, would require compounding companies to register with the FDA, allow the agency to set minimum production standards and impose new labeling restrictions on compounded drugs.

Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, also introduced a measure to address FDA’s authority last month.

The agency itself has called on Congress to allow it to set national standards for large drug compounding operations. FDA officials are scheduled to discuss a potential new regulatory structure during a meeting with state officials on December 19.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Tim Dobbyn)

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