Boehner opens door to tax hikes, shifts U.S. fiscal cliff talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner‘s offer to accept a tax rate increase for the wealthiest Americans knocks down a key Republican road block to a deal resolving the year-end “fiscal cliff.”

The question now boils down to what President Barack Obama offers in return. Such major questions, still unanswered so close to the end of the year suggest, however, that no spending and tax agreement is imminent.

A source familiar with the Obama-Boehner talks confirmed that Boehner proposed extending low tax rates for everyone who has less than $ 1 million in net annual income, meaning tax rates would rise on all above that line.

Under current law, the 35 percent top tax rate is scheduled to expire on January 1, and would automatically go to 39.6 percent. Boehner’s proposal would allow that rate to rise as scheduled at a threshold of $ 1 million – putting it back to where it was during the Clinton administration.

The White House has not accepted the proposal and the source could not confirm any additional talks were held on Sunday between Obama and Boehner.

With just over two weeks before the fiscal cliff’s $ 600 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts are triggered, threatening a new recession, there is little time to craft a comprehensive deal that will satisfy both Democrats and Republicans.

Until the latest Republican offer, made on Friday, Boehner had insisted on extending all of the Bush era’s lower tax rates, resisting Obama’s demand to let the marginal rates rise on income above $ 250,000. A rising chorus of business executives also had urged Republicans to agree to this.

Some lawmakers and congressional aides had predicted that Republicans, once serious negotiations began, might try to raise the $ 250,000 threshold, say to $ 500,000 or $ 1 million. They also speculated that Republicans, if forced into a tax rate hike on the upper-income groups, might seek a smaller increase, say to around 37 percent.

Although the White House has not accepted Boehner’s gambit, it could push negotiations away from entrenched, ideological positions.

“Boehner has now accepted the premise of higher rates. So now we’re just arguing over details. I think it’s a significant step,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group.

A framework deal spelling out tax revenue and spending cut targets to be finalized in the new year could be possible, Valliere said.

“Boehner’s offer to allow tax rates to go up for taxpayers earning over $ 1 million fundamentally transforms fiscal cliff negotiations,” added Sean West, U.S. policy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

In a note to clients, West wrote that it signals, significantly, that Boehner ultimately believes a deal to avoid the cliff is still possible.

“The political burden is now shifted back to the president, who must be willing to take on his party in order to get a deal Boehner can ultimately pass. We do not think the president will overreach: Obama will work with Boehner to get to a deal.”

There are still several critical elements to a deal besides a tax rate increase on the wealthy, including Republican demands to cut spending on social programs.

Changes to the expensive Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and the poor could be central to any deal, which must also include an increase in the federal debt limit needed by the end of February.

DEMANDS SOCIAL PROGRAM CUTS

Boehner conditioned his tax rate increase offer on Obama’s agreement to cuts in social program spending, often called entitlements.

Many Republican lawmakers want to raise the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65. They also want to link Medicare to the income of recipients, making wealthier retirees pay more for their care.

Currently, Medicare does have some means testing, charging higher premiums for coverage of doctors visits and prescription drugs to individuals earning more than $ 85,000 and married couples earning more than $ 170,000. Only about 5 percent of recipients pay these higher premiums.

Thus far, Obama has offered only about $ 400 billion in 10-year entitlement savings, mostly through small adjustments in reining in health care costs – not fundamental changes such as raising the eligibility age.

And just as Boehner faces opposition in his own party to raising any tax rates, Obama faces opposition to cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from Democrats, who pledged in election campaigns they would protect these programs.

A major bloc of congressional Democrats has already signaled they will not accept major cutbacks in Medicare as part of any fiscal cliff deal.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland are among the high ranking Democrats in the House who have come out forcefully in recent days against raising the age for eligibility for Medicare to 67 years of age.

“Given the level of savings that is being talked about from Medicare, you can’t get it all from providers and drug makers,” said Paul Heldman, an analyst at Potomac Research, which tracks Washington policy for investors.

“So opponents of raising the eligibility age have reason to believe beneficiaries will take some sort of hit if a mega-deal is cut,” he said.

If Republicans are not successful in securing entitlement program cuts in exchange for a tax-rate increase on the wealthy, they are adamant about using a debt-limit increase as leverage to overhaul Social Security and Medicare.

The U.S. Treasury expects to reach its $ 16.4 trillion statutory debt cap by year-end, and will exhaust its remaining borrowing capacity around mid-February, risking a potential default.

Louisiana Republican Representative John Fleming, a member of the conservative Tea Party caucus who has never voted to increase the debt ceiling, said he would support a debt limit hike if it were part of a deal to make Medicare and Social Security sustainable.

The pace of activity could pick up the coming week.

House Republicans were told to prepare for a possible weekend session next week, potentially interrupting travel plans for the long Christmas holiday weekend.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor scheduled “possible legislation related to expiring provisions of law,” a reference to the expiring tax cuts, for the end of the week, portending a weekend session. Cantor has said the House would meet through the Christmas holidays and beyond.

(This story was fixed to correct current top tax rate to 35 percent from 36 percent)

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Richard Cowan and Kim Dixon; Editing by Fred Barbash, Todd Eastham and Jackie Frank)

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Samsung and Apple Duel in Enterprise Tech

Last summer, health-care startup Preventice asked Samsung Electronics if it would create a custom version of its popular Galaxy S II phone. Preventice was putting the finishing touches on a product that used a smartphone to transmit data from a patient’s heart monitor to a doctor, and it needed Samsung to disable downloads, which might interfere with a cellular connection. In less than six weeks Samsung made the necessary changes and agreed to pick up roughly $ 40,000 in engineering costs. “I saw a huge company with huge resources move very quickly,” says Preventice Chief Executive Officer Jon Otterstatter. “Samsung was very aggressive.”

Samsung’s mobile-electronics empire was built mostly on consumers. Now it’s making its first big push to woo companies. This so-called enterprise market includes companies that distribute smartphones and tablets to employees, who use them for checking e-mail and tasks such as tracking sales, as well as companies like Preventice that want to resell the devices as part of their own products. “We’ve made the decision to be No. 1 in enterprise,” says Timothy Wagner, who runs the Texas-based Samsung unit that’s leading the effort.

Few think that’s likely to happen unless Apple (AAPL), which has already made a strong move into the enterprise market, slips up. Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone and iPad with professionals, Apple passed fast-fading Research In Motion (RIMM) to become the top seller of company-issued smartphones this year and will remain in that position at least through 2016, says IDC analyst Stacy Crook. With its small number of products and carefully policed App Store, Apple has made itself safe in the eyes of chief information officers. In its last quarter earnings call on Oct. 25, CEO Tim Cook said more than 80 percent of large companies are at least testing iPhones and iPads for employee use.

Still, Samsung does have an opportunity. While Wagner is aware how difficult it will be to get businesspeople to ditch their iPhones, he says there’s plenty of new business to be had from companies that need something beyond Apple’s one-size-fits-all formula. Apple doesn’t customize its products for anyone, or partner with third-party software makers to target specific industries. Samsung will, Wagner says. “We’re in a unique position to take advantage of an opening that’s being left there by one of our competitors,” he says. Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison declined to comment on the company’s enterprise business.

IDC’s Crook says the timing of Samsung’s offensive will allow the company to take advantage of BlackBerry’s problems (according to IDC, RIM’s global smartphone market share has dropped from 19.9 percent in 2009 to 4.7 percent this year). Microsoft (MSFT), she notes, has yet to make inroads with its Windows Phone 8 software, introduced in October.

Samsung, which dominates the booming market for devices built on Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, also could distance itself from other Android rivals in the enterprise market. Its push comes as HTC is struggling and Google focuses elsewhere. In early December, Google closed what was left of 3LM, a mobile enterprise software maker that was acquired by Motorola Mobility in 2011, months before Google bought Motorola. “The fact that Google is shuttering 3LM shows that they’re very focused on the consumer space—but they’re not realizing that consumer devices are being used in enterprise,” says Chris Hazelton, an analyst with 451 Research. “It seems incredibly shortsighted.” Google declined to comment.

Part of Wagner’s strategy for Samsung is to find ways to lower companies’ mobile-computing costs. Many corporations buy smart devices for their employees, but increasingly employees are buying their own and getting reimbursed for a portion of the cost of their data and voice plans. Wagner says Samsung is developing docking stations that would let employees rely on their smartphones’ processing power for their work, eliminating the need for companies to buy them a deskphone or laptop. “As soon as you walk in the room with your phone in your pocket, your monitor, keyboard, and mouse will light up,” Wagner predicts.

Samsung needs to persuade more CIOs to give Android a chance. According to IDC, roughly half of the 125 million iPhones sold by Apple in 2012 were used to run corporate applications, compared with only about 20 percent of Android phones. The biggest obstacle for Samsung is that every Android phone manufacturer uses a slightly different version of the operating system. That means info-tech shops must spend time and money testing each for malware.

With Google showing little desire to solve this problem, Wagner’s team has created a collection of security and management software called SAFE (Samsung for Enterprise) that he says will make all Samsung devices operate the same way. American Airlines is giving Samsung’s Galaxy Note II, a tablet/telephone hybrid, to 17,000 of its flight attendants, who will use it to process payments for onboard purchases of drinks and movies. “The Note was much more enterprise-ready” than other Android devices, says American Airlines CIO Maya Leibman. SAFE lets American disable the device’s camera to protect passengers’ privacy but leaves enough imaging capability to scan bar codes.

Wagner won’t reveal his group’s enterprise sales, but SAFE impressed Samsung’s brass enough that the company will install SAFE products available in Canada, Europe, and South Korea. The company says it’s adding hundreds of new corporate clients each quarter and has recently launched its first corporate-focused ad campaign, with airport ads promising “The Next Big Thing in Business.”

“Some of our partners are calling it Sam-droid,” says Kenneth Daniels, senior director of strategy alliances. “I like that.” Still, Samsung has far to go to prove itself a bona fide corporate power. “They are newbies in the enterprise game,” says Forrester Research (FORR) analyst Frank Gillett. The company is known for high-volume manufacturing efficiency, not for the software expertise and customer support big companies expect. It also has work to do in getting the word out about its new initiatives, says Matt Wallach, co-founder of Veeva Systems, a maker of software for pharmaceutical salespeople. “I asked around,” he says, “and nobody here has even heard of SAFE.”

The bottom line: Samsung aims to pick up enterprise business from RIM and offer better service than Apple and other rivals.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Egyptians hand Islamists narrow win in constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptians voted in favor of a constitution shaped by Islamists but opposed by other groups who fear it will divide the Arab world’s biggest nation, officials in rival camps said on Sunday after the first round of a two-stage referendum.

Next week’s second round is likely to give another “yes” vote as it includes districts seen as more sympathetic towards Islamists, analysts say, meaning the constitution would be approved.

But the narrow win so far gives Islamist President Mohamed Mursi only limited grounds for celebration by showing the wide rifts in a country where he needs to build a consensus for tough economic reforms.

The Muslim Brotherhood‘s party, which propelled Mursi to office in a June election, said 56.5 percent backed the text. Official results are not expected until after the next round.

While an opposition official conceded the “yes” camp appeared to have won the first round, the opposition National Salvation Front said in a statement that voting abuses meant a rerun was needed – although it did not explicitly challenge the Brotherhood‘s vote tally.

Rights groups reported abuses such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people how to vote and bribery. They also criticized widespread religious campaigning which portrayed “no” voters as heretics.

A joint statement by seven human rights groups urged the referendum’s organizers “to avoid these mistakes in the second stage of the referendum and to restage the first phase again”.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is vital to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward. Opponents say the basic law is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights, including those of Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

The build-up to Saturday’s vote was marred by deadly protests. Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies.

However, the vote passed off calmly with long queues in Cairo and several other places, though unofficial tallies indicated turnout was around a third of the 26 million people eligible to vote this time. The vote was staggered because many judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest.

The opposition had said the vote should not have been held given the violent protests. Foreign governments are watching closely how the Islamists, long viewed warily in the West, handle themselves in power.

“It’s wrong to have a vote or referendum with the country in the state it is – blood and killings, and no security,” said Emad Sobhy, a voter who lives in Cairo. “Holding a referendum with the country as it is cannot give you a proper result.”

INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

As polls closed, Islamists attacked the offices of the newspaper of the liberal Wafd party, part of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition that pushed for a “no” vote.

“The referendum was 56.5 percent for the ‘yes’ vote,” a senior official in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party operations room set up to monitor voting told Reuters.

The Brotherhood and its party had representatives at polling stations across the 10 areas, including Cairo, in this round. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the tally was based on counts from more than 99 percent of polling stations.

“The nation is increasingly divided and the pillars of state are swaying,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Poverty and illiteracy are fertile grounds for trading with religion. The level of awareness is rising fast.”

One opposition official also told Reuters the vote appeared to have gone in favor of Islamists who backed the constitution.

The opposition initially said its exit polls indicated the “no” camp would win comfortably, but officials changed tack during the night. One opposition official said in the early hours of Sunday that it would be “very close”.

A narrow loss could still hearten leftists, socialists, Christians and more liberal-minded Muslims who make up the disparate opposition, which has been beaten in two elections since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.

They were drawn together to oppose what they saw as a power grab by Mursi as he pushed through the constitution. The National Salvation Front includes prominent figures such as ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and firebrand leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

If the constitution is approved, a parliamentary election will follow early next year.

DEADLY VIOLENCE

Analysts question whether the opposition group will keep together until the parliamentary election. The Islamist-dominated lower house of parliament elected earlier this year was dissolved based on a court order in June.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has plagued the run-up to the referendum. At least eight people were killed when rival camps clashed during demonstrations outside the presidential palace earlier this month.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those casting ballots. There are 51 million eligible voters in the nation of 83 million.

Islamists have been counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and on Egyptians desperate for an end to turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt’s pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

The army deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armored vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Additional reporting Yasmin Saleh and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Ten Commandments join Isaac Newton’s notes online

LONDON (Reuters) – A copy of The Ten Commandments dating back two millennia and the earliest written Gaelic are just two of a number of incredibly rare manuscripts now freely available online to the world as part of a Cambridge University digital project.

The Nash Papyrus — one of the oldest known manuscripts containing text from the Hebrew Bible — has become one of the latest treasures of humanity to join Isaac Newton‘s notebooks, the Nuremberg Chronicle and other rare texts as part of the Cambridge Digital Library, the university said on Wednesday.

“Cambridge University Library preserves works of great importance to faith traditions and communities around the world,” University Librarian Anne Jarvis said in a statement.

“Because of their age and delicacy these manuscripts are seldom able to be viewed – and when they are displayed, we can only show one or two pages.”

Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nash Papyrus, was by far the oldest manuscript containing text from the Hebrew Bible and like most fragile historical documents, only available to select academics for scrutiny.

The university’s digital library is making 25,000 new images, including an ancient copy of the New Testament, available on its website (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/), which has already attracted tens of millions of hits since the project was launched in December 2011.

The latest release also includes important texts from Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

In addition to religious texts, internet users can also view the 10th century Book of Deer, which is widely believed to be the oldest surviving Scottish manuscript and contains the earliest known examples of written Gaelic.

“Now… anyone with a connection to the Internet can select a work of interest, turn to any page of the manuscript, and explore it in extraordinary detail,” Jarvis said.

The technical infrastructure required to get these texts to web was in part funded by a 1.5 million pound ($ 2.4 million) gift from the Polonsky Foundation in June 2010.

($ 1 = 0.6210 British pounds)

(Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Paul Casciato)

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It’s OK to crank up the music, Florida Supreme Court rules

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Motorist Richard Catalano‘s five-year quest to crank up Justin Timberlake tunes on his way to work won the blessing of the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.

In a unanimous ruling, the state’s highest court affirmed a pair of lower-court opinions that a 2007 state law prohibiting loud music while driving violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression.

Catalano received a $ 73 ticket in 2007 for violating the newly enacted law that prohibited motorists from playing music that is “plainly audible” 25 feet away. Motorists traveling by hospitals, schools and churches were subjected to even stricter standards.

Catalano, a Clearwater lawyer, challenged the law as subjective, arguing that determining whether music was too loud was in the ears of the beholder.

Further, the law provides listeners with fewer protections than drivers of vehicles emitting political or commercial speech, who have more explicit protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Calling the law overly broad, Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that noncommercial speech was also protected. Though rejecting the notion that the law was too vague, Labarga said the state showed no compelling interest in muzzling audiophiles who also prefer to feel their favorite music.

“The right to play music, including amplified music, in public fora is protected under the First Amendment,” Labarga wrote.

A message left with Catalano was not immediately returned Thursday.

(Editing by Jane Sutton; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Venezuela’s Chavez has “full intellectual capacity” after surgery

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has recovered “full intellectual capacity” after a six-hour cancer operation in Cuba this week, an official said on Saturday, but offered few details on the socialist firebrand’s physical condition.

Chavez’s health weakened sharply after his October re-election, casting doubt on the future of his “21st century socialism,” which has won broad popular support but also infuriated adversaries who call him an aspiring dictator.

Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza, who is also Chavez’s son-in-law, said in a phone call from Havana broadcast over state television that Chavez was continuing to recover.

“He is in a process of progressive stabilization and has full intellectual capacity, sufficient to send this message to the Venezuelan people,” said Arreaza, who is accompanying Chavez during his recovery.

“We recognize that there were some moments of tension, mostly on (Tuesday and Wednesday), but we have overcome them one by one,” he said.

The call came during a celebration of the eighth anniversary of the founding of the leftist ALBA bloc of nations championed by Chavez as an anti-U.S. alliance of socialist nations.

Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino joined a celebration in downtown Caracas largely dedicated to celebrating Chavez’s leftist policies and wishing him a swift recovery.

The government has provided no details on the situation of his cancer, which has returned twice since it was originally diagnosed in June 2011 and has required four operations. Chavez has said the cancer struck his pelvic region, but has not given any further details.

The information minister this week conceded Chavez may not be in condition to begin his third term on January 10, as mandated by the constitution.

If he cannot, fresh presidential elections would be called within 30 days, with Vice President Nicolas Maduro running as the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate.

The opposition would likely field the youthful Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in October but gave the opposition its strongest showing in a presidential race against him.

That will depend on Capriles winning reelection for governor in the state of Miranda against Chavez protege and former Vice President Elias Jaua in Sunday’s regional elections.

If Caprles loses that vote, other opposition hopefuls might push him aside. Chavez’s adversaries hope to retain seven of the 23 governorships they currently hold, and may view the ballot as a dry run for a possible presidential election down the road.

Energy companies are keenly watching events and hope a change in government will lead to greater access to the country’s vast crude oil reserves – the world’s largest. Years of combative state takeovers have alienated major oil companies.

Investors drawn to Venezuela’s highly traded bonds are hoping for more fiscal responsibility after a year of blowout campaign spending.

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; editing by Todd Eastham)

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Japan votes in election seen returning LDP to power

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan voted on Sunday in an election expected to return the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power after a three-year hiatus, giving ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a chance to push his hawkish security agenda and radical economic recipe.

Polls opened at 0700 a.m. (1700 ET) and will close at 8 p.m. (0600 ET), when major TV broadcasters will issue exit polls forecasting results.

An LDP win would usher in a government committed to a tough stance in a territorial row with China, a pro-nuclear power energy policy despite last year’s Fukushima disaster and a potentially risky prescription for hyper-easy monetary policy and big fiscal spending to beat deflation and tame a strong yen.

Media surveys have forecast the LDP will win a big majority in parliament’s powerful 480-seat lower house, just three years after a devastating defeat that ended more than 50 years of almost non-stop rule by the business-friendly party. However, many voters remained undecided just days before the vote, the polls showed.

Together with a small ally, Abe’s LDP could even gain the two-thirds majority needed to break through a policy deadlock that has plagued successive governments for half a decade.

Abe, 58, who quit abruptly as premier in 2007 after a troubled year in office, has been talking tough in a row with China over uninhabited isles in the East China Sea, although some experts say he may temper his hard line with pragmatism once in office.

The soft-spoken grandson of a prime minister, who would become Japan’s seventh premier in six years, Abe also wants to loosen the limits of a 1947 pacifist constitution on the military, so Japan can play a bigger global security role.

The LDP, which promoted atomic energy during its decades-long reign, is expected to be friendly to nuclear utilities, although deep public safety concerns remain a barrier to business as usual for the industry.

ECONOMY IN DOLDRUMS

Abe has called for “unlimited” monetary easing and big spending on public works – for decades a centerpiece of the LDP’s policies and criticized by many as wasteful pork barrel – to rescue the economy from its fourth recession since 2000.

Many economists say that prescription for “Abenomics” could create temporary growth and enable the government to go ahead with a planned initial sales tax rise in 2014 to help curb a public debt now twice the size of gross domestic product.

But it looks unlikely to cure deeper ills or spark sustainable growth, and risks triggering a market backlash if investors decide Japan has lost control of its finances.

Japan’s economy has been stuck in the doldrums for decades, its population ageing fast and big corporate brands faltering, making “Japan Inc” a synonym for decline.

Consumer electronics firms such as Sony Corp are struggling with competition from foreign rivals and burdened by a strong yen, which makes their products cost more overseas.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda‘s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) surged to power in a historic victory in 2009 promising to pay more heed to consumers than companies and put politicians, bureaucrats, in charge of policymaking.

Many voters now feel the DPJ pledges were honored in the breach as the novice party struggled to govern and to cope with last year’s huge earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster and then pushed through an unpopular sales tax increase with LDP help.

Voter distaste for both major parties has spawned a clutch of new parties including the right-leaning Japan Restoration Party founded by popular Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.

Surveys show the DPJ, hit by a stream of defections, is likely to win fewer than 100 seats, less than a third of its tally in 2009.

(Additional reporting by Leika Kihara, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Nigeria governor, 5 others die in helicopter crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A navy helicopter crashed Saturday in the country’s oil-rich southern delta, killing a state governor and five other people, in the latest air disaster to hit Africa’s most populous nation, officials said.

Nigeria‘s ruling party said in a statement that the governor of the central Nigerian state of Kaduna, Patrick Yakowa, died in the helicopter crash in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta. The People’s Democratic Party’s statement described Yakowa’s death as a “colossal loss.”

The statement said the former national security adviser, General Andrew Azazi, also died in the crash. Azazi was fired in June amid growing sectarian violence in Nigeria, but maintained close ties with the government.

Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, said four other bodies had been found, but he could not immediately give their identities.

The crash occurred at about 3:30 p.m. after the navy helicopter took off from the village of Okoroba in Bayelsa state where officials had gathered to attend the burial of the father of a presidential aide, said Commodore Kabir Aliyu. He said that the helicopter was headed for Nigeria’s oil capital of Port Harcourt when it crashed in the Nembe area of Bayelsa state.

Aviation disasters remain common in Nigeria, despite efforts in recent years to improve air safety.

In October, a plane made a crash landing in central Nigeria. A state governor and five others sustained injuries but survived.

In June, a Dana Air MD-83 passenger plane crashed into a neighborhood in the commercial capital of Lagos, killing 153 people onboard and at least 10 people on the ground. It was Nigeria’s worst air crash in nearly two decades.

In March, a police helicopter carrying a high-ranking police official crashed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing four people.

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Pope needs help sending out blessing in first tweet

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his first tweet – but something went wrong.

Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try didn’t work. The pope, who still writes his speeches by hand, seems to have pressed too hard and the tweet was not sent right away. So, he needed a little help from his friends.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli of the Vatican‘s communications department showed the pontiff how to do it, but the pope hesitated. Celli touched the screen lightly himself and off went the papal tweet.

“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart,” he said in his introduction to the brave new world of Twitter.

The tweet was sent at the end of weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.

The pope actually has eight linked Twitter accounts. @Pontifex, the main account, is in English. The other seven have a suffix at the end for the different language versions. For example, the German version is @Pontifex_de, and the Arabic version is @Pontifex_ar.

The tweets will be going out in Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. Other languages will be added in the future.

The pope already had just over a million followers in all of the languages combined minutes before he sent his first tweet and the number was growing.

PAPAL Q AND A

Later on Wednesday after the audience was over and the television cameras turned off, the pontiff answered the first of three questions sent to him at #askpontifex.

The first question answered by the pope was: “How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?”

His answer: “By speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells you in the Gospel and looking for him in those in need.”

The pope, who, as leader of the Roman Catholic Church already has 1.2 billion followers in the standard sense of the word, won’t be following anyone else, the Vatican has said.

After his first splash into the brave new world of Twitter on Wednesday, the contents of future tweets will come primarily from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays.

They are also expected to include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The Vatican says papal tweets will be little “pearls of wisdom”, which is understandable since his thoughts will have to be condensed to 140 characters, while papal documents often top 140 pages.

The Vatican said precautions had been taken to make sure the pope’s certified account is not hacked. Only one computer in the Vatican’s secretariat of state will be used for the tweets.

After Wednesday, Benedict won’t be pushing the button on his tweets himself. They will be sent by aides but he will sign off on them.

The pope’s Twitter page is designed in yellow and white – the colors of the Vatican, with a backdrop of the Vatican and his picture. It may change during different liturgical seasons of the year and when the pope is away from the Vatican on trips.

The pope has given a qualified welcome to social media.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Bayer seeks FDA approval for cancer drug radium-223

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German drugmaker Bayer said on Friday it requested approval from U.S. regulators for an experimental prostate cancer drug that could eventually generate more than 1 billion euros ($ 1.31 billion) in annual sales.

Radium-223 dichloride, which Bayer used to call Alpharadin, is designed to target bone metastases from prostate cancer that cannot be treated by standard hormone therapy.

Bayer licensed radium-223 from Algeta in 2009, and if approved in the United States, radium-223 will be co-promoted by Bayer and Algeta, the Oslo-based company said on Friday.

Bayer, which on Wednesday said it was requesting EU approval for the drug, will market radium-223 alone in Europe if the treatment is approved there.

Bayer said last year that Radium-223 dichloride could become a “blockbuster” product with annual sales of least 1 billion euros.

The drug has some properties of calcium, which makes it cling to cancerous bone cells and then destroy them via alpha rays, which is more targeted that the shotgun approach of conventional radiotherapy.

(Reporting by Jonathan Gould; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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