Bruno opens Amsterdam pink light brothel...

Reuters

Fri Jun 19, 2009. AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, in his latest incarnation as a gay Austrian fashion reporter, jet skied through a canal into Amsterdam's red light district on Friday to open a brothel full of men in thongs ahead of the Dutch premiere of 'Bruno'.

"For too long, guys coming here from around the world have been forced to have sex with women," Cohen said, standing in front of a pink-lit brothel building in the Dutch capital as surprised tourists and stag party goers looked on.

"It gives me great pleasure to declare Amsterdam's pink light district officially open for business," he said, as about a dozen men emerged from behind curtains at the windows of a three-storey brothel.

Cohen, hoping to replicate the success of his 2006 hit movie "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," was wearing a cut-away suit which revealed his own red thong. In "Bruno," Cohen is a gay fashion reporter seeking stardom in America.

After declaring the pink brothel open, Cohen left in a black car while the men left their rooms, put on white robes and waved goodbye to crowds. The real prostitutes, who had hidden from the flashing cameras, reopened their curtains to wait for their next clients in their red-lit windows.

(Reporting by Catherine Hornby, editing by Paul Casciato)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Read Madrid signs Kaka in $115m soccer deal...

Courier-Mail

June 09, 2009 09:15am. REAL Madrid has announced the signing of Brazilian international Kaka from AC Milan in the richest deal in football history.

Madrid gave no financial details but reports said the Spanish club would pay Milan 65 million euros (almost $A115 million) for the attacking midfielder.

The largest previous transfer was set by Zinedine Zidane when he joined Madrid from Juventus for $US65 million ($A81.07 million) in 2001.

Milan also confirmed Kaka's transfer to Madrid on their website.

Kaka, who passed a medical in the northeastern Brazilian city of Recife, has signed a six-year contract.

Microsoft's Bing makes early gains:

Technology Reuters

Tue Jun 9, 2009. SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is making early gains on Internet search leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc with its Bing search engine that launched last week, according to industry data firm comScore.

Bing, which had its full launch last Wednesday but was available to some for a few days before that, took 11.1 percent of U.S. Internet searches between Tuesday and Saturday, comScore said, up from 9.1 percent in the comparable period the week before.

"These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president, said in a statement.

He said Bing was off to a good start, but it remains to be seen if Microsoft can entice more users to the service with its big marketing campaign and hang onto them.

Microsoft's Bing has lots of ground to make up. In April, the last full month for which figures are available, Microsoft's sites took 8.2 percent of U.S. Internet searches, trailing Yahoo with 20.4 percent and Google with 64.2 percent.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.

U.S. war funding bill brims with unrelated extras...

Reuters By Jeremy Pelofsky

Mon Jun 8, 2009. WASHINGTON, June 8 (Reuters) - A $100 billion bill to fund U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is rapidly accumulating extra items such as money for military aircraft the Pentagon doesn't want and possibly a scheme to jump-start sagging auto sales.

The cars and planes are not directly linked to the U.S. war effort. But they are typical of Congress' penchant for loading bills with unrelated spending in hopes the funds will sail through on the strength of the main legislation.

President Barack Obama originally sought $83.4 billion for the two wars and more foreign aid for countries like Pakistan.

But then he too sought more -- $4 billion extra to combat H1N1 swine flu and $5 billion to back credit lines to the International Monetary Fund, which is trying to help developing countries weather the global economic downturn.

The unrelated provisions have slowed the bill down, especially for the IMF because Republicans have argued the extra items should be vetted through the normal congressional process rather than jammed into an emergency spending bill.

Fights have also erupted about add-ons for the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and an attempt to bar the release of photos of detainee abuse. While Republicans do not have the votes to block the bill, they have said they will oppose it and that forces Democrats to ensure most of their members back it.

"This supplemental was supposed to be about providing funding for our troops," one House Republican aide said. Instead, it has become a mish-mashed, taxpayer funded 'Christmas tree' bill that will propagate bad policies and unnecessary spending."

Some 51 anti-war House Democrats had opposed the bill but now are under pressure to switch to give Obama a victory. But a House Democratic leadership aide said Republicans will have to answer to constituents for opposing a war funding bill.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS

The House and Senate are working out differences between the two versions of the war funding bill they each approved last month and hope to pass a final, single version this week.

Congress was on the verge of giving Pakistan roughly $1 billion in the bill, but Obama last week sought another $200 million for Islamabad as it fights Taliban militants crossing its border from Afghanistan.

And lawmakers are also considering adding money for a plan to spur domestic car sales by offering up to $4,500 in vouchers for buyers to trade in their less fuel-efficient vehicles for ones that get better mileage, known as "cash for clunkers".

The White House declined to directly address adding in extra provisions, but said officials continue to work with lawmakers "about the core priorities in the legislation and hope that it can get to the president soon."

When the House and Senate originally approved their separate versions of the war bill, the White House praised lawmakers for not inserting their own pet projects in the legislation -- though some pet priorities were included.

Democratic Representative John Murtha, who heads the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, managed to get $3.1 billion for eight C-17 and 11 C-130 military transport planes included. However, that has been pared back by four C-130s.

The Pentagon did not request the aircraft but lawmakers want them to preserve jobs in their home states and Murtha disputes the military's contention that they are not needed.

A senior Democratic House aide said the requests for flu and Pakistan money were appropriate to include in the bill because they were emergency needs Obama cited. The aide also noted that Republicans in the past backed items like the IMF funds.

"This is a dangerous game Republicans are playing by jeopardizing the well-being of our soldiers to score political points," the aide said. "The supplemental will be passed, but they will have to answer for their actions if they oppose it." (Editing by Eric Walsh)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Fewer divorces during financial gloom?

Reuters

Mon Jun 8, 2009. LONDON (Reuters) - Fewer British couples are filing for divorce as a sharp drop in property prices makes it hard for couples to sell a joint home, and the credit crunch dampens a desire to fund two separate households, a study shows.

The study, published by Grant Thornton accountants, showed that almost half of all surveyed matrimonial lawyers believe the numbers of divorces has slumped -- and will continue to do so -- because of the financial squeeze.

"Lawyers believe they will see less couples filing for divorce during the credit crunch," said Robert Kerr, partner at Grant Thornton's Forensic and Investigation Services.

"Reasons vary but certainly the financial carve-up that follows a divorce settlement will be at the forefront of a couple's minds when contemplating divorce," he added.

Data published by the Office for National Statistics earlier this year showed that the number of people getting divorced fell from 12.2 per 1,000 couples in 2006 to 11.9 in 2007, and is currently at a 26-year low.

The survey also found newlyweds are increasingly eager to settle financial agreements ahead of tying the knot, and are steering away from pre-nuptial "lump sum agreements" which do not take the falling value of assets into account. "I can only imagine that this trend will continue to rise particularly in an economic downturn when people feel increasingly vulnerable about their financial position," said Kerr.

The number of couples that cite financial problems as a factor in their split has more than doubled in the past two years, but still lags behind other reasons including extra marital affairs, abuse, mid-life crises and other family strains, the study found.

"There is also an increasing number of people who decide to co-habit but not marry," Grant Thornton spokeswoman Suvra Datta said, but was unable to comment on whether this was down to people being less able to afford the cost of a wedding.

(Reporting by Josie Cox, Editing by Steve Addison)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Groom drinks too much at wedding, dies...

Reuters

Mon May 25, 2009. TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwanese groom died on his wedding day after having too much wine and beer to drink, police and local media said Monday.

The man, 35, an insurance company worker surnamed Wu passed out at home after drinking too much Saturday at a high-end restaurant in Taipei among more than 100 wedding guests, the Liberty Times reported.

It was not known if he had health complications.

"Everyone was having a great time," said restaurant party organizer Linda Chien. "We don't know what happened after that."

Wu was hospitalized after his face turned black, the paper said. A hospital spokeswoman said he died despite treatment.

(Reporting by Ralph Jennings, editing by Miral Fahmy)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Tycoon names blue diamond Star of Josephine...

Reuters

Fri May 22, 2009 GENEVA (Reuters) - A Hong Kong property tycoon and collector who bought a flawless blue diamond for a record $9.5 million, has named it the "Star of Josephine," auction house Sotheby's said Wednesday.

Joseph Lau Luen-Hung made the winning bid last week by telephone for the diamond, which fetched the highest price per carat for any gemstone at the auction and a world record price for a fancy vivid blue diamond at auction.

"Mr. Lau has already exercised his right to name the diamond, which is now known as 'Star of Josephine'," it said.

The rectangular-shaped blue stone weighs 7.03 carats, about the size of a small coin, and was the rarest to enter the international market this year.

David Bennett, chairman of Sotheby's jewelry department in Europe and the Middle East, told reporters after conducting the May 12 sale in Geneva: "I hope it will be worn, it is such a beautiful stone."

Lau is chairman of Chinese Estates, a major Hong Kong property developer.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Farah Master)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Schoolboy Alfie not father of baby after all....

Reuters

Tue May 19, 2009 LONDON (Reuters) - Schoolboy Alfie Patten, who made headlines earlier this year when it was reported he had got his girlfriend pregnant when aged just 12, is not the baby's father after all, the Sun said Tuesday.

In February, media said Patten's 15-year-old girlfriend Chantelle Stedman had fallen pregnant after a night of unprotected sex, possibly making Patten Britain's youngest father when she gave birth to daughter Maisie.

"I thought it would be good to have a baby. I didn't think about how we would afford it," he told the Sun at the time.

"I don't really get pocket money. My dad sometimes gives me 10 pounds."

But after the story was reported, other boys came forward to say they had had sex with Stedman.

The Sun said DNA tests had now revealed that Patten was not the baby's father. Instead Maisie is the daughter of another schoolboy, Tyler Barker, who was 14 at the time Stedman conceived.

The results were revealed after a judge lifted a court injunction and said Patten was "extremely distressed" at the news.

(Reporting by Michael Holden)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Woman beaten up over asparagus prices...

Reuters

Mon May 18, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - German police are searching for a motorist who beat a 24-year-old woman selling white asparagus because he was upset about her asking price for the coveted springtime vegetable, police said on Monday.

The prices for white asparagus, sometimes called "edible ivory" in Germany, fluctuate wildly during the short springtime season, peaking early in the season at 10 euros per kilo.

The man screamed at the woman that her asparagus was overpriced. He then punched her in the face and threatened to unleash his attack dog at her. She fled and called police.

"The motorist said her prices were totally over the top," said Dietmar Keck, police spokesman in the Havelland district west of Berlin, without saying how much she was asking.

Prices for asparagus now range from 1 to 5 euros per kilo, he said. Some 55,000 tons valued at 175 million euros are harvested annually.

(Writing by Jacob Comenetz; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Man tried to hire prostitute for his son, 14...

Reuters

Fri May 15, 2009 LONDON (Reuters) - A man who tried to hire a prostitute to take his 14-year-old son's virginity as a present was spared jail by a court on Friday.

The Polish national took the boy out in his car and allowed him to pick out the prostitute, who was standing at the side of the road in the red-light district of Nottingham.

But the 42-year-old father was arrested because the teenager had chosen an undercover police officer, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was handed a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for a year, after he admitted a charge of trying to solicit a woman to have sex with a child, the Press Association reported.

The court heard that the father, who came to Britain eight years ago, was arrested last July during an undercover operation by the city's vice squad.

Prosecutor Adrian Harris said the man and his son had approached the undercover officer whose code name was Sarah and beckoned her over .

He asked "Sarah" how much it would cost for her to have sex with his son and they agreed on a 20 pound fee. However, when the car pulled over, the man was arrested by plainclothes police officers.

"The boy said that they had driven past the girl and his dad pointed to her and said 'will she do?'" Harris said.

"He said 'yes' and they had turned round. He said his dad did this because he was still a virgin and he was taking care of that for him."

Judge Jonathan Teare said he would spare the father jail because of his excellent character and that he believed he did not mean any harm to his son.

"You have a duty of care to your son and that is to look after his moral welfare, not as you might think to break him in to the ways of sex through a prostitute," he said.

The court was told the boy would continue to live with his father.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Cash flies out of convertible on motorway.....

Reuters

Thu May 14, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - A man lost 23,000 euros ($31,180) to the wind when an envelope with the money he had stuck in the passenger seat pocket of his convertible blew away during a test drive in northern Germany.

The cash -- in 500, 200, and 100 euro notes -- fluttered across the motorway in the midst of speeding traffic near the city of Hanover, police said.

The man, 23, contacted police immediately, who then blocked the motorway in both directions for nearly half an hour. Eight police officers assisted the man in retrieving his notes and were able to recover 20,000 euros.

"The remaining 3,000 euros have not been found," a police spokeswoman said, but warned treasure hunters of searching for any bills and keeping them, saying that was illegal.

(Reporting by Jacob Comenetz

Exam result stolen for official's daughter...

Reuters

Wed May 13, 2009 4:47pm EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese police official has been arrested for stealing another girl's exam results and passing it off as his daughter's to ensure her a place in college, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

Competition for college places is fierce in China where stories of cheating surface every year. Students pay for leaked exam papers, smuggle in mobile phones and electronic dictionaries, or pay others to take the exam for them.

Wang Zhengrong, formerly of the Public Security Bureau in Shaodong county in the southern province of Hunan, was charged with forging and altering official documents and seals in 2004, the China Youth Daily said.

He passed off the identity information and exam results of a village girl, his daughter's classmate, as those of his daughter who had failed the National Examination for College Entrance.

The scam was uncovered when the village girl found she couldn't apply for a credit card as her ID number belonged to someone else, the newspaper said.

The story has become a hot topic on Chinese websites, infuriating many bloggers. "Did they ever think about the future of that country girl and her desperation?" one asked. "Is there any social justice in China?"

The issue eventually attracted the attention of Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu who demanded an investigation.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Miral Fahmy)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Court fines man for beheading wax Hitler...

Reuters

Tue May 12, 2009. BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court fined an unemployed man 900 euros ($1,227) Tuesday for knocking the head off a waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler in a Berlin museum.

Minutes after the Madame Tussauds museum opened in the German capital in July, the 42-year-old pushed past security staff ripped off its head. The man, an ex-policeman, said he found it inappropriate to display an exhibit showing the Nazi leader only some 500 meters from Berlin's Holocaust memorial.

The waxwork of a glum-looking Hitler in a mock bunker stirred debate in Germany even before it went on display. Critics argued it was tasteless to display a replica of the man who unleashed World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews.

Madame Tussauds said the museum avoided politics, arguing Hitler stood for a significant part of German history and his waxwork therefore had a legitimate part in the exhibition.

The restored figure was returned to the museum in September and is now displayed behind a glass wall.

About 25 workers spent about four months on the original waxwork, using more than 2,000 pictures and pieces of archive material and also guided by a model of the "Fuehrer" in the London branch of Madame Tussauds.

The wax figure has been cited as the latest in a gradual breaking down of taboos about Hitler in Germany more than 60 years after the end of the war and the Holocaust in which some six million Jews were killed.

The 2004 film "Downfall" provoked controversy as it portrayed the leader in a human light during the last days of his life. In 2007, a satire about Hitler by Swiss-born Jewish director Dani Levy was released in Germany.

It is illegal in Germany to show Nazi symbols and art glorifying Hitler.

(Reporting by Kerstin Rebien; Writing by Kerstin Gehmlich; editing by Ralph Boulton)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Woman accused of taking 500 pounds of gold from job...

Reuters

Fri May 1, 2009 New YORK (Reuters) - Call her the modern day Goldfinger. A New York woman was charged Wednesday with stealing as much as $12 million in gold bullion and jewelry over a period of six years, lifting the ill-gotten booty from her employer by concealing the stash in the lining of her pocketbook.

The district attorney for New York City's borough of Queens said Teresa Tambunting, 50, was arraigned Wednesday on charges of first-degree grand larceny and first-degree criminal possession of stolen property from Jacmel Jewelry Inc.

"The defendant is accused of establishing a virtual mining operation ... which siphoned off millions of dollars worth of the precious metal from her employer," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

In January, an inventory audit conducted at Jacmel revealed that nearly 850 pounds (386 kg) of gold merchandise worth about $12 million was unaccounted for, Brown's statement added.

After an investigation was initiated, Tambunting returned to Jacmel a suitcase containing 66 pounds (30 kg) of gold. On February 13, an additional 448 pounds (204 kg) of gold was recovered from Tambunting's residence, the DA said.

Jack Rahmey, Jacmel's president, declined to comment.

Spot gold traded at around $890 an ounce Thursday.

(Reporting by Frank Tang; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

50-year-old divorces child bride?...

Reuters

Thu Apr 30, 2009. JEDDAH (Reuters) - A 50-year old Saudi man has agreed to divorce his 9-year-old bride, media reported on Thursday, after the marriage drew international criticism.

The decision, reported by newspapers Alwatan and Al-Riyadh, came after months of court hearings, criticism from the United Nations and an international media frenzy about Saudi Arabia's human rights practices.

"This is a good step and I think the man did it because he was in a lot of pressure from everyone," Wajeha Al-Huaider, founder of the Group for Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, told Reuters by telephone.

Al-Huaider, who campaigned for the child, said she hoped the pressure generated by the case would eventually lead to a law banning child marriages.

The child's mother, who opposed the marriage which took place when the girl was 8 years old, took the case to court last year. The court in the small town of Onaiza upheld the marriage on condition that the husband did not consummate it until the girl reached puberty.

In Saudi Arabia's patriarchal society, which applies an austere version of Sunni Islam, fathers have the right to decide whom their daughters marry.

"Islam does not specify an age for the marriage contract. The contract is one thing and the consummation of marriage is another," Ahmed Al Modi, an Islamic scholar and writer, told Reuters.

In the case of the Onaiza child bride he said the judge could not order a divorce because the marriage contract was carried out according to established rules for marriage, which include the approval of the father.

"When the child is under age the father can approve the marriage contract but as soon as the child reaches puberty she can object to the marriage," Al Modi said, emphasising that it was merely a contract, signed to "secure her future."

He explained that in such cases the child usually remained in her parents' custody and her husband would be able to visit her. But he would not be permitted to live with her or consummate the marriage until she had reached puberty.

Discussion about a legal age for marriage in Saudi Arabia took off after a senior Saudi cleric, Sheikh Mohsen al-Obaikan, was quoted in a local newspaper recently saying that girls under 18 years of age should not be allowed to marry.

Many clerics in Saudi Arabia, including the Kingdom's chief cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, endorse the practice of young girls marrying.

The Onaiza case attracted international criticism.

"Irrespective of circumstances or the legal framework, the marriage of a child is a violation of that child's rights," UNICEF's chief, Ann Veneman, said earlier this month.

Al Modi said Saudi Arabia was falling behind in the issue of child marriage.

"Egypt assigned a legal age for marriage in 1975, now we have started to awaken," he said, adding that Arab countries like Jordon Syria, Lebanon and Egypt had already assigned a legal age for marriage.

(Reporting by Asma Alsharif; editing by Erica Billingham and Richard Balmforth)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Windows 7 RC1 made available for download...

Tech News on ZDNet By David Meyer ZDNet.co.uk

Apr 30, 2009 7:34:33 Microsoft made the first release candidate of Windows 7 available for free download on Thursday. In an unprecedented move for the company, the software will run on a user's PC for more than a year.

Windows 7 RC1 can be downloaded now by MSDN, TechBeta and TechNet subscribers, and the general public will be able to download it on May 5. There is no limit to how many copies can be downloaded. The software will run until June 1, 2010, in what a Microsoft marketing manager described to ZDNet UK as a "try before you buy" scenario.

"There is no cap on the amount of downloads [of Windows 7 RC1]," Laurence Painell said in a prebriefing session on Wednesday. "However, we only recommend that people with a reasonable amount of IT knowledge use it."

Windows 7, the successor to Vista, brings new features such as multitouch interaction, a redesigned taskbar at the bottom of the desktop and an integrated search feature that allows the user to search across the client PC and corporate network at once. Power management has also been improved, as Microsoft has been keen to focus Windows 7 on portable computing.

When Windows 7 went into beta in January, an executive from the company told ZDNet UK that the beta version was "feature complete". However, Painell revealed on Wednesday that two features present in the beta — a built-in Bluetooth audio driver and the ability to have a guest account — have been dropped from the release candidate.

Painell could not explain why Windows 7 would not automatically include a Bluetooth audio driver. He suggested, however, that the omission of the guest-account feature was because Microsoft "has not seen a huge amount of uptake of it".

The omission of another feature — the ability to have thumbdrives or any media other than optical disks autorun — was announced by Microsoft on Tuesday. The company said this decision had been taken in the light of recent malware, such as the Conficker virus, that uses USB memory sticks as an attack vector.

Asked how this would affect, by way of example, Linux distributions that are designed to run from flash drives, Painell said that users "could still run that distribution from an optical disk".

The RC1 also has new features not found in the beta version, such as the ability to stream media between PCs in a Slingbox-like fashion. Another addition — that of an XP virtual machine built into the Professional and Ultimate version of Windows 7 — was announced by Microsoft on Friday.

Painell said an XP application running on Windows 7 would "look like an XP application, but you won't need a virtual PC interface running around it". He added that those applications would be able to share the clipboard and documents folder with their Windows 7 host.

Driver compatibility

It is not clear how Windows 7's XP virtual machines will handle the issue of driver compatibility. Microsoft has also conceded that there will not be 100 percent compatibility between all XP applications and Windows 7's virtual machines, and has asked software vendors and customers to test such applications in the VMs, providing feedback to Microsoft before the operating system's final release.

Painell told ZDNet UK that small businesses — the target audience for the XP virtual machines — would have to install applications to each virtual machine, without the ability to centrally install and control such applications from the server level.

Enterprise customers will be encouraged to use Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) to centrally administer their XP virtual machines. However, Microsoft said on Wednesday that the updated version of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), which will come out within three months of Windows 7's general release, will include only a beta version of MED-V.

Asked why Microsoft was introducing XP virtual machines on business versions of Windows 7, Painell said the VMs were designed to bridge compatibility issues with software. He said this may be useful where the software vendor had gone out of business, the software was bespoke, or the customer had "not purchased the most recent version" of the software.

Microsoft expects that 90 percent or more of applications and hardware that function on Vista will work on Windows 7, Painell said.

The cheapest version of Windows 7 will be the Starter Edition, which Painell said was "an entry-level edition for netbooks only". He added, however, that "any version of Windows 7 will work on a netbook with good experiences".

The Starter Edition limits the number of concurrently running applications to just three. Painell said this would "get the most out of the hardware provided" and would allow manufacturers to "differentiate their offerings".

He pointed out that an antivirus application, which tends to run constantly, would not count as one of the three running applications. In addition, multiple instances of the same application will count as one.

Final release candidate

Microsoft expects RC1 to be the only release candidate for Windows 7, Painell said. He gave no details on the final release date other than confirming the company's current estimate that it will be generally available no later than January 2010.

Gartner research director Annette Jump told ZDNet UK on Thursday that she expected the final version of Windows 7 to arrive in the third quarter of this year, possibly shipping to manufacturers even earlier. Microsoft's decision to allow users to try out the release candidate until June next year would encourage them to move to Windows 7, she said.

"In the past, very few users for Windows would upgrade on their PC," Jump said. "For Mac OS, it's a different picture — a much higher percentage of users upgrade on their machines. Microsoft is possibly trying to encourage people to do that and, with the new user interface, for many consumers it will be quite appealing."

Jump praised the XP mode in Windows 7, saying it showed Microsoft was obviously learning from the mistakes it made with Vista, where there were "major application-compatibility issues".

"I think that feature will be very helpful for business buyers, in terms of trying to encourage them to move to Windows 7 faster," she said.

The analyst said the delay in a final release for the updated MED-V would be unlikely to affect most enterprise customers, as businesses would probably not deploy Windows 7 until 12 to 18 months after it had been released.

Jump predicted, however, that the three-applications restriction in the Starter Edition would dramatically limit the usage of that version. "Personally, I only see the Starter Edition on mini-notebooks being used for education and in very selected emerging markets," she said.

On the subject of Windows 7's lack of a guest-account feature, Jump said this feature was becoming decreasingly popular because more people are carrying around notebook computers, meaning they are less likely to need to use someone else's PC.

This article was originally posted on ZDNet UK.

NBN company details hard to find...

News - Communications - ZDNet Australia Renai LeMay, ZDNet.com.au

30 April 2009 06:52. Details of the company established to bring the Federal Government's $43 billion broadband vision to life remained unavailable this week, despite government assurances it had been registered.

ASIC does not appear to have a record of a company by the name the minister mentioned

In a speech on Tuesday to the National Press Club in Canberra, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the company had been "established", with a search to kick off shortly to find its chief executive. He named the company in associated speech notes as the "National Broadband Network Company".

A spokesperson for Conroy later said the company was incorporated with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on 8 April "under the normal processes", although they were not able to provide further details and have not (at the time of print) disclosed the associated Australian Company Number (ACN).

Broad searches by the opposition and ZDNet.com.au of ASIC's database and the Australian Business Register for the company's registration details have not been successful in finding the company's details.

"Senator Conroy clearly stated that the National Broadband Network Company has been established on behalf of Australian taxpayers; the onus is on him to now provide some further details," Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin said.

Minchin questioned whether the company had a constitution and whether any directors had been named. "ASIC does not appear to have a record of a company by the name the minister mentioned, so at this stage perhaps it is just a number, a broadband company with no name," he added.

It is possible the company could have been registered using a temporary name that did not include any reference to "broadband", "NBN" or any other search terms, as it has not yet been formally named. It could have also simply been registered with a number.

"Matters such as the appointment of company board and executive, as well as the formal naming of the company will be considered in the coming weeks and months," Conroy's spokesperson said.

The news comes as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was in Tasmania this week, to discuss among other things the imminent roll-out of the NBN in the state with Premier David Bartlett. The state and Rudd's government are locked in negotiations regarding the implementation. However, speaking with journalists, Rudd did not provide any concrete details about the government's NBN plans in Tasmania.

"I cannot give you the month nor the day," he said. "But it will be in the second half of the year."

Swiss canton bans nude hiking...

Reuters By Josie Cox

Mon Apr 27, 2009 APPENZELL, Switzerland (Reuters) - Hikers will no longer be able to stroll naked through the idylic Alpine countryside of Appenzell Innerrhoden after the conservative Swiss canton banned nude walking there.

Appenzell Innerrhoden has become hugely popular for naked ramblers due to its tranquil, picture-perfect meadows and valleys. But the hordes offended Appenzellers' sensitivities and they voted Sunday to order them to cover up.

"It's ridiculous that Appenzell is getting an international reputation for such a despicable habit," said Peter Schmid, who turned up bearing the canton's traditional long sword to vote against nude hiking at the annual open-air Landsgemeinde.

The Landsgemeide is a popular assembly that takes place in Appenzell town on the last Sunday of April. Participants vote by raising hands to decide on local issues, a privilege reserved to men only until women were admitted in 1990.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 voters, many wearing traditional robes, turned up at this year's Landsgemeinde.

The canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden started earlier this year to take steps to rein in what the local justice and police department called "immoral habits."

In February, the cantonal council began levying naked hikers on-the-spot fines. But this seemed to backfire, raising Appenzell's international profile as a haven for naked hikers.

DANGEROUS HABIT

Naked hiking has become popular in countries like France and Germany, with supporters praising the liberating feeling of being able to roam freed from clothes in nature.

"There are naked hikers in France and Germany too," Edith Zweifel of the Swiss tourism board told Reuters. "But Switzerland is a lot more conservative and very traditional."

Detractors say the practice, against which the Appenzell canton will now impose a 200 Swiss franc fine, presents risks.

Swiss trekking clothing and equipment manufacturer Mammut deems the practice unsafe and irresponsible.

Mammut spokeswoman Katharina Habermann said exposing certain delicate areas of the body to the sun's UV-rays was dangerous.

Supporters say the rewards for those who dare to bare are worth the effort.

"Those who have already experienced walking nude through the damp mist, lying in the sun, swimming in the water and feeling the wind on your naked skin, know how liberating it is to move around with no clothes on," Alice Haller, president of the Swiss Naturists Organization, wrote in a public letter.

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Lebanese told not to kiss in anti-swine flu drive...

Reuters

Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:01pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Swine flu has not yet hit Lebanon but is threatening a national custom.

Lebanese should stop greeting each other with kisses to the cheek, Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh told a news conference on Tuesday and called to explain measures to tackle the potential spread of the deadly strain.

"If you visit someone, don't exchange kisses... Let's stop the social kissing habit," Khalifeh said. Lebanese have long greeted each other with three kisses to the cheek.

Other measures include keeping school children with flu at home and avoiding travel to countries where the virus has appeared. The new strain of swine flu has killed up to 149 people in Mexico. Israel, which borders Lebanon to the south, on Tuesday confirmed a case of the virus.

(Reporting by Nadim Ladki, editing by Paul Casciato)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.

Karate expert kills two over lice infection...

Reuters

Mon Apr 13, 2009.MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian karate expert has been charged with beating to death a 61-year-old woman and her son, whom he accused of infecting his wife with lice, an investigator said Friday.

The drunk 26-year-old burst into a neighboring room in his hostel Tuesday and used karate moves to kill the pair, state investigator Eduard Abdullin said by telephone from Kazan, a city 700 km (430 miles) east of Moscow.

"He literally beat them to death with his hands and feet," Abdullin said. "The family were poor and drank a lot. He blamed them for infecting his wife and the entire corridor with lice."

The 58-year-old husband of the dead woman was also badly beaten, but survived.

The suspect, who studied karate for seven years, faces life in prison if convicted, Abdullin added.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved.

Skeleton found in tree 29 years after suicide...

Reuters

Tue Apr 7, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - The skeleton of a German retiree who tied himself to the top of a tree and shot himself to death nearly 30 years ago has been found by a hiker.

German police in the southern town of Landshut said on Monday the 69-year-old man disappeared in 1980 and had been classified as missing.

An 18-year-old hiker discovered a bone in the forest last week and brought it to police. They searched the area and spotted the skeleton hanging about 11 meters up, near the top of the spruce tree.

"After searching the area we found the skeleton up in the tree with the pistol hanging on a rope next to it," police spokesman Leonard Mayer said. Police were able to identify the man through DNA testing and an artificial hip.

(Reporting by Franziska Scheven; Editing by Farah Master) '

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Woman divorces husband for cleaning too much...

Reuters

Thu Apr 2, 2009 BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman has divorced her husband because she was fed up with him cleaning all the time.

German media reported the wife got through 15 years of marriage putting up with the man's penchant for doing household chores, tidying up and rearranging the furniture.

But she ran out of patience when he knocked down and rebuilt a wall at their home when it got dirty, Christian Kropp, court judge in the central town of Sondershausen, said on Thursday.

"I'd never had anyone seek a divorce for this," he said.

(Reporting by Franziska Scheven; editing by Myra MacDonald)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserve

Playboy TV fined over explicit content....

Reuters

Thu Apr 2, 2009 LONDON (Reuters) - British media regulator Ofcom has fined Playboy TV 22,500 pounds ($32,990) for airing sexually explicit images in breach of broadcasting rules. It said on Thursday the free-to-air channel Playboy One had broadcast unencrypted raunchy, and what the watchdog deemed offensive, material until September 2008.

Ofcom had received five complaints relating to seven late night programs broadcast between September and December 2007.

Shows investigated included: "Sexy Girls Next Door," "Sexy Urban Legends" and "Adult Stars Close-up."

"Depending on the individual breach, the explicitness, strength and, or, sustained nature of the sexual content and language was unacceptable for broadcast on an unencrypted free-to-air channel," Ofcom ruled.

It said Playboy TV UK/Benelux Ltd had failed to ensure adequate protection for viewers from "potentially harmful or offensive material."

(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi; Editing by Steve Addison and Paul Casciato)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

World's best job? Add sex, scandal for Web marketing dream...

Reuters:

Thu Apr 2, 2009. SYDNEY (Reuters) - Tropical island. Eleven competitors. Osama bin Laden. Porn scandal. Prize? Best job in the world.

This is not a reality TV show, but a contest playing for real in Australia's Queensland state in an advertising campaign that highlights how more firms are tapping the power of social media such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, for marketing.

Tourism Queensland hit on a winner with a global campaign to lure visitors to the Great Barrier Reef by asking people to submit online video applications for the 'best job in the world' - caretaker of a tropical island for six months.

As news of the job advert on www.islandreefjob.com spread, 34,684 people from more than 200 countries submitted 60-second video applications, which everyone could see, for the $150,000 position on Hamilton Island.

'It was just a great idea that captures everyone's imagination as they're sitting in a dreary office and it's raining outside,' said Australian marketing analyst Tim Burrowes, editor of media and marketing website Mumbrella.

'It was already very PR and publicity-friendly but because of all the promotion through videos and file sharing in social media the idea exploded into something much bigger.'

Along the way Tourism Queenland, a government body, received a hoax application from Osama bin Laden, and admitted it concocted the story of a woman in a YouTube video who tattooed an advert for the Great Barrier Reef on her arm to win the position.

By: Tourism Queensland

Very elderly man caught with huge marijuana haul...

Reuters

Wed Apr 1, 2009 (Reuters) - Nigeria's anti-narcotics agency confiscated 6.5 tones of marijuana Tuesday from the home of a man who claimed to be 114 years old.

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) said it had found 254 sacks of cannabis at the home of Sulaiman Adebayo in Ogun state, north of the commercial capital Lagos.

"The quantity of drugs suggests a large scale involvement ... There is more to the case than Pa Sulaiman," NDLEA chairman Ahmadu Giade said in a statement.

Adebayo, who said he had been a farmer all his life, told police he thought the sacks contained rice.

The agency said he claimed to have attended the inauguration of a famous hall in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun state, in 1895 as a small boy and said he was 114 years old. There was no independent confirmation of his age.

Marijuana is grown illegally on large-scale farms in many parts of Nigeria and is smuggled across its porous borders to neighboring countries.

Lax customs control and corruption have also made Africa's top oil and gas producer a conduit for hard drugs from Asia and Latin America into Western markets.

(Reporting by Tume Ahemba; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Seven Network cuts lesbian kiss after backlash over Home and Away TV show

The Australian By Amanda Meade

Saturday, March 28, 2009. THE Seven Network has censored a lesbian kissing scene in its family soapie Home and Away after a viewer backlash.

Since the lesbian story-line began two weeks ago, 100,000 viewers have turned off and complaints have been flooding in. The now-muted kiss will air on Tuesday night.

The decision was taken to play down the scene after complaints from conservative lobby groups in media reports were followed by complaints from viewers. Producers were forced to cut some of the more intimate close-up images of policewoman Charlie Buckton and deckhand Joey Collins sharing a passionate kiss after dancing together on a boat. The original scene, played by actors Esther Anderson and Katie Bell, was no more intimate than any kiss shared by a heterosexual couple, sources said.

Some mothers contacted the network to say they did not want their children exposed to same-sex relationships in a family show. Home and Away is screened at 7pm and is rated PG.

The show is popular internationally, especially with younger viewers, and attracts an Australian audience of more than one million every weeknight.

The story-line might have slipped under the radar had Melbourne's Herald Sun not written a report this month headlined "Gay TV for kids".

It made international news, including one story in Britain's The Sun headlined "Home and Away lesbian fury".

Seven's current affairs show Today Tonight did a story that featured a conservative lobby group called Pro-Family Perspectives complaining about a so-called gay agenda.

Media commentator David Knox from the TV Tonight website said yesterday the PG classification allowed for adult themes with limitations and did not discriminate between gay and straight content.

"It's sad that in 2009 a kiss is considered more threatening to advertisers and family values than stalkers, serial killers and kidnappers, all of which sustain Summer Bay story-lines on a regular basis," Knox said.

Angela Conway of Pro Family Perspectives accused the show of developing "quite sexualised plot lines". Seven drama chief John Holmes declined to comment.

No. 1 lady detective series?

Reuters

<--- Author Alexander McCall Smith (R) answers questions with (L to R) actress Jill Scott and executive producer Harvey Weinstein during the HBO panel for "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Los Angeles January 9, 2009

REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Fri Mar 27, 2009 NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" is the first TV series on U.S. cable network HBO with an African female lead character, but don't expect to see much about the continent's crises and conflicts.

"Many outside writers, when writing about African countries concentrate on the bleak, and on what's wrong," said Alexander McCall Smith, the author of the best-selling novels of the same name that the series is based on.

"Obviously, there are problems in many of these sub-Saharan African countries, but there are positive aspects and this series celebrates that," he said.

The series' main character is Precious Ramotswe, the owner of Botswana's only, and thus No. 1, female-owned detective agency, played by Grammy winning R&B singer Jill Scott.

According to McCall Smith, the television series, like the novels it is based on, is not really about sleuth work.

"These books aren't really about detectives, they're just about the lives of this woman and her friends," McCall Smith said. "It's a very good vehicle for talking about society and lots of different people because all sorts of people are coming through the door with their problems."

Much of the action occurs out of Ramotswe's agency in a sleepy shopping center on the outskirts of Botswana's capital, Gaborone, giving a glimpse of Botswanan life, and providing a decidedly lighter feel from traditional edgy HBO dramas, such as "The Sopranos" and "The Wire."

Filmed in Botswana, the dialogue is peppered with words in Setswana, a local language, herds of cattle make frequent appearances on screen, and early on Ramotswe has an encounter with a crocodile.

The series has already premiered on the BBC and the response has been largely positive, although some people don't like the cheerful nature of the series, McCall Smith said.

"That is often the criticism which is levied against it by people who don't know Africa at all who are so used to getting this negative picture," McCall Smith said. "They feel that anything which doesn't concentrate on that isn't realistic."

In fact, several reviews did take the view that the Africa of the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" is too simplistic.

Although Newsweek found the absence of "wailing babies with swollen bellies" refreshing, a review in the Guardian called the series "cloying" and the "No. 1 reason to change the channel."

But it is the constant focus on the negative in Africa that is unrealistic, according to McCall Smith.

"That's actually treating African countries as being something quite different, mythologized in a sense, made abnormal. Which actually really is, I think, wrong," he said.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Doina Chiacu)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Woman arrested after shackling self to husband...

Tue Mar 24, 2009 8:33pm EDT. HARTFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - An American woman handcuffed herself to her sleeping husband in an apparent attempt to resolve an argument, but police ended up breaking into their home and charging her with assault and other crimes, authorities said on Tuesday.

Helen Sun, 37, handcuffed herself to Robert Drawbough as he slept in their Fairfield, Connecticut, home on Monday in an effort to reconcile their differences, police said.

But when Drawbough called police with his cell phone, Sun responded by biting him on the arms and torso, police said.

Police officers heard screams when they arrived at the home and forced their way in, said Chris Lyddy of the Fairfield Police Department. Sun had also changed the locks on their bedroom door.
Sun was charged with third-degree assault, disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment and unlawful restraint. She was released on a $400 bond.

"I can't say I've ever seen a scenario quite like this," said Lyddy.

(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Telstra ups cable to 100Mbps, dwarfs NBN speeds...

PC World Darren Pauli (Computerworld

10/03/2009 10:15:00 Sol Trujillo - CEO Telstra Telstra today announced sweeping upgrades to its national Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC), or cable, network which will see 1.8 million Melbourne homes receive Internet access speeds of up to 100Mpbs by years' end.

The upgrades will improve the telco's HFC network in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, and dwarf the government's proposed minimum 12Mpbs speeds for the National Broadband Network (NBN).

The speed of Telstra's Melbourne network will more than triple thanks to a rollout of the DOCSIS 3.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) at a total upgrade cost of $300 million.

Outgoing Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said the latest DOCSIS version has been successfully rolled out overseas.

“Late last year, Telstra foreshadowed that we would continue our investment in our cable network and, with the DOCSIS 3.0 software now well established internationally, we have the ability to dramatically increase speeds into Australian homes,” Trujillo said in a statement.

“Now we are going to [have] super-fast broadband with download speeds among the highest in the world.”

Some analysts considered the DOCSIS technology a spare card to allow Telstra to tighten competition between its HFC network and the looming NBN.

The telco said further upgrades could push the network to speeds of 200Mpbs. In Melbourne, network speeds of 30Mpbs go to 1.8 million homes and 17Mpbs to some 700,000, the company said.

Trujillo last month said the company's is unperturbed by it's exclusion from the $4.7 billion taxpayer-funded NBN and said it will build on its Next G, HFC and fibre backhaul networks.

Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie told reporters last month in Sydney its exclusion from the NBN will not jeopardise its market position.

“It would be nice if this country got off the political kick and got on to the innovation investment concept and understand that there are a lot of ways to skin a cat,” McGauchie said.

He claimed the NBN will have no impact on Telstra's financial guidance and will present “major challenges for the operator” in terms of technology, logistics and legal challenges.

Trujillo said in a presentation made at the Citigroup Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications conference in the US the company will lose $1-$2 billion in future revenue.

The national HFC network reaches 2.5 million homes and the DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades will start immediately

New, cheaper female condom wins U.S. approval...

Health Reuters By Susan Heavey

Wed Mar 11, 2009 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Female Health Co has won U.S. approval to market its newer, less expensive female condom, which could help it win over American women as well as boost use in developing countries, the company said on Wednesday.

The company's FC2 Female Condom is made with a softer material for quieter use. Its original version failed to gain a foothold in the male condom-dominated U.S. marketplace in part because it was noisy to use, as well as more expensive.

Its new condom is made using a less costly process that company officials have said should lower its shelf price, as well as allow health organizations to distribute more of the birth control device to women in Africa and other areas where AIDS is a major concern.

The approval "is an important development in efforts to deliver affordable access to woman-initiated HIV prevention in the United States and around the world," Female Health Co's strategic adviser Mary Ann Leeper said in a statement.

The Chicago-based company's shares rose as much as 30 percent after the news. Its shares closed up 22 percent, or 68 cents, at $3.73 on the American Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

Female Health's initial Female Condom was approved in 1993 to prevent pregnancy, as well as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), but has not been widely used in the United States, which made up just 10 percent of its 34.7 million unit sales in 2008.

The product competes with other birth control methods, most notably male condoms, which can cost as little as 50 cents each amid a variety of competing brands. The original Female Condom costs between $2.80 and $4 apiece.

While it is not clear what the retail price will be for FC2, Leeper told Reuters it will cost as little as 60 cents when sold directly to health organizations and government agencies. That will help more groups offer more condoms in the hope of preventing HIV/AIDS and other STDs, she added.

"Having a less expensive Female Condom increases the probability of women who need it having access to it," she said.

Despite the FDA's approval it could be next year or longer before U.S. consumers can buy the new condom in stores.

Female Health is still looking for a pharmaceutical or device company to help it market and distribute FC2, including possibly a male condom maker, Leeper said.

"We're just gearing up," she said. "Our wish is to find a partner who has the capacity to do a good job in getting the message out to the consumer and who has the commitment to women's health."

In the meantime, the original version will be available until inventory is sold and the FC2 will be available to U.S. women through local health agencies and groups such as Planned Parenthood, Leeper said.

Diana Zuckerman, head of the National Research Center for Women & Families, said the FC2 is unlikely to be a big seller in the United States but could win over more users elsewhere.

"I am not assuming that the Female Condom is going to be hugely popular in this country because there are so many other alternatives. I think it's going to be extremely popular in other countries where there are not affordable options," she said.

The FDA's approval allows the United States Agency for International Development and other U.S. organizations to buy the FC2 Female Condom and distribute it to global programs that try to prevent the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, the company said.

Dozens of health advocacy groups had urged U.S. approval of the new version, which the company said is already distributed in 77 other countries.

Only condoms have been proven effective at preventing STDs, but "not everybody wants to use male condoms," said Serra Sippel, executive director for the Center for Health and Gender Equity.

"(Male) condoms have been stigmatized in a lot of areas," she said, adding that female versions give "women another option in negotiating safer sex with their partners or husbands."

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernard Orr, Andre Grenon, Richard Chang)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Merck to buy Schering-Plough for $41.1 billion...

Reuters By Edward Tobin and Ransdell Pierson

Mon Mar 9, 2009. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merck & Co Inc said on Monday it would acquire Schering-Plough Corp for $41.1 billion, uniting the makers of cholesterol drugs Zetia and Vytorin in the second megadeal for big pharma in weeks.

The deal between the New Jersey drugmakers comes amid a harsher climate for pharmaceutical companies, as they have failed to produce enough new drugs to replace old ones, and as the new Obama Administration prepares healthcare reforms that could pressure drug prices.

And it landed the same day Roche Holding AG moved closer to its long sought-after purchase of the remaining stake in Genentech Inc that it doesn't already own, with a source telling Reuters the two sides are discussing a deal for about $46.7 billion.

Schering-Plough's earnings and share price have deteriorated over the past year due to a plunge in sales of Vytorin and Zetia, its biggest products, even as several of its most promising drugs move into very costly late-stage trials.

Merck, which has seen profits and shares battered by Vytorin's decline and other setbacks, has deeper pockets and would help fund research on Schering-Plough products, including promising blood clot and hepatitis C drugs.

"The deal gives Merck more breathing room," said Mehta Partners analyst Viren Mehta, as it girds for patent expirations in 2012 on its $4-billion-a-year Singulair asthma drug and by next year for its Cozaar blood-pressure treatment.

The deal, which many analysts have forecast for years given the Vytorin partnership between Merck and Schering-Plough, follows Pfizer Inc's $68 billion planned purchase of Wyeth. Sanford Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson said it was surprising that Wyeth and Schering-Plough agreed to sell, given their depressed stocks and their robust long-term outlooks.

"What could this imply about how pharma company management teams view the future of the industry?" Anderson said.

The transaction offers a premium of 34 percent for Schering-Plough shareholders based on Friday's closing price and will generate savings of $3.5 billion annually after 2011.

Merck and Schering-Plough, which announced significant job cuts last fall, said about 15 percent of their combined workforce would be eliminated under the deal, with most job cuts to take place outside the United States.

"It seems somewhat inevitable," analyst Jeffrey Holford of Jefferies in London said of the deal, referring to an industry coping with generic rivals as cost cuts have run their course.

"The industry needs to shrink because there is just not the same market for branded pharmaceuticals going forward as there has been over the last 10 years. There is overcapacity and (Merck and Schering-Plough) need to take each other's capacity out of the market."

It will also double the number of experimental medicines Merck has in late-stage development to 18 and diversify Merck's lineup of medicines to include cardiovascular, respiratory, oncology, neuroscience and infectious disease.

Schering-Plough shareholders will receive 0.5767 shares of Merck and $10.50 in cash for each of their shares, valuing each share of Schering-Plough at $23.61.

Schering-Plough investors have reason to feel short-changed, said Caris & Co analyst David Moskowitz.

"I think it should be at least $12 billion to $15 billion higher," he said. "I don't think investors will be happy until the price comes up to the high-$20's or $30 (per share)."

Schering-Plough shares rose 14 percent to $20.25 before the market opened, and was up $2.52, or 14.3 percent, at $20.15 late Monday afternoon. Merck hit a 14-year low of $20.10, before trading down 7.8 percent at $20.96.

Merck's 4.75 percent notes due in 2015 traded weaker, with spreads widening to 149 basis points over Treasuries, yielding 4.4 percent. On March 4, in their last notable trade, the spread was 124 basis points with a yield of 4.2 percent, according MarketAxess data.

ARTHRITIS DRUG RIGHTS IN QUESTION

A big question is whether Merck will inherit Schering-Plough's overseas rights to nearly $2 billion-a-year Remicade and newer arthritis drug golimumab.

Analysts expressed surprise at Merck's confidence it will not have to hand back the arthritis drug rights to Johnson & Johnson under a change of control clause.

Merck, which structured its takeover as a reverse merger that analysts said may give it some leverage to protect the arthritis drugs, said it had not discussed the matter with J&J and that the high-stakes issue would be settled by binding arbitration if J&J throws up a roadblock.

"It is theoretically possible that J&J comes in and bids for Schering-Plough, because the fit between Schering-Plough and J&J would be a good one," said Sanford Bernstein analyst Tim Anderson.

J&J officials declined to comment.

The deal is composed of $9.8 billion in cash, $8.5 billion in financing provided by JPMorgan Chase & Co and $22.8 billion in Merck stock.

Merck Chief Executive Richard Clark, who investors initially considered a caretaker CEO when he took the helm in 2005, will lead the combined company, with Merck shareholders owning a 68 percent stake.

Schering-Plough CEO Fred Hassan, who turned around Pharmacia Corp before selling it to Pfizer Inc, said his plans after the Schering-Plough deal is completed are unclear.

Merck, which vowed to maintain its dividend, expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter and add modestly to operating earnings in the first full year following completion and "significantly" after that.

The combined 2008 revenue of the two companies totaled $47 billion and Merck believes it will maintain its current credit ratings.

Bernstein's Anderson cautioned that such a big company, with combined revenues close to Pfizer's, could have a much harder time delivering earnings growth.

J.P. Morgan acted as financial adviser and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP acted as legal adviser to Merck. Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisers and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz acted as legal adviser to Schering-Plough.

(Reporting by Edward Tobin, Ransdell Pierson and Walden Siew in New York and Ben Hirschler in London, Sam Cage in Zurich; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Andre Grenon, Richard Chang)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkey plane crashes in Amsterdam

BBC NEWS
Page last updated at 10:22 GMT, Wednesday, 25 February 2009

Turkey plane crashes in Amsterdam

A Turkish Airlines plane has crashed on landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport.

The plane, with 135 passengers on board, crashed near the A9 motorway and suffered significant damage.

It was Flight 1951 and was a 737-800 aircraft, the airport said.

There were no confirmed reports of casualties. Reuters news agency, quoting Turkish media, said at least 50 people survived unhurt.

Schiphol is the fifth-largest passenger airport in Europe.

Parents of test tube babies seeking out siblings...

Reuters By Nick Vinocur

Tue Feb 24, 2009. LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Parents who conceived with donated sperm or eggs are increasingly seeking other families who used the same genetic material, sometimes locating as many as 55 "siblings" for their offspring, a study found on Tuesday. The findings published in the journal Human Reproduction raise the issue of reusing a single donor's sample numerous times -- something policy makers may soon need to address, the researchers said.

In some cases, parents found more than 10 donor siblings, and one parent found 55 brothers and sisters for their child, Tabitha Freeman of the Center for Family Research at the University of Cambridge in Britain, who led the study, said.

More than 90 percent of parents included in the study came from the United States, where guidelines regulating the use of sperm or eggs are looser than in Britain, she added.

"The study is exposing that some clinics are using the same donor for a lot of families," Freeman said in a telephone interview.

"Guidelines suggest this should not be the case but they are not strictly enforced" in the United States, she added.

The findings have implications for policy governing a donor's right to anonymity, and could spur legislation limiting how many times genetic material from one donor can be used as a fertility aid, the researchers said.
This is especially true as an increasing number of women are waiting longer to start having children, creating more demand for in vitro fertilization to help them conceive.

"Our most important finding is that the practice of donor conception is creating new family forms," Freeman said. "These family forms are based on genetic links between families with children conceived by the same donor."

Freeman and colleagues recruited 791 parents through the Donor Sibling Registry, a U.S-based group which allows families who used the same genetic material to find each other.

The parents, who had signed up to a service which matches donor samples to parents, were able to discover the identity of their children's "donor siblings" -- other children who shared their genes but were born to different families.

"One very striking finding is that family members in this sample formed close links based on notions of family and kinship," Dr Freeman said. "For example the mothers experienced maternal feelings toward their children's donor siblings."

Since 2005 in the United Kingdom, donors have had to agree that they are willing to be identified by parents who used the sample or their children when they turn 18 -- a reversal of previous legislation which guaranteed anonymity.

The study authors said further research was required to assess the long-term psychological impact for donor offspring of contacting and meeting many of their donor siblings.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

City forbids bright clothes for public servants...

Reuters

Mon Feb 23, 2009. BEIJING (Reuters) - Public servants in the gritty central Chinese city of Zhengzhou should not sport "unnatural hair styles" or wear clothes that are too colorful, according to new city regulations.

From now on, Zhengzhou city officials should make sure their clothing matches and stay away from bright color schemes, the regulations specify.

Neatness and order are the order of the day.

"Don't just dress any which way," the regulations order.

Zhengzhou, the capital of land-locked Henan province, is better known for its agricultural futures exchange and railway station than for its sense of style.

But no specific breach triggered the latest set of rules, which are "designed to improve the image of our public servants," an official at Zhengzhou's central government office told Reuters on Monday.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Lucy Hornby)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Microsoft says no new cost cuts, shares hit 11-year low...

Technology Reuters By Jim Finkle

Tue Feb 24, 2009. BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp outlined plans to offset revenue declines as the PC market shifts to low-cost netbooks, but it failed to announce more cost cuts, sending its shares to an 11-year low.

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told an analysts' meeting in New York on Tuesday that Microsoft will offer robust versions of its yet-to-be-released Windows 7 operating software for netbooks, as the company looks to boost revenue from these hot-selling, low-cost computers.

But Microsoft shares fell more than 3 percent after Ballmer quashed the hopes of some investors for accelerated cost cuts. Microsoft had announced plans to lay off 5,000 workers on January 22 as part of a plan to save $1.5 billion in annual costs.

"I don't think it makes sense for us to come back and say, 'Could we take out another $2 billion in costs?'" Ballmer said at the analysts' meeting.

Avian Securities Jeff Gaggin said investors were disappointed with Ballmer's decision to hold off on further cost cutting measures, and that he chose not to reassure them that the board will maintain the company's current dividend.

"There was a lot left to interpretation," Gaggin said.

Microsoft, which a month ago blamed netbooks for weaker-than-expected quarterly profits, said it is planning to ship a low-end version of Windows 7 for netbooks, and make it easy for users to upgrade to more expensive editions.

"We will have high market share on netbooks," Ballmer said as he painted a grim outlook for the economy.

"I often think of this as an economic reset. It's not a recession from which you recover," he added.

Ballmer also said he still wants to team up with Yahoo Inc to compete against Internet search giant Google Inc, though he is not interested in buying Yahoo.

He said he hopes to discuss a possible search partnership with Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, and added that he expects Google to start competing with the Windows operating system by offering a version of its Android operating system for laptop computers.

Google launched Android last year as an operating system for smart phones.

NETBOOK TREND

Microsoft had partly blamed last quarter's profit shortfall on a shift in personal computer sales to netbooks from full-featured machines.

Analysts say the low pricing of netbook software is hurting Windows profits, and estimate that Microsoft only reaps about half the revenue from PC makers for each netbook sold, compared to what it earns on sales of more expensive laptops.

Still, Ballmer said he disagreed that growing netbook sales represent "downside" for his company.

Microsoft's goal is to boost its average revenue per netbook by persuading users to pay to upgrade low-end versions of the software to gain features included with more expensive ones in full-featured PCs.

The software maker will encourage that by limiting the functionality of low-end versions of the new Windows 7. As an example, Ballmer said Microsoft will restrict the number of programs that a user can run at once.

Netbook sales took off last year as the economy weakened, making their low pricing of $200 to $400 more attractive to consumers. Ballmer said he expects netbook sales to continue to grow as cash-strapped buyers avoid big-ticket, discretionary purchases.

"There is certainly going to be an economic effect on PC sales," he said. "We cannot control it. It will affect our revenue."

Most netbooks are now shipped with a stripped down copy of an older generation of Microsoft's operating system, Windows XP, because those machines don't have the computing resources needed to run Windows Vista, the latest version.

Cross Research analyst Richard Williams estimates that Microsoft gets about $35 for each netbook sold with Windows.

Analysts expect Windows 7 to be released before this year's holiday shopping season. Microsoft has declined to give a specific release date, only saying it will be out by January 2010.

Microsoft shares fell 33 cents to $16.88, after hitting an 11-year low of $16.36.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Richard Chang)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Boy, 13, did father baby: teen mum

News.Ninemsn.com.au

The girlfriend of the 13-year-old boy labelled Britain's youngest dad has rejected claims he did not father her child, publicly declaring "I lost my virginity to him".

Chantelle Steadman, 15, last week gave birth to a girl, Maisie, amid intense media scrutiny — which was compounded when two other teenage boys claimed they could be the father.

Her boyfriend of two years, 13-year-old Alfie Patten, has agreed to take a paternity test he believes will prove beyond doubt that he is the father.

Chantelle has spoken for the first time to back up Alfie's paternity claim and hit back at accusations she had sex with the other boys.

"I love Alfie — I lost my virginity to him," UK newspaper The Sun quoted her as saying.

"We decided to start a physical relationship because we love each other. There has been no one else. Other stupid boys are lying."

Chantelle said Alfie was just 12 when she told him they were expecting a baby.

Since the birth, Alfie has been a doting father who can’t bear to be separated from his daughter, she said.

Matters were complicated yesterday when Tyler Barker, 14, and Richard Goodsell, 16, came forward with claims they had also slept with Chantelle and could have fathered the baby.

The elder boy said even his mother and friends were telling him Maisie "had [his] eyes".

But Chantelle's mother Penny Steadman, 38, joined with her daughter in dismissing the two boys' claims and insisted her daughter had only slept with Alfie.

She said she initially had no idea Chantelle and Alfie had a sexual relationship.

"I spoke to them both one night and asked, 'Are you sleeping together?'" she was quoted as saying.

"Their reply was, 'No'. We had no reason not to believe them."

"Loose" women to send knickers to Hindu group

By Rina Chandran

Fri Feb 13, 2009. MUMBAI (Reuters) - Thousands of Indians, many fuming over a recent assault on women in a pub, are vowing to fill bars on Valentine's Day and send cartons of pink panties to a radical Hindu group that has branded outgoing females immoral.

A "consortium of pub-going, loose and forward women," founded by four Indian women on social networking website Facebook has, in a matter of days, attracted more than 25,000 members with over 2,000 posts about the self-appointed moral police.

The women said their mission was to go bar-hopping on February 14 and send hundreds of pink knickers to Sri Ram Sena, the militant Hindu group that has said pubs are for men, and that women should stay at home and cook for their husbands.

The same Hindu group was blamed for attacking women in a bar in the southern city of Mangalore in January, an incident that sparked a national debate about women's freedoms in India.

Collection centers have sprung up in several cities, with volunteers calling for bright pink old-fashioned knickers as gifts to the Sri Ram Sena as a mark of defiance.

"Girl power! Go girls, go. Show Ram Sena... who's the boss," reads one post on Facebook from Larkins Dsouza.

There is a separate campaign to "Walk to the nearest pub and buy a drink (and) raise a toast," that has found supporters from Toronto to Bangkok to Sydney, with even teetotalers saying they will get a drink on Saturday to show solidarity.

"Though I don't promote smoking or drinking for both sexes, we definitely don't need hooligans telling us what to do and what not. Best of luck!," reads one post from Iftehar Ahsan.

There are more heated discussion threads as well that range from the limits of independence to religion and politics, reflecting the struggle facing a country that has long battled to balance its deep-rooted traditions with rapid modernization.

Growing numbers of young and independent urban women have become an easy target for religious fundamentalists and aging politicians trying to force traditional mores on an increasingly liberal, Western outlook.

Not to be outdone, the Sri Ram Sena, which has cautioned shops and pubs in southern Karnataka state against marking Valentine's Day, has promised to gift pink saris to women and marry off canoodling couples to make them "respectable."

(Reporting by Rina Chandran; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Miral Fahmy)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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Windows 7 SKUs unveiled, six versions to be released...

TechSpot News By Justin Mann, TechSpot.com

Published: February 3, 2009 For all that Microsoft has learned throughout the launch of Vista, they apparently have forgotten how confused their customers were by the tidal-wave of different versions of the OS.

The upcoming release of Windows 7 will be no different than Vista in terms of SKUs, with at least three different consumer versions and three different business versions. The naming scheme is virtually the same, beginning with Windows 7 Starter and moving up through Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.

Feature-by-feature, these different versions seem nearly identical to Vista's supported specs. The Starter edition supports only three concurrent applications, Aero doesn't appear until Home Premium and the ability to join a domain first makes an appearance in the Professional edition.

Microsoft has confirmed that these SKUs are real for Windows 7. More will no doubt be added as the server versions of Windows 7 eventually make their way out. There's certainly a need for specialized versions of Windows, a version aimed at home users and a version aimed at business desktops, but does Microsoft really want to flood the market with six or more different versions of the same OS?

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Google Earth users can dive in the sea, fly to Mars...

Technology Reuters

Tue Feb 3, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has updated its online map of the world to add the more than two- thirds of the planet that lies underwater and provide a way to view changes to glaciers and other geography over time.

The new edition of Google Earth, unveiled in San Francisco on Monday with an appearance by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, was trumpeted as a powerful way to raise awareness about environmental issues such as global warming.

Using photographs and video of fish and other marine life from partners including the National Geographic Society, Google Ocean allows Web surfers to dive under waves and glide over the sea floor.

It was touted as the latest fruit of Google's freewheeling research culture, even as questions swirl about the company's commitment to funding projects that do not contribute to the bottom line right away.

John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Maps, said Google Ocean is less focused on creating immediate revenue than helping to "build support for our perception as a leader."

The opportunities to generate revenue from Google Earth will come later, he added.

Google said last week its sales in the fourth quarter rose 18 percent year-over-year to $5.7 billion, even as the U.S. economic recession and slowing advertising spending stunted growth at rivals such as Yahoo Inc.

In developing Google Ocean, the company used sonar data from the U.S. Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and others to create a visual representation of the topographic landscape hidden beneath the sea.

Google, headquartered in Mountain View, California, also unveiled a three-dimensional map of Mars on Monday based on satellite images, as well as panoramic photos taken from the Mars Rovers.

And a new "timeline" feature on Google Earth allows a person to view a succession of satellite images of the same location over the years, tracking changes to the environment.

Vice President of Search Products Marissa Mayer said the new Google Earth features are a validation of the company's famous 20 percent program, which allows engineers to devote one-fifth of their time to pet projects that may or may not eventually become full-fledged Google products.

"We think some of the most interesting and innovative work we do comes though bottom's up initiatives," Mayer said.

Google has pulled the plug on some experimental projects in recent months, prompting questions about whether the company will continue to give its engineers the same free rein in a tough economy.

In 2008, Google spent roughly $2.8 billion on research and development, or 12.8 percent of total revenue.

Hanke said the company may be taking a closer look at projects that occupy more than 20 percent of a worker's time, but he noted the new Ocean feature was created by very few people and is "invaluable" to the company.

Google shares closed up 0.6 percent at $340.57 on the Nasdaq on Monday.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Breast cancer mutation raises prostate risks in men | Health | Reuters

Reuters

Thu Jan 29, 2009 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The so-called breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 can raise the risk that a man who develops prostate cancer will get an aggressive form of the disease, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Certain mutations in the genes indicated a man was at risk of more aggressive cancer and should be treated right away, the team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University said.

Their study of 2,000 Jewish men shows the gene mutation, more common among Jews of European descent, might help show which men have a slow-growing tumor that may not need immediate treatment.

"One of the biggest problems with early-stage prostate cancer is being able to distinguish between tumors with the potential to become aggressive and those that may persist for many years without enlarging or spreading," said Dr. Robert Burk, who led the study.

He said Ashkenazi Jewish men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer might want to consider getting tested for the mutations in BRCA2 and BRCA1.

"Our large study shows conclusively that prostate cancer patients with either the BRCA2 gene mutation or the BRCA1-185delAG mutation are more susceptible to aggressive cancers than people without that mutation," Burk added in a statement.

For their study, Burk and colleagues tested 979 men with prostate cancer and 1,251 men without it for BRCA1 and BRCA2, both rare genetic mutations known in women to raise the risk of breast and ovarian cancers considerably.

Men with any one of three mutations in the two genes were not any more likely to be in the prostate cancer group. But, if they did have one, their cancer was much more likely to be of an aggressive type, Burk's team reported in Clinical Cancer Research.

Prostate cancer is the second-leading cancer killer of men, killing 221,000 every year globally, with 679,000 new cases diagnosed.

It is easily cured in early stages with surgery or radiation and some men have such slow-growing tumors that they are advised not to have any treatment at all. But distinguishing between the two is tricky and doctors welcome any new tools they can use to guide them.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Michael Kahn and Jackie Frank)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved