More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

___

AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

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Clinton: Facebook post about Benghazi attack not hard “evidence”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday a Facebook post in which an Islamic militant group claimed credit for a recent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible.

“Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be,” Clinton said during an appearance with the Brazilian foreign minister at the State Department.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that an official email showed officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit.

The email, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mentioned that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

That and two other emails also made available showed how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

Clinton, responding to a reporter’s question about the emails, noted that a State Department investigation was under way.

“The independent accountability review board is already hard at work looking at everything, not cherry picking one story here or one document there, but looking at everything – which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach for something as complex as an attack like this,” she said.

“We will find out what happened. We will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about the emails, noted that Ansar al-Sharia had later denied responsibility for the attack.

“This was an open-source, unclassified email about a posting on a Facebook site. I would also note I think that within a few hours, that organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact — that’s why there’s an investigation under way,” he told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One to Iowa.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts were cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

MISSIVES FROM LIBYA

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack. “Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well,” it said.

The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”

A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Andrew Quinn; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Storey)

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European fashion buyers look to Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A model struts the runway wearing a flowing newspaper print gown in this African megacity where international high-end fashion buyers are looking beyond the country’s bleak headlines to uncover the next new thing.

There have been steady efforts to turn Lagos, a city with a fearsome reputation, into a fashion destination. They reached new heights at the MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week that ran from Oct. 24 to 27 and drew European high-fashion brands such as the United Kingdom’s Selfridges & Co. and Munich-based MyTheresa.com to Nigeria for the first time.

Ituen Basi’s newspaper inspired Spring/Summer 2013 collection was among 39 collections spotlighted at the city’s latest major fashion week. The Nigerian’s collection evoked fun and glamour through its use of print and color — characteristics which have come to define the vibrant local fashion scene.

With local brands seeking wider platforms and international retailers hungry for novelty, designers and buyers see opportunities for collaboration.

“There’s something about the fresh, the unknown, the possibility of seeing a new brand springing forth into the limelight. … These are becoming interesting to people outside Nigeria,” said Omoyemi Akerele, the fashion week’s founder and creative director.

An encouraging response to African-inspired designs by top Western labels gives buyers confidence that designs straight from the continent will also sell.

“Over the past few seasons, there’s been a strong trend for print,” said Bruno Barba, the brand public relations manager at Selfridges. “If you look at the collection of Burberry inspired by Africa last year; there was also Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith. … They’ve made that inspiration quite mainstream now. So, for us, it was interesting to take that trend and take it from its roots in Africa.”

Online retailer MyTheresa.com, which ships top designers’ clothes including Miu Miu, Givenchy, Lanvin and Isabel Meron to clients in 120 different countries, is also looking for products in Nigeria that will sell well. The company hopes that will set it apart from the competition in a fast-paced industry.

“For me, Nigeria represents a fun individualism,” the company’s buying director Justin O’Shea said. He also said that MyTheresa.com was looking to work closely with designers and adapt products for their clientele if needed.

Previously, several Nigerian designers have helped put the West African nation on the global fashion map.

Deola Sagoe has gained recognition from U.S. Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley and Oprah Winfrey. London-based Duro Olowu is considered one of Michelle Obama’s favorite designers. Maki Oh has dressed American singer Solange Knowles and Hollywood actress Leelee Sobieski from her Lagos workshop. Jewel By Lisa, who has also dressed celebrities, designed limited edition BlackBerry mobile phone skins and jeweled cases for Canadian manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd.

While looking to Nigeria could bring much-needed novelty to clothes targeted to Western audiences, it could also endear a Nigerian clientele. Though the majority of the nation lives on less than $ 2 a day, the nation’s wealthy elite — including upstart business owners, oil industry executives and corrupt politicians — have a growing appetite for top-shelf brands. Luxury goods stores are increasingly opening in a country where seemingly gratuitous displays of wealth are the norm.

“Nigerians are part of our Top 10 highest-spending foreign customers,” Barba said. “It felt right for us to try and find a response that would appeal to them, excite them and be over and above what they already buy, almost as a recognition that they’re an important part of our consumer base.”

___

Online:

Lagos Fashion & Design Week: www.lagosfashionanddesignweek.com

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GSK raises bet on AIDS drug with new Shionogi deal

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline has raised its bet on a promising drug for HIV/AIDS by redrawing a deal with Japan’s Shionogi which gives it a much bigger economic interest in the new product.

Dolutegravir, a once-daily drug that has performed strongly in clinical trials, is seen by analysts as a potential multi-billion-dollar-a-year seller and a strong competitor to treatments from market leader Gilead Sciences.

The drug belongs to a novel class known as integrase inhibitors that block the virus causing AIDS from entering cells.

Under the new agreement Shionogi will take a 10 percent stake in Viiv Healthcare – an HIV drug joint venture set up in 2009 between Britain’s biggest drugmaker and Pfizer – in exchange for its rights to dolutegravir.

Previously income from the medicine would have been shared 50:50 between ViiV and Shionogi, which analysts calculate would have given GSK only around a 40 percent interest in the drug, after taking account of Pfizer’s minority stake in ViiV.

Now GSK’s economic interest will be between 60 and 66 percent, its chief strategy officer David Redfern told Reuters.

“It’s an affirmation of our belief in dolutegravir as a potential important medicine in HIV,” he said in an interview on Monday. “We’re taking in house, in this case through ViiV, what we deem to be an important growth asset.”

Dolutegravir is scheduled to be submitted for regulatory approval in the United States and Europe by end of this year. Industry analysts expect a launch by late 2013, with sales ramping up to around $ 1 billion by 2016, according to consensus estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma.

Redfern said the new arrangement was expected to dilute GSK’s earnings by around 1 pence a share in 2013 and 2014 but should boost earnings thereafter. Analysts currently expect earnings of just over 120p a share in 2013.

The decision fits with the group’s strategy of increasing investment in its new drug pipeline and echoes a move made in July to take full control of new lupus drug Benlysta by buying Human Genome Sciences for $ 3 billion.

GSK, like its rivals, has suffered a string of patent expiries in recent years. Despite coming through this so-called “patent cliff” earlier than most other drug firms, it is still struggling to grow sales.

Results for the third quarter, due on Wednesday, are expected to show another difficult period of trading, weighed on by price cuts in Europe and weak vaccine sales.

IPO FOR VIIV?

Dolutegravir, which is designed for combination with existing drugs to control HIV, should help GSK rejuvenate its HIV/AIDS business – an area it used to dominate but where it has fallen behind rivals, notably U.S.-based Gilead.

Shionogi, meanwhile, will save money it would otherwise have had to spend in the run-up to the drug’s launch. In exchange for ceding some of its interest in the drug it will gain one Viiv board seat and receive royalties of 15 percent to 19 percent on sales of dolutegravir and future related products.

After the deal, which takes effect from October 31, GSK will hold 76.5 percent in the venture, while Pfizer will hold 13.5 percent. GSK currently holds 85 percent of ViiV and Pfizer 15 percent.

There has been speculation that ViiV might be spun off at some point through an initial public share offer. Redfern, who is also chairman of ViiV, said the new arrangement made this neither more nor less likely.

“I wouldn’t rule anything in or out, but for the foreseeable future we are very comfortable with where ViiV is,” he said.

The creation of ViiV three years ago marked an unusual drug industry collaboration because of the way in which it pooled GSK and Pfizer’s HIV/AIDS operations into a new business.

The current structure, however, could easily form a stepping stone to a fully independent business, which some analysts believe might be better placed to take on Gilead.

(Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Greg Mahlich)

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TSX may open lower; volumes seen down on storm

(Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index looked set to open lower on Monday, hurt by uncertainty prevailing over Spanish bailout and lackluster global corporate earnings.

Trading volumes are expected to be thin with U.S. stock markets closed because of the huge and potentially damaging hurricane expected to hit the U.S. East Coast later in the day.

A spokeswoman for TMX Group Ltd said the Canadian stock markets it operates would remain open.

TOP STORIES

* Progress Energy Resources Corp. : Malaysian state oil firm Petronas will renew a bid for the gas producer, Petronas sources said, seeking to assure the Canadian government that the C$ 5.17 billion deal will benefit the country.

* Hurricane Sandy, a mammoth storm menacing the East Coast, took aim at the most densely populated U.S. region on Monday, forcing hundreds of thousands to seek higher ground, halting public transport and closing schools, businesses and government departments.

* Drugmaker Pfizer Inc and power companies Entergy Corp and NRG Energy Inc said they would postpone releasing quarterly earnings results because of the hurricane approaching the U.S. Northeast.

* TransCanada Corp has formed a joint venture with Phoenix Energy Holdings Ltd to develop a C$ 3 billion pipeline project in Northern Alberta.

* European Union governments will debate a cut of at least 50 billion euros this week as the starting point for negotiations on the bloc’s proposed 1 trillion-euro long-term budget, a source familiar with the issue said.

* Swiss bank UBS AG is expected to cut up to 10,000 jobs, or 16 percent of its workforce, as it contends with shrinking revenue and rising capital requirements, a source familiar with the matter said, in what would be one of the largest layoffs by a bank since the financial crisis.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

* Canada stock futures traded down 0.81 percent

* U.S. stock futures,, were down around 0.68 percent to 0.88 percent <.N>

* European shares <.FTEU3>, <.STOXX> were down <.EU>

COMMODITY PRICE MOVES

* Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB Index <.TRJCRBTR>: 296.90; fell 0.12 percent

* Gold futures: $ 1,709; fell 0.11 percent

* US crude: $ 85.55; fell 0.85 percent

* Brent crude: $ 109.28; fell 0.25 percent

* LME 3-month copper: $ 7,703; fell 1.5 percent

CANADIAN STOCKS TO WATCH

* Inmet Mining Corp. : Gold miner Petaquilla Minerals Ltd rejected the company’s revised buyout offer of C$ 130 million and said it continues to explore other strategic alternatives, including discussions with third parties regarding a potential deal. The offer was revised from its from C$ 109 million offer in September.

* Patheon Inc.: The contract drugmaker said it will buy Banner Pharmacaps, a specialty pharmaceutical business, for $ 255 million to expand its oral dosage development and manufacturing services. It also raised it revenue forecast for the year to between $ 740 million and $ 745 million.

* Wescast Industries Inc. : 75 unionized workers at a plant in Strathroy, Ontario, have gone on strike, the Canadian Auto Workers union and the auto parts maker said on Saturday. The company in a brief statement said that it had put plans in place to ensure continued supply of parts to customers.

ANALYST RECOMMENDATIONS

Following is a summary of research actions on Canadian companies reported by Reuters.

* Alamos Gold Inc. : CIBC raises price target to C$ 23 from C$ 21 on the miner’s strong cost control, production growth and increased cash flow for next year.

* DHX Media Ltd. : Canaccord Genuity starts with buy rating and sets target price of C$ 2.15 on the advantages that accrue from the acquisition of Cookie Jar which may result in more tangible growth potential.

* MacDonald Dewttwiler and Associated Ltd. : CIBC raises to sector outperformer from sector performer and raises price target to C$ 66 from C$ 54.50 after the company received anti-trust approval for the acquisition of Space Systems/Loral Inc from Loral Space and Communications Inc.

* Rogers Communications Inc. : National Bank Financial cuts to sector perform from outperform on company’s overstretched valuations following the rally after the second and third-quarter results beat.

ON THE CALENDAR

* No major Canadian economic data scheduled for release

* Major U.S. events and data includes personal income and consumption and core PCE price index

($ 1= $ 1 Canadian)

(Reporting by Chandrashekhar Modi; With additional reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)

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Lithuania opens 2nd round of national election

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Voting stations have opened in the second round of Lithuania’s parliamentary elections, with the results likely to determine whether the small East European nation continues tough austerity measures in an effort to join the euro zone.

Nearly half of Parliament’s 141 seats are at stake in single-mandate district voting, which takes place two weeks after the party-list round that failed to produce a clear favorite.

Two center-left opposition parties took the most seats and have pledged to form a new coalition government, but the ruling conservative party, which came in third, still has a chance to emerge victorious as it has candidates in over half the 67 districts where voting will be held Sunday.

Opposition parties have vowed to increase social spending and postpone tentative plans to adopt the euro in 2014.

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New York police officer charged with plan to cook, eat women

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City police officer was charged on Thursday with conspiring to kidnap, torture, cook and eat women whose names he listed in his computer.

In a criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Gilberto Valle III, 28, of Forest Hills, Queens, was charged with conspiring to cross state lines to kidnap the women and with illegally accessing a federal database.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Investigators uncovered a file on Valle’s computer containing the names and pictures of at least 100 women, and the addresses and physical descriptions of some of them, according to the complaint. It said he had undertaken surveillance of some of the women at their places of employment and their homes.

Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman, in denying Valle bail at a hearing on Thursday evening, said: “the allegations in the complaint are profoundly disturbing. I have never seen allegations similar to this in 16 years on the bench.”

Valle’s court-appointed attorney, Julia Gatto, had vigorously argued to the judge that her client, a 6-1/2 year NYPD veteran who appeared before the judge in a red T-shirt and jeans, was all talk and deserved to be released on bail.

“The best this complaint alleges is talk, just idle talk,” Gatto said. “There is no actual crossing the line from fantasy to reality, your honor.”

In an excerpt of a July online conversation with an unnamed co-conspirator, Valle is quoted in the complaint as saying:

“I can just show up at her home unannounced. It will not alert her, and I can knock her out, wait until dark and kidnap her right out of her home.”

“I was thinking of tying her body onto some kind of apparatus … cook her over a low heat, keep her alive as long as possible,” he said. The woman in question is identified only as “Victim 1.”

ONLINE FANTASY GAME?

A Manhattan federal prosecutor, Hadassa Waxman, told the judge on Thursday that Valle was as “close as he could possibly come,” short of “kidnapping a woman, drugging her, cooking her and actually eating her.”

Federal prosecutors, in announcing the charges, said Valle had created a document called “Abducting and Cooking: A Blueprint.” Valle also told an unnamed co-conspirator he would kidnap another woman for $ 5,000, they said.

“This case is all the more disturbing when you consider Valle’s position as a New York City police officer and his sworn duty to serve and protect,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

Valle, who an official said had no prior criminal record, was not charged with carrying out any of his suspected plans.

A law enforcement official involved in the investigation characterized Valle’s actions as an online “fantasy game.”

“He was titillated by it,” said the official, who is not authorized to discuss the case publicly. “It looks like he was having these fantasy conversations with people he’s talking to in foreign countries.”

Valle’s attorney, Gatto, agreed. “This was a fantasy, a sexually deviant world where people talk about unreal things,” she said.

Valle’s estranged wife contacted the FBI after discovering pornography on his computer, according to the law enforcement official, who said the couple is separated. Valle was arrested Wednesday by the FBI. He is due back in court on November7.

A spokesman for the Police Department could not be reached for comment.

(Additional Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Vicki Allen and Todd Eastham)

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Beethoven discovery gets first performance in UK

LONDON (Reuters) – A previously undiscovered musical arrangement by Ludwig van Beethoven was performed for the first time at a British university on Thursday.

The two-minute long piece is an organ harmony to the 1,000-year old Gregorian hymn “Pange Lingua”, University of Manchester Professor Barry Cooper told Reuters of the discovery he made while studying a copy of a 192-year-old Beethoven sketchbook.

“Other scholars looked at it without realizing what it was as it looks like a random collection of chords. When I looked at it I saw the series of chords and saw a tune there,” Cooper said.

“It’s a Gregorian chant that I happen to know so I realized that he’d obviously harmonized the chant and produced a new composition.”

The hymn had likely eluded other experts because the German composer had not included the words to the piece or the first line, which in a chant is usually sung unaccompanied, Cooper added.

“And Beethoven specialists tend not to be specialists in plainsong hymns and specialists in Gregorian chant don’t normally look at Beethoven sketches,” he said.

It is thought the hymn was penned for the composer’s friend Archduke Rudolph of Austria, for whom Beethoven also wrote the “Missa Solemnis”, or Mass in D, when the archduke was made an archbishop around 1820.

“The dates match up nicely: he transposed this Gregorian chant into an unusual key that fits well with his mass in D. It seems more than a coincidence,” Cooper said.

Cooper, a leading Beethoven expert, enlisted the help of a group of music students to put on the first known performance of the composition at Manchester University in northern England on Thursday afternoon.

The short hymn is significant because it marks a rare experiment into religious music for Beethoven, who died aged 57 in 1827.

“He wrote only two masses and didn’t write any simple, functional liturgical music like what we have here. It’s the first piece in this genre in his hand,” Cooper said.

“It doesn’t turn the knowledge we have about him upside down but adds a little and that is always interesting.

(Reporting by Clare Hutchison, editing by Paul Casciato)

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IBA signs $40 million U.S. cancer facility deal

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian cancer treatment equipment maker IBA said it has signed a $ 40 million deal for the installation of a treatment facility in Louisiana.

The treatment room, which will receive its first patients in early 2014, will use a system designed by Dutch group Philips, which will allow patients to select comforting ambient sound and lighting before starting the therapy.

The installation in Shreveport in northern Louisiana is the first such project to be realized with Philips, IBA said on Sunday.

(Reporting By Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters)

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Why the Yuan Is Rising

China’s currency hit a 19-year high against the U.S. dollar on Friday. Not coincidentally, on the same day the yuan rose to 6.238 against the greenback, disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai suffered his latest indignity, with the official Xinhua News Agency announcing his removal from the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp legislature. “According to the law on deputies to the NPC and to local people’s congresses,” the NPC Standing Committee said in a statement, as reported by Xinhua, “his post was terminated.”

The latest setback for Bo comes a month after he got booted from the Communist Party and is another sign China is back on track for the leadership transition set for early next month.

The yuan’s rise is related to Bo’s downfall because the uncertainty surrounding Chinese politics during the past six months has been one factor contributing to the currency’s weakness. It wasn’t that long ago that the significant pressure on the yuan was for it to go down, not up. Over the summer, China’s leaders were distracted by the Bo Xilai scandal. Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to President Hu Jintao, disappeared from public view for two weeks last month. That only added to worries that China’s leadership was too distracted to focus on economic issues.

Confusion about China’s politics came at a time when the economy was struggling and China’s exporters were feeling the heat from the global slowdown. Given that combination, “many people in the market expected significant RMB depreciation,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Bank of America (BAC), told Bloomberg Television on Oct. 18.

Now, with the trial of Bo’s wife concluded, there’s less reason to worry about what might happen when China’s leaders gather for the Communist Party congress, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 8. It’s likely everything will now proceed as scripted, with Xi taking over as president and Vice Premier Li Keqiang replacing Wen Jiabao as premier.

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is showing signs of recovery. Recent numbers for industrial production, fixed-asset investment, and retail sales have all surprised on the upside, leading some economists to say the worst is over for the world’s No. 2 economy. Growth in factory output will pick up in the final quarter of the year, putting the country on track to meet its target of 7.5 percent, Zhu Hongren, chief engineer at the Industry and Information Technology Ministry, said on Thursday.

With the political uncertainty reduced and the economic picture improving, the yuan is on the rise again. The currency has strengthened more than 2 percent against the dollar over the past two months. “Earlier this year, people’s worries about China’s economy increased, which caused a decline in yuan demand,” Steven Bell, a fund manager at London-based hedge fund GLC, told Bloomberg News on Thursday. “The trend of outflows has now reversed, and China will probably attract more inflows.”

There’s another reason the Chinese currency is on the upswing. China’s leaders know both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. have been hammering China over its currency, which they say is undervalued and hurting American exporters. Republican Mitt Romney says he would declare China a currency manipulator on Day One of a Romney administration.

Allowing the yuan to strengthen to a two-decade high against the greenback might be the Chinese government’s way to show the Americans they aren’t ignoring those concerns. The yuan’s rise “helps China head off criticism ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election,” Barclays (BCS) analysts Nick Verdi, Olivier Desbarres, and Hamish Pepper wrote in an Oct. 19 note.

Eswar Prasad, a Cornell professor and former IMF China head, argues the Chinese government has not been depressing the value of the yuan: “Right now it’s hard to make the case that China is manipulating its currency,” he told Bloomberg TV on Oct. 23. “The RMB has appreciated, and they have allowed for more flexibility.” If Romney wins, Prasad expects him not to follow through on his threat to go after China’s yuan policy on Day One of his presidency. “The currency manipulation charge is something Romney is going to have to walk back from if he is elected,” said Prasad.

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