Four new cases of SARS-like virus found in Saudi, Qatar

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The U.N. health agency issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.

On Friday it said in an outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and one of the new patients had died.

“The additional cases have been identified as part of the enhanced surveillance in Saudi Arabia (3 cases, including 1 death) and Qatar (1 case),” the WHO said.

The new virus is known as a coronavirus and shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a 10th of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

Among the symptoms in the confirmed cases are fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.

Of the six laboratory-confirmed cases reported to WHO, four cases, including the two deaths, are from Saudi Arabia and two cases are from Qatar.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency, which helped to identify the new virus in September, said the newly reported case from Qatar was initially treated in October in Qatar but then transferred to Germany, and has now been discharged.

Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections, such as flu, travelling in airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The WHO said investigations were being conducted into the likely source of the infection, the method of exposure, and the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

“Close contacts of the recently confirmed cases are being identified and followed-up,” it said.

It added that so far, only the two most recently confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia were epidemiologically linked – they were from the same family, living in the same household.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that these two cases presented with similar symptoms of illness. One died and the other recovered,” the WHO’s statement said.

Two other members of the same family also suffered similar symptoms of illness, and one died and the other is recovering. But the WHO said laboratory test results on the fatality were still pending, and the person who is recovering had tested negative for the new coronavirus.

The virus has no formal name, but scientists at the British and Dutch laboratories where it was identified refer to it as “London1_novel CoV 2012″.

The WHO urged all its member states to continue surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections.

“Until more information is available, it is prudent to consider that the virus is likely more widely distributed than just the two countries which have identified cases,” it said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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How to Game Whole Foods

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The food giant has its shopping experience down to a science. This holiday season, game the grocer to your favor.

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Bank of Canada keeps “over time” condition on rate hike

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Tim Lane repeated on Wednesday the central bank‘s message that interest rate increases will likely be needed, but only over time.

The “over time” phrase was introduced in the bank’s key guidance in its rate statement on October 23 as a way of signaling that while the next rate move is likely to be up, such a move was less imminent than it had been.

“Over time, some gradual withdrawal of monetary policy stimulus will likely be required, consistent with achieving the inflation-control target,” Lane said, according to a prepared presentation he was giving on Wednesday in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Another part of the presentation, which was posted on the central bank’s website, noted: “The Canadian economy continues to operate with a small amount of excess supply.”

The Bank of Canada is alone in the Group of Seven leading industrialized countries in signaling an intention to raise rates despite expectations of modest and unbalanced global growth.

Lane forecast “very robust growth” in emerging markets, stagnation in Europe and significant dampening of U.S. growth due to fiscal consolidation. He said Canada‘s real gross domestic product was still expected to grow at a moderate pace.

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; and Peter Galloway)

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]

Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]

That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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Stone Soup for Thanksgiving: understanding bird disease through citizen science

Windowkill. Photo: Susan Spear

When somebody opens their front door to pick up the morning newspaper and sees a dead bird below their hedge, they get curious for answers. As soon as they stoop down for a closer look, an Indiana Jones adventure unfolds within the confines of their backyard. Was it poison, disease, predation, starvation, old age? Is this a fluke or widespread plague? Perhaps dead birds like this one are widely scattered across a country. But, if so, what sort of scientific method could find answers to what happened to them all? The stone soup method. In my favorite version of the folk story “Stone Soup,” a group of monks traveling through the war-torn countryside sit in the center of a quiet village and boil a stone in a large pot of water. Soon curiosity wins over the initial distrust and skepticism of impoverished villagers as each, in turn, are enticed to add a vegetable or spice. Through cooperation and sharing, the entire village feasts on delicious, nutritious soup. When my colleagues and I carry out research using citizen science methods, we are like the monks boiling stone soup. Instead of a pot, we have a big blank spreadsheet and curious folk are enticed to each add their observations, ultimately creating a robust database with observations from across a continent. Through citizen science I study healthy birds, but several of my colleagues focus on the sick and dying ones. This week in PLOS ONE, a research team led by Becki Lawson, a veterinarian and ecologist, reported a new strain of avian pox spreading in a common backyard bird in Great Britain. Citizen science participation was pivotal to tracking the outbreak, unraveling its mysteries, and informing localized studies. The new strain of avian pox entered Great Britain and spread in one family of birds, the Paridae. The Paridae include chickadees in North America, their European counterparts are various types of tits, most notably the Great Tit. By piecing together reports from citizen science participants, the team was able to track the spread of pox, starting in southeast England, moving to central England, and then into Wales in less than five years. Avian pox is not for the squeamish, so this study is a testament to what citizen scientists are willing to do. Birds with avian pox grow red, yellow, or gray wart-like lesions, particularly around the eyes, beak, and legs. The new strain makes really large lesions, so severe that they leave the bird unable to feed itself or look out for predators. The pox spreads from individual to individual through direct contact, indirect contact (like touching the same bird feeder), or through a vector that bites, like mosquitoes. There is no way to treat wild birds medically. When an outbreak occurs, people are advised to remove bird feeders to prevent birds from congregating. Also, the study is a reminder for people to periodically clean and sanitize wild bird feeders, just as you would with pets. There are numerous causes of bird deaths in Great Britain. I get the shivers from the names, such as the bacteria like salmonellosis, colibacillosis, Suttonella ornithocola, and Chlamydia psittaci, viruses like pox and fringilla papilloma, and parasites, like trichomonosis, cnemidocoptiasis, and syngamiasis. People have found birds with all of these infectious diseases in over 60 species since 2005 because thousands of individuals have followed hygienic protocols to pick up, package, and submit over 2,500 dead birds to designated veterinary labs for post mortem exams. The veterinary labs participate in the Garden Bird Health initiative (GBHi), a highly collaborative research project to investigate causes of sickness and death in British garden birds. Researchers at the Zoological Society of London collate information from two citizen science projects. First, they receive ad hoc reports, typically through the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Second, Garden BirdWatch, run by the British Trust for Ornithology, formed a systematic surveillance system in which participants provided information every week throughout the year (not just when sick or dead birds are found). Over the past few year Brits were alert and tracking the spread of this pox virus. Two years ago they also followed an epidemic of parasitic finch trichomonosis that caused a significant decline in British greenfinch populations, in research also led by Becki Lawson. The parasitic epidemic spread from the UK to the rest of Europe. The current viral pox epidemic turned the tables: this epidemic is likely invading the UK from Europe. Great Tits don’t migrate, so the new strain of pox had to arrive some other way. Working in coordination with the national efforts, ornithologists from the University of Oxford confirmed that the Great Tit was more susceptible than other species. Although the avian pox has severe effects on individual birds, in particular lowering the odds of survival for chicks and juvenile birds, researchers do not anticipate population declines as occurred with the greenfinch. In the US, citizen scientists are helping study disease and death in birds, too. The House Finch Disease Survey, which is a project by Andr? Dhondt, my colleague (and supervisor) at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has tracked an epidemic of conjunctivitis, spread by bacteria. Like pox, people can typically see the symptoms of conjunctivitis in house finches, mainly red swollen and crusty eyes, like pink eye in our children. In the Pacific Northwest, hundreds of people help monitor marine health as they take long walks on the beach. They have counted thousands of dead (beached) sea birds each year and submitted their observations to my colleague Julia Parrish through the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST). These baseline numbers are important. Unless people are paying attention, we won’t notice if there is a sudden uptick in deaths, or be able to properly estimate the impact of a catastrophe, such as an oil spill. There are plenty of misconceptions about citizen science, largely attributed to its dual achievements: public engagement and academic research. Is the purpose of making stone soup to teach people about cooperation or to produce a good meal? The intent doesn’t matter because the stone soup method achieves both. Likewise, citizen science can woo everyday people into falling in love with science AND co-create knowledge that an individual scientist could not acquire alone. References: Lawson, B., Lachish S., Colvile, K.M., Durrant, C., Peck, K.M., Toms, M.P., Sheldon, B.C., Cunningham, A.A. Emergence of a novel avian pox disease in British tit species. PLoS ONE Lachish, S., Bonsall, M.B., Lawson, B., Cunningham, A.A., Sheldon, B.C. Individual and population-level impacts of an emerging poxvirus disease in a wild population of great tits. PLoS ONE Lachish, S., Lawson, B., Cunningham, A.A., Sheldon, B.C. Epidemiology of the emergent disease Paridae pox in an intensively studied wild bird population. PLoS ONE

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Serious About Free Markets? Prove It

On Friday the Republican Study Committee, a policy shop for congressional Republicans, published a memo on how to fix copyright law. By Saturday afternoon the group’s executive director had pulled the memo, which had evidently failed to approach the subject with “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” This is Washington’s way of saying that an interest group hit the roof, and indeed, Ars Technica reports that lobbyists from the “content industry”—Hollywood and recording companies—pressured the group to renounce the memo.

Copyright being in fact broken, you can still read copies of the memo online. It lays out what copyright reform advocates have been saying for years. Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. This, along with punitive laws on copyright violation, hinders creativity and innovation. These facts aren’t new. What’s new is the tone. Derek Khanna, the memo’s author, writes like an unashamed free marketeer, and in doing so manages to latch on to a larger point: Laws that help businesses often harm markets. From the memo:

Today’s legal regime of copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value. We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system. (Emphasis in the original.)

Radical stuff. There’s no one in Washington to lobby for industries that don’t exist yet, and ever so briefly, Khanna and the Republican Study Committee stepped into that breach. Then they stepped back, to gather more facts and viewpoints. Here’s one: Pro-business and pro-market are not the same thing. The most pleasant place for a business is not elbows-out in the middle of a free market, but sitting alone, atop a fat monopoly. Ask your local cable provider. The larger a business gets, the more it has to protect from the companies and industries that might follow it with something better or cheaper. And the best way to protect what you have is to have it written into law.

Real markets, with real competition, are most helpful to newcomers. Small businesses and new industries create new value. Once created, they, too, move to Washington to protect it. Witness the growth of Google (GOOG) and Facebook’s (FB) lobbying operations in the Capitol. Khanna describes extended copyright protection as rent-seeking—in his words, “non-productive behavior that sucks economic productivity and potential from the overall economy.” What’s true of Hollywood and the recording industry could be said of any established industry.

Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View, points out that larger companies can lobby for special exemptions in the tax code. This creates complexity in the tax code, which punishes smaller businesses that can’t pay for tax lawyers and don’t have anyone’s buttonhole on Capitol Hill. Zingales prefers simple regulations and simple taxes, which are harder for lobbyists to game and easier for democracies to understand. He sees this as a bipartisan problem. The left is inclined toward more regulation, and the right is pro-business, rather than pro-markets.

The direction Khanna was headed—a defense of open, competitive markets at the expense of existing businesses—is still wide open space, claimed by no party. This summer, conservatives such as Timothy Carney at the Examiner and Yuval Levin at National Review urged Mitt Romney to back markets, not businesses. But he chose not to, even though he, in his day, disrupted existing markets of his own. Some enterprising Republican can still do it. Derek Khanna in 2016! He’s young. Maybe VP.

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Greek PM presses for deal on loan

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece has reacted with dismay to the European Union‘s failure to agree to release vital rescue loan funds for the debt-ridden country, with the prime minister warning it was not just Greece’s future that hangs in the balance.

The delay prolongs uncertainty over the future of Greece, which faces a messy default that would threaten the entire euro currency used by 17 EU nations.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras stressed that Greece has done what its creditors from the EU and International Monetary Fund required. “Our partners, along with the IMF, also must do what they have committed to doing,” he said.

He said that “it is not just the future of our country, but the stability of the entire eurozone” that depend on the success of negotiations in coming days.

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J.R.R. Tolkien estate sues Warner Bros. over gambling, games

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The estate of “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien and publisher HarperCollins have filed an $ 80 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. studios over the licensing of characters and plots in online and gambling games derived from the films.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Monday, alleges that Warner Bros. and its subsidiary New Line Cinema – which own the merchandising rights to the “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” brands – infringed on copyrights by licensing to casino slot machines, online gambling, games and downloads.

Tolkien‘s estate accuses Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc., of “infringing conduct.”

“Not only does the production of gambling games patently exceed the scope of defendants’ rights, but this infringing conduct has outraged Tolkien’s devoted fan base, causing irreparable harm to Tolkien’s legacy and reputation and the valuable goodwill generated by his works,” the lawsuit stated.

The suit claimed Warner Bros. earned millions of dollars from legal merchandise licensing revenue related to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy of films, which have grossed nearly $ 3 billion at the global box office.

The estate of the late English author and HarperCollins, a division of News Corp., are asking for at least $ 80 million in damages.

Representatives for Warner Bros., Tolkien’s estate and HarperCollins were not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit comes a week ahead of the New Zealand premiere of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first of a new trilogy of films returning to Tolkien’s world of elves, goblins and wizards of Middle Earth, based on the “Lord of the Rings” prequel novel “The Hobbit.”

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Mohammad Zargham)

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UN says an end to AIDS in sight

LONDON (Reuters) – A United Nations report said on Tuesday that eradicating AIDS was in sight, owing to better access to drugs that can both treat and prevent the incurable human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes the disease.

An aim to eventually end the worldwide AIDS epidemic is not “merely visionary” but “entirely feasible”, the report said.

Success in fighting the disease in the past decade has allowed the “foundation to be laid for the eventual end of AIDS” by cutting the death toll and helping stabilise the number of people infected in the pandemic, UNAIDS said its annual report.

Some 34 million people had HIV at the end of 2011.

Worldwide, the number of people newly infected with the disease, which can be transmitted via blood and by semen during sex, is falling. At 2.5 million, the number of new infections in 2011 was 20 percent lower than in 2001.

Deaths from AIDS fell to 1.7 million in 2011, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005 and from 1.8 million in 2010.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most severely affected region with almost one in every 20 adults infected, nearly 25 times the rate in Asia, there are also almost 5 million people with HIV in South, South-East and East Asia combined.

“Although AIDS remains one of the world’s most serious health challenges, global solidarity in the AIDS response during the past decade continues to generate extraordinary health gains,” the report said.

It said this was due to “historic success” in bringing HIV programmes to scale, combined with the emergence of new combination drugs to prevent people from becoming HIV infected and from dying from AIDS.

Since 1995, AIDS drug treatment – known as antiretroviral therapy – has saved 14 million life-years in poorer countries, including 9 million in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.

Some 8 million people were being treated with AIDS drugs by the end of 2011, a 20-fold increase since 2003. The U.N. has set a target to raise that to 15 million people by 2015.

Scientific studies published in recent years have shown that getting timely treatment to those with HIV can also cut the number of people who become newly infected with the virus.

UNAIDS said the sharpest declines in new HIV infections since 2001 were in the Caribbean and in sub-Saharan Africa – where new infections were down 25 percent in a decade.

Despite this, sub-Saharan Africa still accounted for 71 percent of people newly infected in 2011, underscoring the need to boost HIV prevention efforts in the region, UNAIDS said.

HIV trends are a concern in other regions also, it said.

Since 2001, the number of new HIV infections in the Middle East and North Africa was up more than 35 percent from 27,000 to 37,000, it said, and evidence suggests HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia began increasing in the late 2000s after being relatively stable for several years.

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