TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index hit a one-week high on Thursday as higher commodity prices boosted mining stocks and as Research In Motion Ltd shares jumped 11 percent on growing hopes for its new devices.
The market was also supported by data that showed China’s manufacturing sector was picking up steam, a signal of increased demand for Canadian resources.
Research In Motion was up 11.1 percent at C$ 11.36 after National Bank Financial raised its price target on the stock to $ 15, citing “positive sentiment building in the industry” ahead of the launch of its BlackBerry 10 devices.
The stock played the second-biggest role of any single company in leading the market higher.
“The dominant news today is the performance of RIM,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.
“The company has had nothing but bad news over the past year, and the stock has been oversold,” he said.
At midmorning, the Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.GSPTSE> was up 63.94 points, or 0.53 percent, at 12,164. Earlier in the session, the index hit 12,171.20, its highest level since November 13.
The index’s materials sector, which includes mining stocks, rose 0.7 percent, extending gains made in the previous session on higher prices for gold and other commodities.
Miner Barrick Gold Corp was up 1.2 percent at C$ 35.04. Fertilizer producer Potash Corp gained 1.4 percent to C$ 38.77, while Silver Wheaton Corp was up 1.18 percent at C$ 36.74.
The financial sector rallied for the fifth day, with investors optimistic about quarterly results from Canadian banks, which start reporting next week. The group was up 0.4 percent. Royal Bank of Canada , the country’s biggest bank, was up 0.5 percent at C$ 59.90.
In China, data showed expansion in the manufacturing sector accelerated in November for the first time in 13 months, a sign that the pace of economic growth has revived after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.
(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by Peter Galloway)
LONDON (Reuters) – Roche has offered an olive branch to scientific critics in a bid to end a bitter row over blockbuster flu drug Tamiflu that has led to calls for a boycott of the Swiss drugmaker’s products.
Tamiflu has been approved by regulators worldwide and stockpiled by many governments in case of a global outbreak – but some researchers claim there is little evidence it works and have lobbied since 2009 for Roche to hand over all its data from clinical trials.
Sales of the drug hit close to $ 3 billion in 2009, due to the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, although they have since declined.
Roche’s pharmaceuticals head said on Thursday he had written to the Cochrane Collaboration, a non-profit group that reviews trial data to assess the value of drugs, offering to set up a multi-party advisory board to review all the Tamiflu data.
The board of experts from academia and private institutions, including Cochrane critics, would then agree on what analyses were useful in assessing Tamiflu’s public health role.
“We think that would be an appropriate, fair and transparent way of handling this debate,” Daniel O’Day said in an interview.
O’Day said complete transparency had to be balanced against the need to protect patient privacy, respect commercial sensitivity and ensure the scientific merit of any statistical analysis.
He stopped short of matching a promise from rival GlaxoSmithKline to make patient-level data from all company-sponsored clinical trials available on a routine basis.
Roche said it had not handed over the full collection of data requested by Cochrane because the group refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.
Cochrane, meanwhile, has accused Roche of stonewalling and urged a boycott of the company’s products until it publishes the missing data. Its campaign to force Roche’s hand has been backed by the respected British Medical Journal.
EU AGENCY PROMISES OPENNESS
The new attempt by Roche to break the deadlock comes as regulators and healthcare experts meet in London to discuss ways to increase transparency over clinical trials.
As Reuters reported in July, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) aims to open its data vaults to systematic scrutiny, after a ruling by the European Ombudsman that keeping data secret is not compatible with the public interest.
Guido Rasi, executive director of the EMA, told the London meeting on Thursday that the question now was “how” to publish clinical trials data not “if” it should be released.
The move puts the EMA ahead of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in terms of data transparency.
The EMA stance is also forcing drug companies to review how far they can keep information they hold on medicines under wraps.
Most companies have committed in recent years to publishing results of clinical trials, either in journals or online, but that openness has not so far extended to the raw data that lies behind those trials.
Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, however, broke ranks last month when it announced that patient-level data from its clinical trials of approved and failed drugs would be made available to other researchers.
Roche’s O’Day said his company responded to requests for such data on a case-by-case basis, provided scientists were prepared to sign confidentiality agreements if needed, but this did not mean all data should be released as a matter of course.
“To what level data will be shared proactively and constantly is something we need to discuss,” he said.
A Roche spokesman said Cochrane had acknowledged receipt of its proposal for a Tamiflu advisory board but had not given any immediate response.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Erica Billingham)
David Cameron, UK PM: “These are very important negotiations”
European Union leaders have begun talks on the bloc’s seven-year budget, with many urging cuts in line with the savings they are making nationally.
The UK said the latest EU proposals were “a step in the right direction” but “did not go far enough” and more must be done to cut spending.
Poland and its ex-communist neighbours want current spending maintained or raised. They rely heavily on EU cash.
The bargaining in Brussels will continue on Friday, or even longer.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron spent about half an hour talking to the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso.
A Downing Street statement after the meeting said Mr Cameron had stressed the importance of the UK keeping its budget rebate, worth 3.56bn euros (£2.8bn; $ 1.3bn) in 2011. The statement called the rebate “fully justified”. The Commission and some EU governments want the rebate scrapped.
The UK statement said “it was clear that there was a long way to go before we had a deal that reflected the difficult decisions being taken by member states”.
Contrasting visions
The EU Commission, which drafts EU laws, has called for an increase of 4.8% compared with the 2007-2013 budget.
Continue reading the main story
The French have threatened to use their veto if farming subsidies are reduced. Some other countries like Denmark are fighting for a rebate of their own. So every step towards the British position creates problems elsewhere.
The Germans are not far from the Van Rompuy proposal and are prepared to compromise. They are protective of their neighbour Poland and do not want to see an important ally losing out.
But, like the British, they want to see a cut in administrative costs and want to see the budget re-balanced towards projects that enhance growth and innovation with less money for farm subsidies.
If a deal is done by Friday, when the summit is due to end, it will be a major achievement. The expectation is for the meeting to run into Saturday or to collapse.
But the UK and some other net contributors to the budget say cuts have to be made.
Negotiations are focusing on a draft budget – officially called the 2014-2020 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) – presented by Mr Van Rompuy.
He has made cuts to the Commission’s original plan, and proposed a budget worth 973bn euros (£782.5bn; $ 1,245bn).
France objects to the proposed cuts in agriculture, while countries in Central and Eastern Europe oppose cuts to cohesion spending – that is, EU money that helps to improve infrastructure in poorer regions.
They are the biggest budget items. The Van Rompuy plan envisages 309.5bn euros for cohesion (32% of total spending) and 364.5bn euros for agriculture (37.5%).
The EU budget is a small fraction of what the 27 member states’ governments spend in total.
‘Quite wrong’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who wants to restrain spending – says another summit may be necessary early next year if no deal can be reached in Brussels now.
In a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday, EU Commission President Barroso complained, “No one is discussing the quality of investments, it’s all cut, cut, cut.”
Thursday’s business was beginning with short, individual meetings between national leaders and Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso.
Only in the evening will they assemble for talks as a group.
Arriving in Brussels, Mr Cameron said: “These are very important negotiations.
Continue reading the main story
A deal after intense negotiations which may continue into the weekend
Failure to agree and a follow-up budget summit
If no agreement is reached by the end of 2013, the 2013 budget ceilings will be rolled over into 2014 with a 2% inflation adjustment, amid uncertainty over long-term EU projects
“Clearly at a time when we are making difficult decisions at home over public spending it would be quite wrong, it is quite wrong, for there to be proposals for this increased extra spending in the EU.”
However, Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo argued the EU needed greater spending, not less.
“We can’t have a European Union which demands, which imposes, and a European Union which doesn’t have the means to implement its policies,” he said on Thursday.
“For me, for Belgium, Europe is more solidarity and prosperity for all Europeans… I hope that other countries such as Italy and France will support us for the ambitious budget.”
Hurdles
Mr Cameron has warned he may use his veto if other EU countries call for any rise in EU spending. The Netherlands and Sweden back his call for a freeze in spending, allowing for inflation.
Any of the 27 countries can veto a deal, and the European Parliament will also have to vote on the MFF even if a deal is reached.
Failure to agree on the budget would mean rolling over the 2013 budget into 2014 on a month-by-month basis, putting some long-term projects at risk.
If that were to happen it could leave Mr Cameron in a worse position, because the 2013 budget is bigger than the preceding years of the 2007-2013 MFF.
So the UK government could end up with an EU budget higher than what it will accept now.
The Commission says the EU budget accounts for less than 2% of public spending EU-wide and that for every euro spent by the EU the national governments collectively spend 50 euros.
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)
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies. The company says it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates.
The world’s biggest social media company plans to announce Wednesday that its voting mechanism, which is triggered only if enough people comment on proposed changes, has become a system that emphasizes the quantity of responses over the quality of discussion.
Facebook began letting users vote on privacy changes in 2009. Since then, it has gone public and its user base has ballooned from around 200 million to more than 1 billion. As part of the 2009 policy, users’ votes only count if more than 30 percent of all Facebook’s active users partake.
Older patients with positive attitudes on aging may be more likely to fully recover from severe disability compared with those who can’t see the bright side of life, a new study found.
A positive stereotype about aging was associated with a 44 percent greater likelihood of recovery from severe disability versus negative stereotypes, according to study author Becca Levy from the Yale School of Public Health and colleagues.
Holding positive stereotypes in older age was also significantly associated with a slower rate of decline in activities of daily living, the researchers wrote in a letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association online.
“Further research is needed to determine whether interventions to promote positive age stereotypes could extend independent living in later life,” the authors noted.
Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.
The researchers sampled patients through the Precipitating Events Project study and included 598 mostly female patients with an average age of 79, who belonged to a Connecticut health plan. All participants lived in a community, were nondisabled, and experienced at least 1 month of disability from active daily life during the follow-up period.
Can A Positive Outlook Keep Your Heart Healthy? Watch Video
The participants were interviewed monthly for up to 129 months and filled out home-based assessments every 18 months over 10 years.
The researchers established age stereotypes by asking participants for five terms or phrases they associated with older individuals and coding those descriptors on a five-point scale, with 1 being most negative (such as decrepit) and 5 being most positive (such as spry). The participants scored a mean 2.12 on this scale.
Participants’ severity of disability was based on the number of activities of daily living compromised by disability, including bathing, dressing, transferring, and walking. Three or four compromised activities were considered severely disabled; mild to severe disability required assistance with one to two activities, and mild to no disability required no assistance with activities of daily life.
The researchers grouped patients on whether they held positive or negative age stereotypes and compared rates of recovery from severe or mild injury to no or mild disability. Patients between groups were well-matched for age, sex, nonwhite ethnicity, frailty, education, chronic conditions, mental status, depression, and whether or not they lived alone. The nature of the disabling events was not described.
Patients were significantly more likely to recover from any state of injury to either no or mild disability if they fit positive age stereotypes, including from severe disability to no disability, severe disability to mild disabilit and mild disability to no disability.
The researchers also noted that the positive age-stereotyped patients “showed an advantage in the absolute risk increase percentages” in likelihood of recovery, in addition to “a significantly slower rate of [activities of daily life] decline.”
Study limitations included recruitment from a single community and an undersampling of black patients.
The government borrowed much more than expected in October, reducing the chances that the UK will hit its deficit reduction target in 2012-13.
UK public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions, hit £8.6bn in October, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
That marked a sharp rise from the £5.9bn borrowed in October 2011.
This is the last set of borrowing figures before the chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 5 December.
The headline figure was worse than expected – analysts had forecast borrowing of £6bn.
Corporation tax receipts fell nearly 10% in October, a month when there is usually a heavy inflow to boost the public coffers.
A rise in day-to-day departmental spending also contributed to the higher borrowing.
For the seven months of the financial year so far, borrowing has reached £73.3bn, excluding the one-off effects from the transfer of Royal Mail pension assets.
That is £5bn higher than the same time last year.
A spokesperson for the Treasury said: “The economy is healing, but it still faces many challenges.
“These numbers illustrate that, but also show the government’s plans to bring spending under control are on track for the year.”
But Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, said the chancellor was borrowing billions more to pay for the cost of his economic failure.
“Having failed on jobs and growth, the government is now failing on the deficit too,” she said.
‘Wrong direction’ Continue reading the main story
AAA-rating
The best credit rating that can be given to a borrower’s debts, indicating that the risk of borrowing defaulting is minuscule.
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the low tax receipts reflected the disappointing performance of the economy, which is experiencing weak growth and weak consumer spending.
He told the BBC that he could see no chance of the government now hitting its deficit target of £120bn for 2012-13. Current projections suggest this year’s deficit would come in closer to £130bn.
“So it’s moving totally in the wrong direction,” he said.
“The longer-term prospects are looking much more disappointing than the Office for Budget Responsibility and the government were hoping when they first set these targets out back in March.”
He added that Chancellor George Osborne was likely to announce increases in taxes, further cuts in spending, or a combination of the two, when he delivers his Autumn Statement.
Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit
However, analysts at Credit Suisse said the figures were disappointing but not disastrous.
“To some extent, this poor reading was mitigated by improvements in last month’s figure, which was around £0.8bn lower (less borrowing) than previously thought.
“In addition, the good news is that the poor figure appears to have been driven by expenditure rather than receipts data. This suggests that the weakness in the numbers may not be due to weaker GDP performance feeding into weaker tax receipts.”
They also pointed out that, overall, central government receipts were up 1.8% on the year to October, while expenditure was up 7.4%.
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.
(Reuters) – Interpublic Group of Cos said it sold its remaining investment in Facebook Inc for $ 95 million in cash.
Interpublic said it expects to record a pre-tax gain of $ 94 million. It had recorded a pre-tax gain of $ 132.2 million for the third quarter of last year from the sale of half of its 0.4 percent stake in Facebook.
Interpublic paid less than $ 5 million for the stake in 2006.
Shares of Facebook, which debuted with a market value of more than $ 100 billion in May, have lost nearly half their value since then on concerns about money-making prospects.
“We decided to sell our remaining shares in Facebook as our investment was no longer strategic in nature,” Chief Executive Michael Roth said in a statement.
Interpublic also authorized an increase in its existing share repurchase program to $ 400 million from $ 300 million. The company repurchased shares worth $ 151 million, as of September 30.
Shares of the company were up 1 percent at $ 10 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Facebook shares were marginally up at $ 23.00 on the Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
FIRST PERSON | New research shows that Medicare patients with breast cancer wait as long as 32 days before surgery. This wait is typical in the United States. It is not only older women that have a long wait. I first found a lump in my breast in September 2011. My first surgery was not until November 2011. The wait was not on my end — in northwest Arkansas, it takes at least three weeks to get an appointment with anyone.
The study
MedicalXpress reports that the Fox Chase Cancer Center published its findings in the Nov. 19, 2012 edition of The Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study evaluated data from over 72,000 Medicare patients with non-metastatic breast cancer and found that in 2005, at least half of the breast cancer patients waited a minimum of 32 days before having surgery. This data shows a marked increase from 21 days back in 1992.
Breast cancer diagnosis
It is interesting that they looked only at non-metastatic breast cancer. When you first go to see your doctor about a breast problem, like a lump, you have no idea if it is even cancer, much less if it has spread to other parts of the body. Diagnostic mammography, breast MRIs, and ultrasound cannot tell you if the area of concern is cancer. Only surgery can determine breast cancer — that means either a needle biopsy or other invasive procedures.
The waiting can kill you
Medicare had nothing to do with my time delays, as I have private insurance. I have non-metastatic breast cancer. It took 3 weeks to see my OBGYN, then it was another week before I had the imaging done. From there, it took three weeks to schedule a wire-guided surgical biopsy. I had the biopsy in mid-November 2011. It was then I received a cancer diagnosis and was told that it was a high-grade tumor — meaning it was very aggressive. At the same time of my diagnosis, my surgeon ordered more tests. We waited until late December 2011 to discuss a mastectomy. The wait was due to him wanting to see the results of genetic testing. Personally, I was uncomfortable with the long wait time.
Long waits are not just for Medicare recipients and for people in large metropolitan areas. Here in rural Arkansas, wait times are long because there is a shortage of physicians. The area is growing but the medical community is not keeping up with the growth. Patients like me who have serious medical conditions are traveling to other areas in order to get better care.
Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My Battle With Breast Cancer.”
