Shooting renews argument over video-game violence

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the “culture of violence” — the entertainment industry’s embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games.

“The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.

“There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge — they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July.

White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, “But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”

And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”

There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody “Call of Duty” series to the innocuous “Dance Dance Revolution.” But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza’s age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven’t made any connection between Lanza’s possible motives and his interest in games.

The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday’s attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians’ criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, “I’d simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link.”

It’s unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors.

The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games “are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature.” Scalia also agreed with the ESA’s argument that researchers haven’t established a link between media violence and real-life violence. “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively,” Scalia wrote.

Still, that doesn’t make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year’s E3 — the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry’s largest U.S. gathering — some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony’s “The Last of Us” ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft’s “Splinter Cell: Blacklist” showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix’s “Hitman: Absolution” showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns.

“The ultraviolence has to stop,” designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. “I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble.”

“The violence of these games can be off-putting,” Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. “The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There’s this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like ‘Journey,’ a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn’t sell much.”

During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” from Activision, and “Halo 4,” from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, “There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people.”

Critic John Peter Grant said, “I’ve also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se.”

The problem, Grant said, “is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential.”

There are some hints of a sneaking self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer — Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation — has called for other players to join in a “Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters” this Friday, one week after the massacre.

“We are simply making a statement,” Pearman said, “that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost.”

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Two cups of milk daily enough for most kids: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Two cups of cow’s milk per day may be enough for most kids to have the recommended amount of vitamin D in their blood while maintaining a healthy iron level, suggests a new study.

“One of the common questions I get from parents when their kids become toddlers is, ‘how much milk should they be drinking?’ But we didn’t have a good answer,” said Dr. Jonathon Maguire, the study’s lead author from Toronto’s TARGet Kids! Collaboration.

One reason for the confusion, according to the researchers, is the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends children between 2 and 8 years old drink two cups of milk per day, but in another guideline, the organization also says children need supplemental vitamin D if they drink less than four cups per day.

The researchers write in the journal Pediatrics that previous studies showed cow’s milk increases the amount of vitamin D in a child’s blood while also reducing iron levels. Iron, which the body can get from meats and beans, is important for developing brains and protecting against anemia.

Vitamin D, which is naturally produced in the body during sun exposure, helps the body absorb calcium and prevents the bone-softening disease rickets. People also get the vitamin by eating fortified foods, such as milk and fatty fish.

Maguire, a pediatrician at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, and his colleagues surveyed the parents of 1,311 children, who were between 2 and 5 years old and at pediatricians’ offices in the Toronto area between December 2008 and December 2010. They also took blood samples from the children.

The researchers found one cup (250 milliliters) of milk was tied to a 5 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) increase of vitamin D in the children’s blood, and a small decrease in iron levels.

The Canadian Pediatric Society suggests children maintain a vitamin D level in their blood of at least 75 nmol/L. On average, the children were drinking just under two cups of milk per day, and were exceeding their recommended vitamin D level.

The researchers concluded that two glasses of cow’s milk per day is enough to keep most kids at the suggested vitamin D levels while also maintaining a healthy amount of iron.

SUPPLEMENTS AND OTHER SOURCES

That’s not a blanket suggestion for all children, however.

Maguire and his colleagues say darker skinned children may need 3 to 4 cups of milk per day during the winter, when their bodies produce less vitamin D naturally from sun exposure.

Maguire told Reuters Health that the findings seem consistent with previous recommendations.

“I don’t think there is too much cause for concern. I think this is probably old news for some parents,” he said.

Patsy Brannon, a professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said the finding of 2 cups of milk is consistent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for two and three year olds, but said older children need 2.5 cups.

Also, she points out, the U.S. Institutes of Medicine and AAP recommend a vitamin D level in children of at least 50 nmol/L, which is lower than the Canadian society’s suggestion.

Currently, the AAP recommends infants, children and teens get 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day. The average cup of milk has about 100 IU of vitamin D.

Brannon recommends taking a daily vitamin D supplement to reach that recommendation, but adds that people can also get the vitamin from fortified cereals, grains and other foods.

“There are other sources of vitamin D in the diet besides what comes from milk. We have to be concerned about excessive milk consumption in this age group,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/T568Dc Pediatrics, online December 17, 2012.

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Nissan to invest £250m in the UK

19 December 2012 Last updated at 03:43 ET

By Jorn Madslien Business reporter, BBC News

Nissan says it is investing £250m in Sunderland to make a small luxury car, creating “hundreds of jobs” in the UK.

“The Sunderland factory is very competitive,” said Nissan’s chief performance officer Colin Dodge.

The Infiniti model was penned by Nissan’s design team in London and engineered at its technical centre in Bedfordshire.

Their brief was to appeal to buyers in Europe, where the marque’s sales are weak.

Business Secretary Vince Cable visited the Sunderland plant on Wednesday for the investment announcement.

“Today’s news is a strong endorsement of the quality of Britain’s car industry, which is creating jobs, taking on apprentices and contributing to building a stronger economy,” he said.

“The auto sector is living up to being one of the great success stories of our industrial strategy and a testimony to government and private sector working together in close partnership.”

‘Pivotal car’

Business Secretary Vince Cable: “It’s a tremendous vote of confidence in the British car industry”

Mr Dodge said it was too early to be specific about how many jobs would be created as a result of the fresh investment.

It was suggested, however, that it could be about 280 directly at the factory, with a further 700 or so created with suppliers.

However, to make space for the Infiniti, a previously announced investment of £127m to build a hatchback, involving some 125 jobs, will now be moved from Sunderland to another Nissan factory in Europe, for instance in Spain or Russia, an Infiniti spokesman said.

The Infiniti investment will be made during the next two years and the new Infiniti will start rolling off the assembly line in 2015, Mr Dodge said.

Nissan said it would produce up to 60,000 Infiniti cars per year.

The new car has not yet been named, beyond an announcement that it will be called something starting with Q followed by a digit and ending with 0, but it will be based on the Ethera concept vehicle that was displayed at the Geneva motor show in 2011.

“It is a pivotal car for Europe,” Mr Dodge said.

Ambitious target

Infiniti has made little headway since it was first launched in Europe in 2008 with a series of large, thirsty cars with powerful V6 and V8 petrol engines.

“The Infiniti brand has been very American-centric for years,” Mr Dodge said, “but the new, smaller model is the size of car for Europe rather than for the US.”

Infiniti has set itself an ambitious sales target in Europe of 100,000 cars by 2016, compared with 16,700 cars sold in 2011.

Between a third and half the sales of the new Infiniti are expected to come in Europe, said Mr Dodge.

The car will be the first Infiniti to be offered with a diesel engine, an option seen as crucial to win over European drivers, Mr Dodge said, though he declined to reveal further details about the engine options for the car.

The Ethera concept was a petrol-electric hybrid with a 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine. Nissan is developing engines jointly with Mercedes-owner Daimler, it works closely with alliance partner Renault, and in March this year it unveiled a high performance petrol-electric hybrid model, the Emergenc-e, that will use a three-cylinder petrol engine made by Hethel, Norfolk-based Lotus.

Efficient factory

Sunderland was awarded the model thanks to its reputation for efficiency, both in terms of quality and cost as well as ability to deliver, said Mr Dodge, who worked at the plant from 1984 until 2007 before he was promoted and moved to the Nissan headquarters in Japan.

Nissan used to claim that its Sunderland plant, which currently employs more than 6,000 people, was the most efficient car factory in Europe, though these days it tends not to mention this.

“But it is,” said Mr Dodge. “We just don’t keep chest-beating about it year in, year out.”

Nissan said Sunderland is on schedule to become the first car factory in the UK to have produced more than 500,000 cars in one calendar year. “Even during British Leyland times, they didn’t do that,” said Mr Bolt.

Global production

The decision to produce the new Infiniti outside Japan was based on a number of factors.

“Historically, we’ve made Infiniti in Japan,” said Mr Dodge, though in recent years, he explained, the yen has been very strong, thus making it difficult to make money from cars exported from Japan.

In response, the carmaker is shifting production to the UK, the US and China.

It is “heartbreaking” for Nissan’s Japanese staff to see production moved out of the country, Mr Dodge said.

“They can make cars as well as anybody,” he said, “but they’re at a significant disadvantage when compared with rivals selling cars in dollars, euros or pounds.”

But the strong yen is not the only reason why Nissan makes ever more cars abroad.

Investment and production in growth markets around the world would probably continue even if the yen was to fall in value, as it is expected to do under the country’s next prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

“If you’ve got a manufacturing base and a supply base set up, it is best to produce and sell in one currency,” said Mr Dodge.

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Canada serial killer inquiry finds “systemic bias” by police

(Reuters) – Police made critical errors in pursuing Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton partly because of “systemic bias” against his victims, sex trade workers from a rough Vancouver neighborhood, according to the final report from a public inquiry released on Monday.

Commissioner Wally Oppal was asked by the British Columbia government to investigate, in effect, why Pickton was not caught sooner. Women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside neighborhood for more than a decade before the pig farmer’s 2002 arrest.

“The investigations of missing and murdered women were characterized by blatant police failures, and by public indifference,” Oppal said at a press conference in Vancouver that was frequently interrupted by protesters.

Pickton was convicted of six murders, but prosecutors believe he killed many more – 20 other charges were stayed after he received the maximum possible sentence.

Oppal outlined a string of police errors, from failing to take proper reports when women went missing and communicate adequately with families, to ineffective coordination across jurisdictions. He called his more than 1,200-page report, which is based on eight months of hearings, “Forsaken”.

“After reviewing the evidence of the investigations, I have come to the conclusion that there was systemic bias by the police,” he said.

Oppal recommended that the provincial government establish a compensation fund for the children of the victims and consider creating a regional police force for Vancouver, instead of the patchwork of jurisdictions currently in place.

After Oppal’s announcement, B.C. Minister of Justice Shirley Bond wiped away tears as she spoke to victims’ families.

“I want you to know that, however inadequate these words sound, we are sorry for your loss,” she said. “We will work hard to prevent these circumstances from being repeated in our province.”

She announced the appointment of a former lieutenant governor, Steven Point, to serve as the report’s “champion”, guiding implementation. Bond said the government would immediately give new funding to WISH, a drop-in center for women who work in the Downtown Eastside’s sex trade.

POLICE RESPOND

The Vancouver Police Department said in a short statement that it is committed to learning from its mistakes and will study the report.

“We know that nothing can ever truly heal the wounds of grief and loss but if we can, we want to assure the families that the Vancouver Police Department deeply regrets anything we did that may have delayed the eventual solving of these murders,” it said.

Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens, who commands the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, said in a statement that his force will review the report.

Oppal said many individual police officers were diligent, and he commended several by name. But he said that as a system, the authorities failed because of bias against Pickton’s victims, many of whom were poor and addicted to drugs.

“Would the reaction of the police and the public have been any different if the missing women had come from Vancouver’s (more affluent) west side? The answer is obvious,” he said.

Aboriginal women were overrepresented among the victims, and Oppal repeatedly referred to the broader “marginalization” of aboriginal people in Canada.

“There has to be community responsibility for what has taken place,” he said, highlighting poverty and the conditions on the Downtown Eastside. “The social reality is that racism and gender bias are prevalent within Canadian society, and we must do something to eradicate those.”

Victims’ families and activists were on hand for Oppal’s press conference, and he stopped speaking several times as audience members shouted criticism, chanted and played drums.

The provincial government did not offer funding to a number of community organizations that said they needed support to participate in the lengthy and complex inquiry. In protest, other groups boycotted the process.

In November, several organizations, including the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, released their own report, criticizing the inquiry for, among other things, excluding too many aboriginal women, sex trade workers and drug users.

Bond, the justice minister, said she did not regret the decision not to fund those groups, but said she saw them participating in the future. “I think going forward this is room for us to include other voices.” (Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Merry Christmas, America-Haters?

When TNT was preparing its annual special “Christmas in Washington” with the president of the United States, you’d think the last star musician they would consider to join the official caroling would be Psy, the South Korean rapper. What on Earth is Christmasy about this man’s invisible-horse-riding dance to his dorky disco-rap hit “Gangnam Style”? It’s not exactly the natural flip-side to “O Holy Night.” But TNT couldn’t resist this year’s YouTube sensation.

This inane publicity stunt backfired when the website Mediaite reported on Dec. 7 that Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang) had participated in a 2002 protest in which he crushed a model of an American tank with a microphone stand. But that’s nothing compared to the footage of a 2004 performance after a Korean missionary was slaughtered by Islamists in Iraq. These lyrics cannot be misunderstood.

“Kill those f—-ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives … Kill those f—-ing Yankees who ordered them to torture … Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers … Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

This isn’t just anti-American. It’s anti-human.

Guess where this story first surfaced in the American media? CNN, from the same corporate family tree as TNT. It was posted back on Oct. 6 on CNN’s iReport, an open-source online news feature that allows users to submit stories for CNN consideration.

The Korean one-hit wonder put out the usual abject careerist apology, but he weirdly said, “I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted.” Those darn lyrics and those darn people who misinterpret lyrics about killing Yankees’ mothers. It is like Barack Obama expressing regret for the awful things said about Susan Rice, ignoring the awful things said by Susan Rice.

Psy is now a millionaire. As Jim Treacher wrote at the Daily Caller: “So far he’s made over $ 8 million from the song, about $ 3 million of it from the people he once wanted to kill.” Brad Schaeffer at Big Hollywood noted his own father fought for South Korea’s independence in the Korean War: “Had it not been for ‘f——-g Yankees’ like my Dad, this now-wealthy South Korean wouldn’t be ‘Oppan Gangnam Style’ so much as ‘Starving Pyongyang Style.’” (Gangnam is a posh district in the South Korean capital of Seoul.)

Despite the controversy, neither the Obama White House nor the TNT brass felt it was necessary to send Psy packing before the Dec. 9 taping. On Saturday, ABC reporter Muhammad Lila merely repeated, “the White House says the concert will go on and that President Obama will attend, saying that they have no control over who performs at that concert.”

What moral cowardice. On Monday morning, another pliant publicist, NBC correspondent Peter Alexander, calmly relayed that the White House did take control on the Psy front — on its own “We The People” website, where the people may post petitions to the president for their fellow citizens to sign. A petition asking Obama to dump Psy from the Christmas concert was itself dumped. Alexander explained: “But that petition was removed because the rules say the petitions only apply to federal actions. And, of course, the President had no say over who the private charity chose to invite.”

This is double baloney. The White House hasn’t removed silly “federal action” petitions like the one asking to “Nationalize the Twinkie Industry,” or one to “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” They removed one that they didn’t want people to sign.

As for Obama having “no say over” who appeared on the TNT show, the president could easily declare he wasn’t going to share a stage with this America-hater. Or he could have obviously placed one phone call to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes (an Obama donor), and expressed the dismay of the President of the United States.

Instead, the Obamas came and honored Psy. Yes, the president honored a man who despised America enough to want its citizens slaughtered.

John Eggerton of Broadcasting and Cable magazine observed, “At the end of the taping, when the First Family customarily shakes hands and talks briefly with the performers, the First Lady gave Psy a hug, followed by a handshake from the President, who engaged Psy in a short, animated discussion — at one point Psy appeared to rock back with laughter — and patted the singer on the shoulder.”

I never thought I’d ever view a Christmas special featuring a hideous hater of America celebrated by the President of the United States.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM

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Shire’s ADHD amphetamine wins British backing

LONDON (Reuters) – Shire‘s hyperactivity treatment Vyvanse will be available in Europe within months after Britain’s drugs regulator backed the amphetamine-based stimulant used to treat millions of U.S. students.

The drug, lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, has a slow-release action that activates the amphetamine ingredient over the course of a day, helping levels of alertness and concentration in children with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

It was assessed under the European Union‘s decentralized approvals procedure, led by Britain’s medicines watchdog. The application was supported by two European studies and clinical data from the United States.

Seven other EU countries – Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Spain and Sweden – participated, and they have agreed product labels. They will now issue their own national approvals, a process that takes up to three months, Shire said.

Chief executive Angus Russell said: “As all ADHD patients are different and will vary in their responses to the available treatments, we believe introducing Elvanse will provide physicians with a broader range of options to help patients with ADHD manage their individual needs effectively”.

Shire has established a leading position in treating hyperactivity in the United States with its stimulants Adderall XR and Vyvanse. The latter saw sales rise 24 percent to $ 247 million in the three months to September.

Shore Capital analyst Brian White said while he had modest sales expectations in the short term for the drug in Europe, where it will be the first amphetamine to be approved for ADHD, the decision was significant because the condition was becoming better known in Europe.

“Shire has been very successful in the U.S. with its ADHD franchise and one would expect them to use that experience to do a similar job in Europe, although that will take a lot longer just given the much lower awareness,” he said.

“They have another product coming along later (Intuniv) which is a non-stimulant, and that could be more appropriate for the European market than a stimulant.”

Vyvanse, which Shire said was the top-selling branded prescribed ADHD medicine in the United States, has been indicated in Europe for ADHD in children aged six years and over when treatment with methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, was not successful.

(Editing by Dan Lalor)

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UK inflation unchanged at 2.7%

18 December 2012 Last updated at 06:17 ET

UK consumer prices inflation remained unchanged at 2.7% in November, according to official data.

The fastest price rises were seen in the cost of fruit, bread and cereals, as well as in energy bills, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Car fuel and plane ticket prices fell in November from the month before, as did the cost of carpets and beer.

Retail prices index (RPI) inflation, which includes housing costs, fell to 3% last month, from 3.2% in October.

The consumer prices index (CPI) rate, which is targeted by the Bank of England, had jumped from a three-year low of 2.2% to 2.7% in October, a much bigger rise than had been expected and which came as a nasty shock in the City.

Separate data released by the ONS also showed that the annual rate of increase in producer prices – charged by manufacturers for their products – also held steady in November, at 1.4%, excluding the more volatile prices of food and fuel.

Continue reading the main story

The kind of stability delivered by inflation targeting today may be the stability of the grave yard”

End Quote

Energy bills

CPI inflation is now expected by many investors and economists to creep up further next year as further increases in electricity and gas prices take effect.

“UK inflation paused for breath in November before it resumes its assault on the 3% mark over the next few months,” said Rob Wood, economist at Berenberg Bank.

“The figures included the first of this winter’s gas and electricity price rises, from Scottish and Southern Energy,” he added, saying that the other companies’ bill rises would push the inflation rate higher.

A further rise in supermarket food prices is also widely anticipated, after droughts in the US and Russia, and light monsoons in India, pushed up worldwide prices for grain and other foodstuffs.

CPI inflation has been above the Bank’s 2% target for more than three years and until May this year had exceeded 3% for 29 consecutive months, prompting the governor Sir Mervyn King to write regular letters to the government explaining the Bank’s failure.

The Bank has tolerated the elevated inflation rate because of the depressed state of the economy, which has led the Bank to consistently overestimate how quickly CPI would fall back to its target.

The Bank now expects inflation to fall back to its target only in the autumn of 2014.

New target?

Mark Carney, the Canadian central bank head who is due to take over from Sir Mervyn as governor from June, has hinted at the possibility of scrapping inflation targeting.

That has led to speculation that the Bank may switch to an alternative target – with nominal gross domestic product (NGDP) seen as the most likely candidate.

NGDP measures the economy’s total economic output, but without adjusting for rising prices.

Targeting NGDP instead of CPI inflation would enable the Bank to tolerate higher inflation during the current period of depressed economic growth, and would also oblige the Bank to seek an even faster rise in prices if it had fallen short of its target in previous months.

Economist Chris Williamson: “The Bank of England will tolerate inflation to get the economy growing”

Some economists think that the resulting bias towards higher inflation – at least while the economy remains depressed – would help to make debts more manageable by eroding their value, and would encourage people to spend more for fear that their savings would also be eroded by rising prices.

Opinion is divided among analysts as to whether the Bank of England is likely to push ahead in its next monetary policy meeting with more monetary stimulus – likely to come in the form of further purchases of government debt with newly created money, or Quantitative Easing.

“Higher inflation makes it harder for them to restart QE,” said Alan Clarke, economist at Scotiabank. “I don’t think it makes any difference to the Bank of England. They know these things are outside of their control. Gas bills, droughts, they can’t control that.”

Some Monetary Policy Committee members have resisted increasing QE in recent meetings, according to minutes released by the Bank, with one member, Paul Fisher, publicly saying that he would wait for inflation to start falling before he would personally endorse more money creation.

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Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels took full control of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Monday after fighting raged for days in the district on the southern edge of President Bashar al-Assad‘s Damascus powerbase, rebel and Palestinian sources said.

The battle had pitted rebels, backed by some Palestinians, against Palestinian fighters of the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Many PFLP-GC fighters defected to the rebel side and their leader Ahmed Jibril left the camp two days ago, rebel sources said.

“All of the camp is under the control of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army,” said a Palestinian activist in Yarmouk. He said clashes had stopped and the remaining PFLP fighters retreated to join Assad‘s forces massed on the northern edge of the camp.

The battle in Yarmouk is one of a series of conflicts on the southern fringes of Assad’s capital, as rebels try to choke the power of the 47-year-old leader after a 21-month-old uprising in which 40,000 people have been killed.

Government forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters but the violence has crept into the heart of the city and activists say rebels overran three army stations in a new offensive in the central province of Hama on Monday.

On the border with Lebanon, hundreds of Palestinian families fled across the frontier following the weekend violence in Yarmouk, a Reuters witness said.

Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk, descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948, and has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.

Both Assad’s government and the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have enlisted and armed divided Palestinian factions as the uprising has developed into a civil war.

“NEITHER SIDE CAN WIN”

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that neither Assad’s forces nor rebels seeking to overthrow him can win the war.

Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, has rarely been seen since the revolt erupted in March 2011 and is not part of the president’s inner circle directing the fight against Sunni rebels. But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win.

Sharaa said the situation in Syria was deteriorating and a “historic settlement” was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the U.N. Security Council and the formation of a national unity government “with broad powers”.

“With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime,” Sharaa was quoted as telling Al-Akhbar newspaper.

“The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement,” he said, adding that insurgents fighting to topple Syria’s leadership could plunge it into “anarchy and an unending spiral of violence”.

Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully.

In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, he said there was a difference between the state’s duty to provide security to its citizens, and “pursuing a security solution to the crisis”.

He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that “this is a long struggle…and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution.”

In Hama province, rebels and the army clashed in a new campaign launched on Sunday by rebels to block off the country’s north, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked violence monitor, said fighting raged through the provincial towns of Karnaz, Kafar Weeta, Halfayeh and Mahardeh.

It said there were no clashes reported in Hama city, which lies on the main north-south highway connecting the capital with Aleppo, Syria’s second city.

Qassem Saadeddine, a member of the newly established rebel military command, said on Sunday fighters had been ordered to surround and attack army positions across the province. He said Assad’s forces were given 48 hours to surrender or be killed.

In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, crushed an uprising in Hama city, killing up to 30,000 civilians.

Qatiba al-Naasan, a rebel from Hama, said the offensive would bring retaliatory air strikes from the government but that the situation is “already getting miserable”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Erika Solomon and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Afif Diab at Masnaa, Lebanon; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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RIM begins BlackBerry 10 tests with business, government clients

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd said on Monday that it had begun a “beta testing” program that allows 120 companies and government departments to try out its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones before their global launch on January 30.

The Canadian company, which is trying to reverse a sharp decline in market share for the BlackBerry, said the program would enable so-called enterprise customers in business and government to size up the BB10.

Features of the BB10 include the ability to separate personal and business information so that the user can store both without compromising security.

RIM has struggled in recent years to hold on to its base of enterprise customers, which typically pay a higher subscription fee than consumers, as their employees push to use devices such as Apple Inc’s iPhone for business as well as personal communications.

“This is a crucial step for us in getting our large enterprise customers ready to support BlackBerry 10 at the point of launch date, as opposed to post-launch date,” Bryan Lee, senior director for enterprise accounts, said in a phone interview.

RIM is providing the software and handsets at no charge, and the companies do not have to buy anything once the trial is finished.

The company plans to release its quarterly results on Thursday, and analysts expect it to report its third straight loss as it struggles to sell its older devices.

RIM made its name selling mobile email devices to bankers, lawyers and other professionals before expanding to sell phones to consumers.

The company said the BB10 testers were from financial, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, media, and distribution industries and include 64 Fortune 500 companies, as well as government departments.

Lee would not identify any of the entities, beyond Integris Health and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which have both said they are testing the new devices.

The customers have installed test versions of RIM’s new server software, which manages iPhones and devices using Google Inc’s Android software as well as BlackBerrys, and will each receive two preproduction BlackBerry 10 handsets later this week.

RIM shares were down 2.1 percent at C$ 13.59 in morning Toronto Stock Exchange trading.

The stock has rallied from September’s multiyear lows around C$ 6.50 on a wave of optimism over the new devices, but the share price is still far below mid-2008 highs of around C$ 150.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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Pediatricians call to keep thimerosal in vaccines

(Reuters Health) – A mercury-containing preservative rarely used in the United States should not be banned as an ingredient in vaccines, U.S. pediatricians said Monday, in a move that may be controversial.

In its statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorsed calls from a World Health Organization (WHO) committee that the preservative, thimerosal, should not be considered a hazardous source of mercury that could be banned by the United Nations.

The AAP in 1999 asked for its removal from vaccines in the United States because of a concern that youngsters receiving multiple shots containing thimerosal might get too much mercury – and develop autism or other neurodevelopmental problems, despite the lack of hard evidence at the time.

“It was absolutely a matter of precaution because of the absence of more information,” said Dr. Louis Cooper, from Columbia University in New York, who was on the organization’s board of directors at the time.

“Subsequently an awful lot of effort has been put into trying to sort out whether thimerosal causes any harm to kids, and the bottom line is basically, it doesn’t look as if it does,” he said.

In a 2004 safety review, for example, the independent U.S. Institute of Medicine concluded there was no evidence thimerosal-containing vaccines could cause autism. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came to the same conclusion in 2010.

With the exception of some types of flu shots, the compound is not used in vaccines in the United States, which are distributed in single-dose vials.

And nobody is arguing that should change, according to Dr. Walter Orenstein, a member of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases and a researcher at the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta.

But in countries with fewer resources – where many children still die of vaccine-preventable diseases – it is cheaper and easier to use multi-dose vials of vaccines against diphtheria and tetanus, for example.

Thimerosal prevents the rest of a multi-dose vial from getting contaminated with bacteria or fungi each time a dose is used.

Researchers estimated it could cost anywhere from two to five times as much to manufacture vaccines for developing countries without thimerosal, and both transporting vaccines and keeping them refrigerated would also be much harder.

“We’re having a hard time completing the task of getting every kid immunized now. That would add a tremendous burden,” Cooper said, adding that more children would probably die as a result.

Children who can now be protected from these life-threatening diseases could become vulnerable, Orenstein told Reuters Health.

The new statement is published in the AAP’s journal Pediatrics.

Thimerosal contains a type of mercury called ethyl mercury. Toxic effects have been tied to its cousin, methyl mercury, which stays in the body for much longer.

Earlier this year, the WHO said replacing thimerosal with an alternative preservative could affect vaccine safety and might cause some vaccines to become unavailable.

Mercury, however, is still on the list of global health hazards to be banned in a draft treaty from the United Nations Environment Program – which would mean a ban on thimerosal.

Reducing mercury exposure “is a wonderful thing,” Orenstein said.

However, “We need this exception because thimerosal is so vital for protecting children.”

For the Pediatrics document, please see: bit.ly/cxXOG

(Editing by Christine Soares, Nick Zieminski)

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