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Sunday, March 10, 2013
Italy court rules hospitalized Berlusconi can attend tax trial
MILAN (Reuters) - Court doctors ruled on Saturday that Silvio Berlusconi was able to attend a tax fraud appeal, rejecting the Italian ex-prime minister's complaint that an eye ailment prevented him leaving hospital and sparking furious protests from his allies.
The 76-year-old center-right leader and media mogul faces a spate of trials this month as he fights for his political future following an inconclusive national election in February.
On Friday, a hearing in a trial where he is accused of having sex with an under-age prostitute was postponed after he entered hospital with an eye problem. The prosecutor complained that the hospitalization was merely a delaying tactic.
On Saturday the Milan court handling the tax fraud case sent inspectors to examine him in the clinic where he was being treated by his private doctor, and ruled that his problem was not a "legitimate impediment" to him appearing in court.
"It's been rejected. We are carrying on," Piero Longo, one of Berlusconi's lawyers, told Reuters.
Berlusconi's doctor had said the inflammation in his patient's left eye caused him pain and disturbed vision. But the ruling meant the appeals hearing could go ahead on Saturday with or without the defendant being present.
Berlusconi is appealing against a four-year jail sentence for tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his television network Mediaset.
"NAZI DOCTORS"
Berlusconi's political allies rallied to his defense with a chorus of attacks on the judges.
"A Stalinist court sent Nazi doctors to examine Berlusconi and issue a disgusting ruling," said Fabrizio Cicchitto, a top official in Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL).
Niccolo Ghedini, another lawyer for Berlusconi, said it was "extremely grave" that the doctors had accepted that his client needed medical treatment but had still not put off the hearing.
"Of course it wasn't absolutely impossible for him for him to attend, that would need to be a life-threatening condition, but to have a hearing put off do you have to be on a stretcher surrounded by paramedics?" he said.
After the ruling, Berlusconi's doctor told reporters he had asked him to remain in hospital until Sunday.
Berlusconi denies all wrongdoing in the case and said on Thursday he was the victim of "judicial persecution ... which re-emerges every time there are politically complex moments in the political life of our country".
He fell short of victory in last month's election, even though he rallied his supporters and performed better than expected. The vote ended with a hung parliament and Italy's president is still struggling to form a new government.
The PDL has organized a public rally on March 23 to protest against prosecutors described by Berlusconi as the "cancer of our democracy".
Under Italian law, Berlusconi will not serve any jail time until the appeals process is exhausted.
In the tax fraud case, even if the appeals court upholds his previous 4-year jail sentence, it could still be overturned by a higher court. Two appeals are standard procedure in Italy's criminal justice system.
Berlusconi was convicted three times during the 1990s, before being either cleared by higher courts or benefiting from the statute of limitations by which cases expire if a final verdict is not reached within a given time period.
(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Gavin Jones; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/italy-court-rules-hospitalized-berlusconi-attend-tax-trial-183309605.html
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Saturday, March 9, 2013
Hon Hai won't invest in Sharp by March 26 deadline: media
TOKYO (Reuters) - Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd will not invest in Sharp Corp by a March 26 deadline after the two firms failed to revise an earlier agreement, although the Taiwanese company has not ruled out an investment altogether, a newspaper said.
Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou met Sharp's bankers to inform them no deal would be struck this month but he would look at the merits of an investment after the struggling Japanese display maker unveils a new business plan in the near future, the Asahi newspaper reported without saying where it got the information.
Talks for Hon Hai to buy as much as a 9.9 percent stake had stalled after Sharp balked at its demand that it be given a degree of management control.
Hon Hai also sought to lower the $708 million price tag after Sharp's stock slumped in the wake of losses that prompted a bailout from its banks last year.
Sharp's banks, which include Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, had not been expecting a revised deal, sources told Reuters last month.
Sharp spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama and a spokesman for Hon Hai both said the two companies would continue to negotiate until the deadline.
As talks with Hon Hai unraveled, Sharp concluded smaller investment deals with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Qualcomm Inc. It may also have to find other ways to raise money to repay a $2.1 billion convertible bond due in September.
Sources at Sharp and its banks as well as analysts have told Reuters they expect the company will resort to equity financing to make up any shortfall after it adds up available cashflow and gains from asset and stake sales.
Its scope for asset sales, however, is limited because it had to mortgage nearly all its domestic factories and offices to secure emergency bank loans. A junk credit rating makes bond issues an expensive proposition for the Japanese TV pioneer.
Under the deal with Samsung announced this week, the South Korean company will take a 3 percent stake for around $110 million and Sharp will supply it with screens for its TVs and mobile devices. That deal followed an agreement in December for Qualcomm to invest as much as $120 million.
Sharp is also in talks to sell its Chinese TV assembly plant to Lenovo Group Ltd and to sell its Mexico factory to Hon Hai, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Hon Hai already owns a third of Japan's liquid crystal display plant in Sakai western Japan, the world's most advanced display factory.
($1 = 94.6650 Japanese yen)
(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hon-hai-wont-invest-sharp-march-26-deadline-085653113--finance.html
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Despite obesity rise | Tammy's Health Articles
Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid
By Kathryn Doyle
NEW YORK | Wed Mar 6, 2013 1:32pm EST
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) ? U.S. adults have been eating steadily fewer calories for almost a decade, despite the continued increase in obesity rates, according to survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
?It?s hard to reconcile what these data show, and what is happening with the prevalence of obesity,? co-author Dr. William Dietz, former CDC director of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, told Reuters Health.
The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, are based on the nine National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) the CDC has conducted between 1971 and 2010. Several thousand adults aged 20 to 74 were randomly selected every two to four years and asked to recall what they ate over the previous 24 hours.
Dietz and a colleague analyzed trends since the 1970s and found that among adults, average daily energy intake rose by a total of 314 calories from 1971 to 2003, then fell by 74 calories between 2003 and 2010.
?Seventy-four calories is a lot, and as I said before, we would expect to see a measurable impact on obesity,? said Dietz.
Nevertheless, about 35 percent of U.S. adult women are obese, and that percentage has held steady since 1999, according to the CDC. For men, obesity has risen from 27 percent to 35 percent over the same time period.
Dietz said he would have expected obesity rates to have leveled-off for both sexes and to be decreasing at this point, if people are consuming fewer calories.
The CDC released similar results last month for children: boys have cut their calorie intake by 150, and girls by 80, since 1999. Obesity rates for boys continue to increase, however, while holding steady for girls. (see Reuters story of February 21, 2013 here: reut.rs/15wNN8P).
Experts said it?s possible more time is needed to see obesity rates respond to changes in calorie intake. It?s also possible that Americans have changed their eating habits but are still not getting enough exercise to burn the calories they do consume. Or, the surveys may simply be wrong.
?If you cut back on calories by 100 calories, you?ll plateau 10 pounds lower,? but you?ll only see about half of that progress over the first year, Dr. Claire Wang, who studies energy intake and expenditure at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, told Reuters Health.
There wouldn?t be an immediate reduction in obesity at the population level, said Wang, who was not involved in the study.
She believes the change in calorie consumption could be due to more awareness of sugary drinks and added sugar, and that awareness campaigns such as efforts by the White House to promote healthier eating are working.
But by now, ?People should be losing weight,? Dietz said. The fact that they are not could be bad news, he said, because it could mean people are burning fewer calories with exercise, and exercise plays an important role reducing the risk of many chronic diseases.
It?s also possible that increased awareness of unhealthy foods has caused people to be embarrassed about eating junk foods or drinking sodas, so they may still be eating those foods but are less likely to admit it on a survey, Dietz added.
In general, data from surveys don?t line up with actual calorie intakes when measured by a third party, according to nutritionist Marion Nestle of New York University.
The NHANES surveys indicate that men take in an average of 1500 calories per day, and women 1800, for example. When doctors or nutritionists measure calorie intakes, they find an average of 3,000 for men and 2,400 for women, according to Nestle.
While the estimates may not be exactly on point, surveys are the best available way to identify trends in the population, she said.
?NHANES is as good as we have on trend data,? she said. ?Taken at face value, they are somewhat good news.?
SOURCE: bit.ly/XUJ7Dq American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online February 20, 2013.
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Source: http://www.tammyshealtharticles.com/despite-obesity-rise-u-s-calories-trending-downward/
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Chavez body to be put on permanent display
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Hugo Chavez's body will be preserved and forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum not far from the presidential palace from which he ruled for 14 years, his successor announced Thursday in a Caribbean version of the treatment given Communist revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's acting head of state, said Chavez would first lie in state for "at least" seven more days before the museum becomes his permanent home. It was not clear when exactly he would be moved from the military academy where his body has been since Wednesday.
Later Thursday, the National Assembly speaker announced that Maduro would be sworn in Friday night as acting president following a state funeral and would call elections within 30 days. That enables him, as the designated governing party candidate, to run for president as Chavez desired. Legal scholars say that under the constitution, the legislature's speaker should instead be sworn in and organize the vote.
More than 30 heads of government, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are to attend the funeral. U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, will represent the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year.
Maduro said the ceremony would begin at 11 a.m., but did not say where.
"We have decided to prepare the body of our 'Comandante President,' to embalm it so that it remains open for all time for the people. Just like Ho Chi Minh. Just like Lenin. Just like Mao Zedong," Maduro said.
He said the body would be held in a "crystal urn" at the Museum of the Revolution, a mile from Miraflores presidential palace.
The announcement followed two emotional days in which Chavez's supporters compared him to Jesus Christ, and accused his national and international critics of seeking to undermine his "revolution."
A sea of sobbing, heartbroken humanity jammed Venezuela's main military academy Thursday to see Chavez's body, some waiting 10 hours under the twinkling stars and the searing Caribbean sun to file past his coffin.
On Thursday night, Castro, Presidents Jose Mujica of Uruguay and and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil viewed the open casket along with former Brazilian president Inacio Lula da Silva.
But even as his supporters attempted to immortalize the dead president, a country exhausted from round-the-clock mourning began to look toward the future. Some worried openly whether the nation's anointed leaders are up to filling his shoes, and others said they were anxious for news on when elections will be held. The constitution mandates they be called within 30 days, but the government has yet to address the matter.
"People are beginning to get back to their lives. One must keep working," said 40-year-old Caracas resident Laura Guerra, a Chavez supporter who said she was not yet sold on Maduro. "I don't think he will be the same. I don't think he has the same strength that the 'comandante' had."
At the military academy, Chavez lay in a glass-covered coffin wearing the olive-green military uniform and red beret of his paratrooper days and looking gaunt and pale, his lips pressed together. In a nod to the insecurity that plagues this country, mourners had to submit to a pat down, pass through a metal detector and remove the batteries from their mobile phones before they entered.
As they reached the coffin, many placed a hand on their heart or stiffly saluted. Some held up children so they could see Chavez's face.
"I waited 10 hours to see him, but I am very happy, proud to have seen my comandante," said 46-year-old Yudeth Hurtado, sobbing. "He is planted in our heart."
Government leaders had been largely incommunicado Wednesday as they marched in a seven-hour procession that brought Chavez's body from a military hospital to the academy. They finally emerged before the cameras Thursday but offered no answers.
Asked when an election would be held, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said only that the constitution would be followed.
Jaua also struck the defiant, us-against-the-world tone that the government has projected, which some critics fear could incite passions in a country that remains on edge.
"They couldn't defeat him electorally, they couldn't assassinate him, they couldn't beat him militarily," Jaua declared. "Chavez died as president ... Chavez died the leader of his people."
Just hours before the 58-year-old president's death on Tuesday, Maduro expelled two U.S. diplomats and lashed out at opponents at home and abroad. He implied that the cancer that ultimately killed Chavez was somehow injected into him by his enemies, a charge echoed by Ahmadinejad.
While Maduro is the clear favorite over likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, the nation is polarized between Chavez supporters and critics who hold him responsible for soaring inflation, a growing national debt and a jump in violent crime.
Opponents have also questioned the government's allegiance to the rule of law, arguing that Maduro is not entitled to become interim president under the 1999 constitution. They have also criticized the defense minister, Adm. Diego Molero, for pledging support for Maduro's candidacy despite a ban on the military taking political sides.
Ana Teresa Sifontes, a 71-year-old housewife and opposition sympathizer, said Chavez did some good for the nation's poor. But she said he had bungled the economy, exhibiting more interest in regional grandstanding than governing.
She said she hoped his death would bring change.
"Why do we have to pay for Cuba?" she asked, referring to the billions in Venezuelan oil Chavez sent to Havana each year in return for Cuban doctors and other experts. "Why do we need them here?"
Venezuelan officials have yet to say what type of cancer he suffered from, but details were emerging of the former paratrooper's final hours.
The head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Gen. Jose Ornella, told the AP late Wednesday that Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering.
"He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," said Ornella, who said he was with the socialist president at the moment of his death Tuesday.
In Washington, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. hoped the upcoming vote would be held on a level playing field, and lamented the expulsion of the American officials.
"We are obviously disappointed by these false accusations levied against our embassy officials," Nuland said. "This is part of a tired playbook of alleging foreign interference as a political football in internal Venezuelan politics."
___
Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez, Frank Bajak and Christopher Toothaker contributed to this report.
___
Paul Haven on Twitter: www.twitter.com/paulhaven
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chavez-body-put-permanent-display-221421771.html
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Friday, March 8, 2013
Trips to the moon and Mars are catching on
Golden Spike
An artist's conception from the Golden Spike Company shows a lunar lander in the foreground, and a moonwalking astronaut in the background.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Selling trips to the moon? Sending astronauts to Mars and back? These sound like 1960s-era science fiction adventures, but they're actually in the works for later this decade. Will these privately backed projects get off the ground? That's the billion-dollar question.
The Golden Spike Company says it's in talks with one corporation and more than one space agency about sending a two-person expedition to the moon in the 2020 time frame, at a cost of $1.4 billion per mission. Meanwhile, the Inspiration Mars Foundation is getting ready to launch a man and a woman, preferably a middle-aged married couple, on a round-trip flyby past Mars in 2018.
The two ventures are the focus of Wednesday night's installment of "Virtually Speaking Science," a talk show that airs online via BlogTalkRadio with a live audience in the Second Life virtual world. I'm your host, and my guests are Taber MacCallum, Inspiration Mars' chief technology officer; and Doug Griffith, general counsel for Golden Spike.
The hour-long show starts at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT), but if you miss the live program, never fear: You can always download the podcast from BlogTalkRadio's archive or iTunes.
Both Golden Spike and Inspiration Mars are getting advice and moral support from NASA, but the financial support is coming from elsewhere. The lunar venture expects to bootstrap its way to profitability by selling its services ??and initially through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising $240,000 (one dollar for each mile to the moon) by late April. So far, more than $7,500 has been contributed.
To Mars and back
Inspiration Mars is relying on seed money from California millionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first tourist to visit the International Space Station in 2001. Tito said his effort to send a spacecraft zooming past Mars during a favorable planetary alignment in 2018 is purely philanthropic, with the goal of inspiring future generations of Americans.
MacCallum, who took part in the Biosphere 2 experiment in 1991-1992 and went on to become a co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corp., said he's already noticed the inspirational effect.
"I keep hearing people say, 'This is the kind of thing America used to do, and maybe now we can do it again.' It's like we touched on a sore spot, and the reaction has been ... almost too positive," MacCallum said.
He said Tito's aim was merely to get some introductory exposure for the concept, in hopes that all the kinks can be worked out in time to make the 2018 deadline. Tito has committed to supporting the venture for its first two years, but he needs to raise the rest of the money for what's rumored to be a billion-dollar mission.
The team hasn't yet worked out the procedure for selecting the crew, but MacCallum said more than 100 applications have already been sent in ? including some candidates with jaw-dropping credentials. "There are some where you say to yourself, 'Oh, my gosh!'" MacCallum told me. "Hey, listen, it's suddenly cool to be a middle-aged couple."
To the moon
Unlike Inspiration Mars, Golden Spike is set up as a business, which will ultimately have to be supported by paying customers. The idea is to provide two-person trips to the moon for roughly the same cost as today's robotic missions to the moon. Golden Spike aims to do that by employing high-tech, low-cost hardware as well as a relatively low-risk mission architecture. The company plans to pre-position a lander in lunar orbit, and only then send the crew and their moon-and-back booster on a subsequent pair of launches.
"Before it even launches, we know that the lander is working," said Griffith, who is drawing upon years of experience in space and aviation law.
Griffith said Golden Spike will serve as the outer-space analog of, say, United Airlines, contracting with other companies for flight hardware. The company is working on design studies for launch vehicles, landers and other equipment. It's also talking with potential customers???and trying to convince the skeptics that it's really possible to put people on the moon, almost half a century after NASA did it in 1969.
"The consensus seems to be that it's doable within the prices we're talking about," Griffith said. "All of the skepticism seems to be about whether there are space agencies or billionaires who are willing to pay the price. That is the big unknown. ... I think we'll know in fairly short order whether the skeptics are right or wrong."
Griffith said Golden Spike's game plan calls for signing up its first customers for "right of first refusal" deals by the middle of the year, and getting its first flight contract by the end of this year.
"Our operating premise is not that we keep sliding things back," Griffith told me. "Our operating premise for now is, it's go time."
Are Golden Spike and Inspiration Mars ready for takeoff, or will we have to wait for NASA to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s, and to Mars and its moons in the mid-2030s? Listen in to "Virtually Speaking Science" and feel free to weigh in with your own views, either by taking part in the live show or by leaving your comments below.
'Virtually Speaking Science' podcasts:
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's?Facebook page, following?@b0yle on Twitter?and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
"Virtually Speaking Science"?airs on Wednesdays on BlogTalkRadio, with a live audience in the Exploratorium's Second Life auditorium. In addition to Alan Boyle, the hosts include Tom Levenson, director of MIT's graduate program in science writing; and Jennifer Ouellette, science writer and "Cocktail Party Physics" blogger.
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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Cuba upsets Japan 6-3 at World Baseball Classic
Cuba's leftfielder Alfredo Despaigne rounds third base past coach Primitivo Diaz after hitting a three-run homer off Japan's pitcher Takeru Imamura in the eighth inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Cuba's leftfielder Alfredo Despaigne rounds third base past coach Primitivo Diaz after hitting a three-run homer off Japan's pitcher Takeru Imamura in the eighth inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Cuba's starter Wilber Perez delivers a pitch against Japan in the first inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Cuba's leftfielder Alfredo Despaigne rounds third base past coach Primitivo Diaz after hitting a three-run homer off Japan's pitcher Takeru Imamura in the eighth inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Cuba's leftfielder Alfredo Despaigne, right, celebrates with teammate Alexei Bell at home after hitting a three-run homer off Japan's pitcher Takeru Imamura in the eighth inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
Cuba's leftfielder Alfredo Despaigne rounds third base past coach Primitivo Diaz after hitting a three-run homer off Japan's pitcher Takeru Imamura in the eighth inning of their World Baseball Classic first round game in Fukuoka, Japan, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
FUKUOKA, Japan (AP) ? Alfredo Despaigne hit a three-run homer in the eighth inning, helping Cuba defeat two-time defending champion Japan 6-3 Wednesday to finish first in Group A of the World Baseball Classic.
Despaigne's home run off reliever Takeru Imamura at Fukuoka Dome gave Cuba a 6-0 lead. Cuba set up a second-round showdown with Group B runner-up the Netherlands on Friday.
"This is very satisfying," Despaigne said. "This is an important win over Japan that was made possible by making an effort every day. Japan is the two-time champion, and you have to prepare very well to play against Japan."
Japan, which scored three runs in the ninth, will face Group B winner Taiwan in the second round at the Tokyo Dome.
Starter Wilber Perez picked up the win after holding Japan scoreless over three innings. Japan starter Kenji Otonari gave up one run on two hits in three innings to take the loss.
Yasmany Tomas hit a solo homer to left in the bottom of the third to give Cuba a 1-0 lead. Frederich Cepeda doubled in another run in the fourth, and Jose Abreu made it 3-0 on a single to left in the sixth that scored Luis Rivera from third.
Japan has struggled without its top players from Major League Baseball. The three runs in the ninth were more a result of poor pitching by Cuba's relievers, who issued three walks in the final inning.
"We are only looking forward to the next round," Japan manager Koji Yamamoto said. "Although some of our players are not hitting, our pitchers are doing very well."
Cuba, which routed China 12-0 on Monday, displayed the offensive power that makes the 2006 runner-up a title contender this year.
Cuba posted its first win in four WBC games against Japan.
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