Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the "Iron Dome" defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister - and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia's foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh's office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister's office and pledged: "We will declare victory from here."

Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

"Well that wasn't such a big deal," said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel's operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel's right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: "Definitely."

"We have a plan ... it will take time. We need to have patience. It won't be a day or two," he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

"Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river," Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel's manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

"DE-ESCALATION"

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

"(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries," the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran's nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington "wants the same thing as the Israelis want", an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and "de-escalation".

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt's Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes - some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets - and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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Israel hits Hamas government buildings, reservists mobilized

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists in preparation for a possible ground invasion.

Palestinian militants in Gaza kept up cross-border salvoes, firing a rocket at Israel's biggest city Tel Aviv for the third straight day. Police said it was destroyed in mid-air by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery deployed hours earlier, and no one was injured.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister - and struck a police headquarters.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia's foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

Officials in Gaza said 41 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children and a pregnant woman, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Israel uncorked its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years. The salvoes recently intensified, and are now displaying greater range.

The operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel's right to self-defense, along with appeals to both sides to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

"We have not limited ourselves in means or in time," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Israel's Channel One television. "We hope that it will end as soon as possible, but that will be only after all the objectives have been achieved."

Hamas says it is committed to continued confrontation with Israel and is eager not to seem any less resolute than smaller, more radical groups that have emerged in Gaza in recent years.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel pulled settlers out of Gaza in 2005 but maintains a blockade of the tiny, densely populated coastal territory.

RESERVE TROOP QUOTA DOUBLED

At a late night session on Friday, Israel's cabinet decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said.

The move did not necessarily mean all would be called up or that an invasion would follow. Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the sandy border zone on Saturday, and around 16,000 reservists have already been summoned to active duty.

The Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attack on Tel Aviv, saying it had fired a longer-range, Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.

After air raid sirens sounded, witnesses saw two white plumes rise into the sky over the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv and heard an explosion when the incoming rocket was hit.

The anti-missile battery had been due to take delivery of its fifth Iron Dome battery early next year but it was rushed into service near Tel Aviv after rockets were launched toward the city on Thursday and Friday. Those attacks caused no damage or casualties.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

In Gaza, some families abandoned their homes - some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets - and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

ISRAEL'S GAZA TARGETS

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh's office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister's office and pledged: "We will declare victory from here."

A three-storey house belonging to Hamas official Abu Hassan Salah was also hit and totally destroyed early on Saturday. Rescuers said at least 30 people were pulled from the rubble.

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama commended Egypt's efforts to help defuse the Gaza violence in a call to Mursi on Friday, the White House said in a statement, and underscored his hope of restoring stability there.

On Friday, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil paid a high-profile visit to Gaza, denouncing what he called Israeli aggression and saying Cairo was prepared to mediate a truce.

Egypt's Islamist government, freely elected after U.S.-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak fell to a popular uprising last year, is allied with Hamas but Cairo is also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

In a call to Netanyahu, Obama discussed options for "de-escalating" the situation, the White House said, adding that the president "reiterated U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself, and expressed regret over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian civilian lives".

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But few believe Israeli military action can snuff out militant rocket fire entirely without a reoccupation of Gaza, an option all but ruled out because it would risk major casualties and an international outcry.

While Hamas rejects the Jewish state's existence, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in areas of the nearby West Bank not occupied by Israelis, does recognize Israel but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Tulsa Town Hall: Nutrition a valuable tool in health care

Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers.

The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.

“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”

Changes in diet can be an effective treatment for many conditions, but American physicians are functionally illiterate in nutrition, he said.

“The whole subject of nutrition is omitted in medical education,” he said.

There are many ways of managing diseases other than drugs, he said. Integrative medicine, which can include dietary supplements and practices like meditation, is the future of health care, he said.

The health system is resistant to change because of entrenched vested interests. That includes pharmaceutical companies that do direct-to-consumer advertising, which should be stopped, he said.

“As dysfunctional as our health-care system is at the moment – and it is very dysfunctional – it is generating rivers of money,” he said. “That money is going into very few pockets.”

Weil has developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet but with Asian influences.

Inflammation is associated with some heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers, he said. And as a result, people should be eating real, unprocessed foods and whole grains. They should stay away from sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juice, he said.

“The new research that’s being done on sugar is not very comforting,” he said.

The aging process can’t be avoided, but age-related diseases can be avoided by proper care, he said.

“The goal should be to live long and well with a big drop off at the end,” he said.

Weil is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Tickets to the Tulsa Town Hall series are sold as a $ 75 subscription and cover five lectures. Tickets for individual lectures are not available.

To subscribe, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsatownhall, call 918-749-5965 or write to: Tulsa Town Hall, Box 52266, Tulsa, OK 74152.

Future speakers include journalist Ann Compton on Feb. 8; author James B. Stewart on April 5; historian and cinematographer Rex Ziak on May 10.

Original Print Headline: Speaker highlights nutrition

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Shannon Muchmore 918-581-8378
shannon.muchmore@tulsaworld.com
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Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.

The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.

The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.

“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.

“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.

The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.

“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.

“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.

CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.

While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.

“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.

“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”

A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.

The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.

Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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“Sister” Director Tackles Taboo of Switzerland’s Class Divide With Her Oscar Contender

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Director Ursula Meier can hardly believe that her film “Sister” – which depicts tenements, poverty and a seemingly rigid class system in lovely Switzerland – has made it over the Alps to Hollywood for Academy consideration.

“It shows a not-very-usual aspect of Switzerland,” Meier told the audience at a showing of “Sister” Thursday night at the Landmark, part of TheWrap’s Academy Screening Series. “We don’t show the beautiful mountains and the green and the lush life … For me it was important to show another point of view on this country to the world. Because usually it’s Montblanc, chocolate, and Swatch.”

Indeed, with her second film, Meier has given international audiences something else to associate with Switzerland: larcenous snow urchins.

“Sister” centers mostly around 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), who lives in a high-rise tenement in a not-so-snowy valley far below a ski resort and takes gondolas to the top to steal wealthy tourists’ skis right out from under their goggles.

Wily Simon is financing not just his own existence but that of Louise (Lea Seydoux), the title character, who just might be the worst parental figure or caretaker in a cinematic year that did, after all, include “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

It would involve spoilers to explain why Simon’s older sis is not everything she’s cracked up to be. But there’s nothing misleading about this boy-crazy, substance-abusing twentysomething gal’s unfitness to watch over Simon, the breadwinner of their sad two-person family.

He has to empty out his cash drawer to bribe Louise into snuggling with him, and when he entrusts her with the mere task of waxing skis, she can’t even do that without spilling cigarette ashes on the stolen merchandise.

“It was important for me, when we were at the ski resort, to showing the back door of the restaurant, and the workers inside … And it’s just at the end, when it’s finished, when there is no more snow and the ski resort is closed, for the first time Simon looks at the landscape. And we can see how beautiful this place is, but it’s too late now.”

Meier worked with her young leading man on her first theatrical feature, 2009′s “Home,” where he played Isabella Huppert’s son when he was just 7. She’s emphatic that Klein is not the kind of child actor who has to be tricked into giving a performance.

“During the first casting, I ask him, ‘What do you like to do in your life, Kasey?’ And he told me, ‘Thinking.’ So I said ‘OK, think,’ and I turned on the camera, and he was amazing … He understands that acting is to be, not to look like. So I really wanted to write for him with this film, because it was such an amazing experience on my first film.”

The role of the severely neglectful “sister” was tougher to nail down, both for the director and her leading actress.

“This character was the challenge of the film,” Meier said. “Because Kacey’s character is a child, so for the spectator, of course he’s a victim. But with the character of Louise, for Lea as an actress, at the beginning for her it was very hard to find the fragility of the character. I showed her a lot of films like ‘Vagabond’ … I explained to her, you were 14 when you were pregnant; it was too young for a girl, and you stopped your studies and got bad jobs you cut with your family.”

Sometimes, she said, they’d fight because “she couldn’t find the fragility of the character, and suddenly, months later, wow – it was like we cut something open and all the emotion that came out from her was very deep. I was afraid of the spectators judging the character. It was not easy, in the writing, or in the directing with the actors, because I wanted that they would love these characters, even if they’re sometimes terrible. But I like terrible characters.”

Pond told Meier that when it came to supporting actress Gillian Anderson, of “X-Files” fame, “the first time I watched, I didn’t realize it was her till the end credits” – an experience probably shared by most of those in attendance at the screening.

“I’m very happy that you say that,” said Meier, “because if you recognize the actress, you think about the actress.” But the director did want Armstrong to provoke a where-have-I-seen-you-before vibe.

“I really wanted to be played by a star – not to have a star in my film, but because it was important for Simon to have a kind of phantasma this lady, of what he wants as a mother.

And as a spectator, you can have a phantasma on the star. So I like that she came from another country, and not speak French, because she’s almost an apparition.”

Meier admitted she was frightened before the Swiss premiere – before “Sister” went on to play various fests and win the special Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

“When I had the first screening in Switzerland, a lady came back to me and was very moved by the film, because it’s usually a taboo to show poverty in Switzerland. She cried and told me, ‘I grew up in exactly the same place. My father was a worker in the factory we saw in the film, and as a child we never had the money to go up.’ I liked that she just said up.”

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o’nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the “degrading” punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica’s international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller‘s government from ratifying the U.N. convention against torture.

“The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all,” Golding said in a Thursday statement.

The Cabinet has already approved repealing the flogging law and amendments to other laws in the former British colony, where plantation slavery was particularly brutal.

The announcement was welcomed by human rights activists who view the flogging law as a barbaric throwback in a nation populated mostly by the descendants of slaves.

“We don’t really see that (the flogging law) has any part in the approach of dealing with crime in a modern democracy,” said group spokeswoman Susan Goffe.

But there are no shortage of crime-weary Jamaicans who feel that authorities should not drop the old statutes but instead enforce them, arguing that thieves who steal livestock or violent criminals who harm innocent people should receive a whipping to teach them a lesson.

“The worst criminals need strong punishing or else they’ll do crimes over and over,” said Chris Drummond, a Kingston man with three school-age children. “Getting locked up is not always enough.”

The last to suffer the punishment in Jamaica was Errol Pryce, who was sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes in 1994 for stabbing his mother-in-law.

Pryce was flogged the day before being released from prison in 1997 and later complained to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which ruled in 2004 that the form of corporal punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading and violated his rights. Jamaican courts then stopped ordering whipping or flogging.

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“30 Rock” character Liz Lemon to get her happy ending

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “30 Rock” perpetual unlucky-in-love heroine Liz Lemon is finally getting her happy ending, as NBC invited fans on Thursday to watch her get married this month.

After a string of bad boyfriends and unsuccessful romances, Lemon, played by comedienne Tina Fey, finds her soul mate in budding entrepreneur Criss Chross, who owns an organic gourmet hotdog food truck, played by actor James Marsden on the show.

“Ms. Elizabeth Miervaldis Lemon presents herself to be married to Mr. Crisstopher Rick Chross…But not in a creepy way that perpetuates the idea that brides are virgins and women are property,” NBC said in a mock wedding announcement, true to Lemon‘s feminist principles.

The wedding episode will be aired on November 29, during the Emmy-winning show’s seventh and final season.

While Lemon, 42, has never made it down the aisle before, she has had a couple of doomed engagements in past seasons, including her British boyfriend Wesley Snipes (Michael Sheen), whom she almost settled for before finding love with pilot Carol Burnett (Matt Damon).

The hapless singleton has also endured eventful dates with celebrities such as actor James Franco (along with his Japanese body pillow) and Conan O’Brien.

“30 Rock,” created by Fey and inspired by her stint as head writer for “Saturday Night Live”, follows the day-to-day life of fictional NBC sketch comedy show “TGS with Tracy Jordan,” and also stars Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Calpers, others sue Pfizer as “opt outs” to class action

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A dozen large investors have sued Pfizer Inc for securities fraud, distancing themselves from a long-running shareholder class action over allegations the company misled them about the safety of the pain relievers Celebrex and Bextra.

The plaintiffs in the new case, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, include the California Public Employees‘ Retirement System (Calpers), the biggest U.S. public pension fund, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs), and several mutual funds.

“Opting out” of securities class actions has become a growing trend, as some plaintiffs gamble they can do better by suing solo or in a small group instead of joining a larger case.

The plaintiffs in the new case said in September that they would not be part of the pending class action. The class action, led by the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana, grew out of lawsuits that started in 2004 following a study on the cardiovascular risks of Celebrex and Bextra.

Pfizer said it will fight the new case, as well as another opt-out case and the larger class action.

“The company believes these cases and the original class action lawsuit have no merit based on the undisputed facts in the record and the governing federal securities law,” said Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder.

He said both drugs “were rigorously studied and tested” by the company and independent experts, and that the U.S. government, doctors, patients, and investors received accurate information on the risks and benefits of the medications.

Revenues from Celebrex and Bextra dropped by over $ 2 billion in the first nine months of 2005 after the safety concerns were made public, while Pfizer saw a $ 68.4 billion loss in stock market value between October 2004 and October 2005, according to allegations by investors.

In September 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay $ 2.3 billion to settle a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the marketing of drugs including Bextra.

Plaintiffs have opted out of past securities fraud class actions, including cases involving Countrywide Financial Corp and stemming from the collapse of WorldCom.

“Opt-outs are a major trend, probably reflecting the increased competition within the plaintiff’s bar,” said John Coffee, a law professor and securities law expert at Columbia University Law School. He said large institutional investors “can settle for more in cases in which they are not submerged in a huge class with smaller investors.”

Other public pension funds in Thursday’s lawsuit include the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the Montana Board of Investments and the Arizona State Retirement System. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and American Century Investment Management are also among the plaintiffs.

The complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as interest and attorneys fees.

The plaintiffs are represented by Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, a New York law firm that often leads class actions.

Other investors also have opted out of the Pfizer class action. Wolf Opportunity Fund Ltd and Okumus Capital LLC sued Pfizer on Wednesday, making similar allegations of fraud.

Matthew Siben, a lawyer for Wolf and Okumus with law firm Dietrich Siben Thorpe, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Jay Eisenhofer, a lawyer for the lead plaintiff in the class action, declined to comment on the new cases.

The case is Montana Board of Investments, et al. v. Pfizer Inc., et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-cv-9379 .

(Reporting By Nate Raymond; Editing by Martha Graybow and Tim Dobbyn)

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Blast rocks Gulf oil rig, at least two missing

Ships and helicopters are searching for two oil rig workers who disappeared when an explosion rocked a gulf oil rig off the coast of Louisiana and set it on fire, Coast Guard officials said.

Eleven other crew members were flown to hospitals, and four of them are listed in critical condition. No one has been confirmed dead.

Earlier reports by the Coast Guard that as many as 15 people were unaccounted for were resolved as the workers were located.

Among the injured were four who were airlifted for medical treatment to the West Jefferson Medical Center, where they are in critical condition after suffering serious burns. All four are intubated and will be evacuated to Baton Rouge Burn Center when they are stabilized, according to West Jefferson spokesman Taslin Alfonzo.

Three helicopters and two rescue boats are scouring the water looking for the missing crew members, according to Ed Cubanski, chief of the U.S. Coast Guard response.

The Coast Guard said that a Black Elk Energy Co. oil and natural gas platform caught fire after workers using a torch cut a line that had 28 gallons of oil in it, causing an explosion.

Black Elk's CEO, John Hoffman, said that the wrong tool was used in cutting the line. Contract workers should have used a saw instead of a torch, which caught vapors and caused the blast. The workers were employees of Grand Isle Shipyard, not Black Elk, he said. All of the individuals were men.

The rig was offline for maintenance and was scheduled to go back online for production later this month.

There were 22 people on board at the time of the explosion, according to the Coast Guard.

An oil sheen a half mile long and 200 yards wide has spread over the water surrounding the platform, which sits in 56 feet of water. The platform was shut down for the work at the time of the accident, Cubanski said.

The platform was located about 20 nautical miles southeast of Grand Isle, La., when the explosion happened, Vega said.

The explosion and fire comes the day after BP agreed to a $4 billion settlement for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the gulf, triggering the worst offshore oil spill in the country's history.

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