In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...
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Merry Christmas, America-Haters?
Label: TechnologyWhen 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.
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Survivor's father to NRA: Give us our kids back
Label: Business
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, calls on Congress to address gun violence at …A teacher saved his 8-year-old son from the massacre in Newtown, and now Andrei Nikitchyuk has a message for the National Rifle Association: Help make the United States safe for kids again.
"I would offer NRA: Return this country their kids. If they can do it, I would like that very, very much," Nikitchyuk told reporters outside the Capitol after a press conference organized by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The event was organized to pile pressure on lawmakers to enact new gun restrictions.
On Friday, which started like any other day at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nikitchyuk's son, Bear, was walking with another child to turn in attendance sheets at the principal's office when the gunfire started. The boy told his father it sounded like someone slamming a door.
A teacher, Abby Clements, pulled the boys into her classroom and barricaded the door. Twenty children and six adults weren't so lucky and died in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
Nikitchyuk, who emigrated from the Soviet Union 22 years ago, said he used to think that guns are part of American history and that "our politicians will do whatever they can do keep our children safe." After past mass shootings — Columbine and Aurora — "I would avert my eyes."
But now "we all need to speak up," Nikitchyuk said.
Relatives of Americans killed in other mass shootings stood somberly behind him, some nodding their heads or clutching photographs of their slain loved ones.
"It's not a partisan issue, it's an issue of safety of our children," he said. "Let's make it back to the country it was: Safe for kids."
"Friday changed everything," said Brady Campaign President Dan Gross. "It is a tipping point."
Gross echoed President Barack Obama's call for a national conversation about gun control. He insisted that the vast majority of Americans — including "responsible" gun owners — agree on the need for new restrictions.
"The only place that this is a contentious political debate is in that building behind us," he said, with a nod at the Capitol.
Merck, GE to collaborate on Alzheimer’s drug development
Label: Health(Reuters) – Merck & Co and General Electric Co‘s healthcare unit have agreed to collaborate on an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the companies said on Tuesday.
GE Healthcare will supply Flutemetamol, an investigational imaging agent, to Merck for use with its experimental Alzheimer’s disease drug MK-8931.
The companies hope GE’s imaging agent will help identify patients who might benefit from a therapy such as Merck’s, which targets beta amyloid, a protein that can clump together and form plaques in the brain. Such plaques have been found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
MK-8931 is Merck’s lead Alzheimer’s drug candidate and is designed to modify progression of the disease as well as improve symptoms. Alzheimer’s robs patients of their memory and can cause other cognitive disturbances.
Based on promising results from an early-stage clinical trial of MK-8931, Merck plans to move forward with a larger trial, called EPOCH, at multiple sites around the world.
Flutemetamol is a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agent that has been able, in clinical trials, to detect beta amyloid in the brain.
GE Healthcare will supply Flutemetamol to help select patients for clinical trials and evaluate the agent as a companion diagnostic tool. Financial and other terms of the agreement between the companies were not disclosed.
(Reporting By Toni Clarke; editing by John Wallace)
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Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp
Label: WorldBEIRUT (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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HBO making “Game of Thrones”-themed beer
Label: LifestyleLOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Winter is coming – and so is a new line of beers based on HBO‘s fantasy drama “Game of Thrones.” Presumably, all will boast a full, robust head, perhaps resting on top of a spike.
HBO is teaming with Cooperstown, N.Y. brewery Ommegang for a line of brews centered around the series, the New York Times reports. The first beer, Iron Throne Blonde Ale, is slated to go on sale in March, in time for the March 31 premiere of the show’s third season.
It sounds like the perfect libation for watching the premiere from the comfort of your $ 30,000 Iron Throne replica.
A second “GoT”-themed beer will go on sale in fall 2013, with two more varieties expected to go on sale in conjunction with new seasons of the series.
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Iran media: Son of ex-president released on bail
Label: WorldTEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian media say the son of influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been released on bail.
Several papers, including the pro-reform Etemad daily, say Mahdi Hashemi was released late Sunday and immediately went to his father’s home.
Authorities arrested the younger Hashemi in late September, a day after he returned to Iran from Britain.
He is held on charges of fomenting unrest in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. Hashemi also faced corruption charges.
His arrest came days after his sister, Faezeh, was taken into custody to serve a six-month sentence on charges of making propaganda against Iran’s ruling system.
Since Rafsanjani backed Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger in 2009, his family has come under pressure from hardliners.
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Massachusetts fines Morgan Stanley over Facebook research
Label: TechnologyBOSTON (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc’s initial public offering, will pay a $ 5 million fine to Massachusetts to settle charges that its bankers improperly influenced its research analysts when the Internet company went public.
Massachusetts’ top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged that Morgan Stanley improperly helped Facebook disclose sensitive financial information selectively, perpetuating what he calls “an unlevel playing field” between Wall Street and Main Street.
Morgan Stanley has been under criticism since the social media company went public in May for having revealed revised earnings and revenue forecasts to select clients on conference calls before the media company’s $ 16 billion initial public offering. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Galvin, who has been aggressive in policing how research is distributed on Wall Street ever since investment banks reached a global settlement in 2003, said the bank violated that settlement. He fined Citigroup $ 2 million over similar charges in late October.
Massachusetts says that a senior Morgan Stanley banker helped a Facebook executive release new information and then guided the executive on how to speak with Wall Street analysts about it. The banker, Galvin’s office said, rehearsed with Facebook’s Treasurer and wrote the bulk of the script Facebook’s Treasurer used when calling the research analysts.
The banker “was not allowed to call research analysts himself, so he did everything he could to ensure research analysts received new revenue numbers which they then provided to institutional investors,” Galvin said in a statement.
Retail investors were not given any similar information, Galvin said, saying this case illustrates how institutional investors often have an edge over retail investors.
(Reporting By Svea Herbst-Bayliss with additional reporting by Suzanne Barlyn in New York; Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)
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TV network aimed at millennials set for summer
Label: LifestyleNEW YORK (AP) — Participant Media plans to launch a cable network aimed at viewers 18 to 34 years old with programming it describes as inspiring and thought-provoking.
The as-yet-unnamed network is set to start next summer with an initial reach of 40 million subscribers, the company announced Monday.
Targeting so-called millennials, Participant is developing a program slate with such producers as Brian Graden, Morgan Spurlock and Brian Henson of The Jim Henson Company.
Evan Shapiro, who joined Participant in May after serving as President of IFC and Sundance Channel, will head the new network.
Parent company Participant Media has produced a number of fiction and nonfiction films including “Charlie Wilson’s War,” ”An Inconvenient Truth” and Steven Spielberg’s current biopic “Lincoln.”
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Vivalis to buy Intercell in European biotech merger
Label: HealthLONDON/PARIS (Reuters) – France‘s Vivalis and Austrian vaccine specialist Intercell are linking up in a rare cross-border deal that shows the need for Europe’s fledgling biotech companies to grow in scale and produce a stronger pipeline to better compete in the quest for lucrative partnership deals.
Vivalis is set to buy Intercell in a deal valuing the Austrian vaccine maker at around 133 million euros ($ 174 million), and creating an enlarged anti-infectives specialist in the fragmented European biotech industry.
“Today it’s necessary to have critical mass in biotech,” Vivalis Chief Executive Franck Grimaud told Reuters. “Together, we will have all the know-how from drug discovery to product commercialization.”
Both companies are loss-making and the tie-up, billed as a merger of equals, will allow for cost savings of 5 million to 6 million euros a year, the companies said late on Sunday.
The combined group – to be known as Valneva, with listings in Paris and Vienna – also plans to raise 40 million euros via a rights issue to strengthen its balance sheet.
Former Vivalis shareholders will hold approximately 55 percent of the combined entity and Intercell investors 45 percent, immediately after the deal completes.
The combined company will be headquartered in Lyon, France, an establish centre for vaccines and infectious diseases research.
A number of corporate functions will remain at Intercell’s former base in Vienna and Vivalis’ offices in Nantes, north-western France.
STRATEGIC FIT
The decision to merge with Vivalis follows a difficult period for Intercell, which has a vaccine for Japanese encephalitis on the market but has been struggling to get back on track after a string of product setbacks.
For Vivalis, the acquisition offers an opportunity to accelerate its drive to establish a profitable business based on finished products.
Vivalis and Intercell first held talks over a possible combination a year ago, Franck Grimaud said.
Nomura Code analyst Gary Waanders said the two companies will benefit from merging their research and manufacturing activities as well as combined revenues from vaccines and technology licenses.
“We believe the combination of these companies, each experts in their fields, represents an excellent strategic fit which takes advantage of complementary skills and assets and provides a more resilient base for future growth than either company had alone,” Waanders said.
Intercell shares were trading 18 percent higher at 2.06 euros at 1257 GMT in Vienna, while Vivalis was over 7 percent lower at 6.83 euros on the Paris stock exchange.
A Paris-based trader attributed the Vivalis slump to a risk of dilution from the capital hike, which at 40 million is substantial for a group that will have a combined market capitalization of around 270 million.
“It’s also an interesting opportunity to get out of the stock for investors that bought it when it was worth 5 euros,” the trader added.
The French company’s primary expertise is in using technology based on stem cells from embryonic ducks. It licenses its EB66 cell line to pharmaceutical companies for the production of vaccines and drugs, including antibody-based treatments.
Thomas Lingelbach, the current chief executive of Intercell said the merger would bring together Vivalis’ technological know-how with Intercell’s product development and manufacturing experience.
Lingelbach will become CEO of Valneva, while Grimaud will become its chief business officer.
Under the terms of the deal, Intercell shareholders will receive 13 Vivalis new ordinary shares for 40 Intercell shares, representing a premium of 38.5 percent to the Austrian company’s closing share price on December 14, when the company was valued at 96 million euros, or 31.7 percent above the three-month average.
Intercell shareholders will also get 13 new preferred shares for 40 Intercell, with each preferred share to be converted into 0.481 new Valneva ordinary share in the event of successful approval of Intercell’s experimental Pseudomonas vaccine.
Societe Generale is advising Vivalis and Goldman Sachs International is working for Intercell on the deal, which is expected to be completed in May 2013.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler and Elena Berton, editing by G Crosse)
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