Concussions and stricter rules taking their toll

MIAMI (Reuters) – Three teams begin preparation for games this weekend unsure if their starting quarterback will be cleared to play as the league’s stricter concussion rules start to bite.

The NFL has been concerned about the health implications from concussions and brain injuries and introduced a clearly defined series of steps that teams have to follow when players suffer knocks to the head.

In order to return to action the following week, concussed players have to be cleared by an independent neurologist.

The tougher stance from the NFL came against the backdrop of legal action brought by former players, who suffered what they say were long term effects of concussions, and a Congressional hearing on head injuries in American football.

An illustration of the new rules is none more evident than next Monday’s game between the Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers, which could now feature two back-up quarterbacks after both teams lost their starters on Sunday to head injuries.

Jay Cutler of the Bears was forced to exit Sunday’s 13-6 defeat to the Houston Texans at half-time after showing symptoms of concussion following a helmet-to-helmet hit from Houston’s Tim Dobbins.

Cutler came back in after the hit, taking seven more snaps before the Bears said concussion-like symptoms became evident.

Several reports said the NFL had reviewed the Bears’ handling of the situation and agreed they had followed the protocol correctly.

But Bears head coach Lovie Smith said that even without the rules he would not have sent a dizzy Cutler back on the field.

“If a player has a concussion or any injury he’s not going back in the game. It’s as simple as that,” said Smith.

“We’ll never put a guy at risk. No game is that important for us. The players’ health always comes first with us,” added Smith.

Jason Campbell, who completed 11 of 19 passes, putting up 94 yards in tricky, wet conditions, will start if Cutler is not ready.

“It’s tough but that’s why you bring in a veteran like Jason Campbell who has played ball,” smith said.

“In the NFL injuries happen and you have to be ready. Jason is a pro,” he said, adding that the eight-year veteran usually only took a quarter of the snaps in practice.

San Francisco quarterback Alex Smith also went out with concussion during the 24-24 tie with the St. Louis Rams on Sunday after taking a couple of hits.

Smith complained of blurry vision and was replaced by second-year Colin Kaepernick who produced 11 of 17 for 117 yards with 66 rushing yards and a seven yard touchdown run.

“I thought he handled himself pretty well, overall I thought he had a solid performance,” 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh said of Kaepernick.

It is a sign of how seriously teams take the rules and the threat of sanction that both have been at pains to point out while their players recovered to take more snaps, coaching and medical staff followed the rules in bringing a player out once concussion symptoms were identified.

Symptoms included in the NFL‘s rules include a gap in memory, persistent dizziness, headaches and an inability to remember assignments or plays.

Previously the NFL‘s rules stopped a player from returning to action on the same day only if he lost consciousness.

In the third case, Philadelphia Eagles’ Michael Vick suffered what his coach Andy Reid called on Monday a “pretty significant concussion” in the defeat to the Dallas Cowboys and said the player’s memory of what happened was “foggy”.

Vick was told to rest at home after suffering the injury in the second quarter and Reid may well have to turn to back-up Nick Foles for his first start against the Washington Redskins.

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

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New Greece plan ’32bn euros more’

12 November 2012 Last updated at 17:39 ET

A draft document prepared for eurozone finance ministers suggests that Greece should be given two more years to meet budget goals, but that this will add 32.6bn euros ($ 41.4bn) to its bailout.

Eurozone finance ministers have met in Brussels to discuss new targets for Greece based on the report.

The ministers also delayed a decision on whether to release the latest 31.5bn euro tranche of bailout funds.

They said they would meet again to discuss the issue on 20 November.

Greece has been pushing for the funds after passing a tough budget for 2013 on Sunday.

Greek PM Antonis Samaras has warned that without the new tranche the country will run out of money within days.

But the eurozone ministers said Greece needed to implement a “few remaining” prior actions to allow the process to move forward.

‘Smoother path’

The draft document on the pace of Greek economic reform was prepared by the so-called “troika” – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

The troika has already pledged 240bn euros in bailout loans to Greece.

The two-year extension would give Greece time to achieve a primary budget surplus – a figure that would not include debt-financing costs.

Continue reading the main story

• Retirement age up from 65 to 67


• A further round of pension cuts, of 5-15%


• Salary cuts, notably for police officers, soldiers, firefighters, professors, judges, justice officials; minimum wage also reduced


• Holiday benefits cut


• 35% cut to severance pay


• Redundancy notice reduced from six to four months

The document says: “Our revised fiscal programme targets the 4.5% of GDP primary surplus target by 2016, two years later than foreseen.

It adds: “The smoother path will help to moderate the impact of fiscal adjustment on the economy.”

The extension would cost an additional 32.6bn euros and comes with “very large” risks, the report says.

Those risks include the uncertain political support for the programme within Greece, the possible negative effect on the economy of the fiscal consolidation and possible court challenges to the measures.

The BBC’s Chris Morris in Brussels says the original intention was for debt to be reduced to 120% of GDP by 2020 but that this is no longer feasible and a new target needs to be agreed by everyone.

He says this means more uncertainty, at a time when many Greek citizens believe they have taken all the austerity they can swallow.

Market fund-raising

Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker had earlier expressed optimism about the troika report.

“The basis is positive, because the Greeks have really delivered,” he said.

Greek MPs approved the 2013 budget, which includes further cuts to pensions and wages, in a vote on Sunday night.

More than 10,000 people joined demonstrations outside Greece’s parliament to protest against the cuts.

The passing of the budget was a pre-condition for Athens to be granted the next tranche of 31.5bn euros of EU/IMF loans necessary to stave off bankruptcy.

Greece faces a repayment deadline for 5bn euros of debt on Friday.

However, eurozone ministers had indicated it was unlikely a decision on the disbursement of the tranche would be made at Monday’s meeting.

The funding will have to be approved first by some national parliaments, including Germany’s.

“We all… want to help Greece, but we won’t be put under pressure,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

On Tuesday, Greece will make an urgent bid to raise funds from the financial markets in case it does not get the tranche of bailout money.

The national economy is expected to shrink next year by 4.5% and public debt is likely to rise to 189% of GDP, almost double Greece’s national output.

This year, public debt stood at 175%.

The head of Syriza, a left-wing opposition party, said the budget cuts would leave Greeks unable to afford essential goods this winter.

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BBC head says broadcaster must reform or die

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain‘s BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten said on Sunday confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the Newsight report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organizational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC than there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognizable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual license fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Boy Donates Bar Mitzvah Money to Fund Veterans’ Reconstructive Surgeries

At a time when he’s supposed to be celebrating himself, 13-year-old Josh Neidorf decided to make his bar mitzvah about celebrating those who serve their country. As a result, he donated most of  his bar mitzvah money to Operation Mend, a groundbreaking program out of UCLA that repairs extreme injuries and disfigurements in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before anyone shrugs off the gesture as a boy giving up the equivalent of his allowance for a good cause, rest assured Neidorf gave away much more than that. The Associated Press reports this child personally donated $ 13,000 to the medical facility. 

Neidorf explained his decision to local news outlet, KCAL9, “I just love knowing that it’s going somewhere to help the people who save our lives and keep us safe everyday.”

Operation Mend is a privately-funded program that was founded in 2007, by philanthropist Ron Katz. According to The Huffington Post, Katz was inspired by the news of returning vet Aaron Mankin and the dozens of surgeries he would need to repair an explosives injury to his face.  Mankin eventually became the first Operation Mend patient.

Katz told the Post, “My wife and I soon realized that there were dozens of Aarons out there. These men and women deserve not only the best that the defense sector has to offer, they deserve the best that the private sector has to offer as well.”

Though it started with plastic reconstruction, Operation Mend has expanded to include a host of other highly technical specialties including orthopedic reconstruction, airway reconstruction and mental health programs for both soldiers and their caregivers.

Veterans face some incredible odds upon their return to civilian life, chief among them being their health issues. Of the 2 million veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who’ve already returned home, the Los Angeles Times reports most endure recurring issues from physical trauma that include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hearing loss and tinnitus, and head injuries. 

Operation Mend may be small in terms of the number of patients it can serve at any time (it will have served 72 this year), but it provides a place for our most severely injured to be treated by the nation’s most skilled medical staff using the latest in advanced techniques.

Obviously our returning soldiers are the most deserving of ample and expert medical care. But adopting veteran care as a cultural priority clearly has positive results for all of us. Children like Joshua Neidorf learn and can demonstrate real generosity and people in general come to understand we’re so much stronger when we refuse to leave any of our own behind.

Are you a veteran or the loved one of a returning soldier? What would you like to see provided for them to make the transition to civilian life smoother? 

Related stories on TakePart

• 9 Military Animals

• A Fair Education? Military Kids Struggle With New Schools, Red Tape, and High Stress

• Celebs Who Served in the Military

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a web editor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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Japan’s economy shrinks 3.5 percent in 3rd quarter

TOKYO (AP) — Japan‘s economy contracted in July-September, its first contraction in three quarters, foiling hopes for a rebound and signaling to many economists it may already be in recession.

The minus 3.5 percent annual growth rate for the quarter reported Monday was in line with gloomy forecasts for the world’s third-largest economy, which has suffered as a territorial dispute with China hammered exports already weakened by feeble global demand.

Based on the most recent data, economists are forecasting a further decline in October to December, which would officially put Japan in recession, marked by two consecutive quarterly contractions.

The government also said Monday that consumer spending fell 0.5 percent as subsidies for auto purchases expired and corporate capital spending fell 3.2 percent. Spending on reconstruction from the country’s March 2011 disasters has also weakened.

The drop for the current quarter may not be as severe as that in July-September.

“How far is hard to tell,” said David Rea, an economist in London with Capital Economics, adding that the decline could be a couple of percentage points.

“If the economy does recover in any way it will be a minute rebound,” he said.

More than two decades after Japan’s asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, its policymakers have yet to devise an effective strategy to help the economy break out of its deflationary funk. Meanwhile, the Japanese yen remains stubbornly high, discouraging its companies from investing either at home or abroad and undermining its export competitiveness, especially against rivals Germany and South Korea.

Strangled by weak consumer spending and public investment, the economy grew at an anemic 0.7 percent annual pace in April-June, according to figures that were revised down by half from the originally reported 1.4 percent.

Until recently, the government was still forecasting growth at about 2 percent for the year. It earlier was predicting a turnaround late in the year, but the renewed tensions with China over disputed islands in the East China Sea, coupled with sluggish growth in Europe and other key export markets, have doused hopes for a significant rebound before 2013.

A slew of dismal recent data releases offers little encouragement.

Squeezed by surging costs for imported fuel and sinking exports, Japan’s current account surplus plunged to 2.72 trillion yen ($ 34 billion) in April-September, its lowest level since monthly data began in 1985, as the trade deficit surged.

Although Japan will likely continue to run current account surpluses for some time to come, its decline is a stark reminder of the country’s persisting reliance on exports to support its energy-intensive standard of living through massive imports of food, fuel and other resources.

Adding to the squeeze on pocketbooks from hikes in electricity rates, winter bonuses are falling by an average of 4 percent this year.

Machinery orders for September fell twice as fast as expected. Meanwhile, the job market weakened, likely hurting prospects for stronger consumer spending to help offset weak exports. Slower-than-anticipated government spending on reconstruction has further undermined demand.

Japan’s local governments are running short of funds as lawmakers dicker over legislation needed to authorize bonds to pay for deficit financing.

Though the government and opposition parties look likely to reach a compromise on financing that would avert Japan’s own version of a “fiscal cliff,” the standoff has done little to inspire confidence in the potential for a strong rebound, says Klaus Baader, a regional economist with Societe Generale Cross Asset Research in Hong Kong.

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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Ohio teen gets prison for life in Craigslist murders

AKRON, Ohio (Reuters) – Seventeen-year-old Brogan Rafferty was sentenced to life in prison without parole Friday for his role in the killing of three men, two of whom were lured by a Craigslist ad promising work on an Ohio farm.

Rafferty was 16 when he was arrested in November 2011, but was tried as an adult. He was convicted late last month in the murders of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Virginia; Ralph Geiger, 56, of Akron, Ohio; and Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio.

Rafferty also got 10 years for the attempted murder of Scott Davis, who was shot in the arm while escaping after meeting Rafferty and alleged triggerman Richard Beasley.

Prosecutors called the teen an apt pupil to Beasley, 53, who is also charged in the murders.

Rafferty testified that he was terrified of the man he had considered a father figure and spiritual adviser after he saw Beasley shoot Geiger in the head execution-style.

Beasley allegedly enticed Geiger with the offer of a non-existent caretaker job, killed him, stole his identity, and then drew other victims by posting the bogus job on Craigslist.

Rafferty, wearing prison stripes with hands clasped in front of him, told the court Friday that Beasley an “evil, deceitful cruel murderer,” but admitted the he bore some responsibility.

“I was involved, I didn’t like it, and now I see there were many options I couldn’t see then that I see now, but I can’t make anything better and I’m sorry,” he said.

Judge Lynn Callahan called Rafferty’s case “heartbreaking” but said she did not accept that he had no way out of his situation.

“You embraced the evil, you studied it,” she said. She said Rafferty had been dealt “a lousy hand in life,” but she found nothing in the case that could be chalked up to the recklessness of youth.

“You could have been so much more; you are so intelligent,” the judge told Rafferty.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony that the teen helped dig graves for some of the men and was found in possession of guns and knives stolen from them after Beasley shot them.

Beasley’s trial is scheduled in the same courtroom for January 7. He faces the death penalty if convicted. Both Rafferty’s and Beasley’s attorneys are under a gag order and are not permitted to talk to the media.

Under Ohio law, juveniles older than 15 who are charged with a serious offense and crimes that involve a firearm are sent to adult court for trial.

Last summer, a U.S. Supreme Court decision struck down mandatory life sentences for juveniles. The high court found that judges and juries passing sentence on juvenile murders must weigh mitigating circumstances, including the youth’s role and family background.

A 2005 Supreme Court decision made it unconstitutional to execute anyone under the age of 18.

Rafferty’s attorney Jill Flagg objected to his sentence and will appeal.

In other incidents involving Craigslist and other social media, people advertising goods for sale or responding to ads have been attacked and killed.

In 2009, a former medical student was accused of killing a masseuse he met through Craigslist. In February, two men in Tennessee were accused of killing a man and a woman for “unfriending” the daughter of one of the suspects on Facebook.

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Eric Walsh)

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Boehringer Ingelheim to start late-stage hepatitis C drug trial

BOSTON (Reuters) – Boehringer Ingelheim said on Saturday it plans to initiate a late-stage clinical trial of its experimental hepatitis C treatment following promising results from earlier studies.

The company announced final data from a mid-stage trial of its treatment regimen which showed that 69 percent of patients in the study were free of the virus 12 and 24 weeks following the end of treatment.

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne infectious disease of the liver that can lead to liver failure and transplant.

Historically, hepatitis C has been treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin, but treatment lasts as long as 48 weeks and interferon is associated with flu-like side effects.

The goal of drugmakers now, including Boehringer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Gilead Sciences Inc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co is to develop products that do not need to be combined with interferon. Most analysts consider Gilead to currently be at the forefront of the race.

Full results from Boehringer’s trial, known as SOUND-C2, were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston. Preliminary data were presented earlier this year.

Boehringer’s trial tested a combination of BI-201335, a protease inhibitor, BI-207127, a polymerase inhibitor, and ribivirin.

Boehringer is a privately held company headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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The Workday After Tomorrow

What happens when business as usual is impossible? When millions in the Northeast lost power, cell service, Internet access, and running water due to Superstorm Sandy, companies scrambled to find the answer. Some improvised on the spot: Keith McNally’s New York City bistro Balthazar grilled steaks and served lobster on Prince Street, while Katz’s Delicatessen sliced up sandwiches by candlelight. Manhattan’s Equinox fitness clubs started a second business, selling showers for $ 35 a pop. Large financial firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS) began relocating staff and workloads from New York to offices overseas, and tens of thousands of workers turned to the cloud, working from home—or Starbucks (SBUX). Meanwhile, Tim Webster, a customer enablement manager at EMaint Enterprises, an info-tech company in Mount Laurel, N.J., found himself in a Florida Wal-Mart (WMT), picking out a Captain America costume for the company’s impromptu Halloween party. “It’s hard to complain,” he says. “I mean, it’s a bit cold this morning. Maybe you need a light jacket?”

Webster was one of five employees flown down to EMaint’s satellite office in Estero, Fla., on the Saturday before Sandy hit, as part of the company’s business continuity plan. “It looked like we were going to get battered here in South Jersey, with mass power outages and trees down, and we have customers worldwide,” says Jon Hollander, executive vice president of operations. “So we decided to send five of our core-function employees for an expense-paid vacation in sunny Florida.”

Thanks to data stored in the cloud, the company was able to provide service to its clients without interruption. But Webster (who insists “it’s not a vacation—I’m still working”) is still playing it safe. “I’m staying out of the sun,” he says, noting how weird it’s been to see his colleagues wearing shorts.

Illustration by Marcos Chin

World economic losses to disasters totaled an estimated $ 380 billion in 2011, and nearly every major company now sets up detailed continuity and mitigation plans for everything from terrorist incidents and nuclear attacks to pandemics like bird flu. A cottage industry of in-house sky-is-falling professionals and glass-half-empty consulting firms has sprung up to deal with this need. And as companies become more reliant on digital data and geographically diverse locations, their strategies must evolve, too. “For instance, people don’t warehouse parts anymore,” says Ken Burris, chief executive officer of Witt Associates, a crisis management consultancy. “They rely on just-in-time delivery. But when there’s that hiccup in the supply chain, they’d better have multiple contingencies in place, or work stops.” And Burris points out that the implications are often dire: “Statistics show that, of small businesses impacted by disaster, about a third don’t recover.”

The biggest difference between recent disruptions and those only a decade ago shows up in businesses’ increasing faith in cloud computing, which was sorely tested by Sandy. As Lower Manhattan was swamped, major media companies such as Huffington Post, MarketWatch, and Gawker saw their sites go offline as water flooded the basement floors of the Datagram server building. Gawker Media eventually improvised by redirecting Gawker, Gizmodo, and Deadspin to temporary Tumblr blog pages. “If we’re the indestructible cockroaches of the media world,” Gawker founder Nick Denton e-mailed his staff, “now’s the time to show it.” Still, the network lost nearly all its advertising opportunities, save a cheeky “Back Up Site Covered by State Farm” plug at the top of each site’s Tumblr home page.

Peer1 Hosting, a Net outfit based in Lower Manhattan, thought it was in the clear—it had generators on the 17th floor ready to keep the data servers humming. But when the fuel pump in the basement was flooded, Peer1 was unable to get the necessary diesel fuel upstairs. So it improvised, too. “We had a team of 30 people getting buckets of diesel fuel going up 17 floors to keep the generator working and our customers online,” says Rajan Sodhi, Peer1’s vice president of marketing. Employees hoofed it up darkened stairwells for more than 48 hours, replenishing the tanks.

Shawn White, vice president of operations for Keynote Systems, which monitors online access, says many companies have turned to the cloud primarily for cost savings, not safety. “If you’re going to be in the cloud, you have to make sure they have options for multiple data centers in a geographically distributed base. It’s extra money, but that’s the cost of a robust continuity plan,” he says.

And obviously the cloud can’t help if you don’t have electricity, cell service, or Net access. In the 10 states hit by Sandy, 25 percent of cell towers and land lines were affected by the storm, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Downtown New York lost power for nearly a week. “People keep asking what they can do if there is absolutely no power at all, anywhere,” says Ken Moon, co-founder of Connecticut-based emergency software platform Veoci Systems. “I say, ‘It’s smoke signals and CBs, if you got ’em. And how long the juice lasts on your cell phone, if your cell phone works.’”

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Throughout the Northeast, many of the contingency plans at businesses failed, most notably at several hospitals, which were left without working backup generators and forced to evacuate patients. Now experts are sorting out why. “This notion that big disasters are wake-up calls?” Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, asks. “They’re more like snooze alarms. Everyone gets aroused, then we end up repeating mistakes. For too long we’ve depended upon seat-of-the-pants decision-making to determine disaster policy. We have a lot of data about what actually works.”

So how does a company or government stress the importance of disaster planning when a storm isn’t bearing down? By invoking the undead, of course. “Are You Zombie Safe?” asks a Red Cross video promoting its disaster preparedness training program. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a graphic novel, Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security also have so-called zombie-based safety programs. In fact, while the East Coast scrambled to recover from Sandy, thousands of first responders and security firms were preparing for Zombie Apocalypse, an emergency-response training event held at the Paradise Point Resort in San Diego.

“We get all these first responders in here and tell them the sky is falling, the Mayans were right, the clock is ticking, and your bosses are watching,” says Brad Barker, president and founder of Halo, the event’s organizer. In addition to simulating crisis-driven hysteria, he also dresses up actors as zombies in elaborate Hollywood makeup and orders them to eat the humans’ brains. “We got our asses handed to us during Katrina on live TV, and everyone knows it,” says Barker. “We create hyper-realistic training, so you can put together a plan for a mass casualty event of any kind, whether that’s seismic, meteorological, biological, or somebody flies a couple planes into your building. The zombies just make it fun.”

But what happens when every plan has fallen apart and it’s just you, your cubicle, and a horde of alien, radioactive, bird-flu-infected terrorist zombies? “The priorities of survival are always the same, whatever the terrain or disaster,” says Bear Grylls, celebrity survivalist and host of TV show Man vs. Wild. “Protection, rescue, water, food.” Grylls recommends gathering office trash bags and using them for shelter, water collection, or waterproofing your tinder and cell phone. “Remember, you can only last three days without water, but three weeks without food.” On that last note, Grylls says that even in an office environment (the filthier the better), would-be survivalists should look for “bugs, grubs, and worms before rats or bigger game—as well as the obvious, like vending machines and cans.”

Last (and, yes, least), take a page from such fictional companies as Cyberdyne Systems in the Terminator franchise, Weyland Yatuni in Alien, BuyNLarge in Wall-E, and the Trade Federation of the Star Wars prequels. They’re all extraordinarily evil. So evil, in fact, that in most post-apocalyptic fiction, the company last left standing is usually the one that created the catastrophic calamity in the first place. If the collected wisdom of sci-fi is right, a company’s best long-term disaster preparedness strategy is the opposite of Google’s (GOOG): Be Evil.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.

SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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