Egyptian Voters Go to the Polls to Decide the Fate of Alcohol and Bikinis (The Atlantic Wire)

Egypt's second of three rounds of parliamentary elections began today, and two of the big talking points during this election?are booze and beachwear --?at least according to CNN's report.?Egypt's Islamist parties -- the two most powerful being relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood and more conservative?Salafis -- stand to make further gains in the second round of elections as voting opened today?in "the Giza, Luxor, Aswan and Ismailia regions, which have historically favored conservative Islamic candidates." That has liberals in the country worried, since the Islamist parties already won about two-thirds of the first round's vote,?as Reuters reports. Their concern is that Islamists will walk back secular reforms:?"Just this last week, the Salafis, the ultra-conservative [party], came out and were talking about certain thing like banning booze in Egypt and segregating beaches and banning bikinis on beaches," reports CNN's Ian Lee. But liberals just don't want imposed religious norms -- banning alcohol and bikinis would hurt the Egyptian economy. "These are things that have a lot of people worried because Egypt really relies on the tourism industry for revenue." Money seems to be talking to the Muslim Brotherhood and some other Salafis, who say they wouldn't do anything to hurt the tourism industry. "We will not rule Egypt alone. Parliament will include all the colors of the rainbow that must agree on one direction, one goal," the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,?Mohamed Badie, told supporters on TV, according to Reuters.

Related: The Suspicious Timing of Mubarak's Heart Attack

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Ajamu Stewart And Clifton Sanders, San Francisco Health Inspectors, Charged With Bribery

SAN FRANCISCO -- Two former health inspectors have been accused of accepting bribes in exchange for passing hundreds of restaurants on food safety exams in a city known for its culinary scene, officials said Wednesday.

In addition to bribery charges, Ajamu Stewart and Clifton Sanders face felony counts for falsifying public records, said District Attorney George Gascon and City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Stewart pleaded not guilty to the charges last week, and Sanders was scheduled to be arraigned later Wednesday.

City officials said Stewart, 54, and Sanders, 41, allegedly pocketed thousands of dollars by selling safety certifications to nearly 350 restaurants in San Francisco dating as far back as 2007.

Gascon said the former inspectors' scheme showed total disregard for state laws and violated the public's trust.

"We take public corruption very seriously," Gascon said. "We want to send a very clear message to people who work for our government that they are held to a very high standard and if they violate that standard and trust, there will be consequences."

Officials say the former inspectors for the health department's Food Safety Program worked in tandem over an 18-month period and accepted bribes of between $100 and $200 from several hundred restaurant owners and employees to give passing grades on written food safety exams. The restaurants range from well-known chains to popular eateries offering ethnic fare.

Sometimes, the inspectors would administer the tests verbally and fill in the answers themselves. The exam included questions on the temperatures of hot or cold foods and the sanitization of food preparation areas, said Richard Lee, the department's director of environmental health regulatory programs.

About 80 percent pass the test, Lee said.

The scheme surfaced after a restaurant employee told the city's public health department in late 2008, officials said, leading to a probe by the city attorney's office.

"It is of paramount importance that the public have confidence that the employees that are investigating and regulating food safety issues are carrying out their responsibilities with the highest degree of professionalism," said Herrera, adding that most of the restaurants have since been recertified.

Gascon said prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against the restaurant employees because it would be a difficult criminal case to prove since some of them did not know the exam process.

"We believe the greater culpability here goes to the public employees," Gascon said. "They violated the law and that's why they are being prosecuted."

Both Stewart and Sanders face at least up to eight years in prison and fines up to $10,000 if convicted.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/ajamu-stewart-and-clifton_n_1149665.html

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Stocks weaken as government lowers growth estimate

In this Nov. 21, 2011 photo, specialist Glenn Carell, right, works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The collapse of talks aimed at reducing the staggering U.S. budget deficit weighed on world markets Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, but failed to stifle a rebound in Europe.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In this Nov. 21, 2011 photo, specialist Glenn Carell, right, works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The collapse of talks aimed at reducing the staggering U.S. budget deficit weighed on world markets Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, but failed to stifle a rebound in Europe.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

File - In this Nov. 21, 2011 file photo, specialist Michael McDonnell works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The collapse of talks aimed at reducing the staggering U.S. budget deficit weighed on world markets Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, but failed to stifle a rebound in Europe.(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

(AP) ? Stock indexes are falling after the government lowered its estimate of economic growth in the third quarter. Higher borrowing costs for Spain also renewed worries about Europe's debt crisis.

Hewlett-Packard Co. sank 4 percent Tuesday, dragging down the Dow Jones industrial average. H-P lowered its earnings forecast for the 2012 fiscal year after the market closed Monday.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the July-September period, down from the government's earlier estimate of 2.5 percent. Analysts had expected the rate to remain the same.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 98 points, or 0.9 percent, at 11,449 at noon.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 10 points, or 0.9 percent, to 1,183. The Nasdaq composite lost 21, or 0.8 percent, to 2,502.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-11-22-Stocks/id-853540aa2f874a3084e5216672cb53b7

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Iran says new sanctions from West "in vain" (Reuters)

TEHRAN (Reuters) ? Iran dismissed a new wave of sanctions Tuesday, saying the West's attempts to isolate its economy would only serve to unite Iranians behind their government's nuclear program.

The United States, Britain and Canada announced new measures against Iran's energy and financial sectors Monday and France proposed "unprecedented" new sanctions, including freezing the assets of its central bank and suspending purchases of its oil.

The news pushed benchmark Brent crude above $107, reflecting concerns about escalating tensions with the world's fifth biggest exporter.

Critics of the sanctions said they would fail to stop Iran's nuclear work and would play into the hands of a government that wears its hostility to Washington as a badge of pride.

"Such measures are condemned by our people and will have no impact and be in vain," Foreign Ministy spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference. "They will have no impact on Iran's trade and economic ties with other countries."

The latest sanctions were prompted by a U.N. nuclear agency report that suggested Iran had worked on an atomic bomb design. Tehran maintains its work is entirely peaceful and said the report was based on false Western intelligence.

"If our people feel that enemies want to deprive them of their rights by threatening, bullying and adopting illegal and irrational methods, they will pursue the path that they have taken, more united and more determined than ever," Mehmanparast said.

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said Iran would hit back.

"This will not go unanswered and we will review our ties with them ... there will be a tit-for-tat reaction," he said.

Russia, whose reluctance to join Washington's new anti-Iran drive prevented any possible tightening of the four existing rounds of U.N. sanctions, condemned what it said were "extraterritorial measures unacceptable and contradictory to international law."

CONFLICT RISK

The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran to suspend the nuclear program before it gets the bomb. Israel and Washington say they do not rule out military strikes if other efforts fail.

Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons and says its atomic work is aimed only as generating power and for medical and agricultural uses.

The risk of conflict, which could close the Strait of Hormuz, the exit point of the Gulf where most crude from the region passes, has worried markets.

Commerzbank oil analyst Carsten Fritsch said the new sanctions "increase the risk of supply disruptions either directly from Iran or transported via the Strait of Hormuz, which carries one third of seaborne oil."

Some Tehran residents initially feared airstrikes had started when a huge explosion rocked a military base near the capital on November 12 but the blast turned out to be an accident that happened while troops were working on a missile.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul called for a return to talks between Iran and world powers that stalled last January.

"For the sake of peace it is very important that the dialogue between Iran and the West progresses in a more frank and transparent way," Gul told the London Guardian daily.

"When I say transparent I mean Iran, and when I say frank I mean the West."

The National Iranian American Council advocacy group said the new sanctions would "punish ordinary people for the actions of the Iranian regime" and impede sales of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to Iran.

"Unfortunately, policymakers have succumbed to a false choice between either more broad sanctions on Iran or military strikes," NIAC said in a statement.

"Iran's democratic opposition has warned that broad sanctions are a 'gift to the regime'. Sanctions on Iran have undermined the backbone of the opposition - Iran's middle class - and enriched Iran's Revolutionary Guard."

IMPACT UNCLEAR

The true economic impact of the new measures is unclear.

The United States already bans imports of Iranian oil and a Tehran official said he had no fear of losing EU markets.

"Iran's crude exports to the countries that are members of the European Union are very small," the head of the National Iranian Oil Company said on the Iranian Oil Ministry website.

"There are various countries that want Iran's oil and the Islamic Republic of Iran does not have any concerns about European countries not buying its oil," Ahmed Ghalehbani said.

U.S. and EU sanctions passed in 2010 already stopped most Western banks dealing with Iran and pressure from Washington made it temporarily impossible for Indian oil buyers to pay for some $5 billion of Iranian oil earlier this year.

And while President Barack Obama said Monday the United States had "the entire Iranian banking sector -- including the Central Bank of Iran" in its sights, Washington avoided sanctioning the bank that handles Iran's the receipts of more than 2 million barrels of oil exported each day, for fear of the impact on the oil market and global economy.

Britain ordered all British financial institutions to stop doing business with their Iranian counterparts, including the central bank.

"(The new sanctions are) clearly going to add to the transaction costs that Iranians have to face for all of their international trade. It is going to be a complication, but I still think that the impact will be marginal," said David Butter, regional director at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

"It is going to slow down business and trade activities to some extent, but Iran has had many years to build up experience of dealing with these sorts of measures and I'm sure they'll find some ways around them."

Iran says new measures aimed at its petrochemicals sector would serve only to push up prices rather than stop its $8 billion annual exports.

(Additional reporting by Ramin Mostafavi and Hossein Jaseb and by Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Martina Fuchs in Dubai and Keith Weir and Zaida Espana in London; Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111122/wl_nm/us_iran_sanctions_reaction

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The Sleek Sailrocket 2 Looks To Set a New World Speed Sailing Record [Video]

There's not much room for a cooler, but the Sailrocket 2 isn't designed for a casual afternoon on the lake. It's engineered to set a new sailing speed record, and it's in Namibia right now trying to do just that. More »


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British tabloids out of control, inquiry told (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? British tabloid journalists competing ferociously to secure front-page news believed themselves untouchable in recent years, losing all sense of right and wrong and making some public figures afraid to leave home, an inquiry has heard.

Appearing at a public hearing into media standards, witnesses including the family of a murder victim, a lawyer and the actor Hugh Grant said the press had completely lost control before a phone hacking scandal blew up this year, drawing attention to media practices.

Grant said that if he ever called police to report a crime, a photographer would always turn up first. Fear of drawing attention to a girlfriend meant he had missed the birth of his child and previous girlfriends had been hounded by photographers, leaving them terrified.

"A free press is of course a cornerstone of democracy," Grant told a packed London court room. "I just think that there has been a section of our press that has become toxic over the last 20 or 30 years.

"It's main tactic being bullying, intimidation and blackmail. And I think it's time that this country found the courage to stand up to this bully now."

The disclosure in July that phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had stretched from celebrities to murder victims provoked a national outcry that led to the closure of the newspaper.

Within days, his News Corp group withdrew its bid to buy the 61 percent of broadcaster BSkyB it did not already own; its British newspaper arm News International shut the 168-year-old paper and Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the inquiry.

The parents of the murder victim Milly Dowler have become key figures in the debate about media practices, appearing with Hollywood stars and other high-profile figures who have suffered from a ruthless hunt for stories to boost sales.

They described at length how they had to come to terms with the disappearance of their daughter, while journalists hid in their garden and photographers caught their most difficult moments.

"It felt like such an intrusion into a really private grief," Sally Dowler said.

To a silent court room, she told how she had suddenly become excited during the hunt for her daughter when she realized that phone messages left on Milly's phone were being deleted - thinking, falsely, she was still alive.

Bob Dowler said the family had felt hounded and afraid to leave their home.

FERAL BEAST

Britain's tabloid press has for years been known as highly aggressive, reporting the most intimate details between members of the royal family, politicians and celebrities, prompting Former Prime Minister Tony Blair to once describe it as a "feral beast."

In its defense, the press says it acts to expose hypocrisy, where famous figures make a living off a clean role-model image -- a stance immediately dismissed by Grant and lawyer Graham Shear, who has acted for famous footballers and entertainers.

Shear described the revelations of press wrongdoing as the "ultimate in hypocrisy" while Grant disputed that there was ever any public interest that could justify an investigation into his private life.

"I've never had a good name and it's made absolutely no difference at all," he said. "I'm the man who was arrested with a prostitute and the film still made tons of money," he added, referring to a notorious 1995 arrest.

Another witness, columnist Joan Smith, said she had gone into shock when she saw the lengthy notes made about her. She described the tabloid press as remorseless.

Last Wednesday, the lawyer representing 51 clients who say they have suffered at the hands of the press delivered a withering critique of newspapers. Three of those he represents say they believed the treatment had contributed to family members committing suicide or attempting to kill themselves.

Most of the focus of the inquiry so far has fallen on Murdoch's News International however, lawyer David Sherborne has made it clear that all papers' activities deserve to be scrutinized and reformed.

Grant said he believed the Mail on Sunday had hacked into his phone messages in previous years but had no concrete proof. A spokesman for the Daily Mail & General Trust's Mail on Sunday said it "utterly refuted" Grant's allegation.

The inquiry, headed by senior judge Brian Leveson and due to last a year, will make recommendations that could have a lasting impact on the industry, lead to tighter media rules or at least an overhaul of the current system of self-regulation.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan and Michael Holden; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111121/en_nm/us_newscorp_hacking

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FDA Avastin Decision Potential Death Sentence to Breast Cancer Sufferers (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | After an exhaustive hearing, the Food and Drug Administration has delivered what may well be a death sentence to a number of women with advanced stage breast cancer. Avastin will no longer be approved for the treatment of breast cancer.

The position of the FDA is Avastin has a number of serious side effects. At the same time in the view of the FDA, it does not prolong life or the quality of life for most women. Those few women for whom Avastin has had some life extending benefit are out of luck. The fact Avastin in tandem with some chemotherapies has had positive results is also not well understood. Since it is not known why some women respond positively to Avastin, the FDA has told them, in essence, that they can drop dead.

The Avastin drama began in 2008 when Avastin was approved for treatment of women with end stage breast cancer on a fast track basis. Avastin works by choking off blood flow to tumors, thus stopping their growth. It had already been approved for colorectal cancer and lung cancer.

Then, as further studies suggested that Avastin did not have benefit for most women, an advisory panel of the FDA abruptly voted to rescind its approval. This meant that it was likely that the $100,000 a year drug would not been covered by private insurance or Medicare. Thus the decision was a death sentence for those women who were responding positively to the drug. The decision taken Friday was final, pending the results of further studies.

The Wall Street Journal is pretty sure the FDA decision has more to do with an assertion of regulatory power over the private sector than it does from sound, medical evidence. The suggestion is made that Avastin should remain an option, to be prescribed by oncologists using their informed judgment and not restricted by government bureaucrats.

Fortunately Genetech, the drug's manufacturer, will conduct clinical trials to determine which biomarkers determine who will respond to Avastin and who will not. Avastin will also still be covered, for now, by Medicare. But the FDA's decision is still a chilling example of the effects of state power and regulatory zeal over the lives-and deaths-of real people.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/cancer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111119/us_ac/10479629_fda_avastin_decision_potential_death_sentence_to_breast_cancer_sufferers

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Samsung Galaxy Note now available on O2 in the UK, priced at around $400

Well, that didn't take long. Less than a week after O2 announced that the Galaxy Note would be "coming soon," Samsung's 5.3-inch handset has just popped up for sale on the UK carrier's site. It's available now for £250 (or about $396) on the most basic of monthly plans, offering a hybridized notepad/tablet experience, in exchange. The provider is also offering £100 worth of free movies and music to early buyers, available for download via Samsung Hub. Interested parties can grab it now, at the source link below.

[Thanks, George]

Samsung Galaxy Note now available on O2 in the UK, priced at around $400 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Grenades hit Baath Party building in Damascus: report (Reuters)

AMMAN (Reuters) ? At least two rocket-propelled grenades hit a main ruling Baath Party building in Damascus Sunday, residents said, in the first insurgent attack reported inside the Syrian capital since an eight-month uprising began against President Bashar al-Assad.

"Security police blocked off the square where the Baath's Damascus branch is located. But I saw smoke rising from the building and fire trucks around it," said one witness, who declined to be named.

"The attack was just before dawn and the building was mostly empty. It seems to have been intended as a message to the regime," he said.

(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111120/wl_nm/us_syria

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