UK police arrest 6 on terror charges

Phil Noble / Reuters

Police officers stand next to passengers from a bus after it stopped and was surrounded by armed police on highway near Litchfield in central England on Thursday.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

Updated 8:30 a.m. ET:?Armed British police carried out early-morning raids?Thursday in London, arresting six people?in what they called a pre-planned anti-terror operation.?

Just hours later, armed police evacuated around 50 people and closed a major toll road in both directions in Central England after?a passenger on the bus was reportedly seen pouring liquid into a box, which then started smoking. ?

Police later said the operation involving the bus was "not being treated as a terror-related incident."

---

The operations came amid heightened security ahead of the London Olympics, which begin on July 27, though officials said the terror arrests were?not linked to the upcoming games.?

Police didn't identify the suspects, who range in age from 18 to 30 and included?five men and a woman.?

However, Mizanur Rahman, who is involved with a Muslim activist group, said all those arrested were British Muslims. He said the three men taken into custody in Stratford, the neighborhood that contains Olympic Park, were brothers and claimed that one was a former police officer.?

A police press officer declined to comment on the claim.?

Resident John Smallshaw said a raid took place at a residence on Abbey Road, only about a mile from the Olympic Park.?

'In the line of fire': UK confirms 6 London Olympic missile defense sites

He told The Associated Press he was awoken just after 4 a.m. by "five loud bangs in quick succession" and saw police raiding the home. He said he later witnessed "one young man taken on foot to a waiting ambulance."?

Another man was later taken into an unmarked police car, Smallshaw said, adding that plainclothes officers were still at the premises.?

Searches are being carried out at eight separate addresses in east, west and north London and at one business in east London, police said. Rahman identified one of the addresses as being in Old Street, near London's financial district.?

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Police said all the suspects have been taken to a southeast London police station.?

Bus operation
Live aerial video of the bus operation showed around 50 passengers sitting on the road surrounded by armed police.?

Police declared the area safe about four hours after the incident began,?the BBC?reported.

"This is not being treated as a terror-related incident," a spokesman for Staffordshire Police said in a statement.?

Earlier, a commuter told the BBC?he was four vehicles behind the bus when security officials stopped the traffic.?

"I've never seen so many ambulances turning up, also armed police, helicopter and dozens of police cars," the man, Nick Jones, said. "We were told to stay in our cars, keep windows up and not put air conditioning on."

Terror suspect's eye color? Flying cameras know

Intelligence officials say there has been an expected increase in chatter among extremist groups ahead of the games, but there are still no specific or credible threats targeting the Olympics. The terror level is labeled substantial, a notch below severe. A substantial threat level indicates that an attack is a strong possibility

Msnbc.com and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/05/12576199-uk-police-arrest-6-on-terror-charges-amid-heightened-security-fears?lite

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India to give free generic drugs to hundreds of millions

By Henry Foy

MUMBAI | Wed Jul 4, 2012 5:48pm EDT

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India has put in place a $5.4 billion policy to provide free medicine to its people, a decision that could change the lives of hundreds of millions, but a ban on branded drugs stands to cut Big Pharma out of the windfall.

From city hospitals to tiny rural clinics, India's public doctors will soon be able to prescribe free generic drugs to all comers, vastly expanding access to medicine in a country where public spending on health was just $4.50 per person last year.

The plan was quietly adopted last year but not publicized. Initial funding has been allocated in recent weeks, officials said.

Under the plan, doctors will be limited to a generics-only drug list and face punishment for prescribing branded medicines, a major disadvantage for pharmaceutical giants in one of the world's fastest-growing drug markets.

"Without a doubt, it is a considerable blow to an already beleaguered industry, recently the subject of several disadvantageous decisions in India," said KPMG partner Chris Stirling, who is European head of Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals.

"Pharmaceutical firms will likely rethink their emerging markets strategies carefully to take account of this development, and any similar copycat moves across other geographies," he added.

But the initiative would overhaul a system where healthcare is often a luxury and private clinics account for four times as much spending as state hospitals, despite 40 percent of the people living below the poverty line, or $1.25 a day or less.

Within five years, up to half of India's 1.2 billion people are likely to take advantage of the scheme, the government says. Others are likely to continue visiting private hospitals and clinics, where the scheme will not operate.

"The policy of the government is to promote greater and rational use of generic medicines that are of standard quality," said L.C. Goyal, additional secretary at India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and a key proponent of the policy.

"They are much, much cheaper than the branded ones."

Global drugmakers like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck will be hit. They spend billions of dollars a year researching new treatments and target huge growth for branded medicine in emerging economies such as India, where generics account for around 90 percent of drug sales by value, far more than in developed countries.

U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories, which bought an Indian generics maker in 2010, is the biggest seller of drugs, both branded and generic, in India, followed by GlaxoSmithKline.

BIG PHARMA BLUES

In March, India granted its first ever compulsory license, allowing a domestic drugmaker to manufacture a copy-cat version of Nexavar, a cancer drug developed by Germany's Bayer, unnerving foreign drugmakers that fear a lack of intellectual property protection in emerging markets.

That enabled India's Natco Pharma to sell its generic version of Nexavar at 8,800 rupees ($160) per monthly dose, a fraction of the 280,000 rupees Bayer's version cost.

In another blow to Big Pharma's emerging market ambitions, China recently overhauled regulations to grant authorities the power to allow domestic drugmakers to produce cheap copies of medicines protected by patents.

Emerging markets are on track to make up 28 percent of global pharmaceuticals sales by 2015, up from 12 percent in 2005, according to IMS Health, a healthcare information and services company.

Most sales in emerging markets come from branded generics, which are off-patent drugs priced at a premium to those made by local manufacturers.

The Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), a lobby group for multinational drugmakers in the country, argues that the price of drugs is just one factor in access to healthcare and that the scheme need not be detrimental to manufacturers of branded drugs.

"I think this will hasten overall growth of the pharmaceutical industry, as poor patients who could not afford will now have access to essential medicines," said Tapan Ray, director general of OPPI.

About 600 billion rupees ($11 billion) in drugs are sold each year in India, or 482 billion at wholesale. Drugs covered under the new policy account for about 60 percent of existing sales, or 290 billion rupees at wholesale cost.

The government's annual cost is likely to be lower due to bulk purchasing and because patients at private clinics would still pay for their own drugs. States will pay for 25 percent of the free drugs and the central government will cover the rest.

Under various existing programs, around 250 million people, or less than a quarter of India's population, now receive free medicines, according to the health ministry.

India's new policy, to be implemented by the end of 2012 and rolled out nationwide within two years, is expected to provide 52 percent of the population with free drugs by April 2017, at a cumulative cost of 300 billion rupees ($5.4 billion).

That requires a major funding ramp-up from a deficit-strapped government. The scheme has been granted just 1 billion rupees thus far from central government coffers.

STRICT INSTRUCTIONS

Public doctors will be able to spend 5 percent of the budget, equivalent to around $50 million a year, on drugs outside of the government's list, on branded drugs or on medicines that are not on the list. Beyond that, they can be punished, said Goyal, the health ministry official.

"If doctors are found to be prescribing medicines which are not on the list, or which are branded, then disciplinary action will be initiated," he said.

Free medicine is just one solution to better healthcare in India, where just getting to a state clinic can require a long journey.

Swapnil Yadav, who runs a clinic in Ambegaon, a village 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Mumbai, said India should set up free drug retailers instead of government clinics.

"Patients can approach a private clinic and then get free medicines from government-run medicine shops," he said.

The free generics scheme, which mirrors policies in the states of Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, is expected to be fully operational by the time voters go to the polls for the 2014 general election, when the populist Congress party will seek a third straight victory.

Indian makers of generics such as Dr Reddy's and Cipla are best placed to benefit.

"The move will please the generics manufacturers who stand to gain substantially in competing for contracts," said KPMG's Stirling.

($1 = 56.9650 Indian rupees)

(Additional reporting by Kaustubh Kulkarni in MUMBAI and Ben Hirschler in LONDON; Editing by Tony Munroe and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/04/us-india-drugs-idUSBRE8630PW20120704?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

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'Spider-Man' Post-Credits Scene: What Just Happened?

'I invite speculation,' director Marc Webb teases about the big Easter egg at the end of 'Amazing Spider-Man.'
By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Rhys Ifans
Photo: MTV News

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1689023/amazing-spider-man-post-credits.jhtml

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Djokovic beats Mayer to reach Wimbledon semis

[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/djokovic-beats-mayer-reach-wimbledon-semis-143036378--spt.html

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PFT: Ex-Raiders star Davidson dead at 72

AP

Plenty of this year?s franchise players have yet to receive multi-year deals.? Recently, Titans safety Michael Griffin got one.

Widely reported as a five-year, $35 million deal with $15 million guaranteed, the first part is right and the second part requires a little clarification.

Per a source with knowledge of the deal, the contract indeed has a base value of $35 million, but only $11.5 million is fully guaranteed.? The other $3.5 million is guaranteed for injury only; it becomes fully guaranteed on the fifth day after the start of the 2013 waiver period.

In all, Griffin gets a $9 million signing bonus, a $2.5 million fully-guaranteed base salary in 2012, a $3.5 million base salary in 2013 guaranteed for injury only until next year, a $1 million roster bonus due on the 15th day of the 2013 league year, a $6.2 million base salary in 2014, a $6.3 million base salary in 2015, and a $6.5 million base salary in 2016.

The cap numbers are $4.3 million in 2012, $6.3 million in 2013, $8 million in 2014, $8.1 million in 2015, and $8.3 million in 2016.

With cap numbers at and above $8 million in the final three years of the deal, Griffin will need to continue to play at a high level to persuade the Titans to honor all five seasons of the contract.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/07/03/ben-davidson-dead-at-72/related/

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Pope taps German theologian to head orthodoxy post

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? The pope named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller to head the Vatican's all-important orthodoxy office Monday, tapping a German theologian like himself to head the congregation he presided over for nearly a quarter-century enforcing Catholic doctrine.

The 64-year-old Regensburg bishop replaces American Cardinal William Levada, who turned 76 last month and is retiring after seven years at the helm of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office.

While Mueller is considered a conservative theologian ? he has penned some 400 academic articles and founded an institute to publish all the pope's writings ? some of his less-than-orthodox positions have raised eyebrows in Rome and abroad among staunch conservatives.

Chief among them is his friendship with the Rev. Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian priest considered the founder of liberation theology, the Marxist-influenced one advocating for the poor.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, spent much of his tenure at the congregation battling liberation theology, arguing that it misinterpreted Jesus' preference for the poor into a call for rebellion.

Mueller was a student of Gutierrez, wrote a book with him on liberation theology in 2004, and in 2008 was given an honorary degree at the Pontifical University of Lima, where he gave a speech entitled "My experiences with Liberation Theology."

In the speech, though, he stressed that Gutierrez's liberation theology wasn't a political call to revolution, but rather was perfectly in line with the church's social teaching about the poor. It's a distinction he repeated in December in an article in the Vatican newspaper in which he noted that Benedict himself has said not all aspects of liberation theology were problematic.

Yet Mueller has also raised alarm bells among the church's more conservative, traditionalist wings for his outreach work with other Christians. He has served on several ecumenical committees, including being named the chief Catholic negotiator in theological talks with Lutherans.

In addition to handling clerical sex abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is responsible for negotiating with a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics, the Society of St. Pius X, which split from Rome over the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.

Mueller has spoken out against the society, including a 2009 interview with the German news website Zeit Online in which he said the society's four bishops should resign, keep quiet and "lead an exemplary life as simple priests to repair a part of the damage the schism has caused."

Benedict has made many concessions to try to reconcile with the society, and just last month he offered its members a special legal status within the church, if they were to come into full communion with Rome. But the superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay, has said more talks are needed and that things were at a "dead end."

Naming Mueller as lead negotiator in reconciliation talks certainly can't have come as a welcome development by the society. Yet in a bid to nudge the process forward ? and perhaps blunt any negative reaction to a Mueller appointment ? Benedict last week tapped a trusted colleague to be the congregation's key No. 2 negotiator.

The appointment of the American Dominican theologian, Monsignor Augustine Di Noia, was accompanied by an unusual statement from the congregation stressing Di Noia's credentials in interpreting Vatican II not as a rupture from the past as liberals believe but as a continuation with the great traditions of Catholicism.

Mueller is a longtime friend of Benedict's and in 2008 founded a diocesan institute, the "Pope Benedict XVI Institute" to publish a 16-volume compilation of the "Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger."

Ratzinger attended Mueller's 2002 consecration when he was named bishop of Regensburg, and Mueller hosted the pope during his now-infamous 2006 visit to Regensburg, where Benedict delivered a speech which riled Muslims around the globe. In it, Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor connecting Islam with violence.

At the congregation, Mueller will find a host of unfinished business: In addition to talks with the breakaway traditionalists, he inherits the clerical sex abuse portfolio, which grew exponentially in 2010 with the explosion of cases in Europe, including his native Germany.

The main U.S. victims group, Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, faulted Mueller for having reinstated a priest who had been convicted for child sex crimes. Mueller has apologized for his handling of the case of the Rev. Peter Kramer, who was convicted in 2000 yet was reinstated in parish work after undergoing therapy.

Mueller also must deal with the congregation's crackdown on the largest group of American nuns, the Leadership Conference for Women Religious, whom the congregation under Levada had accused of straying too far from church doctrine.

Levada, who was brought into the ex-Holy Office in 2005 after Benedict became pope, launched the investigation in 2009 and its findings have embittered many American Catholics against what they perceive as heavy-handed tactics by Rome against U.S. sisters who provide critical health care, education and other services for the poor.

In a statement Monday, the head of the German Bishops Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, said bishops in the pope's homeland are proud that Mueller would be performing "this important task."

"He is one of the most distinguished theologians of the present time," Zollitsch said, adding that he has led the conference's ecumenical commission for several years "with success and great sensitivity."

We Are Church, a movement that calls for reforms in the church, said Mueller had high-class academic qualifications but that a key question would be whether he has the "necessary intellectual and spiritual caliber" for new thinking ? and whether his friendship with Gutierrez might lead to a reevaluation of liberation theology.

Mueller's best-known work is a 900-page tome "Catholic Dogmatics: For the Study and Practice of Theology."

___

Geir Moulson and Juergen Baetz contributed from Berlin.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-taps-german-theologian-head-orthodoxy-post-161100171.html

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Amelia Earhart anniversary: 75 years after her disappearance, Amelia Earhart attracts interest in her hometown (+video)

Amelia Earhart anniversary: Atchison, Kan., sees interest spike in Amelia Earhart, who was born there, as a search begins for her plane 75 years after her disappearance over the Pacific.

By Associated Press,?Associated Press / July 2, 2012

An undated file photo shows Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is meeting Tuesday March 20, 2012, with historians and scientists from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which will launch a new search in June for the wreckage of Earhart's plane off the remote island of Nikumaroro.

Enlarge

Interest in aviation pioneer Amelia?Earhart is high in her birthplace, Atchison, on the 75th anniversary of her disappearance.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
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'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "off"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // --> Seventy-five years ago, Americans learned that Amelia Earhart was missing. Now, the 10th expedition searching for that aircraft is about to take off. Lee Cowan reports.

The St. Joseph News-Press?reported that visitors have been flocking to the city, 45 miles northwest of Kansas City.

One popular destination is the Amelia?Earhart Birthplace Museum, at the home where Earhart was born in an upstairs bedroom in 1897 and where she spent much of her first 12 years.

Helping to fuel the flow of visitors are renewed efforts to learn what happened to Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937. They disappeared while flying from New Guinea to Howland Island as part of the adventurer's attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.

"We like to stress her accomplishments rather than her disappearance," said Louise Foudray, who serves as caretaker and historian of the Amelia?Earhart Birthplace Museum. "However, everyone loves a mystery."

In April, researchers announced that enhanced analysis of a photograph taken months after her Lockheed Electra plane vanished shows what may be the landing gear of the aircraft protruding from the waters off the remote island of Nikumaroro, in what is now the Pacific nation of Kiribati. Historians, scientists and salvagers from The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, spurred by this discovery, were to begin a search attempt in that area Monday.

The group also revealed during a symposium last month that they had recently stumbled upon what might be an anti-freckle cream jar that could have belonged to Earhart on a remote island in the western Pacific.

Recently, Wayne and Billie Henderson of Ottawa, Kan., made the trip with their 11-year-old granddaughter, Rachael Wells.

"We've kind of been following the stories," Wayne Henderson said.

California muralist John Cerney, who describes his work as "giant cut-out-art," was so fascinated that he is donating a giant highway piece depicting Earhart with her plane. It will greet visitors entering Atchison.

Jackie Pregont, president of the Atchison Chamber of Commerce and coordinator of the annual Amelia?Earhart Festival, said the artist offered to create the mural after developing an interest in Earhart and learning that this month marks the anniversary of her disappearance.

"He's a phenomenal artist, and we're terribly excited he's chosen to do this," Pregont says, adding that the piece will measure approximately 12 feet tall by 38 feet wide. It will be put together July 18 on property located south of Atchison.

___

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/tpBmojR_Y1g/Amelia-Earhart-anniversary-75-years-after-her-disappearance-Amelia-Earhart-attracts-interest-in-her-hometown-video

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