TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index tumbled to a three-month low on Thursday, dragged down by the materials and financial sectors, as soft U.S. and European economic data dampened sentiment.
The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.GSPTSE> was down 143.03 points, or 1.20 percent, at 11,786.76 after the open. Earlier it had fallen to 11,761.34, its lowest since August 7.
(Reporting by John Tilak; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TORONTO (Reuters) – Interest rate hikes have become less imminent than the Bank of Canada once expected, although rates are still likely to rise, central bank Governor Mark Carney said in an interview published on Saturday.
“Over time, rates are likely to increase somewhat, but over time, so a less imminent timing relative to our expectation,” Carney said in an interview with the National Post newspaper.
Canada’s economy rebounded better than most from the global economic recession, and the Bank of Canada is the only central bank in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that is currently hinting at higher interest rates.
But Carney has also made clear that there will be no rate rise for a while, despite high domestic borrowing rates that he sees as a major risk to a still fragile economy.
“We’ve been very clear in terms of lines of defense in addressing financial vulnerabilities,” he said in the interview. “And the most prominent one, obviously, in Canada, is household debt.”
He said the bank was monitoring the impact of four successive government moves to tighten mortgage lending, which aimed to take the froth out of a hot housing market without causing a damaging crash in prices.
A Reuters poll published on Friday showed the majority of 20 forecasters believe the government has done enough to rein in runaway prices, preventing the type of crash that devastated the U.S. market.
The experts expect Canadian housing prices to fall 10 percent over the next several years, but they do not expect the recent property boom to end in a U.S.-style collapse.
(Reporting by Janet Guttsman; Editing by Vicki Allen)
Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Texas Instruments is eliminating 1,700 jobs, as it winds down its mobile processor business to focus on chips for more profitable markets like cars and home appliances.
Texas Instruments said in September it would halt costly investments in the increasingly competitive smartphone and tablet chip business, leading Wall Street to speculate that part of the company’s processor unit, called OMAP, could be sold.
The layoffs are equivalent to nearly 5 percent of the Austin, Texas-based company’s global workforce.
“A sale would have been better than a restructuring but a restructuring is certainly better than nothing,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said.
TI has been under pressure in mobile processors, where it has lost ground to rival Qualcomm Inc. Leading smartphone makers Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been developing their own chips instead of buying them from suppliers like TI.
Instead of competing in phones and tablets, TI wants to sell its OMAP processors in markets that require less investment, like industrial clients like carmakers.
TI is expected to continue selling existing tablet and phone processors for products like Amazon.Com Inc‘s Kindle tablets for as long as demand remains, but stop developing new chips.
“This year, the Kindle runs on the OMAP 4 and next year’s Kindle is slated, we believe, for OMAP 5. We believe that program is well along to completion and do not expect that the termination of OMAP will disrupt those plans,” said Longbow Research analyst JoAnne Feeney.
Amazon had reportedly been in talks to buy the mobile part of OMAP.
TI said it expects to take charges of about $ 325 million related to the job cuts and other cost reduction measures, most of which will be accounted for in the current quarter. Its previously announced financial targets for the fourth quarter do not include these costs, TI said.
The company, which has 35,000 employees around the world, expects annualized savings of about $ 450 million by the end of 2013 from the action.
TI shares rose to $ 29 in after-hours trading after closing at $ 28.76, down 2 percent on Nasdaq.
(Reporting By Sinead Carew in New York and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actor Channing Tatum, who set female hearts fluttering in the summer movie hit “Magic Mike”, was named the sexiest man alive by People magazine on Wednesday.
“My first thought was, ‘Y’all are messing with me,” Tatum told the magazine after hearing the news.
The 32-year-old actor, who is married to actress Jenna Dewan-Tatum, is training to play an Olympic athlete in his upcoming film, “Foxcatcher”.
The couple, who have been married since 2009, are ready to start a family, according to People.
“The first number that pops into my head is three, but I just want one to be healthy and then we’ll see where we go after that,” he told the magazine.
Tatum joins a long list of Hollywood heartthrobs who also have also received the “sexiest man” title from the magazine including Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Ryan Reynolds, George Clooney and Matt Damon.
(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Pamela Costa has never known a day without agonizing pain in her legs and feet.
At age 11, the Seattle native was diagnosed with inherited erythromelalgia, a genetic condition that causes such severe pain and redness some call it “Man on Fire Syndrome.”
“Think of the feeling that you get when you come in from the cold and your hands and feet are rewarming too fast,” said Costa, 47. “I have that feeling all of the time.”
Inherited erythromelalgia is a disease of small nerves and blood vessels that causes severe pain in response to heat, pressure, exertion or stress.
“These people feel excruciating, scalding pain while putting on shoes or putting on a sweater,” said Dr. Stephen Waxman, a neuroscientist at Yale University and the West Haven Veterans Affairs Hospital. “They will keep their feet on ice to the point of getting gangrene, just to relieve the sensation.”
When Costa was growing up, playing outside would trigger the unbearable burning sensation.
“I used to come in from recess and just hold my hands on the cool metal of my school desk,” said Costa, who has more than two dozen relatives with the same affliction. “I have had cousins suffer devastating injuries from over-cooling themselves.”
Although the disease is rare, researchers are searching for clues to its cause with hopes of uncovering treatments for chronic pain of all kinds. The story starts at the molecular level within tiny nerves that conduct pain signals.
An Overactive Channel Protein
Pain comes in different forms, depending on the type of nerve that senses it. And for chronic pain patients, the pain is not quick and specific, but instead slow and sharp.
This slow pain is transmitted from the limbs and body to the brain along small nerves in the spinal cord called C-fibers. Messages move along these nerve fibers due to the action of special proteins in their membranes called channels. One specific type of channel is the Nav1.7 sodium channel, which is present in great numbers in the C-fibers of the spinal cord.
Work by Waxman and others has shown that patients with inherited erythromelalgia have a defect in their Nav1.7 channels that allows too many sodium ions to enter the C-fibers, causing an increase in the sensitivity of the nerves.
The specific atomic structure of the Nav1.7 channel has been modeled by Waxman’s lab, and the results are detailed in the current issue of Nature Communications. Armed with this new model of the Nav1.7 channel, the lab has been able to show why some patients with inherited erythromelalgia respond well to an anti-epileptic drug called Carbamazepine.
Furthermore, in studying the channel structure in many different people, Waxman and colleagues have found variations in the channel from person to person. These variations may cause some people to be more likely to experience chronic pain than others.
A New Drug Target
Patients with a completely defective Nav1.7 suffer from the opposite condition, known as congenital indifference to pain. These people do not experience pain at all, with case reports of being able to walk on hot coals without pain.
As the role of Nav1.7 in the mechanism for pain sensation becomes clearer, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies will likely take notice, according to Waxman.
“I anticipate a race to develop Nav1.7 specific blockers,” he said.
Current drug therapies for pain include medicines like morphine, as well as aspirin and ibuprofen. While all of these decrease the sensation of pain, they also interact with other tissues such as the brain, heart and stomach, causing side effects.
Nav1.7 does not appear to be present in large quantities outside of the C-fibers of the spinal cord. As such, new drugs targeting this protein could herald a new class of pain treatments with many fewer side effects than our current drugs for pain.
Costa said she hopes to see a day where such a medicine would be available to her, providing her with full relief for the first time in her life.
Also Read
Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News
In October 2003, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions assembled for hearings on compounding pharmacies. These state-licensed retail businesses mix and sell medications, but without the federal safety approval required for mass-produced drugs. Then-Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) convened the hearing by warning of “a significant number of very real problems caused by compounded drugs.” The committee, he said, had “received reports of non-sterile eye drops causing blindness; spinal injections contaminated with bacteria and/or fungus, resulting in hospitalizations and, in some cases, death; and children poisoned as a result of pharmacy compounding errors.” In one case, a pharmacist in Bond’s home state had been convicted in 2002 and sent to prison for diluting more than 4,000 doses of chemotherapy drugs.
Expert witnesses testified that to address such dangers, Congress should give the Food and Drug Administration authority over compounders. Not everyone agreed. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) commented from the dais that he’d met privately with a physician named Steven Hotze, who was “eager to provide the committee with his input on this important topic.” That input bore the stamp of Hotze’s free-market philosophy. “Regulatory agencies,” he asserted in written testimony, “cannot prevent an individual from committing a criminal act. However, regulatory agencies can, and often do, adversely affect the efficient, safe, and productive practice of business.”
The impresario of a nationally prominent alternative-medicine practice in Houston, Hotze has helped popularize what he calls the Wellness Revolution and what others call the anti-aging movement. With roots in the timeless quest for rejuvenation, the disparate products and treatments associated with anti-aging became a booming business in the mid-1990s. Defined expansively to include everything from dietary supplements such as resveratrol to hormone-replacement capsules and creams, the anti-aging industry generates annual sales of $ 80 billion, according to the research firm Global Industry Analysts.
Photograph by Daniel SheaPharmacist Sarah Sellers quit compounding over inadequate sterilization and other practices. The influence of anti-aging compounders, she says, “has been surprising and not well-understood”
Hotze promotes an eight-step regime emphasizing “bio-identical” estrogen, testosterone, and other plant-derived hormones, which are made and sold at the Hotze Pharmacy, an arm of the 90-employee Hotze Health & Wellness Center, which resembles not a Walgreens (WAG) but a high-end spa in a suburban Houston neighborhood. Suzanne Somers, the former Three’s Company sitcom actress, Thigh Master marketer, and best-selling health-tips author, sings Hotze’s praises. So do patients who appear in his advertising videos or on his four-day-a-week Houston radio show. A conservative activist, Hotze has gone to court and coordinated online campaigns to thwart federal oversight of compounding pharmacies, many of which resemble conventional drug-dispensing stores. He and other anti-aging advocates are a vital subset of the compounding industry. Indeed, compounders continue to operate in a regulatory gray zone, in part because of Hotze and his anti-aging colleagues, according to Sarah Sellers, a pharmacist who has advised the FDA. “Their influence,” she says, “has been surprising and not well-understood.”
Congress didn’t act on compounding after the Senate hearings nine years ago. Legislation surfaced in 2007, but again, it didn’t get far. Now, in the wake of a meningitis outbreak linked to a compound pharmacy in Framingham, Mass., bills are being introduced once more. Eclipsed temporarily by the lethal hurricane in the Northeast and the presidential election, the New England Compounding Center (NECC) scandal has forced the issue. In October, NECC recalled more than 17,000 vials of a back-pain steroid after tainted doses were linked to cases of fungal meningitis. So far, 438 people nationwide have suffered infections, leading in many cases to strokes and to swelling of the membranes covering the brain or spinal column; 32 patients have died.
Neither Hotze nor other anti-aging practitioners are implicated in the meningitis outbreak. Many mainstream physicians and researchers question the efficacy and potential side effects of certain anti-aging treatments, but that’s a separate issue from whether compounding needs better oversight. This is the story of the little-noticed role Hotze and other wellness entrepreneurs play in the compounding industry—and, in particular, how they’ve helped compounders avoid more stringent federal regulation.
Hotze, 62, holds proudly defiant views on many issues, none stronger than his hostility to what he sees as government overreaching. On compounding, he says: “They want to regulate us to death. That’s what we’ve fought against.”
A 1976 graduate of the University of Texas Medical School, Hotze began his career conventionally, as an emergency room physician and then general practitioner. Mainstream medicine, though, left him frustrated. Many patients seemed not to respond to FDA-approved drugs he prescribed. In 1988 he had an awakening. An elderly woman told him: “Ever since I threw away all the medications you gave me, I feel like a million dollars.” He shared this revelation with his wife, Janie. They “knelt before God,” according to his center’s website, “and asked Him to give them a way that they could help their patients get well, and at the same time build a practice that could support their eight children.”
Photograph by Daniel SheaThe Wellness Guru: “They want to regulate us to death. That’s what we’ve fought against”
Their prayers were answered. Hotze became a leading evangelist of alternative treatment aimed at correcting hormonal imbalances rather than “masking” symptoms with what he disparages as “anti drugs”—antibiotics, antihistamines, antidepressants, and so forth. “We are able to help you regain and prolong your quality of life by utilizing bio-identical hormones, vitamins, and minerals, and an optimal eating regime, all of which restore hormones to optimal levels, strengthen the immune system, and increase energy levels,” he promises in promotional literature. “Get back your life” is the slogan at the Hotze center. The nattily attired proprietor refers to his patients as “guests,” adding: “I’m in the hospitality business, and in that context, we provide health care.”
By the early 2000s, enterprising pharmacists all across the country were benefiting from the spreading popularity of anti-aging therapies. A central tenet of this movement is that patients ought to seek natural remedies whenever possible and avoid at all costs what Hotze calls “counterfeit” hormones manufactured under patent by large FDA-regulated corporations. He points to mainstream research showing that these drugs increase the risk of breast cancer and heart attack. He advocates instead unpatented mixtures made by compounding pharmacies—like his. His bio-identicals are formulated from yams and, he says, “fit perfectly into the hormone receptors found in the cells of the body.”
Although compounding may conjure images of cloaked apothecaries hunched over mortar and pestle, the practice was widespread until big manufacturers systematized drug production 60 to 70 years ago. Even after the FDA began regulating the safety of new drugs in 1938, state-chartered pharmacies continued to provide specialty medications that weren’t otherwise commercially available: a syrup with a flavor added to appeal to a sick child, a pill reformulated to remove an allergen, a customized intravenous solution for a cancer sufferer. Viewing compounders as a disappearing breed operating on a small scale, the FDA didn’t require that their one-off mixtures receive federal approval as new drugs.
Meanwhile, the advent of compounded wellness remedies proved a godsend for struggling mom-and-pop pharmacies competing against discount retailers, in part because most chains didn’t bother with hormones, which often aren’t covered by health insurance. In her 2010 book Selling the Fountain of Youth, author and former Businessweek senior writer Arlene Weintraub recounts how pharmacists “could go into a back room, mix up hormones according to a doctor’s instructions, and sell them straight to patients.” By 2003 more than 30 million prescriptions for compounded drugs were being written every year. Today about 3 percent of all prescriptions call for compounded drugs, according to the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP), a trade group.
Not all pharmacists were gung-ho about the revival of compounding, which was also spurred by compounders’ ability to provide versions of drugs that large companies ceased to manufacture. As a rookie pharmacist in Florida in the early 1990s, Sellers, the former FDA adviser, observed what she considered inadequate sterilization of compounded spinal injections and a lack of potency testing. She suggested switching exclusively to patented, FDA-approved products. Her employer refused, telling her that doing so would reduce profits. Sellers quit and began doing broader research on sterile compounding. In 1998 the FDA invited her to serve on its Advisory Committee on Pharmacy Compounding. The panel was charged with helping to implement a federal law enacted in 1997 to clarify the rules that applied to compounders.
The FDA had grown concerned that some compounding pharmacies were going beyond the one-patient, one-prescription model to become, essentially, drug manufacturers. The agency took this anxiety to Congress, which, as part of the 1997 FDA Modernization Act, said compounding could remain exempt from federal safety review, but only in its traditional prescription-by-prescription form. If they produced drugs in bulk and not to fill individual patient scripts, pharmacists would be considered manufacturers. In a provision that would prove fateful, Congress sought to deter mass production by prohibiting pharmacists from advertising compounded drugs.
Some doctors and pharmacists viewed the federal action as an intrusion. “We’re regulated as it is,” Hotze says. “We have state regulation that is thorough and sufficient.” David Miller concurs. The chief executive of the IACP, to whose political action committee Hotze contributes, Miller notes that “doctors, nurses, and hospitals are all state-regulated. The FDA’s repeated efforts to oversee us—that is just an attempt to do something without jurisdictional authority. We have made our voice heard in opposition.”
That they did. In 1998, before the Modernization Act had even been enforced, pharmacists in six states (although not Hotze) filed suit in federal court in Nevada claiming their constitutional rights were endangered. When the litigation reached the Supreme Court four years later, the IACP filed a brief pointing out that compounding enjoyed a storied tradition in America: John Winthrop (1606-76), son of the first governor of Massachusetts, was one of the country’s first pharmacists in an era when compounding was the entire game. The ban on ads for compounded drugs, industry lawyers argued, infringed pharmacists’ First Amendment right to free speech. The argument worked. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled that preventing large-scale compounding was an insufficient rationale to justify compromising “commercial speech.”
In the years that followed, Hotze and another group of pharmacists stayed on the offensive. In 2004, nine months after he personally lobbied the Senate committee, Hotze was back on Capitol Hill, telling a House subcommittee not to trust federal drug regulators. “The drugs that the FDA approves kill Americans every day,” he said. Later that year he helped organize a group of compounding pharmacists to sue the FDA again, this time in Texas. The suit aimed to settle once and for all whether the agency had authority over the drug mixers. Instead, it added to the muddle.
A federal trial judge initially ruled for the pharmacists, but in 2008 a three-judge appellate panel said the Supreme Court’s decision six years earlier should be read narrowly to allow compounding with a modicum of FDA oversight. The upshot was that the federal agency claimed it still had some authority while compounders insisted it had almost none.
Simultaneously, Hotze spearheaded a lobbying campaign to block a bill introduced in 2007 by the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts that would have given the FDA the unmistakable clout to inspect and regulate compounding pharmacists. A Hotze-sponsored online group called Project: FANS (Freedom for Access to Natural Solutions) organized telephone and e-mail campaigns to urge members of Congress to oppose the Kennedy bill. FANS warned that “the bureaucrats at the FDA would determine which pharmaceutical company drug is best for you.”
Compounders know how to mobilize. During the 2007 Compounders on Capitol Hill campaign, the IACP dispatched 404 members to pay in-person visits to 285 congressional offices. Since 2000 the IACP has spent $ 1.1 million on lobbying in Washington, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That money has purchased the services of such engineers of influence as Parry, Romani, DeConcini & Symms and Arnold & Porter. Never a top priority for either party, the Kennedy bill died. The FDA continued to write the occasional warning letter about compounders whose conduct resembled that of an interstate manufacturer; lacking clear authority, however, the agency mostly stayed on the sidelines.
Hotze’s personal brand is familiar to many Houstonians whether or not they partake of the Wellness Revolution. On one recent morning he arrived at the health center after an appearance on Great Day Houston on the local CBS affiliate, during which he puckishly recommended that middle-aged men seek testosterone replacement therapy to “put a tiger back in your tank.” Clad in a camera-friendly cerulean blazer and paisley pocket square, the doctor hustled to his office, where a film crew from out of town was set to shoot a video for his website. “It’s all about marketing,” Hotze says. “That’s where the leads come from.”
Still life art direction by Morgan Brill
Over the past 15 years, Hotze estimates, the 20,000-square-foot center has served 25,000 guests. Hotze says 20 percent of his patients come from out of state, some because they’ve seen his ads in airline magazines. His elegantly appointed second-floor waiting area resembles a luxury hotel lounge. The mostly female staff of nurses, medical assistants, and telemarketers with headsets wear identical, trimly cut black pantsuits. In the spotless compounding lab, technicians in protective hats, tunics, and booties weigh and mix the powders and creams purchased by guests. The Hotze Pharmacy handles about 450 prescriptions a day. As many insurance companies won’t cover the remedies Hotze prescribes, customers pay out of their own pockets.
The doctor’s interests extend beyond medicine. According to the Houston Chronicle, Hotze has been “a powerhouse” in local Republican primaries. Opposing gay causes and candidates has been one of his main missions, although he hasn’t always been as successful on that score as he has in thwarting federal pharmacy regulation. In a 1990 video titled “Restoring America: How You Can Impact Civil Government,” Hotze told viewers: “There is no neutrality. Civil government will either reflect biblical Christianity, or it will reflect anti-Christian positions. You can make the difference.”
Hotze merged several of his concerns into a campaign in 2010 against President Barack Obama’s health overhaul bill. The FANS website urged citizens to lobby members of Congress to kill the legislation. “Do we want to kiss goodbye to medical innovation, like possible cures for cancer and other life-saving medical treatments?” FANS asked. “Keep the government out of medical care and let the free market work its magic.”
The NECC scandal—which, to repeat, did not involve Hotze or anti-aging therapies—has restarted the debate about whether state-level regulation is sufficient to ensure the safety of compounded drugs, or if it’s time to reconsider the type of oversight Hotze and the IACP have frustrated so far. (“What went on up there in Massachusetts, I can’t say,” Hotze notes. “I don’t know the facts.”)
In an Oct. 29 survey of pharmacy board records from all 50 states, the office of Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.) concluded that the agencies “do not, as a general rule, appear to undertake enforcement actions that relate to the safety or scope of compounding pharmacy practices.” Rather, the states “focus more on compliance with traditional pharmacy licensing, controlled substances, and other requirements.” Massachusetts health officials have fired the director of the state’s pharmacy board for failing to investigate a complaint about NECC. Markey, in whose district NECC operated until October, has introduced a bill that would authorize the FDA to inspect and oversee compounding pharmacies.
In addition to the recent meningitis outbreak, Markey’s staff has found records documenting 23 deaths and at least 86 serious illnesses or injuries since 2001 associated with improper compounding practices. “These totals should be considered to be conservative,” the staff concluded, “since in many cases the reviewed documents noted the existence of adverse events but did not specify the type or quantity.”
Hotze and IACP note the FDA had a chance to crack down on NECC and missed it. Because of hints that the business was compounding on a large scale, the federal agency inspected NECC and in 2006 issued a warning letter. “The FDA suspected this was a drug manufacturer, not a legitimate compounding pharmacy, and they had jurisdiction to close down a drug manufacturer but did not,” Miller of the IACP says. “It seems facile,” he adds, to propose giving the FDA more power when the agency already has the ability to shut rogue drug factories. “It’s a frustration for our profession,” Miller says, “that the FDA seems intent on insinuating itself into the day-to-day practice of pharmacy.”
The FDA wants Congress to expand and clarify its authority. In anticipation of a new round of Capitol hearings on Nov. 14 and 15, the agency issued a statement asking lawmakers to strengthen federal oversight. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg was scheduled to testify before separate House and Senate committees. While lawmakers debate the future of compounding, Hotze himself was back in Washington to monitor the hearings and meet privately with several members of Congress. “The last thing we need,” he says, referring to the NECC case, “is for Washington to overreact to one bad actor.”
Businessweek.com — Top News
ROME (AP) — Good plumbers may be worth their weight in gold, but when one was spotted zipping around in a bright red Ferrari, Italian tax police were fast on his trail.
Stamping out entrenched tax evasion is crucial to Premier Mario Monti‘s quest to keep Italy from succumbing to the European debt crisis, and it is critical to fellow eurozone members in more dire straits, such as Greece and Spain — which are also notorious for making cheating the taxman a way of life.
Indeed, Greece’s international rescue creditors have been pressing Greece for two years to reform its ailing tax system, citing poor collection as a key factor keeping the country mired in crisis. In Spain, where tax fraud is rampant, as much as €90 billion ($ 150 billion) is lost each year to tax fraud — the equivalent of the country’s national debt, according to Spain’s main tax inspectors union.
To succeed in Italy, authorities will have to catch the legions of self-employed and small business owners who brazenly lie about their earnings, like the plumber in the eastern town of Pescara, who socked away undeclared income in 30 bank accounts, or a successful pastry shop owner in Calabria, who on his tax return claimed he was earning next to crumbs.
And those are the less sophisticated schemers.
Tax police officials say that wealthy Italians, their companies and foreigners who make their money in Italy are increasingly trying to avoid taxes by using such strategies as falsely declaring that their base of operations or residence is abroad.
Another daunting challenge is the so-called “submerged” economy, a term embracing Italians who declare only a fraction or nothing at all of their earnings — and dentists, lawyers, doctors and other big-earning professionals are frequently among the worst offenders.
Tax evasion of all types in Italy totals about euros 240 billion ($ 300 billion), or 15 percent of the country’s gross domestic product of €1.6 trillion ($ 2 trillion), tax police estimate. Winning the war on tax cheats could therefore more than wipe out the country’s budget deficit, which is expected to increase to euros 42 billion ($ 53 billion), or 2.6 percent of GDP this year. That would start knocking away at the nation’s colossal public debt of €2 trillion ($ 2.5 trillion), or 125 percent of GDP.
But “big international frauds are up,” lamented Lt. Col. Gianluca Campana, in charge of the income tax unit revenue protection office at the Guardia di Finanza, Italy’s financial police corps which reports to the Economy Ministry.
The entrenched practice by many cafes, eateries, hair dressers and similar small business of neglecting to give customers mandatory cash register receipts commonly grabs the attention in crackdowns on tax evasion in Italy.
But, cautioned Campana, “one false (big business) invoice can equal no cash register receipts for coffees for two months.”
Over all of 2011, the total of non-declared income discovered by tax police amounted to some €50 billion ($ 65 billion), of which some 20 percent was due to international tax evasion, he said. By comparison, in the first nine months of this year, tax police discovered some €40 billion in undeclared income, with 30 percent of that blamed on international tax evasion, Campana said.
With the economic crisis shrinking bottom lines, and Italy increasingly on the hunt for big-time evasion, especially by big businesses, “there is a tendency to move capital abroad, using maneuvers apparently legal but which really are not,” Campana said. A classic technique consists of declaring one’s formal residence abroad in tax havens like Monte Carlo. Also common are companies that clearly have their business base in Italy but claim it is abroad in countries with far lower tax brackets.
Campana is armed with three degrees, including a masters in tax law from Milan’s Bocconi University, the prestigious economics institute formerly headed by Monti. He brings skills to this specialized police corps that are as finely tuned as sharp-shooting.
“We are going after the big cases (of evasion) in order to rake in more money,” Campana said.
The Ferrari-driving plumber hid some €2 million ($ 2.6 million) of his income over several years by giving his customers invoices — for jobs ranging from fixing leaks to installing new bathrooms — for the actual cost of his work, but kept a second, false registry of much lower figures for tax purposes, said Pescara tax police Col. Mauro Odorisio.
Armed with a 2008 law, authorities confiscated assets belonging to the plumber equivalent to the approximately €1 million ($ 1.3 million) they contend he owed in taxes, Odorisio said.
With Ferraris in red or yellow, and snazzy Porsches parked inside, Guardia di Finanza garages practically resemble luxury car dealerships.
The cars get sold to help recoup unpaid taxes and interest.
Overall, tax revenues in Italy were up by 4.1 percent, says the Economy Ministry, when comparing figures from the first eight months of 2012 with the same period in 2011, but much of that was due to new taxes, and not necessarily a revolution in citizens’ consciences about tax obligations.
Monti’s recipe relies heavily on taxes that are nearly impossible to avoid, such as sales tax. He also revived a property tax that his populist predecessor, Premier Silvio Berlusconi, had abolished in a promise to voters.
The ministry’s report last month noted that the property tax figured prominently in the “tendency toward growth” in tax revenues. But sales tax revenue dropped slightly despite higher sales tax rates, indicating that consumers were feeling the pinch of the stagnant economy.
The heavier fiscal burden seems to have driven some honest citizens to rebel against the engrained culture of tax evasion.
The number of phone calls from the public to the tax police’s hotline to report stores, restaurants and other businesses that didn’t give customers sales receipts has almost doubled in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period in 2011.
It’s apparently dawning on Italians that shirking taxes in the end only costs them, in terms of ever-higher levies and cutbacks in public services.
Citizens now increasingly understand that “the lack of revenue over time caused by tax evaders forced the government to stiffen the tax burden on categories where you can’t evade taxes,” Campana said, referring to workers whose taxes are deducted from paychecks. Another area where evasion is close to impossible is real estate ownership.
Odorisio noted the crackdown included extending the statute of limitations on tax evasion from six to eight years and establishing prison as a penalty for big-time evasion.
Other weapons include a measure promoted by the Monti government that limits cash payments to no more than €1,000. Paying by credit card or personal check is a relatively new habit for Italians, who are used to carrying wads of cash in their pockets, even for big-ticket items like home renovations or vacations.
Past governments in Italy sometimes resorted to tax amnesties to try to boost revenues. But critics, contending some Italians counted on such a possibility, described that strategy as only perpetuating the tax cheat culture.
Spain hasn’t had much success with its own tax amnesty introduced by the conservative government in March. That measure, expiring soon, allows undeclared assets or those hidden in tax havens to be repatriated by paying a 10 percent tax without criminal penalty. The amnesty is estimated to recuperate far less than the expected €2.5 billion ($ 3.25 billion).
Greece saw demands for tax system reform from international rescue creditors added on to conditions for future rescue loan payments, as Greek authorities acknowledged that a high-profile campaign to crack down on major tax cheats has produced disappointing results.
The cash-strapped government over the last 10 months recovered just €19 million ($ 25 million) of the €13 billion ($ 17 billion) of arrears on the list. A prominent Greek magazine publisher recently tapped anger over rich tax evaders by publishing a list of people allegedly holding Swiss bank accounts. He was acquitted this month of breaching privacy laws.
Meanwhile, Italian tax police are chasing after cheats who have shown some of the most chutzpah about not paying their fair share of taxes, like the Padua woman who advertised on the Internet that she had a couple of “cash-only” bed and breakfast rooms to let.
Tax police discovered the lodgings are part of an apartment in public housing she was given after falsely declaring she was indigent on her annual tax forms.
____
AP reporters Derek Gatopoulos in Athens and Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this report.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – Microsoft and Google‘s Motorola Mobility unit squared off on Tuesday at a trial with strategic implications for the smartphone patent wars and which could reveal financial information the two companies usually keep under wraps.
The proceeding in a Seattle federal court will determine how much of a royalty Microsoft Corp should pay Google Inc for a license to some of Motorola‘s patents. Google bought Motorola for $ 12.5 billion, partly for its library of communications patents.
If U.S. District Judge James Robart decides Google deserves only a small royalty, then its Motorola patents would be a weaker bargaining chip for Google to negotiate licensing deals with rivals.
Apple Inc and Microsoft have been litigating in courts around the world against Google and partners like Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which use the Android operating system on their mobile devices.
Apple contends that Android is basically a copy of its iOS smartphone software, and Microsoft holds patents that it contends cover a number of Android features.
Motorola had sought up to $ 4 billion a year for its wireless and video patents, while Microsoft argues its rival deserves just over $ 1 million a year. A federal judge in Wisconsin last week threw out a similar case brought by Apple against Google just before trial.
In court on Tuesday Microsoft called Jon DeVaan, a veteran software manager in the Windows division, as its first witness. He said Motorola‘s wireless and video patents at issue covered only a small part of the overall Windows architecture.
During the run-up to trial in Seattle, both Microsoft and Google asked Robart to keep secret a range of financial details about the two companies, including licensing deals and sales revenue projections. Google requested that Robart clear the courtroom when witnesses discuss those details.
However, in an order on Monday, Robart rejected that request. The public will not be able to view the documents describing patent deals or company sales during trial, Robart ruled, but testimony will be in open court.
“If a witness discloses pertinent terms, rates or payments, such information will necessarily be made public,” the judge wrote.
Additionally, any documents the judge relies on for his final opinion will be disclosed, Robart wrote on Monday.
Before trial began on Tuesday, Robart said in court that he wanted to take the most “expansive” interpretation of the public’s right to know. Several outside companies besides Microsoft and Motorola, like Research in Motion Inc, have also asked him to keep secret their royalty deals.
Robart said he would consider a request to refer to those third party companies by code names, known only to the lawyers and the judge.
The case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Corp. vs. Motorola Inc., 10-cv-1823.
(Reporting By Bill Rigby in Seattle and Dan Levine in San Francisco; editing by Jim Marshall and Carol Bishopric)
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A towering figure such as Abraham Lincoln, who stood 6 feet 4 and was one of history’s master orators, must have had a booming voice to match, right? Not in Daniel Day-Lewis‘ interpretation.
Day-Lewis, who plays the 16th president in Steven Spielberg‘s epic film biography “Lincoln,” which goes into wide release this weekend, settled on a higher, softer voice, saying it’s more true to descriptions of how the man actually spoke.
“There are numerous accounts, contemporary accounts, of his speaking voice. They tend to imply that it was fairly high, in a high register, which I believe allowed him to reach greater numbers of people when he was speaking publicly,” Day-Lewis said in an interview. “Because the higher registers tend to reach farther than the lower tones, so that would have been useful to him.”
“Lincoln” is just the fifth film in the last 15 years for Day-Lewis, a two-time Academy Award winner for best actor (“My Left Foot” and “There Will Be Blood”). Much of his pickiness stems from a need to understand characters intimately enough to feel that he’s actually living out their experiences.
The soft, reedy voice of his Lincoln grew out of that preparation.
“I don’t separate vocal work, and I don’t dismember a character into its component parts and then kind of bolt it all together, and off you go,” Day-Lewis said. “I tend to try and allow things to happen slowly, over a long period of time. As I feel I’m growing into a sense of that life, if I’m lucky, I begin to hear a voice.
“And I don’t mean in a supernatural sense. I begin to hear the sound of a voice, and if I like the sound of that, I live with that for a while in my mind’s ear, whatever one might call it, my inner ear, and then I set about trying to reproduce that.”
Lincoln himself likely learned to use his voice to his advantage depending on the situation, Day-Lewis said.
“He was a supreme politician. I’ve no doubt in my mind that when you think of all the influences in his life, from his childhood in Kentucky and Indiana and a good part of his younger life in southern Illinois, that the sounds of all those regions would have come together in him somehow.
“And I feel that he probably learned how to play with his voice in public and use it in certain ways in certain places and in certain other ways in other places. Especially in the manner in which he expressed himself. I think, I’ve no doubt that he was conscious enough of his image.”
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GENEVA (Reuters) – At least 2.5 million Syrians are believed to have fled their homes because of civil war, aid groups said on Tuesday, more than double previous estimates.
The figure comes from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, whose volunteers are on the frontlines of the 20-month conflict, delivering aid supplies and evacuating wounded.
“The figure they are using is 2.5 million. If anything, they believe it could be more, that this is a very conservative estimate,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.
“So people are moving, people are really on the run, hiding. They are difficult to count and to access,” she said.
Aid agencies had previously thought there were around 1.2 million internally displaced Syrians.
Only 5 percent of the 2.5 million are believed to be living in public facilities, including warehouses and schools, said Fleming. The rest are staying with host families, making it more difficult to count them.
In recent days, air strikes on the town of Ras al-Ain near the Turkish border have caused some of the biggest refugee movements of the conflict.
The United Nations said on Friday that up to 4 million people inside Syria will need humanitarian aid by early next year when the country is in the grip of winter, up from 2.5 million now whose needs are not fully met.
For now, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says its food rations are reaching some 1.5 million. The UNHCR aims to provide assistance to 500,000 in Syria by the end of the year, mainly blankets, clothing, cooking kits and jerry cans, Fleming said.
“Unfortunately the recent deliveries have been very difficult, marred by violence and insecurity also spreading to parts of the country that used to be relatively calm,” she said.
A Syrian Arab Red Crescent warehouse in Aleppo was apparently hit by a shell, burning 13,000 blankets, she said. Unknown armed men hijacked a truck carrying 600 blankets on its way to Adra, outside Damascus.
The UNHCR has temporarily withdrawn about half of its 12 staff from north-eastern Hassaka province due to fierce fighting and insecurity, Fleming said.
“We see corresponding movement of populations there, Syrian Kurds for the most part, across the border into Iraq,” she said.
More than 407,000 Syrian refugees have registered or await registration in the surrounding region – Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq – and more are fleeing every day, according to UNHCR.
(Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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