MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning smoking in public places in Russia from June, a cornerstone of the government's bid to improve public health, the Kremlin said Monday.
The law, called "On protecting the health of citizens from the danger of passive smoking and the consequences of the use of tabacco," makes smoking illegal in restaurants, cafes, hotels, trains and a host of other places.
-AFP/sb
According to intelligence sources, Kagzi was based in Saudi Arabia since 2009. He is accused of recruiting terrorists from India along with 26/11 handler Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, who was deported by Saudi authorities last year.
Agencies believe that Kagzi, who hails from Beed district of Maharashtra, decided to shift back to Pakistan, where he had lived after escaping from India in the wake of the Aurangabad arms haul, on seeing the heightened cooperation of Saudi authorities in meeting India's requests for deportation of terror fugitives like Jundal and Fasih Mahmood.
While Jundal was deported in June 2012, Mahmood was handed over by Saudi authorities in October 2012. The two deportations had heightened the expectations of Indian agencies for Kagzi's custody as well. "But as per our latest information, Kagzi is living in Pakistan," an intelligence officer said.
Kagzi had fled to Pakistan via Bangladesh in the wake of the Aurangabad arms haul with the help of Hyderabad terror operative Shahid Bilal. He later shifted to Saudi Arabia and oversaw recruitment of Indian youth for LeT operations.
His aide Jundal told Indian investigators last year that he and Kagzi had a meeting in Colombo in 2008 to which Himayat Mirza Baig, also from Beed and now being tried in the German Bakery blasts case, was summoned. During the meeting, Jundal and Kagzi gave money to Baig to buy explosive devices and pay for indoctrinated youths to travel to Pakistan for terror training.
Kagzi hails from Feroz Shah Nagar, New Shahenshai Nagar, near Aqsa mosque in Beed. It is learnt that Kagzi and Jundal had formed a group of around 10 youths, who were selected from and around Beed to wage terror strikes.
On June 8, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) registered an FIR against Jundal and Kagzi for being part of a terror organization. The FIR was based on information that Kagzi and Jundal were trying to organize explosives for certain LeT and IM operatives in India for attacks in Delhi and Mumbai. Both Jundal and Kagzi have been charged under sections 18 and 20 (for being part of a terror organization) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act ( UAPA).
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.
The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.
Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.
"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."
Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.
The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.
Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.
FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.
Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.
FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer
Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.
Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.
Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.
"Argo" took home the top prize as best picture at the Oscars Sunday night, with first lady Michelle Obama announcing the winner from the White House.
"You directed a hell of a film," co-producer Grant Heslov told director and fellow producer Ben Affleck. "I couldn't be more proud of the film and more proud of our director."
Affleck was snubbed in the directing category but humbly accepted the best picture Oscar as one of the three producers on the film. George Clooney was the third.
Affleck thanked Steven Spielberg and the other best picture nominees and his wife Jennifer Garner for "working on our marriage."
"It's good, it's work," he said, adding, "but there's no one I'd rather work with."
For Full List of Winners
Acknowledging his last Oscar win, as a screenwriter for "Good Will Hunting," Affleck said, "I was really just a kid. I never thought I would be back here."
In the acting categories, Daniel Day-Lewis won the Oscar for best actor, being the first actor to three-peat in that category. As he accepted the award from Hollywood's greatest actress, Meryl Streep, he joked, "I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher. ... Meryl was Stephen's first choice for Lincoln."
He also thanked his wife, Rebecca Miller, for "living with some very strange men," with each new role that he takes on.
"She's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them," he said.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Jennifer Lawrence won the award for best actress. She tripped on the stairs on her way to accepting her award but picked herself up and made her way to the stage, earning a standing ovation.
"You're just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's embarrassing," she said, before rattling off a list of thank-yous and leaving the stage looking slightly stunned.
Watch Jennifer Lawrence's Oscar Tumble
"Life of Pi," which had a total of 11 nominations, was another big winner of the night. Director Ang Lee took home the Oscar for best director over Steven Spielberg and David O. Russell.
"Thank you, movie god," Lee said, accepting his award.
As expected, the film took home the first technical awards of the night for cinematography and visual effects. "Life of Pi" also won for best original score.
The first big acting awards of the night went to Christoph Waltz and Anne Hathaway in the supporting actor categories.
In one of the biggest tossups, Waltz claimed the award for supporting actor for his role in "Django Unchained." It was his second Oscar for a Quentin Tarantino film; his first was for Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds."
PHOTOS: Stars on the Red Carpet
As expected, Hathaway took home the award for best supporting actress for her role as Fantine in "Les Miserables."
"It came true," she said, launching into a breathy speech, in which she thanked the cast and crew, her team and her husband. "The greatest moment of my life was when you walked into it," she said.
Tarantino won the Oscar for best original screenplay for his slave revenge western "Django Unchained." He thanked his cast.
"I have to cast the right people," he said. "And boy this time did I do it."
Chris Terrio won the award for best adapted screenplay for "Argo," which also won for film editing.
For only the sixth time in Academy history, there was a tie at the Oscars. "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Skyfall" tied for sound editing.
See Other Ties in Academy History
ROME (Reuters) - Polling stations opened for the first day of voting on Sunday in an election to choose a successor to the technocrat government of Mario Monti, appointed just over a year ago to save Italy from financial crisis.
Voting began at 8 a.m. and will go on to 10 p.m. (2100 GMT)Polls will re-open on Monday at 7 a.m. and remain open until 3 p.m. (1400 GMT), with the first exit polls for both the lower house and Senate expected soon afterwards.
The election, in the middle of a deep recession, is being closely watched by financial markets amid concern that it may fail to produce a clear winner capable of continuing the broad course of budget discipline and economic reform begun by Monti and backed by Italy's European partners.
The last opinion polls published before a pre-election blackout two weeks ago put a center-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani in the lead although former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had been closing the gap.
Uncertainty over the result has been increased by a surge in support for the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comedian Beppe Grillo who has ridden a wave of public anger against corruption and privilege in Italy's political elite.
(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Alison Williams)
BARCELONA - Chinese handset makers will lead an onslaught on smartphone titans Samsung and Apple when the world's biggest mobile fair opens on Monday in Barcelona, Spain.
Offering big-screen, slick, slim smartphones at lower prices, Chinese manufacturers Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo will leverage the Mobile World Congress to chip away at the mighty duopoly, analysts say.
The handset battle is part of a broader revolt against a handful of companies with a stranglehold on the booming industry's handsets, operating systems and microchips, they say.
Apple, as usual, is steering clear of the February 25-28 congress that draws 1,500 exhibitors to this Mediterranean city in northeastern Spain, and Samsung is not expected to launch its next big offer, the Galaxy S4, until some time after the show.
That may leave the field clear for rivals to tout their ambitions for a slice of the smartphone market, which is set to grow to a record one billion handset shipments in 2013, according to a forecast by global consultancy Deloitte.
"I think we will see challengers trying to make noise at the Mobile World Congress this year," said Ian Fogg, London-based senior mobile analyst at research house IHS.
New players face a daunting task, though.
Samsung and Apple accounted for more than half of all smartphone sales in the final quarter of 2012 -- 29.0 percent for Samsung and 22.1 percent for Apple -- according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
Behind Samsung and Apple, however, Chinese firms held the third, fourth and fifth spots -- with 5.3 percent for Huawei, 4.7 percent for ZTE and 4.4 percent for Lenovo.
Demand for smartphones in developing countries could give Chinese firms a bigger opening, said Magnus Rehle, senior partner at telecommunications management consultancy group Greenwich Consulting.
"Hundreds of millions of Africans and Indians and Asians want to have a smartphone and so far the blocking point has been the price," said Rehle, speaking from Ghana.
Now the Chinese firms were offering attractive smartphones at lower prices, he said.
"I think they will be quite successful in grabbing the new market outside of Europe and the US, and that is where the growth is," Rehle said.
An even mightier duopoly holds sway over the operating system software that makes the smartphones work.
Google's Android ran 69 percent of all handsets sold last year and Apple's iOS 22 percent, said a study by independent analytical house Canalys.
Yet they face challengers, too, including Mozilla's new open-sourced Firefox OS, backed by an array of mobile phone operators.
Microsoft's new Windows Mobile operating system is struggling, however.
"The number of apps that is available is one thing that is blocking Windows from being successful," Rehle said.
"They have had problems and everybody is hoping this will change because the duopoly is maybe not good for the market."
Firefox could face similar difficulties, he predicted.
A battle has broken out, too, over the processor chips that run the smartphones.
Santa Clara, California-based Intel is offering new high-performance chips to break its way into smartphones, of which almost all now use chip technology licensed by ARM, based in Cambridge, England.
Chinese group Lenovo, for example, is launching a new handset, the IdeaPhone K900, just 6.9mm thick with a 5.5-inch high definition screen, which contains an Intel Clover Trail processor.
The potential rewards for Intel could be rich: the market in processor chips for smartphone applications was worth nearly seven billion euros (US$9 billion) last year, said Francis Sideco, communications technology analyst at IHS.
Despite robust growth in smartphones and tablet sales, however, the mobile industry still faces a major challenge moving customers over to new ultrafast fourth generation, or 4G, networks, which can offer speeds similar to a fixed fibre-optic connection.
"There are 3G networks in many parts of the world like in Sweden that have been overcrowded and then you have parallel 4G networks that are almost empty," said Greenwich Consulting's Rehle.
Network operators need to convince their customers to pay a little more for the faster speeds, he said, pointing to videos as the "killer application" to lure people to the system over the longer term.
If the operators succeed, they can make more money and invest in greater capacity, the analyst said.
"Otherwise, they will have problems."
- AFP/ir
The Prime Minister, who reached Hyderabad by a special flight on Sunday morning, was accompanied by Andhra Pradesh governor ESL Narasimhan, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and top officials.
Singh inspected the tiffin centre area where the first bomb exploded, and later the bus shelter, scene of the second blast.
Senior police officials explained the sequence of events to the Prime Minister.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.
The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.
Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.
"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."
Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.
The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.
The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.
Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.
FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.
Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.
FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer
Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.
Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.
Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.
Las Vegas police identified a suspect today in a shooting on the strip that caused a Maserati to hit a taxi and burst into flames, killing three people.
Ammar Harris, 26, has been named a suspect in the Thursday skirmish that killed three people, including rapper Kenny Clutch.
The altercation between Harris and Clutch, 27, whose legal name was Kenneth Cherry Jr., is believed to have originated in the valet area of a Las Vegas hotel, police said.
Police said Harris fired several rounds into a Maserati that was being driven by Cherry as both vehicles continued northbound on glitzy Las Vegas Boulevard.
The rapper's expensive sports car careened out of control after he was shot, slamming into several cars, including a taxi. The impact caused the cab to burst into flames, killing the driver, Michael Boldon and a female passenger. Witnesses said it looked like the car exploded.
"He was a number one guy," Carolyn Jean Trimble, Boldon's sister, told ABC News.
"I looked out my window and I could see one vehicle down here on the corner of the intersection totally engulfed in flames," witness John Lamb told ABC News.
Boldon, 62, and his passenger, who has not yet been identified, were both killed, as was Clutch.
Timble said her brother loved driving his taxi around Vegas.
"He came to live with me in Las Vegas last year to help take care of our mother, and the first day he got here he said, 'I have to get a job.' The second day, I came home from work, and he said he got a job," she recalled.
"He says, 'You'll never guess what it is,' and I said, 'what,' and he said, 'taxi cab driver,' and we both fell out laughing," Trimble said. "He loved that job. He never complained. He'd come home and tell me stories about what happened, who he picked up."
Boldon was a single father who raised a 36-year-old son and was a new grandfather. His grandson was named after him, Trimble said.
"Of all the people to take from this earth," she said. "But I guess the Lord needed him."
A passenger in the Maserati was hit and sustained only a minor injury to his arm. Clutch died at University Medical Center.
His father, Kenneth Cherry Sr., expressed his grief for the loss of his son while speaking with ABC News.
"This is something you never really, really ever want to experience as a parent, to lose a child before you go," he said.
Harris is described as 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Las Vegas Metro Police Department's homicide division.
MEMPHIS, Tennessee - Fifth-seeded Kei Nishikori of Japan cruised past top-seeded Marin Cilic 6-4, 6-2 on Friday to reach the semi-finals of the US National Indoor Tennis Championships.
Croatia's Cilic had saved three match points in his previous match against Igor Sijsling, but could not find the answer against Nishikori, who had just four aces compared to a dozen for Cilic but won 69 percent of points on his serve.
"I was dominating with my serve," said the 23-year-old Nishikori, who also reached the semi-finals in Brisbane in January but retired from that match against Andy Murray with a knee injury.
Since then, he has reached the fourth round of the Australian Open.
"It's getting better every match... little by little," Nishikori said of his game.
He next faces Australian Marinko Matosevic, a 6-7 (6/8), 6-2, 6-4 winner over seventh-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine.
Nishikori won their only prior meeting at Brisbane earlier this year.
The other men's semi-final in this combined ATP and WTA event will pit Spain's Feliciano Lopez against Uzbekistan's Denis Istoman.
Lopez defeated US wildcard Jack Sock 6-4, 6-3, and Istoman was a 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) winner over Michael Russell of the United States.
In women's action, big-hitting Sabine Lisicki of Germany set up a title showdown with Marina Erakovic.
Lisicki, the third seed, fell behind in each set but dug deep for a 7-5, 7-5 semi-final win over seventh-seeded Magdalena Rybarikova. She will be vying for a fourth career WTA title.
New Zealand's Erakovic defeated Stefanie Voegele of Switzerland 6-2, 6-4 to earn a shot at a first WTA title. She has two runner-up finishes on her resume, including in Memphis last year.
- AFP/ir
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