Pelosi slams House GOP for taking break amid debt talks

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today ripped House Republicans for scheduling a five-day break amid the " fiscal cliff" debate, asking why the chamber is not in session "trying to build confidence" and "find common ground" with only 26 days left until a mix of steep tax hikes and spending cuts take effect.

"Here we are, Thursday in December. The talk around here is what's going on at the negotiating table. Is anything going on at the negotiating table?" Pelosi, D-Calif., wondered at her weekly news conference. "I can't even explain to my constituents why Congress isn't in session now trying to at least build bridges of understanding and representing."

The GOP-controlled House concluded legislative business Wednesday afternoon after a light floor schedule this week. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor cancelled one day of legislative business previously scheduled for today, and also cut next Friday from the calendar. Cantor, however, announced Wednesday that he has added an unspecified number of days to the legislative calendar the week of Dec. 17.

"I'm really surprised that the Republicans would leave," Pelosi said. "With all that needs to be done, [are House Republicans] avoiding the conversation? Sounds like people don't want to be in town for some reason."

At least one top House Republican, however, stayed at the Capitol: House Speaker John Boehner.

President Obama and Boehner spoke on the phone Wednesday afternoon, but no details were released about the conversation. An aide to the speaker said that "the lines of communication are open" today.

Pelosi, who said she remains in close contact with the president, has repeatedly described a Republican counter-proposal this week as "an assault" on the middle class, seniors and the country's future. She also criticized the proposal for failing to detail how Republicans would specifically achieve savings if they refused to raise tax rates on the wealthiest taxpayers.

"Why are we not here getting information?" Pelosi said. "What are we talking about here? What are we talking about when we say restructure entitlements? What does restructure mean? Destroy? Wither on the vine? Voucherize? Or does it mean let's work together to make these stronger and improve benefits for the beneficiaries?"

But with a stalemate on tax rates, even negotiations between White House and congressional staffs seem to have ground to a halt.

"It's hard to explain to anyone why there's even a mystery in the conversation that we shouldn't be having the upper 2 percent of our population paying its fair share," she said. "How do you start by saying we want to know what you're going to do to seniors before we will do what we know we have to do, which is make the wealthy pay their fair share?"

Pelosi also doubted whether the GOP proposal, which called for $600 billion in health-care savings through changes such as increasing the eligibility age for Medicare, would create adequate savings.

"Show me the money. I don't even know why that is something that people think is going to produce money. What are we going to do with people between 65 and 67?" she said. "It's not even the right thing to do, first and foremost, but is it a trophy that the Republicans want … to raise the rates for the wealthiest people in our country?"

Lawmakers return to the House for legislative business Tuesday, three weeks before the "fiscal cliff" kicks in.

The Senate is in session today.

Also Read

Read More..

NATO moving missiles, troops to Syria-Turkey border

BEIRUT (AP) — As fears grow in the West that Syrian President Bashar Assad will unleash chemical weapons as an act of desperation, NATO moved forward Thursday with its plan to place Patriot missiles and troops along Syria's border with Turkey to protect against potential attacks.

Assad's regime blasted the move as "psychological warfare," saying the new deployment would not deter it from seeking victory over rebels it views as terrorists.

The missile deployment sends a clear message to Assad that consequences will follow if he uses chemical weapons or strikes NATO member Turkey, which backs the rebels seeking his ouster. But its limited scope also reflects the low appetite in Western capitals for direct military intervention in the civil war.

The U.S. and many European and Arab countries called for Assad to step down early in the uprising but have struggled to make that happen. Russia and China have protected Assad from censure by the U.N. Security Council, and the presence of extremists among the rebels makes the U.S. and others nervous about arming them.

In Dublin, Ireland, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Russia's foreign minister and the U.N. peace envoy to the Arab country for three-way talks that suggested Washington and Moscow were working toward a common strategy as the Assad regime weakens.

The diplomatic efforts to end the civil war come days after NATO agreed to post Patriot missiles and troops along Turkey's southern border with Syria after mortars and shells from Syria killed five Turks.

Germany's Cabinet approved the move on Thursday, and German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters that the overall mission is expected to include two batteries each from the Netherlands and the United States, plus 400 soldiers and monitoring aircraft.

"Nobody knows what such a regime is capable of and that is why we are acting protectively here," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that intelligence reports raise fears that an increasingly desperate Assad is considering using his chemical weapons arsenal — which the U.S. and Russia agree is unacceptable.

The Assad regime said the NATO deployment would not make Assad change course, calling the talk of chemical weapons part of a conspiracy to justify future intervention.

"The Turkish step and NATO's support for it are provocative moves that constitute psychological warfare," Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said in an interview with Lebanon's Al-Manar TV. "But if they think this will affect our determination and work for a decisive victory in this fight against terrorism, they are very wrong."

Syria has not confirmed it has chemicals weapons, while insisting that it would never use such arms against its own people.

"I repeat for the hundredth time that even if such weapons exist in Syria, they will not be used against the Syrian people," Mekdad said. "We cannot possibly commit suicide."

Analysts say the missile deployment sends a message to Assad to keep the war in his own country.

"There is an element there of deterrence, of coercive diplomacy," said Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. "We won't go further if you don't go further."

Sayigh said it is possible that Syria, too, moved its chemical weapons to send a counter-message to the West.

Still, the missile deployment does not appear to be a step toward military intervention, he said, noting that no NATO member nations want to enter the war.

NATO officials said the Patriots will be programmed only to intercept Syrian weapons that enter Turkish airspace and will not be fired into Turkey preemptively. This means they would not target Syrian military activities that remain inside Syria.

The German Parliament is expected give its final approval in mid-December, and the Dutch are also expected to approve the move soon, allowing the plan to go ahead. Due to the complexity and size of the Patriot batteries, they will probably have to travel by sea and won't arrive in Turkey for another month.

In Syria, government forces shelled rebellious suburbs around the capital, Damascus. They also clashed with rebels in Damascus as well as in the northern city of Aleppo and elsewhere. Anti-regime activists say more than 40,000 have been killed since the country's crisis started with political protests in March 2011.

The fighting in Syria has enflamed tensions in neighboring Lebanon, where security officials said the toll in clashes between two neighborhoods in the northern city of Tripoli had risen to eight dead and more than 60 wounded.

The clashes between the two communities, which support opposite sides in Syria's civil war, started Monday, following reports that 17 Lebanese men were killed after entering Syria to fight alongside the rebels.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

___

Associated Press writers David Rising in Berlin and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Read More..

South Africa military plane crashes in mountains

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African military aircraft on an unknown mission to an area near the village where former President Nelson Mandela lives crashed in a mountain range, officials said Thursday. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.

The Douglas DC-3 Dakota, a twin-propeller aircraft, had taken off from Pretoria’s Waterkloof Air Force Base on Wednesday night, said Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, a military spokesman. On Thursday morning, soldiers found the wreckage of the airplane in the Drakensberg mountains near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of the air base, Mabanga said.

Mabanga said soldiers had been sent to the scene to look for survivors. Mabanga said he did not know what the mission of the aircraft was, though it had planned to land in Mthatha in the country’s Eastern Cape. Siphiwe Dlamini, a Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to immediately comment Thursday morning.

Mthatha is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu, the village where Mandela now lives after retiring from public life. South Africa‘s military remains largely responsible for the former president’s medical care. However, military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.

In November, another South African military flight crash landed at Mthatha, sending several people to the hospital with injuries. However, at that time, the military denied that those on board had anything to do with Mandela’s care.

Mandela, 94, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s president in the country’s first fully democratic vote in 1994.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Latest James Bond movie breaks UK box office record

LONDON (Reuters) – “Skyfall“, the 23rd official James Bond movie, has become the most successful film in British box office history, earning 94.3 million pounds ($ 152 million), its producers said on Wednesday.

The tally, earned over 40 days, surpasses the previous record of 94.0 million pounds set by 2009 3D adventure film “Avatar” over its 11 month run in UK cinemas, although the figures do not take inflation into account.

Skyfall, which has been well received by critics, stars Daniel Craig in his third outing as 007, and is directed by Sam Mendes.

In it Bond and British spymaster M, played by Judi Dench, are pitted against technological wizard Silva (Javier Bardem) who is bent on revenge.

“We are very proud of this film and thank everybody, especially Daniel Craig and Sam Mendes, who have contributed to its success,” said co-producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli in a statement.

Globally, Skyfall has some way to go to match Avatar. It has earned $ 870 million in ticket sales around the world, according to movie tracking site Boxofficemojo.com, compared with Avatar’s record $ 2.8 billion.

According to the same website, Avatar’s adjusted box office total comes in at 14th in cinema history, with the 1939 classic “Gone With the Wind” in pole position.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Breast Cancer Vaccine a Reality for Women With HER-2 Negative Cancers

COMMENTARY | NeuVax, a breast cancer vaccine, is entering phase III trials. The drug’s manufacturer, Galena Biopharma, announced on Dec. 5, that it signed a distribution deal with TEVA Pharmaceuticals. TEVA will handle the global commercialization and distribution of the drug once it is out of trials. It is about time this is moving forward. We need to make progress toward ending this disease.

What is NeuVax?

A vaccine called NeuVax is close to being a reality for breast cancer patients. NeuVax is a vaccine, the first of its kind, to prevent breast cancer from recurring. A recurrence is when breast cancer returns to the same breast. If breast cancer appears in the other breast, it is not a recurrence but a new cancer.

Most women have a 15-20 percent chance of breast cancer recurring, even after a mastectomy. The implications of the vaccine are huge. It reduces the chance of breast cancer recurrence in women with node-positive, HER-2 negative breast cancers. About 75 percent of all breast cancer is HER-2 negative. The vaccine is given after the standard course of treatment is completed. It is not a replacement for radiation or chemotherapy. I would gladly try a vaccine over the currently available long-term recurrence preventions — all are hormone based and carry awful side effects.

Phase III trials

Unfortunately for me, there are no trials available in Arkansas. Even if there were, I am not eligible because my cancer is HER-2 positive, and I am thankfully, node-negative. This means that the cancer is not in my lymph system. Phase III trials are when the drug is actually tested in random settings on humans. This drug seems to be very promising. Right now, phase III trials are open in the United States and Canada. Israel will have at least four phase III trials opening soon. You can see if there are trials near you at the NeuVax website.

This vaccine has the potential to replace hormone therapies like tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors. Both types of drugs have serious side effects. A vaccine, taken over the course of three years, reduces the time a patient needs to take medications and it helps to prevent recurrence. Hopefully the phase III trials go well and we get this vaccine available to breast cancer patients soon.

Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My Battle With Breast Cancer.”

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Windows 8: A ‘Christmas gift for someone you hate’

Microsoft (MSFT) is no stranger to criticism these days, and the company’s new Windows 8 platform is once again the target of a scathing review from a high-profile user. Well-known Internet entrepreneur and MIT professor Philip Greenspun handed Windows 8 one of its most damning reviews yet earlier this week, calling the new operating system a “Christmas gift for someone you hate.” Greenspun panned almost every aspect of Microsoft’s new software, noting that Microsoft had four years to study Android and more than five to examine iOS, but still couldn’t build a usable tablet experience.

“The only device that I can remember being as confused by is the BlackBerry PlayBook,” Greenspun wrote on his blog after using Windows 8 on a Dell (DELL) XPS One All-in-One desktop PC. The acclaimed computer scientist noted that Microsoft omitted all of the best features from the most popular touch-focused platforms and instead created a user interface he describes as a “dog’s breakfast.”

“Suppose that you are an expert user of Windows NT/XP/Vista/7, an expert user of an iPad, and an expert user of an Android phone… you will have no idea how to use Windows 8,” Greenspun wrote.

He continued, “Some functions, such as ‘start an application’ or ‘restart the computer’ are available only from the tablet interface. Conversely, when one is comfortably ensconced in a touch/tablet application, an additional click will fire up a Web browser, thereby causing the tablet to disappear in favor of the desktop. Many of the ‘apps’ that show up on the ‘all apps’ menu at the bottom of the screen (accessible only if you swipe down from the top of the screen) dump you right into the desktop on the first click.”

The only praise Greenspun offered was that “some of the supplied apps are wonderful,” pointing to Microsoft’s Bing Finance application as an example.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Death toll from Philippine typhoon nears 300

NEW BATAAN, Philippines (AP) — Stunned parents searching for missing children examined a row of mud-stained bodies covered with banana leaves while survivors dried their soaked belongings on roadsides Wednesday, a day after a powerful typhoon killed nearly 300 people in the southern Philippines.

Officials fear more bodies may be found as rescuers reach hard-hit areas that were isolated by landslides, floods and downed communications.

At least 151 people died in the worst-hit province of Compostela Valley when Typhoon Bopha lashed the region Tuesday, including 78 villagers and soldiers who perished in a flash flood that swamped two emergency shelters and a military camp, provincial spokeswoman Fe Maestre said.

Disaster-response agencies reported 284 dead in the region and 14 fatalities elsewhere from the typhoon, one of the strongest to hit the country this year.

About 80 people survived the deluge in New Bataan with injuries, and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who visited the town, said 319 others remained missing.

“These were whole families among the registered missing,” Roxas told the ABS-CBN TV network. “Entire families may have been washed away.”

The farming town of 45,000 people was a muddy wasteland of collapsed houses and coconut and banana trees felled by Bopha’s ferocious winds.

Bodies of victims were laid on the ground for viewing by people searching for missing relatives. Some were badly mangled after being dragged by raging flood waters over rocks and other debris. A man sprayed insecticide on the remains to keep away swarms of flies.

A father wept when he found the body of his child after lifting a plastic cover. A mother, meanwhile, went away in tears, unable to find her missing children. “I have three children,” she said repeatedly, flashing three fingers before a TV cameraman.

Two men carried the mud-caked body of an unidentified girl that was covered with coconut leaves on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and wooden poles.

Dionisia Requinto, 43, felt lucky to have survived with her husband and their eight children after swirling flood waters surrounded their home. She said they escaped and made their way up a hill to safety, bracing themselves against boulders and fallen trees as they climbed.

“The water rose so fast,” she told AP. “It was horrible. I thought it was going to be our end.”

In nearby Davao Oriental, the coastal province first struck by the typhoon as it blew from the Pacific Ocean, at least 115 people perished, mostly in three towns that were so battered that it was hard to find any buildings with roofs remaining, provincial officer Freddie Bendulo and other officials said.

“We had a problem where to take the evacuees. All the evacuation centers have lost their roofs,” Davao Oriental Gov. Corazon Malanyaon said.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies issued an urgent appeal for $ 4.8 million to help people directly affected by the typhoon.

The sun was shining brightly for most of the day Wednesday, prompting residents to lay their soaked clothes, books and other belongings out on roadsides to dry and revealing the extent of the damage to farmland. Thousands of banana trees in one Compostela Valley plantation were toppled by the wind, the young bananas still wrapped in blue plastic covers.

But as night fell, however, rain started pouring again over New Bataan, triggering panic among some residents who feared a repeat of the previous day’s flash floods. Some carried whatever belongings they could as they hurried to nearby towns or higher ground.

After slamming into Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, Bopha roared quickly across the southern Mindanao and central regions, knocking out power in two entire provinces, triggering landslides and leaving houses and plantations damaged. More than 170,000 fled to evacuation centers.

As of Wednesday evening, the typhoon was over the South China Sea west of Palawan province. It was blowing northwestward and could be headed to Vietnam or southern China, according to government forecasters.

The deaths came despite efforts by President Benigno Aquino III’s government to force residents out of high-risk communities as the typhoon approached.

Some 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely hit the vast southern Mindanao region where sprawling export banana plantations have been planted over the decades because it seldom experiences strong winds that could blow down the trees.

A rare storm in the south last December killed more than 1,200 people and left many more homeless.

The United States extended its condolences and offered to help its Asian ally deal with the typhoon’s devastation. It praised government efforts to minimize the deaths and damage.

___

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Teresa Cerojano and Oliver Teves in Manila contributed to this report.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Facebook’s Instagram cuts support for key Twitter integration

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service, Instagram, removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram’s Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

Instagram’s move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, due to Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided that its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users. Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with their friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman Jack Dorsey was an investor in Instagram and hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tabled a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he said one of Instagram’s strengths was its inter-connectivity with other social networks and pledged to continue running it as an independent service.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

Systrom noted that Instagram users will be able to “continue to be able to share to Twitter as they originally did before the Twitter Cards implementation.”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck dead at 91

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, whose choice of novel rhythms, classical structures and brilliant sidemen made him a towering figure in modern jazz, has died at the age of 91, his longtime manager and producer Russell Gloyd said on Wednesday.

Brubeck died of heart failure on Wednesday morning after he fell ill on his way to a regular medical exam at Norwalk Hospital, in Norwalk, Conn., a day short of his 92nd birthday, Gloyd said.

His Dave Brubeck Quartet put out one of the best selling jazz songs of all time: “Take Five,” composed by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Like many of the group’s works, it had an unusual beat — 5/4 time as opposed to the usual 4/4.

“We play it differently every time we play it,” Brubeck told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2005. “So I never get tired of playing it. That’s the beauty of jazz.”

“Take Five” was the first million-selling jazz single.

Dressed in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses and living a clean-cut lifestyle in the 1950s, Brubeck did not fit the stereotype of a hipster jazzman and his music was not nearly as brooding as that coming from East Coast be-bop players.

Despite his innovative approach, some critics interpreted Brubeck’s popularity as a sign of un-coolness, but his fans were undeterred.

Brubeck was born in Concord, California, on December 6, 1920. His father was a rancher and as a teenager Brubeck was a skilled cowboy. But his mother, a music teacher who had five pianos in the house, saw that he took up piano at age 5.

At the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, he planned to be a veterinarian, but within a year he was majoring in music and playing jazz in nightclubs.

“After my first year in veterinary pre-med I switched to the music department … and that was at the advice of my zoology teacher,” Brubeck said in a Reuters interview. “He said ‘Brubeck, your mind is not here, with these frogs and formaldehyde. Your mind is across the lawn at the conservatory. Will you please go over there.’”

Brubeck later met the co-director of a weekly campus radio show, Iola Marie Whitlock, and they eventually married.

After graduation, Brubeck studied under French composer Darius Milhaud and played in a U.S. Army jazz band during World War Two.

In the late 1940s, he moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where he headed an experimental jazz octet. He formed a trio in 1950 and the following year expanded to a quartet with Desmond, who he had known since the war.

Brubeck injected classical counterpoint, atonal harmonies and modern dissonance into his music, hinting at composers such as Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky and Bach.

The group built an enduring fan base by taking its subdued bluesy brand of classically influenced jazz to colleges.

As a leading figure in the West Coast jazz scene, which also included Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, Brubeck was featured in a Time magazine cover story in 1954. Some critics and black musicians, who felt jazz was a central part of black culture, resented the story about the prominence of a white artist.

In the article Brubeck said Milhaud had told him “if I didn’t stick to jazz, I’d be working out of my own field and not taking advantage of my American heritage.”

Brubeck disbanded the quartet in 1967 after nearly 17 years to concentrate on composing. He wrote several choral works, all religiously influenced.

He later began performing jazz regularly again and appeared with his sons, Darius, a composer and pianist; Chris, who played electric bass and trombone; and drummer Danny. They were billed as Two Generations of Brubeck.

In February 1989 Brubeck, who had a history of heart problems, underwent triple-bypass surgery but kept playing. Well into his 80s, he still put on some 80 shows a year. He had a pacemaker implanted in October 2010.

Actor-director Clint Eastwood, a jazz fan, announced plans to make a documentary on Brubeck in 2007. Eastwood also was named chairman of the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific, designated as the home of his papers, private recordings and other memorabilia.

Brubeck and his wife, who also was his agent and lyricist, had two other sons, Matthew, a cellist, and Michael, and a daughter, Catherine. The couple lived in Wilton, Connecticut.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

With Teva at crossroads, new CEO set to unveil vision

NEW YORK/TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Teva Pharmaceutical Industries‘ new Chief Executive Jeremy Levin has promised investors it will be a very different company going forward. Next week he has to prove it.

Levin’s ability to paint a bright future for the world’s biggest maker of generic drugs at a meeting with investors and analysts on December 11 in New York became a bit more difficult last week, when Teva issued a 2013 earnings forecast that fell short of Wall Street estimates.

Levin, a big pharma veteran, is expected to shift Teva’s focus to branded drugs even as its most important such product, top-selling multiple sclerosis treatment Copaxone, faces new competition and a 2015 patent expiration. Investors are also hoping for a meaningful boost to the annual dividend while new management works to jumpstart a stagnant share performance.

“I’ve made a lot of money in Teva and I’ve seen this company wither in front of my eyes,” said Dan Hunt, a co-portfolio manager for RCM Capital Management’s Wellness Fund. Hunt’s fund no longer includes Teva shares, but RCM has small Teva holdings.

“The most important signal (shareholders) need to hear on the record from Levin is ‘whatever it takes I will protect you’,” Hunt said, adding that Teva has not delivered for its shareholders in years.

Teva’s U.S. shares are up about 2 percent in 2012 after falling 22.6 percent in 2011. They are off 35 percent from a 2010 peak at about $ 64. Shareholders of smaller Teva rivals Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc and Mylan Inc have fared far better with Watson up about 45 percent this year and Mylan shares up about 27 percent over the same period.

Levin has taken some preemptive steps to placate investors ahead of the meeting by announcing that the company plans to cut $ 1.5 billion to $ 2 billion in costs over the next five years, streamline operations and discontinue some research programs.

Morgan Stanley estimated that Copaxone sales account for 58 percent of Teva’s projected 2013 earnings. Levin will have to reveal how he plans to make up for the anticipated decline in Copaxone revenue beyond cost-cutting efforts.

Generic drugs accounted for 56 percent of Teva’s revenue last year, but the company faces obstacles to generic growth in the United States, the world’s largest market.

Following a wave of major patent expirations, the number of multibillion-dollar drugs going generic will diminish after the next couple of years. And new generic drugs are facing competition sooner along with faster price declines. Generic drugs are also facing considerable price pressure in Europe.

SMALL ACQUISITIONS

South African-born Levin, a former senior vice president for strategy at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, took over as CEO of Israel’s biggest company in May, replacing Shlomo Yanai.

In five years at the helm, Yanai engineered a number of large acquisitions, including last year’s $ 6.5 billion purchase of U.S. drugmaker Cephalon, which has been viewed by some analysts as a disappointment. The company last month took a $ 481 million impairment charge related to the Cephalon deal.

Levin last week signaled a desire for more targeted acquisitions focused on Teva’s core areas of expertise, such as central nervous system disorders and respiratory diseases.

He has begun to whittle away at non-core businesses, selling Teva’s U.S. animal health unit to Bayer for up to $ 145 million. Investors said Teva needs to improve production efficiency and downsize or close some of its plants.

Levin, who implemented at Bristol-Myers a series of deals and alliances with small and large companies, has been credited with helping to guide Bristol through its enormous patent cliff as the blood clot preventer Plavix, which had been the world’s second biggest selling prescription medicine, lost exclusivity.

“The key is smart deals and getting an estimate of what a reasonable growth rate is going forward,” said Robert Caravella, equity research analyst for Victory Capital Management, which holds about $ 9 million in Teva convertible bonds.

“The biggest issue is there’s not an understanding of where revenue and earnings are going to go and how we’re going to get to that point,” he said.

BIGGER DIVIDEND?

Shareholders would also like to see Teva raise its dividend, which provides only a 2.5 percent return on the stock, below the industry average of about 4 percent. Alternatively, the company may decide to increase shareholder returns by boosting its $ 3 billion share buyback.

Steven Tepper, an analyst at brokerage Harel Finance, said Levin must demonstrate how Teva can again become a growth company or that it will be a value investment going forward through a significant dividend increase. “This plan will have to convince investors it’s making that move,” Tepper said.

RCM Capital’s Hunt said Levin must present “a strong, formed, clear strategic vision” of where the company is headed.

The question is whether it will be enough to convince disenchanted investors such as Stewart Capital, which has more than $ 1 billion in assets under management but sold its Teva holdings shortly after Levin took over.

Matthew DiFilippo, chief portfolio strategist for Stewart, was skeptical that one individual could effect the change necessary to transform Teva back into an industry darling. “So while we recognized his talents, we also recognized the challenges they face and we sold,” he said.

A lot of money remains on the sidelines waiting for what Levin has to say, said Ori Hershkovitz, managing partner at Israel-based pharmaceutical hedge fund Sphera. Levin needs to say he is committed to replenishing Teva’s branded pipeline and will do whatever it takes to replace those lost sales by 2016, Hershkovitz said, and he must “make the market believe it”.

(Additional reporting by Steven Scheer in Jerusalem; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..