December 13, 2012
Online gambling companies struggle to clear EU hurdles
Label: TechnologyLONDON (Reuters) – A partnership stuck on Friday between bwin.party Digital Entertainment and a Belgian casino group has defused one of many disputes pitting online gambling companies against governments across Europe.
The agreement came a month after bwin.party’s co-CEO was questioned by Belgian authorities in an escalating license dispute the company said was costing it 700,000 euros ($ 916,000) in monthly revenue.
By joining forces with Belcasinos, a unit of local casino owner Group Partouche, bwin.party neatly met a requirement to have a presence in Belgium to win a license for online poker, casino and sports betting.
The agreement is a rare bright spot in a tough regulatory environment for online gambling companies across the continent.
Betting online on sports events or playing poker on the Internet are increasingly popular pastimes in Europe, where operators say they are held back by unfair and discriminatory rules in many European Union countries.
“It is not a European Union in any way, it is a patchwork of different countries who happen to be in the EU,” said Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham Business School in central England.
“Different countries have different vested interests and different ideas they are trying to promote. Are they trying to protect consumers or to maximize their tax take?” he said.
The 27 EU member states retain the right to regulate their gambling sectors as they see fit, but rules must comply with EU law, broadly meaning they must be consistent and proportionate.
Some companies are scaling back activities in European markets where, they say, regulatory risks are too high or tax rates are punitive.
Betting exchange operator Betfair for instance said this week it was halting marketing and investment in unregulated markets, including EU members Cyprus, Germany and Greece.
William Hill, Britain‘s largest bookmaker, has joined Betfair in pulling out of Greece and has also stopped offering sports betting to German residents because of a 5 percent turnover tax.
STAKES RISE
The stakes are high. Online gambling is growing at an annual rate of almost 15 percent in the EU and will be worth an estimated 13 billion euros ($ 17 billion) by 2015, according to EU figures.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive, stepped in to the debate in October when it published a medium-term plan to clarify regulations and promote cooperation between member states, ruling out EU-wide legislation for the time being.
“All citizens must be adequately protected, money laundering and fraud must be prevented, sport must be safeguarded against betting-related match-fixing and national rules must comply with EU law,” Internal Market and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said, setting out his approach.
The online operators accuse the European Commission of failing to follow through properly on complaints lodged about regulation in no fewer than 20 or the 27 EU member states.
Barnier has written to member states accused of breaching EU law in the way they handle gambling, seeking an update on the situation by the end of the year.
However, the industry questions whether the EU will go into battle over gambling when it is facing so many other problems.
“They will chip away at some of the most blatant ones,” said Clive Hawkswood, chief executive of trade body the Remote Gambling Association. “What we really need is for them to take some to the European Court and take enforcement action.”
BRITISH TAXES
Gambling companies themselves have taken advantage of different tax regimes where they work in their favor.
This is illustrated in Britain, historically the biggest betting market in Europe and a place with a well-developed gambling culture where bookmakers have operated in town centers for 50 years.
In recent years, most betting companies have moved their British online betting operations to Britain’s overseas territory of Gibraltar. There they are sheltered from a 15 percent tax on gross profit faced by operators based in Britain.
New legislation will close off that loophole after 2014. The shift to a taxation model based on the location of the consumer was expected to cost gambling companies as much as 270 million pounds ($ 435 million) by 2016-17.
Analyst Nick Batram at brokerage Peel Hunt said smaller players would likely be picked off because of the impact of higher tax and regulatory burdens across Europe.
“It is getting more complicated and more expensive. There is more change afoot but it should ultimately play into the hands of the better-capitalized companies.”
In that vein, William Hill has provisionally agreed a 485 million pound takeover of smaller rival Sportingbet, keen to get its hands on the company’s regulated Australian betting business.
“I think there is a lot more M&A activity to come,” said Batram.
(Additional reporting by Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by David Holmes)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
PHOTO: Jessica Biel's Dog Tina Sleeps in a Tree
Label: Lifestyle
People Pets
12/14/2012 at 09:30 AM EST
Jessica Biel found her dog snoozing beneath a tree – but not the kind you might expect for this time of year.
In her regular photo post series, #TuesdayswithTina, Biel shared four shots of her dog hopping into a potted tree and laying down for a nap.
"That doesn't even look comfortable!" she wrote on WhoSay, with a shot of the dog curled up around the tiny tree's trunk. "I promise I have an actual dog bed for her."
It seems Tina is never too picky about where she sleeps. In August, she got cozy in Biel's suitcase, and in October the dog copped-a-squat right on top of Biel, who was lying on a couch.
"My 55 pound blanket," the actress Tweeted, with a shot of the pair snoozing together.
Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants
Label: HealthALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.
The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.
To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.
But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.
When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.
And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.
In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."
The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.
Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.
Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.
A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.
California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.
The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.
And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.
If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.
Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.
The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.
"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."
Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.
There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.
Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.
For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.
"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."
___
Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .
Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .
Wall Street dips at open on "cliff" overhang
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street dipped at the open on Friday as investors digested the latest round of economic data, while concerns about a lack of progress by politicians in ongoing fiscal negotiations remained at the forefront.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 7.22 points, or 0.05 percent, to 13,163.50. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> dropped 3.65 points, or 0.26 percent, to 1,415.80. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 16.49 points, or 0.55 percent, to 2,975.67.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Kim Jong-un’s Image Bolstered by Rocket Launching
Label: World
SEOUL, South Korea — For North Korea’s inexperienced young leader, Kim Jong-un, the largely successful launching on Wednesday of a long-range rocket could not have come too soon.
Analysts say the launching was sure to bolster Mr. Kim’s grip on power after months of political purges meant to tame the elite class and hints of dissatisfaction among his hungry people. It was also expected to serve as an antidote to a humiliating failure early in his rule: a rocket test in April that fizzled before an international audience.
In the insular world of North Korea, the country’s ability to send a rocket hurtling hundreds of miles on roughly the course it set is a fulfillment of promises that have kept people loyal to the Kim dynasty for decades. Under that mythology, the launching was a sign that the so-called arduous march — soldiering on despite isolation and sanctions — was paying off, building a nuclear deterrent that would keep imperialist powers at bay.
Another promise — becoming increasingly important to the people, yet harder for the government to deliver on in the face of sanctions — is to resolve economic mismanagement that has kept North Koreans in chronic hunger.
Still, the success of the rocket was critical, analysts say, to Mr. Kim’s continuing attempts to strengthen his grip on the country’s powerful military, a process that in recent months has led to the dismissals of top generals loyal to his father and the elevation of a new crop of officers.
“It helps Kim Jong-un solidify internal unity,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
Ever since Mr. Kim took over after the death last December of his father, the longtime North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, he has been trying to show himself to be a worthy successor to his father and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the North Korean founder. He badly needed a propaganda boon this year, when North Korea observes the first anniversary of his father’s death and the centennial of his grandfather’s birth.
On Wednesday, after state television announced the “important news” that the rocket had put the satellite Kwangmyongsong-3, or Shining Star-3, into orbit, government vehicles blaring the news rolled through the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, according to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency. The Associated Press, which has a bureau in Pyongyang, reported people dancing in the streets.
“Suddenly, the whole country is engulfed with happiness and the people endlessly inspired,” the Korean Central News Agency reported, attributing the success to Mr. Kim’s father, whose main legacy was the missile program that his son just advanced, and the country’s nuclear program.
(The West considers such rocket launchings to be crucial tests of the same technology as that used by intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads.)
“Domestically, the test provides Kim with a much-needed propaganda boost following April’s launch failure and what North Korea watchers believe have been a series of disputes with the military,” said James Hardy, a security expert at IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly.
An ability to deploy unconventional weapons has long been integral to the North Korean government’s survival strategy, analysts say, not only as a means of creating a sense of empowerment among the impoverished masses, but also for catering to the elite. Without the revenues from selling such technology abroad or the aid and investment packages North Korea’s neighbors often provide to appease it, the government can hardly afford resources to buy privileges for the military, the secret police and top party members whose loyalty is the linchpin in maintaining totalitarian control.
Recently, Mr. Kim was believed to have given out special cash cards containing foreign currency to party, military and state elites, Park Hyong-joong, an analyst, said in a recent report posted on the Web site of the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Mr. Kim also opened a series of high-rise apartments, supermarkets and amusement parks in Pyongyang, where most of the elites and their families live.
The rocket achievement was timed well for Mr. Kim’s attempts to bolster his credibility among the North’s hard-line military, which forms the backbone of his political control. For months, Mr. Kim has been testing the loyalty of top generals by dismissing or demoting them and letting them try to win his favor again, according to South Korean officials and analysts. Meanwhile, they said, he has been putting his stamp on the military leadership by elevating a new lineup of officers who will owe their promotions to him.
These new elites — many of them reportedly also close to Mr. Kim’s aunt, Kim Kyong-hee, and her husband, Jang Song-thaek — have been depriving the old elites of lucrative rights, including the ability to trade in commodities, Mr. Park said.
Such abrupt changes have created “losers and discontent” and resulted in “indications of domestic instability,” according to a senior South Korean government official who spoke during a background briefing last week.
The launching, the analysts say, will help Mr. Kim tame such discontent by bolstering the military’s morale.
“With this first major achievement as new leader, Kim Jong-un can boost his legitimacy as a hereditary successor and consolidate the loyalty of the elite,” said Chang Yong-seok, an analyst at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. “It helps subdue the friction and tension between the old and new elites in the military and solidify its unity.”
iPad mini deemed a ‘game changer,’ outgrew Kindle Fire by nearly 50%
Label: TechnologySmaller tablets in the 7-inch range have been on the market for more than two years now, but it looks like it took Apple (AAPL) just one month to vault to the top of the category. Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media recently published the findings of a study pitting the iPad mini against Amazon’s (AMZN) popular Kindle Fire, which has been an extremely popular iPad alternative since it first launched last year. According to Millennial, iPad mini usage grew about 50% faster during early November than the Kindle Fire did immediately following its successful launch last year, as measured by ad impressions served by the firm’s network.
Millennial found that impressions served to the iPad mini in early November grew at an average daily rate of 28%. In the weeks following the Kindle Fire’s launch last year, usage of Amazon’s tablet grew roughly 19% each day.
“In the first weeks after the iPad mini went on sale, we saw an average daily growth in impressions of 28 percent. Last holiday season, Amazon launched the Kindle Fire to much anticipation, Millennial Media’s Matt Mills wrote on the company’s blog. “As a comparison, we saw Kindle Fire impressions grow at an average daily rate of 19 percent in the first two weeks after it went on sale last year. So, by our math it looks like Apple could have itself another massive holiday season.”
Mills called the iPad mini a “game changer” and said he expects “a massive amount” of iPad mini tablets to be given as gifts this holiday season.
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Taylor Swift & Harry Styles Get Away - Far Away - for Her Birthday
Label: LifestyleBy Simon Perry
12/13/2012 at 10:00 AM EST
Taylor Swift and Harry Styles
Courtesy Magda
The country star, who turns 23 on Thursday, has been getting a tour of rural northern England – where a fan snapped this photo – from her beau, One Direction singer Harry Styles.
The couple ate dinner by an open fire in a country pub and toured the picturesque Lake District, picking up classic children's souvenirs – and goofing around to seasonal songs in a shop.
On Tuesday night they popped into the Rising Sun pub in Hope Valley, in the Peak District, about 170 miles north of London, where they dined on "traditional English food," manager Sarah Walker tells PEOPLE.
Sitting in an alcove by the fire, they were joined by two friends about their age, locals report. There was little evidence of them behaving like boyfriend and girlfriend, Walker says.
"She was polite and pleasant – fantastic," Walker says. "She is just having a nice tour of England. They were like any typical group of people having dinner. Everyone thinks they are a couple, but to be honest, we had no sense of that at all."
Swift said she "loved" being in Britain and was "excited about her birthday," Walker adds.
With calls coming into the pub from as far away as California and Canada, it shows the reach of the boy band and country star. People are already asking to sit in their special table, Walker reports.
The following day, the couple were spotted a little further northwest, in the Lake District. At Bowness, they stopped into the World of Beatrix Potter to visit the store. Swift bought some soft toys, and she and Styles struck the workers as "nice and charming," chief executive Andy Poole says.
Styles, who is from the north of England, and Swift were being shepherded around by Styles's mom.
"They were dancing around to the seasonal music being played. Harry was being the most boisterous," Poole reports. Sadly, they didn’t break into song. "They didn’t give any impromptu concert, no!"
Dozens sue pharmacy, but compensation uncertain
Label: HealthNASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dennis O'Brien rubs his head as he details ailments triggered by the fungal meningitis he developed after a series of steroid shots in his neck: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, exhaustion and trouble with his speech and attention.
He estimates the disease has cost him and his wife thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses and her lost wages, including time spent on 6-hour round trip weekly visits to the hospital. They've filed a lawsuit seeking $4 million in damages from the Massachusetts pharmacy that supplied the steroid injections, but it could take years for them to get any money back and they may never get enough to cover their expenses. The same is true for dozens of others who have sued the New England Compounding Center.
"I don't have a life anymore. My life is a meningitis life," the 59-year-old former school teacher said, adding that he's grateful he survived.
His is one of at least 50 federal lawsuits in nine states that have been filed against NECC, and more are being filed in state courts every day. More than 500 people have gotten sick after receiving injections prepared by the pharmacy.
The lawsuits allege that NECC negligently produced a defective and dangerous product and seek millions to repay families for the death of spouses, physically painful recoveries, lost wages and mental and emotional suffering. Thirty-seven people have died in the outbreak.
"The truth is the chance of recovering damages from NECC is extremely low," said John Day, a Nashville attorney who represents several patients who have been sickened by fungal meningitis.
To streamline the process, attorneys on both sides are asking to have a single judge preside over the pretrial and discovery phases for all of the federal lawsuits.
This approach, called multidistrict litigation, would prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings and conserve resources of all parties. But unlike a class-action case, those lawsuits would eventually be returned to judges in their original district for trial, according to Brian Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville.
Even with this approach, Fitzpatrick noted that federal litigation is very slow, and gathering all the evidence, records and depositions during the discovery phase could take months or years.
"Most of the time what happens is once they are consolidated for pretrial proceedings, there is a settlement, a global settlement between all the lawyers and the defendants before anything is shipped back for trial," he said.
A lawyer representing NECC, Frederick H. Fern, described the consolidation process as an important step.
"A Boston venue is probably the best scenario," Fern said in an email. "That's where the parties, witnesses and documents are located, and where the acts subject to these complaints occurred."
Complicating efforts to recover damages, attorneys for the patients said, NECC is a small private company that has now recalled all its products and laid off its workers. The company's pharmacy licenses have been surrendered, and it's unclear whether NECC had adequate liability insurance.
Fern said NECC has insurance, but they were still determining what the policy covers.
But Day says, "It's clear to me that at the end of the day, NECC is not going to have sufficient assets to compensate any of these people, not even 1 percent."
As a result, many attorneys are seeking compensation from other parties. Among the additional defendants named in lawsuits are NECC pharmacist and co-founder Barry Cadden; co-founder Greg Conigliaro; sister company Ameridose and its marketing and support arm, Medical Sales Management.
Founded in 2006 by Cadden and Conigliaro, Ameridose would eventually report annual revenue of $100 million. An NECC spokesman didn't respond to a request for the pharmacy's revenue.
While Federal Drug Administration regulators have also found contamination issues at Westborough, Mass.-based Ameridose, the FDA has said it has not connected Ameridose drugs to infection or illness.
Under tort law, a lawsuit has to prove a defendant has a potential liability, which in this case could be anyone involved in the medical procedure. However, any such suit could take years and ultimately may not be successful.
"I would not be surprised if doctors, hospitals, people that actually injected the drugs, the people that bought the drugs from the compounding company, many of those people will also be sued," said Fitzpatrick.
Plaintiffs' attorneys said they're considering that option but want more information on the relationships between the compounding pharmacy and the hundreds of hospitals and clinics that received its products.
Day, the attorney in Tennessee, said the clinics and doctors that purchase their drugs from compounding pharmacies or manufacturers could be held liable for negligence because they are in a better position to determine the safety of the medicine than the patients.
"Did they use due care in determining from whom to buy these drugs?" Day said.
Terry Dawes, a Michigan attorney who has filed at least 10 federal lawsuits in the case, said in traditional product liability cases, a pharmaceutical distributor could be liable.
"We are looking at any conceivable sources of recovery for our clients including pharmaceutical supply places that may have dealt with this company in the past," he said.
Ten years ago, seven fungal meningitis illnesses and deaths were linked to injectable steroid from a South Carolina compounding pharmacy. That resulted in fewer than a dozen lawsuits, a scale much smaller than the litigations mounting up against NECC.
Two companies that insured the South Carolina pharmacy and its operators tried unsuccessfully to deny payouts. An appellate court ruled against their argument that the pharmacy willfully violated state regulations by making multiple vials of the drug without specific prescriptions, but the opinion was unpublished and doesn't set a precedent for the current litigation.
The lawsuits represent a way for patients and their families recover expenses, but also to hold the pharmacy and others accountable for the incalculable emotional and physical toll of the disease.
A binder of snapshots shows what life is like in the O'Briens' rural Fentress County, Tenn., home: Dennis hooked up to an IV, Dennis in an antibiotics stupor, bruises on his body from injections and blood tests. He's had three spinal taps. His 11-day stay in the hospital cost over $100,000, which was covered by health insurance.
His wife said she sometimes quietly checks at night to see whether her husband of 35 years is still breathing.
"In my mind, I thought we were going to fight this and get over it. But we are not ever going to get over it," said Kaye O'Brien.
Marjorie Norwood, a 59-year-old grandmother of three who lives in Ethridge, Tenn., has spent just shy of two months total in the hospital in Nashville battling fungal meningitis after receiving a steroid injection in her back. She was allowed to come home for almost a week around Thanksgiving, but was readmitted after her symptoms worsened.
Family members are still dealing with much uncertainty about her recovery, but they have not filed a lawsuit, said their attorney Mark Chalos. He said Norwood will likely be sent to a rehabilitation facility after her second stay in the hospital rather than return home again.
Marjorie Norwood's husband, an autoworker, has taken time off work to care for her and they depend on his income and insurance.
"It doesn't just change her life, it changes everyone else's life around her because we care about her and want her to be happy and well and have everything that she needs," said her daughter, Melanie Norwood.
Wall Street opens flat on "fiscal cliff" worry
Label: Business
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