Hitachi buys UK nuclear project

30 October 2012 Last updated at 08:43 ET

The UK’s nuclear expansion plans have been boosted after Japan’s Hitachi signed a £700m deal giving it rights to build a new generation of power plants.

Hitachi is to buy Horizon Nuclear Power, which was intending to build reactors on existing sites at Wylfa, Anglesey, and Oldbury, near Bristol.

Hitachi is buying Horizon from Germany’s E.On and RWE, which are withdrawing from the UK nuclear market.

Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a major step for the UK.

“This is a decades-long, multi-billion pound vote of confidence in the UK, that will contribute vital new infrastructure to power our economy.

“It will support up to 12,000 jobs during construction and thousands more permanent highly skilled roles once the new power plants are operational, as well as stimulating exciting new industrial investments in the UK’s nuclear supply chain. I warmly welcome Hitachi as a major new player in the UK energy sector,” he said.

UK engineering companies Babcock International and Rolls-Royce have signed preliminary contracts to join the Hitachi deal, which the Japanese company said should be completed by the end of November.

There will then be regulatory issues to clear, but once Hitachi’s reactor design is approved by the necessary authorities the company intends to build 6 gigawatts of nuclear capacity, with the first plant generating power in the first half of the next decade.

Up to 6,000 jobs are expected to be created during construction at each site, thousands more in the supply chain, and a further 1,000 permanent jobs at both locations once operational.

Dependency

The Horizon venture, based at Brockworth, Gloucester, currently employs about 90 people and was set up in 2009 as part of the drive to meet the UK’s carbon reduction goals and secure energy demand as old power plants are decommissioned.

But RWE and E.On put the business up for sale in March after Germany’s move to abandon nuclear power in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

A consortium made up of EDF and British Gas-owner Centrica has maintained its interest but the two companies have still to decide whether to build two reactors at Hinckley Point, Somerset.

Companies involved in the nuclear industry have expressed caution over entering the UK market. Because of the huge capital costs, stretched over many years, companies want some certainty over how much they might be paid for the electricity generated by their plants.

Last week, the chief executive of EDF, Vincent de Rivaz, told MPs that his company needed safeguards from the government that the finances of future nuclear deals would be “fair”.

Delays over decision-making and financing have led to doubts that new power capacity will come on stream before existing plants go offline. A so-called “energy gap” is likely to lead to rising prices and a greater dependency on gas imports.

Earlier this month, the energy regulator Ofgem warned that the UK risks running out of energy generating capacity in the winter of 2015-16. Its report predicted that the amount of spare capacity could fall from 14% now to only 4% in three years.

However, the government said that its forthcoming Energy Bill would ensure that there was secure supply.

With so many uncertainties still to be resolved, investment in the UK nuclear sector was still a “leap of faith”, said George Borovas, head of nuclear projects at global law firm Pillsbury. So, he said, Hitachi’s decision was a “significant… vote of confidence in the UK nuclear programme”.

‘Milestone’

Hitachi’s proposed facilities will use its advanced boiling water technology, which is already used in four reactors in Japan. Mr Borovas said this technology was a “proven success”, adding: “This should be very helpful with respect to its licensing in the UK and also opens up the possibility of significant export credit agency and commercial financing from Japan.”

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said: “Hitachi bring with them decades of expertise, and are responsible for building some of the most advanced nuclear reactors on time and on budget, so I welcome their commitment to helping build a low-carbon, secure-energy future for the UK.”

Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint called on the government to use this as an opportunity to encourage investment in nuclear research and design.

Unions also welcomed Hitachi’s move, with Mike Clancy, general secretary designate of Prospect, saying: “The Horizon venture is an important milestone in securing future low-carbon energy generation capacity within the UK and its importance to local and national economies cannot be overstated.

“While Hitachi’s advanced boiling water reactor design has yet to undergo the UK’s generic design assessment approval process, it is a proven technology and therefore any construction in the UK will benefit from lessons learned from its construction in Japan.”

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Cuba’s 2nd city without power, water after Sandy

HAVANA (AP) — Residents of Cuba‘s second-largest city of Santiago remained without power or running water Monday, four days after Hurricane Sandy made landfall as the island’s deadliest storm in seven years, ripping rooftops from homes and toppling power lines.

Across the Caribbean, the storm’s death toll rose to 69, including 52 people in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, two in the Bahamas, two in the Dominican Republic, one in Jamaica and one in Puerto Rico.

Cuban authorities have not yet estimated the economic toll, but the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported there was “severe damage to housing, economic activity, fundamental public services and institutions of education, health and culture.”

Yolanda Tabio, a native of Santiago, said she had never seen anything like it in all her 64 years: Broken hotel and shop windows, trees blown over onto houses, people picking through piles of debris for a scrap of anything to cover their homes. On Sunday, she sought solace in faith.

“The Mass was packed. Everyone crying,” said Tabio, whose house had no electricity, intermittent phone service and only murky water coming out of the tap on Monday. “I think it will take five to ten years to recover. … But we’re alive.”

Sandy came onshore early Thursday just west of Santiago, a city of about 500,000 people in agricultural southeastern Cuba. It is the island’s deadliest storm since 2005′s Hurricane Dennis, a category 5 monster that killed 16 people and did $ 2.4 billion in damage. More than 130,000 homes were damaged by Sandy, including 15,400 that were destroyed, Granma said.

“It really shocked me to see all that has been destroyed and to know that for many people, it’s the effort of a whole lifetime,” said Maria Caridad Lopez, a media relations officer at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Santiago. “And it disappears in just three hours.”

Lopez said several churches in the area collapsed and nearly all suffered at least minor damage. That included the Santiago cathedral as well as one of the holiest sites in Cuba, the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre. Sandy’s winds blew out its stained glass windows and damaged its massive doors.

“It’s indescribable,” said Berta Serguera, an 82-year-old retiree whose home withstood the tempest but whose patio and garden did not. “The trees have been shredded as if with a saw. My mango only has a few branches left, and they look like they were shaved.”

On Monday, sound trucks cruised the streets urging people to boil drinking water to prevent infectious disease. Soldiers worked to remove rubble and downed trees from the streets. Authorities set up radios and TVs in public spaces to keep people up to date on relief efforts, distributed chlorine to sterilize water and prioritized electrical service to strategic uses such as hospitals and bakeries.

Enrique Berdion, a 45-year-old doctor who lives in central Santiago, said his small apartment building did not suffer major damage but he had been without electricity, water or gas for days.

“This was something I’ve never seen, something extremely intense, that left Santiago destroyed. Most homes have no roofs. The winds razed the parks, toppled all the trees,” Berdion said by phone. “I think it will take years to recover.”

Raul Castro, who toured Cuba’s hardest-hit regions on Sunday, warned of a long road to recovery.

Granma said the president called on the country to urgently implement “temporary solutions,” and “undoubtedly the definitive solution will take years of work.”

Venezuela sent nearly 650 of tons of aid, including nonperishable food, potable water and heavy machinery both to Cuba and to nearby Haiti, which was not directly in the storm’s path but suffered flash floods across much of the country’s south.

Across the Caribbean, work crews were repairing downed power lines and cracked water pipes and making their way into rural communities marooned by impassable roads. The images were similar from eastern Jamaica to the northern Bahamas: Trees ripped from the ground, buildings swamped by floodwaters and houses missing roofs.

Fixing soggy homes may be a much quicker task than repairing the financial damage, and island governments were still assessing Sandy’s economic impact on farms, housing and infrastructure.

In tourism-dependent countries like Jamaica and the Bahamas, officials said popular resorts sustained only superficial damage, mostly to landscaping.

Haiti, where even minor storms can send water gushing down hills denuded of trees, listed a death toll of 52 as of Monday and officials said it could still rise. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has described the storm as a “disaster of major proportions.”

In Jamaica, where Sandy made landfall first on Wednesday as a Category 1 hurricane, people coped with lingering water and power outages with mostly good humor.

“Well, we mostly made it out all right. I thought it was going to be rougher, like it turned out for other places,” laborer Reginald Miller said as he waited for a minibus at a sunbaked Kingston intersection.

In parts of the Bahamas, the ocean surged into coastal buildings and deposited up to six feet of seawater. Sandy was blamed for two deaths on the archipelago off Florida’s east coast, including a British bank executive who fell off his roof while trying to fix a window shutter and an elderly man found dead beneath overturned furniture in his flooded, low-lying home.

___

Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana, David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica, and Jeff Todd in Nassau, Bahamas, contributed to this report.

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Peter Orsi is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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SEC taking deeper look at Nasdaq’s Facebook plan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Securities regulators are taking a closer look at Nasdaq OMX’s $ 62 million plan to compensate brokers who suffered losses from the exchange operator’s botched handling of Facebook‘s initial public offering.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was instituting proceedings to more closely review the plan in light of the “legal and policy issues raised” by other market players.

“The Commission believes that questions are raised as to whether Nasdaq‘s accommodation proposal… would promote just and equitable principles of trade, protect investors and the public interest, and not be designed to permit unfair discrimination between customers, issuers, brokers, or dealers,” the SEC wrote in a notice posted online on Monday.

A Nasdaq spokesman declined to comment on the SEC’s decision to extend the timeframe for reviewing the proposal. However, on the company’s earnings call earlier this month, Nasdaq Chief Executive Bob Greifeld said he anticipated such a move by the SEC.

“To the extent the SEC requires more time, then we would agree to that, so I’m not here to predict what they may do, but end of the year is a reasonable guess,” Greifeld said at the time.

Market-makers like Knight Capital Group Inc, UBS AG, Citigroup Inc, and others, say they collectively lost around $ 500 million on May 18 when Facebook first debuted on public markets. A technology issue delayed the IPO for 30 minutes and in the interim, many orders were not included in the opening cross.

That led to delays in many clients’ orders being put through and hours-long waits for confirmations.

Some orders were lost all together, while others were entered repeatedly when market-makers did not receive the electronic confirmations they expected. Those usually arrive within seconds.

Nasdaq has since disclosed that the SEC’s enforcement division is investigating the series of events leading up to the $ 16 billion IPO.

Nasdaq had originally drafted a $ 40 million compensation plan for brokers who lost money, but later raised it to $ 62 million amid criticism that the amount was too low.

Since then, some market-makers and brokers have said they would back the amended proposal. But other market participants have continued to balk at the sum being offered.

The SEC’s latest announcement that it will “institute proceedings” to determine whether or not to approve or disapprove Nasdaq’s proposal is a new, procedural change created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The law aimed to streamline the process for the commission to review rule changes filed by exchanges, which act as self-regulatory organizations.

It requires the SEC to either approve, disapprove or institute such proceedings for proposed rule changes no more than 45 days after an exchange submits it for consideration.

If the SEC does not act within the 45 days, the rule automatically gets approved. In this case, the deadline for the SEC to act was October 30.

Typically the SEC will institute proceedings to more closely review rule changes if they are novel, complicated or somewhat more controversial.

A decision to institute proceedings “does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions,” the SEC said in its notice.

The SEC will seek additional public comments to help it reach a final decision on whether to accept Nasdaq’s compensation plan proposal.

The agency said among the main complaints it has already received from commenters include concerns about the “limited categories” of claims eligible for compensation, Nasdaq’s method for determining losses and a requirement for member firms to waive all claims against the exchange operator for their losses.

(Reporting By Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)

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Israeli-Palestinian drama ‘The Other Son’ wins Tokyo Film Fest

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Lorraine Levy‘s Palestinian/Israeli drama, “The Other Son,” won the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix, the top award at the 25th Tokyo International Film Festival, on Sunday night. Levy also took home the best director honors at the festival, which marks the final go-round for festival chairman, Tom Yoda.

The special jury prize went to Kang Yi-kwan’s “Juvenile Offender.” Seo Young-joo, who stars in the film, was awarded the best actor prize. The best actress award went to Neslihan Atagul for “Araf – Somewhere in Between.” Tetsuaki Matsui‘s “Flashback Memories 3D,” about a Japanese didgeridoo player who loses his memory, took home the audience award. The Toyota Earth Grand Prix for the best nature-themed fiction or documentary was given to Valerie Berteau’s “Himself He Cooks.”

“All the films were excellent,” said Roger Corman, president of the international competition jury. “They each demonstrate the glory and power of cinema to entertain, inform, and teach us.”

For the first time this year, TIFFCOM, the market arm of the festival took place in Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Bay. At TIFFCOM, there were 227 exhibiting companies from 25 countries and regions, up from last year’s 20 countries, with 111 of those entities were new exhibitors.

At the close of the festival, Yoda reflected back on his five years as chairman.

“It is the fifth year since the introduction of the Green Carpet and the Toyota Earth Grand Prix. It is also the 25th memorable year for us. On such as special year, I am very happy to have had the world respected Roger Corman leading the member of the jury,” he said.

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Analysis: U.S. foreign bribery penalties for drugmakers may lack bite

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global drugmakers are paying tens of millions of dollars to settle U.S. allegations that they bribed their way across emerging markets, but harsher penalties may be needed to deter the practice in untapped regions where billions are at stake.

Federal authorities have cast a wide net to weed out suspected gift-giving and kickbacks to foreign doctors and government officials to gain a foothold in burgeoning new markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

At least eight of the world’s top 10 drugmakers, including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Pfizer Inc and Johnson &, have disclosed U.S. probes under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Pfizer agreed to pay $ 60 million this year to settle FCPA charges and J&J reached a $ 70 million settlement last year. Pfizer is on track to record $ 10 billion in sales from emerging markets this year, while J&J said Brazil, Russia, India and China accounted for just under 10 percent of the $ 65 billion in sales it reported last year.

With so much at stake outside of established markets in the United States and Europe, some experts say fines like these are hardly a deterrent.

“The $ 60 million fine for Pfizer to a lay person sounds like quite a bit of money, but in perspective it took less than two days of Lipitor sales during its peak. It’s really just chump change for them,” said Michael Leibfried, a senior analyst with market research consulting firm GlobalData. The cholesterol pill at its height was a $ 13 billion a year cash cow for Pfizer.

Kara Brockmeyer, chief of FCPA investigations within the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division, said the SEC and Department of Justice make a considerable effort to ensure penalties are appropriate and a deterrent. And there has yet to be a repeat FCPA prosecution.

The SEC relies on legal provisions that call for disgorgement of profits based on ill-gotten gains plus penalties. Companies that report violations and cooperate with authorities are often rewarded with penalty reductions.

“I would hate to think the companies view enforcement actions as the cost of doing business,” Brockmeyer told Reuters. “If we find that out, it will certainly increase the size of the penalty,” she said.

The law firm Shearman & Sterling, which puts out a semi-annual report tracking FCPA enforcement, found that penalties across all industries have averaged less than $ 20 million.

In 2009 Danish insulin maker Novo Nordisk paid $ 9 million for FCPA violations, while medical device maker Smith & Nephew this year agreed to $ 22 million in fines and profit disgorgement. The largest FCPA penalty on record was $ 800 million paid in 2008 by Germany-based Siemens.

The industry’s FCPA payments pale in comparison to billion-dollar settlements over allegations drugmakers promoted medications for unapproved uses in the United States. These penalties often involve how much federal Medicare and Medicaid programs spent on the so-called off-label prescriptions.

“I’m not terribly surprised that dollar settlements (for FCPA violations) are strikingly lower because the government isn’t directly being harmed,” said Boston University law professor Kevin Outterson.

PLAYING THE RIGHT WAY

Pfizer’s settlement covered infractions dating back to 2004, including some attributed to drugmaker Wyeth, which it bought in 2009. The company lightened its penalty by voluntarily providing information about kickbacks and bribes in Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, the Czech Republic, Italy, Serbia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

“Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers,” Brockmeyer said in a statement at the time the settlement was announced.

Pfizer executives say their emerging market operations will not repeat those practices. It has introduced an anti-corruption audit program, closer monitoring of relationships with non-U.S. healthcare providers and government officials, a mandatory global training program for appropriate employees and enhanced due diligence to make sure buyout targets follow the rules.

J&J said it has enacted similar anti-corruption initiatives.

“We’re not out there to play the game that’s been played before,” said Adele Gulfo, head of Latin America for Pfizer’s emerging markets unit. “We’re either going to win by playing the right way or we’re going to find another place to go.”

Asked if there is still an expectation of payoffs for business in some Latin American circles, Gulfo said: “I’m sure it exists. I’d be naive to say it doesn’t exist.”

Latin American business practices were cited in August as the reason No. 1 generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries was targeted for an FCPA investigation.

J&J also voluntarily reported violations by foreign subsidiaries going back to 2007. Its settlement covered allegations of bribes and kickbacks to win business in Greece, Iraq, Poland and Romania.

DOJ spokeswoman Rebekah Carmichael said the penalties have already had a ripple effect in the industry, forcing companies to “make real, lasting changes to their operations that have altered the way they engage with foreign countries.”

BEYOND THE PENALTIES

The U.S. government sees vast potential for abuse in the drug industry’s business model, said Andy Spalding, assistant law professor at the University of Richmond and a senior editor for The FCPA Blog, which closely follows such cases.

“So much of their research and development, their marketing, their pricing and distribution and sales are occurring in foreign countries,” Spalding said. “And often they are occurring through a big chain of subsidiaries and other operations that make compliance challenging.”

Legal experts noted that any company subject to an FCPA probe is already spending a great deal to investigate the charges internally, and that the final cost can run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Overall expense vastly dwarfs the penalty,” said Philip Urofsky, head of Shearman & Sterling’s FCPA practice who previously worked on FCPA cases for the DOJ.

Drugmakers can have a tough time tracking kickbacks to local officials. Such payments, while widespread, are typically smaller than in other industries.

“In pharma there are thousands of daily interactions with government officials. There are always going to be people that step over the line,” Urofsky said.

Since FCPA investigations typically take years to come to a head, Outterson said the jury is still out on whether the current strategy is working.

“Whether they’re taking aggressive enough action to end it is a question we’ll know in five more years … when we see the cases refer to 2012.”

(Editing by Michele Gershberg and David Gregorio)

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TSX may open lower; volumes seen down on storm

(Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index looked set to open lower on Monday, hurt by uncertainty prevailing over Spanish bailout and lackluster global corporate earnings.

Trading volumes are expected to be thin with U.S. stock markets closed because of the huge and potentially damaging hurricane expected to hit the U.S. East Coast later in the day.

A spokeswoman for TMX Group Ltd said the Canadian stock markets it operates would remain open.

TOP STORIES

* Progress Energy Resources Corp. : Malaysian state oil firm Petronas will renew a bid for the gas producer, Petronas sources said, seeking to assure the Canadian government that the C$ 5.17 billion deal will benefit the country.

* Hurricane Sandy, a mammoth storm menacing the East Coast, took aim at the most densely populated U.S. region on Monday, forcing hundreds of thousands to seek higher ground, halting public transport and closing schools, businesses and government departments.

* Drugmaker Pfizer Inc and power companies Entergy Corp and NRG Energy Inc said they would postpone releasing quarterly earnings results because of the hurricane approaching the U.S. Northeast.

* TransCanada Corp has formed a joint venture with Phoenix Energy Holdings Ltd to develop a C$ 3 billion pipeline project in Northern Alberta.

* European Union governments will debate a cut of at least 50 billion euros this week as the starting point for negotiations on the bloc’s proposed 1 trillion-euro long-term budget, a source familiar with the issue said.

* Swiss bank UBS AG is expected to cut up to 10,000 jobs, or 16 percent of its workforce, as it contends with shrinking revenue and rising capital requirements, a source familiar with the matter said, in what would be one of the largest layoffs by a bank since the financial crisis.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

* Canada stock futures traded down 0.81 percent

* U.S. stock futures,, were down around 0.68 percent to 0.88 percent <.N>

* European shares <.FTEU3>, <.STOXX> were down <.EU>

COMMODITY PRICE MOVES

* Thomson Reuters-Jefferies CRB Index <.TRJCRBTR>: 296.90; fell 0.12 percent

* Gold futures: $ 1,709; fell 0.11 percent

* US crude: $ 85.55; fell 0.85 percent

* Brent crude: $ 109.28; fell 0.25 percent

* LME 3-month copper: $ 7,703; fell 1.5 percent

CANADIAN STOCKS TO WATCH

* Inmet Mining Corp. : Gold miner Petaquilla Minerals Ltd rejected the company’s revised buyout offer of C$ 130 million and said it continues to explore other strategic alternatives, including discussions with third parties regarding a potential deal. The offer was revised from its from C$ 109 million offer in September.

* Patheon Inc.: The contract drugmaker said it will buy Banner Pharmacaps, a specialty pharmaceutical business, for $ 255 million to expand its oral dosage development and manufacturing services. It also raised it revenue forecast for the year to between $ 740 million and $ 745 million.

* Wescast Industries Inc. : 75 unionized workers at a plant in Strathroy, Ontario, have gone on strike, the Canadian Auto Workers union and the auto parts maker said on Saturday. The company in a brief statement said that it had put plans in place to ensure continued supply of parts to customers.

ANALYST RECOMMENDATIONS

Following is a summary of research actions on Canadian companies reported by Reuters.

* Alamos Gold Inc. : CIBC raises price target to C$ 23 from C$ 21 on the miner’s strong cost control, production growth and increased cash flow for next year.

* DHX Media Ltd. : Canaccord Genuity starts with buy rating and sets target price of C$ 2.15 on the advantages that accrue from the acquisition of Cookie Jar which may result in more tangible growth potential.

* MacDonald Dewttwiler and Associated Ltd. : CIBC raises to sector outperformer from sector performer and raises price target to C$ 66 from C$ 54.50 after the company received anti-trust approval for the acquisition of Space Systems/Loral Inc from Loral Space and Communications Inc.

* Rogers Communications Inc. : National Bank Financial cuts to sector perform from outperform on company’s overstretched valuations following the rally after the second and third-quarter results beat.

ON THE CALENDAR

* No major Canadian economic data scheduled for release

* Major U.S. events and data includes personal income and consumption and core PCE price index

($ 1= $ 1 Canadian)

(Reporting by Chandrashekhar Modi; With additional reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)

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Clinton: Facebook post about Benghazi attack not hard “evidence”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday a Facebook post in which an Islamic militant group claimed credit for a recent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible.

“Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be,” Clinton said during an appearance with the Brazilian foreign minister at the State Department.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that an official email showed officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit.

The email, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mentioned that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

That and two other emails also made available showed how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

Clinton, responding to a reporter’s question about the emails, noted that a State Department investigation was under way.

“The independent accountability review board is already hard at work looking at everything, not cherry picking one story here or one document there, but looking at everything – which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach for something as complex as an attack like this,” she said.

“We will find out what happened. We will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about the emails, noted that Ansar al-Sharia had later denied responsibility for the attack.

“This was an open-source, unclassified email about a posting on a Facebook site. I would also note I think that within a few hours, that organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact — that’s why there’s an investigation under way,” he told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One to Iowa.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a “terrorist” attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of “extremists,” they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts were cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

MISSIVES FROM LIBYA

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack. “Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well,” it said.

The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”

A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials “carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.”

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

“Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Andrew Quinn; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Storey)

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European fashion buyers look to Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A model struts the runway wearing a flowing newspaper print gown in this African megacity where international high-end fashion buyers are looking beyond the country’s bleak headlines to uncover the next new thing.

There have been steady efforts to turn Lagos, a city with a fearsome reputation, into a fashion destination. They reached new heights at the MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week that ran from Oct. 24 to 27 and drew European high-fashion brands such as the United Kingdom’s Selfridges & Co. and Munich-based MyTheresa.com to Nigeria for the first time.

Ituen Basi’s newspaper inspired Spring/Summer 2013 collection was among 39 collections spotlighted at the city’s latest major fashion week. The Nigerian’s collection evoked fun and glamour through its use of print and color — characteristics which have come to define the vibrant local fashion scene.

With local brands seeking wider platforms and international retailers hungry for novelty, designers and buyers see opportunities for collaboration.

“There’s something about the fresh, the unknown, the possibility of seeing a new brand springing forth into the limelight. … These are becoming interesting to people outside Nigeria,” said Omoyemi Akerele, the fashion week’s founder and creative director.

An encouraging response to African-inspired designs by top Western labels gives buyers confidence that designs straight from the continent will also sell.

“Over the past few seasons, there’s been a strong trend for print,” said Bruno Barba, the brand public relations manager at Selfridges. “If you look at the collection of Burberry inspired by Africa last year; there was also Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith. … They’ve made that inspiration quite mainstream now. So, for us, it was interesting to take that trend and take it from its roots in Africa.”

Online retailer MyTheresa.com, which ships top designers’ clothes including Miu Miu, Givenchy, Lanvin and Isabel Meron to clients in 120 different countries, is also looking for products in Nigeria that will sell well. The company hopes that will set it apart from the competition in a fast-paced industry.

“For me, Nigeria represents a fun individualism,” the company’s buying director Justin O’Shea said. He also said that MyTheresa.com was looking to work closely with designers and adapt products for their clientele if needed.

Previously, several Nigerian designers have helped put the West African nation on the global fashion map.

Deola Sagoe has gained recognition from U.S. Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley and Oprah Winfrey. London-based Duro Olowu is considered one of Michelle Obama’s favorite designers. Maki Oh has dressed American singer Solange Knowles and Hollywood actress Leelee Sobieski from her Lagos workshop. Jewel By Lisa, who has also dressed celebrities, designed limited edition BlackBerry mobile phone skins and jeweled cases for Canadian manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd.

While looking to Nigeria could bring much-needed novelty to clothes targeted to Western audiences, it could also endear a Nigerian clientele. Though the majority of the nation lives on less than $ 2 a day, the nation’s wealthy elite — including upstart business owners, oil industry executives and corrupt politicians — have a growing appetite for top-shelf brands. Luxury goods stores are increasingly opening in a country where seemingly gratuitous displays of wealth are the norm.

“Nigerians are part of our Top 10 highest-spending foreign customers,” Barba said. “It felt right for us to try and find a response that would appeal to them, excite them and be over and above what they already buy, almost as a recognition that they’re an important part of our consumer base.”

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Online:

Lagos Fashion & Design Week: www.lagosfashionanddesignweek.com

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Facebook More Irresistible Than Sex?

Reported by Dr. Julielynn Wong:

You may want to ask your date to turn off his or her phone. A new study suggests Facebook and email trump sex in terms of sheer irresistibility.

The German study used smartphone-based surveys to probe the daily desires of 205 men and women, most of whom were college age. For one week the phones, provided by the researchers, buzzed seven times daily, alerting study subjects to take a quick survey on the type, strength and timing of their desires, as well as their ability to resist them.

While the desire for sex was stronger, the study subjects were more likely to cave into the desire to use media, including email and social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter, according to the study.

“Media desires, such as social networking, checking emails, surfing the Web or watching television might be hard to resist in light of the constant availability, huge appeal, and apparent low costs of these activities,” said study author Wilhelm Hofmann, an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The subjects were paid $ 28 at the start of the study and were eligible for extra incentives if they filled out more than 80 percent of the surveys. It’s no small wonder that more than 10,000 surveys were completed.

The urge to check social media was so strong that subjects gave in up to 42 percent of the time, according to the study published in the journal Psychological Science. One explanation is that it’s much more convenient to check email or Facebook than it is to have sex.

“The sex drive is much stronger but it’s also much more situational,” said Karen North, director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who was not involved with the study. “We’re training ourselves to check our messages every couple minutes.”

“People are constantly looking down to check their phones,” North added. “They can’t stop.”

One drawback of this study is that it failed to address whether the subjects had sexual partners.  So while some subjects might have been single, all of them had smartphones, North said. It’s also unclear whether the findings can be generalized to the general population.

While social media can help people stay connected, Hofmann said overuse can be damaging.

“Media desires distract us from getting work done,” he said. “People underestimate how much time they consume and the distractions they produce and that can be harmful.”

The study surprised media expert Bob Larose, a professor in the department of telecommunications, information studies, and media at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.

“It’s surprising that self-regulation fails so much more often for media use than for sex, alcohol or food,” said Larose, who was not involved with the study. ”That speaks to the power of the instantly available, 24/7 media environment to disrupt our lives… Our failure to control media use can deplete our ability to control other aspects of our lives.”

For those who fear social media is taking over their personal or professional lives, there is hope.  North offers some tips.

“If it is interfering with social/business relationships, work, or school performance, then people should try to scale back and control or limit the behavior,” she said, describing how self-imposed “rules,” like no social media at the dinner table, can help curb the constant urge to check Facebook.

“People can use a self monitoring technique, such as charting when they use social media as a means of reducing it,” North added. “Some people find it helpful to set rewards for staying within use standards that they set for themselves.”

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Why the Yuan Is Rising

China’s currency hit a 19-year high against the U.S. dollar on Friday. Not coincidentally, on the same day the yuan rose to 6.238 against the greenback, disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai suffered his latest indignity, with the official Xinhua News Agency announcing his removal from the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp legislature. “According to the law on deputies to the NPC and to local people’s congresses,” the NPC Standing Committee said in a statement, as reported by Xinhua, “his post was terminated.”

The latest setback for Bo comes a month after he got booted from the Communist Party and is another sign China is back on track for the leadership transition set for early next month.

The yuan’s rise is related to Bo’s downfall because the uncertainty surrounding Chinese politics during the past six months has been one factor contributing to the currency’s weakness. It wasn’t that long ago that the significant pressure on the yuan was for it to go down, not up. Over the summer, China’s leaders were distracted by the Bo Xilai scandal. Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to President Hu Jintao, disappeared from public view for two weeks last month. That only added to worries that China’s leadership was too distracted to focus on economic issues.

Confusion about China’s politics came at a time when the economy was struggling and China’s exporters were feeling the heat from the global slowdown. Given that combination, “many people in the market expected significant RMB depreciation,” Lu Ting, chief China economist at Bank of America (BAC), told Bloomberg Television on Oct. 18.

Now, with the trial of Bo’s wife concluded, there’s less reason to worry about what might happen when China’s leaders gather for the Communist Party congress, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 8. It’s likely everything will now proceed as scripted, with Xi taking over as president and Vice Premier Li Keqiang replacing Wen Jiabao as premier.

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is showing signs of recovery. Recent numbers for industrial production, fixed-asset investment, and retail sales have all surprised on the upside, leading some economists to say the worst is over for the world’s No. 2 economy. Growth in factory output will pick up in the final quarter of the year, putting the country on track to meet its target of 7.5 percent, Zhu Hongren, chief engineer at the Industry and Information Technology Ministry, said on Thursday.

With the political uncertainty reduced and the economic picture improving, the yuan is on the rise again. The currency has strengthened more than 2 percent against the dollar over the past two months. “Earlier this year, people’s worries about China’s economy increased, which caused a decline in yuan demand,” Steven Bell, a fund manager at London-based hedge fund GLC, told Bloomberg News on Thursday. “The trend of outflows has now reversed, and China will probably attract more inflows.”

There’s another reason the Chinese currency is on the upswing. China’s leaders know both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. have been hammering China over its currency, which they say is undervalued and hurting American exporters. Republican Mitt Romney says he would declare China a currency manipulator on Day One of a Romney administration.

Allowing the yuan to strengthen to a two-decade high against the greenback might be the Chinese government’s way to show the Americans they aren’t ignoring those concerns. The yuan’s rise “helps China head off criticism ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election,” Barclays (BCS) analysts Nick Verdi, Olivier Desbarres, and Hamish Pepper wrote in an Oct. 19 note.

Eswar Prasad, a Cornell professor and former IMF China head, argues the Chinese government has not been depressing the value of the yuan: “Right now it’s hard to make the case that China is manipulating its currency,” he told Bloomberg TV on Oct. 23. “The RMB has appreciated, and they have allowed for more flexibility.” If Romney wins, Prasad expects him not to follow through on his threat to go after China’s yuan policy on Day One of his presidency. “The currency manipulation charge is something Romney is going to have to walk back from if he is elected,” said Prasad.

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