Egypt protesters demand that Mohamed Morsi step down

CAIRO — Tens of thousands of Egyptians broke through barbed wire and marched to the presidential palace Friday demanding that President Mohamed Morsi step down even as government officials appeared to offer a slight concession on a controversial proposed constitution.

"Leave, leave like Mubarak!" protesters chanted, referring to Morsi's predecessor, longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Many protesters outside the palace no longer asked for Morsi to rescind a decree last month that expanded his powers and postpone a referendum scheduled Dec. 15 on a proposed charter written by an Islamist-dominated assembly. They demanded his resignation in what has become the sharpest political crisis since last year's overthrow of Mubarak.

Protesters said they were upset by Morsi's televised address Thursday, during which he offered a "national dialogue" with opposition leaders but remained adamant about the referendum and kept his unpopular decree in place.

In response to protests that have spread across the country, Vice President Mahmoud Mekki announced that Morsi was willing to postpone the constitutional referendum if the opposition agreed not to challenge the document in court. The government, in another effort to calm the crisis, announced that it would delay the early start of voting on the referendum for Egyptians living abroad from Saturday until Wednesday.

Analysts said the government's announcement may have been an attempt by Morsi to allow time for negotiations with opposition leaders.

"Morsi underestimated the opposition," said Ziad Akl, senior analyst at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "After witnessing the protesters break through the barbed wire to surround the palace, he realized that he had to make some kind of concession."

Opposition leaders had not responded to government officials by late Friday. They have said the opposition is not willing to negotiate until the president revokes his "dictatorial" constitutional decree and postpones the referendum.

At least six people have died and hundreds have been injured in clashes that began Wednesday between Islamist supporters of Morsi and protesters from mainly secular opposition movements.

The civil strife has been the bloodiest the country has witnessed since last year's uprising that toppled Mubarak. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have refused to retreat as the opposition promised more protests.

"Morsi has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the people, especially after yesterday's speech. As a leader, he is responsible for those who died," Waleed Essam, a 30-year-old artist, said as he waved a large white banner with the image of one of the protesters killed in the recent violence.

"He didn't even acknowledge that those who died were revolutionaries. He spoke 24 hours after the violence. This is not a president for Egyptians," Essam said.

Tamer Sherif, a 38-year-old engineer protesting outside the palace, said Morsi must go because "he is a president for the Brotherhood."

"He didn't respect the judiciary, the people or the constitution," Sherif said. "He wants to turn the country into a Brotherhood nation."

More than 20 political parties and opposition movements called for Friday's protests against Morsi. The groups said Morsi's legitimacy as president "fell as the blood of revolutionaries" fell during the clashes.

Thousands of Morsi's supporters marched in the afternoon after holding funeral prayers for victims of Wednesday's violence in Al Azhar mosque.

Abdellatif is a special correspondent.

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Feds Charge Anonymous Spokesperson for Sharing Hacked Stratfor Credit Cards

A Dallas grand jury has brought charges against Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown stemming from the 2011 hack of intelligence vendor Stratfor Global Intelligence.

Brown isn’t charged with committing the hack; just with possessing and transmitting credit card numbers that were stolen in the incident.

He has been in prison since he was arrested in dramatic and public fashion three months ago after posting a threatening video to YouTube. Brown was talking with acquaintances during a Sept. 12 TinyChat session when the feds burst in and took him away. The chat session was later posted to the internet.

The Anonymous spokesman was charged the next day with threatening a federal officer.

This time the charges are are related to a different incident: the 2011 Stratfor hack where credit card numbers and internal e-mail messages were stolen.

According to the grand jury indictment, dated Tuesday, Brown posted a link to a zipped version of the documents stolen in the Stratfor hack on Christmas day 2011 — that counts as trafficking in “stolen authentication features,” the indictment claims. He’s also charged with possessing stolen credit card numbers, Card Verification Values, and other information related to those credit card numbers.

Brown, 31, has been in custody since his Sept. 12 arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a press release announcing the 12-count indictment. He could face a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on the most serious of these charges.

The self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesman said he was expecting to face fraud charges after his apartment was raided back in March. He mentioned them in a long, rambling video posted to YouTube the day on the same day he was arrested in September. “I bring in no money. I have $25,000 I brought in the last year from this fucking book deal. that’s it.” he said. “A fucking fraud charge for a fucking writer activist who has no fucking money.”

Later in the video, Brown railed against FBI Agent Robert Smith, saying that he was going to “ruin” Smith’s life “and look into his fucking kids.” The Anonymous activist said he was angry that feds were contemplating obstruction of justice charges against his mother.

The indictment is below.

Gov.uscourts.txnd.226354.1.0

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Australia’s Gillard in spoof: Mayans were right, world is ending

CANBERRA (Reuters) – According to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Mayans were right and the apocalypse is near.

In a spoof 50-second video appearance promoting a local radio station‘s breakfast show, Gillard provided hair-raising details that she said would come when the world ends this month, as the ancient Mayans calendar predicted.

With the straight face she often uses in a normal press conference, and surrounded by Australian national flags, Gillard addressed viewers as “My dear remaining fellow Australians.”

“The end of world is coming. It wasn’t Y2K, it wasn’t even the carbon price,” said Gillard firmly. “It turns out that the Mayan calendar is true.”

Y2K was the computer glitch feared globally just before the year 2000, while the carbon tax refers to a major controversial policy put forward by her Labour government in 2012.

She went into terrifying details about the end of the world such as “flesh-eating zombies” and “demonic hell beasts”, but then wooed her constituents with promises.

“If you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end,” she said, but noted that there is also a bright spot.

“At least this means I won’t have to do Q&A again,” she said, referring to an Australian TV show where politicians usually have to face tough questions from the audience.

A spokesman for Gillard said the video, which was uploaded by radio station Triple J on Thursday and has already been viewed more than 232,000 times on YouTube, was simply a spoof.

“It’s just bit of fun,” he told Reuters. “It’s just a bit of humor for the end of the year. Nothing else.”

The video comes out in the wake of a phone hoax in which two Australian presenters from another local radio station called the hospital which is treating Prince William’s wife Kate and posed as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to ask questions about her condition.

(Reporting By Maggie Lu Yueyang, editing by Elaine Lies)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Justices to Take Up Generic Drug Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would decide whether a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to pay a competitor millions of dollars to keep a generic copy of a best-selling drug off the market.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ralph Neas, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said the case would alter the marketing of new generics.

The case could settle a decade-long battle between federal regulators, who say the deals violate antitrust law, and the pharmaceutical industry, which contends that they are really just settlements of disputes over patents that protect the billions of dollars they pour into research and development.

Three separate federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled over the last decade that the deals were allowable. But in July a federal appeals court in Philadelphia — which covers the territory where many big drug makers are based — said the arrangements were anticompetitive.

Both sides in the case supported the petition for the Supreme Court to decide the case, each arguing that the conflicting appeals court decisions would inject uncertainty into their operations.

By keeping lower-priced generic drugs off the market, drug companies are able to charge higher prices than they otherwise could. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a Senate bill to outlaw those payments would lower drug costs in the United States by $11 billion and would save the federal government $4.8 billion over 10 years.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, which never came to the floor for a vote, praised the decision.

The Federal Trade Commission first filed the suit in question in 2009. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said, “These pay-for-delay deals are win-win for the drug companies, but big losers for U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Generic drug makers say that the payments preserve a system that has saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

“This case could determine how an entire industry does business because it would dramatically affect the economics of each decision to introduce a new generic drug,” Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said in a statement. “The current industry paradigm of challenging patents on branded drugs in order to bring new generics to market as soon as possible has produced $1.06 trillion in savings over the past 10 years.”

The case will review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, which in the spring ruled in favor of the drug makers, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Watson had applied for federal approval to sell a generic version of AndroGel, a testosterone replacement drug made by Solvay.

While courts have long held that paying a competitor to stay off the market creates unfair competition, the pharmaceuticals case is different because it involves patents, whose essential purpose is to prevent competition.

When a generic manufacturer seeks approval to market a copy of a brand-name drug, it also often files a lawsuit challenging a patent that the drug’s originator says prevents competition.

Last year, for the third time since 2003, the 11th Circuit upheld the agreements as long as the allegedly anticompetitive behavior that results — in this case, keeping the generic drug off the market — is the same thing that would take place if the brand-name company’s patent were upheld.

Two other federal circuit courts, the Second Circuit and the Federal Circuit, have ruled similarly. But in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that those arrangements were anticompetitive on their face and violated antitrust law.

The agreements are also affected by a peculiar condition in the law that legalized generic competition for prescription drugs. That law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, gives a 180-day period of exclusivity to the first generic drug maker to file for approval of a generic copy and to file a lawsuit challenging the brand-name drug’s patent.

Brand-name drug companies have taken advantage of that law, finding that they can settle the patent suit by getting the generic company to agree to stay out of the market for a period of time. Because that generic company also has exclusivity rights, no other generic companies can enter the market.

Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, said that while there were provisions in the law under which a generic company could forfeit that exclusivity, “they really are toothless in practice.”

One wild card could still prevent the Supreme Court from definitively settling the question. In granting the petition to hear the case, the Supreme Court said that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself, taking no part in the consideration or decision.

That opens the possibility that a 4-4 decision could result, upholding the lower court case that went against the F.T.C. and in favor of the drug makers. But it would leave the broader question for another day.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals et al, No. 12-416.

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Wealth Matters: Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud This Madoff Day

Left to right: Louis Lanzano/Associated Press; Stephen Chernin/Getty Images; Richard Carson/Reuters

Three men accused of defrauding clients arriving at federal court. From left, Marc Dreier in Manhattan on May 11, 2009; Bernard Madoff in Manhattan on March 12, 2009; and R. Allen Stanford in Houston last Feb. 29.

THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past.

Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud.

These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest).

Protecting yourself against fraud, or simply bad advice, is easier said than done. The most common advice is to make sure your money is held by an independent custodian or firm whose job is to keep your money safe. That wasn’t the case with either the Madoff or Stanford fraud. But that is only one small step.

So what else can investors do to protect themselves, not only from unscrupulous advisers but also from rushing into an investment that is clearly too good to be true?

Marc H. Simon, a lawyer who lost two years of bonuses, his job and months of unreimbursed expenses when Mr. Dreier’s law firm collapsed, said he has thought a lot about what he could have done differently.

Mr. Simon said that six or seven years before the fraud was uncovered, he knew of inconsistencies in the firm’s 401(k) plans. But the big red flag should have been that Mr. Dreier had sole control over every major decision at the law firm. Still, that had been Mr. Dreier’s pitch: work for him and don’t worry about the irksome details partners typically face.

“People like Drier and Madoff were highly intelligent individuals, they were very charismatic and they were giving people what they wanted,” Mr. Simon said. “It is harder to bring into question those who are providing you something you want.”

Randall A. Pulman, a lawyer in San Antonio who represents many victims of Mr. Stanford’s fraud, agreed that the will to believe was what ensnared people.

“For you and me, it’s too good to be true,” he said. “For the guy who has been working in the oil fields, how is he supposed to know?”

Of course, fraud and just plain bad advice are not limited to the poor or unsophisticated. Robert P. Rittereiser, the former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and former chief executive of E. F. Hutton, is working as the receiver for two funds suing J. Ezra Merkin, a former money manager who steered money to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Rittereiser did not think investors in Mr. Merkin’s funds knew that their money was simply being passed on to Mr. Madoff. But even if they did, they may not have seen anything to be concerned about.

“They were investing money and getting appropriate returns for the kind of fund it was,” Mr. Rittereiser said. “Most of them had a relationship of some kind and confidence with Merkin and the people he was dealing with.”

So how do you protect yourself? The first step would seem to be picking an honest adviser. The good news is that only about 7 percent of advisers have disciplinary records, said Nicholas W. Stuller, president and chief executive of AdviceIQ, a company that evaluates advisers. The bad news is that those violations appear only after someone has filed a complaint.

Mr. Stuller’s company, which has now approved some 2,400 advisers, rejects anyone with any type of infraction — from a securities fine to a misdemeanor for getting into a fight. He said this policy might keep some good advisers off the site, but his goal is to search the records of federal and state regulators to find advisers he knows are clean.

“There are advisers who have significant negative disciplinary history with one regulator but appear to be pristine with another regulator,” Mr. Stuller said. “There was a guy in Minnesota who was stealing insurance premiums. In his enforcement record, it says, ‘We’re going to alert Finra,’ but his Finra record is clean,” he said, referring to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “That’s where the regulators don’t talk to each other.”

AdviceIQ’s main competitor, BrightScope, takes a different approach. It notes disciplinary actions taken against advisers but leaves it up to the consumer to go to regulators to determine what the violations were.

“We want the consumer to go to the source data, because there is a lot of liability in publishing that,” said Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive of BrightScope. “Many of these folks are good advisers, and they’ll take care of you. But what if they had one crazy client who put all his money in Internet stocks in 2000 and then sued?”

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