More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Nearly 20 minutes into the latest clash between Spain’s most popular football teams, Barcelona‘s 98,000-seat Camp Nou stadium erupted into a deafening roar. Tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”

More than ever, FC Barcelona, known affectionately as Barca, is living up to its motto of being “more than a club” for this wealthy northeastern region where Spain’s economic crisis is fueling separatist sentiment.

Lifelong Barca club member Enric Pujol was at Camp Nou for this month’s game against Real Madrid, the team of Spain’s capital. Wearing his burgundy-and-blue Barca jersey, Pujol also held one of the hundreds of pro-independence “estelada” flags, featuring a white star in a blue triangle, which bristled throughout the stands.

“It was a beautiful emotion to see Camp Nou like that,” said Pujol. “Barca is more than a club because of the values it transmits. It is linked to Catalan culture. In this sense it is a club and a social institution that acts like our flag.”

Barca has been seen as a bastion of Catalan identity dating back to the three decades of dictatorship when Catalans could not openly speak, teach or publish in their native Catalan language. Barcelona writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban famously called the football team “Catalonia‘s unarmed symbolic army.”

Barca-Real Madrid matches have a nickname: “el clasico” — the classic — and they are one of the world’s most-watched sporting events, seen by 400 million people in 30 countries. But local passions run high. In Spain, where football has deep political and cultural connotations, many see the clashes of Spain’s most successful teams as a proxy battle between wealthy Catalonia and the central government in Madrid. If Barca is a symbol of Catalan nationalism, Real Madrid is an emblem of a unified Spain.

“Look, the truth is that ever since the Civil War there has always been tension in Spain,” said Pujol. “Having traveled in Spain, they always look at us as Catalans.”

Ahead of kickoff before any “clasico,” Camp Nou traditionally greets Real Madrid players with a huge mosaic of Barcelona’s burgundy-and-blue made up of colored cards. This year, for the first time, they held up cards forming the red-and-yellow striped Catalan “senyera” flag — an explicit nationalist message. (Barca says it can neither confirm nor deny reports that its away uniform next season will be modeled on the senyera.)

Then came the crowd’s collective shout for independence at 1714 hours — in reference to the year 1714 when Barcelona fell to the troops of Philip V in the War of Spanish Succession. It was organized by a pro-independence group through social media.

Barca fan David Fort sees his team as a vehicle to show the world that Catalonia has its own language and culture, which is distinct from what he called the “bulls and flamenco” associated with Spain.

“We have this love for Barca because we have the chance to be represented around the world,” said Fort, a 38-year-old architect from the southern Catalan town of Tarragona. “When we travel and they ask me if I am Spanish, I say not exactly, but when I mention Barca they say ‘Ah! The Catalan team’, and of course since they are champions you feel proud.”

Barca, like every institution in Spain, was marked by the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s and resulting right-wing dictatorship that ended after Franco’s death in 1975.

Franco’s soldiers killed Barca’s club president in 1936, and the club was forced to change its name from a Catalan to a Spanish version. And while Real Madrid was identified with the regime, Barca, for many, came to represent Catalan anti-fascist resistance.

“Under Franco, people could not shout ‘Long Live Catalonia!,’ but they could shout ‘Long Live Barca!’ (¡Visca Barca!)” in Catalan, said Ernest Folch, a newspaper columnist who writes about Barca for El Periodico. The chant became a kind of code for expressing Catalan pride.

“Barca is an anomaly. There is no other club with its particular history,” said Folch. “It survived the Franco dictatorship, and has always been a focal point for protest and ferment where sport has mixed with politics.”

And politics is a very hot topic these days in Catalonia.

Voters will go to the polls on Nov. 25 in regional elections sure to be judged as a litmus test of the strength of the pro-independence movement that brought 1.5 million people to the streets of Barcelona on Sept. 11 in the largest rally since the 1970s.

Catalonia is heavily in debt and has in fact asked Spain for a euros 5.9 billion ($ 75 billion) bailout. Even so, regional lawmakers voted on Sept. 27 to hold a referendum on self-determination at a date still to be determined. And although it is still unclear that a “Yes” vote would win, Spain’s central government has called such a referendum unconstitutional and will surely try to stop it from taking place.

That all puts Catalonia, and therefore Barca, in the midst of Spain’s struggles to deal with consequences of back-to-back recessions, 25 percent unemployment, and high public debt that has drawn it into the euro crisis along with already bailed-out Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Barca’s appeal, of course, transcends its regional identity. The team is beloved throughout the world, and a poll last year found that it had displaced Real Madrid as Spain’s most popular team. Barca has 546 fan clubs in Catalonia, and 841 in the rest of Spain. Some of these fans— even in Catalonia — disagree with what they perceive as the political turn the club has taken in recent years.

“It’s surreal to talk to talk about these ideas related to independence,” said fan Jamie Easton, 27, a Spaniard born in Barcelona to a British father and a mother of Catalan descent. “Barca is a Catalan and Spanish club because Barcelona is part of Spain, and fans can feel however they want.”

The upswing in separatist sentiment in Catalonia has forced both the club and its players— many of whom form the backbone of Spain’s world champion national side — to try a difficult balancing act between supporting their most fervent pro-independence fans without alienating the millions of others who are not.

“We are Barca. We represent Catalonia and we will support whatever Catalans want,” said Barca and Spain midfielder Xavi Hernandez. But he added: “We try to isolate ourselves from everything outside the game. We know the political issue is there, and the people have the right to express themselves however they wish, but we are here to play football and make sure people have fun.”

The glaring exception to the moderate tone is former coach Pep Guardiola, a hugely popular figure in Catalonia, who appeared in a video during the Sept. 11 march saying: “Here you have my vote for independence.”

Two weeks after the politically charged “clasico,” Barca president Sandro Rosell made his first official visit to southern Spain to cool tensions at a meeting of Barca fan clubs.

“I don’t know what information you are receiving here, but I preferred to come here and say on behalf of the club that Barca will never get mixed up in political issues,” Rosell told the 1,000 Spanish fans, promising that Barca would never display a mosaic of the separatist “estelada” flag at Camp Nou.

“This doesn’t mean that this isn’t a Catalan club and that of course we will defend our roots and origins, but one thing shouldn’t be mixed with the other. One thing is politics and the other is identity. Barca unites us all.”

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AP Writer Jorge Sainz contributed to this report from Madrid.

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Benghazi: The Real Libya Story Is No Story

It was, from the start, about as hard an intelligence problem as you can find. The date was Sept. 11, and the CIA was stretched thin, monitoring anti-American protests in no fewer than 54 countries that day, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Post-Qaddafi Libya itself was still chaotic, caught up in the fog of war, and indeed Ambassador Chris Stevens, at great personal risk, had journeyed to his old Arab Spring-era stomping ground in Benghazi to assess the situation himself. Still, Clapper recently told an annual conference of intelligence professionals that there was no warning to Stevens or anyone else that he was about to be targeted by an organized extremist attack.

So in the ensuing days, the fog lifted only very gradually. The intelligence community did not see a clear way to explain the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans. And as the probe advanced they began shifting their assessment dramatically. Four days after the attacks, on Sept. 15, intel briefers sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice off to tape the Sunday talk shows with talking points that suggested Stevens’s death was the result of “spontaneous” protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. And that’s what Rice said on CBS’s Face the Nation “based on the best information we have to date,” as she put it. Rice added, however, that “soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that—in that effort with heavy weapons.”

“It was clear from the outset that a group of people gathered that evening. A key question early on was whether extremists took over a crowd or if the guys who showed up were all militants,” said an intelligence official involved in the Benghazi assessment. “It took time—until that next week—to sort through varied and sometimes conflicting accounts to understand the group’s overall composition.”

By the following week, however, the DNI came to believe that there had been no protest at all. “That was genuine fog of war issue,” the intelligence official said. “Press reports at the time indicated there had been. It took about a week or so to iron that out.” On Sept. 28, Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office, said in a statement that as U.S. intelligence learned more about the attack, “we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”

To supporters of Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the chattering classes and in the House of Representatives, where an investigative committee has been hard at work probing the attacks and, apparently, leaking information, there is a lot more going on here. They see a deliberate effort by the Obama administration to play down evidence that new al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups were at work killing Americans. After all, one of the president’s big talking points in a tough election race is that he’s killed Osama bin Laden and decimated al-Qaida.

It sounds very plausible. There’s only one problem with that view: No evidence has surfaced so far to support the idea that the Obama administration deceived the public deliberately. On Wednesday a new spate of stories emerged, quoting unclassified e-mails sent to the White House and State Department only hours after the attacks that indicate the extremist Libyan militia Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility. “Smoking gun!” Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger, tweeted. “The White House cover story—namely that CIA got it all wrong and the White House (in urging us to believe the murder of four Americans was the result of a video riot gone bad) was telling us what it knew, when it knew—has been severely undercut,” she added on her blog. “Three e-mails sent to the White House within two hours of the attack identify it as a terrorist operation and inform the White House that local jihadists with al-Qaida connections claimed responsibility.”

But that story doesn’t hold up well either. The e-mails in question contained nothing more than “raw” intelligence, uncorroborated and unverified, that often flows in after an event. Intelligence officials typically don’t deliver their assessments until they have “finished” reports based on multiple sources, and corroborated evidence, and Obama officials such as Rice certainly would not have been out in front of the TV cameras citing raw intelligence. And as the government’s most senior officials say, the Benghazi case has taken them a long time to finish. “People forget that a Palestinian group was the first to claim credit for 9/11,” the intelligence official said. “There was no message from the field in those first hectic days that would have eliminated questions or proven who was behind the attack.”

Indeed, as White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters, all that Wednesday’s stories reported was “an open-source, unclassified e-mail about a posting on a Facebook site. I would also note I think that within a few hours, that organization itself [Ansar al-Sharia] claimed that it had not been responsible.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in separate remarks on Wednesday, also said that “posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be.” 

Even now, intelligence officials say, the full story is not known. It is not even clear that the video-inspired protests in Cairo were unrelated to the attack in Benghazi, because some of the extremists who attacked Stevens and his colleagues may have been provoked by watching the demonstrations on TV. Officials say they are still compiling a list of suspects.

“The bulk of available information still supports the early assessment that extremists—many with ties to Ansar al-Sharia, AQIM [Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb], or other groups—didn’t preplan the attack days or weeks in advance, but launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo,” the intelligence official said.

Interestingly, even Romney seems to have grown a bit tired of the Benghazi story, as he indicated on Monday night when moderator Bob Schieffer made Libya question No. 1 in his final debate with President Obama and the GOP nominee basically ignored it. Nonetheless, the story of what senior administration officials knew and when they knew it doesn’t seem to go away. Perhaps it will after Nov. 6.

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UCB’s next generation drugs take over after blockbuster expiry

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgian pharmaceuticals group UCB said on Monday that sales of its three new main products had for the first time overtaken those of its expiring blockbuster epilepsy treatment Keppra and retained its full-year guidance.

UCB, which makes drugs targeted at diseases of the immune and central nervous systems, said on Monday sales of Cimzia, Neupro and Vimpat rose 50 percent to 665 million euros over the first nine months and were now treating about 382,000 patients.

UCB said it was on course to reach its goal of 1.5 million patients treated with the three drugs, with combined peak sales of at least 3.1 billion euros, in the second half of the decade.

Sales of Cimzia, treating bowel disorder Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis, rose 51 percent to 334 million euros. For Neupro, a patch used for Parkinson’s disease and restless leg syndrome, sales were up 33 percent to 93 million euros.

Sales of Vimpat, UCB’s next generation epilepsy drug, increased 54 percent to 237 million euros.

Keppra sales dropped 13 percent to 652 million euros as generic competitors took advantage of its patent expiry in Europe and North America.

In the first half, sales of Keppra were strong enough in Japan to offset generic competition in Europe and the United States.

The company said overall revenues increased 5 percent to 2.565 billion euros ($ 3.32 billion). However, based on stable exchange rates they were flat.

UCB is forecasting that 2012 revenues should be at least 3.2 billion euros ($ 4.14 billion), with recurring core profit between 630 and 660 million euros and core earnings per share about 1.70 euros.

Last year, revenues were 3.25 billion euros and recurring core profit 683 million euros.

($ 1 = 0.7733 euros)

(Reporting By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Philip Blenkinsop)

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Indian Companies Are America-Bound

The southern Indian city of Hyderabad is home to the 500-year-old Chilkur Balaji Temple, which features a statue of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu deity. The monument has become a magnet for workers such as Ravi Shanker, who seek divine help in securing a work permit from Washington, D.C. Shanker, who lives in Bangalore, works for Kodiak Networks, a telecom services company in Plano, Tex., and the company needs him stateside to help its client AT&T (T) develop software. “A visa is not under my control, my employer’s control, or my country’s control,” says Shanker. “The only way to change my luck is through God.”

With the Obama administration applying tougher standards for H-1B and L-1 work visas in an effort to protect jobs at home, Indian companies aren’t relying on prayer to staff their U.S. operations. Instead they’re hiring tech workers who are American citizens or hold green cards. They’re facing pressure by their American clients, which spent $ 27.7 billion on outsourcing services last year, to move some operations from India to the U.S. for faster customer support.

With jobs and outsourcing such hot political issues in the U.S., it pays for Indian companies to hire some Americans, even though they’re more expensive. Companies that want to win contracts with state and local governments need at least some work to go to local hires. “A lot of us want to be seen as generating employment in the U.S.,” says Lakshmanan Chidambaram, senior vice president (Americas) at IT services company Mahindra Satyam (SCS).

In September, Bangalore-based Infosys (INFY) acquired Marsh Consumer BPO, an outsourcing company with 87 workers based in Des Moines. In June rival Mahindra Satyam opened a new outsourcing center in Fargo, N.D. Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH), a company headquartered in Teaneck, N.J., that has most of its 145,000 workers in India, acquired centers in June in Des Moines and Minot, N.D., employing over 1,000 people. Even with U.S. unemployment at 7.8 percent, Indian executives say they have difficulty finding skilled tech workers. Two years ago, Cognizant began recruiting software developers at 17 American universities to reduce its reliance on employees from India on short-term visas. Cognizant added 4,000 workers in the U.S. between mid-2011 and mid-2012 and would like to do more hiring, says President Gordon Coburn. “There’s not enough tech talent in the U.S. to meet the need,” he says.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) used the social network site CareerBuilder to find Darlene Black, 54, from Ann Arbor, Mich., who had worked for Parke-Davis and Pfizer (PFE) for 18 years. She applied on a Sunday and by Friday had a full-time offer to help a TCS client manage contractors and other construction-related work. “They are getting people [into] the workplace here in the U.S.,” says Black.

Indian companies have also expanded their talent hunt beyond well-known tech hubs. Bangalore-based MindTree (MTCL), an Indian outsourcer with 11,000 employees, is opening its first U.S. software development center in Gainesville, Fla. MindTree has 100 engineers in training, with plans to increase its U.S. headcount to 400. It chose the location to be close to the University of Florida and has promised the state government it will invest $ 2.5 million in the region. In return, it will get tax abatements from the state and help to cover the cost of training new employees. “It takes state aid to make the business model work,” says Scott Staples, president of MindTree Americas.

Back at Chilkur Balaji Temple in Hyderabad, Google (GOOG) employee Narendra Sripal, who wants a visa to travel to the home office in Silicon Valley someday soon, has asked Lord Vishnu for help. The realist in him thinks it will take some time before Washington eases up on work permits. “I’m not even sure if God could convince the U.S. to change its visa policy,” says Sripal.

The bottom line: Indian firms are hiring U.S. staff to serve clients, which spent $ 27.7 billion on outsourcing in 2011.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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‘Argo’ finally tops box office with $12.4M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It took three weeks, but “Argo” finally found its way to the top of the box office.

The Warner Bros. thriller from director and star Ben Affleck, inspired by the real-life rescue of six U.S. embassy workers during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, made nearly $ 12.4 million this weekend, according to Sunday studio estimates. “Argo” had been in second place the past two weeks and has now made about $ 60.8 million total.

Debuting at No. 3 was the sprawling, star-studded “Cloud Atlas,” which made a disappointing $ 9.4 million. The nearly three-hour drama, also from Warner Bros., was co-directed by siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer and features an ensemble cast including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant playing multiple roles over six story lines.

Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Bros., said the studio thought there might be a good chance of “Argo” coming out on top this weekend.

“We’re thrilled. An accomplishment like that is well deserved, they don’t happen very often. You would probably have to do a lot of searching to find a movie that opened in wide release to have two No. 2 weekends in a row and hit No. 1 in the third week,” Fellman said. “It’s a tribute to the film. Word-of-mouth has taken over the campaign. We have a long way to go, we have a lot of year-end accolades which will approach, and we’ll see what happens in terms of the Academy.”

On the flip side, Fellman acknowledged that “Cloud Atlas” underperformed compared to hopes that it would end up in the $ 11-12 million range domestically. The movie had an estimated budget of $ 100 million. But he pointed out that it had a higher per-screen average than any other film opening in the top 10 with $ 4,681.

“We did very well on the East and West coasts in a number of major cities,” he said. “We’re challenged in the Midwest and the South.”

It was a soft weekend all around, though, with several newcomers opening poorly, Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian pointed out. The horror sequel “Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D” from Open Road Films debuted at No. 5 with $ 8 million and the Paramount Halloween comedy “Fun Size” arrived in 10th place with just over $ 4 million. “Chasing Mavericks,” an inspirational surfing drama from Fox 2000, didn’t even open in the top 12 — it came in at No. 13 with $ 2.2 million.

The World Series might have been a factor in keeping folks away from the theaters; also, potential moviegoers along the East Coast in the path of Hurricane Sandy might have stayed home this weekend.

“The whole marketplace felt more like September than October. Back in September, we had four down weekends in a row. There was no momentum in the marketplace,” Dergarabedian said. “When a holdover is No. 1, it reflects a lack of strength in the marketplace. Every week should have a new movie topping the chart.”

As for the philosophical, centuries-spanning “Cloud Atlas,” he said: “To have a) a big budget, b) Tom Hanks and c) it’s a big, epic film, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s going to be a big box office hit. I admire that they went for it.”

But there’s hope on the horizon with the animated comedy “Wreck-It Ralph” coming next weekend, the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” opening Nov. 9 and the final installment in the “Twilight” saga due out Nov. 16. “Skyfall” opened this weekend overseas with a whopping $ 77.7 million in 25 countries.

“This is just one of those box office weekends we’d rather forget,” Dergarabedian said. “Unless you’re ‘Argo.’”

Estimated ticket sales are for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Argo,” $ 12.4 million. ($ 5 million international.)

2. “Hotel Transylvania,” $ 9.5 million. ($ 18.1 million international.)

3. “Cloud Atlas,” $ 9.4 million.

4. “Paranormal Activity 4,” $ 8.7 million. ($ 14.1 million international.)

5. (tie) “Silent Hill: Revelation 3-D,” $ 8 million.

6. “Taken 2,” $ 8 million. ($ 10.1 million.)

7. “Here Comes the Boom,” $ 5.5 million.

8. “Sinister,” $ 5.07 million.

9. Alex Cross,” $ 5.05 million.

10. “Fun Size,” $ 4.1 million.

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Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

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1. “Skyfall,” $ 77.7 million.

2. “Hotel Transylvania,” $ 18.1 million.

3. “Paranormal Activity 4,” $ 14.1 million.

4. “The Bourne Legacy,” $ 11.5 million.

5. “Taken 2,” $ 10.1 million.

6. “The Impossible,” $ 8.7 million.

7. “Madagascar 3,” $ 8.4 million.

8. “Asterix et Obelix: Au Service de Sa Majeste,” $ 5.3 million.

9. (tie) “Argo,” $ 5 million.

10. “Ted,” $ 5 million.

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Lithuania opens 2nd round of national election

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Voting stations have opened in the second round of Lithuania’s parliamentary elections, with the results likely to determine whether the small East European nation continues tough austerity measures in an effort to join the euro zone.

Nearly half of Parliament’s 141 seats are at stake in single-mandate district voting, which takes place two weeks after the party-list round that failed to produce a clear favorite.

Two center-left opposition parties took the most seats and have pledged to form a new coalition government, but the ruling conservative party, which came in third, still has a chance to emerge victorious as it has candidates in over half the 67 districts where voting will be held Sunday.

Opposition parties have vowed to increase social spending and postpone tentative plans to adopt the euro in 2014.

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Play ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ on Your Phone Very Soon [VIDEO]

Nostalgic for the days of getting home from school or work, firing up the PlayStation 2 and popping Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in the tray? Then get your smartphone ready: Rockstar Games on Friday officially announced the game will be ported to Android and iOS later this fall.

[More from Mashable: Hunky Breast Cancer Screening App Gets a Hot Update [VIDEO]]

Rockstar made the mobile versions, which will have some all-new bonus features and top-notch graphics, to celebrate the game’s 10-year release. That’s right: Vice City, the sixth Grand Theft Auto title, came out way back in 2002.

“Grand Theft Auto: Vice City gave players the freedom of a massive open-world in one of the most iconic and vibrant settings ever realized in a game,” said Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games, in a statement. “It was a defining moment in the series and we’re delighted to be celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a stunning, updated version for phones and tablets.”

[More from Mashable: App Turns Smartphone Into a Sex Toy for Couples]

As part of the anniversary celebration, Grand Theft Auto fans will find new promotional gear for sale at the Rockstar Games Warehouse and through online sweepstakes.

There’s no solid release date for the mobile game yet: Rockstar’s only saying “later this fall.” The company’s silent on any Windows 8 version, too.

Can’t wait for your fix of old-school vehicular carnage? Check out Sega’s mobile port of Dreamcast favorite Crazy Taxi while you’re waiting for Vice City to arrive.

Below, one of the original trailers for the PlayStation 2 version of Vice City. Check it out, then share your favorite Grand Theft Auto memories in the comments!

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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FDA finds contaminants in drug linked to meningitis

(Reuters) – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Friday it found “greenish black foreign matter” and other contaminants in an injectable steroid produced by the New England Compounding Center, the pharmacy at the heart of a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak.

It also found that vials from the same bin of the steroid contained what appeared to be a “white filamentous material,” according to the report released by the FDA following inspections of the facility in October.

Massachusetts health regulators said earlier this week that they had turned up evidence of problematic procedures, record-keeping and work conditions inside the pharmacy facility.

The pharmacy is being investigated for its role in the meningitis outbreak, which has killed 25 people and infected hundreds who received injections of its preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, a steroid used for back pain and other conditions.

The FDA report also said that NECC’s environmental monitoring program found bacteria and mold in two “clean rooms” between January 2012 and September 2012. The rooms are used in the production of sterile drug products.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke and Caroline Humer; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Steve Orlofsky)

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Sacked S Africa miners reinstated

27 October 2012 Last updated at 09:31 ET

The world’s biggest platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), has agreed to reinstate the 12,000 South African miners sacked for taking part in an unofficial strike.

It had agreed to take back the miners if they returned to work by Tuesday, the National Union of Mineworkers said.

South Africa’s mining sector has been hit by a series of wildcat strikes, which have cost millions of dollars.

Dozens of people have been killed in strike-related violence.

The miners were sacked three weeks ago.

“They agreed to reinstate all the dismissed workers on the provision that they return to work by Tuesday,” NUM spokesman Lesiba Seshoka told the Reuters news agency.

He said he expected workers would return to their posts and “that will mean the end of the strike”.

Amplats said in a statement: “Employees who do not return to work on Tuesday… will remain dismissed and/or be subjected to the illegal strike disciplinary action and will not be eligible for any of the benefits mentioned above.”

The company said it was offering the miners a one-off hardship payment of $ 230 (£140) to facilitate their return.

Calm may now be returning, with many mining companies agreeing to higher wage demands, but in the longer term, more miners are likely to be laid off, says the BBC’s Andrew Harding in Johannesburg.

And while the unrest has shaken the authorities here, there is no sign that it has prompted the sort of radical steps many are calling for, our correspondent adds.

High cost

Strikes at South Africa’s platinum, gold and coal mines are estimated to have cost the country more than $ 1bn.

More than 40 people died in violent clashes between police and striking workers at a platinum mine in August.

South Africa is one of the world’s biggest producers of precious metals.

Analysts say workers across the industry are disaffected with the NUM and other mainstream unions, regarding them as too close to the employers.

The workers had been demanding 6,000 rand ($ 1,800; £1,100) in monthly pay, more than three times their current average salary.

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Kim Kardashian makes a splash at NYC bash

NEW YORK (AP) — Kim Kardashian isn’t worried about the behemoth storm expected to pummel the eastern U.S. with rain and wind this week.

Dressed as a blond mermaid for her Halloween party Saturday night in New York, the star joked that her boyfriend, Kanye West — wearing a nautical-looking outfit — could “sail” her to safety if need be.

West didn’t talk to press covering the event but smiled and took photos of Kardashian on his phone.

It’s the second year Kardashian has hosted the Midori Green Halloween party. She has an endorsement deal with the liquor company.

The reality star said it took two months to plan her costume, inspired by the 1984 film “Splash,” and two hours to get ready.

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Online:

http://www.kimkardashian.com/

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Follow Nicole Evatt on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NicoleEvatt

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