NEW YORK (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's on Friday said they have settled two long-running lawsuits seeking to hold them responsible for misleading investors about the safety of risky debt vehicles that they had rated.
The lawsuits had accused Moody's, a unit of Moody's Corp , and S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos, of negligent misrepresentation over their activities regarding the Cheyne and Rhinebridge structured investment vehicles (SIVs).
Morgan Stanley, which marketed both SIVs and helped structure the Rhinebridge SIV, also settled.
Settlement terms were not disclosed in the cases, which had been brought in 2008 and had sought more than $700 million (452 million pounds) of damages. Both lawsuits were dismissed with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought again.
Moody's spokesman Michael Adler, McGraw-Hill spokesman Jason Feuchtwanger and Morgan Stanley spokesman Mark Lake confirmed their companies' respective settlements.
"This settlement allows us to put the significant legal defence and related costs, as well as the distraction, of these very protracted litigations behind us," Adler said.
Feuchtwanger said McGraw-Hill's settlement involved no admission of wrongdoing.
Lawyers for the plaintiff investors did not immediately respond to several requests for comment.
A trial in the Cheyne case had been scheduled for May 6 before U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan, who oversaw both lawsuits.
Credit rating agencies have been accused by investors, regulators and politicians of inflating the ratings of risky mortgage-backed and structured securities in a bid to win new business.
Critics said these activities also fuelled demand from investors who believed the ratings were objective, but prices collapsed once the risks materialized, helping to trigger the 2008 global financial crisis.
S&P still faces the U.S. Department of Justice's $5 billion civil fraud lawsuit filed in February over its ratings, the government's first major post-crisis action against a credit rating agency. The credit rating agency is trying to dismiss that case.
FIRST AMENDMENT
In the Cheyne and Rhinebridge cases, investors accused rating agencies of collaborating with banks to ensure that SIVs received ratings as high as "triple-A," though much of the underlying collateral was low-quality or subprime mortgage debt.
The Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, King County in Washington state, and other investors sought $638 million of damages related to losses they claimed to have suffered when the Cheyne SIV went bankrupt in August 2007. The similarly-named firm that managed the SIV did not go bankrupt.
King County and the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp, meanwhile, had been seeking $70 million of damages over Rhinebridge, which had been structured by Germany's IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG and was wound down in August 2008.
IKB settled the Rhinebridge case last year, and credit rating agency Fitch Ratings, a unit of France's Fimalac SA , settled last month.
Among the defences raised by the rating agencies were that their ratings were opinions that deserved free speech protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Scheindlin limited that defence in a 2009 ruling, saying that ratings on notes sold to select investors were not "matters of public concern" deserving broad free speech protection.
The government has not hit Moody's and Fitch with lawsuits similar to the case it is pursuing against S&P.
The cases are Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank et al v. Morgan Stanley & Co et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 08-07508; and King County, Washington et al v. IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG et al in the same court, No. 09-08387.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Gary Hill and Lisa Shumaker)
Losers of four straight with a searching offense and erratic pitching, the Nationals? 8-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday night was perhaps the perfect medicine for a team in an unexpected position as they near the end of the season?s first month. Their bats woke up, they got the breaks their opponents had been getting, and their starting pitcher was buzzing right from the first pitch. Finally, things were going the Nationals way.
Whether it was offense, pitching, or defense in the field: everything seemed to work out for the home team.
?That was a big day,? manager Davey Johnson said.??A lot of guys were saying to me, ?It?s been a long time since we were shaking hands.? I said no doubt about that.?
?It was just a good all-around game. That?s more like who we are: Good pitching, timely hitting.?
The Nationals broke out of their worst offensive slump of the season ? four runs total in their previous four games ? early with two scores in the second inning. Danny Espinosa, whose 26th birthday it happened to be, started things off with an RBI double to score Ian Desmond. He hit a long fly ball to right-center field that fell just beyond the reach of a sprinting Shin-Soo Choo.?
Espinosa hit a ball to nearly the exact same spot in the team?s loss on Wednesday that was reeled in, but this one dropped and bounced off the wall.
?I said it was cause it was my birthday that it fell today,? Espinosa said. ?It was nice to see it fall in. I know Choo can get after it out there. He can run balls down pretty well. So when I saw it fall in it was a big sigh of relief.?
Espinosa was then batted in by Denard Span with two outs who hit a slow chopper to shortstop Zack Cozart. Span beat the throw to first by a half-a-step, another close break for the Nats.
In the third inning the Nats would make their own luck. Bryce Harper led off with a towering home run to the lawn in dead center field, his eighth of the season. Jayson Werth then got on with a single and was moved to third because of a throwing error by Joey Votto that let Adam LaRoche reach second. A fielder?s choice on a groundout by Ian Desmond sent home Werth to bring Espinosa back to the plate. The Nats? second baseman then blasted a 2-2 sinker from Bronson Arroyo into the team?s bullpen in right field to put Washington up 6-0.
Three RBI on two extra base hits later and Espinosa was having a pretty good birthday. He was finally having fun and so were his teammates.
?It takes something like this to get a team going sometimes,? he said. ?Hitting's contagious, everybody knows that. You get a couple guys hot and everybody starts getting on base and it's kind of easier. You've got more holes to hit with and things start going the team's way and things start rolling.?
The six-run lead was plenty enough for starter Gio Gonzalez who, if it weren?t for the team?s recent offensive woes, would have been the story of the game. He put in his best start of the season allowing only one hit and two walks with seven strikeouts, redeeming himself after giving up 12 earned runs in his previous nine innings across two starts.
?I felt like I was more on top of the ball, again my team gave me confidence to go out there and pound the strike zone,? he said.?
?I was trying to make the adjustment to stop being so perfect, to just going out there and throw strikes.?
Gonzalez threw 112 pitches in eight innings with 78 of them strikes. He was particularly effective early in counts with 20 first strikes on the 27 hitters he faced.?
Gonzalez? one miscue was against Votto in the fourth inning. Having retired the Reds? first 11 batters, Gonzalez threw a 2-1 fastball that the former MVP took opposite field for a solo home run. It cleared the fence by just a few inches, but served as the only Reds? hit of the evening.
It was one hit and may have prevented the shutout, but overall Gonzalez was on his game and back to the form that helped him lead the majors in wins in 2012.
?Today was just get the ball and go,? catcher Kurt Suzuki said. ?He was rocking fire. That?s what Gio needs to do. That?s what Gio does. And when he does that, he?s successful most times out of not because his stuff is that good.?
Gonzalez? 112 pitches were a season-high and just at Johnson?s threshold for the lefty. The manager said he would have let him go one more inning and finish the game if it weren?t for his previous two bad starts.?
The Nats got two more runs across in the bottom of the eighth on a triple by Span. He scored Suzuki who had walked and Roger Bernadina who dropped his first hit of the season as Gonzalez? pinch-hitter.
Eight runs total and a game that was essentially over in the third inning gave the Nats a feeling they hadn?t felt in days and hope that maybe their recent struggles, particularly at the plate, have been solved. There were high fives and smiles, and music in the locker room, the type of dugout and clubhouse the Nats have become used to over the past year.?
?It's a different atmosphere when you win,? Espinosa said. ?It's a totally different atmosphere.?
?It was huge,? Suzuki said. ?No mystery last couple series, last couple games, especially the last six home games before this was tough. I think everybody was getting frustrated a little bit. You try to stay positive. We needed a game like this, to come out and click on all cylinders. Everybody was having fun, laughing in the dugout again. It was like back to normal.?
Leading leukemia experts: High leukemia treatment costs may be harming patientsPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Slesinski aslesinski@hematology.org 202-552-4927 American Society of Hematology
Increasing, unsustainable prices for leukemia drugs represent larger issue across all cancers
(WASHINGTON, April 25, 2013) The increasing cost of treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the United States has reached unsustainably high levels and may be leaving many patients under- or untreated because they cannot afford care, according to a Blood Forum article supported by nearly 120 CML experts from more than 15 countries on five continents and published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Blood Forum articles are a new feature in the journal that present well documented opinions on controversial topics and provide a sounding board for current subjects of importance to the science and practice of hematology.
CML was selected as the focus of the piece because it is now considered a highly curable disease, thanks to the emergence of powerful, targeted CML therapies known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that allow patients to manage their disease with few symptoms by taking a well-tolerated pill. Since the introduction of TKI therapy more than a decade ago, the annual mortality of patients with this disease has declined from 10 to 20 percent in the early 2000s to just 2 percent today and the estimated 10-year survival of CML patients has increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent. Patients with CML, who were once told at diagnosis that they had a grim prognosis, are now enjoying close to normal life spans as long as they receive and adhere to prescribed treatments. The management of CML has become similar to that of chronic disorders such as diabetes and hypertension, yet a key difference remains in the extremely high cost of CML drugs.
"Patients with CML have a much better outlook today than ever before, thanks to advances that have greatly improved survival rates. But these patients now face dire financial struggles as they try to maintain their treatment regimen with the drastically inflating cost of care. And this issue likely extends to patients with other types of cancer who require ongoing treatment to maintain therapeutic benefit," said corresponding author Hagop Kantarjian, MD, chairman of the leukemia department at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
In the Blood Forum article, Dr. Kantarjian and colleagues note that newly approved CML treatments in the U.S. are priced substantially higher than older options, and the trend is consistent among other cancer types. For example, of the 12 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for various cancer indications in 2012, 11 were priced above $100,000 per yeari. Monthly cancer drug prices today (more than $10,000 per month on average) have almost doubled from just a decade ago, when they averaged $5,000 per month. The overall cost burden on families is significant, as out-of-pocket cancer care-related costs comprise approximately 25-30% of an average annual household budget. Cancer care-related costs contribute heavily to the unprecedented cost of health care in the U.S., now estimated at 18 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, compared with just 6-9% in much of Europe.ii
"A major question we need to answer is how to determine the 'right' price for these drugs. In many cases, it makes sense to let the market govern the price; however, when a product is directly related to a patient's survival over a period of years, it is critical to set a price that allows companies to profit and ensures that patients can afford their treatment," said Dr. Kantarjian. "Since CML treatments must be taken on an ongoing basis, we are concerned that the surging prices are potentially harming patients."
Research suggests that up to 10 percent of patients in the U.S. fail to take prescribed drugs, largely because of cost concerns.iii And while U.S. CML survival rates have improved in the last decade, the estimated survival remains at roughly 60 percent, suggesting that a portion of the population is not receiving adequate treatment, which may be related in part to the high cost of these therapies. By comparison, in Sweden, where costs are managed and compliance rates are high, CML survival rates are at least 80 percent.iv
"We believe that lowering the prices of CML drugs might improve accessibility to treatment and increase treatment adherence, effectively expanding the population of patients who live longer by continuing their TKI therapy," said Dr. Kantarjian.
The authors advise that advancing a long-term solution for the high price of these drugs will require the participation of and collaboration among many invested parties, including treating physicians, patients, advocacy groups, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as government entities, insurance companies, and pharmacies. Collaborations will require agreement from a cooperative group on how best to manage the research process to control treatment costs, how the community can balance those investments, and how newly approved products are priced in the market; similar to established processes in other countries around the world.
"Identifying better ways to manage the cost of cancer care will require an evolution in thinking about current pricing-related policies and regulations, including those that limit price negotiation for Medicare coverage of treatments, as well as patent-related laws that limit the introduction of more affordable generic drugs," said Dr. Kantarjian.
###
Blood, the most cited peer-reviewed publication in the field of hematology, is available weekly in print and online. Blood is the official journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), the world's largest professional society concerned with the causes and treatment of blood disorders.
ASH's mission is to further the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders affecting blood, bone marrow, and the immunologic, hemostatic, and vascular systems by promoting research, clinical care, education, training, and advocacy in hematology.
blood is a registered trademark of the American Society of Hematology.
i "New Drug Approvals Hit 16-Year High In 2012." Chemical and Engineering News. 91 (5): 15-17. 2013. Accessible at : http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i5/New-Drug-Approvals-Hit-16.html
iiNational Health Expenditure Projections 2011-2020; Accessed from:
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/Proj2011PDF.pdf (Accessed: 10/2012).
iii "The costly war on cancer-New cancer drugs are technically impressive. But must they cost so much?" The Economist: May 26 2011. Accessible at: http://www.economist.com/node/18743951
ivBjorkholm M, Ohm L, Eloranta S, et al. Success story of targeted therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia: a population-based study of patients diagnosed in Sweden from 1973-2008. J Clin Oncol: 29: 2514-2520. 2011. Accessible at: http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2011/05/16/JCO.2011.34.7146.full.pdf
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Leading leukemia experts: High leukemia treatment costs may be harming patientsPublic release date: 25-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andrea Slesinski aslesinski@hematology.org 202-552-4927 American Society of Hematology
Increasing, unsustainable prices for leukemia drugs represent larger issue across all cancers
(WASHINGTON, April 25, 2013) The increasing cost of treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the United States has reached unsustainably high levels and may be leaving many patients under- or untreated because they cannot afford care, according to a Blood Forum article supported by nearly 120 CML experts from more than 15 countries on five continents and published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Blood Forum articles are a new feature in the journal that present well documented opinions on controversial topics and provide a sounding board for current subjects of importance to the science and practice of hematology.
CML was selected as the focus of the piece because it is now considered a highly curable disease, thanks to the emergence of powerful, targeted CML therapies known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that allow patients to manage their disease with few symptoms by taking a well-tolerated pill. Since the introduction of TKI therapy more than a decade ago, the annual mortality of patients with this disease has declined from 10 to 20 percent in the early 2000s to just 2 percent today and the estimated 10-year survival of CML patients has increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent. Patients with CML, who were once told at diagnosis that they had a grim prognosis, are now enjoying close to normal life spans as long as they receive and adhere to prescribed treatments. The management of CML has become similar to that of chronic disorders such as diabetes and hypertension, yet a key difference remains in the extremely high cost of CML drugs.
"Patients with CML have a much better outlook today than ever before, thanks to advances that have greatly improved survival rates. But these patients now face dire financial struggles as they try to maintain their treatment regimen with the drastically inflating cost of care. And this issue likely extends to patients with other types of cancer who require ongoing treatment to maintain therapeutic benefit," said corresponding author Hagop Kantarjian, MD, chairman of the leukemia department at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
In the Blood Forum article, Dr. Kantarjian and colleagues note that newly approved CML treatments in the U.S. are priced substantially higher than older options, and the trend is consistent among other cancer types. For example, of the 12 drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for various cancer indications in 2012, 11 were priced above $100,000 per yeari. Monthly cancer drug prices today (more than $10,000 per month on average) have almost doubled from just a decade ago, when they averaged $5,000 per month. The overall cost burden on families is significant, as out-of-pocket cancer care-related costs comprise approximately 25-30% of an average annual household budget. Cancer care-related costs contribute heavily to the unprecedented cost of health care in the U.S., now estimated at 18 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, compared with just 6-9% in much of Europe.ii
"A major question we need to answer is how to determine the 'right' price for these drugs. In many cases, it makes sense to let the market govern the price; however, when a product is directly related to a patient's survival over a period of years, it is critical to set a price that allows companies to profit and ensures that patients can afford their treatment," said Dr. Kantarjian. "Since CML treatments must be taken on an ongoing basis, we are concerned that the surging prices are potentially harming patients."
Research suggests that up to 10 percent of patients in the U.S. fail to take prescribed drugs, largely because of cost concerns.iii And while U.S. CML survival rates have improved in the last decade, the estimated survival remains at roughly 60 percent, suggesting that a portion of the population is not receiving adequate treatment, which may be related in part to the high cost of these therapies. By comparison, in Sweden, where costs are managed and compliance rates are high, CML survival rates are at least 80 percent.iv
"We believe that lowering the prices of CML drugs might improve accessibility to treatment and increase treatment adherence, effectively expanding the population of patients who live longer by continuing their TKI therapy," said Dr. Kantarjian.
The authors advise that advancing a long-term solution for the high price of these drugs will require the participation of and collaboration among many invested parties, including treating physicians, patients, advocacy groups, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as government entities, insurance companies, and pharmacies. Collaborations will require agreement from a cooperative group on how best to manage the research process to control treatment costs, how the community can balance those investments, and how newly approved products are priced in the market; similar to established processes in other countries around the world.
"Identifying better ways to manage the cost of cancer care will require an evolution in thinking about current pricing-related policies and regulations, including those that limit price negotiation for Medicare coverage of treatments, as well as patent-related laws that limit the introduction of more affordable generic drugs," said Dr. Kantarjian.
###
Blood, the most cited peer-reviewed publication in the field of hematology, is available weekly in print and online. Blood is the official journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), the world's largest professional society concerned with the causes and treatment of blood disorders.
ASH's mission is to further the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disorders affecting blood, bone marrow, and the immunologic, hemostatic, and vascular systems by promoting research, clinical care, education, training, and advocacy in hematology.
blood is a registered trademark of the American Society of Hematology.
i "New Drug Approvals Hit 16-Year High In 2012." Chemical and Engineering News. 91 (5): 15-17. 2013. Accessible at : http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i5/New-Drug-Approvals-Hit-16.html
iiNational Health Expenditure Projections 2011-2020; Accessed from:
http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/Proj2011PDF.pdf (Accessed: 10/2012).
iii "The costly war on cancer-New cancer drugs are technically impressive. But must they cost so much?" The Economist: May 26 2011. Accessible at: http://www.economist.com/node/18743951
ivBjorkholm M, Ohm L, Eloranta S, et al. Success story of targeted therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia: a population-based study of patients diagnosed in Sweden from 1973-2008. J Clin Oncol: 29: 2514-2520. 2011. Accessible at: http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2011/05/16/JCO.2011.34.7146.full.pdf
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A NuvaRing contraceptive. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty)Rachel Lietzke Payne started using Nuvaring in 2008, when she was a 20-year-old college student. The contraceptive device appealed to her because it was easy to use. Birth control pills have to be taken every day, but Nuvaring, which came onto the market in 2001, is inserted into the vagina and removed each month?and is just as effective at preventing pregnancy.
One Monday in October of 2010, more than a year after she first began using the vaginal ring, Payne met her father for a standing lunch date at Buffalo Wild Wings in Casselberry, north of where they lived in Orlando. When she and her dad walked out of the restaurant, Payne suddenly fell ill and spat up quarter-size chunks of blood onto the cement.
Payne was rushed to the hospital, where she spent 10 days being pumped with anti-coagulants to thin her blood. She was diagnosed as having developed a blood clot in her lung, a condition that could have been fatal. ?It took them a while to figure out that it was blood clots because I was 22 at the time,? said Payne, who is now a married 25-year-old aspiring air traffic controller with a toddler son. She was also a non-smoker, fit, and had no family history of blood clots, all potential risk factors.
But the doctors landed on what they believed might have caused the clotting: the Nuvaring.
Payne is now one of more than 1,000 women suing Merck & Co?the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the birth control?in a federal district court in Missouri. They allege that the company?s device caused them to suffer blood clots?in a few cases, fatal ones?the risks of which they say they were inadequately warned about.
The suits are the latest in a pricey legal backlash over a variety of hormonal contraceptives that have come to the market in the past 10 years. Thousands of women sued over the Ortho Evra patch, citing studies that showed a higher blood clot risk compared to traditional birth control pills, costing Ortho McNeil, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, millions of dollars. And as of 2012, more than 10,000 suits had been filed against Bayer, the makers of Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills, which has set aside more than $1.5 billion to settle claims against them.
Roger Denton, the lead counsel for the multi-district litigation against Nuvaring in Missouri, said he thinks the case could be as lucrative for his clients as Bayer?s litigation over Yaz and Yasmin. (Bayer has settled for an average of $216,000 with each plaintiff in that case.)
Hormonal contraceptives inhibit ovulation by releasing a combination of estrogen and progestin. While earlier iterations of progestin have shown only a slight increase in blood clot risk, recent studies have shown that newer forms of progestin?called third- and fourth-generation progestins, which were developed in the 1990s and 2000s?are associated with higher rates of blood clotting among women who take them compared to second-generation iterations of the hormone.
In fact, more than a dozen studies conducted over more than a decade have shown that women taking contraceptives containing a third-generation progestin?such as that used in Nuvaring and some birth control pills?have a 1.4 to 4 times higher risk of developing blood clots than women on contraceptives containing second-generation progestin.
The studies include a recent one funded by the FDA that tracked the health records of more than 835,000 women. It found that those who used the vaginal ring were more likely to experience venous thrombosis than women who took oral contraceptives. But the researchers warned that the finding is ?new and raises concern,? and ?needs to be replicated in other studies.?
A handful of other studies, however, have shown no increased risk. Overall, the risk is still very low, with only around six to 10 out of 10,000 women developing blood clots over a year.
The plaintiffs in the Nuvaring case allege it's not just the hormone in the device that caused their blood clots, but also the delivery system. Unlike other forms of birth control, Nuvaring dispenses hormones directly into the bloodstream, which the plaintiffs' expert witness argues could cause "spikes" of hormones that make women more susceptible to blood clots. There's currently no large study that backs up that claim.
Some experts, however, warn the results of the studies are being overblown by the media and trial lawyers, and may be scaring women away from effective birth control. More than 20 international researchers published an open letter in the Journal of Family Health and Reproductive Planning earlier this month saying the media and attorneys are creating a ?scare? that is not based on adequate research and could create more harm than good. They argue that large database studies, such as the one funded by the FDA, can be inaccurate because they don?t take into account all the confounding variables, such as obesity, that could affect blood clotting.
The letter notes that third- and fourth-generation hormonal contraceptives overall contain a very low risk of blood clots, and that more studies are needed before that risk can be determined. Overall, it notes, about four to six additional women out of every 10,000 on the newer forms of birth control would suffer a blood clot compared to women taking the older form of birth control. The risk of blood clotting goes up dramatically for pregnant women: 29 per 10,000 pregnant women develop a blood clot, meaning that the risks of unintended pregnancy are far greater than that of any hormonal birth control on the market.
The plaintiffs in the Nuvaring case say Merck did not adequately test or label the Nuvaring product to warn of these risks. Merck has disputed this, saying the company is confident its product is safe, and that it followed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for its packaging.
The company was awarded a judicial victory last week, when a judge in New Jersey threw out seven separate suits against Nuvaring, saying the plaintiffs did not prove that Nuvaring was the cause of their blood clots. New Jersey courts have tougher standards for suing an FDA-approved product than the federal court system, however, where some of the more than 1,000 suits face trial beginning in October.
?We are confident the company has provided appropriate and timely information about Nuvaring to consumers and the medical, scientific and regulatory communities,? Lainie Keller, a spokeswoman for Merck, said in a statement. ?We remain confident in the efficacy and safety profile of Nuvaring, and will continue to always act in the best interest of patients.?
But Denton, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said he?s sure his cases in the district court won?t be dismissed.
?That?s what all these drug companies say,? Denton said. ?'It?s good enough for the FDA, that?s the end of the story.? But under our law that doesn?t matter. The jury decides.?
Net sales and operating cash flow up considerably; net and operating income still taking big hits
Everyone's favorite online retailer turned tablet maker and content aggregator, Amazon, has just posted its Q1 2013 financial report. There's a whole lot of numbers to jump into here, so let's get to the quick breakdown first:
Net sales of $16.07 billion, up a full 22-percent year-over-year
Operating income of $181 million, down 6-percent y-o-y
Net income of just $82 million, down sharply by 37-percent y-o-y
Operating cash flow (for the trailing 12 months) of $4.25 billion, up 39-percent y-o-y
This seems to be the trend for Amazon as of late, boasting high quarterly sales year after year, but coming up a bit short at the bottom line. Over $16 billion in sales is a massive number, but among other reasons currency fluctuations are to blame for the decreasing net income. Regardless of what the income numbers look like, Amazon isn't slowing down any time soon. During the release it took time to remind us of its current initiatives.
Amazon is continually boosting its Prime Instant Video catalog, bringing TV shows from A&E, FX, PBS, HGTV and many more. It also debuted pilots for 14 original series, which are coming out of Amazon Studios. Aside from touting increased availability of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" in several new countries, in typical Amazon fashion it didn't break out any sales or earnings for the devices. Rest assured that Amazon is likely selling a boatload of Kindles every quarter.
Apr. 24, 2013 ? An international team of researchers, led by scientists at Boston University?s Department of Earth and Environment, has found evidence that material contained in young oceanic lava flows originated at the Earth?s surface in the Archean (>2.45 billions years ago). The new finding helps constrain the timing of the initiation of plate tectonics, the origin of some of the chemical heterogeneity in the Earth?s mantle, and may shed light on how the chaotically convecting mantle could preserve such material for so long. The study appears in the April 25 issue of the journal Nature.
Tectonic plates at the Earth?s surface move around and collide at areas called subduction zones. In these areas, one plate is forced beneath the other and is transported into the Earth?s mantle. It has long been suggested that this subducted material must be re-erupted at a later time. However, the residence time of the subducted material in the mantle is uncertain and convincing evidence of its return to the surface has been lacking.
Sulfur isotopes provide the key to the authors? discovery. According to the researchers, because mass-independently fractionated (MIF) sulfur isotope signatures were generated exclusively through atmospheric photochemical reactions until about 2.5 billion years ago, material containing such isotope signatures must have originated at the Earth?s surface in the Archean. In the new study, the researchers found MIF sulfur-isotope signatures in olivine-hosted sulfides from relatively young (20-million-year-old) ocean island basalts (OIB) from Mangaia, Cook Islands (Polynesia), providing evidence that material once at the Earth?s surface has been recycled through the mantle and re-erupted at a young ocean island.
?The discovery of MIF-S isotope in these young oceanic lavas suggests that sulfur?likely derived from the hydrothermally-altered oceanic crust?was subducted into the mantle more than 2.5 billion years ago and recycled into the mantle source of the Mangaia lavas,? says Rita Cabral, the study?s primary author and a graduate student in BU?s Department of Earth and Environment.
The data also complement evidence for sulfur recycling of ancient sedimentary materials to the subcontinental lithospheric mantle previously identified in diamond inclusions.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston University College of Arts & Sciences, via Newswise.
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Journal Reference:
Rita A. Cabral, Matthew G. Jackson, Estelle F. Rose-Koga, Kenneth T. Koga, Martin J. Whitehouse, Michael A. Antonelli, James Farquhar, James M. D. Day, Erik H. Hauri. Anomalous sulphur isotopes in plume lavas reveal deep mantle storage of Archaean crust. Nature, 2013; 496 (7446): 490 DOI: 10.1038/nature12020
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