General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend

PERTH, Australia (AP) — In a new twist to the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal, the Pentagon said Tuesday that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under investigation for alleged “inappropriate communications” with a woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.

Panetta said that he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.

A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen’s communications were with Jill Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.

Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Broadwell, who is Petraeus’ biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.

Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

The senior official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen’s problematic communications.

The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen’s communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.

“Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter,” the official said. He said Allen currently is in Washington.

Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.

The FBI’s decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta’s decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.

Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.

In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen’s nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined.” He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.

Panetta said President Barack Obama was consulted and agreed that Allen’s nomination should be put on hold. Allen was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.

NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen’s appointment.

“We have seen Secretary Panetta‘s statement,” NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. “It is a U.S. investigation.”

Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama’s nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford’s hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.

___

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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Charlie Chaplin’s bowler and cane to hit auction block

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – One of Charlie Chaplin’s iconic bowler hats and canes, the staple of Hollywood silent-era comedy, will go under the hammer in Los Angeles this weekend, auction house Bonhams said on Tuesday.

Chaplin’s hat and cane – synonymous with his trademark “Little Tramp” character in films such as “City Lights” and “Modern Times” – are expected to fetch between $ 40,000 and $ 60,000 in the November 18 auction.

It is unknown how many of Chaplin’s bowlers and canes still exist, said Lucy Carr, a memorabilia specialist at Bonhams. The ones up for auction come from a private collection but have a direct link to Chaplin, Carr said.

The waddling and bumbling Little Tramp character propelled Chaplin to global fame. The character, which Hollywood legend says was created by accident on a rainy day at Keystone Studio, first appeared in 1914′s “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and lastly in 1936′s “Modern Times.”

Chaplin’s hat and cane are the highlights of an auction of popular culture artifacts including a saxophone that belonged to jazz pioneer Charlie Parker ($ 22,000-$ 26,000) and a handwritten letter from John Lennon in which The Beatle sketched himself and wife Yoko Ono nude ($ 18,000-$ 22,000).

Other items hitting the block range from an archive of Marilyn Monroe photographs ($ 15,000-$ 20,000), an early Charles Schulz “Peanuts” comic strip ($ 10,000-$ 15,000) and a wicker chair from Rick’s Cafe in “Casablanca” ($ 5,000-$ 7,000).

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Head injury, pesticides tied to Parkinson’s disease

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The combination of a past serious head injury and pesticide exposure may be linked to an extra-high risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, a new study suggests.

The findings don’t prove being knocked unconscious or exposed to certain chemicals directly causes Parkinson’s, a chronic movement and coordination disorder.

But they are in line with previous studies, which have linked head trauma and certain toxins – along with family history and other environmental exposures – to the disease.

“I think all of us are beginning to realize that there’s not one smoking gun that causes Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. James Bower, a neurologist from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota who wasn’t involved in the new research.

“There might be many paths to the ultimate development of Parkinson’s disease,” he told Reuters Health.

For example, Bower said, some people who are genetically predisposed might need just one “environmental insult” – such as a blow to the head – to set them up for Parkinson’s. Others who aren’t naturally susceptible to the disorder could still develop it after multiple exposures.

Head trauma and contact with pesticides “may not be directly related, and may be two independent stresses,” Columbia University neurologist David Sulzer, who also wasn’t part of the study team, told Reuters Health in an email.

About 50,000 to 60,000 older adults in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease each year, according to the National Parkinson Foundation.

For the new study, researchers led by Pei-Chen Lee from the University of California at Los Angeles compared 357 people with a recent Parkinson’s diagnosis to a representative sample of 754 people without the disease, all living in central California, which is a major agricultural region.

The study team asked all of them to report any past traumatic head injuries – in which people had been unconscious for at least five minutes – and used their home and work addresses to determine their proximity to pesticide sprayings since 1974.

Those surveys showed that close to 12 percent of people with Parkinson’s had been knocked unconscious, and 47 percent had been exposed to an herbicide called paraquat near both their home and workplace.

That’s in comparison to almost seven percent of control-group participants with a history of head injury and 39 percent with pesticide exposure.

On their own, traumatic brain injury as well as living and working near pesticide sprayings were each tied to a moderately increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. Combined, they were linked to a tripling of that risk, the researchers reported Monday in the journal Neurology. That was after taking into account people’s baseline risk based on their age, gender, race, education, smoking history and family history of Parkinson’s.

Lee’s team didn’t know which came first in people who’d had both head trauma and paraquat exposure.

It makes sense, the researchers noted, that a head injury would increase inflammation in the brain and disrupt the barrier that separates circulating blood and brain fluid. Those changes could then make neurons in the brain more vulnerable to the effects of pesticides, ultimately increasing the risk of Parkinson’s.

But that’s just a theory.

“There are all kinds of hypotheses,” Bower said. But the study “is more evidence that traumatic injury to the brain can lead to later problems that are usually neurodegenerative,” he added. “We need to be increasingly careful about preventing these traumatic brain injuries.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TD3OA9 Neurology, online November 12, 2012.

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TSX drops to two-month low on U.S., Europe fears

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index slipped to a two-month low on Tuesday, dragged down by resource and financial shares, as investors fixated on fears of a fiscal crisis in the United States and economic turmoil in Europe.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.GSPTSE> unofficially closed down 56.80 points, or 0.47 percent, at 12,134.66.

(Reporting by Claire Sibonney; Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson)

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Canada seen needing to spell out rules for natural gas projects

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The fate of a handful of liquefied natural gas projects planned for Canada’s Pacific coast may depend on the Canadian government‘s willingness to spell out rules for foreign investment in the country’s energy sector, according to a study released on Thursday.

Apache Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Petronas, BG Group Plc and others are in the planning stages for LNG projects that would take gas from the rich shale fields of northeastern British Columbia and ship it to Asian buyers.

But the federal government’s decision last month to stall the C$ 5.2 billion ($ 5.2 billion) bid by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas C$ 5.2 billion for Canada‘s Progress Energy Resources Corp could lessen the appetite of Asian buyers for Canadian LNG, energy consultants Wood Mackenzie said.

“Some potential off-takers of Canadian LNG like the idea … because it’s perceived as having low political risk, and another reason is because they see the potential for investment opportunities,” said Noel Tomnay, head of global gas at the consultancy.

“If there are going to be restrictions on how they access those opportunities, if acquisitions are closed to them, then clearly that would restrict the attractiveness of those opportunities. If would-be Asian investors thought that corporate acquisitions were an avenue that was not open to them then Canadian LNG would become less attractive.”

The Canadian government is looking to come up with rules governing corporate acquisitions by state-owned companies and has pushed off a decision on the Petronas bid as it considers whether to approve the $ 15.1 billion offer for Nexen Inc from China’s CNOOC Ltd.

Exporting LNG to Asia is seen as a way to boost returns for natural-gas producers tapping the Montney, Horn River and Liard Basin shale regions of northeastern British Columbia.

Though Wood Mackenzie estimates the fields contain as much as 280 trillion cubic feet of gas, they are far from Canada’s traditional U.S. export market, while growing supplies from American shale regions have cut into Canadian shipments.

Because the region lacks infrastructure, developing the resource will be expensive, requiring new pipelines and multibillion-dollar liquefaction.

Still Wood Mackenzie estimates that the cost of delivery into Asian markets for Canadian LNG would be in the range of $ 10 million to $ 12 per million British thermal units, similar to competing projects in the United States and East Africa.

($ 1 = $ 1.00 Canadian)

(Reporting by Scott Haggett; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

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Early end-of-life talks tied to less aggressive care

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Terminally-ill cancer patients are less likely to get aggressive end-of-life treatment, such as chemotherapy in the last two weeks of life, when they talk with their doctors early on about how they want to die, according to a new study.

Treatment aimed at keeping those patients alive at the end is often expensive and may not improve patients’ quality of life or comfort. Such therapies usually involve more time in the hospital rather than at home or in hospice care.

“Aggressive care at the end of life for individual patients isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that most patients who recognize they’re dying don’t want to receive that kind of care,” said Dr. Jennifer Mack, the study’s lead author from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“We should at least consider having these discussions soon after diagnosis if we know that a patient has incurable cancer,” she told Reuters Health.

Her team’s analysis involved 1,231 people with advanced lung or colon cancer who died over a 14-month period during a larger cancer study. Researchers interviewed patients or their caregivers about whether and when the patients had discussions with their doctors about end-of-life care.

Mack and her colleagues also checked medical records for signs of those discussions and for any treatment and hospitalizations cancer patients had in their last month of life.

They found that most patients – 88 percent – had end-of-life discussions, but more than one-third of those took place less than a month before the patient died, when their health was likely already deteriorating. Close to two-thirds of the talks happened while patients were in the hospital.

Almost half of study participants received aggressive, life-prolonging care, Mack’s team reported Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Those who’d had end-of-life discussions more than a month before dying were 50 to 60 percent less likely to get that extra treatment than patients who put off those talks or didn’t have them at all.

Patients (and their caregivers) who reported having the discussions with doctors were almost seven times more likely to end up in hospice than those who didn’t recall end-of-life talks.

“A lot of patients don’t want (aggressive treatment), but they don’t recognize that they’re dying or that this is relevant for them,” said Dr. Camilla Zimmermann, head of the palliative care program at University Health Network in Toronto.

But, she told Reuters Health, “The earlier you discuss these things, the more options you have. If you wait too long, you end up having these discussions with someone you don’t know, that you just met, in an inpatient setting,” instead of with your primary doctor.

Mack agreed.

“If we start these conversations early, then patients have some time to process this information, to think about what’s important to them (and) to talk with their families about that,” she said.

Aggressive end-of-life care is also expensive. According to data from the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, 32 percent of total Medicare spending goes to caring for very sick patients in their last two years of life, often because those people are in and out of the hospital. In the early 2000′s, that spending was equal to about $ 46,000 per chronically-ill patient.

Zimmermann, who wasn’t involved in the new research, believes it’s never too early for doctors, patients or caregivers to initiate discussions about end-of-life preferences – even if it can be an uncomfortable topic.

“There are many opportunities while that incurable illness is still being treated… to also focus on what happens if this doesn’t work,” she said.

“I think people are afraid that bringing up these discussions is going to make them die. Bringing up these discussions is really going protect them from an outcome they don’t want in the end.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/gPtMdm Journal of Clinical Oncology, online November 12, 2012.

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U.S. the New Saudi Arabia? Peak Oilers Scoff

The U.S. is set to increase oil production so much that it will overtake Saudi Arabia and become the world’s biggest producer by around 2017, the International Energy Agency said today.

The reaction from “peak oil” theorists? Not a chance. They continue to argue that the surge in U.S. production coming from shale oil and shale gas is a flash in the pan. Before long, they say, U.S. output will start falling again—as will global output. The price of oil will skyrocket and the industrial economy will be brought to its knees, they argue.

I first reached Kjell Aleklett in Sweden. He’s president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and a physics professor at Uppsala University. Aleklett acknowledged that peak oil theorists didn’t predict the U.S. output increase, but he said the jump doesn’t undermine their main case. “We were wrong that it was not possible for the U.S. [production] to swing back again. But we don’t know how high the swing will be,” Aleklett said.

“The shale production we are talking about now relies on thousands of wells drilled every year. If the drilling capacity should go down, or for some reason it becomes too expensive, then the production will go down very fast,” Aleklett said.

What’s more, he said, the U.S. success is not being duplicated in other countries. In densely populated Europe, Aleklett said, the best shale happens to be beneath the city of Paris, making it off-limits to production (unless the Eiffel Tower is converted into a production platform).

Aleklett also pointed out that the U.S. Energy Department’s own outlook contradicts that of the Paris-based International Energy Agency. In 2035, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, imports of crude oil, liquid fuels, and other petroleum, plus natural gas will still total about 24 quadrillion BTUs a year, nearly triple the level of exports.

Mark your calendar, by the way: Aleklett said the next meeting of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil is in Austin, Tex., on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1.

I then reached Jeremy Leggett, a British solar energy entrepreneur who is chairman of a company called Solarcentury and who writes about energy issues, including peak oil. His talking points were more polished than Aleklett’s, but he hit the same arguments. Like the Swede, he said he doesn’t think production from unconventional sources such as shale is sustainable for long.

“On the massive balance of probabilities, not withstanding the U.S. phenomenon, there’s going to be a descent of global production and much higher prices, by 2015 at the latest,” Leggett said.

I asked him if it’s harder for him to persuade people now than it was before the surprising resurgence in U.S. output. Yes, he said. “It’s a comfortable narrative, and people are desperate to believe comfortable narratives. It has set back the perception of the risk.” Dependence on oil and gas, said Leggett, “will blow up in our face.”

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BBC must reform or die, says Trust chairman

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC could be doomed unless it makes radical changes, the head of its governing trust said on Sunday, after its director general quit to take the blame for the airing of false child sex abuse allegations against a former politician.

Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, said confidence had to be restored if the publicly funded corporation was to withstand pressure from rivals, especially Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire, which would try to take advantage of the turmoil.

“If you’re saying, ‘Does the BBC need a thorough structural radical overhaul?’, then absolutely it does, and that is what we will have to do,” Patten, a one-time senior figure in Prime Minister David Cameron‘s Conservative Party and the last British governor of Hong Kong, told BBC television.

“The basis for the BBC’s position in this country is the trust that people have in it,” Patten said. “If the BBC loses that, it’s over.”

George Entwistle resigned as director general on Saturday, just two months into the job, to take responsibility for the child sex allegation on the flagship news programme Newsnight.

The witness in the report, who says he suffered sexual abuse at a care home in the late 1970s, said on Friday he had misidentified the politician, Alistair McAlpine. Newsnight admitted it had not shown the witness a picture of McAlpine, or approached McAlpine for comment before going to air.

Already under pressure after revelations that a long-time star presenter, the late Jimmy Savile, was a paedophile, Entwistle conceded on the BBC morning news that he had not known – or asked – who the alleged abuser was until the name appeared in social media.

The BBC, celebrating its 90th anniversary, is affectionately known in Britain as “Auntie”, and respected around much of the world.

But with 22,000 staff working at eight national TV channels, 50 radio stations and an extensive Internet operation, critics say it is hampered by a complex and overly bureaucratic and hierarchical management structure.

THOMPSON’S LEGACY

Journalists said this had become worse under Entwistle’s predecessor Mark Thompson, who took over in the wake of the last major crisis to hit the corporation and is set to become chief executive of the New York Times Co on Monday.

In that instance, both director general and chairman were forced out after the BBC was castigated by a public inquiry over a report alleging government impropriety in the fevered build up to war in Iraq, leading to major organisational changes.

One of the BBC’s most prominent figures, Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, said since the Iraq report furore, management had become bloated while cash had been cut from programme budgets.

“He (Entwistle) has been brought low by cowards and incompetents,” Paxman said in a statement, echoing a widely-held view that Entwistle was a good man who had been let down by his senior staff.

Prime Minister Cameron appeared ready to give the BBC the benefit of the doubt, believing that “one of the great institutions of this country” could reform and deal with its failings, according to sources in his office.

Patten, who must find a new director general to sort out the mess, agreed that management structures had proved inadequate.

“Apparently decisions about the programme went up through every damned layer of BBC management, bureaucracy, legal checks – and still emerged,” he said.

“One of the jokes I made, and actually it wasn’t all that funny, when I came to the BBC … was that there were more senior leaders in the BBC then there were in the Chinese Communist Party.”

Patten ruled out resigning himself but other senior jobs are expected to be on the line, while BBC supporters fear investigative journalism will be scaled back. He said he expected to name Entwistle’s successor in weeks, not months.

Among the immediate challenges are threats of litigation.

McAlpine, a close ally of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has indicated he will sue for damages.

Claims for compensation are also likely from victims who say Savile, one of the most recognisable personalities on British television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, sexually abused them as children, sometimes on BBC premises.

INQUIRIES

Two inquiries are already under way, looking at failures at Newsnight and allegations relating to Savile, both of which could make uncomfortable reading for senior figures.

Police have also launched a major inquiry into Savile’s crimes and victims’ allegations of a high-profile paedophile ring. Detectives said they had arrested their third suspect on Sunday, a man in his 70s from Cambridgeshire in central England.

Funded by an annual licence fee levied on all TV viewers, the BBC has long been resented by its commercial rivals, who argue it has an unfair advantage and distorts the market.

Murdoch’s Sun tabloid gleefully reported Entwistle’s departure with the headline “Bye Bye Chump” and Patten said News Corp and others would put the boot in, happy to deflect attention after a phone-hacking scandal put the newspaper industry under intense and painful scrutiny.

He said that “one or two newspapers, Mr. Murdoch’s papers” would love to see the BBC lose its national status, “but I think the great British public doesn’t want to see that happen”.

Murdoch himself was watching from afar.

“BBC getting into deeper mess. After Savile scandal, now prominent news program falsely names senior pol as paedophile,” he wrote on his Twitter website on Saturday.

It is not just the BBC and the likes of Entwistle and Patten who are in the spotlight.

Thompson, whom Entwistle succeeded in mid-September, has also faced questions from staff at the New York Times over whether he is still the right person to take one of the biggest jobs in American newspaper publishing.

Britain’s Murdoch-owned Sunday Times queried how Thompson could have been unaware of claims about Savile during his tenure at the BBC as he had told British lawmakers, saying his lawyers had written to the paper addressing the allegations in early September, while he was still director general.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Sophie Hares)

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Malaysian charged with Facebook insult of sultan

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The sister of a Malaysian man who has been charged with insulting a state sultan on Facebook said Friday that he is innocent and will lodge a complaint over his detention.

Anisa Abdul Jalil said her brother Ahmad Abdul Jalil was charged Thursday with making offensive postings on Facebook last month. But she said there is no evidence linking Ahmad to the posts in question, which were made by someone using the name “Zul Yahaya.”

“This is ridiculous as they have failed to build a case against him. We are very angry. It is a dirty game and an abuse of power, an abuse of the court process,” Anisa told the Associated Press.

Ahmad was freed on bail Thursday after six days of detention, during which he was denied access to lawyers and family members.

Anisa said Ahmad told the family that police tried to force a confession from him but he stood firm. She said Ahmad will file a complaint with police for unlawful detention and intimidation.

Defense lawyer Fadiah Nadwa Fitri said they would appeal to throw out the charges against Ahmad when the case is next heard Nov. 28.

The posts in question were directed at Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar of southern Johor state. Fadiah said that according to the charge sheet, the postings likened the sultan’s skin and behavior to that of a pig, which is viewed as a dirty animal in Islam.

“The charges are unfounded. Ahmad is vocal and is critical about political matter but he didn’t write the postings. It seems that Ahmad is being prosecuted for exercising his rights,” Fadiah said. Ahmad faces up to a year in jail if convicted, she added.

Nine Malaysian states have sultans and other royal figures. Though their roles are largely ceremonial, they command wide respect after centuries of hereditary rule.

Under Malaysian law, acts that provoke hatred against royal rulers are considered seditious. Only a few people have been charged with the crime in recent years.

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