TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
(Reporting by Solarina Ho)
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BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Lawyers fighting a New York man’s ownership claim against Facebook Inc. say a bizarre motion bearing the name of convicted abortion doctor killer James Charles Kopp earlier this month was apparently filed by an impostor.
In court papers, Facebook lawyers say they received a sworn statement from the imprisoned Kopp Monday denying he’s filed any motion in Paul Ceglia‘s lawsuit. An accompanying letter from Kopp to the federal judge handling the case says someone is impersonating him.
The motion signed with Kopp’s name had sought permission to intervene in Ceglia’s lawsuit while accusing Ceglia of a litany of personal slights, threats and crimes. Kopp’s serving life in prison for the 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian in suburban Buffalo.
Facebook says the Kopp motion, even if it’s real, should be denied.
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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – FilmDistrict, Alliance Films and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will bring “Insidious Chapter 2,” the sequel to last year’s hit film “Insidious,” to U.S. theaters on August 30, 2013, the companies announced Monday.
Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins will reprise their roles in the film, which “Insidious” director James Wan will direct from a script written by Leigh Whannell who also wrote the first film.
Jason Blum, who produced “Insidious,” is producing the low-budget sequel through his Blumhouse Productions. Brian Kavanaugh Jones, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, and Charles Layton are executive producing. Production on the sequel is set to begin on January 15 in Los Angeles.
Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired the U.S. rights to the film in conjunction with FilmDistrict. The film is being financed by Alliance Films. FilmDistrict will distribute the film theatrically in the United States, with Sony handling the majority of ancillary rights in the U.S.
Alliance Films will distribute in Canada, the U.K. (via its Momentum Pictures subsidiary) and Spain (via Aurum), and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will distribute in all other international territories.
Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s CEO, said: “We are all very excited to see the next chapter of James and Leigh’s vision of the Further. It’s great to be in business again with Blumhouse, Alliance and Sony.”
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TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Hamas rockets forced the closure of the main crossing point for humanitarian aid from Israel to Gaza on Tuesday, holding up the transfer of more than 100 truckloads of food and medical supplies including anesthetics, Israeli officials said.
Despite the fact its air force is bombarding the coastal enclave, Israel is trying to maintain the essential daily flow of basic foodstuffs into the Gaza Strip where most of 1.7 million Palestinians are dependent on aid.
A Twitter message from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that “120+ trucks of supplies from Israel are waiting at Gaza border crossing. Hamas is firing rockets at the crossing. Trucks can’t enter now”.
Israel says it launched its military offensive a week ago to halt increasing Islamist militant rocket fire on southern Israeli communities close to the Gaza Strip.
The Kerem Shalom crossing at the extreme south of the Israel-Gaza border, next to Egyptian territory, is the only freight passage into the blockaded territory.
No comment was available from Hamas. But a Palestinian liaison official said the crossing was closed after some mortar bombs landed at Kerem Shalom and work was suspended after just one hour of operations. The western-backed Palestinian Authority liaises with Israel on Kerem Shalom transfers.
For security reasons, it operates on a back-to-back system: trucks go in from Israel and offload within the protective concrete walls of the terminal, then trucks come in from the Gaza end and load up.
Since the start of the latest round of violence, now in its seventh day, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), says it has let in 123 trucks loaded with food, medicine and fuel, including 43 that passed on Tuesday before rockets started to fall.
The rest of the transfer included 16 truckloads of medical equipment “specifically vital equipment, such as medicines, anesthetics and disposable medical equipment”, COGAT said.
The main Israeli fortified crossing-point at Erez was opened to permit the exit of 26 patients and their escorts into Israel in order to receive medical treatment, the authority added.
“While Israel is committed to providing continued assistance, it is subject to the limitations created by continuous rocket fire and attacks on the part of Hamas and other extremists groups in Gaza,” COGAT said.
“Rocket attacks endanger the staff manning the crossing and often hinder or prevent the transfer of goods,” it added.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) says 1.2 million Gazans rely on UNRWA assistance, which enters the territory via Israel.
“UNRWA will continue to provide food aid to more than 800,000 refugees in the Strip. Our schools are providing a place of safe shelter. Our health clinics remain open and ready to bring medical care to the children, the sick, and the elderly,” the agency said in its latest update on the crisis.
In relatively normal times about 130 truckloads of aid — mainly bulk staples — go through the Kerem Shalom crossing daily.
(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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JERUSALEM (AP) — Egypt's president predicted Tuesday that Israel's nearly weeklong offensive in the Gaza Strip would end within hours, as diplomats from across the world raced across the region to negotiate a cease-fire to end relentless Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket attacks.
Mohammed Morsi, perhaps the most important interlocutor between the militant Hamas group that rules the Palestinian territory and the Israelis, gave no explanation for his statement, saying only that the negotiations between the two sides will yield "positive results" during the coming hours.
President Barack Obama also dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Mideast from Cambodia, where she had accompanied Obama on a visit.
Hours before Morsi spoke, a man identified as Hamas' militant commander urged his fighters to keep up attacks on Israel, and Palestinian militants fired a rocket toward Jerusalem, just minutes before U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in the holy city. Israeli airstrikes killed a senior militant and five others in a separate attack on a car, according to Gaza health officials.
"This must stop, immediate steps are needed to avoid further escalation, including a ground operation," Ban said from Egypt. "Both sides must hold fire immediately ... Further escalation of the situation could put the entire region at risk."
Clinton is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo. Turkey's foreign minister and a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers traveled to Gaza on a separate truce mission. Airstrikes continued to hit Gaza even as they entered the territory.
It was unclear how diplomatic efforts to achieve a cease-fire and stave off a threatened Israeli ground invasion into Gaza were hampered by the hard-to-bridge positions staked out by both sides — and by the persistent attacks. Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers have been dispatched to the Gaza border in case of a decision to invade.
Residents of Jerusalem ran for cover Tuesday when Palestinians fired a rocket toward the holy city for the second time since the fighting started last Wednesday. The rocket, which set off sirens in the city, landed harmlessly in an open area on the outskirts in one of the longest rocket strikes fired from the Gaza.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the rocket landed in Gush Etzion, a collection of Jewish West Bank settlements southeast of the city. Last Friday's attempt to hit Jerusalem, nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Gaza, landed in the same area. No one was wounded in either attack.
Jerusalem had previously been considered beyond the range of Gaza rockets — and an unlikely target because it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Israeli officials feared Gaza's Hamas rulers will try to stage similar attacks deep into Israel's heartland ahead of any possible truce.
Shortly afterward, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a car in Gaza City killing five people and seriously wounding four others. Their identities were not immediately known.
In a sign of the difficulty diplomats will have in forging such a cease-fire, a man identified as Mohammed Deif, Hamas' elusive military commander, urged his fighters to keep up attacks on Israel.
Speaking from hiding on Hamas-run TV and radio, Deif said Hamas "must invest all resources to uproot this aggressor from our land," a reference to Israel.
Deif is one of the founders of Hamas' military wing and was its top commander until he was seriously wounded in an Israeli airstrike in 2003. He was replaced as the de facto leader by Ahmed Jabari, who was assassinated by Israel last week in the opening salvo of its latest Gaza offensive.
The U.S. considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide and other attacks, to be a terror group and does not meet with its officials. The Obama administration blames Hamas for the latest eruption of violence and says Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, it has warned against a ground invasion, saying it could send casualties spiraling.
An airstrike Tuesday killed a senior Hamas militant identified as Amin Al Dada and wounded two others, Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra said.
By Tuesday, 115 Palestinians, including 54 civilians, were killed since Israel began an air onslaught that has so far included nearly 1,500 strikes. Some 840 people have been wounded, including 225 children, Gaza health officials said.
Three Israeli civilians have also been killed and dozens wounded since the fighting began last week, the numbers possibly kept down by a rocket-defense system that Israel developed with U.S. funding. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel this week, the military said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel was exploring a diplomatic solution, but wouldn't balk at a broader military operation.
"I prefer a diplomatic solution," Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting with Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is also in the region trying to advance peace efforts. "But if the fire continues, we will be forced to take broader measures and will not hesitate to do so."
Westerwelle said a truce must be urgently pursued, "but of course, there is one precondition for everything else, and this is a stop of the missile attacks against Israel."
The conflict erupted last week, when a resurgence in rocket fire from Gaza set off the Israeli offensive, which included hundreds of airstrikes on militants' underground rocket launchers and weapons' stores.
The onslaught turned deadlier over the weekend, as airstrikes began targeting the homes of suspected Hamas activists, leading to a spike in civilian casualties. Israel sent warnings in some cases, witnesses said, but in other instances missiles hit suddenly, burying residents under the rubble of their homes.
Hamas is deeply rooted in densely populated Gaza, and the movement's activists live in the midst of ordinary Gazans. Israel says militants are using civilians as human shields, both for their own safety and to launch rocket strikes from residential neighborhoods.
Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, battering the headquarters of the bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group's rule. After Hamas violently overran Gaza in June 2007, foreign lenders stopped doing business with the militant-led Gaza government, afraid of running afoul of international terror financing laws.
The inside of the bank, which was set up by leading Hamas members and describes itself as a private enterprise, was destroyed. A building supply business in the basement was damaged.
Owner Suleiman Tawil, 31, grimly surveyed the damage to his store and six company cars. "I'm not involved in politics," he said. "I'm a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas."
Fuad Hijazi and two of his toddler sons were killed Monday evening when missiles struck their one-story shack in northern Gaza, leaving a crater about two to three meters (seven to 10 feet) deep in the densely populated neighborhood. Residents said the father was not a militant.
The conflict showed signs of spilling into the West Bank, as hundreds of Palestinian protesters in the town of Jenin clashed with Israeli forces during a demonstration against Israel's Gaza offensive.
Two Palestinian protesters were killed in anti-Israel demonstrations in the West Bank on Monday, according to Palestinian officials. Separate clashes occurred Tuesday in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, during the funeral for one of the dead.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, now governs from the West Bank. Abbas claims to represent both areas, and there is widespread sympathy among West Bank Palestinians for their brethren in Gaza.
As part of truce efforts, Ban was to meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Tuesday. In Cairo, Ban said he would also travel to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Egypt, the traditional mediator between Israel and the Arab world, has been at the center of recent diplomatic efforts involving the U.S., Turkey, Qatar and other nations.
Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt. It also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt's Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.
Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement in and out of the territory that have been in place since Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal told reporters in Cairo on Monday that Hamas would only agree to a cease-fire if its demands are met. "We don't accept Israeli conditions because it is the aggressor," he said. "We want a cease-fire along with meeting our demands."
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi in Cairo, and Karin Laub and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Making a movie about Elizabeth Taylor takes courage. Casting wayward starlet Lindsay Lohan as the Hollywood screen legend was both daring and asking for trouble.
And indeed, trouble is what producers got during the shooting of Lifetime TV movie “Liz & Dick” – but they say the payoff made it all worthwhile.
“Let’s say that producing a movie with Lindsay Lohan is not for the faint of heart,” said executive producer Larry Thompson. “I turned 50 shades of white during production…But the risk was worth the rewards; the pain was worth the pleasure.”
“Liz & Dick,” which premieres on November 25, recounts the scandalous and tumultuous romance between Taylor and British actor Richard Burton in the 1960s and 70s. Lohan is one of the few people ever to have portrayed the diamond-loving, larger-than-life, two-time best actress Oscar winner on screen.
The idea was irresistible. Who better than Lohan, 26, a former child star herself, would know the pressures of having her every move scrutinized by the media, the allure of drink and drugs, and the thrills and risks of living life on the edge?
“I think Lindsay Lohan…literally knows no boundaries and that becomes dangerous and exciting. And she has the ability to bring to the screen and her performance that danger, that raw emotion,” Thompson told reporters ahead of the premiere.
“If you are going to make a movie about Taylor, you damn well want some great magic. And we felt that Lindsay Lohan could bring that.”
Some reviews for “Liz & Dick” have been savage. The Hollywood Reporter called Lohan “woeful as Taylor from start to finish” and the TV movie “an instant classic of unintentional hilarity.” Variety was kinder, calling Lohan “adequate” and the film “hammy” but “pretty good, all things considered.” Both noted casting Lohan was a sound publicity move.
Thompson however is proud of the 90-minute TV film. “I think people will see (New Zealand actor) Grant Bowler as Richard Burton just steals your heart, and Lindsay Lohan breaks it.”
PAGES OF ‘WHAT IFS’
After five years of legal troubles, numerous trips to jail, rehab, and courtrooms, the “Mean Girls” star was looking for a project that could re-establish the credentials that had once made her among the most promising young actresses in Hollywood.
But her past brought problems with insurance for the movie, shooting schedules and the personal setbacks Lohan faced during the making of the TV film earlier this year.
Thompson said the deal with Lohan included “pages and pages of ‘what if’ clauses. What if there is a car accident? What if there is a violation of probation and she would be incarcerated? She might be the most insured actress to ever walk on a soundstage.”
The clauses were needed. During shooting, Lohan was involved in a serious car crash in the California beach city of Santa Monica, and on a separate occasion she was rushed to the hospital suffering from what as described as “exhaustion and dehydration.”
And just as Taylor and Burton were hounded by (and sometimes courted) the media during their highly public extra-marital affair, Lohan and the production staff had the paparazzi to deal with.
“There were paparazzi following us around, hanging out of trees every day. And while we were making a movie about Elizabeth Taylor being followed by paparazzi, we had real paparazzi following our paparazzi following Elizabeth Taylor. So it was life imitating art, art imitating life,” said Thompson.
Thompson acknowledged that fans of Taylor, who died in 2011 at age 79 after eight marriages – two of them to Burton – will believe there is no actress who could possibly play her. Burton died in 1984 at the age of 58.
Yet Lifetime chose Lohan also in the hope she would bring a younger generation of her own fans to the movie.
“A lot of young people today think Liz Taylor is an old woman sitting in a wheelchair next to Michael Jackson, whereas our movie is about the young, vibrant, highest-paid movie star in the world at the height of her beauty and power,” Thompson said.
As for whether he would work again with Lohan despite the challenging shoot?
“Sure,” Thompson said.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Christine Kearney and Lisa Shumaker)
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Efforts to end a week-old convulsion of Israeli-Palestinian violence drew in the world's top diplomats on Tuesday, with President Barack Obama dispatching his secretary of state to the region on an emergency mission and the U.N. chief appealing from Cairo for an immediate cease-fire.
Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers have staked out tough, hard-to-bridge positions, and the gaps keep alive the threat of an Israeli ground invasion. On Tuesday, grieving Gazans were burying militants and civilians killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes, and barrages of rockets from Gaza sent terrified Israelis scurrying to take cover.
From Egypt, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he came to the region because of the "alarming situation."
"This must stop, immediate steps are needed to avoid further escalation, including a ground operation," Ban said. "Both sides must hold fire immediately ... Further escalation of the situation could put the entire region at risk."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton departed for the Mideast on Tuesday from Cambodia, where she had accompanied Obama on a visit. Clinton is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo, according to U.S. and Palestinian officials.
The U.S. considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide and other attacks, to be a terror group and does not meet with its officials. Washington blames Hamas rocket fire for the latest eruption of violence and says Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, it has cautioned that a ground invasion could send casualties spiraling.
By Tuesday, 115 Palestinians, including 54 civilians, have been killed since Israel mounted an air onslaught that has so far included nearly 1,500 strikes. Some 840 people have been wounded, including 225 children, Gaza health officials said.
Three Israeli civilians have also been killed and dozens wounded since the fighting began last week, the numbers possibly kept down by a rocket-defense system Israel developed with U.S. funding. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel this week, the military said.
Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel wouldn't balk at a broader military operation.
"I prefer a diplomatic solution," Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting with Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who is also in the region trying to advance peace efforts. "But if the fire continues, we will be forced to take broader measures and will not hesitate to do so."
Successive Israeli governments have struggled to come up with an effective policy toward Hamas.
Neither Israel's economic blockade of the territory of 1.6 million people nor bruising military strikes have cowed Gaza's Islamists, weakened their grip on the coastal strip or fire rockets at the Jewish state.
An Israeli ground invasion would risk Israeli troop losses, and could send the number of Palestinian civilian casualties ballooning — a toll Israel could be reluctant to risk just four years after its last invasion drew allegations of war crimes.
Still, with Israeli elections just two months away, polls show Israeli public sentiment has lined up staunchly behind the Netanyahu government's offensive.
Turkey's foreign minister and a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers headed to Gaza on Tuesday on a separate truce mission. Before setting off, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu signaled Turkey was in contact with Israel bout a truce — an important development given the two countries' chilly ties.
"We would be involved in all kinds of efforts if it amounted to saving the life of a single brother from Gaza," Davutoglu said. "We are determined to keep all direct or indirect channels (of dialogue) open."
Turkey's once-close ties with Israel frayed badly over the high civilian toll during Israel's 2009 war in Gaza.
With tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers dispatched to the Gaza border, awaiting a possible order to invade, the truce missions were all the more urgent.
Egypt, the traditional mediator between Israel and the Arab world, has been at the center of recent diplomatic efforts.
Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt. It also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt's Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.
Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement to and from the territory imposed after Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past.
Resurgent rocket fire set off the Israeli offensive, launched with the assassination of the Hamas military chief and followed by hundreds of airstrikes on militant rocket launchers and weapons stores.
The onslaught turned deadlier over the weekend, as airstrikes began targeting the homes of suspected Hamas activists, leading to a spike in civilian casualties. Israel sent warnings in some cases, witnesses said, but in other instances missiles hit suddenly, burying residents under the rubble of their homes.
Hamas is deeply rooted in densely populated Gaza, and the movement's activists live in the midst of ordinary Gazans. Israel says militants are using civilians as human shields, both for their own safety and to launch rocket strikes from residential neighborhoods.
In one case, a senior member of the military wing of Islamic Jihad rented a small apartment in a 15-story high-rise of offices and news outlets. The militant, Ramez Harb, was killed Monday in a rocket strike that damaged the building.
One journalist said he and others were furious that Harb had apparently used their building as a hideout, putting others at risk. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions from Gaza militants.
Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, the headquarters of a bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group's rule. After Hamas overran Gaza, foreign lenders stopped doing business with its militant-led government, afraid of running afoul of international terror financing laws.
The inside of the bank was destroyed and a building supply business in the basement was damaged.
"I'm not involved in politics," said the business owner, Suleiman Tawil. "I'm a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas."
Israel and Gaza's militants have a long history of fighting, but the dynamics have changed radically since they last warred four years ago. Though their hardware is no match for the Israeli military, militants have upgraded their capabilities with weapons smuggled in from Iran and Libya, Israeli officials claim.
Only a few years ago, tens of thousands of Israelis were within rocket range. Today those numbers have swollen to 3.5 million, as the militants' improved weapons reached Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for the first time this past week.
Hamas, a branch of the region-wide Muslim Brotherhood, is also negotiating from a stronger position than four years ago. At that time, Hamas was internationally isolated; now, the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt and Tunisia, and Hamas is also getting political support from Qatar and Turkey.
At home, too, the military offensive has shored up Hamas at a time when it was riven by internal divisions over its direction and the new Egyptian government's refusal to lift the blockade it imposed along with Israel after Hamas seized the territory.
This newfound backing contrasts radically with the loss of stature the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has endured as Palestinians lose faith in his ability to bring them a state through negotiations with Israel.
____
Teibel reported from Jerusalem. With contributions from Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey.
LONDON (Reuters) – A United Nations report said on Tuesday that eradicating AIDS was in sight, owing to better access to drugs that can both treat and prevent the incurable human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes the disease.
An aim to eventually end the worldwide AIDS epidemic is not “merely visionary” but “entirely feasible”, the report said.
Success in fighting the disease in the past decade has allowed the “foundation to be laid for the eventual end of AIDS” by cutting the death toll and helping stabilize the number of people infected in the pandemic, UNAIDS said its annual report.
Some 34 million people had HIV at the end of 2011.
Worldwide, the number of people newly infected with the disease, which can be transmitted via blood and by semen during sex, is falling. At 2.5 million, the number of new infections in 2011 was 20 percent lower than in 2001.
Deaths from AIDS fell to 1.7 million in 2011, down from a peak of 2.3 million in 2005 and from 1.8 million in 2010.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the most severely affected region with almost one in every 20 adults infected, nearly 25 times the rate in Asia, there are also almost 5 million people with HIV in South, South-East and East Asia combined.
“Although AIDS remains one of the world’s most serious health challenges, global solidarity in the AIDS response during the past decade continues to generate extraordinary health gains,” the report said.
It said this was due to “historic success” in bringing HIV programs to scale, combined with the emergence of new combination drugs to prevent people from becoming HIV infected and from dying from AIDS.
Since 1995, AIDS drug treatment – known as antiretroviral therapy – has saved 14 million life-years in poorer countries, including 9 million in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.
Some 8 million people were being treated with AIDS drugs by the end of 2011, a 20-fold increase since 2003. The U.N. has set a target to raise that to 15 million people by 2015.
Scientific studies published in recent years have shown that getting timely treatment to those with HIV can also cut the number of people who become newly infected with the virus.
UNAIDS said the sharpest declines in new HIV infections since 2001 were in the Caribbean and in sub-Saharan Africa – where new infections were down 25 percent in a decade.
Despite this, sub-Saharan Africa still accounted for 71 percent of people newly infected in 2011, underscoring the need to boost HIV prevention efforts in the region, UNAIDS said.
HIV trends are a concern in other regions also, it said.
Since 2001, the number of new HIV infections in the Middle East and North Africa was up more than 35 percent from 27,000 to 37,000, it said, and evidence suggests HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia began increasing in the late 2000s after being relatively stable for several years.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – A New York City police officer pleaded not guilty on Monday to conspiring to kidnap, torture, cook and eat women.
Gilberto Valle, 28, of Forest Hills, Queens, was charged and arrested in October with conspiring to cross state lines to kidnap the women and with illegally accessing a federal database.
Prosecutors said some of the women were acquaintances of Valle but it was not clear if he knew or had met all of them. Valle, who an official said had no prior criminal record, was not charged with carrying out any of his suspected plans.
At a brief hearing Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Valle’s attorney, Julia Gatto, told the judge she would again seek to have her client freed on bail after two other judges previously denied her request.
Investigators uncovered a file on Valle’s computer containing the names and pictures of at least 100 women, and the addresses and physical descriptions of some of them, according to the criminal complaint. It said he had undertaken surveillance of some of the women at their places of employment and their homes.
Gatto argues that Valle, a 6-1/2 year NYPD veteran, was all talk and should be released on bail.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The case is U.S. v. Gilberto Valle, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 12-cr-847.
(Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
(Reporting by Solarina Ho)
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