Supreme Court weighs deals to delay generic drugs

WASHINGTON — A government attorney urged the Supreme Court to allow authorities to crack down on cash deals among prescription drug makers that delay the introduction of generic drugs and keep consumer prices high.

The so-called pay-for-delay deals, which allow brand-name drug companies to keep cheaper generic drugs off the market for a time, violate antitrust laws, the Federal Trade Commission argued Monday.

"It's unlawful to buy off the competition," said Malcolm Stewart, the deputy solicitor general who represented the FTC and the Justice Department. "It's an agreement not to compete," he said, which is "presumptively illegal."

The FTC said that more than two dozen such deals cost consumers $3.5 billion last year. Companies such as CVS Caremark Corp., Rite Aid Corp., Walgreen Co., Albertson's and Safeway Inc. joined the FTC in urging the court to rein in the deals.

But the FTC's attorney ran into skeptical questions from several justices who said the government's argument ignored the patent rights of the brand-name drug makers. A patent gives a drug maker 20 years to sell a drug exclusively and to earn monopoly profits. So long as the patent it still valid, the brand maker is entitled to keep out competitors, they said.

Justice Antonin Scalia said he did not understand how the brand-name makers would be seen as violating the law if they were "acting within the scope of the patent."

The issue has become complicated because another federal law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, encourages generic makers to enter the market as soon as possible and, in some instances, to challenge the validity of patents. These suits sometimes lead to the settlements that the FTC sees as suspect.

The case before the court illustrates the issue. A company called Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. applied for a patent in 2000 for AndroGel, a topical gel which dispenses synthetic testosterone. The key ingredient — synthetic testosterone — was not covered by a patent, but the patent for the gel extended to 2020.

Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., a generic drug maker, announced plans to market a generic version of the gel. Solvay feared that its profit would fall $125 million a year if a generic version of the gel were on the market, and it sued Watson for patent infringement.

That suit ended after nearly three years with a deal that kept a generic gel off the market until 2015 and paid Watson $19 million to $30 million a year, ostensibly for marketing assistance.

The FTC then sued Watson and Solvay on antitrust grounds, alleging that this was a deal to share monopoly profits and prevent generic competition. But a federal judge and the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected the complaint, saying the brand-name firm had acted within its rights under the patent laws.

Jeffrey I. Weinberger, a Los Angeles attorney for Solvay and Watson successor firm Actavis Inc., urged the justices to reject the FTC's antitrust argument and uphold the validity of the settlement. A "good-faith settlement" of a lawsuit is not illegal, he said, so long as the patent itself was valid.

"What if it isn't in good faith?" asked Justice Elena Kagan. What if it's clear "they are splitting the monopoly profits and the person who is injured is the consumer out there?"

Weinberger countered that these settlements are rare and usually arise after an extended period of litigation. They are not automatic or routine, he said.

The justices spent the hour debating how to apply antitrust principles to patent law, and they did not give a strong hint about how they might rule on the issue. A decision is expected by late June.

A similar case is pending before the California Supreme Court. The state attorney general's office intervened in a lawsuit against Bayer over a deal to delay a generic version of its Cipro antibiotic.

"During its monopoly period, a single Cipro pill costs consumers upward of $5.30, while with generic competition, the same pill should have cost only $1.10," the state said.

That appeal is pending.

david.savage@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bearing up in Glendale: Another bruin takes to the city

Just as the memory of "Meatball," Glendale's favorite bear, may be fading, it appears a new bruin has taken to the city.

And this black bear — described as 3 to 4 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds — has a fondness for hummingbird sugar water and a taste for honey. This dietary insight is based on its snacking habits during multiple visits over the course of at least six months to the Chevy Chase Canyon neighborhood.

In some cases, the bear has knocked down hummingbird feeders hanging as high as 8 feet off the ground.

"I was kind of surprised another bear is back," said resident Suzanne Whitman, whose bird feeder was knocked down about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday at her home on Chevy Chase Drive. The bear, she said, visited her home twice last year.

The bear may also be responsible for destroying Herbert Harder's small backyard apiary, which contained seven beehives that he had maintained for 30 years. Harder hasn't replaced the hives and isn't entirely sure he wants to take the risk.

It took only three visits for the bear to decimate Harder's honey crop and population of bees, he said. But the bear's fourth visit was the most devastating, since it tore apart several hives and sent others rolling down a steep hillside.

Harder's hummingbird feeders also found themselves on the bear's menu.

According to residents, the bear visited the Chevy Chase Canyon neighborhood at least seven times last year, including a foray into a trash bin for chicken, rice and baklava.

Other trash runs, door-pawing and sunbathing sightings have prompted police responses, including a helicopter search and the use of air horns and floodlights.

After spending winter in their dens, bears typically leave their hide-outs around spring and begin foraging for food, said Kevin Brennan, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A bear usually starts feeding on grass, but an urban bear may yearn for something a little tastier — and fattier.

Human garbage, Brennan said, is higher in protein fat than a bear's natural diet, making the human food irresistible.

"Bears are smart animals and they go back to those sources," Brennan said.

With a very acute sense of smell, bears will go virtually anywhere and put up with almost anything to reach a source of tasty food, he said.

Though state wildlife officials were aware of a bear's past visits to the Chevy Chase Canyon area, they had not received any recent reports, Brennan said. Still, he added, "they are creatures of habit."

Harder said he wants the bear to be trapped and relocated just like Meatball, who was moved earlier this year to an animal sanctuary in San Diego County after twice being relocated deep within Angeles National Forest.

"He is going to stay here until he destroys everything or hurts someone," Harder said.

The gender of the bear has yet to be verified.

But trapping and relocating doesn't work, Brennan said, noting Meatball's persistence.

"The issue is not the bears. The issue is improper storage of garbage," he said.

Whitman, a neighborhood watch block captain, has urged neighbors to cover their trash bins and to keep small children and animals inside at night.

In her 25 years of living in the canyon, she said she has never before had visits from a bear.

"It's a little too much nature," Whitman said.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

British teen sells mobile news app to Yahoo for $30 million

SAN FRANCISCO — Meet Nick D'Aloisio, the 17-year-old British entrepreneur who just sold his popular news-reading app to Yahoo Inc. for close to $30 million, instantly becoming one of the world's youngest self-made millionaires.

It's the classic Silicon Valley success story of a young software prodigy striking it ridiculously and improbably big. But this time the spotlight is shining on the other side of the pond.

D'Aloisio, who taught himself to write software at age 12, built the free iPhone app Summly — which automatically summarizes news stories for small screens — in his London bedroom in 2011. He was just 15 years old.

Soon he had backing from Horizons Ventures, the venture capital arm of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and big names such as Zynga Inc.'s Mark Pincus and actor Ashton Kutcher.

Before it was pulled from the app store Monday after the announcement of the Yahoo deal, D'Aloisio's app Summly had been downloaded nearly 1 million times. It had deals with 250 online publishers, including News Corp., and 10 employees in London. Not bad for a high school student.

"To me, Yahoo is the best company to be joining right now because it's one of these classic Internet companies," D'Aloisio said in an interview. "With new leadership from Marissa Mayer, Yahoo has a strong focus on mobile and product, and that's the perfect fit for Summly."

Mayer, the former Google Inc. executive who took over the Sunnyvale, Calif., company last summer, has focused on mobile technology to revive Yahoo's lagging fortunes. She has snapped up a number of promising mobile start-ups as much for their personnel as for the innovation.

In D'Aloisio, Yahoo is getting someone who truly thinks and lives in the mobile world.

Rather than browsing the Web by clicking a mouse, more people are connecting to the Internet with their smartphone or tablet, changing what kind and how much information they consume, Yahoo mobile chief Adam Cahan said. Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook and Yahoo are looking to adapt their Internet businesses to hold on to consumers who want easier, faster ways to find what matters to them.

"Summly solves this by delivering snapshots of stories, giving you a simple and elegant way to find the news you want, faster than ever before," Cahan said.

D'Aloisio, who took a break from school for six months to focus full time on Summly, will join Yahoo's London office while continuing his studies in the evenings and living at home with his parents. He says Yahoo plans to integrate Summly into all sorts of mobile experiences.

"The real idea is to take the core of the technology and find different fits for it and make it as ubiquitous as possible on the Web," he said. "We want to take summarization and build beautiful content experiences around it."

He says his parents — his dad is an energy financier, his mother is a lawyer — will help him manage the financial windfall (he says all he wants is a new computer and pair of Nike trainers). But he says he was not driven to the deal by dollar signs.

"Technology has really been the driver behind this whole deal," D'Aloisio said. "I can't wait to see how it plays out at Yahoo."

D'Aloisio is just one of a number of under-21 entrepreneurs who have made millions at a very young age.

Patrick Collison, who took his first computer class at age 8 and entered young scientist competitions as a teen in Ireland, was just 19 when he and his brother John sold their Silicon Valley start-up Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current Media Inc., a deal that made them overnight millionaires.

"It was helpful perspective to have something like that happen very early on," said Collison, who is now co-founder and chief executive of San Francisco payments start-up Stripe. "It shows you that it's not all that big a deal. Yes, it's wonderful to create something that someone is interested in acquiring, and it's nice to have more money than you had before, but really nothing changes. Enjoying what you do on a day-to-day basis is what's important."

The sudden flash of worldwide media attention has been a bit overwhelming, D'Aloisio said. But not in a bad way.

"It's been an absolutely awesome experience," D'Aloisio said. "I'd love to do it again someday with another company."

Spoken like a true entrepreneur.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Email tax may slice spam and scams out of inboxes

SACRAMENTO — The most courageous politician in California — probably the nation — is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak. His gutsy act: proposing that the government tax email.

Yes, sacrosanct, time-gobbling, out-of-control email.

"I got a lot of nasty emails nationally," he says.

"You are making Berkeley look really silly," one person wrote. Another called him "the epitome of a communist — you and all your commy liberal idiots."

Wozniak, however, is certified brainy — a retired nuclear scientist, a futurist who, he admits, may be ahead of his time about taxing email. "It's a real uphill battle."

But a battle worth waging.

Wozniak, 59, suggested taxing email during a recent council meeting as the city went on record opposing the sale of the Berkeley main post office and urging the Postal Service to maintain all its services there.

Postal officials have announced plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays starting in August. Email and online billing have reduced the feasibility of — and need for — six-day snail mail delivery, they say.

An email tax — as part of a broader Internet tax — could raise money to help keep the Postal Service afloat, Wozniak told the council.

"There should be something like a bit tax," he said. "I mean, a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would make, probably, billions of dollars a year.... And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email."

I don't know about taxing gigabits. I'm not even sure what they are.

But email I'm as familiar with as a nagging toothache. I spend way too much of my day, as do many workers who depend on computers, hitting the delete key or — even more time-consuming — routing spam into the junk file and trying to block out the arrogant sender forever.

Often the email is in a foreign language that's all Greek to me. Or it's spinning me on some Atlantic Coast congressional race that is of no interest whatsoever. I'm also not in the market for awnings or pet food or a "tactical robot." And, no, I really don't care about the "Amway Boycott" or that "the National Farmers Union Endorses Raw Milk."

So leave me alone. And stop clogging my inbox.

There also are the scam scum. No, I wasn't aware that I had just won the $25-million online lottery and the check would be sent as soon as I turn over my personal info. Nor am I interested in the woman who wants to "share her love."

You get the idea. I'm not nearly as concerned about keeping snail mail afloat as fending off these spammers and scammers and denying them free access to my work station. Make them pay. Maybe it'll be a deterrent.

If the Postal Service were to receive the tax money, fine.

Or it could be used to place a laptop on every school kid's desk. Or blanket the country with Wi-Fi. Or combat Chinese hackers. Maybe chase after scammers.

Or just to help replace the tax revenue lost by technology putting people out of work. That was the idea of the Canadian economist — Wozniak's inspiration — who first raised the notion of a bit tax back in 1997 in a speech at Harvard Law School.

"Needed: new taxes for a new economy," asserted Arthur J. Cordell, then an information technology advisor for the Canadian government. "The new wealth of nations is to be found in the trillions of digital bits of information pulsing through global networks….

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Excavating a future in Afghanistan

TAGHAR, Afghanistan — In a rugged valley outside Kabul, where mud-walled villages blend into bare scrubland, a team of international mining experts and Afghan trainees set up camp over the winter to probe the region's mineral resources.

Protected by armed guards, they spent three months drilling test holes into the snowcapped peaks, as curious goat- and sheepherders looked on.

"We hit copper damn near everywhere," said Robert Miller, a Colorado-based mining executive recruited by the Pentagon to help advise Afghan authorities on how to develop the country's natural resources. "It's a very encouraging finding."

Studies have found that Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest and most war-torn countries, sits atop hydrocarbon and mineral deposits that could be worth more than a trillion dollars. The Afghan government and its U.S. backers are counting on this largely untapped wealth — including oil, gas, copper, iron, gold and lithium — to bring in cash and create jobs as international assistance begins to wind down.

"Afghanistan needs to develop its geology," said Najibullah Rochi, a 24-year-old geophysicist with the Afghanistan Geological Survey who was getting his first field experience at the Taghar deposit in what is known as the North Aynak mineral zone. "We need jobs and salaries. This is the way."

But industry experts caution that it will take many years and billions of dollars to build the power plants, railway lines and other infrastructure needed to extract and transport commodities from the country's mountainous terrain. Moreover, many of the mineral deposits are in the south and east of Afghanistan, where the Islamist insurgency is strongest.

Afghanistan's first attempts to develop a modern mining industry have been plagued by security threats and rumors of corruption, underscoring the difficulty the country is likely to face in unlocking its mineral riches.

Miller said he had no doubt about the country's potential.

"In my opinion, Afghanistan could replace Chile as the largest exporter of copper," he said. "Can they put it together? That's the trillion-dollar question."

Managed poorly, Afghanistan's mineral riches could instead become a source of more conflict and graft, another example of the "resource curse" that has afflicted countries such as Angola, Cambodia and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The World Bank estimates that 97% of Afghanistan's economy is tied to international military and donor spending. Although the United States and other major donors have pledged not to abandon the country, they are tired of government corruption and have economic difficulties of their own. Support for Afghanistan could fall sharply after most foreign forces leave by the end of next year.

Afghanistan's natural resources appear to represent the country's best hope for self-sufficiency. A report prepared by the Pentagon in 2010, based on research by the U.S. Geological Survey, identified mineral and oil reserves worth nearly $1 trillion. Afghan authorities called that estimate conservative and put the figure at $3 trillion.

They hope to sell the development rights to many of the deposits to international mining companies.

A $3-billion agreement was reached in 2008 with a Chinese consortium to develop a copper deposit in Logar province, south of Taghar. Negotiations are underway with companies in India and Canada for rights to one of the world's largest iron ore deposits, in Bamian province. The government is also completing contracts for major copper, gold and oil concessions.

Wahidullah Shahrani, Afghanistan's minister of mines, said the mining and petroleum sectors could bring in as much as $1.5 billion in annual government revenue, create 150,000 jobs and contribute $5 billion to the economy annually by 2016.

"Not in your wildest dreams," Miller said; it could take 10 to 15 years for major projects to be readied.

Afghans have engaged in small-scale "artisanal" mining for centuries, but the country does not have large commercial operations.

Major construction has not started at the Mes Aynak deposit south of Taghar, a joint venture by the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corp., or MCC, and Jiangxi Copper Co. The site holds ancient Buddhist ruins and artifacts. Archaeologists were given until the end of last year to salvage what they could. But in an interview with The Times, Shahrani said mining would not be allowed to begin until he received clearance from the Ministry of Information and Culture, which he expects by May.

Another reason for the delay is that several villages must be relocated, MCC said in its latest earnings report.

Last month, the government celebrated the completion of a mosque, schools and other infrastructure at a planned relocation site for displaced villagers. But Mullah Sharbat Ahmadzai, a local elder who sits on a community advisory council for the project, said residents who vacated their homes years ago were still waiting for jobs and for land to rebuild on. Now others don't want to cooperate.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Olen Burrage dies at 82; suspect in slayings of Mississippi civil rights workers

Olen Burrage, a farmer and Ku Klux Klan member who owned the Mississippi land where the bullet-riddled bodies of three civil rights workers were found buried in the 1960s, has died. He was 82.

Burrage, who was acquitted on civil rights charges related to the murders, died March 15 at a medical center in Meridian, Miss., the McClain-Hays Funeral Home announced. The cause was not released.

The Ku Klux Klan slaying became one of the most infamous episodes of the civil rights era and led to the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices that kept African Americans from voting.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2013

When the state refused to bring murder charges, the federal government stepped in. The FBI dubbed the investigation "Mississippi Burning," which was later used as the title of a 1988 movie loosely based on the crime.

The murdered men — Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner — all in their early 20s, were freshly trained in voter-registration techniques when they drove into Philadelphia, Miss., on June 20, 1964.

When they were arrested the next day by the sheriff and released after dark, their station wagon was overtaken by a group of men on a rural road. The three workers were severely beaten before they died.

When their bodies were found under an earthen dam on his property, Burrage said he had no idea who would have wanted to kill the young men or how the bodies got there, according to a 1964 article in The Times.

But a 1964 confession to the FBI by Klansman Horace Doyle Barnette, who was convicted in the killings, contradicted that account.

Barnette said Klansmen drove the bodies to a remote location in a 1963 Ford station wagon and met up with Burrage, who directed them to the dam on his farmland.

"Burrage got a glass gallon jug and filled it with gasoline to be used to burn the 1963 Ford" used to transport the bodies, according to Barnette. He also said Burrage proposed using one of his trucking company's diesel trucks to pick up the men who would carry out the burning because "no one will suspect a truck on the road" so late at night.

An FBI agent read Barnette's confession to the jury during the 1967 trial of Burrage and 17 other men on charges of conspiring to violate the civil rights of the three dead men. Burrage was one of eight men acquitted.

The jury deadlocked on charges against a local minister, Edgar Ray Killen, accused of orchestrating the killings. He was charged again in 2005 with killing the three men and convicted on three counts of manslaughter by a state court. Killen is serving a 60-year prison sentence.

Civil rights groups, family members of the victims and other groups have continued to push Mississippi to pursue criminal charges against the original suspects in state court. But they are running out of time. Among the original 18 indicted, only Pete Harris — identified in testimony as a Klan leader — is still alive.

An informant had told the FBI that Burrage had bragged in the days before the killings that his dam would hold plenty of "invading" civil rights workers — a piece of information that caused observers to speculate that retrying Burrage provided the best chance of another conviction in the case.

Norma Bourdeaux, who was on the federal grand jury that indicted Burrage in the 1960s, told the Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson, Miss., that she believed he was guilty.

"A man who has a piece of property doesn't generally have people come in, take a bulldozer and bury three bodies under a dam," she said, "unless he knows about it."

Olen Lavelle Burrage was born March 16, 1930, in Neshoba County, Miss., and lived most of his life there.

In the 1950s, he served in the Marines as a truck mechanic and later began a successful trucking business, which he sold in 1990.

Burrage is survived by his wife of 62 years, Ruth; three children; four siblings; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

news.obits@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

California voters split on Jerry Brown school plans

California voters divided on Gov. Jerry Brown's school plans

SACRAMENTO — California voters have yet to strongly embrace Gov. Jerry Brown's controversial plan to shift money from rich schools to poor ones, an ominous sign as he works to win support for the idea from skeptical lawmakers and the state's powerful teachers unions.

A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll found that 50% of respondents agreed with such a move, to help school districts that serve low-income children and English-language learners.

But a significant minority, 39%, opposed the plan, which is embedded in the governor's budget blueprint and is the centerpiece of his education agenda. Brown has described his bid as "a classic case of justice to unequals."

Support broke along ethnic and socioeconomic lines, with 67% of Latinos backing the proposal, compared with 42% of whites.

Voters solidly endorsed a separate Brown proposal to give school districts more control over the state funds they receive, with 59% in favor. Only 41% approved of a legislative effort to make it easier for local governments to raise more education money through parcel taxes — a priority for many Democratic lawmakers.

In the past, Democrats and their allies in teachers unions have resisted upending the way schools are funded. Brown's most contentious proposal this year would give all districts a base grant, with extra funding for each student who is low-income, struggling with English or in foster care.

"Our future depends not on across-the-board funding, but in disproportionately funding those schools that have disproportionate challenges," he said as he unveiled his plan in January.

With race and class at its core, the proposal could open a thorny debate.

"The challenge for the governor here is to make a case that this is not a divisive issue but a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats" proposal, said Drew Lieberman of the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which conducted the survey in conjunction with the Republican company American Viewpoint.

Lisa Andrews, a Latina from Fresno, approves of the plan. The 47-year-old Democrat grew up in a small Central Valley farming community where her elementary school classmates struggled with English skills.

"If you're going to set tax money aside, then give it to those who would benefit the most from it," she said. "You have to be able to speak English and learn your grammar first, because the other classes are useless if you're not on equal ground" with other students.

On the other side of the issue, Dave Kanevsky, a pollster for American Viewpoint, described the governor's plan as "class warfare applied to schools" because it is framed "in terms of taking from one and giving to another."

Respondent Debra Sexton, 57, a Democrat and retired photographer from Corona, expressed a similar view. She said the idea of giving more money to poor schools at the expense of wealthier ones was fundamentally unfair, particularly to high-performing campuses.

"I don't think those schools should be punished because a lesser school isn't making the grade," she said.

Brown's proposal to give districts more spending flexibility would eliminate dozens of state requirements for specific programs, such as vocational training and summer school, and instead allocate more money to districts with no strings attached.

"Nobody knows better than the local school district," said Johnnie White, a 35-year-old Democrat and cashier from Venice. "It's tough for somebody in Sacramento to say what a kid needs in South L.A. or Hawthorne."

Forty-nine percent of respondents opposed legislation that would ask voters to change the state Constitution to lower the threshold for passage of parcel taxes, from two-thirds to 55% of the vote. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), the measure's author, has touted it as a way to give school districts the power to offset potential losses under Brown's funding plan.

But poll participants were not in the mood for more taxes, after an election in which billions of dollars in new levies were approved to help stave off education cuts. The Democratic and unaffiliated voters who supported Brown's tax-hike proposal in big numbers last November were lukewarm on a parcel-tax change. Republicans were firmly opposed.

"There's enough money there," said Ron Simington, 40, a Republican military contractor from Ramona. "I think it really comes down to mismanagement. The money just needs to be dealt with properly."

Since 2000, when voters lowered the vote threshold for local bonds to fund school construction, the passage rate for those measures increased dramatically. Less than half of the successful measures secured the two-thirds vote that was previously required.

The USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times poll surveyed 1,501 registered voters by telephone March 11-17. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points (4.9 points for the subgroup of Latino respondents).

michael.mishak@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Lil Wayne seizure puts spotlight on rappers' use of 'sizzurp'

The powerful narcotic popped up on the cultural grid around the turn of the millennium. A Texas producer-remixer named DJ Screw paid homage to its woozy, heavy-lidded high by dramatically slowing down beats and vocals to replicate the drug's sleepwalker euphoria.

Among Southern rappers, the chemical mixture — called "sizzurp" on the street — soon became as ubiquitous as gold jewelry.

This wasn't some exotic new hallucinogen. In fact, it was usually mixed with fruit soda and sipped from oversized plastic foam cups. A cough syrup, fortified with codeine and promethazine and bought with a prescription, it was highly addictive — and technically legal.

PHOTOS: A history of 'sizzurp' in song

Over the last dozen or so years, sizzurp has become a quietly pervasive cultural force that has infiltrated the Top 40 by way of the hip-hop genre Chopped and Screwed, pioneered by DJ Screw. The sound has turned up on tracks by elite hit makers including Beyonce, Kanye West and, most notably, dreadlocked rap superstar Lil Wayne, who found an unlikely muse in the drug's chemical composition.

When news that Wayne was hospitalized after suffering a seizure on a music video set March 12, many thought sizzurp might be to blame. Spokespeople for the rapper denied it, and he was released from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center six days after he was admitted. Stress, not substance abuse, caused his hospitalization, said Bryan "Birdman" Williams, co-chief executive of the chart-topping rapper's label Cash Money Records.

But sizzurp has long existed in the shadows of the music industry, and is even suspected in several deaths.

Followers of Lil Wayne (Dwayne Michael Carter Jr.) know well his affection for "sippin' on syrup," as the phenomenon is known.

As far back as 2005, Lil Wayne rapped affectionately about his favored cocktail — sizzurp with fruit soda to mask its unpleasant medicine taste — on the song "Lock & Load": "I'm probably drinkin' that syrup/Thinking I won't slip/Even though I'm leaning like a broken hip."

Sizzurp has also provided a street-cred-bolstering talking point in lyrics for star rappers Rick Ross and Far East Movement. And syrup provoked a minor media frenzy in February, when pop star Justin Bieber was photographed at a party in close proximity to what looked like a bottle of codeine-fortified meds (Bieber has denied taking drugs).

Chopped and Screwed music is front and center on R&B diva Beyonce's newly released single "Bow Down / I Been On." The genre's signature sound — slowing the singer's vocal pitch to a molasses-y growl — is used to showcase Beyonce's artistic risk-taking. As well, hip-hop luminaries Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, T.I. and Drake have made repeated use of the genre's slo-mo phrasing techniques.

That Lil Wayne, one of hip-hop's cash kings, would find escape in something as down-market as prescription cold medication may seem at odds with the genre's blinged-out excesses.

PHOTOS: Rapper Lil Wayne a.k.a. Dwayne Carter

"Codeine is an opiate," said Jane Maxwell, senior research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin's Addiction Research Institute. "When you're sipping on syrup, you're sipping on a synthetic narcotic analgesic."

Lil Wayne is seen guzzling what appears to be sizzurp — also known as "lean," "purp" or "purple drank" thanks to the cough syrup's synthetic pastel hue — in the 2009 documentary film "The Carter." (He sued to block the movie's release, accusing its filmmakers of fraud by intentional misrepresentation, but the suit was thrown out by a judge.)

After serving 242 days on Rikers Island in 2010 for gun possession, Lil Wayne continued to pledge allegiance to sizzurp — never mind probation terms stipulating more prison time should he test positive for drugs prior to November 2013: "I'm purple drank forever," Wayne raps in last year's "Turn On the Lights."

Call it the multiple Grammy-winning rapper's cultural prerogative, a byproduct of his New Orleans upbringing. Within the gritty environment that spawned Lil Wayne and Southern hip-hop, purple drank provides a cheap, legal, often medical-insurance-subsidized alternative to dangerous street drugs like crack and heroin, especially for those below the poverty line, according to "Leaning on Syrup," a report on opioid cough syrup abuse from the Texas Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

Recreational users generally mix two ounces of codeine-promethazine cough syrup with a 12-ounce can of soda to achieve a high. Habitual abusers with a high opioid tolerance have been known to take up to 25 times the recommended dosage over the course of a day.

In a videotaped public service announcement Lil Wayne posted to the Web in 2011, the multi-platinum-selling Louisiana rapper addresses his complex relationship with cough syrup:

"I don't do this to be cool," Lil Wayne explains, holding up a container of promethazine codeine syrup clearly bearing his given name. "I did this because I was sick."

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

France confirms death of Al-Qaida chief Abou Zeid

The death of a top  Al Qaida-linked warlord in combat with French-led troops represents a victory in the battle against jihadists who had a stranglehold on northern Mali. But it is far from the defining blow against a wily enemy that can go underground and regroup to renew itself. Even the fearsome Abou Zeid is replaceable.

A top commander of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Abou Zeid had been in the crosshairs of the French military and their African partners since they moved in to Mali on Jan. 11 to rout radicals seen as a threat to northwest Africa and to Europe. An announcement Saturday by the French president's office that Abou Zeid's death in late February has been "definitively confirmed" ends weeks of speculation about his fate.

Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, an Algerian thought to be 47, was a pillar of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb's southern realm, responsible for the death of at least two European hostages and a leader of the extremist takeover of northern Mali, which followed a coup d'etat a year ago. He joined a succession of radical insurgency movements in Algeria starting in the early 1990s and became known for his brutality and involvement in high-profile hostage-taking.

President Francois Hollande's office said the death of Abou Zeid "marks an important step in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel," the borderlands where the Sahara meets the sub-Saharan jungle, encompassing several nations where radicals are on the rise.

French officials have maintained for weeks that the Abou Zeid was "probably" dead but waited to conduct DNA tests to verify.

But jihadists have shown again and again that they can overcome the death of individual warlords. Even French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said that eliminating leaders "doesn't solve everything."

"It's the entire structure that has to be put down and not this or that leader," he said in an interview with Le Monde earlier this month.

Al Qaida rebounded after commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed. Leaders of jihadist movements in Algeria that gave birth to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, were killed and seamlessly replaced. The top AQIM leader in Mali, with the title Emir of the Grand Sahara, Nabil Makloufi, was quickly replaced after being killed last fall in a road accident, according to Matthieu Guidere, an expert on radical Islam who monitors AQIM and other jihadist movements. The new top emir, Yahya El-Hammam, could now step into Abou Zeid's warlord role, according to one scenario.

Abou Zeid was killed in operations in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains in Mali's far north, the French statement said. The area where mountains meet the desert was Abou Zeid's stronghold — and thought to be where he was keeping four French hostages captured two years ago at a uranium mine in Niger. Their fate is unclear.

The French military says the French-led forces have killed hundreds of extremist fighters in the two-month campaign in Mali, and French officials say they have cornered the Al Qaida-linked groups in a patch of northern mountains.

However, even a clear military success by the French and their African partners in Mali would not guarantee that AQIM will die.

While based in northern Algeria, it has proven extremely mobile, latching on to political instability in the region and arming itself with weapons from Libya. AQIM has seeded ties with other radical Islamic movements like the violent Boko Haram in Nigeria. Last week, AQIM put out a call to jihadists throughout northern Africa to join the fronts in Mali and Algeria — or to stay home, and wage a war of preaching in countries like Tunisia or Morocco to turn the tide against "secularists," according to the SITE Intel Group which monitors jihadist statements.

Interviews with a series of experts on AQIM and other jihadist groups all suggest that a military victory is not the definitive answer to snuffing out jihadist terror, which can change form, move on to new theaters of operation or reignite if the instability it breeds on is not eliminated too.

"The problem doesn't go away by eliminating terrorists," Sajjan Gokel of the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation said in a recent interview. "For every terrorist captured or killed there are at least five other terrorists coming down the assembly line."

One analyst suggested that Abou Zeid's death may lead to greater unity among the various al-Qaida-linked factions.

Jean-Paul Rouiller, director of the Geneva Center for Training and Analysis of Terrorism, describes AQIM's organization as a set of insulated cells under the larger Al Qaida umbrella, which existed independently of each other. The region of Mali — known in the group's parlance as the "emirate of the Sahara" — was divided between units loyal to Abou Zeid and those loyal to his arch-rival Moktar Belmoktar, who led an attack on a gas plant in Algeria in January that left dozens of foreign hostages dead.

Rouiller said El-Hammam will likely take over control of Abou Zeid's katibat, or brigade. He said it was Hammam who had acted as the go-between when Abou Zeid wanted to communicate with Belmoktar.

"Especially if Hammam takes over, there could be a chance for a better coordinated relationship with Moktar Belmoktar," said Rouiller. "I would not be surprised if we see a more united Saharan emirate."

Chad's government claimed that Belmoktar was also killed in fighting in northern Mali, but the claim has not been independently verified.

Mystery surrounds the powerful and shadowy figure of Abou Zeid, even regarding his real name. Along with his nom de guerre, Abou Zeid had an alias, Mosab Abdelouadoud, and nicknames, the emir of Timbuktu, the fabled city that became his fief during the 10-month-long occupation of Mali, and the little emir, due to his diminutive size. But the Algerian press has raised questions about his legal identity — Abid Hamadou or Mohamed Ghedir.

He was viewed as a disciplined radical with close ties to the overall AQIM boss, Abdelmalek Droukdel, who oversees operations from his post in northern Algeria.

Abou Zeid fought with a succession of Islamist insurgency movements trying to topple the Algerian state since 1992. He reportedly joined the brutal, and now defunct, Armed Islamic Group that massacred whole villages in northern Algeria, then joined the Salafist Group for Call and Combat that morphed into al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in 2006 under Droukdel's rule.

An Algerian court tried him in absentia in January 2012, convicting him of belonging to an international terrorist group and sentencing him to life in prison.

Abou Zeid was believed to be the most brutal of the top jihadist leaders in Mali. He held a Frenchman who was executed in July 2010. He's also been linked to the execution of a British hostage in 2009.

In the Sahara, Abou Zeid's reputation for brutality toward hostages outdid that of Belmoktar, who in general allowed the foreigners in his care to receive medicine when needed. Rouiller says that an analysis done by his center of proof-of-life videos released by Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb suggests that Hammam and another jihadist commander, Targui, are just as brutal toward hostages as was Abou Zeid.

"Based upon the analysis of the video sequences, I don't think either Hammam or Targui are more humane — the line will not change."

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Californians show strong support for strict gun control measures

Californians are overwhelmingly in favor of strict gun control measures that impose background checks for all gun purchases and toughen penalties for illegally purchasing or using a gun, as well as enhancing efforts to keep guns away from the severely mentally ill, a new poll has found.

Sweeping majorities of California voters backed a proposed federal ban on the sale of assault weapons. They also backed state proposals to prohibit the possession of large-capacity magazines, background checks for the purchase of ammunition and a requirement that all gun owners be registered, licensed and insured, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

The findings often cut across demographic and political lines: Nine of ten gun owners and slightly more among non-owners favored background checks for all gun purchases. Eighty-seven percent of conservatives shared that position, along with 96% of liberals.

But even in a state that is home to some of the nation's strictest gun-control laws, voters were more closely divided over some measures now being considered by state lawmakers. Those included whether to enact a five-cent tax on every bullet or allow schools to hire armed guards. One measure was a clear loser, as two-thirds opposed arming teachers in order to protect their students.

"Everybody agrees on keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people — criminals and the mentally ill — and on punitive measures against criminal enterprises. Those are no-brainers," said Drew Lieberman of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic polling firm that conducted the survey with the Republican polling company American Viewpoint.

But "when you get to the some of the more … nanny-state-type proposals, you've got a little bit of a difference there."

The findings come three months after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., reignited the gun debate. President Obama set gun control measures as a priority at the start of his second term; the Senate and House have been tussling over whether the federal government should take steps to protect citizens from gun violence or to minimize restrictions on gun owners.

Legislation including an assault-weapons ban championed by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, but on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to exclude the ban and move ahead with legislation focused on more popular elements, such as improving school safety. Expanded background checks and harsher penalties for gun trafficking also are among the proposals that could be voted on in the Senate next month.

In California, legislators are working on a parallel track with a host of other gun control proposals. Among them are the bullet tax, heightened protections for schools and the registration, insuring and licensing of all gun owners. The state already bans assault weapons, has imposed universal background checks and limits the size of ammunition magazines for sale.

Besides the background checks, voters expressed strong support for increasing the penalties for committing a crime with a gun (87%) and increasing the punishment for illegally buying, selling or possessing a gun (85%). Republicans overwhelmingly joined Democrats in supporting both.

Harold Goss, a Republican from Hemet who owns a hunting rifle and a .22-caliber firearm, adamantly supports the right of Americans to own guns. But he also strongly backs background checks and bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

"I believe everyone should have a gun to protect their house and protect their family," he said. "But it doesn't need to be an extreme thing."

Criminals have excessive access to firearms, the 37-year-old said, and no civilian needs to own certain weapons.

"High-capacity magazines, a lot of rounds, it's uncalled for," he said.

Still, Californians seemed divided when matters turned more theoretical. Asked about the role of government in regulating guns, 45% said "common-sense" reforms were necessary, while 46% said the government should better enforce existing laws.

But when asked which deserved more protection — people, from gun violence, or Americans' right to own guns — the gap grew. Just over half said it was more important to protect people from gun violence than to fully protect gun owners, compared to 37% who held the opposite view.

And the positions on specific policy proposals were distinct. Nearly four in five Californians supported requiring a thumbprint and identification to purchase ammunition, including two-thirds of gun owners. The proposal to require gun owners to be registered, licensed and insured won the support of 71%, including half of gun owners.

The proposed federal assault-weapons ban was supported by 62% of voters and a ban on magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds won the support of 58%. Gun owners were split about the assault-weapons ban, and just over half opposed the restriction on high-capacity magazines.

John Swenson, 65, is a gun owner who supports mandatory background checks but opposes both bans as "an infringement on the 2nd Amendment."

"Citizens should have access to guns if they pass background checks," said the retired auto mechanic who lives in Sonora, about 60 miles east of Stockton.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More