Ahead of the Bell: US consumer confidence

WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of Americans’ confidence in the economy likely rose for a second straight month on expectations that business conditions will improve and hiring will pick up.

Economists forecast that the Conference Board, a private research group, will report that its monthly consumer confidence index rose to 72 in October from 70.3 in September, according to a survey by FactSet.

The September reading was the highest since February. That’s when employers added 259,000 jobs and the economic recovery was thought to be strengthening.

The confidence index is widely watched because consumer spending drives about 70 percent of the U.S. economy.

A separate survey issued Friday by the University of Michigan showed that U.S. consumer confidence rose in October to the highest level since September 2007. That was three months before the Great Recession began.

The Conference Board is to issue its report at 10 a.m. Eastern time Thursday. The report had been scheduled for release earlier this week but was delayed because of Superstorm Sandy.

A further gain in consumer confidence could be an encouraging sign for President Barack Obama, who faces re-election Tuesday at a time when the economy is the top issue for most voters.

In September, the survey showed that consumers were more optimistic about the availability of jobs and the outlook for hiring over the next six months.

The government’s employment report for September, issued Oct. 5, showed that employers added a modest 114,000 jobs. But it also showed that job growth in July and August was stronger than first thought.

Economists note some key reasons why consumers have grown more confident. They say higher stock prices and the early stages of a recovery in the housing market have helped boost optimism.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has surged 12 percent this year. Gasoline prices have leveled off after rising for several months.

And a broad increase in home prices is likely giving would-be buyers more confidence. When prices rise, buyers don’t worry so much that a home might lose value after they bought it.

Some economists question whether the higher level of confidence is sustainable. But others note that even a weak economy doesn’t feel so bad to many consumers once it begins to make steady improvement.

Consumers’ confidence might have been rattled by this week’s Superstorm Sandy. Disruptions across U.S. industries will slow the economy temporarily, and some stores and restaurants will draw fewer customers. Some of those losses won’t be made up.

The consumer confidence index has fluctuated sharply this year. It’s fallen five times in the past nine months, hitting a low for the year of 61.3 in August before rising in September.

The index remains well below the reading of 90 that indicates a healthy economy — a level it hasn’t touched since the Great Recession began in December 2007. But it’s far above the all-time low of 25.3 touched in February 2009.

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Syrian air force on offensive after failed truce

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian warplanes bombed rebel targets with renewed intensity on Tuesday after the end of a widely ignored four-day truce between President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces and insurgents.

State television said “terrorists” had assassinated an air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi, in a Damascus suburb, the latest of several rebel attacks on senior officials.

In July, a bomb killed four of Assad‘s aides, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and the defense minister.

Air strikes hit eastern suburbs of Damascus, outlying areas in the central city of Homs, and the northern rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, activists said.

Rebels have been attacking army bases in al-Hamdaniya and Wadi al-Deif, on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan.

Some activists said 28 civilians had been killed in Maarat al-Numan and released video footage of men retrieving a toddler’s body from a flattened building. The men cursed Assad as they dragged the dead girl, wearing a colorful overall, from the debris. The footage could not be independently verified.

The military has shelled and bombed Maarat al-Numan, 300 km (190 miles) north of Damascus, since rebels took it last month.

“The rebels have evacuated their positions inside Maarat al-Numaan since the air raids began. They are mostly on the frontline south of the town,” activist Mohammed Kanaan said.

Maarat al-Numan and other Sunni towns in northwestern Idlib province are mostly hostile to Assad’s ruling system, dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded in an air strike on al-Mubarkiyeh, 6 km (4 miles) south of Homs, where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility.

Opposition sources said the facility had been used to shell Sunni villages near the Lebanese border.

“WE’LL FIX IT”

The army also fired mortar bombs into the Damascus district of Hammouria, killing at least eight people, activists said.

One video showed a young girl in Hammouria with a large shrapnel wound in her forehead sitting dazed while a doctor said: “Don’t worry dear, we’ll fix it for you.”

Syria’s military, stretched thin by the struggle to keep control, has increasingly used air power against opposition areas, including those in the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Insurgents lack effective anti-aircraft weapons.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he will pursue his peace efforts despite the failure of his appeal for a pause in fighting for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

But it is unclear how he can find any compromise acceptable to Assad, who seems determined to keep power whatever the cost, and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels equally intent on toppling him.

Big powers and Middle Eastern countries are divided over how to end the 19-month-old conflict which has cost an estimated 32,000 dead, making it one of the bloodiest of Arab revolts that have ousted entrenched leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The United Nations said it had sent a convoy of 18 trucks with food and other aid to Homs during the “ceasefire”, but had been unable to unload supplies in the Old City due to fighting.

“We were trying to take advantage of positive signs we saw at the end of last week. The truce lasted more or less four hours so there was not much opportunity for us after all,” said Jens Laerke, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva.

The prime minister of the Gulf state of Qatar told al-Jazeera television late on Monday that Syria’s conflict was not a civil war but “a war of annihilation licensed firstly by the Syrian government and secondly by the international community”.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said some of those responsible were on the U.N. Security Council, alluding to Russia and China which have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad.

He said that the West was also not doing enough to stop the violence and that the United States would be in “paralysis” for two or three weeks during its presidential election.

(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Panasonic’s red ink grows, forecasts loss for year

TOKYO (AP) — Panasonic Corp.‘s losses ballooned to 698 billion yen ($ 8.7 billion) for the fiscal second quarter as sales plunged in flat-panel TVs, laptops and other gadgets, and restructuring costs to turn itself around were proving bigger than initially expected.

The red ink, announced Wednesday, proved far worse than the 105.8 billion yen loss racked up for the July-September period last year.

The Osaka-based maker of Viera TVs and Lumix digital cameras revised its full year forecast from an earlier projection for a 50 billion yen ($ 625 million) profit to a massive annual loss of 765 billion yen ($ 9.6 billion).

Panasonic sank into a record loss of 772.2 billion yen ($ 9.6 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2012 — among the biggest in Japan‘s manufacturing history.

Its problems are emblematic of the overall Japanese electronics industry. Panasonic’s longtime rival Sony Corp. racked up a record annual loss of 457 billion yen ($ 5.7 billion) in its fourth straight year of red ink. Sony reports fiscal results on Thursday.

Panasonic’s quarterly sales sank 12 percent to 1.82 trillion yen ($ 22.8 billion) as a global slowdown, the falling price of electronics products and competition from cheaper Asian makers chipped away at sales. Sales in Japan dipped 11 percent, while overseas sales shrank 14 percent.

Panasonic has been trying to expand operations that cater to other businesses, instead of consumers, by beefing up its solar panel and battery divisions, including auto batteries.

But such shifts are expected to take some time, and those sectors have also been slammed by price declines.

Panasonic lowered its sales forecast for the full year through March 2013, to 7.3 trillion yen ($ 91.3 billion), down from an earlier 8.1 trillion yen ($ 101 billion). Even the more pessimistic number falls short of last year’s sales at 7.85 trillion yen.

The company also said it expects to book restructuring expenses of 440 billion yen ($ 5.5 billion) for the year, bigger than the originally estimated 41 billion yen ($ 513 million).

Panasonic and other Japanese makers have struggled despite the popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices as the market, including Japan, has been dominated by Apple Inc. of the U.S. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.

Also Wednesday, Panasonic said it will boost the efficiency of its operations by merging three group companies focusing on mobile phones and network systems.

During the first fiscal half, Panasonic’s sales grew in appliances and automotive systems, but declined in TVs, digital cameras, Blu-ray recorders, mobile phones, printers and semiconductors, according to the company.

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yurikageyama

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“Neighbors,” “Scandal” get full-season orders

NEW YORK, Oct 30 (TheWrap.com) – ABC has given full season orders to the aliens-next-door drama “The Neighbors” and the political drama “Scandal.”

“Neighbors,” a freshman comedy, has benefitted from a Wednesday time slot between “The Middle” and “Modern Family,” ABC’s biggest hit.

“Scandal,” a Shonda Rhimes series that stars Kerry Washington (pictured) as a crisis management specialist, debuted in midseason last year and returned last month for its second season.

The two series are the first to receive full-season pickups from ABC this fall.

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Fresenius Medical Care warns on profits

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s largest dialysis group, cut its estimates for sales and profits this year to take account of the impact of a strong U.S. dollar on earnings outside the United States.

FMC said on Wednesday it now expected 2012 revenue and net profit to be as much as 2 percent below its original forecast of about $ 14 billion and $ 1.14 billion respectively. The company had said previously a deviation of plus or minus 2 percent from its goal was possible.

The group, which dominates the U.S. dialysis clinics market along with rival DaVita Inc., also reported a 3 percent drop in third quarter net income to $ 270 million. This fell short of analysts’ average forecasts of $ 285 million.

The company reports in U.S. dollars because it derives about two thirds of its revenue from North America and the value of its revenues from Europe declines when the dollar rises against the euro.

Equinet Bank analyst Edouard Aubery said it was “quite unusual” for FMC to miss analysts’ forecasts. “We would stay away from the stock today,” Aubery said.

FMC’s shares were down 3.5 percent.

The company also revealed plans to take a $ 70 million one-off charge that will be excluded from its full-year earnings outlook. This mainly relates to FMC’s plans to buy itself out of a fixed-price contract for iron drugs that have become cheaper.

These drugs treat low levels of iron in the body that typically affect dialysis patients.

FMC’s parent company Fresenius, the diversified healthcare group, reported slightly higher than expected adjusted net income on Wednesday, supported by growth at its generic drugs and hospitals divisions.

Adjusted net income in the first nine months of the year rose 21 percent to 682 million euros ($ 885 million). That was above the average estimate of 675 million euros in a Reuters poll.

Fresenius still expects 2012 net income up by between 14 and 16 percent, adjusted for currency swings and excluding the effects of a failed takeover of Rhoen-Klinikum AG.

Fresenius last month raised the full-year profit outlook for its generic infusion drug unit Kabi for the third time this year as it benefits from rivals’ supply shortages.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Andreas Kröner and Maria Sheahan. Editing by Jane Merriman)

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Heseltine issues growth challenge

31 October 2012 Last updated at 04:55 ET

Lord Heseltine, the former Conservative party deputy prime minister, has challenged the government to take bolder action to stimulate the economy.

In a new report, commissioned by Downing Street, he says that people think the UK “does not have a strategy for growth and wealth creation”.

He wants the funds used to support industry to be distributed locally, rather than through central government.

Labour said his message was “a damning indictment” of the government.

His review makes 89 recommendations to help industry. One of its key aims is to move £49bn from central government to the regions to help local leaders and businesses.

The aim, he said, was to devolve power from Whitehall and re-invigorate the big cities that had fuelled the growth and wealth that the UK had experienced in past decades.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I have told it as I see it, but I have told it in a way that is very supportive of the government”

End Quote Lord Heseltine

Chancellor George Osborne said he would “study it [the report] very carefully”.

Lord Heseltine, a former head of the Department of Trade and Industry in the 1980s, said the Government should allocate growth funds to new Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) over the next few years.

He said LEPs’ responsibilities should include wealth creation as well as focus on social provision.

The current climate was “the worst economic crisis of modern times”, he said, arguing that local business and political leaders are best placed to invest the money.

The main points of the report, called No Stone Unturned: In pursuit of growth, include:

• a major devolution of funding


• making a smaller and more skilled government machine


• enhancing the standing of Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) to bring together private and public sectors


• more government leadership for major infrastructure projects


• a role for employers in education

‘Pulsing’

When in office Lord Heseltine was well known for promoting intervention to back business and the regeneration of urban areas.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

This is a war cry from the man whose golden locks and virtuoso performances earned him the nickname Tarzan”

End Quote

The report is presented in a highly individual style, fronted by a cartoon of Lord Heseltine shining a torch under a rock, with the caption “In search of growth”.

He calls it “one man’s vision”, and says “there is opportunity on a grand scale”.

He said that throughout the regions there was excellence in industry, commerce and academia, which should be extended and that cities were “pulsing with energy” that should be unleashed.

He backed the government’s economic strategy, and said it was taking the right path to recovery. But later, in an interview with the BBC, Lord Heseltine said there was “an urgency” about stimulating growth. “Across the world there are emerging economies that want our jobs and our wealth,” he said.

He wanted to “unleash the power of our big cities. London did not make the UK. London has acquired too much power. Cities like Manchester and Birmingham made the UK. We need to mobilise the skills of provincial England,” he told Radio 4′s Today programme. “I want to shove power out of Whitehall, into the provinces.”

Asked whether his conclusions might be at odds with thinking in the Treasury, Mr Heseltine said: “I do not work for the Treasury, I work for George Osborne. And George has been behind this initiative.”

He added: “I have got baggage, they know my views. There are bound to be things where they say, ‘oh my god, here he goes again’. I have told it as I see it, but I have told it in a way that is very supportive of the government.”

‘Challenge received wisdom’

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

He will have his work cut out in convincing ministers of this new approach”

End Quote Brendan Barber TUC

Mr Osborne said the report provided food for thought.

“I wanted Lord Heseltine to do what he does best: challenge received wisdom and give us ideas on how to bring government and industry together. He has done exactly that,” he said.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said he would also be considering the report and would respond in the coming months.

Shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, said aspects of Lord Heseltine’s report chimed with Labour’s own industrial policy.

“Labour has led calls for an active government approach to support business and underpin regional growth – it is good to see Lord Heseltine echoing this in his report. We will examine his proposals and consider which ones we can take forward,” he said.

“We hope that ministers will take Lord Heseltine’s proposals seriously.”

Business backing

Lord Heseltine: “It is a shift and in a sense it is a criticism of Whitehall”

The Institute of Directors (IoD) business group reacted positively to the broad thrust of the report’s proposals.

“We welcome the idea of encouraging more devolution to the local level, and ensuring business has the opportunity to make heard its priorities on local issues,” IoD director general Simon Walker said.

“Business leaders and the various business organisations have long experience of co-operating to encourage a positive business environment in the UK, and we are committed to continuing that work.”

Meanwhile the TUC also backed the report but warned that it needs to be embraced across government in order to make a difference.

“The TUC shares Lord Heseltine’s vision of collaboration between the public and private sectors, with unions and employers working together to promote growth,” said general secretary Brendan Barber.

“But he will have his work cut out in convincing ministers of this new approach, who are going to have to change their attitude towards civil servants, public bodies and unions if they want this strategy to succeed.”

Lord Heseltine will formally launch his report later on Wednesday at an event in Birmingham.

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Cuba’s 2nd city without power, water after Sandy

HAVANA (AP) — Residents of Cuba‘s second-largest city of Santiago remained without power or running water Monday, four days after Hurricane Sandy made landfall as the island’s deadliest storm in seven years, ripping rooftops from homes and toppling power lines.

Across the Caribbean, the storm’s death toll rose to 69, including 52 people in Haiti, 11 in Cuba, two in the Bahamas, two in the Dominican Republic, one in Jamaica and one in Puerto Rico.

Cuban authorities have not yet estimated the economic toll, but the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported there was “severe damage to housing, economic activity, fundamental public services and institutions of education, health and culture.”

Yolanda Tabio, a native of Santiago, said she had never seen anything like it in all her 64 years: Broken hotel and shop windows, trees blown over onto houses, people picking through piles of debris for a scrap of anything to cover their homes. On Sunday, she sought solace in faith.

“The Mass was packed. Everyone crying,” said Tabio, whose house had no electricity, intermittent phone service and only murky water coming out of the tap on Monday. “I think it will take five to ten years to recover. … But we’re alive.”

Sandy came onshore early Thursday just west of Santiago, a city of about 500,000 people in agricultural southeastern Cuba. It is the island’s deadliest storm since 2005′s Hurricane Dennis, a category 5 monster that killed 16 people and did $ 2.4 billion in damage. More than 130,000 homes were damaged by Sandy, including 15,400 that were destroyed, Granma said.

“It really shocked me to see all that has been destroyed and to know that for many people, it’s the effort of a whole lifetime,” said Maria Caridad Lopez, a media relations officer at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Santiago. “And it disappears in just three hours.”

Lopez said several churches in the area collapsed and nearly all suffered at least minor damage. That included the Santiago cathedral as well as one of the holiest sites in Cuba, the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre. Sandy’s winds blew out its stained glass windows and damaged its massive doors.

“It’s indescribable,” said Berta Serguera, an 82-year-old retiree whose home withstood the tempest but whose patio and garden did not. “The trees have been shredded as if with a saw. My mango only has a few branches left, and they look like they were shaved.”

On Monday, sound trucks cruised the streets urging people to boil drinking water to prevent infectious disease. Soldiers worked to remove rubble and downed trees from the streets. Authorities set up radios and TVs in public spaces to keep people up to date on relief efforts, distributed chlorine to sterilize water and prioritized electrical service to strategic uses such as hospitals and bakeries.

Enrique Berdion, a 45-year-old doctor who lives in central Santiago, said his small apartment building did not suffer major damage but he had been without electricity, water or gas for days.

“This was something I’ve never seen, something extremely intense, that left Santiago destroyed. Most homes have no roofs. The winds razed the parks, toppled all the trees,” Berdion said by phone. “I think it will take years to recover.”

Raul Castro, who toured Cuba’s hardest-hit regions on Sunday, warned of a long road to recovery.

Granma said the president called on the country to urgently implement “temporary solutions,” and “undoubtedly the definitive solution will take years of work.”

Venezuela sent nearly 650 of tons of aid, including nonperishable food, potable water and heavy machinery both to Cuba and to nearby Haiti, which was not directly in the storm’s path but suffered flash floods across much of the country’s south.

Across the Caribbean, work crews were repairing downed power lines and cracked water pipes and making their way into rural communities marooned by impassable roads. The images were similar from eastern Jamaica to the northern Bahamas: Trees ripped from the ground, buildings swamped by floodwaters and houses missing roofs.

Fixing soggy homes may be a much quicker task than repairing the financial damage, and island governments were still assessing Sandy’s economic impact on farms, housing and infrastructure.

In tourism-dependent countries like Jamaica and the Bahamas, officials said popular resorts sustained only superficial damage, mostly to landscaping.

Haiti, where even minor storms can send water gushing down hills denuded of trees, listed a death toll of 52 as of Monday and officials said it could still rise. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has described the storm as a “disaster of major proportions.”

In Jamaica, where Sandy made landfall first on Wednesday as a Category 1 hurricane, people coped with lingering water and power outages with mostly good humor.

“Well, we mostly made it out all right. I thought it was going to be rougher, like it turned out for other places,” laborer Reginald Miller said as he waited for a minibus at a sunbaked Kingston intersection.

In parts of the Bahamas, the ocean surged into coastal buildings and deposited up to six feet of seawater. Sandy was blamed for two deaths on the archipelago off Florida’s east coast, including a British bank executive who fell off his roof while trying to fix a window shutter and an elderly man found dead beneath overturned furniture in his flooded, low-lying home.

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Associated Press writers Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana, David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica, and Jeff Todd in Nassau, Bahamas, contributed to this report.

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Peter Orsi is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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Apple software, retail chiefs out in overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook on Monday pushed out the powerful head of the company‘s mobile software products group, sources said, in a major management shake-up that also claimed the recently hired chief of the retail stores division.

Scott Forstall, a long-time lieutenant of late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was asked to leave following years of friction with other top executives and his recent refusal to take responsibility for the mishandling of the Apple’s much-criticized mapping software, people familiar with the situation said.

Sources said Forstall refused to sign a public apology after Apple’s mapping product, which displaced the popular Google Maps on the iPhone and the iPad in September, contained embarrassing errors and drew fierce criticism.

Instead, Cook signed the letter last month.

Forstall will leave the company next year, Apple said in a statement. He did not respond to emails seeking comment.

The executive changes are the biggest at Apple in more than a decade, and mark the first major move by Cook to shape his own management team since Jobs’ death a year ago.

John Browett, who was hired as the company’s retail chief just seven months ago after serving as CEO of U.K. electronics retailer Dixon’s, will also leave Apple.

His efforts to improve profits at the stores had alienated employees and sources close to Apple said Cook had concluded he was simply the wrong person for the job.

“These changes show that Tim Cook is stamping his authority on the business,” added Ben Wood, analyst with CCS Insight, said. “Perhaps disappointed with the Maps issues, Forstall became the scapegoat.”

INCREASING COMPETITION

While Apple has enjoyed enormous success since Cook took the helm, recent stumbles including the Maps debacle and several earnings disappointments have underscored the long-term challenges the company faces in retaining its dominance in the smartphone and tablet markets.

In Google, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft and Samsung Electronics, Apple faces an array of powerful competitors who are determined to own a piece of the exploding mobile-computing market.

“Competition is moving much faster to be more Apple-like,” said Tim Bajarin, president of technology research and consulting firm Creative Strategies.

The executive changes hand substantially more responsibility to Jonathan Ive, Apple’s celebrated industrial design chief, who will now oversee both hardware and software design.

Eddy Cue, a long-serving executive who runs online products, will take charge of Apple Maps and the Siri voice search software. Craig Federighi, who oversees the OSX software that powers the Macintosh computers, will take charge of the iOS software.

The retail stores will report directly to Cook while a search is conducted for a new head of the division.

Shares of Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company by market value, have declined 14 percent in the past month since reaching a 52-week high of $ 705.07 in September.

UPROAR OVER MAPS

People with knowledge of Apple’s inner workings said Forstall’s departure was years in the making, and came to a head with the Apple Maps incident.

A 15-year veteran of the company, Forstall was once considered a possible CEO candidate and is credited with playing a central role in making the iPhone and the iPad two of the most successful consumer electronics products ever.

But Forstall was also considered a hard person to work with, and he alienated other senior executives with his abrasive style, one person familiar with the situation said. This person added that once Jobs passed away, Forstall was left with few defenders at the top of the company.

The fate of the executive, who had 1,000 people directly reporting to him, was sealed by the Maps debacle. Even after a public uproar over the shortcomings and widespread calls for Apple to revert to Google Maps, Forstall would not acknowledge the gravity of the problem, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

Forstall instead likened the situation to the complaints over the antenna in an earlier iPhone and insisted it would blow over without a public mea culpa, the source said. But Cook disagreed, and issued a public apology with his own signature on it after Fortstall would not go along, the source added.

Apple described Monday’s moves as a way to increase “collaboration” across its hardware, software and services business. Forstall will serve as an advisor to Cook until his departure.

Putting the mobile and personal computer software teams together under Federighi could improve operations within the company, particularly as the capabilities and features of smartphones and PCs increasingly converge, said analysts.

Ive, now responsible for design across all products, has played a key role in Apple’s success by imbuing its gadgets with a distinct look and feel.

BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said Ives could now help reinvigorate the look of Apple’s software, which has been slow to evolve.

“If you have two different heads, you have two different fiefdoms,” he said.

QUESTIONS ABOUT BROWETT’S HIRING

Browett, the ousted retail chief, was simply not a good fit for the company, people familiar with the matter said — raising questions about how well the high-profile hire was vetted in the first place.

A source familiar with Browett’s hiring said Apple board member Millard Drexler, a legend in consumer retail who is now CEO of J. Crew, did not even meet Browett before he was hired.

Browett took over from Ron Johnson, who is credited with making the Apple stores as revolutionary a force in retailing as the products have been in computing. Johnson left the company last year to become CEO of J.C. Penny.

Browett angered store staff when he cut some workers’ hours in effort to make staffing more efficient. He also could not improve the slow pace of Apple’s retail expansion in China, a region Cook has said was key to the growth of the company.

(Editing by Jonathan Weber and John Mair)

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Daniel Craig, Bill Murray confirmed for “The Monuments Men”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Daniel Craig and Bill Murray are joining Cate Blanchett and Jean Dujardin in George Clooney‘s ‘The Monuments Men,” as previously reported in TheWrap.

A rep for George Clooney confirmed the castings to TheWrap.

Blanchett will play the role of Rose Valland, an art historian and member of the French resistance. Dujardin, who became the first French actor to win an Oscar for Best Actor earlier this year (for “The Artist”), will play a supporting role in this story about a group of men and women who chased down the stolen art of Europe during World War II.

“The Monument’s Men” is based on the book “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History,” by Robert M Edsel.

Clooney will star in the film and also direct. He is also producing and writing the screenplay with Grant Heslov. Clooney plays George Stout, a U.S. Army officer and leading art conservationist, who repatriated tens of thousands of pieces of art from the Nazis.

The film is shooting in Germany, Austria, Paris and England next spring.

The book focuses on the 11-month period between D-Day and V-E Day.

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Breast-cancer checks save lives despite over diagnosis

LONDON (Reuters) – Breast-cancer screening saves lives even though it also picks up cases in some women that would never have caused them a problem, according to a review published in The Lancet medical journal.

The independent review, commissioned by the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and Britain’s Department of Health, follows fierce international debate about the benefits of routine screening and recent research that has argued it does more harm than good.

“This has become an area of high controversy,” said Sir Mike Richards, the Department of Health‘s National Cancer Director and one of the sponsors of the review.

Critics of routine screening argue that women can be subjected to unnecessary surgery, radiotherapy and medication to treat cancers that would have posed them no risk.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of CRUK, acknowledged the shortcomings of screening but argued that until testing for breast cancer becomes more sophisticated, regular monitoring is the best option.

“Screening remains one of the best ways to spot the very early signs of breast cancer, at a stage when treatment is most likely to be successful,” he said.

“Yet, as the review shows, some cancers will be diagnosed and treated that would never have caused any harm.”

A panel of experts led by University College London professor Sir Michael Marmot concluded that screening prevents about 1,300 deaths per year in Britain but can also lead to about 4,000 women having treatment for a condition that would never have troubled them.

This means that for every death that is prevented, three women are over-diagnosed.

The review panel called for improved information, in health leaflets for instance, to give women a clearer picture of both the benefits and potential harms before they go for a mammogram.

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women in Britain, affecting one in eight at some point in their lives. The country’s screening program invites women aged 50 to 70 for a mammogram every three years and this is being expanded to ages 47 and 73.

Earlier diagnosis and better treatments have improved the survival rate to 77 percent in 2007 from 41 percent in 1971, according to CRUK.

The conclusions of the review are based on analysis of 11 trials that all took place more than 20 years ago, which assessed whether screening resulted in fewer deaths due to the disease, compared to when no screening takes place.

The panel acknowledged the studies had limitations, not least because of their age, but decided the evidence was strong enough to conclude that women invited for screening have a relative risk of dying from breast cancer that is 20 percent less than those who are not invited.

Harpal Kumar said research is under way that could lead to more sophisticated tests that distinguish aggressive cancers from those that are not.

This, coupled with a better understanding of genetic predisposition and lifestyle factors that play a role in breast cancer, could mean more finely targeted screening and less over-diagnosis.

“Until this is possible, we’d recommend women who have had something unusual picked up through screening to seek full advice and discuss all possible options with their breast cancer specialist team,” he said.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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