Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.

Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.

Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.

Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.

The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.

State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.

It was not open to international journalists.

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Mall shooter quit job, was going to Hawaii

In the days before he stole a semiautomatic weapon and stormed into an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people in a shooting spree, Jacob Roberts quit his job, sold his belongings and began to seem "numb" to those closest to him.

Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, told ABC News today that the man who donned a hockey mask and opened fire on Christmas shoppers was typically happy and liked to joke around, but abruptly changed in the week before the shooting.

Roberts unleashed a murderous volley of gunfire on the second floor of the Clackamas Town Center on Tuesday while wearing the mask and black clothing, and carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon and "several" magazines full of ammunition. He ended his barrage by walking down to the first floor of the mall and committing suicide.

READ: Why Mass Shooters Wear Masks

"I don't understand," Sansburn said. "I was just with him. I just talked to him. I didn't believe it was him at all. Not one part of me believed it."

She said that in recent weeks, Roberts quit his job at a gyro shop in downtown Portland and sold all of his belongings, telling her that he was moving to Hawaii. He had even purchased a ticket.

She now wonders if he was really planning to move.

"He was supposed to catch a flight Saturday and I texted him, and asked how his flight went, and he told me, 'oh, I got drunk and didn't make the flight,'" she said. "And then this happens... It makes me think, was he even planning on going to Hawaii? He quit his job, sold all of his things."

Roberts described himself on his Facebook page as an "adrenaline junkie," and said he is the kind of person who thinks, "I'm going to do what I want."

Roberts, who attended Clackamas Community college, posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page firing a gun at a target. His Facebook photo showed graffiti in which the words "Follow Your Dreams" were painted over with the word "Cancelled."

Sansburn said the pair had dated for nearly a year but had broke up over the summer. Throughout their relationship, she had never seen him act violently or get angry.

"Jake was never the violent type. He didn't go out of his way to try to hurt people or upset people. His main goal was to make you laugh, smile, make you feel comfortable. I never would have guessed him to do anything like this ever," she said.

"You can't reconcile the differences. I hate him for what he did, but I can't hate the person I knew because it was nothing like the person who would go into a mall and go on a rampage. I would never associate the two at all."

The last time she saw him, which was last week, he "seemed numb," and she didn't understand why, she said.

"I just talked to him, stayed the night with him, and he just seemed numb if anything. He's usually very bubbly and happy, and I asked him why, what had changed, and said 'nothing.' He just had so much he had to do before he went to Hawaii that he was trying to distance himself from Portland," Sansburn said.

Sansburn said the last message she sent Roberts was a text, asking him to stay, and saying she didn't want him to leave. He replied "I'm sorry," with a sad face emoticon.

Police are still seeking information about what Roberts was doing in the days leading up to the shooting. They said today they believe Roberts stole the gun he used in the rampage from someone he knew. They have searched his home and his car for other clues into his motive.

Read ABC News' full coverage of the Oregon Mall Shooting

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said earlier today on "Good Morning America" that he believes Roberts went into the mall with the goal of killing as many people as he could.

"I believe, at least from the information that's been provided to me at this point in time, it really was a killing of total strangers. To my knowledge at this point in time he was really trying, I think, to kill as many people as possible."

Sansburn said she has not talked to police.

Mall Shooter Told Ex-Girlfriend He Was Moving to Hawaii

Roberts' mother, Tami Roberts, released a statement through a friend today saying she had no explanation of her son's behavior.

"Tami Roberts wishes to express her shock and grief at the events at Clackamas Town Center Tuesday," the friend said, reading from a statement outside of Tami Roberts' home.

The friend noted that Tami raised Roberts, but was not his biological mother. Sansburn said that Roberts' biological mother had died when he was very young.

"She has no understanding or explanation for her son's behavior...It's so out of his character," the friend said.

Officials from the Oregon City School District, where Roberts graduated from Oregon City High School, were also surprised at the news.

"This news is very shocking to those who knew Jacob while at OCHS. He was known as a soft spoken and polite young man who was often eager to be helpful. The motive for such a horrific act is likely to remain a mystery to us all," the district said in a statement.

Roberts had attended the school for only his senior year. He spent three years at Milwaukie High School, where officials described him as an "average student with average grades."

He had no disciplinary record at the school, but chose to transfer for his senior year to Oregon City High School, according to Joe Krumm, an administrator at the North Clackamas School District. Krumm did not know why he transferred, and said that in all, Roberts did not stand out in memory for anything in particular.

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Music, comedy strike defiant tone at Sandy concert

NEW YORK (AP) — Music and comedy royalty struck a defiant tone in a benefit concert for Superstorm Sandy victims on Wednesday, asking for help to rebuild a New York metropolitan area most of them know well.

The sold-out Madison Square Garden show was televised, streamed online and aired on radio all over the world. Producers said up to 2 billion people could experience the concert live.

“When are you going to learn,” comic and New Jersey native Jon Stewart said. “You can throw anything at us — terrorists, hurricanes. You can take away our giant sodas. It doesn’t matter. We’re coming back stronger every time.”

Jersey shore hero Bruce Springsteen set a roaring tone, opening the concert with “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Wrecking Ball.” He addressed the rebuilding process in introducing his song “My City of Ruins,” noting it was written about the decline of Asbury Park, N.J. before that city’s renaissance over the past decade. What made the Jersey shore special was its inclusiveness, a place where people of all incomes and backgrounds could find a place, he said.

“I pray that that characteristic remains along the Jersey shore because that’s what makes it special,” Springsteen said.

He mixed a verse of Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” into the song before calling New Jersey neighbor Jon Bon Jovi to join him in a rousing “Born to Run.” Springsteen later returned the favor by joining Bon Jovi on “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”

Adam Sandler hearkened back to his “Saturday Night Live” days with a ribald rewrite of the oft-sung “Hallelujah” that composer Leonard Cohen never would have dreamed. The rewritten chorus says, “Sandy, screw ya, we’ll get through ya, because we’re New Yawkers.

Sandler wore a New York Jets T-shirt and mined Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, the New York Knicks, Times Square porn and Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez for laugh lines.

The music lineup was heavily weighted toward classic rock, which has the type of fans able to afford a show for which ticket prices ranged from $ 150 to $ 2,500. Even with those prices, people with tickets have been offering them for more on broker sites such as StubHub, an attempt at profiteering that producers fumed was “despicable.”

“This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” Rolling Stones rocker Mick Jagger said. “If it rains in London, you’ve got to come and help us.”

In fighting trim for a series of 50th anniversary concerts in the New York area, the Stones ripped through “You’ve Got Me Rockin’” and “Jumping Jack Flash.

Jagger wasn’t in New York City for Sandy, but he said in an interview before the concert that his apartment was flooded with 2 feet of water.

Eric Clapton switched from acoustic to electric guitar and sang “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” and “Crossroads.” New York was a backdrop for Clapton’s personal tragedy, when his young son died after falling out of a window.

Roger Waters played a set of Pink Floyd’s spacey rock, joined by Eddie Vedder for “Comfortably Numb.” Waters stuck to the music and left the fundraising to others.

“Can’t chat,” he said, “because we only have 30 minutes.”

The sold-out “12-12-12″ concert was being shown on 37 television stations in the United States and more than 200 others worldwide. It was to be streamed on 30 websites, including YouTube and Yahoo, and played on radio stations. Theaters, including 27 in the New York region and dozens more elsewhere, were showing it live.

Proceeds from the show will be distributed through the Robin Hood Foundation. More than $ 30 million was raised through ticket sales alone.

The powerful storm left parts of New York City underwater and left millions of people in several states without heat or electricity for weeks. It’s blamed for at least 125 deaths, including 104 in New York and New Jersey, and it destroyed or damaged 305,000 housing units in New York alone.

Other concert performers were to include Long Islander Billy Joel (“New York State of Mind”) and New Yorker Alicia Keys (“Empire State of Mind”). Even Liverpool’s Paul McCartney has a New York office, Hamptons home and a wife, Nancy Shevell, who spent a decade on the board of the agency that runs New York‘s public transit system.

E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt said backstage that musicians are often quick to help when they can.

“Yes, it’s more personal because literally the Jersey shore is where we grew up,” he said. “But we’d be here anyway.”

The concert came a day after the death of sitar master Ravi Shankar, a performer at the 1971 “Concert for Bangladesh” considered the grandfather of music benefits. That concert also was in Madison Square Garden.

___

AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu in New York contributed to this report.

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Venezuela’s Chavez in delicate state after surgery

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in stable but delicate condition after his latest cancer surgery, the government said on Wednesday in a somber assessment that could indicate an end to his 14-year rule.

“Having been through a complex and delicate surgery, he is now in an equally complex post-operation process,” Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said on national television. “We trust in his strength.”

In an earlier broadcast, Vice President Nicolas Maduro spoke of “difficult” times ahead, urging Venezuelans to pray for Chavez and to keep faith that he would come home soon from Cuba, where he underwent the surgery on Tuesday.

Chavez’s downturn has opened gaping uncertainty about the future of his self-styled socialist revolution in a nation of 29 million people with the world’s largest oil reserves.

A frequent critic of the United States, Chavez has spearheaded a resurgence of the left in Latin America, galvanized a global “anti-imperialist” alliance from Iran to Belarus and led a decade-long push by developing nations for greater control over natural resources.

A close ally, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa, sought to put a more positive spin on the cancer operation, telling reporters in Quito that Chavez was doing all right.

“He is fine, even though the surgery was complex,” Correa said, but he added that the future was not certain.

“If the gravity of his illness meant he could not continue to lead Venezuela, the revolutions must continue, in Venezuela, in Ecuador, in Argentina, in Bolivia.”

At home, Chavez has won cult-like status among the poor with his charisma and oil-financed largesse from health clinics to free homes. But he has alienated business with frequent nationalizations and angered many Venezuelans by putting ideological crusades over basic services.

Maduro, whom Chavez has named as a preferred successor should he be incapacitated, offered no medical details on Wednesday but urged Venezuelans to stay hopeful.

PRAYER VIGILS

Supporters have been holding prayer vigils, while opponents also sent Chavez best wishes for a successful recovery. Senior government ministers and military commanders attended a Mass to pray for Chavez’s health, which was broadcast live on state TV.

“He is fighting for life,” the head of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, told the congregation.

In a plaza near the center of Caracas, neighbors came to write well wishes for Chavez on a white cloth. But government officials appeared to be cautiously preparing the president’s supporters for the worst.

Villegas said in a statement that Venezuelans should view Chavez’s situation like that of an ill relative and have faith that he will return.

“If he doesn’t, our people should be ready to understand. It would be irresponsible to hide the delicate nature of the moment we are currently living,” he wrote.

One government source said Chavez was in critical condition early on Wednesday, but since then his vital signs had improved.

State media ran hours of tributes to the president, and of rank-and-file supporters around the country gushing with admiration. “He is a second Jesus Christ,” one woman beamed.

The stakes also are enormous for allies around Latin America and the Caribbean who rely on generous oil subsidies and other aid from Chavez. President Raul Castro’s communist government in Cuba is particularly vulnerable because of its dependence on more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day from Venezuela.

Wall Street investors are also watching closely in the hope that Chavez’s intransigent socialism will give way to a more market-friendly administration.

Venezuela’s global bonds, which usually rise on bad news about Chavez’s health, saw a muted reaction on Wednesday.

The operation was Chavez’s fourth in Havana since mid-2011 for a recurring cancer in the pelvic region.

Opposition leaders have criticized the government for lack of transparency, pointing out that other Latin American leaders provided detailed reports of both diagnoses and treatments.

Chavez is due to start a new, six-year term on January 10 after his October re-election.

REGIONAL ELECTIONS LOOM

The Chavez health saga has eclipsed the buildup to regional elections on Sunday that will be an important test of political forces in Venezuela at such a pivotal moment.

Of most interest in the 23 state elections is opposition leader Henrique Capriles’ bid to retain the Miranda governorship against a challenge from former Vice President Elias Jaua.

Polls have been mixed with one showing Capriles way ahead and another giving Jaua a 5 percentage point lead.

Capriles must win if he is to retain credibility and be the opposition’s presidential candidate-in-waiting should Chavez’s cancer force a new election. Even though it may be premature, many Venezuelans already are asking themselves what a Capriles versus Maduro presidential election would be like.

Capriles, who favors a Brazilian-style government promoting open markets with firm welfare safeguards, won 44 percent in the election, a record 6.5 million votes for the opposition.

Although past polls have shown Capriles more popular than all of Chavez’s allies, that would not necessarily be the case against a Maduro candidacy imbued with Chavez’s personal blessing and with the power of the Socialist Party behind him.

(Additional reporting by Marianna Parraga, Eyanir Chinea, Mario Naranjo, Efrain Otero and Daniel Wallis in Caracas, and Eduardo Garcia in Quito.; Editing by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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New Flickr iPhone app to compete with Instagram and Twitter with 16 filters

Hot on the heels of its email redesign, Yahoo (YHOO) announced on Wednesday that it has completely redesigned the Flickr iPhone app. The new app borrows heavily from Instagram and focuses on what makes Flickr special: photos and communities. Yahoo’s new Flickr app also includes 16 filters with their own fancy names to go head-on with Instagram and Twitter’s recently updated app that added eight filters. Users can now access the Flickr app with numerous accounts including Facebook (FB) and Google (GOOG) and photos can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or via email. The new Flickr app is available for free on iPhone but to our disappointment, there isn’t an iPad-optimized version.

Ellis Hamburger from The Verge penned an interesting editorial on how Twitter misses the mark by simply adding filters to its app without having the close community that makes Instagram so addictive. Led by CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo seems aware that mobile apps thrive on the communities that sprout up. The new Flickr app’s emphasis on how the images are displayed and shared in visually appealing and digestible thumbnails suggests Yahoo finally understands mobile.

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The Hobbit: Richard Armitage Talks Preparations For Playing Thorin Oakenshield

British actor Richard Armitage admitted it wasn’t a walk in the park to play a J.R.R. Tolkien character in Peter Jackson’s reimagining of “The Hobbit,” the first installment of which is on its way into theaters.

Upon touching down in New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot, the cast had a lot of character preparation to do.

PLAY IT NOW: Martin Freeman Discusses The Hobbit’s ‘Good Chemistry’ & Playing Bilbo Baggins

“We arrived in February 2011 and we went straight into a training program, which was called ‘Dwarf Bootcamp,’ which was literally boots — these huge boots. We learned how to walk, we wrestled with each other, we did archery together, we did sword fighting, hammer fighting, horse riding — everything you could possibly think of,” Richard, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the film told Access Hollywood at the film’s junket.

In addition, the cast, which includes his former “Cold Feet” co-star James Nesbitt as Bofur, found ways to get to know each other better off set.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — New York City Premiere

“We went round to each other’s houses and we cooked food together, we went to the pub and got drunk together, so there was an incredibly great bonding time between the dwarves,” he said.

Richard had plenty of experience sword fighting and horse riding in the BBC America series “Robin Hood,” but it was something else that came in handy during the long days on set.

“I’d done a number of shows where I’d had to use sword fighting and I’d also done horse riding. I’d also pulled guns out of my pocket. That was less useful,” he laughed, likely referring to his recent role in the PBS-import series “MI-5,” where he played a British spy. “But, yeah, you draw on everything. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so the vocal work was really useful to kind of pull that from there. I’d worked in a circus, there were… all sorts of things that were really useful, but the one thing that I do have — for lack of talent — is stamina and that’s the one thing I think everybody needed on this job.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Meet ‘The Hobbit’ Cast!

An imagination was useful also, but Richard said what turned out on the big screen was still wilder – and more beautiful – than he dreamed of.

“So many moments… Actually, apart from the eagles — which every single time I’ve seen this film absolutely blows my mind and I can barely keep the tears back and [it has] nothing to do with the pathos of the scene, just that feeling of flight moves me — is the throne of Aragorn, in the beginning of the prologue,” he told Access of the moment that moved him most. “When it got to [filming] that scene, I walked on and… it was just a green cross on the floor with a tiny green chair… [But in the film], they just made this incredible, almost space aged, sort of suspended seat in the middle of this stalagmite. It just blows my mind when I see that.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Brit Pack: Hot Shots Of Stars From The UK!

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters on December 14, 2012, followed by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” on December 13, 2013 and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” on July 18, 2014.

– Jolie Lash

Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Gunman kills 2, then self in Oregon mall rampage

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families. The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital.

Rhodes described the shooter as an adult male.

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man in a white hockey mask and bulletproof vest tore through the Macy's, food court, and mall hallways firing rounds at shoppers beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT today.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the busy mall full of holiday shoppers after the shooting began.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

The gunman entered the mall through a Macy's store, ran through the upper level of Macy's and opened fire near the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after another, with what is believed to be a black, semiautomatic rifle, according to witness reports.

Katie Tate said she was in the parking lot of the mall when she saw the shooter run by, wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun, headed for the Macy's.

"He looked like a teenager wearing a gun, like a bullet-proof vest and he had a machine, like an assault rifle and a white mask and he looked at me," she said.

Witnesses described the shooter as being on a mission and determined, looking straight ahead. He then seemed to walk through the mall toward the other end of the building, shooting along the way, according to witness reports.

Those interviewed said that Macy's shoppers and store employees huddled in a dressing room to avoid being found.

"I was helping a customer in the middle of the store, her and her granddaughter and while we were looking at sweatshirts we heard five to seven shots from a machine gun fire just outside my store," Jacob Rogers, a store clerk, told ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland.

"We moved everyone into the back room where there's no access to outside but where there's a camera so we can monitor what's going on out front," Rogers said.

Evan Walters, an employee at a store in the mall, told ABC News Radio that he was locked in a store for his safety and he saw two people shot and heard multiple gunshots.

"It was over 20, and it was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises," he said. "We're next to the food court here and we hear pops and loud noises all the time, but we don't -- nothing like that. It was very definite gunshots."

Police are tracing the weapon used in the shooting.

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Spice Girls take stage at musical premiere

LONDON (Reuters) – The Spice Girls took to the stage on Tuesday after the world premiere of a new musical loosely based on their meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s, earning huge cheers from an audience that only really got going at the encore.

“Viva Forever!” was the brainchild of producer Judy Craymer, whose “Mamma Mia!” musical based on the hits of ABBA has earned nearly $ 2 billion worldwide and spawned a hit movie starring Meryl Streep.

She teamed up with British comedian Jennifer Saunders to create a story about the central character Viva, a sprightly teenager who, along with her friends, gets into the final stages of a TV singing contest closely resembling “The X Factor”.

To boost flagging audience figures – a nod to “The X Factor”s real-life ratings woes in Britain this season – their “mentor” springs a surprise and throws out three members of the band to leave Viva on her own.

What follows is part morality tale examining what is more important – friends, family or fame – and part satire on reality television, including a callous, Simon Cowell-like producer.

“We love you Judy!” said Geri Halliwell at the end of the show, which closed with a romp through some of the Spice Girls‘ biggest hits including “Spice Up Your Life”.

“Thank you for making the Spice Girls‘ dream come true,” Halliwell added.

Halliwell was joined on stage by Victoria Beckham, Melanie Brown, Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm, who together stormed the charts in the 1990s and put “girl power” on the map.

Beckham, who arrived at the London premiere after her ex-bandmates, sat with her soccer star husband David and three sons, who clapped along to the music during the final medley.

NATIONAL TREASURES

Now all young mothers in their late 30s and early 40s, The Spice Girls are still affectionately known by the nicknames they adopted in the band – Posh (Beckham), Scary (Brown), Baby (Bunton), Sporty (Chisholm) and Ginger (Halliwell).

They were hailed as modern-day feminists by some and dismissed as vacuous pop princesses by others, but their success is beyond doubt. They sold 55 million records, had nine British No. 1 singles and three back-to-back Christmas No. 1s.

The band broke up around 12 years ago, and internal bickering among the members was long the delight of Britain’s celebrity-obsessed tabloids.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the bust-ups and hissy fits, the group has been united in its backing of the new musical, and underlining the Spice Girls‘ lasting popularity they played a major part in the closing ceremony at the London Olympics.

Paul Taylor, writing in the Independent newspaper, gave the musical two stars out of five in his review.

“The Spice Girls‘ songs, with their clever hooks and catchy rhythms, are better at projecting an attitude than fleshing out a dramatic situation,” he wrote, describing Saunders’ story as “charmless”, “messy” and “lackluster”.

“Not only does her script rarely give you that necessary gleeful sense of expectancy about where the songs are going to be shoe-horned in, but it’s embarrassingly derivative of ‘Mamma Mia!’ and looks way past its sell-by date in its utterly surprise-free satiric swipe at ‘X Factor’.”

Saunders said before the show that she considered herself the “sixth” Spice Girl.

“We used to travel around everywhere to see them and they were so great with my kids,” said the 54-year-old, best known for playing a self-absorbed, eccentric mother in the popular British comedy series “Absolutely Fabulous”.

“The thought of a Spice Girls musical written by somebody else was not acceptable,” she told the Daily Mirror newspaper. “Because I was so close to them, I couldn’t let it slip through my fingers.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Jill Serjeant)

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Lilly likens Alzheimer’s race to 1920s insulin quest

(Reuters) – Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co is confident it will do for Alzheimer’s patients what it did almost a century ago for diabetics – find a breakthrough treatment, even though skeptics say it could take years.

“We are on the cusp here of writing medical history again as a company, this time in Alzheimer’s disease,” Jan Lundberg, Lilly’s research chief, said in an interview.

Just as the Indianapolis-based company made history in the 1920s by producing the first insulin when type 1 diabetes was a virtual death sentence, Lundberg said he is optimistic that the drugs Lilly is currently testing could significantly slow the ultimately fatal memory-robbing disease.

“It is no longer a question of ‘if’ we will get a successful medicine for this devastating disease on the market, but when,” said Lundberg, 59.

To be sure, companies often tout drugs in the pipeline that never make it to market. Lundberg’s degree of confidence is striking given that Lilly’s most closely watched experimental drug – solanezumab – failed two big late-stage studies earlier this year. Analysts said the drug still has a slight chance of approval because it delayed memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients with mild symptoms – something no other drug has ever done.

Lilly desperately needs new big-selling medicines to replace lost sales of several of its biggest products that now face competition from cheaper generics. A successful Alzheimer’s drug could bring in billions of dollars each year.

An estimated 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer’s, the biggest cause of dementia. More than 35 million people worldwide are believed to have dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and those numbers are expected to rise as more countries see lifespans increase. But truly effective treatments have eluded researchers.

“Alzheimer’s is fatal, ultimately with no survivors, so we are in desperate need for an effective therapy,” said Dr. Ronald Petersen, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Mayo Clinic. “Is Lilly poised to make that contribution? I don’t know. But they are pursuing very good options.”

Petersen said Alzheimer’s may be more complex than diabetes, and thus harder to make quick strides against, as Lilly did with insulin. “There may not be a silver bullet. We’ve had so many failures of Alzheimer’s drugs, so we don’t want to be inappropriately optimistic.”

THE WAIT FOR APPROVAL

And even as Wall Street looks for an Alzheimer’s treatment that will deliver blockbuster revenues, many remain cautious.

“Lilly is one of the leaders, but this is going to take a lot longer than we all want it to,” said Cowen and Co analyst Steve Scala. “I doubt a drug will have a meaningful impact on the course of the disease for the next five years.”

Lilly also faces competition from other drugmakers like Merck & Co and Roche Holding AG that have promising Alzheimer’s compounds that could reap annual sales in the billions of dollars.

Lilly is ahead of other drugmakers in Alzheimer’s research after solanezumab, in Phase III trials, was shown in August to slow cognitive declines in patients with mild symptoms of the disease. But the drug, given by intravenous infusion, failed its overall goal of delaying cognitive and physical decline in the larger group of patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s.

Industry analysts said Lilly might ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve solanezumab only for patients with mild Alzheimer’s. But the FDA would likely require new trials for that narrower population of patients with mild disease, analysts said.

Leerink Swann analyst Seamus Fernandez said a new trial would likely take three years, but that solanezumab could generate annual sales of up to $ 7 billion if approved and become Lilly’s biggest source of earnings growth.

Lundberg, who joined Lilly in early 2010 after heading research for a decade at British drugmaker AstraZeneca, would not say whether Lilly would seek approval of solanezumab, based on already completed trials.

Lundberg noted that test results were mixed for solanezumab. “What we saw was a slowing of cognitive decline — the memory problem — while the activities of daily living were much less affected.”

But he said solanezumab’s results were impressive nonetheless, especially compared with a similar drug from Pfizer Inc, called bapineuzumab, that failed in large closely watched trials over the summer. Both drugs target toxic plaques in the brain made of a protein called amyloid.

“We have an agent that was safer and also showed a statistically significant benefit” against mild Alzheimer’s, he said.

A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY

Some researchers believe far earlier use of solanezumab, and other drugs that target amyloid, could prevent symptoms of the disease. One such prevention study will begin next year at Washington University in St. Louis, and includes use of solanezumab.

Lundberg was cautiously optimistic about Lilly’s mid-stage trials of a different oral class of Alzheimer’s drugs called beta secretase inhibitors — or BACE inhibitors — which work by blocking production of amyloid.

In small earlier trials, Lilly’s experimental drug cut levels of amyloid beta in cerebrospinal fluid by 60 percent. A similar drug from Merck & Co lowered levels by about 90 percent in a separate Phase 1 trial. Each company claims to be ahead of the other in the potentially lucrative race to develop the first approved BACE inhibitor.

Excitement about the class of drugs intensified in July, when researchers in Iceland identified a mutation in a gene that slows the body’s production of beta secretase, Lundberg said. Those aged 85 and older with the beneficial mutation were 81 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than others in that age group.

Lilly and Merck are expected to complete their mid-stage trials by early 2014, and show whether their BACE inhibitors are safe.

“This category could be enormous,” said Leerink Swann’s Fernandez, estimating that a successful drug could capture as much revenue – $ 10 billion – annually as some of the most successful cholesterol drugs.

“We’re looking at multi-billion opportunities because of desperation and the cost of treating this disease,” he said.

(Reporting By Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Leslie Adler)

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Facebook helps FBI bust cybercriminals blamed for $850 million losses

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and aided by Facebook Inc, have busted an international criminal ring that infected 11 million computers around the world and caused more than $ 850 million in total losses in one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.

The FBI, working in concert with the world’s largest social network and several international law enforcement agencies, arrested 10 people it says infected computers with “Yahos” malicious software, then stole credit card, bank and other personal information.

Facebook’s security team assisted the FBI after “Yahos” targeted its users from 2010 to October 2012, the U.S. federal agency said in a statement on its website. The social network helped identify the criminals and spot affected accounts, it said.

Its “security systems were able to detect affected accounts and provide tools to remove these threats,” the FBI said.

According to the agency, which worked also with the U.S. Department of Justice, the accused hackers employed the “Butterfly Botnet”. Botnets are networks of compromised computers that can be used in a variety of cyberattacks on personal computers.

The FBI said it nabbed 10 people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, New Zealand, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States, executed numerous search warrants and conducted a raft of interviews.

It estimated the total losses from their activities at more than $ 850 million, without elaborating.

Hard data is tough to come by, but experts say cybercrime is on the rise around the world as PC and mobile computing become more prevalent and as more and more financial transactions shift online, leaving law enforcement, cybersecurity professionals and targeted corporations increasingly hard-pressed to spot and ward off attacks.

(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Matt Driskill)

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