Ang Lee talks about risks, spirituality of “Life of Pi”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Gay cowboy drama “Brokeback Mountain” may have been considered a risky film to make, but director Ang Lee said his new movie, “Life of Pi,” a 3D exploration of faith about a boy stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger, is his riskiest yet.

The film, which was released in U.S. theaters this week, is adapted from Yann Martel‘s best-selling novel of the same name and was once considered impossible to make.

Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Lee, 58, took on the laborious task of using computer-generated imagery to bring the sensational plot to the big screen, taking a year and a half just to edit the film together.

The director talked to Reuters about the film’s themes, technical barriers and casting an unknown actor in the lead.

Q. Why was “Life of Pi” considered unfilmable?

A. “Because you cannot make the tiger do everything you want to do, you have to use digital. A digital animal, up until two years ago, was not totally realistic yet, let alone in 3D, and then water is pretty difficult.”

Q. Was this your most difficult filming experience yet?

A. “Oh yes. And it was also the longest…there was the technical difficulty and then it is a big movie. And it was across continents, I finally decided to shoot most of it in Taiwan, but we also had to go to India to shoot for two to three weeks. Because you can’t fake Pondicherry, and Munnar. And then we have scenes in Canada.”

Q. But Brokeback Mountain was a risky film too?

A. “No, that wasn’t for me. At least when I made it, I thought it was strictly arthouse and few people would see it. And it’s a lot cheaper (to make). So I didn’t care…And then I got nervous, ‘Oh they are going to lynch me, making a gay cowboy movie, that will go into a shopping mall.’”

Q. It was only after you made it you realized that?

A. “Yes, I was afraid. I was looking around when I walked, when I would go home, to see if anybody was following me. Once it hit the shopping mall I was nervous, actually. My brother is a distributor in Taiwan and I told him not to buy it. He hates me to this day, he is still babbling about it.”

Q. Why choose unknown Suraj Sharma to play Pi?

A. “I wanted someone authentic, and no bad habits, that means you have to train them from the start. “

Q. Why did you replace Tobey Maguire and reshoot his scenes with the little-known Rafe Spall?

A. “It was a small part, and he is a big movie star. He is a good old friend of mine and he would do this for nothing, for me. But he is not doing anything (in the role), he is just sitting there listening most of the time. It becomes a little distracting I think.”

Q. How does the film explore spirituality?

A. “To me, faith can be elusive, but .. As a Taoist would say, ‘That’s the apple’s truth.’ The source of all the material comes from nothingness, illusion is working more on things you can prove. That’s the principle, the essence of life, it is actually an illusion, not immaterial. That’s worth pursuing. So illusion is not nothing. In a way, that is the truth.”

“Sometimes I feel (illusions) are more of life’s essence, I can trust them more than real life that is full of deceit and covering up.”

Q. Did exploring faith encourage you to make this?

“The book is fascinating, it talks about faith. But it didn’t make me believe in God or anything…I didn’t go to church or a temple after that. When I started making the movie, you do feel faith embody you and carry you through. But when I picked the subject, and chose to do the book, it was actually more storytelling in my mind. The value of storytelling. How people share a story. Because a story has structure, it has a beginning, middle and end. It seems to have meaning, where life has not.”

Q. Do you practice any religion?

A. “No, my mother is a baptized Christian, so she made me go to church every Sunday, and I prayed four times a day until I was 14. And at lunchtime kids at school would giggle at my praying…I stopped praying. And two weeks later, nothing happened to me, so I didn’t pick it up again.”

“I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.”

Q. Do you consider yourself spiritual?

A. “I hate to think life is just facts and laws. And I am a filmmaker, I am a sensitive person, I like to think it is spiritual, so I like people to be more in that way. I think life without spirit is in the dark, it is absurd. Call it illusion or call it faith, whatever you call it, we have emotional attachment to the unknown. We yearn to find out. That is human nature. It can be, in a way, unrequited love, we don’t know. I don’t have a particular God I pray to, except sometimes a movie god.” (laughs)

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Andrew Hay)

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Japanese Stocks? Yes, They Really Think So

Less than a quarter-century ago, Japan was the economic envy of the world. In 1989, Tokyo-listed shares represented nearly half the planet’s equity value, while the land beneath the city’s royal palace was worth more than all of California. American nightly news anchors practically misted up when they had to report that Rockefeller Center was turning Japanese.

Two lost decades and massive property- and stock-bubble explosions later, Japan is a one-word cautionary tale. Caught in economic and demographic atrophy—and stewarded by countless false-start prime ministers—the country has become a hub for zombie banks, a generation of disenchanted youth, and fading brands such as Sony (SNE), Sharp (6753:JP), and Panasonic (PC).

Last year, for the first time, sales of adult diapers in Japan exceeded those for babies. Factor in how the strong yen has been making the country’s critical exports more expensive, and you can see why the world’s No. 3 economy (recently pushed into third place by China) has been quicksand for investors; when international markets hit bottom in early 2009, Japan’s Nikkei slumped to levels it hadn’t seen since 1983. A Merrill Lynch survey of global fund managers discovered that their net exposure to Japan is at its lowest in a decade (subscription necessary).

Accordingly, in his Nov. 14 note, “The Sun Also Rises?”, James Hunt, portfolio manager of Tocqueville’s International Value Fund and a rare Japan bull, concedes: “One of the questions we are asked most often by investors is why we would invest in Japan. Normally, there is a slight tone of derision in the question, as if to say: ‘Everyone knows that Japan has poor demographics, a huge public debt and weak growth prospects.’ And of course, all of these things are true.”

Hunt says his case for Japan boils down to its deeply contrarian pull: “Everyone thinks Japan is sinking into obscurity,” he writes, “and this negative sentiment provides us with the opportunity to buy what we consider to be excellent global franchise businesses at attractive valuations.”

Noting that Japanese equities have lagged their U.S. counterparts by 25 percent over the last two years, Hunt writes, “The storm of negative factors affecting Japan combined with the poor market performance is just of the sort of situation that piques our interest.”

Over the last 12 years of economic stagnation, Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index has, in dollar terms, posted zero total return. Meanwhile, aggregate earnings for its profitable companies have gone from ¥438 billion ($ 5.3 billion) to ¥608 billion, while their return on equity has swelled from around 6 percent to nearly 10 percent. At the same time, notes Hunt, the price-to-earnings ratio for these profitable listings has collapsed from 24 to 15, while their dividend yield has tripled to 2.3 percent.

Of course, Japan—Nikkei, Discman, and all—could just be in the middle stages of terminal decline. Zero interest rates be damned: Jobs are scarce, deflation constantly threatens, and China and Korea are not getting any easier to compete with. Japan’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, now well over 200 percent, is tops in the world.

Not likely, says Hunt. “There will,” he writes, “be a moment when the broad process of [equity] de-rating has run its course. With valuation multiples having compressed to quite reasonable absolute levels, we may be approaching that moment.”

“Our discipline generally is to buy good business franchises at a discount to their intrinsic value,” he adds, “and we are not as focused as many investors on catalysts and timing for the realization of value. That being said, with expectations so low and the market having underperformed, we would not be surprised to see the sun also rise in Japan.”

Hunt isn’t alone in declaring contrarian ardor for Japan. David Herro, Morningstar’s (MORN) international stock fund manager of the decade, also thinks its risk-reward profile is increasingly attractive.

Indeed, the Nikkei has recently sprinted higher on broadening sentiment that the country’s policy makers will act forcefully to lower the yen—a development that would provide a huge boost to Japanese multinationals such as Toyota (TM), Canon (CAJ), and Fuji Heavy Industries (7270:JP). The “yen rout play” is what market bloggers are already calling the trade.

Shinzo Abe, widely viewed as frontrunner to become the next prime minister, has been calling for unlimited monetary easing to incite inflation. The current governor of the (independent) Bank of Japan, who has been criticized for not being loose enough with his monetary purse strings, is expected to step down in April.

“(Shinzo) Abe’s focus is on two things—aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus,” wrote CLSA Japan strategist Nicholas Smith in a report. “He made clear that the Bank of Japan will bend to his will or he will rewrite the BOJ Law to let him fire them.” The replacement governor, he added, will be selected for his “willingness to print money.”

“It has been a fool’s game to guess when the yen would finally weaken,” writes Hunt, “but economic healing in the West and eventually inflation and rising interest rates here could certainly be a catalyst, as could money printing in Japan.”

It should be remembered, however, that the Bank of Japan has already shattered what is widely regarded as the ultimate monetary taboo: printing money to buy equities to boost the chronically moribund economy. To little apparent avail, so far.

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Cricket-Australia v South Africa – second test scoreboard

ADELAIDE, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Scoreboard at the close of the

third day of the second test between Australia and South Africa

at Adelaide Oval on Saturday:

Australia won the toss and chose to bat

Australia first innings 550

South Africa first innings

G. Smith c Wade b Siddle 122

A. Petersen run out 54

H. Amla st Wade b Warner 11

J. Rudolph c Quiney b Lyon 29

AB de Villiers lbw b Siddle 1

F. du Plessis c Clarke b Hilfenhaus 78

D. Steyn c Ponting b Hilfenhaus 1

R. Kleinveldt b Hilfenhaus 0

J. Kallis c Wade b Clarke 58

M. Morkel b Lyon 6

I. Tahir not out 10

Extras (b-7, lb-2, w-3, nb-6) 18

Total: (all out, 124.3 overs) 388

Fall of wickets: 1-138 2-169 3-233 4-233 5-240 6-246 7-250

8-343 9-352 10-388

Bowling: B. Hilfenhaus 19.3-6-49-3, J. Pattinson 9.1-0-41-0

(nb-4, w-1) N. Lyon 44-7-91-2, P. Siddle 30.5-6-130-2 (nb-2), M.

Clarke 7-1-22-1, M. Hussey 1-0-7-0 (w-2), D. Warner 5-0-27-1, R.

Quiney 8-3-12-0

Australia second innings

D. Warner c Du Plessis b Kleinveldt 41

E. Cowan b Kleinveldt 29

R. Quiney c De Villiers b Kleinveldt 0

R. Ponting b Steyn 16

M. Clarke not out 9

P. Siddle c De Villiers b Morkel 1

M. Hussey 5

Extras (lb-7, nb-3) 10

Total (for five wickets, 32 overs) 111

Fall of wickets: 1-77 2-77 3-91 4-98 5-103

Still to bat: M. Wade, B. Hilfenhaus, J. Pattinson, N. Lyon.

Bowling: Steyn 10-4-28-1, Morkel 9-2-24-1, Kleinveldt

6-1-14-3 (nb-2), Tahir 7-1-38-0 (nb-1)

- -

Third test: WACA, Perth Nov. 30-Dec. 4

(Compiled by Ian Ransom; Editing by Alastair Himmer)

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6 ways to tweet yourself out of a job

Hate your job? Want to leave without giving two weeks notice? Thanks to Twitter, it’s never been easier to get fired, says Rob Lammie at Mental Floss

Step 1: Drunk tweet
As any Spring Break partier knows, drinking impairs your judgment. It seems to have also impaired the judgment of Major League pitcher-turned-sports-radio-host Mike Bacsik, who put on quite a show during a San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks NBA game in April 2010. While watching the game, Bacsik bragged that he was “About 12 deep and some shots.” He proceeded to unleash a string of insults aimed at NBA commissioner David Stern, accused the refs of fixing the game, and even threatened to blow up the NBA’s offices. But the one that really got people riled up came after the Mavericks lost the game, when Bacsik tweeted: 

SEE MORE: Why popular kids make more money as adults

@MikeBacsik: “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio.”

After sobering up, Bacsik deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology. But it was too little, too late. Numerous people complained to his radio station, which first suspended Bacsik and later fired him. After his dismissal, he told ESPN Dallas, “When you tweet like that, it’s not a playful, harmless thing… I’m very sorry and will try my best for my actions to speak louder than my tweets.”

Step 2: Break the law (or just anger your governor)
Twitter has become a great tool for politicians to connect to the voting public. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, has really embraced the technology as a way to share his opinions and views. For example, in December 2009, he sent out a tweet saying:

 @HaleyBarbour: “Glad the Legislature recognizes our dire fiscal situation. Look forward to hearing their ideas on how to trim expenses.”

Jennifer Carter, one of his Twitter followers who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC), read this message and offered up a suggestion on how Governor Barbour could personally save the taxpayers money:

“Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees overtime to do it when clinics are usually closed.” 

This “Oh, snap!” moment referred to an incident that had occurred three years earlier, when the governor requested the medical center open on a Saturday, when they were normally closed, and bring in a staff of 15-20 people who were paid overtime to administer his annual check-up. This happened before Carter worked for UMC and she was simply repeating what she had been told by other employees. 

SEE MORE: Does a shaved head give you an advantage in corporate America?

The governor’s office tracked down Carter and made a formal complaint to UMC, saying Carter had violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a privacy law that states no employee of a medical facility can reveal any information about a person’s “protected health information.” Some argued that Carter didn’t violate HIPAA, since she didn’t actually give out any information about the health of the governor. However, others believe that simply saying the governor had even visited a doctor is a violation. 

Semantics aside, UMC administrators said it was a violation, so they suspended Carter for three days without pay and strongly suggested she resign to avoid further disciplinary action, which she did.

SEE MORE: Facebook’s new jobs board: Is LinkedIn toast?

Step 3: Have an NSFW lifestyle
St. Louis-based blogger “The Beautiful Kind” had been writing online about her polyamorous sex life for years. Knowing that not everyone would agree with her chosen lifestyle, she was always very careful about maintaining her anonymity, especially when it came to the workplace. So when she signed up for Twitter, she wanted to be anonymous there as well. She thought that, thanks to the similarities between the two, it was like signing up for an online message board — you supplied your real name to the website privately, but could choose to be known publicly by your username only. But when she logged in for the first time and saw that, not only did it show her username (@TBK365), but also her real name on her profile, she immediately went back and removed it. 

Thinking she was now safely anonymous, she used Twitter to promote her blog and to discuss sexually explicit topics with her followers. However, when her boss at the non-profit group where she worked was told by upper management to do a Google search of all employees, TBK’s Twitter account information — with her real name still associated — came up on the Twitter tracking site topsy.com.

The next day, TBK was called into her boss’ office and fired on the spot. Afterwards, her former boss sent her a letter saying, “While I know you are a good worker and an intelligent person, I hope you try to understand that our employees are held to a different standard. When it comes to private matters, such as one’s sexual explorations and preferences, our employees must keep their affairs private.” Because Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire someone for just about any reason, TBK was SOL.

Step 4: Question company policy
When California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) traded in their standard white shirts for black ones, employee Tim Chantarangsu wasn’t happy with the change. So he tweeted @calpizzakitchen his opinion:

@traphik: “black button ups are the lamest s**t ever!!!”

He didn’t expect anyone to notice or care, but the next day he received a direct message from corporate asking what restaurant he worked for. He knew better than to respond, but they tracked him down anyway and he was fired. They not only referenced his tweet about the shirts, but also an earlier one where he had said he was getting ready to work at “Calipornia Skeetza Kitchen.” 

Little did they know that Chantarangsu is kind of a big deal on another social website, YouTube. Under the name TimothyDeLaGhetto2, Chantarangsu has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, accounting for over 10,500,000 views of his videos at the time. Of course he made a YouTube video telling his Twitter story and it has been viewed well more than 100,000 times. Shortly after the incident, he asked his followers to bombard CPK’s Twitter account with RTs (re-tweets) of his offending message, which they were more than happy to oblige.

Step 5: Make a celebrity look bad
During his five years on the job, Jon Barrett-Ingels had served a lot of celebrities as a waiter at Barney Greengrass, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, Jane Adams, star of the HBO series Hung, came in and had lunch to the tune of $ 13.44. Unfortunately, when the bill came, Adams realized she had left her wallet in the car. Ingels knew who she was, so he told her she could run out and grab it and come back. The actress left, but didn’t return. Instead, someone from her agency called the next day and paid the bill. However, they didn’t leave a tip. Ingels had recently signed up for Twitter and so, his sixth tweet to his 40 followers said:

@PapaBarrett: Jane Adams, star of HBO series “Hung” skipped out on a $ 13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” 

Over the next few weeks, Ingels started using Twitter to send out a few harmless observations about celebrities that came in to eat — mainly what they ordered or what they looked like that day. Then, out of the blue, Jane Adams came back to the restaurant. According to Ingels’ blog, she was clearly upset and begrudgingly slapped $ 3 on the bar for Ingels as a tip. Surprised, Ingels told the actress she really didn’t have to do that, but her gesture was appreciated. She allegedly replied with, “My friend read about it on Twitter!” before storming off. Adams complained about the tweet to management, so someone from Barney’s corporate started following Ingels on Twitter to see what he was up to. After reading his celebrity tweets, it didn’t take long before they gave him the boot.

Step 6: Don’t get hired in the first place
If you’ve followed steps 1 – 5 and you still have a job, here’s the ultimate way to make sure Twitter will keep you from gainful employment.

When recent college grad Skye Riley heard back from Cisco, the computer networking giant, about her job application, one of her first instincts was to tweet about it. Unfortunately, this is what she tweeted:

@theconnor: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The unfortunate part? An employee of Cisco, Tim Levad, came across her post while doing a Twitter search for Cisco. He replied to her by saying:

@timmylevad: Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Riley’s story was the tweet heard round the world. It became a hot topic on tech blogs for weeks afterwards, with writers calling it the “Cisco Fatty” incident. She later claimed that the tweet was taken out of context — that part of her message was referring to a well-paid internship she had turned down — but it appears the damage had already been done. While only she and Cisco know what really happened, according to her online resume, she has never worked for the company.

 — Rob Lammie

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Ireland opens new probe into death of woman denied abortion

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland has opened a new investigation into the death of a woman denied an abortion of her dying fetus, as the government scrambled to stem criticism of its handling of an incident that polarized the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist, was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors said her baby would not survive, according to husband Praveen, but in a country with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws, surgeons would not remove the fetus until its heartbeat stopped days later.

Husband Praveen Halappanavar, who believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed his wife on October 28, has said he would not cooperate with an investigation already launched by the country’s health service because he did not believe it would be neutral.

On Friday, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) watchdog, which is government-funded but independent of the state health service, said it had also launched an investigation after receiving information from the health service and University Hospital Galway, where Halappanavar died.

A solicitor acting on behalf of the husband said the new inquiry was unlikely to be enough to satisfy his client.

“My client has always made his position very clear … He wants a public inquiry. He has made it clear he wants to get to the truth of the matter, so I don’t think that the framework of HIQA will suffice,” Gerard O’Donnell, told RTE radio.

He added that the next step would be to consider an application to the European Court of Human Rights, which criticized Ireland’s abortion ban in 2010.

Halappanavar’s death has reopened a decades-long debate over whether the government should legislate to explicitly allow abortion when the life of the mother is at risk.

Irish law does not specify exactly when the threat to the life of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide. Critics say this means doctors’ personal beliefs can play a role.

Though the influence of the Catholic Church over Irish politics has waned since the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

CALL TO CLARIFY

Ireland’s abortion stance is enshrined in a 1983 constitutional amendment that intended to ban abortion in all circumstances. In 1992, when challenged in the “X-case” involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted when the woman’s life was at risk, including from suicide.

But successive governments refused to make clear the circumstances under which a threat would make an abortion legal. After several challenges, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2010 that Ireland must clarify its position.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, whose ruling Fine Gael party made an election pledge not to introduce new laws allowing abortion, said last week he would not be rushed into a decision on the issue.

The government was forced into an embarrassing u-turn this week when it removed three Galway-based consultants from the health service inquiry following criticism from Praveen Halappanavar.

The issue has raised tensions between Fine Gael and the more socially liberal Labour Party, its junior coalition partner, which has campaigned for a clarification of the country’s abortion rules.

The country’s president, Michael D. Higgins, a former member of the Labour Party, weighed into the debate this week when he said an investigation was needed that satisfied the dead woman’s family.

Opposition party Sinn Fein introduced a motion to parliament on Wednesday calling for parliament to legislate on abortion, but it was rejected.

“Successive governments over the past 20 years have failed in respect of legislation. That failure is in large measure due to fear or cowardice,” said Mary Lou McDonald, vice president of Sinn Fein.

(Editing by Will Waterman)

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Health Care’s Epidemic of Insider Trading

On April 14, 2011, James Fan, 39, stood on a parking garage landing at Newark Liberty International Airport, a letter from his young son in his pants pocket, about to jump four stories to his death. Fan had been charged a day earlier with insider trading based on his knowledge of confidential test results at Seattle Genetics (SGEN), a health-care company where he was manager of clinical programming. Also charged: his younger brother, Zishen, who was scheduled to take the oath of U.S. citizenship a month later. The total take, a judge later determined, was about $ 200,000. James Fan was trying to help his brother, who had found himself deep under water after the California real estate market collapsed in 2008, prosecutors said later. “The Fan case is such a cautionary tale,” says Jenny Durkan, the U.S. attorney in Seattle. “Both brothers were promising.”

The markets are awash in insider trading, and the health-care industry has been particularly hard-hit. Health-care businesses offer illegal traders abundant opportunities to profit from unpublicized data about earnings and deals. Pharmaceutical companies can live or die on the results of drug trials. And the industry has undergone significant consolidation, leading to several multibillion-dollar mergers. “Health care is particularly attractive to criminals because so much turns on the government regulatory approval,” says Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland. “If you have a pending application for a new drug, the difference between yes and no on approvals can be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The Fans are among at least 83 people who have been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or charged since 2008 with passing or receiving insider-trading tips involving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or other health-care stocks. On Nov. 20, federal prosecutors charged Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager for Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, with trading on insider tips about clinical trials of bapineuzumab, a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. They said the scheme netted as much as $ 276 million for the hedge fund. Martoma’s lawyer said his client would be exonerated. An SAC spokesman said, “Mr. Cohen and SAC are confident that they have acted appropriately and will continue to cooperate with the government’s inquiry.”

A day earlier, three executives at health-care companies Celgene (CELG), Sanofi (SNY), and Stryker (SYK) were among six people charged for their roles in an insider-trading ring that prosecutors said generated $ 1.48 million in illicit profit. Lawyers for the six men declined to comment.

The lineup of accused health industry inside traders illustrates how widespread the problem is: CEOs, hedge fund traders, bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, baseball players, a retired pilot, and a film producer have been charged or sued by regulators. Martha Stewart went to prison in 2004 for obstructing justice and false statements about her sale of shares of health-care company ImClone Systems (LLY), whose founder Sam Waksal was ordered to spend 87 months in jail for insider trading.

While the number of insider-trading cases in the technology industry has been roughly the same since 2008, many of those were intertwined with Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire hedge fund manager appealing his conviction while serving an 11-year prison sentence. What’s notable about health-care corruption is its breadth. The cases include husbands stealing information from wives, fraternity brothers conspiring, and an attorney making trades on information he overheard from his daughter. (She was a lawyer visiting home for the holidays while working on Abbott Laboratories’ (ABT) acquisition of Advanced Medical Optics.) A health-care inside trader turned confidential informant on another case said he was once on a golf course with three doctors whose beepers all went off at the same moment with the same inside tip, according to an FBI agent’s interview summary obtained by Bloomberg.

James Fan, originally named Zizhong Fan, was born in 1971 in Beijing, a year before his brother. Their parents later divorced. James and his wife trained as physicians in China, where doctors’ pay was low, says his attorney in Los Angeles, Adam Braun, a former federal prosecutor. James never practiced medicine and moved to the U.S. in 1999, a year after Zishen.

In July 2008, James began work at Seattle Genetics in Bothell, Wash., as a senior statistical programmer. His job was to convert raw data from clinical trials into statistics measuring the effectiveness of drugs. In 2010 he was leading a group of programmers who analyzed the data from a pair of clinical trials on the company’s flagship drug, SGN-35, for patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. James learned in July 2010 that the raw data showed progress for a large majority of the patients.

Because of the drug trials, Seattle Genetics began a blackout period on employees trading company securities starting on June 22. Soon after, James wired money to China, and the money ended up in an account in his father’s name at TD Ameritrade (AMTD). On Aug. 24, Zishen Fan began using the TD Ameritrade account to buy Seattle Genetics shares and options. Over a month, the brothers spent $ 514,314 on Seattle Genetics stock and options. On Sept. 27, Seattle Genetics announced that SGN-35 cut tumor size by at least half for 75 percent of the patients in a group of 102. Shares rose almost 18 percent. Zishen Fan began exercising the options and selling shares.

The activity aroused suspicions at TD Ameritrade, which filed a complaint about possible insider trading on Oct. 27 with federal regulators. “TD Ameritrade utilizes a variety of risk management tools and surveillance methodologies to identify potentially problematic activity,” says Kristin Petrick, a company spokeswoman. The Options Regulatory Surveillance Authority, or ORSA, which monitors trading for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and other exchanges, also flagged the account and alerted the SEC on Dec. 13.

SEC lawyers in San Francisco, who also cover Seattle, sued, filing a complaint in January against James and Zishen Fan that laid out the insider-trading scheme. Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against the brothers in federal court in Seattle on April 13. The next morning, FBI agents went to arrest James Fan at his home in Mill Creek, Wash. James, who had been fired by Seattle Genetics, was then working in New Jersey. His distraught wife called Braun, who phoned a prosecutor and promised to bring his client to court the next day for his initial appearance and bail hearing.

When Braun spoke with James at his job in New Jersey, James told him he would reserve a flight out of Newark. James spoke that afternoon with a friend who grew alarmed and went to the airport to find him, Braun says. The friend contacted the police, saying James was suicidal and at a parking garage. When police arrived, they found his body beside the garage.

Zishen Fan pleaded guilty in July 2011, admitting his brother gave him material, nonpublic information about SGN-35. Three months later, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman sentenced Fan to 18 months in prison. He is serving his term at a facility in Taft, Calif. Fan declined an interview request. His lawyer, Allen Ressler, has spoken with Fan in prison. “He says he’s enduring it,” says Ressler.

The bottom line: The Fans are among at least 83 people charged with insider trading in health-care stocks since 2008.

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Canada wants to balance budget in 2015, may invest to grow economy

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Thursday he is aiming to wipe out the federal budget deficit by 2015, in time for the next election, but cautioned the Conservative government would be flexible with that target if the economy soured.

Canada’s fiscal shortfall of 1.4 percent of gross domestic product is tiny compared to that of the United States and some other major economies. But it is a sore point for policy makers in a country that ran an 11-year string of surpluses prior to the global financial crisis.

“It remains our intention to balance the budget during this session of Parliament,” Flaherty said in the prepared text of a speech he was delivering in Toronto.

“Although we are prepared to be flexible and pragmatic should circumstances warrant — our plan is to stick to our plan: balanced budgets and low taxes,” he said.

The parliamentary session is due to end in October 2015, the same month a federal election is scheduled.

Last week, Flaherty presented a fiscal update that showed a return to balanced budgets in 2016-17, including a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion in case the global economy worsens.

Three days later, amid criticism, both he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.

Flaherty said on Thursday the next budget in early 2013 would continue with what he called “pro-growth initiatives” of the past year, giving as examples previously-announced initiatives to strengthen the venture capital system and to provide skills training for the work force.

He hinted there would be “much more,” without giving details.

The plan will not include tax hikes and the government will continue to look for ways to cut spending, he said.

“From the experience of Greece and beyond, Canadians know that the consequences of unsustainable finances are all too painful,” he said.

($ 1 = $ 1 Canadian)

(Writing by Louise Egan; editing by Andrew Hay)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Black Friday Fiscal Cliff Twitter Guide

With the dirty dishes cleared and leftovers safely in the fridge, Americans across the country start looking ahead to the winter holidays the day after Thanksgiving.

But for Congress, there’s a pretty big hurdle to handle before the House and Senate can abscond to presents and plum pudding. It’s called the fiscal cliff, and according to a recent Pew Research Poll , more Americans are paying attention to it than the scandal surrounding Gen. David Petraeus‘ resignation.

While talks and deals on budget cuts and tax increases are currently on hold, once the holiday weekend ends, it’s time to take to Twitter and follow these folks to learn what’s at stake, where each party stands and whether to expect a bipartisan deal for the new year.

Subscribe to the list on @OtusNews here.

Follow Tweeters in the House

These partisan tweeters should give a good idea of where things stand on the House side of Capitol Hill.

@SpeakerBoehner - The official Twitter account for the speaker of the House commends Republican representatives for their work on the fiscal cliff negotiations and retweets relevant articles with a GOP slant. Last Friday, a tweet from the account said, “Survey shows Americans favor GOP approach to averting #fiscalcliff http://j.mp/SsmYJT ” To see more of Boehner’s opinions on the issue and read about his meetings with key players, follow his personal account: @ JohnBoehner .

@NancyPelosi – While the House minority leader has kept her thoughts on the fiscal cliff away from Twitter for now, Pelosi expressed strong sentiments on the need for higher taxation of wealthy Americans in her interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz Sunday. Pelosi will be a tweeter to watch as options come on and off the table – she’s a good gauge for how the rest of the party will vote.

@RepPaulRyan – The budget hawk has stayed out of the spotlight since losing the vice presidency earlier this month, but as chairman of the House Budget Committee, it’s unlikely Ryan will resist for long when spending cuts are in sight. The former VP nominee’s other Twitter account, @PaulRyanVP , spent a lot of time tweeting about the need for pro-growth policies and the reduction of government debt. Keep an eye on Ryan’s congressional account to see if those positions will factor into the negotiations this time around.

@ChrisVanHollen – As a ranking member on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Van Hollen, D-Md., has tweeted a photo of him discussing the fiscal cliff, a video of his interview on it and vitriolic attacks with the hashtag #DoNothingGOP.

Tweeters in the Senate

Ranking senators on the fiscal cliff aren’t as inclined to tweet as their House counterparts, but here is a couple to keep in your newsfeed.

@ChuckGrassley - The Republican senator from Iowa doesn’t tweet many links or videos, but he is outspoken in his digital opinions. “PresObama meets w Congressional leaders tomorrow. I hope it is a serious attempt by PresO to reach bipartisan agreement not a photo op 4tax,” Grassley tweeted Nov. 15. In addition to 140-character diatribes on the fiscal cliff, use Grassley’s feed to learn about deer hunting, the History Channel and University of Northern Iowa football.

@SenJohnMcCain – The outspoken former presidential candidate will be one to watch throughout these negotiations. In addition to offering news on foreign affairs and the state of the nation’s finances, McCain adds humor, tweeting a little pre-emptively last weekend , “Twinkies maker Hostess closes – what will we do without deep fried Twinkies at the #Iowa State Fair?”

Organizations and Think Tanks

@BudgetHawks – The handle for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget gives you an idea of what they’re all about. They tweet ideas, articles and commentary on how to balance the federal budget.

@CenterOnBudget – The somewhat-left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities focuses on analyzing national data to predict how possible solutions could affect Americans.

@Heritage – The Heritage Foundation brings a conservative perspective on the financial issues at stake. On Monday it tweeted a chart showing how its plan for lowering the debt stacked up against those of four other think tanks.

@AARP – A number of Democratic senators have pledged to oppose a deal that would hurt seniors, but nevertheless, Medicare and Social Security cuts could be on the table. Follow AARP to see how congressional compromises could affect older Americans.

@CSPAN­_Classroom – This account offers civics lessons for educators, but the guide to the fiscal cliff they tweeted this week has background information and interviews with lawmakers that could be helpful for anyone trying to understand the complex talks on Capitol Hill.

Observers at ABC

ABC’s @JakeTapper, @DevinDwyer and @MaryKBruce will bring the view from the White House. @RickKlein, @AmyEWalter and @ JonKarl will have analysis of the issues (most likely with sports metaphors to boot). Turn to @GStephanopoulos for the big picture. @JParkABC report on the ground from the House of Representatives and @SunlenMiller will cover the Senate.

The Instigators, 2016ers and Others

@JimDemint – U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., draws a hard line and likes to stir up the conversation, though the Romney backer has been unusually quiet since President Obama‘s win. We’re hoping this budget battle will be enough to rile him up again.

@TedCruz - The senator-elect from Texas will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows with his fired-up rhetoric during this showdown. As an example of his spunk, the Republican rising star essentially issued a challenge to President Obama about working together on the fiscal cliff.

@MarcoRubio – With his attendance at the Iowa governor’s birthday bash last week, it seems Sen. Rubio, R-Fla., is already preparing to court a 2016 electorate. He’ll want to command a memorable presence in this historic fiscal fight.

@GovernorOMalley – The Maryland governor is rumored to be a Democratic favorite for 2016. He’s garnered praise for reining in costs to the state.

@djheakin - Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director and current president of the American Action Forum, offers educational tweets, including an e-book with the need-to-know on the fiscal cliff.

@econjared – Jared Bernstein is a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities fellow and the former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden who made some of the original predictions about the stimulus package.

For a Laugh

If talk of impending economic doom becomes a little too heavy to take, turn to @PourMeCoffee , @MrFiscalCliff and @TheOnion for tweets from the lighter side of the fiscal cliff.

And of course … @BarackObama – If the fiscal cliff fight is anything like the battle to raise the debt ceiling, President Obama will likely take to Twitter to encourage Americans to get involved and contact their representatives. You’ll know tweets that come directly from the president (and not his communications team) if they have “-BO” at the end.

Did we miss someone? Tweet your suggestions to @WordsOfSarah!

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Serious About Free Markets? Prove It

On Friday the Republican Study Committee, a policy shop for congressional Republicans, published a memo on how to fix copyright law. By Saturday afternoon the group’s executive director had pulled the memo, which had evidently failed to approach the subject with “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” This is Washington’s way of saying that an interest group hit the roof, and indeed, Ars Technica reports that lobbyists from the “content industry”—Hollywood and recording companies—pressured the group to renounce the memo.

Copyright being in fact broken, you can still read copies of the memo online. It lays out what copyright reform advocates have been saying for years. Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. This, along with punitive laws on copyright violation, hinders creativity and innovation. These facts aren’t new. What’s new is the tone. Derek Khanna, the memo’s author, writes like an unashamed free marketeer, and in doing so manages to latch on to a larger point: Laws that help businesses often harm markets. From the memo:

Today’s legal regime of copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value. We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system. (Emphasis in the original.)

Radical stuff. There’s no one in Washington to lobby for industries that don’t exist yet, and ever so briefly, Khanna and the Republican Study Committee stepped into that breach. Then they stepped back, to gather more facts and viewpoints. Here’s one: Pro-business and pro-market are not the same thing. The most pleasant place for a business is not elbows-out in the middle of a free market, but sitting alone, atop a fat monopoly. Ask your local cable provider. The larger a business gets, the more it has to protect from the companies and industries that might follow it with something better or cheaper. And the best way to protect what you have is to have it written into law.

Real markets, with real competition, are most helpful to newcomers. Small businesses and new industries create new value. Once created, they, too, move to Washington to protect it. Witness the growth of Google (GOOG) and Facebook’s (FB) lobbying operations in the Capitol. Khanna describes extended copyright protection as rent-seeking—in his words, “non-productive behavior that sucks economic productivity and potential from the overall economy.” What’s true of Hollywood and the recording industry could be said of any established industry.

Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View, points out that larger companies can lobby for special exemptions in the tax code. This creates complexity in the tax code, which punishes smaller businesses that can’t pay for tax lawyers and don’t have anyone’s buttonhole on Capitol Hill. Zingales prefers simple regulations and simple taxes, which are harder for lobbyists to game and easier for democracies to understand. He sees this as a bipartisan problem. The left is inclined toward more regulation, and the right is pro-business, rather than pro-markets.

The direction Khanna was headed—a defense of open, competitive markets at the expense of existing businesses—is still wide open space, claimed by no party. This summer, conservatives such as Timothy Carney at the Examiner and Yuval Levin at National Review urged Mitt Romney to back markets, not businesses. But he chose not to, even though he, in his day, disrupted existing markets of his own. Some enterprising Republican can still do it. Derek Khanna in 2016! He’s young. Maybe VP.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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