Northern Rock will repay £270m

11 December 2012 Last updated at 08:19 ET

Some 152,000 Northern Rock Asset Management customers will receive hundreds of pounds each in compensation owing to mistakes made in paperwork.

Customers who took out personal loans of less than £25,000 will receive an average of £1,770 each.

Bank staff failed to include key details on annual statements about loans, including the original amount which had been borrowed.

Refunds of the interest paid by customers will now be made.

‘Right thing’

Many of the loans were provided on top of Northern Rock’s Together mortgage which was popular before the credit crunch, and allowed homebuyers to borrow more than their homes were worth.

The rules on loan paperwork changed, but this was not implemented properly on these loans after the bank was nationalised in 2008.

All of the interest charged on these loans since 2008 will be refunded.

The £270m bill for the refunds will have to come from the taxpayer, as this section of the bank has been owned by the government since 2008.

The problems with the paperwork arose as a result of an investigation by UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), which looks after rescued banks for the government.

Continue reading the main story

Where redress is required, this will be made by correcting a customer’s account balance”

End Quote Sajid Javid Economic secretary to the Treasury

“Northern Rock Asset Management is acting in accordance with its legal responsibilities and we are determined to do the right thing for customers and the taxpayer,” said UKAR chief executive, Richard Banks.

“We will be writing to all customers who are affected and advising them on next steps. We have not received any complaints or claims as a result of this matter and as far as we are aware it has not resulted in financial loss for customers.”

Letters

Affected customers would be refunded for all the interest they paid after the mistakes were made in 2008, economic secretary to the Treasury Sajid Javid confirmed in a written statement.

Customers did not need to do anything at this stage. They will receive a letter in the next few days.

There are 107,000 accounts which remain live and so the balance will be altered to take the refunds into account.

“Where redress is required, this will be made by correcting a customer’s account balance to reverse the consequences of them being charged any interest over the period in which the documentation is non-compliant,” Mr Javid said in the statement,

An additional 45,000 customers have paid back their loans and will receive a refund of the interest charged.

The mistakes pre-date the separation of Northern Rock plc and Northern Rock Asset Management.

The bill would not delay the repayment of government funding, which stood at £19.6bn in June. The Treasury said it would fully recover the whole of the taxpayer support for the bank.

This part of the bank is being wound down, while the mortgage lending and savings arm, Northern Rock plc, was sold to Virgin Money in 2011.

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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#OccupyCheerios: A Facebook Revolt

It wasn’t an obvious forum for an anti-GMO protest.

A YouTube video posted on Cheerio’s Facebook page depicts an elderly woman leaning over the highchair of her infant grandchild, cooing about family and the holidays, drawing a map with pieces of cereal representing relative’s far-flung houses. “But don’t you worry,” the grandmother says, pushing two Cheerios together, “we’ll always be together for Christmas.”

More than 1,200 users have commented on the vintage Cheerios commercial since it was posted last week, expressing outrage over the General Mills-owned brand’s use of genetically modified ingredients. Commenters have also been critical—like heavy-exclamation-points-use critical—of General Mills’ significant financial support of Prop. 37, California’s defeated GMO-labeling ballot initiative

Comments like “Can you please inform the public exactly why it is that General Mills spent $ 1.2 million to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs????” and “Nostalgic old commercials are no substitute for healthy ingredients. I won’t buy Cheerios until they are GMO-free” are a far cry from the stories of spending holidays with family—and perhaps a bit of Cheerios nostalgia—the post was surely intended to elicit.

The protest campaign was stoked by GMO Inside, an organization born of the failed Yes on 37 campaign. The group also called on people to comment-bomb a Cheerios app, which has since been removed from the company’s Facebook page. But beyond that, Cheerios’ response to the criticism has been . . . nothing. Anti-GMO comments are still piling up on the post, and no new material has been added to page in order to bury the video in the timeline.

Do 1,256 comments (and counting) cancel out $ 1.2 million of anti-Prop. 37 funding? Of course not. But just as the Occupy-style tactics being employed by protesters at Cooper Union and the Michigan State Capitol exhibit, showing up and voicing an opinion can be a powerful gesture, even if it’s not overpowering. 

Similar stories on TakePart

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• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Nude Protests, Stripped Down

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Willy Blackmore is the food editor at TakePart. He has also written about food, art, and agriculture for such publications as Los Angeles Magazine, The Awl, GOOD, LA Weekly, The New Inquiry, and BlackBook. Email Willy | TakePart.com

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Singer feared dead in Mexican plane crash

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar.

Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera’s relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged territory in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico.

“My son Lupillo told me that effectively it was Jenni’s plane that crashed and that everyone on board died,” her father, Pedro Rivera told dozens of reporters gathered in front of his Los Angeles-area home. “I believe my daughter’s body is unrecognizable.”

He said that his son would fly to Monterrey early Monday to identify her presumed remains

Messages of condolence poured in from fellow musicians and celebrities.

Mexican songstress and actress Lucero wrote on her Twitter account: “What terrible news! Rest in peace … My deepest condolences for her family and friends.” Rivera’s colleague on the Mexican show “The Voice of Mexico,” pop star Paulina Rubio, said on her Twitter account: “My friend! Why? There is no consolation. God, please help me!”

Born in Long Beach, California, Rivera was at the peak of her career as perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated regional style influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchero styles.

A 43-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of two, the woman known as the “Diva de la Banda” was known for her frank talk about her struggles to give a good life to her children despite a series of setbacks.

She was recently divorced from her third husband, was once detained at a Mexico City airport with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and she publicly apologized after her brother assaulted a drunken fan who verbally attacked her in 2011.

Her openness about her personal troubles endeared her to millions in the U.S. and Mexico.

“I am the same as the public, as my fans,” she told The Associated Press in an interview last March.

Rivera sold 15 million records, and recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for “Joyas prestadas: Banda.” She was nominated for Latin Grammys in 2002, 2008 and 2011.

Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said “everything points toward” the wreckage belonging to the plane carrying Rivera and six other people to Toluca, outside Mexico City, from Monterrey, where the singer had just given a concert.

“There is nothing recognizable, neither material nor human” in the wreckage found in the state of Nuevo Leon, Ruiz Esparza said. The impact was so powerful that the remains of the plane “are scattered over an area of 250 to 300 meters. It is almost unrecognizable.”

A mangled California driver’s license with Rivera’s name and picture was found in the crash site debris.

No cause was given for the plane’s crash, but its wreckage was found near the town of Iturbide in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental, where the terrain is very rough.

The Learjet 25, number N345MC, took off from Monterrey at 3:30 a.m. local time and was reported missing about 10 minutes later. It was registered to Starwood Management of Las Vegas, Nevada, according to FAA records. It was built in 1969 and had a current registration through 2015.

Also believed aboard the plane were her publicist, Arturo Rivera, her lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew.

Though drug trafficking was the theme of some of her songs, she was not considered a singer of “narco corridos,” or ballads glorifying drug lords like other groups, such as Los Tigres del Norte. She was better known for singing about her troubles in love and disdain for men.

Her parents were Mexicans who had migrated to the United States. Two of her five brothers, Lupillo and Juan Rivera, are also well-known singers of grupero music.

She studied business administration and formally debuted on the music scene in 1995 with the release of her album “Chacalosa”. Due to its success, she recorded two more independent albums, “We Are Rivera” and “Farewell to Selena,” a tribute album to slain singer Selena that helped expand her following.

At the end of the 1990s, Rivera was signed by Sony Music and released two more albums. But widespread success came for her when she joined Fonovisa and released her 2005 album titled “Partier, Rebellious and Daring.”

Besides being a singer, she is also a businesswoman and actress, appearing in the indie film Filly Brown, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown.

She was filming the third season of “I love Jenni,” which followed her as she shared special moments with her children and as she toured through Mexico and the United States. She also has the reality shows: “Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C” and her daughter’s “Chiquis ‘n Control.”

In 2009, she was detained at the Mexico City airport when she declared $ 20,000 in cash but was really carrying $ 52,167. She was taken into custody. She said it was an innocent mistake and authorities gave her the benefit of the doubt and released her.

In 2011, her brother Juan assaulted a drunken fan at a popular fair in Guanajuato. In the face of heavy criticism among her fans and on social networks, Rivera publicly apologized for the incident during a concert in Mexico City, telling her fans: “Thank you for accepting me as I am, with my virtues and defects.”

On Saturday night, Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from former Major League Baseball pitcher Esteban Loaiza, who played for teams including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.

“I can’t get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other woman,” she said Saturday night. “The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up.”

Rivera had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage.

There have been several high-profile crashes involving Learjets, known as swift, longer-distance passenger aircraft popular with corporate executives, entertainers and government officials.

A Learjet carrying pro-golfer Payne Stewart and five others crashed in northeastern South Dakota in 1999. Investigators said the plane lost cabin pressure and all on board died after losing consciousness for lack of oxygen. The aircraft flew for several hours on autopilot before running out of fuel and crashing in a corn field.

Former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker was severely injured in a 2008 Learjet crash in South Carolina that killed four people.

That same year, a Learjet slammed into rush-hour traffic in a posh Mexico City neighborhood, killing Mexico’s No. 2 government official, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, and eight others on the plane, plus five people on the ground.

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Associated Press Writer Galia Garcia-Palafox and Olga R. Rodriguez contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Britain launches genome database to improve patient care

LONDON (Reuters) – Up to 100,000 Britons suffering from cancer and rare diseases are to have their genetic codes fully sequenced and mapped as part of government efforts to boost drug development and improve treatment.

Britain will be the first country to introduce a database of genetic sequences into a mainstream health service, officials say, giving doctors a more advanced understanding of a patient’s illness and what drugs and other treatments they need.

It could significantly reduce the number of premature deaths from cancer within a generation, Prime Minister David Cameron‘s office said in a statement.

“By unlocking the power of DNA data, the NHS (National Health Service) will lead the global race for better tests, better drugs and above all better care,” Cameron said on Monday.

His government has set aside 100 million pounds ($ 160 million) for the project in the taxpayer-funded NHS over the next three to five years.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of the charity Cancer Research UK, said the work would uncover new information from which doctors and scientists will learn about the biology of cancers and develop new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat them.

He said some targeted, or personalized, cancer treatments such as Novartis’ Gleevec, or imatinib – a drug for chronic myeloid leukemia – are already helping to treat patients more effectively.

Some critics of the project, known as the “UK genome plan”, have voiced concerns about how the data will be used and shared with third parties, including with commercial organizations such as drug companies.

Genewatch, a campaign group fighting for genetic science and technologies to be used in the public interest, has said anyone with access to the database could use the genetic codes to identify and track every individual on it and their relatives.

Cameron’s office said the genome sequencing would be entirely voluntary and patients would be able to opt out without affecting their NHS care. It said the data would be made anonymous before it is stored.

($ 1 = 0.6242 British pounds)

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Stephen Powell and Tom Pfeiffer)

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These Christmas Trees Have Frequent Flier Miles

People are finicky about their Christmas trees. For some, that holiday staple must hail from Wisconsin. That’s where Wayne Raisleger comes in. He’s been FedExing Wisconsin trees from his Windswept Tree Farm to customers across the nation since 1999.

“A lot of my customers are ex-Wisconsin residents,” he says, noting that he’s shipped to at least 40 states. “They’re used to quality Christmas trees but are unable to get them, if they live in, say, Georgia, or Coral Gables, or the Los Angeles area, or what have you.”

Raisleger, who with his 23-year-old daughter runs the site ChristmasTreesNow.com, says orders have tripled over the past two decades. These days he sends out hundreds of trees each holiday season, for $ 75 a pop, plus shipping. Many of his customers are urbanites from Chicago and New York. “For them, it’s a question of convenience,” he says. It’s also among their only options for buying a freshly cut pine. Many Christmas trees sold on city street corners, Raisleger points out, are cut anywhere from six weeks to two months in advance. “I get calls from people who say they bought their tree and within a couple days the needles started falling off,” he says.

Still, the mail-order tree business isn’t for the faint of heart. Raisleger has a good deal of competition, not only in Wisconsin, but also from other big Christmas tree-growing states such as Michigan. There are also some unique challenges. Packaging, for example.

“Every tree is different—just like every person is different—and here I am, I have to package a very nonstandard Christmas tree into a standard-size box,” says Raisleger. He solved the problem by making his own boxes. “We buy huge [cardboard] blanks that are like 100-inch x 100-inch squares, and we start making boxes in early November,” he says. “In packing the trees, you have to be very attuned to the branching, the configuration, the density—and if the tree is too cold, the limbs can snap off.”

The cost of shipping varies from state to state. Shipping a tree via FedEx (FDX) from Wisconsin to Florida or California costs roughly $ 65, while shipping to Texas costs about $ 40. Last minute buyers, of course, pay a lot more. “Invariably I get an order or two around the 20^th, when someone wants a tree air freighted by FedEx,” says Raisleger. “I’m serious. Last year there was a fella in North Carolina. I think the tree was like $ 75 and the FedEx Air was like $ 225.”

Raisleger also keeps his eye out for tree scams. “Every year I have at least one fraudulent order on a stolen credit card,” he says. “This year, one of my first ones, right off the bat, was somebody from New York who ordered a tree to be delivered to Miami.”

A much more serious problem, which affects both online and offline sales, is the weather. This year Wisconsin, along with other Midwest states, suffered the worst drought since 1988. According to Donna Gilson, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade & Consumer Protection, thousands of trees were wiped out. “We inspected 212 of our licensed growers this year—that was 446 fields,” she says. “What we found was that 97 fields had drought damage, meaning that that they had 40 percent or more mortality rates.” The trees that did survive, she notes, were typically older trees, with deeper root systems.

Windswept Tree Farm suffered immensely. “I got to tell ya, I have partnerships with a couple growers—and I grow right here too—and we’ve lost everything we planted this spring,” says Raisleger. “We’re talking thousands and thousands and thousands of trees.”

Christmas trees normally take six to eight years to mature, which means we won’t see repercussions from the drought this year. We may, in fact never see any at all, if growers can manage to make up for their loss in coming seasons. “Those farms in Wisconsin, they might plant twice as many trees next year, and they might grow twice as fast in 2015 or 2016,” says Rick Dungey, a spokesman for the National Christmas Tree Association. “The trees also might be ready to harvest at 5 feet tall, or maybe they’re going to wait for them to be harvested at 8 feet tall,” he says.

Raisleger isn’t so sure. “I’m not going to say that there’s going to be a shortage of trees, because there are trees growing in other parts of the country,” he says. “But I think that quality might be diminished somewhat—I was just looking at my home plantation here, and some of the trees are still turning brown, and we’re into December now.”

Businessweek.com — Top News

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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Barnes and Noble Nook HD+ is a Big Screen, Good Value Tablet

Barnes and Noble Nook-HD+

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[More from Mashable: 7 Stylish iPad Cases With Notepads]

The other night I handed the new Barnes and Noble HD+ to my son to see his reaction to one of the latest 9-inch tablets. He held it, played with the screen and said, “Which one is this?” I told him and he answered, “I can’t tell the difference anymore.” It’s true, with the sudden explosion of 7-, near-8-, 9- and 10-inch-plus tablets, it’s getting a little hard to tell which one is which — especially when many larger tablets look like their tinier siblings.

Barnes and Noble’s large-format (9-inch) HD-screen entry, the HD+, is a quite similar to the 7-inch Nook HD. However, with its somewhat sharper corners and far-reduced black-screen border, it’s also more similar in appearance to larger tablets such as the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9. What sets the Nook apart visually is the trademark nook hole in the lower left-hand corner. It appears to serve no visible purpose, though you could hold the roughly 18-ounce tablet by that corner without too much stress on your hand. It is one of the lightest tablets on the market, although it’s thicker than the Google Nexus 10, Kindle Fire 8.9 and fourth-generation Apple iPad.

[More from Mashable: The 7 Best Tablets for Kids]

Nook HD+’s other distinctive feature is the physical “N” home button on the face of the device. It’s an attribute the Nook HD+ (and 7-inch Nook HD) share with the iPad. As I’ve said before, having that obvious “take me home” button on the front of the device is something I wish every tablet manufacturer would replicate.

Interface

Speaking of replicate, much of what is important and what you need to know about Barnes and Noble’s biggest tablet can be found in my review of the 7-inch Nook HD. The interfaces are exactly the same, so I won’t waste too much space recounting every bit of the Nook HD+ interface, which obscures any trace of Android 4.0, and is exquisitely usable.

The biggest difference between the Nook HD and the HD+ is screen resolution. The HD gets you 1440×900 pixels, while the HD+ offers 1920×1280, which is slightly more than the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s 1920×1200. The latter two devices are almost the exact same size. By contrast, the competitors’ 7-inch devices are quite different because Amazon includes a front-facing camera, while Barnes and Noble does not include cameras on any of its tablets (if you plan on taking photos or video with your tablet, you can stop reading now). In the case of the Nook HD+, Barnes and Noble uses the space it saves on a camera for, it appears, 80 extra pixels of space. For the record, neither device beats the iPad’s 2048×1536 resolution.

Connectvity

Barnes and Noble also chose to leave out a cellular option from all of its tablets. Amazon, on the other hand, adds it in for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 LTE. This is not as big of a deal as it seems since the world is filled with high-speed Wi-Fi. Still, if you plan to surf the web on your tablet while sitting on a train without another device to which to tether your HD+, look for products with the mobile broadband option, instead.

When it comes to connectivity, Amazon adds dual-band Wi-Fi to its HD Kindle Fires, while Barnes and Noble’s tablet remains single band. I’ve tested both devices in the most stressful situation -– streaming HD video -– and the difference is negligible.

Using It

Barnes and Noble Nook HD+’s profile-centric interface remains one of the best on the market. There is no learning curve; you simply drag your profile image to the unlock icon, and you have access to the large and uncluttered interface that features a carousel (which like the Kindle is a hodge-podge of disparate icons), your library and some recently used apps. Persistent menu items include the Library, Apps, Web, email and Shop. The screen also includes “your Nook Today,” which, along with the weather, is a place for Barnes and Noble to push shopping options based on your interests.

As you would expect, reading books and magazines is a pleasurable experience, especially on this larger screen. Magazines such as Esquire look great and, yes, Barnes and Noble still employs the animated page turn (though I don’t know for how much longer). Email and Web browsing are solid, and I prefer Barnes and Noble’s web solution to Amazon’s home-grown Silk browser, which crashed too often for my taste.

Social integration is fairly good on the Nook HD+. When I installed the Twitter client, it became one of my options for social sharing. That said, the app looks like it would be more at home on a small-screen smartphone than on the HD+’s 9-inch display. For Facebook, I opted for the web interface, which looks too tiny in portrait mode, but just right in landscape.

Movies and Music

I had no trouble buying, renting and streaming HD-quality movies such Arthur Christmas, and Netflix worked smoothly. Barnes and Noble, however, lacks its own streaming option. If you pay $ 75 a year for Amazon Prime, you get access to a vast library of streaming content. Both devices will let you play HD content on your big-screen TV, though they do it in slightly different ways.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes complete with a mini-HDI-out port, and can accommodate a mini-to-standard HDMI cable (not included), so I could watch the HD content on my big-screen TV. The Nook HD+ lacks an HDMI port, but you can buy a $ 39 adapter (with an HDMI cable), which plugs into the tablet’s 30-pin port, to do the same thing.

I still prefer the Kindle HD platform for music since Amazon’s music services are more deeply integrated into the device and its cloud-based storage offering. On the Nook HD+ you have to start by finding the music service under Apps. If Barnes and Noble is serious about music, it should be on the main menu. Worse yet, if you open the Music app, it offers no instruction on how to fill your music library. You have to add tunes via your computer, by connecting to your PC with the proprietary cable or through the Micro SD slot where you can add more storage or place, say, an entire library of songs.

If you have a Rhapsody Account, you can use it to manage your music needs on the Nook HD+.

I almost never use my large tablet for music (that’s a job for my iPhone or iPod), so I don’t miss the rich music capabilities as much as some others likely would.

Apps and Performance

Like Amazon, Barnes and Noble curates its app library, which generally makes it safe and usable. The key apps, such as Netflix, Twitter, Dropbox, MobiSystems’ OfficeSuite, FlipBoard and Evernote, are all there.

I found some games on there, too, such as the Angry Birds Series and Cut the Rope. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble has very few action games. This may be because, while it’s running the same Texas Instruments Dual core 4470 CPU as the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, it doesn’t offer the same quadcore graphics processing power as Apple’s fourth-generation iPad.

Amazon actually includes the GPU-hungry Asphalt 7 in its app library, but the game does not look particularly good on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Obviously, Barnes and Noble chose not to take that risk.

Price

At $ 269 for the 16 GB model (I tested the $ 299 32 GB option), Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD+ is one of the most affordable large-screen tablets on the market — that price even includes the AC adapter. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 costs $ 299, but does not include the charger, and adds subsidizing sleep-screen ads. A 16 GB Wi-Fi-only fourth-generation iPad starts at $ 499.

Obviously, the iPad is more powerful, has a higher resolution and two cameras, while the Kindle, which also includes a camera, offers powerful Dolby stereo speakers (Nook HD+ has ones with decent volume) and unlimited cloud-based storage for your Amazon content. But if those features don’t matter to you, and you’re looking for an attractive, large-screen, light-weight, fun, effective and very affordable tablet from a company that knows a thing or two about good content, you can’t do better than the Nook HD+.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Ariad drug proves effective in curbing chronic leukemia in study

(Reuters) – An experimental leukemia drug from Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc eliminated the cancer from the bone marrow of nearly half of patients with a chronic form of the disease who had stopped responding to other drugs, according to a 12-month follow-up of a pivotal drug trial.

The trial of the drug, ponatinib, which involved 444 patients, including 267 with chronic myeloid leukemia who had previously been treated with older drugs, also showed that 56 percent of chronic patients achieved the study’s goal of a “major response,” meaning the disease had nearly disappeared from the bone marrow.

Ariad earlier this year presented interim results from the trial, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration agreed in October to an expedited review. The agency is slated to decide by March 27 whether to approve ponatinib.

“We expect FDA approval sometime in the first quarter,” said Tim Clackson, Ariad’s chief scientific officer. He said the company is prepared to immediately launch sales of the drug. “We believe the overall trial data suggests activity in all forms of resistant disease.”

Ponatinib is designed to target an abnormal tyrosine kinase that is closely associated with chronic myeloid leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Ariad is also testing the drug in newly diagnosed CML patients. Final results from that trial are expected at the end of 2014, but an interim analysis will occur after half of the trial patients are enrolled, Clackson said.

Around 5,000 U.S. patients are diagnosed with CML each year, and about 2,500 patients will become resistant to their treatment, according to Ariad.

(Reporting By Deena Beasley; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Alexander: No triple dip slump

9 December 2012 Last updated at 07:36 ET

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander: “It is a longer and harder road… but we are making progress”

Britain is not heading for a triple dip recession, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said.

Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that the economy was set to shrink in the final three months of 2012.

Mr Alexander said he accepted this, but added “steady growth” in 2013 meant the UK would avoid another recession.

He said the road to economic recovery was being “longer and harder” than expected, but progress had been made.

The OBR growth forecasts show that despite the UK economy’s return to growth in the three months from July to September, in the final quarter the economy will shrink again by 0.1%, before growth returns in 2013.

The UK would experience a triple dip recession if it had two quarters or more of negative growth before the economy had fully recovered from the 2008 recession.

It experienced a double dip recession earlier this year, with three quarters of negative growth between the end of 2011 and the middle of 2012.

‘Uncertain world’

Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show whether he thought the UK would face a triple dip recession, Mr Alexander said: “The OBR forecast that the final quarter of this year would be negative, but that we would see positive growth slowly returning in every quarter of next year.

“That would suggest that we’re not going to have that happening. But it is an uncertain world out there.

“We’re seeing continuing problems in the eurozone, but I’m happy to rest on the OBR’s forecast, which is a bounce-back from the Olympic boost we saw in the third quarter causing a small negative in the final quarter of this year, but then steady growth slowly starting to return next year and the year after that.”

However, Mr Alexander’s Liberal Democrat colleague Business Secretary Vince Cable was more cautious.

He told the Observer there was “certainly a risk” of the UK going back into its third recession since 2008, although it is more likely the economy will “continue bumping along the bottom”.

Mr Alexander said slow growth in the eurozone and the “weight of the broken banking system in the United Kingdom” were weighing down the economy.

This meant the economic recovery was “a longer and harder road” than expected, but he said: “We are making progress and I think we are going to get there”.

Spending review

He said he would continue to protect the NHS budget and schools spending, as he looks to save an additional £10bn before the next election.

It follows a warning from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that unprotected government departments could face could cuts of more than 30% following the Autumn Statement.

It said further welfare cuts and tax rises “must be on the cards” to make the government’s numbers add up if the NHS and welfare continue to be protected.

Mr Alexander said additional savings to be made in 2015-16 will be “at the same pace” as departments have had in recent years.

“I think we’re right not to chase our debt target, but instead to continue to do this in a steady way,” he added.

Decisions on spending for after the next election, and whether to continue to protect the NHS budget, would be set out in party manifestos, he said.

The next spending review, which will set out future departmental spending, is expected to be announced in the first half of next year.

BBC News – Business

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