Canada serial killer inquiry finds “systemic bias” by police

(Reuters) – Police made critical errors in pursuing Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton partly because of “systemic bias” against his victims, sex trade workers from a rough Vancouver neighborhood, according to the final report from a public inquiry released on Monday.

Commissioner Wally Oppal was asked by the British Columbia government to investigate, in effect, why Pickton was not caught sooner. Women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside neighborhood for more than a decade before the pig farmer’s 2002 arrest.

“The investigations of missing and murdered women were characterized by blatant police failures, and by public indifference,” Oppal said at a press conference in Vancouver that was frequently interrupted by protesters.

Pickton was convicted of six murders, but prosecutors believe he killed many more – 20 other charges were stayed after he received the maximum possible sentence.

Oppal outlined a string of police errors, from failing to take proper reports when women went missing and communicate adequately with families, to ineffective coordination across jurisdictions. He called his more than 1,200-page report, which is based on eight months of hearings, “Forsaken”.

“After reviewing the evidence of the investigations, I have come to the conclusion that there was systemic bias by the police,” he said.

Oppal recommended that the provincial government establish a compensation fund for the children of the victims and consider creating a regional police force for Vancouver, instead of the patchwork of jurisdictions currently in place.

After Oppal’s announcement, B.C. Minister of Justice Shirley Bond wiped away tears as she spoke to victims’ families.

“I want you to know that, however inadequate these words sound, we are sorry for your loss,” she said. “We will work hard to prevent these circumstances from being repeated in our province.”

She announced the appointment of a former lieutenant governor, Steven Point, to serve as the report’s “champion”, guiding implementation. Bond said the government would immediately give new funding to WISH, a drop-in center for women who work in the Downtown Eastside’s sex trade.

POLICE RESPOND

The Vancouver Police Department said in a short statement that it is committed to learning from its mistakes and will study the report.

“We know that nothing can ever truly heal the wounds of grief and loss but if we can, we want to assure the families that the Vancouver Police Department deeply regrets anything we did that may have delayed the eventual solving of these murders,” it said.

Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens, who commands the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, said in a statement that his force will review the report.

Oppal said many individual police officers were diligent, and he commended several by name. But he said that as a system, the authorities failed because of bias against Pickton’s victims, many of whom were poor and addicted to drugs.

“Would the reaction of the police and the public have been any different if the missing women had come from Vancouver’s (more affluent) west side? The answer is obvious,” he said.

Aboriginal women were overrepresented among the victims, and Oppal repeatedly referred to the broader “marginalization” of aboriginal people in Canada.

“There has to be community responsibility for what has taken place,” he said, highlighting poverty and the conditions on the Downtown Eastside. “The social reality is that racism and gender bias are prevalent within Canadian society, and we must do something to eradicate those.”

Victims’ families and activists were on hand for Oppal’s press conference, and he stopped speaking several times as audience members shouted criticism, chanted and played drums.

The provincial government did not offer funding to a number of community organizations that said they needed support to participate in the lengthy and complex inquiry. In protest, other groups boycotted the process.

In November, several organizations, including the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, released their own report, criticizing the inquiry for, among other things, excluding too many aboriginal women, sex trade workers and drug users.

Bond, the justice minister, said she did not regret the decision not to fund those groups, but said she saw them participating in the future. “I think going forward this is room for us to include other voices.” (Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Eric Beech)

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UBS fined $1.5 billion in growing Libor scandal

ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss bank UBS admitted fraud and accepted a $ 1.5 billion fine on Wednesday for its role in manipulating global benchmark interest rates.

Dozens of UBS staff rigged the Libor rate, which is used to price trillions of dollars worth of loans, in collusion with brokers and traders at other banks, according to an investigation by authorities in multiple countries.

The controversy is expected to ensnare other big lenders and spark criminal and civil lawsuits against individuals involved. The penalty UBS agreed with U.S., UK and Swiss authorities far exceeds the $ 450 million levied on Britain‘s Barclays in June, also for rigging Libor, and the second largest ever imposed on a bank.

“This is an endemic banking industry problem and shows how far the industry has fallen, failing itself and its customers,” said Neil Dwane, chief investment officer for Allianz Global Investors.

“For the future it shows that without strong regulation and strong and new management throughout most of the biggest banks, there can be no reasonable expectation that they will improve their behavior substantially – at least UBS now has strong new management.”

Shares in the Swiss lender rose 1.6 percent to hit a 17-month high of 15.5 francs ($ 16.97) in early trade as investors judged the worst was over.

“You can see from the stock movement that the fine is already baked in,” said Markus Jordi, principal at Zurich-based investment manager Cosmos Capital.

“The bank has already kicked out some traders, apologized, said it will shut down parts of the investment bank and overhauled management.”

The UBS fine comes a week after Britain’s HSBC agreed to pay a record $ 1.92 billion to settle a probe in the United States into laundering money for drug cartels.

UBS’s unit in Japan pleaded guilty to one count of fraud relating to manipulation of benchmark rates, including the yen Libor.

The Libor benchmarks are used for trillions of dollars worth of loans around the world, ranging from home loans to credit cards to complex derivatives.

Tiny shifts in the rate, compiled from daily polls of bankers, could benefit banks by millions of dollars. But every dollar a bank benefited meant an equal loss by a bank, hedge fund or other investor on the other side of the trade – raising the threat of a raft of civil lawsuits.

REPUTATIONAL HIT

The Libor settlement caps a torrid 18 months for UBS during which it lost $ 2.3 billion in a rogue trading scandal, underwent a management upheaval and made thousands of job cuts.

“We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm,” UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in a statement.

The reputational impact of the controversy may only emerge next year.

“The only thing shareholders can do is keep a very close eye on the money flows on the wealth management side,” said Neil Wilkinson, portfolio manager at Royal London Asset Management.

“We may not see until the first quarter of next year whether they have lost any clients as a result of this.”

Ermotti said around 40 people had left UBS or had been asked to leave as a result of the investigation.

The bank will pay $ 1.2 billion to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), 160 million pounds to the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) and 59 million Swiss francs from its estimated profit to Swiss regulator Finma.

The UK penalty is the largest in the history of the FSA and more than double the 59 million pounds paid by Barclays.

UBS said the fines would widen its fourth quarter net loss but it would not need to raise new capital.

BE A HERO

Britain’s FSA said attempts to manipulate Libor and Euribor, its European equivalent, were so widespread that every submission UBS made over a six-year period from 2005 to 2010 was suspect.

At least 45 people at UBS were involved in the rigging, which was discussed in internal chat forums and group emails but never detected by compliance staff, despite five audits.

The FSA said the manipulation was considered to be “normal business practice” by a wide pool of people within UBS.

In addition to traders trying to move the Libor rate up or down to make money for themselves, senior managers at the Swiss bank directed dealers to keep Libor submissions low during the financial crisis to make the bank look stronger.

The extent of the wrongdoing was highlighted in a series of emails released by the FSA which showed how traders and brokers conspired to rig the rate and referred to each other in congratulatory terms such as “superman” and “be a hero today”.

In one email, a trader wrote :”I need you to keep it as low as possible … if you do that …. I’ll pay you, you know, 50,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars… whatever you want … I’m a man of my word”.

It is the first time that brokers have been accused of taking payments to aid manipulation. ICAP, the world’s largest inter-dealer broker, and rival RP Martin have suspended employees in connection with the probe.

In a memo to staff on Wednesday, Ermotti said it was too early to determine whether or how clients were affected, pending further regulatory probing of the rate fixing.

Last week, British police arrested three men, including former UBS and Citigroup trader Thomas Hayes, in connection with the Libor probe, the first such arrests. The two others were Terry Farr and James Gilmour, who both worked at interdealer broker RP Martin.

Until the rate-rigging scandal broke, Libor had been ignored by regulators and left to the banks to police. From next year, Britain’s FSA will have oversight of it as part of a major overhaul.

The steep fine for UBS is despite the bank, since 2011, cooperating with law-enforcement agencies in their probes. The bank said it received conditional immunity from some regulators.

A similar admission by Barclays in June touched off a political firestorm that forced its chairman and chief executive to quit.

(Additional reporting by the Zurich bureau and London bureau; Writing by Carmel Crimmins and Alex Smith. Editing by Anna Willard and Janet McBride)

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Iran leader gets the clicks with Facebook rumor

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Facebook page purportedly created by Iran‘s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attracted nearly 10,000 followers on Tuesday although the site’s content and style raise serious questions about its authenticity.

Iranian authorities had no immediate comment on the site, which apparently went online last week but only recently gained prominence among social media watchers. Despite the possibility that it is a hoax, the page has generated at least 170 comments — laudatory and derogatory, and nearly all in Farsi — that highlight the deep political divisions in Iran and possibly opposition fervor from expatriate Iranians.

One post compared Khamenei to a celebrated ruler of ancient Persia, Cyrus the Great, who significantly expanded the Persian empire 2,500 years ago.

Another wrote: “Mr. Khamenei, how are you visiting this page? With proxy?”

It was a reference to Iran’s blocking of Facebook and many other Western social media sites, and the efforts to bypass the restrictions using proxy server links from outside Iran.

The U.S. State Department said Monday it will keep tabs on the page, but had no comment on whether it was genuine or not. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland joked that Washington is curious how many “likes” the Khamenei page receives.

But much about the page — including an informal photo of Khamenei riding in a car — suggested it was not sanctioned by Iran’s top leader. It is also highly unlikely that Khamenei would endorse a banned outlet such as Facebook.

The Net is not unknown territory for Iranian leaders, however. Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and others have official websites. Also, some senior Iranian clerics issue religious opinions by email.

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“The Office” head Greg Daniels sells tennis comedy to Fox

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “The Office” might be preparing to close up shop, but the series’ creator is most definitely still open for business.

Greg Daniels, who birthed the American version of “The Office” – which is preparing to wrap up its run at the end of this season – has sold a half-hour comedy to Fox via Universal Television and his own Deedle-Dee Productions.

The project was sold through Daniels by Tom Gormican (“Are We Officially Dating?”) and Richie Keen (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), who are also writing.

The as-yet-untitled project will revolve around Richie, a so-so tennis pro who returns to his college town to get a fresh start on life. There, Richie finds himself torn between living the carefree life with his bar-owning brother and growing up to pursue Kristen, the love of his life.

Daniels will executive-produce the project via his Deedle-Dee Production, along with Gormican and Keen.

Deedle-Dee’s Howard Klein and Tracy Katsky are also executive-producing, along with Oly Obst.

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Home HIV Test — No ‘Live’ Counselor

Dan Nainan had never heard of a home test for HIV until a prospective girlfriend insisted that he take one. Apparently, she didn’t trust him.

“I’m not some sleaze bag, but she’s really suspicious,” said Nainan, 31, who works as a comedian. “I’m like, ‘Come on, you’re kidding me.’”

The test became a sticking point in their budding relationship. “I didn’t feel I had anything to be worried about,” Nainan said, “but she didn’t want to proceed.”

He finally gave in and took the test his girlfriend foisted on him, certain he’d test negative. He swabbed his gums — the test works on saliva — put the test swab in a test tube and waited as his girlfriend grilled him about his sexual history.

“It was a bit uncomfortable,” Nainan said.

Ten tense minutes passed as he watched a deep-pink line appear slowly in a tiny window on the testing device. He prayed it wouldn’t be joined by a second line signaling a positive result, and wondered what he’d do if it did emerge.

“I felt like I was taking a pregnancy test,” Nainan said.

Do-it-yourself home testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has arrived.

The OraQuick In-Home HIV Test — the only one approved for over-the-counter use by the Food and Drug Administration that captures testing and results in one sitting — hit drug-store shelves two months ago. An earlier HIV home test — called Home Access — required a user to prick a finger with a spring-loaded lancet, collect a drop of blood on a test card, mail it to a lab and call in a week for the results.

“This was actually quite easy and painless,” Nainan said of the OraQuick test. “It’s so much better than what you used to have to do.”

Aimed at those who might have avoided getting tested in the past either out of, fear, stigma, worries over confidentiality or inconvenience, the new home test has been hailed as a breakthrough.

“It’s hard not to be fully enthusiastic about the test,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Everything we do to increase testing has to have some degree of benefit. By identifying and treating people early, we preserve normal life span and excellent health and reduce contagion.”

But the new home test, which sells for about $ 40 and can also be bought online, has generated its share of hand-wringing, too.

“We generally like this thing,” said Dan Tietz, executive director of the research and advocacy group AIDS Community Research Initiative of America, or ACRIA. “It decreases some of the barriers to testing. It kind of puts HIV in front of people, but there’s a bunch of cautions.”

For one, there’s what Tietz called the “freaking out by themselves problem” — for the first time, there’s no live counselor present — not even a voice over the phone — to deliver the results, offer support and make referrals.

Nainan tested negative for HIV, as he expected he would. Despite some sweat as he waited out the 20 minutes staring at the test window, “I really wasn’t nervous,” he said.

But for home-testers less certain of their HIV status, or who receive an unexpected result, the do-it-yourself route could be overwhelming, Tietz said. “I think about a young person with very little experience with the health care system who might pick up this test,” he added.

Tony Martinez, 40, who works in New York’s fashion district, took the home test as an “experiment.” “If I didn’t know I wasn’t HIV positive, the test would be a different ballgame. I put myself back many years ago when I went to a clinic and took the test and was terrified. [The home test] was a lot of steps. I don’t think I would have followed the directions in that [terrified] state. Am I really going to read the manual “What Your Results Mean” if the test is positive? It’s like asking someone to read a drivers’ ed manual after an accident.”

In lieu of an in-person counselor, OraSure Technologies, which makes the OraQuick test that the FDA approved in July — has set up a toll-free 24/7 customer support center with bilingual reps (English-Spanish). They’re not certified counselors but have been trained to answer questions about HIV/AIDS, explain how the test works and what the results mean. They can also hook up callers to counseling and care, using the CDC National Prevention Information Network and the HIV Medicine Association, and can also transfer callers directly to a health care professional or agency, said Ron Ticho, senior vice president for corporate communications at OraSure.

“Our representatives go through more than 160 hours of training,” Ticho said. Test kits come with instructions, warnings and precautions. Home-testers can find the same test information on OraSure’s website, along with the same referral databases the call center uses.

But handing concerns about HIV over to a toll-free number has raised questions.

Much is made of the fact that without a counselor present, even with warnings on the box and inserts and brochures written for a seventh- to eighth-grade reading level, home-testers might not understand that, as with all HIV tests, regardless of the testing method, a positive result is preliminary and needs to be confirmed by a more specific test given at an HIV test site.

This is especially worrying with the home test because although the OraQuick test is the same rapid test that medical professionals have used at testing sites since 2004, it loses some of its accuracy in the hands of consumers: The percentage of results that will be accurately positive drops from 99.3 at a testing site to 92.9 when do-it yourselvers test themselves at home: This means that about one person in 12 could get a false negative.

Another stumbling block is the “window period” — the time it takes, usually 12 weeks, for the body to develop the antibodies the test detects after exposure to HIV, giving some people a “false sense of safety” that they’re HIV negative when they are in fact HIV positive and at their most contagious.

“That’s always a huge, really important piece of counseling,” said Barbara Adler, manager of HIV counseling and testing at the AIDS Alliance Project at the University of California at San Francisco, where the first HIV test was given 27 years ago.

But, Adler said, sometimes people who received a preliminary positive result didn’t return for the results from the confirming test.

“So I don’t know if sitting with another human being when they’re getting a result is going to help that. I think the person who wants the physical presence of someone else probably won’t do the home test.

“There’s reasons, though, for wanting to test alone in your home. While the stigma is not like it was 30 years ago,” Adler said, “it’s still there and can be heavy. It’s a disease around sex, or around needle use. Who wants to talk about those things? It’s not like we’re talking about cholesterol, or something you got because you ate certain foods or got too much sun.”

OraSure emphasizes that its HIV home test is simply an additional option to the testing already available — which often comes free — at public health clinics, community service organizations and doctors’ offices.

“We know that there’s a lot of individuals who should be getting tested but aren’t, and this is another opportunity for them to do so,” OraSure’s Ticho said. “Is it the right option for everyone? Probably not.”

Nevertheless, with an HIV diagnosis no longer sounding a death knell, it could be a test whose time has come.

“The tide has really turned on HIV testing,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, co-director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Center and an AIDS researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“It’s a lot more streamlined, and there’s not a lot of counseling required now. Treatment is available, and there’s a lot of literature that says that life expectancy is up to near normal if people engage in care early and take care of themselves.

“There are cancers, and many, many other diseases that have far worse outcomes than HIV that people deal with on their own without a lot of counseling.”

Of the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 20 percent don’t even know that they’re infected and account for more than half of the 50,000 new infections a year in the United States.

Whether people most at risk — African-American gay-bisexual men, especially those between the ages of 13 and 24, according to the CDC — will have the money and motivation to go to the drug store and pay $ 40 for the home test is another question, Walensky said.

Even if they have the $ 40 to spend on an HIV home test, many won’t be able to buy it anyway, because the OraQuick home test cannot be sold to anyone younger than 17, and requires ID.

“Any availability of any test anywhere is a good thing,” Walensky said. “Whether this is going to be an epidemic game-changer is where I have to opt out.”

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Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels took full control of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Monday after fighting raged for days in the district on the southern edge of President Bashar al-Assad‘s Damascus powerbase, rebel and Palestinian sources said.

The battle had pitted rebels, backed by some Palestinians, against Palestinian fighters of the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Many PFLP-GC fighters defected to the rebel side and their leader Ahmed Jibril left the camp two days ago, rebel sources said.

“All of the camp is under the control of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army,” said a Palestinian activist in Yarmouk. He said clashes had stopped and the remaining PFLP fighters retreated to join Assad‘s forces massed on the northern edge of the camp.

The battle in Yarmouk is one of a series of conflicts on the southern fringes of Assad’s capital, as rebels try to choke the power of the 47-year-old leader after a 21-month-old uprising in which 40,000 people have been killed.

Government forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters but the violence has crept into the heart of the city and activists say rebels overran three army stations in a new offensive in the central province of Hama on Monday.

On the border with Lebanon, hundreds of Palestinian families fled across the frontier following the weekend violence in Yarmouk, a Reuters witness said.

Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk, descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948, and has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.

Both Assad’s government and the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have enlisted and armed divided Palestinian factions as the uprising has developed into a civil war.

“NEITHER SIDE CAN WIN”

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that neither Assad’s forces nor rebels seeking to overthrow him can win the war.

Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, has rarely been seen since the revolt erupted in March 2011 and is not part of the president’s inner circle directing the fight against Sunni rebels. But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win.

Sharaa said the situation in Syria was deteriorating and a “historic settlement” was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the U.N. Security Council and the formation of a national unity government “with broad powers”.

“With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime,” Sharaa was quoted as telling Al-Akhbar newspaper.

“The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement,” he said, adding that insurgents fighting to topple Syria’s leadership could plunge it into “anarchy and an unending spiral of violence”.

Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully.

In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, he said there was a difference between the state’s duty to provide security to its citizens, and “pursuing a security solution to the crisis”.

He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that “this is a long struggle…and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution.”

In Hama province, rebels and the army clashed in a new campaign launched on Sunday by rebels to block off the country’s north, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked violence monitor, said fighting raged through the provincial towns of Karnaz, Kafar Weeta, Halfayeh and Mahardeh.

It said there were no clashes reported in Hama city, which lies on the main north-south highway connecting the capital with Aleppo, Syria’s second city.

Qassem Saadeddine, a member of the newly established rebel military command, said on Sunday fighters had been ordered to surround and attack army positions across the province. He said Assad’s forces were given 48 hours to surrender or be killed.

In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, crushed an uprising in Hama city, killing up to 30,000 civilians.

Qatiba al-Naasan, a rebel from Hama, said the offensive would bring retaliatory air strikes from the government but that the situation is “already getting miserable”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Erika Solomon and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Afif Diab at Masnaa, Lebanon; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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Modern Etiquette: A bit of netiquette will keep Christmas real

LONDON (Reuters) – Christmas is a convivial time of year when people get together for celebrations and conversation. It’s all about human contact so it’s important that you’re discriminating about how you use your digital devices.

It’s fine if they’re used to facilitate get-togethers and spread seasonal cheer. But Christmas is a real, not a virtual event, so it’s important to discard the phones, tablets and computers and enjoy festive celebrations in the real world.

Christmas cards are still an invaluable and personal way of keeping in touch with far-flung friends and relations.

In these straitened times, however, you might want to cut down the number of cards you send, so it’s fine to explain to your nearest and dearest that you won’t be sending them cards – a personalized seasonal message by text, phone call or email, sent out to individuals, is quite acceptable.

Avoid sending out generic e-cards. They’re lazy and impersonal, and many people will find them lacking in Christmas spirit or just baffling.

If you’re emailing instead of sending a Christmas card, make sure that you send out unique – and individual – messages to each of your recipients. Group emails, like round robins, are to be avoided.

It’s fine to put general seasonal messages on social networking sites, but avoid posting compromising photos.

This is the time of year when we all let our hair down, but not everyone will appreciate the evidence being posted for all to see in cyberspace.

Don’t get too carried away with seasonal cyber-cheer. Spamming your friends and followers with endless Christmas wishes and updates will soon get tedious.

Christmas Day is all about socializing with family and friends, and enjoying good food and good conversation. So don’t spend the big day glued to your phone, rather than interacting with your family.

Ban all phones from the Christmas table.

Eating together is all about sociability and it’s a real insult to the host and/or cook to be transfixed by your texts rather than the turkey and table talk.

Be a good digital host.

Technology is part of our everyday life and Christmas is no exception. If you have friends or family staying in your home, make sure that you have your WiFi password to hand. Offer them access to your network, and hope that everyone adheres to good festive netiquette.

Christmas is the perfect time to make a video call, but choose your timing carefully. Nobody wants to be talking to virtual visitors during lunch or present opening.

Remember the power of the written word.

If you are the lucky recipient of a generous present or lavish hospitality, then hand-writing a proper thank you letter is a much more elegant gesture than texting or emailing, and will be noted and appreciated. It is fine to email or text your thanks for small presents.

(This story has been refiled to fix dateline)

(Jo Bryant is an etiquette advisor and editor at Debrett’s, the UK authority on etiquette and modern manners (www.debretts.com). Any opinions expressed are her own. Debrett’s “Netiquette” is a definitive guide to digital dilemmas and outlines a code of manners for modern communication.)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Amy Winehouse inquest to be heard again

LONDON (AP) — Officials in London say the inquest into the death of soul singer Amy Winehouse was overseen by a coroner who lacked the proper qualifications and will be re-heard next month.

Camden Council says a new hearing will take place on Jan. 8.

Winehouse was found dead in her London home in July 2011 at age 27. An inquest in October 2011 found the “Back to Black” singer had died of accidental alcohol poisoning.

Assistant deputy coroner Suzanne Greenaway, who oversaw the inquest, resigned the next month after her qualifications were questioned. She had been appointed by her husband, Andrew Reid, the coroner for inner north London.

Reid was suspended, and resigned earlier this month.

Winehouse family spokesman Chris Goodman said Monday that family had not requested a new hearing.

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Draft EU rules open door to plain cigarette packs

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union‘s executive Commission will propose larger health warnings on cigarette packs and a ban on flavorings such as menthol, a draft revision of EU tobacco rules seen by Reuters on Monday showed.

The proposals stop short of forcing all cigarettes to be sold in plain packets carrying graphic health warnings, as required in Australia from the start of this month. But individual EU governments will be free to impose plain packaging if they so wish.

“The proposal foresees that combined warnings (picture plus text) of 75 percent should be displayed on both sides of the packages of tobacco products,” the draft legislation from the European Commission said.

“However, a member state may maintain more stringent national provisions… in areas covered by this directive, on grounds of overriding needs relating to the protection of public health,” it added.

The proposals, due be published on Wednesday, must be jointly approved by EU governments and the European Parliament before they can become law, in a process that could take up to two years.

(Reporting by Charlie Dunmore and Claire Davenport; editing by Rex Merrifield)

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Iran media: Son of ex-president released on bail

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian media say the son of influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been released on bail.

Several papers, including the pro-reform Etemad daily, say Mahdi Hashemi was released late Sunday and immediately went to his father’s home.

Authorities arrested the younger Hashemi in late September, a day after he returned to Iran from Britain.

He is held on charges of fomenting unrest in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term in office. Hashemi also faced corruption charges.

His arrest came days after his sister, Faezeh, was taken into custody to serve a six-month sentence on charges of making propaganda against Iran’s ruling system.

Since Rafsanjani backed Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger in 2009, his family has come under pressure from hardliners.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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