Work programme ‘to miss targets’

27 November 2012 Last updated at 04:11 ET

Government figures assessing the success of its welfare-to-work programme are expected to show a crucial target has been missed.

Firms and charities are paid to help find jobs for the long-term unemployed in the hope of helping 2.4m people.

But the first set of official figures, due out at shortly, are expected to show they are getting less than 5% of jobseekers into “sustainable” work.

Ministers argue the programme will help cut welfare payments and change lives.

But critics say only those in already economically successful areas will benefit.

The figures will show how many people are still in employment six months after joining the Work Programme, which was launched by the coalition in June last year.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson says the figures are expected to show that only around 3% of jobseekers meet this criteria.

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The work programme was part of what ministers called a revolution in welfare ”

End Quote

And failing to hit the 5% target will mean “as many unemployed are getting sustainable jobs as if the work programme had never existed”, he said.

He added that the government will not accept the scheme is a failure and will claim the work programme is taking longer than expected to succeed and the next set of figures will be better.

Under the scheme – replacing the New Deal, Employment Zones and Pathways to Work – approved providers in England, Scotland and Wales, mostly private companies, try to find work for claimants on a payment-by-results basis.

‘Still early days’

People aged over 25 become eligible when they have been out of work for a year and under-25s after nine months. Some younger people in certain circumstances, like young offenders, are eligible after a shorter period of time.

Ahead of the release of the government’s figures, the Employment Related Services Association, the trade body for the welfare-to-work industry, said 20,000 jobseekers were being helped each month. More than 200,000 have found employment since the scheme’s launch, it added.

But these figures do not show how many have remained in a job for six months after being helped off long-term unemployment, unlike the official ONS figures.

Employment minister Mark Hoban said: “The Work Programme has already helped more than 200,000 of the hardest-to-help unemployed people into jobs. This is great news.

He added: “It’s still early days, but it’s a welcome sign that one year in providers are getting more and more people into sustained jobs.”

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion think-tank predicted that the official data would show performance targets missed as a result of the poor state of the UK’s economy.

Under the programme, providers can earn between £3,700 and £13,700 per person helped into work, depending how hard it is to give support to an individual, with an initial payment of between £400 and £600.

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Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout

CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — A 20-year-old state beauty queen died in a gun battle between soldiers and the alleged gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with in a scene befitting the hit movie “Miss Bala,” or “Miss Bullet,” about Mexico’s not uncommon ties between narcos and beautiful pageant contestants.

The body of Maria Susana Flores Gamez was found Saturday lying near an assault rifle on a rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, the chief state prosecutor said Monday. It was unclear if she had used the weapon.

“She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout,” state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. “That’s what we’re going to have to investigate.”

The slender, 5-foot-7-inch brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. In June, the model competed with other seven contestants for the more prestigious state beauty contest, Our Beauty Sinaloa, but didn’t win. The Our Beauty state winners compete for the Miss Mexico title, whose holder represents the country in the international Miss Universe.

Higuera said Flores Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an hours-long chase and running gun battle on Saturday near her native city of Guamuchil in the state of Sinaloa, home to Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel. Higuera said two other members of the drug gang were killed and four were detained.

The shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol. Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house in the town of Mocorito. The other men escaped, and the gunbattle continued along a nearby roadway, where the gang’s vehicles were eventually stopped. Six vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.

It was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants have been linked to Mexico’s violent drug gangs, a theme so common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.

In “Miss Bala,” Mexico’s official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of this year’s Academy Awards, a young woman competing for Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into performing.

In real life, former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga was stripped of her 2008 crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. She was later released without charges.

Zuniga was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $ 53,300 with them inside a vehicle.

In 2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for Paraguay‘s national football team and Mexico’s Club America. She was also later released.

Higuera said Flores Gamez’s body has been turned over to relatives for burial.

“This is a sad situation,” Higuera told a local radio station. She had been enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling and in pageants since at least 2009.

Javier Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants entitled “Miss Narco,” said “this is a recurrent story.”

“There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself,” Valdez said.

“It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need,” said Valdez. “For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn’t offer many opportunities for young people.”

Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.

“I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend,” he said. “She practically took out a classified ad saying ‘Looking for a Narco’.”

The stories seldom end well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they simply disappear.

“They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed,” Valdez said.

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Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report

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HTC confirms 5-inch ‘Deluxe’ smartphone won’t launch in Europe

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Halle Berry’s ex claims he was victim in Thanksgiving brawl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Halle Berry‘s ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry on Monday won a restraining order against the actress’s current lover, as the two men fought in the Los Angeles courts over who started their Thanksgiving Day brawl.

Releasing photos of himself with a black eye and cuts to his face, Aubry claimed that he was the victim in the November 22 punch-up with Berry’s fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, in the driveway of her Los Angeles house.

“I suffered numerous injuries as a result of the attack, including a fractured rib, multiple bruises on my face and a number of cuts which required stitches,” Aubry said in court papers, alleging that Martinez had threatened the day before to kill him.

“It all happened so fast and so suddenly; I did not see Mr Martinez’s actions coming and thus I was not ready for it and was not able to defend myself,” Aubry wrote.

Aubry, Martinez, and the Oscar-winning “Monster’s Ball” actress have been embroiled for months in a custody fight over Berry’s 4-year-old daughter, Nahla. Berry wants to take the daughter she had with Aubry to live with her and Martinez in France, but a Los Angeles judge denied that request earlier in November.

Aubry claimed in his request for a restraining order on Monday that Martinez told him, “You cost us $ 3 million,” while the French actor punched and kicked him on November 22.

Aubry, a Canadian model, was arrested last week for battery after the fist fight, and ordered to stay away from Berry, the child, and Martinez.

Neither man has been yet been formally charged in the case.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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Outbreak-Tied Peanut Butter Plant Shut

Nov 26, 2012 7:37pm

The Food and Drug Administration today shut down the country’s largest organic peanut butter processor following a salmonella outbreak that sickened scores of people nationwide.

For the first time the FDA has utilized new power granted by the 2011 food safety law and shut down Sunland Inc.’s New Mexico processing plant.

In a statement on their website, the FDA said that the link between the company and the salmonella outbreak that sickened 41 people in 20 states along with “Sunland’s history of violations led FDA to make the decision to suspend the company’s registration.”

Between June 2000 and September 2012 eleven product lots of nut butter tested positive for presence of Salmonella. And, according to the FDA, between March 2010 and September 2012, Sunland Inc. distributed at least a portion of eight product lots after they had tested positive.

The FDA also found the presence of Salmonella in 28 environmental samples during a September and October 2012 inspection.  FDA inspectors reported that employees of Sunland Inc. failed to wash hands, improperly handled equipment used to process food as well as providing  ”no records” to document cleaning of equipment. Additionally, the building housing the production and packaging had no hand-washing sinks even though employees had “bare-handed contact” with the product.

“The super-sized bags used by the firm to store peanuts were not cleaned despite being used for both raw and roasted peanuts.  There was a leaking sink in a washroom which resulted in water accumulating on the floor, and the plant is not built to allow floors, walls and ceilings to be adequately cleaned.

Finally, investigators found that raw materials were exposed to potential contamination.  Raw, in-shell peanuts were found outside the plant in uncovered trailers. Birds were observed landing in the trailers and the peanuts were exposed to rain, which provides a growth environment for Salmonella and other bacteria.  Inside the warehouse, facility doors were open to the outside, which could allow pests to enter.”

In a November 15 statement the president and CEO of Sunland, Jimmie Shearer, emphasized that at “no time” did the company distribute products they knew to be contaminated. The company has submitted a response to the FDA outlining their response to the recall and contaminated product testing.

“We believe that drawing any inferences much less conclusions about the Company’s practices based solely on the observations as set forth in the Form 483 without considering the Company’s response would be wholly premature and unduly prejudicial to Sunland.”

Food Safety Modernization Act, which the FDA acted under to shut down the plant, grants the agency the authority to suspend manufacturing when there is “reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, and other conditions are met.”

Sunland Inc., can request an informal hearing to lift the suspension.  However the 24-year-old company will only have its registration returned after the FDA decides the company has safe manufacturing practices.

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World stocks muted ahead of meeting on Greece

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets rose modestly Monday after the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. topped expectations. But trading in Europe was subdued hours before finance ministers gathered yet again to discuss what to do about Greece.

The ministers of the 17 countries that use the euro are scheduled to meet in Brussels to try to reach an agreement on conditions that Greece must meet before the next installment of its emergency bailout loan can be disbursed. Athens faces bankruptcy without the cash.

In early European trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.1 percent to 5,812.32. Germany‘s DAX was 0.1 percent down at 7,301.64. France‘s CAC-40 lost 0.3 percent to 3,519.75.

Wall Street, gearing up for its first full day of trading since last Wednesday, was set to fall. Dow Jones industrial futures lost 0.2 percent at 12,937 and S&P 500 futures shed 0.3 percent to 1,401.50. U.S. stocks rose on Friday after a half-day of trading.

Stocks in Asia fared better, posting some modest gains after what appeared to be a successful start to the traditional pre-Christmas U.S. shopping season.

Americans visited stores and websites in record numbers last Friday, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday that is dubbed “Black Friday” because U.S. retailers traditionally turn a profit as millions of Americans rush out to stores in search of gifts for Christmas and other celebrations.

Surveys showed a record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites between Thursday and Sunday, up 9.2 percent from the year before.

Japan‘s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.2 percent to 9,388.94 while Australia‘s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.3 percent to 4,424.20. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, India and the Philippines also rose.

But South Korea‘s Kospi shed 0.2 percent to 1,908.15. Hong Kong‘s Hang Seng was sapped of momentum by lethargic mainland Chinese markets. The index lost 0.3 percent to 21,857.77. The Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.5 percent to 2,017.46. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index lost 1.4 percent to 789.49.

Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong, said traders were shying away from mainland stock markets due to the failure of Chinese authorities to remove companies that fail to earn profits after three years.

A regulation exists to allow for a delisting after three years, but it is not enforced, Lun said.

“If you cannot weed out the losers, the stock market will be inundated with companies not doing anything,” he said. “The listed companies are out to grab money instead of earning a profit for shareholders.”

Among individual stocks, Japanese vehicle makers posted solid gains. Toyota Motor Corp. rose 1.7 percent. Nissan Motor Co. added 2.3 percent. Yamaha Motor Co. gained 2.1 percent.

Australia’s Sydney Airport rose 1.5 percent after announcing it has secured about $ 1.1 billion in new funds to repay existing debts and fund future spending.

Benchmark crude for January delivery was down 9 cents to $ 88.18 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 90 cents to finish at $ 88.28 per barrel on Friday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $ 1.2957 from $ 1.2971 late Friday in New York. The dollar fell to 82.01 yen from 82.40 yen. Earlier Monday, the dollar rose to 82.59 yen.

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

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Jose Luis Borau, Spanish Filmmaker, dies at 83

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Influential Spanish filmmaker Jose Luis Borau died Friday in Madrid, the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences said. He was 83.

Borau had reportedly been suffering from throat cancer.

Though Borau, who was born in Zaragoza in 1929, only made a handful of films since his 1960 directorial debut “En el Rio,” his talents were widely respected, and he received a Goya award for Best Director in 2000 for his final film, “Leo.”

Borau was also a screenwriter and producer, and acted in some of his films. According to the Academy, his other pursuits included editing the first published biography of director-producer Samuel Bronston and short-story writing. He also “dabbled in advertising,” the Academy said.

Borau was probably best known for his 1975 drama “Furtivos” (“Poachers”), a film whose success, he later said, made him “a little sad.”

“Nobody is bitter sweet, but I’m a little sad,” the filmmaker once said. “My scale is a bit like what happened to Orson Welles, who made great films after ‘Citizen Kane,’ but just remember that title. “

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Embryo survival gene may fight range of diseases: study

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A gene that keeps embryos alive appears to control the immune system and determine how it fights chronic diseases like hepatitis and HIV, and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, scientists said on Monday.

Although the experts have only conducted studies on the gene Arih2 using mice, they hope it can be used as a target for drugs eventually to fight a spectrum of incurable diseases.

Lead author Marc Pellegrini at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia said the gene appears to act like a switch, flipping the immune system on and off.

“If the gene is on, it dampens … the immune response. And if you switch it off, it greatly enhances immune responses,” Pellegrini said in a telephone interview.

“It is probably one of the few genes and pathways that is very targetable and could lead to a drug very quickly.”

Arih2 was first identified by another group of scientists in the fruit fly but it drew the interest of Pellegrini’s team because of its suspected links to the immune system.

In a paper published in Nature Immunology, Pellegrini and his team described how mice embryos died when the gene was removed.

Next, they removed the gene from adult mice and noticed how their immune systems were boosted for a short period of time. But it quickly went into an overdrive and started attacking the rodents’ own healthy cells, skin and organs.

“The mice survived for six weeks quite well. Then they started developing this very hyperactive immune responses and if you leave it for too long, it starts reacting against the body itself,” Pellegrini said.

Pellegrini and his colleagues hope that scientists can study the gene further and use it as a drug target to fight a large spectrum of diseases.

“It’s like an accelerator. In infectious diseases, you want to slam on the brakes on this gene, and for autoimmune diseases, you want to push the accelerator to make it work much harder to stop the whole immune response,” said Pellegrini.

“The more the gene works, the less of an immune response there is. And the less active the gene is, the more the immune response is.”

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Catalonia election tests Spanish unity

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Voters in Spain’s Catalonia region go to the polls on Sunday and are likely to elect a pro-independence leader who will test Spanish unity at a time of deep economic crisis.

Opinion polls show two-thirds of voters in this region on the French border will cast ballots for parties, both rightist and leftist, that want Catalan independence from Spain.

Catalan President Artur Mas will likely win re-election since his conservative Convergence and Union party is forecast to take a majority, some 62 to 64 seats, in the 135-seat regional assembly, or Parliament.

Frustration over high unemployment and a deep recession have fueled a separatist resurgence in Catalonia, where polls show that for the first time more than half of the people want to break away from Spain.

Many Catalans believe their economy would be more prosperous on its own, complaining that a high portion of their taxes go to the central government in Madrid.

Mas, who adopted the independence cause in September after a massive street demonstration, campaigned on a promise to hold a referendum on secession.

If he carries through with the pledge, it will put him on a collision course with Madrid, where Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will use the constitution to block a referendum.

“Catalonia has never faced elections this important,” Mas said at a campaign rally this week. He told supporters he wanted to be the last president of Catalonia within Spain.

A strong mandate for Mas and other Catalan independence leaders from the left will undermine Rajoy’s mission to persuade investors of Spain’s fiscal and political stability.

Spain’s deep recession and high public deficit have put it at the heart of the euro zone debt crisis and the government’s borrowing costs are painfully high.

Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, the candidate for Rajoy’s People’s Party in Catalonia has campaigned on a message that leaving Spain and the European Union would lead to economic disaster. The PP is vying to be the second biggest party in the Catalan Parliament with opinion polls forecasting it will win 17 seats.

“Don’t stay at home (on election day) if you don’t want them to kick us out of Spain and out of Europe,” she said at a campaign rally this week.

Polls open at 0800 GMT and close at 1900 GMT.

IDENTITY AND ECONOMY

In the rest of Spain the Catalan secession drive is viewed with disbelief and suspicion. Many Spaniards fear that if Catalonia moves to break away, the Basques could soon follow.

Like Basques, Catalans speak their own language and have always seen themselves as distinct from the rest of Spain.

The land of surrealist painter Salvador Dali and architect Antoni Gaudi prides itself on a regional character that blends pragmatism and idealism.

Home to car factories and banks that generate one fifth of Spain’s economic wealth, Catalonia also has one of the world’s most successful football clubs, FC Barcelona.

This year at Barcelona’s famous Camp Nou stadium fans started a new tradition. They chant “independence” at every game when the clock hits 17 minutes and 14 seconds – 1714 being the last year that Catalonia was under the Crown of Aragon before the Bourbon King Philip V united most of what is now Spain into one kingdom.

Catalan independence movements have waxed and waned over the centuries. Secessionism had been politically dead since Spain returned to democracy and gave its 17 autonomous regions significant self-governing power in the 1978 Constitution.

But now there is a widespread perception among Catalans that autonomy did not go far enough and the region is treated unfairly. Most supporters of Mas’s CiU party say the tax system drains resources from their region and that Madrid has refused to negotiate improvements.

Even though the Catalan treasury is broke and Mas has had to cut spending on schools and hospitals, many people in the region still blame Madrid for their woes.

“It’s like a marriage, when things are good then everything is fine, but when things go bad then you see if there really is any love there,” said Elias Banares, the 35-year-old owner of a shop that sells prams. He plans to vote for CiU.

The political mood has driven demand for “esteladas,” a flag that symbolises the independence movement, with a lone star against the red and yellow stripes of the official Catalan banner.

The “estelada,” once too politically risky for most Catalans to fly, now waves all over the Catalan capital, the Mediterranean port city of Barcelona.

“In two weeks we’ve sold more than in the last eight years. Amazing figures,” said Margarita Bascompte, owner of a family business that makes the flags in the city of Vic, in the heart of the most pro-independence province of Catalonia.

(Additional reporting by Nigel Davies and Elena Gyldenkerne; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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