Abe’s challenge: Can he give Japan what money can’t buy

TOKYO (Reuters) – Even before Japanese voters returned Shinzo Abe‘s party to power, he had already won over financial markets with an economic revival plan as seductively simple as economists say it is risky: print money and spend it. Lots of it.

The Liberal Democratic Party’s landslide on Sunday is likely to sustain a market rally fuelled by economic stimulus hopes, but Abe’s economic legacy will probably be defined by how he tackles chronic ills that easy money alone cannot fix and that were largely ignored during the campaign.

The conservative leader set to return to the prime minister’s post he abruptly left in 2007 campaigned on a promise to double spending on public works and to push the Bank of Japan for radical action to end deflation and help exporters such as Toyota and Sony by taming the yen.

“The fact that Abe points to changes in the BOJ law or forex levels, or aggressive easing as solutions to Japan‘s problems is, if anything, worrying,” said Yuuki Sakurai, chief executive of Fukoku Capital Management which manages $ 19 billion in assets.

“They should be treated as tools to buy time to implement structural reforms, but we’re not hearing anything about deep reforms that the LDP wants to carry out.”

The so-called Abe trade – a 4 percent slide in the yen and more than a 10 percent rise in stock prices over the past month – shows that for now, most investors just want to see the new leader fulfill his pledges.

Analysts said they expected Sunday’s vote, which according to TV projections based on counted votes gave LDP and its ally a two-thirds lower house majority, to sustain that trend in the near-term.

“Abe’s economic policies will be implemented so the economy will improve next year. The problem is what happens after that,” said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. “The key is whether Abe can implement long-term structural reforms and growth strategies.”

The BOJ is poised to heed Abe’s calls for more aggressive easing and a more ambitious 2 percent inflation target, with markets expecting the central bank to ease policy for the fifth time this year on Thursday.

Investors also expect an extra budget of up to 10 trillion yen ($ 120 billion) as a down payment on Abe’s plan to spend such amounts per year over the next decade – double the current level – on public works long synonymous with the LDP.

Economists say pumping cash into the economy will only give it a temporary jolt if not followed by efforts to lift its growth potential and contain runaway debt.

In just three decades Japan has become the world’s oldest society, with those 65 or above making up nearly a quarter of a population that is greying and is estimated to have shrunk by over 260,000 in the last fiscal year alone.

Recipes to cope with it are well known: social security overhaul, including cuts in healthcare and pensions; boosting access to overseas markets and opening Japan to foreign goods, workers and investment; power sector revamp and bringing more women into the workforce.

All, however, carry political and social risks that Japan’s recent revolving-door leaders were unable or unwilling to take.

Left to sink or swim with swings in overseas demand for its exports and its currency, the world’s third-largest economy has been in and out of recession and dogged by low-grade deflation for the past two decades.

Now, in firm control of the lower house, Abe has a chance to prove his mettle and erase the memories of his first troubled year in office.

So far he has played it safe.

His “Abenomics” — a mix of potent monetary stimulus and big public spending — carries little political cost and he has been coy on touchy issues such the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade pact, or implementing sales tax increases.

With some luck, the new government may be even be able to call an end to a brief recession it entered last quarter.

Economists polled by Reuters last week predict the economy will start growing again in the first quarter of next year, largely due to expected recovery in China, Japan’s top export market.

TAX TEST

Abe’s first stern economic test will come after August, when the government, armed with second-quarter data, will decide whether the economy is strong enough to go ahead with a first round of planned sales tax increases.

With 10-year bond yields near a decade low below 0.7 percent, bond investors are now confident that he can steer the central bank to buy more bonds from the world’s most indebted government without setting off a market meltdown.

To keep that trust, Abe must convince investors that in his push for big scale-stimulus, he has not abandoned budget discipline. Economists say with Japan’s public debt at more than twice its economic output and climbing, the new government can ill-afford delaying a tax hike that has become a symbol of Tokyo’s fiscal rectitude. Their message is clear: “Just do it!”

“I hope they will go through with it,” said Takatoshi Ito, a Tokyo University professor, former adviser to the first Abe administration who is now mooted as a possible successor to BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa when his term ends in April.

“Tax revenue is less than half of expenditures. Bond issuance is bigger than tax revenues. It’s like using a credit card for more than half of your monthly expenditure. It’s crazy, abnormal, you can’t go on like that.”

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Antoni Slodkowski and Leika Kihara; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Egyptians hand Islamists narrow win in constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptians voted in favor of a constitution shaped by Islamists but opposed by other groups who fear it will divide the Arab world’s biggest nation, officials in rival camps said on Sunday after the first round of a two-stage referendum.

Next week’s second round is likely to give another “yes” vote as it includes districts seen as more sympathetic towards Islamists, analysts say, meaning the constitution would be approved.

But the narrow win so far gives Islamist President Mohamed Mursi only limited grounds for celebration by showing the wide rifts in a country where he needs to build a consensus for tough economic reforms.

The Muslim Brotherhood‘s party, which propelled Mursi to office in a June election, said 56.5 percent backed the text. Official results are not expected until after the next round.

While an opposition official conceded the “yes” camp appeared to have won the first round, the opposition National Salvation Front said in a statement that voting abuses meant a rerun was needed – although it did not explicitly challenge the Brotherhood‘s vote tally.

Rights groups reported abuses such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people how to vote and bribery. They also criticized widespread religious campaigning which portrayed “no” voters as heretics.

A joint statement by seven human rights groups urged the referendum’s organizers “to avoid these mistakes in the second stage of the referendum and to restage the first phase again”.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is vital to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward. Opponents say the basic law is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights, including those of Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

The build-up to Saturday’s vote was marred by deadly protests. Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies.

However, the vote passed off calmly with long queues in Cairo and several other places, though unofficial tallies indicated turnout was around a third of the 26 million people eligible to vote this time. The vote was staggered because many judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest.

The opposition had said the vote should not have been held given the violent protests. Foreign governments are watching closely how the Islamists, long viewed warily in the West, handle themselves in power.

“It’s wrong to have a vote or referendum with the country in the state it is – blood and killings, and no security,” said Emad Sobhy, a voter who lives in Cairo. “Holding a referendum with the country as it is cannot give you a proper result.”

INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

As polls closed, Islamists attacked the offices of the newspaper of the liberal Wafd party, part of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition that pushed for a “no” vote.

“The referendum was 56.5 percent for the ‘yes’ vote,” a senior official in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party operations room set up to monitor voting told Reuters.

The Brotherhood and its party had representatives at polling stations across the 10 areas, including Cairo, in this round. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the tally was based on counts from more than 99 percent of polling stations.

“The nation is increasingly divided and the pillars of state are swaying,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Poverty and illiteracy are fertile grounds for trading with religion. The level of awareness is rising fast.”

One opposition official also told Reuters the vote appeared to have gone in favor of Islamists who backed the constitution.

The opposition initially said its exit polls indicated the “no” camp would win comfortably, but officials changed tack during the night. One opposition official said in the early hours of Sunday that it would be “very close”.

A narrow loss could still hearten leftists, socialists, Christians and more liberal-minded Muslims who make up the disparate opposition, which has been beaten in two elections since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.

They were drawn together to oppose what they saw as a power grab by Mursi as he pushed through the constitution. The National Salvation Front includes prominent figures such as ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and firebrand leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

If the constitution is approved, a parliamentary election will follow early next year.

DEADLY VIOLENCE

Analysts question whether the opposition group will keep together until the parliamentary election. The Islamist-dominated lower house of parliament elected earlier this year was dissolved based on a court order in June.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has plagued the run-up to the referendum. At least eight people were killed when rival camps clashed during demonstrations outside the presidential palace earlier this month.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those casting ballots. There are 51 million eligible voters in the nation of 83 million.

Islamists have been counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and on Egyptians desperate for an end to turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt’s pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

The army deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armored vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Additional reporting Yasmin Saleh and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Chicano rock pioneers Los Lobos marking 40 years

LOS ANGELES (AP) — They are seen as the progenitors of Chicano rock ‘n’ roll, the first band that had the boldness, and some might even say the naiveté, to fuse punk rock with Mexican folk tunes.

It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about twice the volume you’d normally expect to hear.

“They were Latinos who weren’t afraid to break the mold of what’s expected and what’s traditionally played. That made them legendary, even to people who at first weren’t that familiar with their catalog,” said Greg Gonzalez of the young, Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.

To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high school is still “just another band from East LA,” the words the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more than two dozen albums.

As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos‘ 40th anniversary gets under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of rock stardom.

That’s, well, sort of true.

For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos‘ life, there was power-chord rock ‘n’ roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.

“I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,” says drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Perez, recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop on a ticket to a Hendrix show.

“I sat right down front,” he recalls, his voice rising in excitement. “That experience just sort of rearranged my brain cells.”

About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the school made famous in the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver” that profiled Jaime Escalante’s success in teaching college-level calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow students Conrad Lozano and Cesar Rosas, both experienced musicians.

“Cesar had played in a power trio,” Perez recalls, while Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.

It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have been born.

And the group might have stayed just another garage band from East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las Mananitas.

“It’s a serenade to someone on their birthday,” Perez explains, and the group members’ mothers had birthdays coming up.

“So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to our parents’ homes and did a little serenade,” Hidalgo recalled separately.

They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.

Because they were at heart a rock ‘n’ roll band, however, they always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast. That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars they had so coveted as kids.

“They said, ‘Well, that’s not what we hired you for,’” Perez says, chuckling.

So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where initially the reaction wasn’t much better.

Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for Berlin’s group the Blasters, the reaction was different.

“It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,” the saxophonist recalls. “By the next morning, everybody I knew in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los Lobos.”

A few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them. They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with Norteno, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a saxophone, and they needed a sax player.

For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteno music.

Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the group’s first true rock album, 1984′s “How Will the Wolf Survive?” At the end of the sessions he was in the band.

The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.

The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their version of the Mexican folk tune “La Bamba” for the soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.

A two-year tour and a couple albums that nobody bought followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.

So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics and power chords of “Kiko,” the 1992 album now hailed as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released earlier this year.

The influence of Los Lobos‘ cross-cultural work can be heard to this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert on cross-border music.

“All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a Mexican-American group,” said Kun, who curated the Grammy Museum’s recent “Trouble in Paradise” exhibition that chronicled the modern history of LA music.

For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the natural way of doing things for guys, Perez says, who learned early on that they didn’t fit in completely on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

“As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we’re not completely accepted on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the border it’s like, ‘Well, what are you?’” he mused.

“So if that’s the case,” he added brightly, “then, hey, we belong everywhere.”

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First Responders Face Haunting Memories

Police and paramedics who descended on the scene of the massacre at a Connecticut grade school face haunting memories and nightmares in the days and weeks to come, particularly if they have children of their own, experts say.

Twenty children and seven adults were killed Friday after a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, then killed himself.

“How the first responders react depends on how closely they identify with the victims,” said Dr. Charles Marmar, chair of psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. “Let’s say somebody has a son or a daughter the same age as the victims — we know that makes a big difference.”

CLICK HERE for full coverage of the tragedy at the elementary school.

After the initial shock of such a violent attack fades, first responders sometimes struggle with flashbacks and sleep disturbances that can take a personal and professional toll.

Neal Schwieterman, a first responder at the 1999 Columbine massacre, still struggles with memories of what he saw there.

“Part of me is still missing from that day,” said Schwieterman, who was a sheriff’s deputy in his last week with the Jefferson County Police Department at the time. “I will never be the same.”

Alex von Kleydorff/AP Photo

Newtown Teacher Kept 1st Graders Calm During Massacre Watch Video

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Schwieterman rushed to the scene where he evacuated eight carloads of wounded students.

“It’s a grieving process for everyone after this kind of thing, including first responders,” said Schwieterman, who sought counseling to cope with the harrowing day. “It took a complete toll on me, and rightfully so.”

Schwieterman was not a father at the time, but now has a 10-year-old daughter.

“I just can’t imagine,” he said of the Newtown shooting. “It rips your heart out.”

CLICK HERE for live updates on the Connecticut school shooting.

Experts say first responders are surprisingly resilient, with the vast majority recovering from the stress of a horrific scene within days or weeks.

“But some will continue to have symptoms, and those people will probably benefit from some form of counseling,” said Dr. Spencer Eth, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Miami. “Unfortunately, when it comes to police, they sometimes try to act tough even when they’re feeling badly, and that’s an obstacle to getting the help they need to recover.”

The fact that most of the victims in Newtown were children, Eth said, could mean more first responders will need counseling.

“The shock and horror of seeing children killed is more personally distressing than almost any other situation they have to deal with,” he said, adding that first responders in many cases are also responsible for notifying families of the deceased. “Having to notify parents of their child’s death is among the most difficult things they have to do in their professional lives.”

With help, first responders can learn to cope. But they can never forget. Schwieterman, who is now the mayor of Paonia, Colo., still speaks of Columbine with a shaky voice, pausing often to gather himself. And when he heard about the Newtown shooting, he knew his phone would be ringing.

“I’ve had several family members call and ask if I’m doing OK,” he said. “That kind of support helps you through these things.”

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Economic slowdown throughout euro zone a worry for ECB: Liikanen

BERLIN (Reuters) – Economic growth is slowing to a worrying degree across the euro zone and not only in the periphery, European Central Bank Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said in an interview to be published on Sunday in Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

“There are a number of indications that the economy is getting weaker and not only in the indebted southern European countries, but across the euro zone,” Liikanen was quoted as saying in an excerpt released on Saturday.

“Economic developments are causing us concern,” he said, adding that no-one is immune to the effects of the debt crisis. “Not even the German economy.”

Liikanen did not say what action should be taken to deal with the slowdown, and a Reuters poll this week found economists are evenly split on what else – if anything – the ECB will do.

Thirty-nine economists said the ECB would hold its main refinancing rate at its current record low of 0.75 percent through the first quarter of next year, while 38 believed it would cut the rate to 0.5 percent.

The ECB on December 6 predicted the euro zone economy would shrink again in 2013. Its projections for economic performance ranged from a 0.9 percent drop to a meager 0.3 percent rise next year, suggesting contraction is far more likely than not.

It had previously penciled in a range of -0.4 percent to +1.4 percent for the euro area economy.

On Dec 7. the central banks of Germany and Austria forecast barely any economic growth in 2013, with the Bundesbank flagging risks of a recession in the euro zone’s biggest economy as the debt crisis hits the bloc’s core.

(Reporting By Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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Nigeria governor, 5 others die in helicopter crash

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A navy helicopter crashed Saturday in the country’s oil-rich southern delta, killing a state governor and five other people, in the latest air disaster to hit Africa’s most populous nation, officials said.

Nigeria‘s ruling party said in a statement that the governor of the central Nigerian state of Kaduna, Patrick Yakowa, died in the helicopter crash in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta. The People’s Democratic Party’s statement described Yakowa’s death as a “colossal loss.”

The statement said the former national security adviser, General Andrew Azazi, also died in the crash. Azazi was fired in June amid growing sectarian violence in Nigeria, but maintained close ties with the government.

Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency, said four other bodies had been found, but he could not immediately give their identities.

The crash occurred at about 3:30 p.m. after the navy helicopter took off from the village of Okoroba in Bayelsa state where officials had gathered to attend the burial of the father of a presidential aide, said Commodore Kabir Aliyu. He said that the helicopter was headed for Nigeria’s oil capital of Port Harcourt when it crashed in the Nembe area of Bayelsa state.

Aviation disasters remain common in Nigeria, despite efforts in recent years to improve air safety.

In October, a plane made a crash landing in central Nigeria. A state governor and five others sustained injuries but survived.

In June, a Dana Air MD-83 passenger plane crashed into a neighborhood in the commercial capital of Lagos, killing 153 people onboard and at least 10 people on the ground. It was Nigeria’s worst air crash in nearly two decades.

In March, a police helicopter carrying a high-ranking police official crashed in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing four people.

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Sony’s PlayStation 4 could lose to the next Xbox before it’s even released

I love all game consoles equally. My Xbox 360 is used equally as much as my PlayStation 3. The Wii — oh, I’ll just leave it at that. The current generation of consoles is all but over — 10-year life cycle be damned — and new consoles are rumored to be coming next fall. If not next fall, then in 2014. Whatever is the case, Sony (SNE) can’t afford to lag in third place again. Sure, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are neck-in-neck in global lifetime sales, and the Xbox 360 did have a one year head start, but coming off the disappointing PS Vita, “confidence is less high” that Sony will deliver a console next year in time to compete with Microsoft (MSFT), according to Kotaku.

[More from BGR: Has the iPhone peaked? Apple’s iPhone 4S seen outselling iPhone 5]

I want a new console just as much as any other gamer. There’s a reason people are still pouncing on those Wii U consoles and flipping them on eBay. Six years is unusually long for a console to still be kicking around.

[More from BGR: Apple execs said to be ‘seething’ over Google Maps praise]

According to the well-informed Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, the game blog that first broke news on the next-gen Xbox, Microsoft’s “Durango” is ”on the mark” and “Sony appears to inspire less confidence…due to the on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3 and the struggles of the Vita vs. how much lost confidence is due to any problems looming for PS4.“

Totilo says “confidence is high that the next Xbox will be out in time for next Christmas” and confidence is low that the PS4 will be right there on store shelves next to it.

The “on-and-off troubles of the PlayStation 3″ Totilo is referring to is the anchor that’s weighed the console down since launch: tougher development due to the Cell processor and less available RAM – 256MB vs. 512MB in the Xbox 360.

In the months before the PS3′s launch in 2006, Sony said the console would be the most powerful console ever created, and here we are six years later and multi-platform games on the console consistently end up being buggier and uglier than on the Xbox 360 in many cases. Cases in point: Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Sony’s in a rut right now. It has the chops to build beautiful and powerful hardware that’s a developer’s dream (ex: PS Vita), but at the same time, it’s always launching after the competition nowadays.

If Sony’s learned any lessons in the last half a decade, it better apply them to the PS4. The console needs to offer next-level processing and graphics. It needs to be backward-compatible with PS3 games and play Blu-ray discs. It should be small and quiet. It should have a strong online platform, support a greater array of apps and most importantly be easy for developers to program for.

Game exclusives will always be important, but now that games are million-dollar productions, multi-platform will be where developers hope to reap back their costs.

With Microsoft said to be preparing an “Xbox 720″ and an “Xbox Lite,” Sony can’t make the mistake of launching late or pricing the console too high. A launch in spring of 2014 would mean Sony will miss Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the two biggest shopping days of the year that bring in massive sales.  Ceding sales and market share to Microsoft and Nintendo by launching late would be disastrous.

The PS3 screwed up too many times. At this point, the PS4 needs to be perfect out of the door.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Confused by medication guides? You’re not alone

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The information sheets that come stapled to certain prescriptions picked up at the pharmacy are too complex and difficult for people to understand, according to a new study.

“Anyone who’s seen these are not going to be surprised by the fact that they’re difficult to read,” said Michael Wolf, the study’s lead author and an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved medication guides are attached to drugs that the agency considers to have “serious and significant public health concerns,” according to the report.

Patients are supposed to read the guides before taking the drugs to learn about risks, side effects, potential interactions with other drugs and why the medication should be taken as prescribed.

“You want to make sure that message is effective. Otherwise it can do major harm,” Wolf told Reuters Health.

In previous studies, Wolf and his colleagues found several problems with the guides, including patients not understanding their content and – in many cases – not even receiving them along with their medication.

The number of drugs required to be accompanied by a so-called med guide increased from 40 in 2006 to 305 last year. That led the researchers to look into whether the guides had gotten easier to understand.

For the new study, the researchers first analyzed 185 medication guides in April 2010, which represented the majority of those available on the FDA’s website at the time.

On average, the guides were about 2,000 words long, none of the guides had a review section or brief summary and only one met “suitability” guidelines frequently used as the standard for medical education materials.

Then, Wolf and his colleagues asked 449 adults at two Chicago clinics to read three medication guides then answer a series of questions about the drugs, including how they should be stored and their possible side effects. The participants were allowed to refer back to the guides during the test and were not rushed to answer the questions.

On average, the participants were only able to correctly answer half of the questions.

People with the lowest literacy level did the worst, answering only about a quarter of all the questions correctly. That compared to people with the highest level of literacy, who answered about 65 percent of the questions correctly.

The researchers add, however, that the results are limited, because they only tested three medication guides and people may not pay as close attention to the material if they’re not actually taking the drugs.

But, Wolf said, in general people failed the test.

“It was highly educated and lowly educated people. It didn’t make a difference. Everyone struggled,” said Wolf.

In their analysis, Wolf and his colleagues found the guides were typically written for someone at an 11th or 10th grade reading level.

They write in the Journal of General Internal Medicine that the Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to make information available to the public in a clear and understandable way. The Act, however, does not provide a way to measure what is understandable.

Some researchers have suggested that materials be written for people with a 4th to 8th grade reading level.

“If you’ve ever tried to create things at a 4th grade reading level, it’s incredibly difficult. And I don’t know if the evidence is clear as to what grade level is the target,” said Wolf.

There are a few possible solutions to the problem, including creating a uniform guide, which the researchers say is something the pharmaceutical industry and a private institution are working together to develop.

Wolf told Reuters Health that his team is also working with the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to create a how-to guide for medical organizations to make educational materials easy to understand.

He added that they’re also testing a new medication guide prototype in a clinical trial.

Until better guides become available, Wolf said patients should not be afraid to ask their doctors and pharmacists questions.

“Have that conversation when they’re getting it prescribed to them, but understand the pharmacist is available,” he said.

The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Y19pZ0 Journal of General Internal Medicine, online December 2012.

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Best Buy extends deadline for founder bid

(Reuters) – Best Buy Co Inc agreed to extend the deadline to February 28 for founder Richard Schulze to make a bid for the company, continuing the uncertainty for shareholders over whether he can put a bid together.

Best Buy shares fell 14.2 percent to $ 12.12 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company said on Friday the extension would allow Schulze to include the consumer electronics retailer’s full-year results as part of his due diligence review.

The new deadline will also give him more time to line up partners and financing for a bid. A source told Reuters on Thursday that Schulze didn’t have financing lined up in time for a December bid.

Schulze, who founded Best Buy in 1966, has said he would fund any deal through a combination of private equity and debt financing, as well as the reinvestment of some of his own equity in the company.

“Obviously with the extension, there is still some hesitation on the part of his private equity suitors about how much financing they would want to put up for this deal,” Morningstar analyst R J Hottovy said.

Under the extension, Schulze will be able to submit an offer any time during February, and the company will have 30 days to review and make a decision on the bid.

In August, Schulze made an informal proposal to acquire Best Buy for $ 24 to $ 26 per share, or a total of $ 8.16 billion to $ 8.84 billion. Including debt, it would be as much as $ 10.9 billion.

But Best Buy’s performance has continued to lag and its stock has slid since. Last month, the company reported a decline in same-store sales for the ninth time in the last 10 quarters.

Best Buy’s fortunes have faltered as consumers increasingly use its big box stores as showrooms for products they end up buying online at Amazon.com Inc and other websites.

To add to its troubles, the company forced out Schulze’s protégé, Brian Dunn, as chief executive earlier this year amid allegations he was having an inappropriate relationship with a female employee.

That scandal led to the ouster of Schulze from the board, and Best Buy hired turnaround expert Hubert Joly as CEO to come up with its own restructuring plan.

Schulze remains Best Buy’s largest shareholder with about one-fifth of the company’s outstanding shares.

If he can come in with a bid at about $ 16 or $ 17 a share when the market thinks the stock is only worth $ 12, it is in the interests of shareholders to extend the deadline, Hottovy said.

Others agreed.

“That’s really the best hope for investors, that Schulze takes it out because there’s been no other good news for the company,” said Rakesh Agrawal, principal analyst at San Francisco-based consulting firm reDesign Mobile.

Agrawal, who also advises hedge funds and money managers on the technology sector, said at this point the stock was trading entirely on whether a deal can get done or not.

A Best Buy spokesman said the extension will not affect the company’s day-to-day operations, especially during the all-important holiday season.

“We are determined to have a strong holiday season,” both in stores and online, spokesman Matt Furman said, adding that the company was moving “full speed ahead” with its turnaround plan.

(Writing by Brad Dorfman; Additional reporting by Olivia Oran in New York, and Siddharth Cavale in Bangalore; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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