Indian board rejects AstraZeneca’s patent plea on cancer drug

(Reuters) – India‘s patents appeal board has dismissed British drugmaker AstraZeneca‘s petition challenging an earlier ruling that refused patent protection for a cancer-fighting drug, in the latest blow for Big Pharma in the country.

The Indian patents office in 2007 refused patent protection to AstraZeneca’s quinazoline molecule, citing lack of invention. The Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on Monday upheld the refusal.

The decision is also a setback for struggling AstraZeneca, which is battling to turn itself around as key drugs lose patent protection.

Global drug companies suffered a high-profile reversal in March when India granted the first ever compulsory license to domestic drugmaker Natco Pharma to sell cheap copies of Bayer’s cancer drug Nexavar. Bayer has appealed the order.

And early this month IPAB revoked a six-year-old Indian patent granted to Roche’s hepatitis C drug Pegasys, citing lack of evidence that the drug was any better than existing treatments.

Multinational drug manufacturers regard India’s $ 13 billion drug market as a huge opportunity, but are wary of what they see as lax protection for intellectual property in a country where generic medicines account for more than 90 percent of sales.

Indian generic companies, which do not need to plough money into future research, can produce drugs at a fraction of the cost of originator firms like Roche or Bayer.

Natco and another domestic drugmaker, G. M. Pharma, had opposed the initial patent application for AstraZeneca quinazoline derivative. The London-listed company filed a review petition, which India’s patent office dismissed in 2011.

A challenge to a review petition does not come under the purview of the IPAB, and even on merit the petition has failed, S. Majumdar & Co, the counsel for Natco Pharma, said in a statement.

AstraZeneca could not immediately be reached for a comment by Reuters. The company has the option to take its case to India’s Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Kaustubh Kulkarni in MUMBAI; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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S.Africa’s rand holds on to surprise gains

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – S.Africa’s rand held firm against the dollar Wednesday, consolidating a surprisingly strong performance in the previous session after weaker-than-expected economic growth figures.

The rand was little changed at 0611 GMT, trading at 8.8434 against the greenback after New York’s close of 8.845.

“The international backdrop remains negative this morning but the trend for rand gains remains strong,” Rand Merchant Bank said in a note.

Investors are likely to pay attention to a speech by Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus at a conference of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) at 0800 GMT.

Marcus left the repo rate unchanged at a four-decade low of 5.0 percent last week and warned that strikes in the mining sector and beyond since August would lead to job losses in a country already grappling with unemployment of over 25 percent.

Tuesday’s GDP statistics drove home that point, showing that growth slowed sharply in the third quarter after a big contraction in the strike-hit mining sector.

Government bond yields slipped one basis point each to 5.46 percent for the three year bond and 7.555 percent for the longer dated 14-year paper.

Power utility Eskom is due to auction 400 million rand between the EL29 and ES33 bonds at 0900 GMT.

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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.

___

Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report

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Exclusive: Egyptian investor seeks to put stamp on Telecom Italia

DUBAI (Reuters) – Egyptian entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris aims to shake up debt-laden Telecom Italia and steer it towards expansion in Brazil if shareholders warm up to his proposal for a 3 billion euro ($ 3.9 billion) cash infusion.

The billionaire tycoon, who got to know Italy well when he owned the third-biggest mobile operator Wind, has put on the table a capital increase that could make him one of the biggest shareholders in Telecom Italia.

Details on the structure of the proposed transaction are scarce, but Sawiris told Reuters that he proposed that the capital increase be open to all shareholders, not just himself, and that it should be conducted around the current market price of 0.70 euros per share.

That is likely to draw the ire of other Telecom Italia shareholders, including Spain’s Telefonica and the three Italian financial institutions who together own 22.4 percent via an unlisted holding company called Telco.

They value Telecom Italia at 1.50 euros per share in their accounts, and Marco Fossati, whose family’s Findim Group SA owns 5 percent of the Italian operator, on Monday said 1.50 was the “correct price” for any capital increase.

Sawiris, going against a trend of retreating investment in crisis-hit southern Europe, said he might also bring in some of his old Wind associates to put Telecom Italia back on the path to growth.

“This proposal will provide a more stable financial structure for Telecom Italia going forward, more growth in Latin America and Brazil, and improved management through the infusion of people who have an excellent knowledge of the Italian market,” Sawiris told Reuters.

Sawiris initially approached Telefonica and the other shareholders in Telco about the possibility of carrying out a capital increase at the holding company level. He was rebuffed, so decided to approach the Italian group directly.

“We are willing to participate in the capital increase, but shareholders have the choice not to get diluted and join in putting the money,” he said.

“If they do not want to, we will come and replace them. But they will benefit from a higher stock price and a more stable company and a company that will grow.”

It remains to be seen whether his vision for the group will be shared by Telecom Italia’s management and core shareholders.

Telefonica, insurer Assicurazioni Generali, and banks Mediobanca and Intesa Sanpaolo had the Sawiris’ offer dropped onto them as a bombshell two weeks ago, insiders have said.

“Sawiris is not a man to go in without being sure he can drive the strategy,” one source familiar with the thinking of the core shareholders said.

Sawiris told Reuters he was also opposed to a current plan to spin off Telecom Italia’s fixed-line network, which is backed by some core investors as a way to raise badly needed cash, and by the Italian government as a means to speed up broadband investment.

“I believe this is a catastrophe,” Sawiris said. “If Telecom Italia does that, they will lose the only differentiator they have left in the telecom market in Italy.”

Telecom Italia is now in talks with an Italian state-backed investment fund over such a spin-off. Under the plan, the fund would take a minority stake in the new company in exchange for Telecom Italia effectively becoming a wholesaler of broadband capacity to other companies.

Proponents of the spin-off argue the move would help Telecom Italia reduce debt while accelerating the modernization of the woeful Internet infrastructure in Europe’s fourth-largest economy.

STRATEGY CROSSROAD

Telecom Italia’s board will meet on December 6 to discuss the network spin-off and whether to bid for Vivendi’s GVT, a broadband specialist in Brazil, to complement its TIM Brasil mobile business unit in the fast-growing market.

GVT’s owner, Vivendi, is seeking up to 7 billion euros for GVT, which provides fixed telephone, broadband, and TV services in 120 Brazilian cities. Preliminary bids are due in December, sources have told Reuters.

Sawiris is waiting in the wings, though he says he has not had any direct contact from Telecom Italia since sending a letter of interest two weeks ago.

However, advisers from both sides – Lazard for Sawiris and Rothschild for Telecom Italia – have been communicating, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, sources close to the telecom group’s shareholders have complained of a lack of detail in the Sawiris proposal.

Nuno Matias, a telecoms analyst at Espirito Santo bank, said while Sawiris’s arguments about seeking growth in Brazil via the GVT takeover were persuasive, the tycoon could face an uphill battle getting the board and shareholders onside.

“Sawiris isn’t alone; there are controlling shareholders of Telecom Italia, and they have their own interests,” he said.

“If Telecom Italia strengthens in Brazil then it sets up a conflict with Telefonica.”

Sawiris pointed out that he tried talking to Telefonica.

“I met with them, but my feeling is that they are conflicted. They are happy where they are today holding Telecom Italia as a hostage and preventing it from growing into Latin America.”

Telefonica and Telecom Italia are the number one and number two players in Brazilian mobile, respectively, and also compete in Argentina. The conflict means that Telefonica cannot take part in board deliberations at Telecom Italia over the Latin American units.

Telefonica’s Chief Financial Officer Angel Vila said last week that the group wanted to remain a long-term shareholder in Telecom Italia, and opposed a capital increase.

Telecom Italia has made debt-cutting a priority since late 2008. Cost cuts and asset sales have trimmed net debt more than 4 billion euros to 29.5 billion at the end of September.

Morgan Stanley predicted its net debt was likely to stand at 27.8 billion euros at year-end, or 2.7 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), above sector averages and in the warning zone for rating agencies.

Sawiris, who sold Wind to Vimpelcom last year, wants to re-enter Italy by investing in the incumbent operator, betting on low valuations and turnaround potential in old-world telecoms.

“I’ve worked in Italy for five years and what I’ve learned that very few investors have the insight on what is the real story in Italy,” Sawiris said.

($ 1 = 0.7713 euros)

(Additional reporting by Leila Abboud in Paris and Lisa Jucca in Milan; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Bin Laden movie “Zero Dark Thirty” based on first-hand accounts

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The makers of a Hollywood movie about the U.S. operation to kill Osama bin Laden denied asking for classified material for their film, but say they did conduct interviews with a CIA officer and others at the heart of the decade-long hunt for the al Qaeda leader.

“It was all based on first-hand accounts so it really felt very vivid and very vital and very, very immediate and visceral of course which is very exciting as a filmmaker,” Kathryn Bigelow, director of “Zero Dark Thirty,” told ABC News in an interview airing on Monday.

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal said in a “Nightline” interview that they were originally working on a film about the failed bid to find bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan during the U.S-led invasion there in 2001.

But their plans changed swiftly after U.S. President Barack Obama announced in May 2011 that a Navy commando unit had killed bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan.

“I picked up the phone and started calling sources and asking them what they knew and taking referrals and knocking on doors and really approached it as comprehensively as I could,” Boal told “Nightline” according to an advance excerpt.

“I certainly did a lot of homework, but I never asked for classified material,” he said. “To my knowledge I never received any.”

The release of “Zero Dark Thirty” – seen as a strong contender for Oscar nominations – was pushed back to December after the film got caught up earlier this year in a U.S. election year controversy.

The U.S. admiral who oversaw the secret operation in May denied a claim that the Obama administration arranged for Bigelow and Boal to be given special access to top officials while researching their movie.

The film reconstructs the hunt for bin Laden largely through the eyes of a young female CIA officer, played by Jessica Chastain, who helps find him through a long-forgotten courier. Obama only makes a fleeting appearance in the film.

“It was a couple of months into the research when I heard about a woman, part of the team, and she has played a big role and she had gone to Jalalabad and been deployed with the SEALs on the night of the raid,” Boal told ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz in the “Nightline” interview.

While some of the dialogue is word for word and based on interviews with the young CIA officer and others, some of the dialogue is dramatized, said the Oscar-winning makers of 2008′s “The Hurt Locker,” about a U.S. Army bomb disposal team during the Iraq War.

The assault on bin Laden’s Pakistan compound was recreated as accurately as possible, using a full-scale version built in Jordan. The floor, the tile, the carpet, the furniture and the marks on the walls were copied from images seen in ABC News footage that Bigelow said they reviewed frame by frame.

The full interview can be seen on “Nightline” on Monday evening.

“Zero Dark Thirty” opens in U.S. movie theaters on December 19. Nominations for the 2013 Academy Awards are announced on January 10 ahead of the February 24 Oscar ceremony.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant)

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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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ResCap creditors target cash from Ally asset sales: WSJ

(Reuters) – A group of creditors of Ally Financial Inc‘s mortgage subsidiary is laying claim to cash from Ally asset sales that was intended to help repay the U.S. government, which funded a $ 17.2 billion bailout of the financing firm, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The creditors of mortgage firm Residential Capital LLC (ResCap) are eyeing more than $ 9 billion that Ally plans to collect from sales of its international operations, the business daily said.

Ally, which is 74 percent owned by the U.S. government, agreed to sell its European and Latin American auto lending operations to General Motors Co’s financing arm General Motors Financial Co for about $ 4.2 billion last week.

The sale was part of Ally’s efforts to speed up the repayment of bailout funds. The company is focusing on its U.S. business and has already sold operations in Canada and Mexico.

In a letter sent on Monday to Ally’s board, the creditors question transfers made in 2009 from Residential Capital to Ally, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people who have reviewed the letter.

The creditors said Ally stripped ResCap of most of its value when it transferred Ally Bank, a depository unit valued at $ 10 billion, to the parent company and asked the company to repay them before others receive proceeds from Ally.

Ally, the former financing arm of GM, confirmed a letter had been received and said the company disagreed with the creditors’ claims, although it did not elaborate on the content of the letter.

“The letter from ResCap’s unsecured creditors‘ committee is a predictable tactic. We strongly disagree with the allegations in the letter and believe the claims are wholly without merit,” Ally spokeswoman Gina Proia said in an e-mailed statement.

Ally has maintained that it is insulated from ResCap’s liabilities because of their distinct ownership structures.

The Wall Street Journal said a representative for the creditors’ committee did not respond to a request for comment.

ResCap filed for bankruptcy in May and earlier this month a bankruptcy court judge approved the sale of its mortgage operations to Ocwen Financial Corp and Walter Investment Management Corp for $ 3 billion.

(Reporting by Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore and Rick Rothacker in New York; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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UN climate talks open in Qatar

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it.

The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.

Attempts to create a new climate treaty failed in Copenhagen three years ago but countries agreed last year to try again, giving themselves a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty.

A host of issues need to be resolved by then, including how to spread the burden of emissions cuts between rich and poor countries. That’s unlikely to be decided in the Qatari capital of Doha, where negotiators will focus on extending the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions deal for industrialized countries, and trying to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.

“We all realize why we are here, why we keep coming back year and after year,” said South Africa Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year’s talks in Durban, South Africa. “We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing.”

The U.N. process is often criticized, even ridiculed, both by climate activists who say the talks are too slow, and by those who challenge the scientific near-consensus that the global temperature rise is at least partly caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.

A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) this century, compared with pre-industrial times, overshooting the 2-degree target that has been the goal of the U.N. talks.

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Tourists visit Southfork to remember Larry Hagman

PARKER, Texas (AP) — Tourists and locals flocked to Southfork Ranch on Saturday, bringing flowers in memory of Larry Hagman, who played the infamous J.R. Ewing on the TV show “Dallas.”

Hagman died in Dallas on Friday at age 81 due to complications from his battle with cancer.

Southfork, a ranch north of Dallas, was known to millions of viewers as the Ewing family home. Exterior shots of the house and pool were shown when the series aired from 1978 to 1991, although the show wasn’t filmed there.

The ranch has been open for tours since the mid-1980s, and now sees more than 100,000 visitors each year. Each room of the house has a theme for each character.

On Saturday, J.R. Ewing’s room had flowers and a card for tourists to sign.

“Today is about Larry Hagman and his family,” said Janna Timm, a Southfork Ranch & Hotel spokeswoman. “He was such a wonderful person, and we will really miss him.”

“Dallas” was recently revived on TNT this summer, and all of the scenes were filmed at Southfork or other places in the Dallas area. Hagman had revised his role as the scheming oilman who would even double-cross his own son.

Linda Sproule of Peterborough, Ontario, had been traveling through the U.S. the past couple of weeks and heard about Hagman’s death Friday while in Dallas. She said she didn’t know where Southfork was but wanted to come because she was a fan of the show in the 1980s.

“I remember on Friday nights we watched it, and J.R. was bigger than life in some ways,” she said after taking the Southfork tour Saturday morning. “This ranch is beautiful. Being here is kind of emotional in a way.”

Barbara Quinones and her husband were in town for their daughter’s soccer tournament and had already planned to visit Southfork when they heard news of Hagman’s death.

“We loved him because he was so ruthless,” said Quinones, of Albuquerque, N.M. “This is a sad day, but I’m glad we’re here.”

Some of the show’s stars, including Hagman, came to Southfork for the series’ 25th anniversary. The Fort Worth-born actor also had visited several times before the show was revived.

“He was definitely a gentleman, a class act,” said Jim Gomes, vice president of resorts at Southfork Ranch & Hotel. “He loved the fans as much as they loved him.”

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Donald preparing for surgery on sinuses

DUBAI (Reuters) – World number two Luke Donald is planning to have an operation in the off-season in an attempt to cure a lingering problem with his sinuses.

“My sinuses are all completely clogged up and every time I get a little bit run down they turn into infections,” the 34-year-old Briton told reporters after finishing in a tie for third place at the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday.

“Hopefully the surgery will fix it. It’s a pretty quick and easy operation.”

Donald said he was affected by the problem over the last two rounds in Dubai, the final event of the European Tour season.

The former world number one wanted to make it clear, however, that his disappointing one-under-par final round of 71 should not be blamed on his physical ailments.

“I don’t like to make excuses but the last couple of days I’ve had the sinus issue again,” added Donald. “I felt a little bit flat and unfortunately I couldn’t get things going on Sunday.”

The Chicago-based Englishman went into the last 18 holes sharing the lead with Ryder Cup team mate Rory McIlroy.

Donald went a remarkable 102 holes without carding a bogey in the Dubai tournament, this year and in 2011, but a dropped stroke at the third on Sunday ended that sequence and put him on the back foot for the rest of the round.

He finished five strokes adrift of world number one and tournament winner McIlroy, who birdied each of the closing five holes to shoot a six-under 66.

(Editing by Peter Rutherford)

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