ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Voters in Ghana were selecting their next president and a 275-seat parliament in elections Friday, solidifying the West African nation‘s reputation as a beacon of democracy in the region.
Some 14 million people are expected to turn out. President John Dramani Mahama, in office for only five months, is running against seven contenders. A former vice president, Mahama became president in July after the unexpected death of former President John Atta Mills. The 54-year-old is also a former minister and parliamentarian and has written an acclaimed biography, “My First Coup d’Etat.”
His main challenger is Nana Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister and the son of one of Ghana’s previous presidents. The contender lost the 2008 election to Mills by less than 1 percent. Both men are trying to make the case that they will use the nation’s newfound oil wealth to help the poor.
Ghana, a nation of 25 million, is one of the few established democracies in the region as well as the fastest-growing economy. But a deep divide still exists between those benefiting from the country’s oil, cocoa and mineral wealth and those left behind financially.
In an interview on the eve of the vote, Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press that the first thing he will do if elected is begin working on providing free high school education for all. “It’s a matter of great concern to me,” he said, adding that he plans to use the nation’s oil wealth to educate the population, industrialize the economy and create better jobs for Ghanaians.
Policy-oriented and intellectual, Akufo-Addo is favored by the young and urbanized voters. He was educated in England and comes from a privileged family. The ruling party has depicted him as elitist, which Akufo-Addo calls “a little PR construct.”
“The idea that merely because you are born into privilege that automatically means you are against the welfare of the ordinary people, that’s nonsense,” he said.
Ghana had one of the fastest growing economies in the world in 2011. Allegations of corruption against the ruling party are rife.
Akufo-Addo said that if elected, he would not be able to weed out corruption in the government overnight.
“It’s a long fight,” he said. “But we build the institutions that can fight it.”
He said that in 30 years in politics he has never been accused of corruption.
Many analysts believe Mahama and Akufo-Addo are neck-and-neck.
Results are expected to be announced by Sunday, but could be delayed. If no one wins an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on December 28.
All candidates have signed a peace pact and have promised to accept the results of Friday’s poll.
Ghana, a nation of 25 million, has previously held five transparent elections in a row. Nearby Mali, which was also considered a model democracy, was plunged into chaos this March following a military coup.
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Associated Press writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report from Accra, Ghana.
(Reuters) – Digital music service Spotify rolled out new features and said it increased the number of active users at a press event that featured a special musical performance by Frank Ocean.
Spotify now has 20 million active users worldwide, up 33 percent in less than six months. The company counts five million people among paying subscribers, a 25 percent increase during the same time period.
Spotify also revealed it has one million paid subscribers in the United States, that it added a Twitter like functionality that allows users to follow one another, and that the rock band Metallica‘s music was now available on the service.
The company made the announcements at a splashy New York event on Thursday that included a conversation between Spotify backer Sean Parker and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich.
Ulrich’s appearance is notable since his band was one of the leading crusaders against Napster, the digital music sharing company co-founded by Parker more than a decade ago that was a flashpoint for digital rights and artist compensation.
“We have more in common than the whole thing that happened 12 years ago,” said Ulrich about Parker.
Ulrich said the decision to join Spotify coincided with the fact the band now owns its entire catalogs of music.
Spotify, which strikes royalty deals with record labels, has paid more than $ 500 million to the music industry since its launch four years ago – an amount that has more than doubled in the past nine months. It pays roughly 70 percent of its revenue back to rights holders.
“The more music that gets shared the more money goes back to artists,” said Daniel Ek, CEO and co-founder of Spotify.
Spotify is a free on-demand streaming music service that is rising in popularity. People can pay to hear music without interruptions from advertising and the ability to play lists and preferences from any device any time.
The company has struck up a partnership with Facebook – Parker is Facebook’s founding president – that allows listener’s to display their music choices on their personal pages.
Streaming music services such as Spotify and Pandora are being carefully watched by the music industry concerned over the royalty payments.
For example, Pandora is pushing the Internet Radio Fairness Act, which would change how royalties are paid to artists. As of now, online streaming music companies like Pandora pay a different rate to license music than say traditional radio companies.
Many of music’s most notable names like Billy Joel and Rihanna are opposing the proposed change.
(Reuters) – Not only are men more likely than women to be diagnosed with cancer, men who get it have a higher chance of dying from the disease, according to a U.S. study.
In an analysis of cases of all but sex-specific cancers such as prostate and ovarian cancer, for example, men were more likely than women to die in each of the past ten years, said researchers, whose findings appeared in The Journal of Urology.
That translates to an extra 24,130 men dying of cancer in 2012 because of their gender.
“This gap needs to be closed,” said Shahrokh Shariat from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who worked on the study. “It’s not about showing that men are only doing worse and, ‘poor men.’ It’s about closing gender differences and improving health care.”
Using U.S. cancer registry data from 2003 through 2012, Shariat and his colleagues found the ratio of deaths to cancer diagnoses decreased 10 percent over the past decade – but was consistently higher among men than women.
Overall, men with any type of cancer were six percent more likely to die of their disease than women with cancer. When men and women with the same type of cancer were compared, that rose to more than 12 percent.
In 2012, Shariat’s team calculated that about 575,130 men and 457,240 women would be diagnosed with a non-sex specific cancer. Also this year, an estimated 243,620 men will die of cancer – one death for every 2.36 new diagnoses, compared to 182,670 women dying, or one for each 2.5 new diagnoses.
“We found that from the 10 most common cancers in males and females… men present at a higher stage than females, and adjusted for the incidence, are more likely to die from the cancer,” Shariat told Reuters Health.
“If you take an average of the 10 most common cancers, men are more likely to die in seven out of the ten,” he added. In contrast, women are more likely to die only from bladder cancer.
The new study can’t show what’s behind the differences in cancer deaths, but possible theories include men’s higher rates of smoking and drinking combined with less frequent doctor’s visits – which cause men’s cancers to be diagnosed in later, more advanced stages.
Sex hormones may also contribute to differences in men’s and women’s immune systems, metabolism and general susceptibility to cancer, according to Yang Yang, a sociologist and cancer researcher from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who studies health disparities but wasn’t part of the study.
She said the new findings are consistent with work suggesting a higher risk of death for men from many causes, not just cancer.
But a full understanding of the origins and mechanisms in sex differences in cancer, as well as overall mortality, has remained elusive,” Yang told Reuters Health in an email.
Shariat said men should be particularly proactive about their health care.
“That means going to screening programs, seeing a general practitioner or primary care provider on a regular basis and as soon as symptoms arise that are new, mentioning that to their primary care physicians,” he added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Vz8RJI
(Reporting from New York by Genevra Pittman at Reuters Health, editing by Elaine Lies)
Starbucks UK’s Kris Engkov: “We are going to do what’s required beyond the law”
Coffee chain Starbucks has agreed to pay more UK corporation tax, after a public outcry over how little it pays.
Kris Engskov, managing director of Starbucks UK, announced that the company would pay “a significant amount of tax during 2013 and 2014, regardless of whether the company is profitable”.
One tax expert described the move as “unprecedented”.
HM Revenue and Customs reacted by saying that corporation tax “is not a voluntary tax”.
“The public expects businesses to pay their fair share,” the tax authorites added, “and HMRC will challenge, through the courts if necessary, any structures or tax payments that do not comply with the UK tax law.”
But Amazon and Google, also under fire for paying little UK tax, held firm.
The extra tax could amount to £20m over the next two years, Mr Engskov said.
Bill Dodwell, head of tax policy at the accountants Deloitte, told the BBC that he suspected the figure was a “sensible number taking account of the scale of the business and their history of past losses”.
“This is an unprecedented move for a company to announce this sort of change,” he said.
‘Joke’
Starbucks’ announcement comes after much public anger over the revelation of how little corporation tax it pays in the UK, with some people saying they would boycott its outlets.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Offering to pay some tax if and when it suits you doesn’t stop you being a tax dodger”
End QuoteUK Uncut
The company has paid just £8.6m in corporation tax in its 14 years of trading in the UK, and nothing in the last three years, despite UK sales of nearly £400m in 2011.
Starbucks has reported a taxable profit only once in its 15 years of operating in the UK, often reporting losses.
“It is extraordinary,” Stephen Williams, Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, told the BBC. “People have been joking that some of these multinationals seem to think that paying tax is voluntary. Well Starbucks have just confirmed the joke really.
“Tax is something that is a legal obligation that you should pay according to the tax rules of a particular country. It’s not a charitable donation in order to gain sort of brand value. But that seems to be what Starbucks are doing.”
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I don’t think there will be many people who stop using Google… but the problem for Starbucks is there is a coffee shop on every High Street”
End QuoteRichard BaconConservative MP
Conservative MP Richard Bacon, who is a member of the Public Accounts Committee, expressed surprise at the move.
“They have recognised the public outrage at the fact that a company as large as Starbucks would… not be paying any corporation tax.
“They have realised that it is a PR problem and it is a PR response. It is nice for the exchequer to have a bit more money, but it is not a long-term solution to the problem that we face.”
Starbucks admitted that the degree of hostility and emotion surrounding the tax issue had “taken us a bit by surprise” and that the move was an attempt to rebuild trust with its customers.
“Since we started doing business here, we have always organised our tax affairs according to the letter of the law,” said Mr Engskov.
“[But] with the backdrop of these difficult times, in the area of tax, our customers clearly expect us to do more,” he said.
Mr Engskov added that the company had found it difficult to make profits in the UK, which has “the most competitive espresso market in the world”, despite “two million customers visiting us each week in hundreds of stores across the UK”.
The extra tax payments will be funded by not claiming “tax deductions for royalties or payments related to our intercompany charges”, Mr Engskov said.
Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, says this is a welcome first step
Mr Dodwell said he thought the coffee chain would not claim some of the deductions they may otherwise have been allowed to claim.
“We don’t know the details – that will be between the company and HM Revenue and Customs,” he said.
More protests
UK Uncut, a group that protests against corporate tax avoidance in the UK, said that Starbucks’ announcement was not enough and that 40 “actions” would take place in Starbucks stores up and down the country.
“There’s no money yet, and hollow promises on press releases don’t fund women’s refuges or child benefits,” the group said. “Offering to pay some tax if and when it suits you doesn’t stop you being a tax dodger. Today’s announcement is just a desperate attempt to deflect public pressure.
“The £10m that Starbucks has estimated it may end up paying is £5m less than that paid by their nearest competitor Costa coffee.”
Starbucks has 760 outlets across the UK and says it contributes “£300m to the UK economy” each year. Rival Costa has 1,479 coffee shops.
In a statement, Amazon said: “Amazon pays all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operates within.”
Continue reading the main story
And Google said: “We comply with all the tax rules in the UK. We make a substantial contribution to the UK economy through local, payroll and corporate taxes.”
Mr Bacon said that Starbucks’ move will likely have an effect on its fellow US giants.
“I suspect what companies do is when they see their name in the public lights and they don’t like it and then they take action,” the MP said. “I don’t think there will be many people who stop using Google… and probably for their Christmas shopping lots of people will still use Amazon.
“But the problem for Starbucks is there is a coffee shop on every High Street.”
Companies pay corporation tax on any profit they make in the UK, not their revenue or takings. Hence, allegations that multinationals move money to other countries to reduce how much tax they pay in the UK.
John Whiting, director at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, told the BBC that Starbucks was trying to protect its image.
“I think what it demonstrates is that companies big or small do care about their reputation,” he said.
“I mean, you can say Starbucks depends on its coffee….but a real key thing they depend on, is what people think about them, the trust. Do they like the image they portray?”
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African military aircraft on an unknown mission to an area near the village where former President Nelson Mandela lives crashed in a mountain range, officials said Thursday. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.
The Douglas DC-3 Dakota, a twin-propeller aircraft, had taken off from Pretoria’s Waterkloof Air Force Base on Wednesday night, said Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, a military spokesman. On Thursday morning, soldiers found the wreckage of the airplane in the Drakensberg mountains near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of the air base, Mabanga said.
Mabanga said soldiers had been sent to the scene to look for survivors. Mabanga said he did not know what the mission of the aircraft was, though it had planned to land in Mthatha in the country’s Eastern Cape. Siphiwe Dlamini, a Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to immediately comment Thursday morning.
Mthatha is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu, the village where Mandela now lives after retiring from public life. South Africa‘s military remains largely responsible for the former president’s medical care. However, military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.
In November, another South African military flight crash landed at Mthatha, sending several people to the hospital with injuries. However, at that time, the military denied that those on board had anything to do with Mandela’s care.
Mandela, 94, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s president in the country’s first fully democratic vote in 1994.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – TNT‘s upcoming pilot “Legends” is getting a Stark makeover.
Sean Bean, who played ill-fated Lord of Winterfell Eddard Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has signed on to replace Brendan Fraser in TNT’s upcoming pilot “Legends.”
Fraser dropped out of the pilot last month; the show would have marked his first starring turn on a TV series.
Bean will play Martin Odum, a deep-cover operative who has a chameleon-like ability to transform himself into a different person for each mission. The project is based on a book by spy novelist Robert Littell.
“Homeland” duo Howard Gordon and Alexander Cary are executive-producing the pilot, which comes from Fox 21, as are Jeffrey Nachmanoff (“The Day After Tomorrow”) and Jonathan Levin (“Charmed”).
Deadline first reported news of Bean’s “Legends” casting.
(Reuters) – Drug reviewers said a painkiller developed by Zogenix Inc could possibly be abused more than currently available hydrocodonecombination products.
Zogenix’s painkiller Zohydro is a single-entity product containing hydrocodone — a narcotic painkiller. Hydrocodone and oxycodone are often-abused drugs.
Combination hydrocodone drugs usually also contain acetaminophen, the active ingredient in common pain products such as Tylenol.
However, since an overdose of acetaminophen can cause liver damage, especially in patients on other acetaminophen medications, there is a requirement for painkillers without acetaminophen.
The reviewers said the expected higher levels of abuse with Zohydro were based on what has been observed for oxycodone products, according to briefing documents released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday. (http://link.reuters.com/hux44t)
“The abuse ratio for oxycodone combination products was 24 emergency department visits per million tablets dispensed, compared with 85 visits for oxycodone single-entity ER products,” the FDA reviewers said in the documents.
An independent panel of experts will advise the FDA and vote on the drug’s safety, efficacy and approval on Friday.
Zogenix shares were down 6 percent at $ 2.39 in early trade on Wednesday on the Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – HSBC Holdings Plc might pay a fine of $ 1.8 billion as part of a settlement with U.S. law-enforcement agencies over money-laundering lapses, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The settlement with Europe’s biggest bank – which could be announced as soon as next week – will likely involve HSBC entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The potential settlement, which has been in the works for months, is emerging as a test case for just how big a signal U.S. prosecutors want to send to try to halt illicit flows of money moving through U.S. banks.
An HSBC spokesman said: “We are cooperating with authorities in ongoing investigations. The nature of discussions is confidential.”
HSBC said on November 5 that it set aside $ 1.5 billion to cover a potential fine for breaching anti-money laundering controls in Mexico and other violations, although Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said the cost could be “significantly higher.
In regulatory filings, HSBC has said it could face criminal charges. But similar U.S. investigations have culminated in deferred prosecution deals, where law-enforcement agencies delay or forgo prosecuting a company if it admits wrongdoing, pays a fine and agrees to clean up its compliance systems. If the company missteps again, the Justice Department could prosecute.
A deferred prosecution agreement could raise questions over whether HSBC is simply paying a big fine and nothing more, said Jimmy Gurule, a former enforcement official at the U.S. Treasury.
It would make a “mockery of the criminal justice system,” said Gurule, who is now a University of Notre Dame law-school professor.
In his view, the only way to really catch the attention of banks is to indict individuals.
“That would send a shockwave through the international finance services community,” Gurule said. “It would put the fear of God in bank officials that knowingly disregard the law.”
An HSBC settlement, long rumored, has been slow in coming. Inside the Justice Department, prosecutors in Washington, D.C. and West Virginia argued over how to best investigate HSBC. According to documents reviewed by Reuters, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Wheeling, West Virginia, was prepared as far back as 2010 to indict HSBC and include more than 170 money laundering counts.
Prosecutors in Washington ultimately took charge.
In July, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report saying HSBC allowed clients to move shadowy funds from Mexico, Iran, the Cayman Islands, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
The use of deferred prosecution agreements has surged in recent years because Justice Department officials believe they give prosecutors an option aside from indicting a company or dropping a case.
According to a report in May by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative-leaning think tank, there have been 207 deferred or non-prosecution agreements since 2004.
The agreements “have become a mainstay of white collar criminal law enforcement,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in September during an appearance at the New York City Bar Association.
“I’ve heard people criticize them and I’ve heard people praise them. DPAs have had a truly transformative effect on particular companies and, more generally, on corporate culture across the globe.”
If U.S. prosecutors agree to a deferred agreement, they still could wield a powerful legal tool by accusing the bank of laundering money.
That would be a much more serious charge than if prosecutors, in a deferred agreement, charged HSBC with criminal violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, a law that requires banks to maintain programs that root out suspicious transactions.
In March 2010, for example, Wells Fargo & Co’s Wachovia entered into a deferred prosecution agreement to pay $ 160 million as part of a Justice Department probe that examined how drug traffickers moved money through the bank. Wachovia was accused of violating the Bank Secrecy Act, a decision that prompted criticism from some observers who thought a money laundering charge should have been employed and individual bankers prosecuted.
A charge of money laundering would be a rare move by the Justice Department and would send a signal to other big banks that the agency is intent on cracking down on dirty money moving through the U.S. financial system.
(This story corrects month the Senate report was published to July in paragraph 13)
(Reporting by Carrick Mollenkamp and Brett Wolf; Additional reporting by Emily Flitter and Aruna Viswanatha)
(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team to be wary of a backlash from Australia in their three-test series after the hosts were stung by their series defeat to South Africa earlier this week.
Australia’s hopes of snatching the Proteas’ top test ranking ended in a crushing 309-run defeat in the third and final test in Perth on Monday, but Jayawardene took little comfort from the home side’s disappointment.
“I see them as wounded soldiers – they could come back stronger against us,” Jayawardene told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday, on the eve of a three-day tour match against a Chairman’s XI side.
“So we just need to make sure we are ready for that and start well.
“We can’t be complacent – we need to make sure we know from ball one we give them a good go at it.”
Sri Lanka have their own problems coming into the first test at Hobart next week, losing their last test at home to New Zealand by 167 runs to level a two-match series 1-1, with key batsmen out of form.
Kumar Sangakkara scored five, nought and 16 in his three innings against New Zealand, but Jayawardene backed the veteran to bounce back in Sri Lanka’s bid to win their first test Down Under.
“I am happy that he went through a lean phase because he’ll be really hungry for runs – that’s Kumar for you,” Jayawardene said of the 35-year-old stalwart.
Jayawardene also said he would weigh up his future as captain after the series, which includes tests in Melbourne and Sydney, after taking on the role for a second time in the wake of Tillakaratne Dilshan’s sudden resignation in January.
“After this, we get a well-deserved four weeks off, after about three years, so it gives me a bit of time to think (about) what I need to do,” said Jayawardene, who captained the team for more than three years in his first stint from 2006.
“We need to groom another leader as well. It’s very important to have that changeover done smoothly while the senior players are still in the side.”
Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is headed to the altar again – with the blonde Playmate who ditched him five days before their planned wedding in 2011.
Hefner, 86, and his former “runaway bride” Crystal Harris, 26, obtained a marriage license in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, Los Angeles County Recorder spokeswoman Elizabeth Knox said.
Celebrity website TMZ.com said the couple, who reunited earlier this year, are planning a New Year’s Eve wedding.
Harris was Playboy magazine‘s Miss December 2009 and appeared on the July 2011 cover of the adult magazine with a “runaway bride” sticker covering her bottom half.
In what was described at the time only as a “change of heart,” Harris dumped the magazine mogul and left his Playboy Mansion five days before a lavish June 2011 wedding before 300 guests.
This time around, the couple are playing it low-key, staying mum on their busy Twitter accounts with Hefner’s spokeswoman declining to confirm or deny their plans.
Hefner, founder of the Playboy adult entertainment empire, has been married twice before. He and his second wife Kimberley Conrad, also a former Playmate, divorced in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He has two children from each marriage.
