News Summary: India outrage over Facebook arrests

WHAT HAPPENED: As India‘s financial capital shut down for the weekend funeral of a powerful politician linked to waves of mob violence, a woman posted on Facebook that the closures in Mumbai were “due to fear, not due to respect.” A friend of hers hit the “like” button. For that, both women were arrested.

THE RATIONALE: The arrests were seen as a move by police to prevent any outbreak of violence by supporters of Bal Thackeray, a powerful Hindu fundamentalist politician who died Saturday.

THE REACTION: But analysts and the media are slamming the Maharashtra state government for what they said was a flagrant misuse of the law and an attempt to curb freedom of expression.

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Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hat and cane fetch over $60,000 at auction

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One of Charlie Chaplin’s bowler hats and a cane, the staple of Hollywood silent-era comedy, were auctioned for $ 62,500 on Sunday, said auction house Bonhams.

Chaplin’s hat and cane, which fetched more than the initial estimate of $ 40,000-60,000, are synonymous with his “Little Tramp” character in films such as “City Lights” and “Modern Times.”

Bonhams memorabilia specialist Lucy Carr said earlier it is unknown how many of Chaplin’s bowlers and canes still exist. Those auctioned on Sunday are from a private collection but have a direct link to Chaplin, Carr said.

The waddling and bumbling “Little Tramp” character propelled Chaplin to global fame. The character, Hollywood legend says was created by accident on a rainy day at Keystone Studios, first appeared in 1914′s “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and lastly in 1936′s “Modern Times.”

Chaplin’s hat and cane are the highlights of an auction of popular culture artifacts that is still in progress. Other items include a handwritten letter from John Lennon in which the Beatle sketched himself and wife Yoko Ono nude. There is also an archive of Marilyn Monroe photographs, an early Charles Schulz “Peanuts” comic strip, and a wicker chair from Rick’s Cafe in “Casablanca.”

(Additional reporting by Eric Kelsey; editing by Christopher Wilson)

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New push for most in US to get at least 1 HIV test

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a new push to make testing for the AIDS virus as common as cholesterol checks.

Americans ages 15 to 64 should get an HIV test at least once — not just people considered at high risk for the virus, an independent panel that sets screening guidelines proposed Monday.

The draft guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are the latest recommendations that aim to make HIV screening simply a routine part of a check-up, something a doctor can order with as little fuss as a cholesterol test or a mammogram. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has pushed for widespread, routine HIV screening.

Yet not nearly enough people have heeded that call: Of the more than 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, nearly 1 in 5 — almost 240,000 people — don’t know it. Not only is their own health at risk without treatment, they could unwittingly be spreading the virus to others.

The updated guidelines will bring this long-simmering issue before doctors and their patients again — emphasizing that public health experts agree on how important it is to test even people who don’t think they’re at risk, because they could be.

“It allows you to say, ‘This is a recommended test that we believe everybody should have. We’re not singling you out in any way,’” said task force member Dr. Douglas Owens, of Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

And if finalized, the task force guidelines could extend the number of people eligible for an HIV screening without a copay in their doctor’s office, as part of free preventive care under the Obama administration’s health care law. Under the task force‘s previous guidelines, only people at increased risk for HIV — which includes gay and bisexual men and injecting drug users — were eligible for that no-copay screening.

There are a number of ways to get tested. If you’re having blood drawn for other exams, the doctor can merely add HIV to the list, no extra pokes or swabs needed. Today’s rapid tests can cost less than $ 20 and require just rubbing a swab over the gums, with results ready in as little as 20 minutes. Last summer, the government approved a do-it-yourself at-home version that’s selling for about $ 40.

Free testing is available through various community programs around the country, including a CDC pilot program in drugstores in 24 cities and rural sites.

Monday’s proposal also recommends:

—Testing people older and younger than 15-64 if they are at increased risk of HIV infection,

—People at very high risk for HIV infection should be tested at least annually.

—It’s not clear how often to retest people at somewhat increased risk, but perhaps every three to five years.

—Women should be tested during each pregnancy, something the task force has long recommended.

The draft guidelines are open for public comment through Dec. 17.

Most of the 50,000 new HIV infections in the U.S. every year are among gay and bisexual men, followed by heterosexual black women.

“We are not doing as well in America with HIV testing as we would like,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, CDC’s HIV prevention chief, said Monday.

The CDC recommends at least one routine test for everyone ages 13 to 64, starting two years younger than the task force recommended. That small difference aside, CDC data suggests fewer than half of adults under 65 have been tested.

“It can sometimes be awkward to ask your doctor for an HIV test,” Mermin said — the reason making it routine during any health care encounter could help.

But even though nearly three-fourths of gay and bisexual men with undiagnosed HIV had visited some sort of health provider in the previous year, 48 percent weren’t tested for HIV, a recent CDC survey found. Emergency rooms are considered a good spot to catch the undiagnosed, after their illnesses and injuries have been treated, but Mermin said only about 2 percent of ER patients known to be at increased risk were tested while there.

Mermin calls that “a tragedy. It’s a missed opportunity.”

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Online:

Task force recommendation: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org

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U.S. ITC will review Apple, Samsung patent decision

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. International Trade Commission will review a judge’s decision which found that Apple did not violate patents owned by Samsung Electronics in making the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad.

An administrative law judge at the ITC had said in a preliminary ruling in September that Apple was innocent of violating the patents. The ITC, which could have opted to simply uphold the judge’s decision, said that it would take up the matter. A final decision is expected in January.

If Apple is found to infringe, its devices can be banned for sale in the United States.

Apple and Samsung have taken their bruising patent disputes to some 10 countries as they vie for market share in the booming mobile industry.

Apple won a huge victory in August when a U.S. jury found the South Korean firm had copied key features of the iPhone. Apple was awarded $ 1.05 billion in damages. That ruling is under appeal.

In its announcement that it would review the case, the ITC asked for briefings on how it should consider standard essential patents, which are normally expected to be licensed widely and on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The use of standards helps companies ensure devices are interoperable.

Some antitrust enforcers have argued that it is wrong for companies which own standard essential patents to ask for infringing devices to be barred from the country except in extreme instances.

The commission is reviewing a decision by ITC Judge James Gildea, who said in September that Apple did not violate the four patents at issue in the case, which was filed in mid-2011.

The two standard essential patents in the complaint are related to 3G wireless technology and the format of data packets for high-speed transmission.

Apple has a parallel complaint filed against Samsung at the ITC, accusing Samsung, a major Apple chip provider as well as a global rival, of blatantly copying its iPhones and iPads. An ITC judge said in that case that Samsung infringed on four Apple patents. The full ITC will issue a final decision in February.

Apple has waged an international patent war since 2010 as it seeks to limit growth of Google’s Android system. The fight has embroiled Samsung, HTC and others who use Android.

Google’s Android software, which Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs denounced as a “stolen product,” has become the world’s No. 1 smartphone operating system.

Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone maker, while Apple is in third place. Many experts consider Samsung’s Galaxy touchscreen tablets the main rival to the iPad, although they are currently a distant second to Apple’s devices.

Samsung is also a parts supplier to Apple, producing micro processors, flat screens and memory chips – both dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips and NAND memory chips – for the iPhone, iPad and iPod. Apple has reduced orders from Samsung for chips and screens.

The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-794.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Bernard Orr and David Gregorio)

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Turbulence on Cuba-Italy flight leaves 30 bruised

ROME (AP) — An airliner flying from Havana to Milan abruptly plunged some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) when it hit unusually strong turbulence over the Atlantic on Monday, terrifying passengers and leaving some 30 people aboard with bruises and scrapes, airline officials said.

The flight continued to Milan’s Malpensa airport after the plane’s captain determined that it suffered no structural damage and two passengers who are physicians found no serious injuries, Giulio Buzzi, head of the pilots division at Neos Air, told Sky TG24 TV.

The ANSA news agency quoted bruised passenger Edoardo De Lucchi as saying meals were being served when suddenly there was “10 seconds of terror.” He recounted how plates went flying and some passengers not wearing seatbelts bounced about.

Buzzi had said that the drop measured some 3,000 meters (10,000 feet) in a cloudless sky. But Milan daily’s Corriere della Sera’s web site, quoting Neos official Davide Martini, later reported that the plane first bounced up some 500 meters (1,650 feet), then dropped some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) to some 500 meters (1,650 feet) below the original altitude.

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Google should not be accused of “unfair” acts: lawmakers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two lawmakers urged the Federal Trade Commission on Monday to steer clear of expanding its authority as it investigates allegations search engine company Google violated antitrust law.

The two California Democrats in the House of Representatives, who count Google as a major campaign contributor, asked the FTC not to accuse the company of “unfair” acts if it believes it broke antitrust law.

Anna Eshoo, on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Zoe Lofgren, who is on the Judiciary Committee, said there were reports to suggest the FTC planned to use the unfair standard to avoid proving some elements required in an antitrust claim.

They said such a move could lead to over-broad authority for the FTC that could create legal uncertainties for firms and stifle economic growth.

“Such a massive expansion of FTC jurisdiction would be unwarranted, unwise, and likely have negative implications for our nation’s economy,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was dated November 19 and sent to the five FTC commissioners.

The FTC is looking into a long list of complaints brought by rivals of Google, which is also accused of using its dominance to squash competitors in vertical search areas such as shopping and travel.

The FTC staff has reportedly given the commission a report urging them to file a complaint against Google for suing competitors based on standard essential patents and asking for injunctions to stop the sales of their products. Standard essential patents are supposed to be broadly licensed at a fair rate.

Google is the seventh largest contributor to Eshoo, donating $ 13,000 during the 2012 election cycle, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. It is the third largest contributor to Lofgren, who got $ 14,500 from Google. The donations came from a Google political action committee and employees and lobbyists associated with Google.

Complaints about Google to the FTC over standard essential patents arise from a raft of litigation between Apple Inc, Google and Microsoft Corp, which have sued each other numerous times in various countries, each alleging that their respective patents are being infringed upon by rivals in the highly competitive smartphone market.

In many cases, the companies ask that their rivals’ products be banned from stores. Many antitrust enforcers believe it is inappropriate for companies to ask for sales bans based on the infringement of essential patents.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who is expected to leave the agency soon, said in mid-September that he expected a decision in the case by the end of the year. A decision could be in the form of a lawsuit or, more likely, a settlement.

Google has settled with U.S. law enforcement agencies in the past.

For example, it settled with the FTC following privacy gaffes during the botched roll-out of its social network, Buzz. Later, it paid $ 22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple’s Safari browser.

Google also paid a $ 500 million settlement in 2011 to the Justice Department for knowingly accepting illegal advertisements from Canadian pharmacies selling in the United States.

FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan confirmed that the commission had received the letter but said the agency declined comment.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Cablevision subscribers sue over Hurricane Sandy outages

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Even as workers scramble to clean up the mess that Hurricane Sandy left in the Northeast two weeks ago, a legal mess is beginning to spill into the court system.

Cablevision subscribers Jeffery and Irwin Bard filed a class-action lawsuit against the cable provider in New York Supreme Court this week, seeking restitution for television, telephone and internet outages caused by Sandy, according to court papers obtained by TheWrap.

The suit, which alleges breach of contract and unjust enrichment, claims that Cablevision “continued to advertise falsely that it was providing services to its customers” even after the storm caused outages for its customers, and “could not restore services to many of its customers for days, or even weeks.”

Moreover, according to the complaint, Cablevision continued to issue bills for services it was unable to provide in the aftermath of the storm, and “instituted a secretive policy to offer ‘customer credits’ only to customers who affirmatively and actively demanded rebates on a discretionary basis,” rather than offer across-the-board rebates to its customers, even though it had access to which customers had lost power and for how long.

A spokesman for Cablevision told TheWrap that the lawsuit “misstates the facts and is without merit,” and that Cablevision has “an extremely broad and customer friendly credit policy following Sandy.”

“Blanket or arbitrary credits for cable outages could shortchange customers because each case is different and our policy covers the entire period of time when Cablevision service was out, including when the service interruption was caused by the loss of electrical power,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Cablevision does allow for customers to call and process their credit, or go to optimum.net/credit, where they can detail the period of their outage to receive credit.

The suit, filed Tuesday, seeks unspecified damages for each member of the class, plus attorneys’ fees and court costs, along with a permanent restraint barring Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision from billing or invoicing customers when there’s a service outage of more than 24 hours.

(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)

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Corporate China’s Black Hole of Debt

For China bulls, things are starting to look up. The property market has been showing signs of life, and October retail sales, investment, and industrial production have come in above forecasts. A manufacturing index also showed improvement, and exports increased 11.6 percent in October, the fastest pace in five months.

Yet one figure is going in the wrong direction: China’s corporate debt has risen from 108 percent of the entire economy last year to 122 percent in 2012, its highest level in 15 years, estimates GK Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economic consultancy. That makes China’s corporate sector one of the most debt-laden in the world. “Companies have seen their business slowing down and revenues were not what they had expected. They have bridged the gap by taking on more debt,” says GK Dragonomics Research Director Andrew Batson.

Key industries such as steel, construction machinery, aluminum, and coal are facing overcapacity, squeezed margins, and most alarmingly, debt. “That is dragging down corporate investment, and that matters for the overall economy,” says Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in Hong Kong. “I don’t expect the uptick in growth to be very sharp.” He predicts fourth-quarter gross domestic product will rise 7.1 percent, below the average forecast of 7.7 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Kuijs expects most companies to focus more on debt reduction than on building another plant or opening another mine.

Complicating matters is that many of the heavily indebted companies are state-owned, and the banks that lent to them are state-controlled, too. That means the government may have to pick up the tab if any of these companies is unable to manage its debt. The sudden bankruptcy of a giant state corporation would have political as well as financial consequences. This implicit government guarantee behind a portion of China’s corporate debt means the government’s actual obligations are likely higher than the 49 percent figure estimated by GK Dragonomics. Lump together corporate, public, and household debt, says the research firm, and you get a figure close to 206 percent of GDP.

One sign of how tough it is for companies is the return of a problem that plagued China in the 1990s: triangular debt. That’s when a manufacturer that hasn’t been paid for its product is unable to pay its suppliers, which in turn struggle to pay their suppliers. By Sept. 30, total accounts receivable—money owed for products already delivered—for China’s industrial companies had reached 8 trillion yuan ($ 1.3 trillion), up 16.5 percent from September 2011, according to the national statistics bureau. “China has already tipped over the precipice into a very bad debt crisis,” warns Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, a Beijing-based equities analysis firm.

The origin of this morass dates back to late 2008, when the country unleashed a massive wave of loans from its state-owned banks to the corporate sector. That stimulus helped Beijing avoid the major unemployment and dire downturn that afflicted much of the world. Hopes were that the surge in loans would be a temporary measure. Instead, China’s banks, trust companies, and other financing operations are on track this year to issue new credit equal to one-third of GDP, the fourth year in a row of such a sizable expansion, according to Fitch Ratings.

China’s banking assets will have grown by almost $ 14 trillion between 2008 and 2013 (Fitch includes an estimate of loans issued by the informal banking sector and offshore banks—data not included in Beijing’s official figures). “This is equivalent to replicating the entire U.S. commercial banking sector in just five years,” says Charlene Chu, head of Chinese bank ratings at Fitch, in a Nov. 8 note. “Rising leverage either will swamp borrowers’ ability to repay, or banks’ funding and capital needs will fall short of existing resources.”

Accounts are appearing in the Chinese press of litigation by companies that haven’t been paid. As of the end of September, a logistics unit of state-owned Anhui-based Maanshan Iron & Steel had filed 23 lawsuits for the recovery of money and goods it was owed, reported the official Xinhua News Agency. Maanshan announced on Oct. 8 that “the logistics company has become insolvent.” Maanshan did not respond to requests for comment.

In August, state media reported that China’s central bank, as well as various commissions and ministries, had launched an investigation to uncover the scale of corporate indebtedness among state and private companies. “The lurking debt risk, which once hit China in the 1990s, could take a huge toll on the real economy,” warned Xinhua on Oct. 28. At China’s top four listed steel companies, debt as a percentage of equity now averages 80 percent, with anything above 50 percent considered very high, says Helen Lau, senior analyst for metals and mining at UOB Kay Hian (UOBK), a Singapore-based securities company.

Any turnaround in the corporate sector will involve tackling overcapacity. Lau estimates that the steel industry has 900 million tons of productive capacity, some 200 million tons too much. Yet shuttering the excess production lines may not happen anytime soon. “All the big producers have strong backing from the state banks. That is why they have been adding new capacity. This is not a commercial decision but a political one,” says UOB’s Lau. It’s happening because “the government wants to boost local economies.”

One likely result: a jump in bad bank loans. Standard & Poor’s (MHP) is predicting that the portion of nonperforming loans will grow from about 2 percent of total bank lending at the end of 2011 to 3 percent by the end of the year. That could rise to 5 percent by yearend 2013, says S&P’s Liao Qiang, director of ratings for financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region. “The challenge for China,” says GK Dragonomics’ Batson, “is to look for ways to not just mobilize vast amounts of money but to put their money in the right places.”

The bottom line: Total accounts receivable in China rose 16.5 percent, to $ 1.3 trillion, from a year ago, a worrying sign for companies.

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Rebels in Congo reach door of Goma

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A Rwandan-backed rebel group advanced to within 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, marking the first time that rebels have come this close since 2008.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the fighting has been going on since 6 a.m. Sunday and the front line has moved to just a few kilometers (miles) outside the city. After more than nine hours of violent clashes the two sides took a break, with M23 rebels establishing a checkpoint just 100 meters (yards) away from one held by the military in the village of Munigi, exactly 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) outside the Goma city line.

Contacted by telephone on the front line, M23 rebel spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said the group will spend the night in Goma.

“We are about to take the town. We will spend the night in Goma tonight,” said Kazarama. “We are confident that we can take Goma and then our next step will be to take Bukavu,” he said mentioning the capital of the next province to the south.

The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda‘s 1994 genocide. In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.

In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo. They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.

Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo’s rich mineral wealth.

The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday U.N. attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.

Also on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame “to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack,” according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Saturday.

North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.

“Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us,” he said Saturday.

In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.

“I don’t really know what is happening, I’ve seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me,” said Imaculee Kahindo. Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: “What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children.”

Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.

In 2008 as Nkunda’s CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.

“We are fighting 3 kilometers from Goma, just past the airport. And our troops are strong enough to resist the rebels,” said Hamuli. “We won’t let the M23 march into our town,” he said. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: “These are false rumors. We are not going anywhere.”

U.N. peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.

Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.

The U.N. Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting. The council said it would add sanctions against M23 rebels and demanded that rebels immediately stop their advance toward the provincial capital of Goma.

“We must stop the M23″ because Goma’s fall “would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis,” said France‘s U.N. Ambassador, Gerard Araud. He added that U.N. officials would decide in the coming days which M23 leaders to target for additional sanctions.

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Associated Press writer Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

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Man demoted for Facebook comments wins case

LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s High Court ruled Friday that a Christian was unfairly demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook.

Adrian Smith was stripped of his management position with the Trafford Housing Trust in northwest England and had his salary cut by 40 percent after posting that gay weddings in churches were “an equality too far.”

The trust said Smith broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views that might upset co-workers.

But High Court judge Michael Briggs ruled Friday that Smith had been “taken to task for doing nothing wrong” and found his employer guilty of breach of contract.

Smith said he was glad the court had backed the principle that “Britain is a free country where people have freedom of speech.”

And he received support from veteran gay rights and civil liberties campaigner Peter Tatchell, who said Smith’s employer had overreacted.

“In a democratic society, Adrian has a right to express his point of view, even if it is misguided and wrong,” Tatchell said.

Trafford Housing Trust chief executive Matthew Gardiner, said he “fully accepted” the court’s decision and had apologized to Smith, though it was not clear whether he would be reinstated.

In Britain, same-sex couples can currently form civil partnerships, which carry the same legal rights as marriage. The government wants to change the law to include gay marriage, a move opposed by many religious groups.

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