John Kerry embarks on sweeping tour of Europe, Mideast

WASHINGTON: America's top diplomat John Kerry began his first official trip as secretary of state on Sunday, a marathon get-acquainted tour of America's closest allies in Europe and the Middle East.

A plane carrying the news US secretary of state and his team took off from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington at around 7:15 am local time (1215 GMT).

Kerry will visit the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar from February 24 to March 6.

The first stop will be London, where Kerry will meet with senior British officials, State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Friday.

Kerry travels on to Berlin where, in addition to meeting Germans, he will encounter his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, for a tricky exchange at a time when Moscow and Washington are at loggerheads on many issues.

"Obviously, they know each other well from when Secretary Kerry was Senator Kerry, but it will be their first opportunity to sit down bilaterally as foreign ministers," Nuland said.

Nuland added: "I would expect they'll talk about all of the issues -- bilateral, regional, global -- but with a particular emphasis, I would expect, on Syria, Iran, DPRK (North Korea) and the bilateral issues of the day."

The marathon trip underscores Washington's new foreign policy imperative, which is subtly pivoting away from Asia and increasingly towards Europe.

Tyson Barker of the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank said that, after a first term focused on relations with Pacific countries, President Barack Obama hopes "to consolidate and retro-fit some of our legacy relationships."

He added that Obama has in Kerry someone who is "comfortable engaging with Europe, and someone with whom Europe is comfortable engaging."

Kerry is a figure of standing in Washington.

He served for decades as a US senator, including a stint as the chairman of the chamber's Foreign Relations Committee. He was also the Democratic party's presidential nominee in 2004.

Among the issues high on his agenda during the marathon series of talks is a newly-announced effort to agree a mammoth free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union.

Obama announced the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in his annual State of the Union address last month, and said the agreement would boost economic growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nuland added, on a personal note, that Kerry's visit to Berlin "will also be an opportunity to reconnect with the city in which he lived as a child."

The 69-year-old diplomat's father, Richard Kerry, was a Foreign Service officer who was posted in Berlin, where John Kerry lived before being sent to a Swiss boarding school at the age of 11.

Kerry travels from Germany to Paris, where Nuland said he would meet senior French officials to discuss American assistance for France's ongoing military operation against Islamist rebels in Mali.

On his next stop, in Rome, Kerry will concentrate on multilateral talks on the crisis in Syria.

However, Syria's main opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition, has canceled plans to attend international meetings on Syria in Italy, saying it wanted action not words from Arab and Western countries.

Instead, the coalition announced on Friday it would set up a government to run areas of the country "liberated" by rebels and would meet in Istanbul on March 2 to name a prime minister.

Kerry will travel to Ankara for meetings with Turkish officials on a range of strategic issues, including Syria.

His travels conclude in the Middle East.

In Egypt, Kerry will meet with political and business leaders and the secretary general of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi.

He will then go to Riyadh for meeting with Saudi leaders on "a broad range of shared concerns," said Nuland.

Kerry then visits Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, and Doha, Qatar, key contacts for America as it confronts crises in Syria, Afghanistan, and the Middle East peace process.

- AFP/fa

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LeT has sent threat letter claiming responsibility for blast: Andhra BJP

HYDERABAD: Andhra Pradesh BJP chief G Kishan Reddy on Sunday said he has received a threat letter purportedly written by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in which it claimed responsibility for the Dilsukhnagar bomb blast.

He received the letter by post on Saturday written in Urdu and English, he claimed at a press conference here.

He, however, refused to give a copy of the letter saying he has handed it over to Abids police station.

In the letter, the LeT stated that its next target is Begam Bazar, Reddy claimed.

Begum Bazar is another crowded wholesale market in the city.

When contacted, Abids police said, "We have received a letter from Kishan Reddy today (Sunday) and it is being verified."

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

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Crash at Daytona Exposes Risks to Fans

The risks of racing extend beyond the drivers.

Fans can wind up in the danger zone, too.

A horrifying crash on the last lap of a race at Daytona International Speedway injured at least 30 fans Saturday and provided another stark reminder of what can happen when a car going nearly 200 mph is suddenly launched toward the spectator areas.

The victims were sprayed with large chunks of debris — including a tire — after rookie Kyle Larson's machine careened into the fencing that is designed to protect the massive grandstands lining NASCAR's most famous track.

"I love the sport," said Shannan Devine, who witnessed the carnage from her 19th-row seat, about 250 feet away. "But no one wants to get hurt over it."

The fencing served its primary purpose, catapulting what was left of Larson's car back onto the track. But it didn't keep potentially lethal shards from flying into the stands.

"There was absolute shock," Devine said. "People were saying, 'I can't believe it, I can't believe it. I've never seen this happen, I've never seen this happen. Did the car through the fence?' It was just shock and awe. Grown men were reaching out and grabbing someone, saying, 'Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!' It was just disbelief, absolute disbelief."

From Daytona to Le Mans to a rural road in Ireland, auto racing spectators have long been too close to the action when parts start flying. The crash in the second-tier Nationwide race follows a long list of accidents that have left fans dead or injured.

The most tragic incident occurred during the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans, when two cars collided near the main stands. The wreck sent debris hurtling into the crowd, while one of the cars flipped upside down and exploded in a giant fireball.

Eighty-three spectators and driver Pierre Levegh were killed, and 120 fans were injured.

The Daytona crash began as the field approached the checkered flag and leader Regan Smith attempted to block Brad Keselowski. That triggered a chain reaction, and rookie Kyle Larson hit the cars in front of him and went airborne into the fence.

The entire front end was sheared off Larson's car, and his burning engine wedged through a gaping hole in the fence. Chunks of debris from the car were thrown into the stands, including a tire that cleared the top of the fence and landed midway up the spectator section closest to the track.

"I thought the car went through the fence," Devine said. "I didn't know if there was a car on top of people. I didn't know what to think. I'm an emotional person. I immediately started to cry. It was very scary, absolutely scary. I love the speed of the sport. But it's so dangerous."

The fencing used to protect seating areas and prevent cars from hurtling out of tracks has long been part of the debate over how to improve safety.

Three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti lost close friend Dan Wheldon at Las Vegas in the 2011 IndyCar season finale, when Wheldon's car catapulted into the fencing and his head struck a support post. Since his death, IndyCar drivers have called for studies on how to improve the safety barriers.

Franchitti renewed the pleas on Twitter after the Daytona crash, writing "it's time (at)Indycar (at)nascar other sanctioning bodies & promoters work on an alternative to catch fencing. There has to be a better solution."

Another fan who witnessed the crash said he's long worried that sizable gaps in the fencing increase the chances of debris getting through to the stands.

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Football: Singapore's Adam Swandi secures 2-year contract with FC Metz

SINGAPORE: Sixteen-year-old Adam Swandi has secured a two-year deal with French Football Club FC Metz.

He was the Most Valuable Player of the Singapore National Football Academy Under-16 team at the Lion City Cup tournament last June.

Adam Swandi, recently underwent training stints with top European clubs such as Newcastle United, Chelsea, FC Metz and Atletico Madrid.

His latest move to Metz sees him undergo training and compete for their U-19 team, while furthering his studies there.

The former U-16 captain said he chose the French club as he liked his experience there and the club is renowned for its youth academy.

The Football Association of Singapore was behind the partnership and is looking at sending more youths for such exposure.

- CNA/fa

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PM to visit Hyderabad tomorrow

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Hyderabad tomorrow to take stock of the situation in the aftermath of twin bomb blasts there.

Singh will visit the hospital where the injured are being treated besides taking a briefing from chief minister Kiran Reddy, sources said.

Two bombs exploded within a span of minutes in Hyderabad on Thursday evening, killing 16 people and injuring 117.

The central government yesterday came under sharp attack in Parliament, with the Opposition saying terror was being dealt with in a casual manner.

Strongly condemning the blasts, the Prime Minister had said soon after the incident that those responsible for the "dastardly" act would not go unpunished.

He appealed to the public to remain calm and maintain peace.

Singh has sanctioned Rs 2 lakh each to next of kin of those killed in the blasts and Rs 50,000 each to those seriously injured from the PM's Relief Fund.

Investigators today claimed to have got "vital clues" in the probe, with the needle of suspicion zeroing in on banned militant outfit Indian Mujahideen.

Police announced Rs 10 lakh award for information leading to the perpetrators of the serial blasts.

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FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

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6 Leaking Tanks Are Wash. Nuke Site's Latest Woe

Federal and state officials say six underground tanks holding a brew of radioactive and toxic waste are leaking at the country's most contaminated nuclear site in south-central Washington, raising concerns about delays for emptying the aging tanks.

The leaking materials at Hanford Nuclear Reservation pose no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take perhaps years for the chemicals to reach groundwater, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

But the news has renewed discussion over delays for emptying the tanks, which were installed decades ago and are long past their intended 20-year life span.

"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," said Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."

Just last week, state officials announced that one of Hanford's 177 tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.

Inslee then traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the problem with federal officials, learning in meetings Friday that six tanks are leaking.

AP Photo/Shannon Dininny, File

The declining waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time, Inslee said.

"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."

Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and that federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.

Regardless, Sen. Ron Wyden, the new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate Hanford's tank monitoring and maintenance program, said his spokesman, Tom Towslee.

The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.

Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.

Several years ago, workers at Hanford completed two of three projects deemed urgent risks to the public and the environment, removing all weapons-grade plutonium from the site and emptying leaky pools that held spent nuclear fuel just 400 yards from the river.

But successes at the site often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges. Nowhere have those challenges been more apparent than in Hanford's central plateau, home to the site's third most urgent project: emptying the tanks.

Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid has already leaked there.

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Iran appears to advance in construction of Arak nuclear plant

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to be advancing in its construction of a research reactor Western experts say could offer the Islamic state a second way of producing material for a nuclear bomb, if it decided to embark on such a course, a U.N. report showed.

Iran has almost completed installation of cooling and moderator circuit piping in the heavy water plant near the town of Arak, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report issued to member states late on Thursday.

Nuclear analysts say this type of reactor could yield plutonium for nuclear arms if the spent fuel is reprocessed, something Iran has said it has no intention of doing. Iran has said it "does not have reprocessing activities", the IAEA said.

In its previous report on Iran, in November, the Vienna-based U.N. agency said installation work at Arak was continuing, without giving any indication of how far advanced it was.

Iran rejects Western allegations it seeks to develop a capability to assemble nuclear weapons, saying its atomic program is entirely peaceful and that the Arak reactor will produce isotopes for medical and agricultural use.

Iran says it plans to begin operating the facility in the first quarter of 2014, the IAEA said. Tehran last year postponed the planned start-up from the third quarter of 2013, a target that Western experts said always had seemed unrealistic.

The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said late last year that it was questionable whether Iran would be able to meet the new target date as well, in view of "significant delays and impeded access to necessary materials" because of international sanctions imposed on Iran.

Western worries about Iran are focused largely on uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, as such material refined to a high level can provide the fissile core of an atomic bomb. But experts say Arak may also be a proliferation issue.

The Arak facility is a "growing source of concern", said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation and disarmament program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think-tank.

Israel, believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state, sees Iran's nuclear program as a serious danger and has threatened to attack its atomic sites if diplomacy and sanctions fail to resolve the decade-old dispute.

If it does, the nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Arak in central Iran are likely to be targets. Fitzpatrick said it could be Arak that triggers a conflict because attacking it after it is launched could cause an environmental disaster.

TESTING FUEL FOR ARAK REACTOR

Thursday's quarterly IAEA report showed Iran expanding its uranium enrichment program in defiance of tightening Western sanctions, installing advanced centrifuge machines at its main enrichment plant near the town of Natanz.

The report, issued just a few days before six world powers and Iran are due to resume negotiations after an eight-month hiatus, underlined the tough task facing the West in seeking to pressure Tehran to curb its nuclear activities.

Cliff Kupchan, Middle East director at the Eurasia consultancy, said Iran had adopted a defiant policy of pressing ahead with its nuclear program, despite harsh sanctions.

"As a result, Israel and the U.S. Congress will press a receptive U.S. administration to move forward with new and even harsher sanctions," he said in a research note.

Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear power plants, Iran's stated aim, but also provide the explosive core of a nuclear weapon if refined much further. Making plutonium from spent fuel is a second way of obtaining potential bomb material.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a U.S. think-tank, noted that Iran planned to use a medical research reactor in Tehran, known as TRR, to test fuel for Arak.

"The TRR is now more than a medical isotope production reactor, Iran's stated use for the reactor, and is necessary for the operation" of Arak, it said in a report.

If operated optimally, the heavy-water plant could produce about nine kilograms (20 pounds) of plutonium a year, or enough for about two nuclear bombs annually, ISIS has said previously.

"Before it could use any of the plutonium in a nuclear weapon, however, it would first have to separate the plutonium from the irradiated fuel," it added on its website.

Iran has repeatedly declared it has no plans to reprocess the spent fuel. But, "similarly sized reactors ostensibly built for research" have been used by India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan to make plutonium for weapons, Fitzpatrick said.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Gossip scandal erupts in Vatican ahead of Pope's exit

VATICAN CITY: With just days to go before Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, the Vatican is battling persistent rumours that his decision was triggered by an explosive report on intrigue in its corridors of power.

The secret report compiled by a committee of three cardinals for the Pope's eyes only was the result of a wide-ranging investigation into leaks of confidential papers from the Vatican that caused huge embarrassment last year.

The cardinals questioned dozens of Vatican officials and presented the Pope with their final report in December 2012, just before Benedict pardoned his former butler Paolo Gabriele who had been convicted of leaking the papal memos.

The Panorama news weekly and the Repubblica daily said on Thursday that the report contained allegations of corruption and of blackmail attempts against gay Vatican clergymen, as well as favouritism based on gay relationships.

Both publications quoted a source with knowledge of the investigation saying that the cardinals' conclusions "revolve around the sixth and seventh commandments" -- "Thou shall not commit adultery" and "Thou shall not steal".

The Vatican has declined to comment on these two reports, with spokesman Federico Lombardi saying they were "conjectures, fictions and opinions."

The run-up to papal conclaves to elect a new Pope is often accompanied by rumours and gossip in Italian media, as rival factions battle for influence.

But there was a twist on Friday when Pope Benedict XVI replaced Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, a powerful behind-the-scenes figure in the Secretariat of State with a major role in handling the Vatican bank's foreign relations.

He is being sent as Vatican envoy to Colombia -- a serious demotion.

Balestrero has been a key figure in Vatican efforts to overhaul its scandal-tainted bank to comply with international anti-money laundering laws.

La Repubblica said Balestrero's name was mentioned in the cardinals' report.

A Vatican expert at Italian daily La Stampa said the Pope would likely meet with the three retired cardinals who authored the report before resigning.

The report could also be discussed during a series of meetings for cardinals beginning next Friday, a day after the Pope steps down, where priorities for the Catholic Church will be debated and potential papal candidates sussed out.

The "Vatileaks" scandal first exploded in January last year when Italian media published a series of letters to the Pope in which Carlo Maria Vigano, the head of the Vatican City's government denounced corruption and waste.

The following leaks pointed to divisions in the Vatican hierarchy including efforts to unseat Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, a divisive figure.

On May 23, Gabriele was arrested and his house inside the Vatican walls was raided by special gendarmes who found hundreds of sensitive documents.

A day later, the head of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked, accused of mismanagement and indiscretions linked to the leaks.

Gabriele was convicted after a week-long trial in the Vatican in October.

The Pope asked cardinals to investigate last year, giving them free rein to interview anyone of the 2,843 people working in the Roman Curia and 2,001 people working for the governorate, the administration of the Vatican City.

The committee was also allowed to collect testimony from cardinals.

-AFP/fl

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