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понедельник, 12 марта 2012 г.

Eli Lilly 2Q profit jumps 16 pct on top drug sales

Eli Lilly and Co. said Thursday its second-quarter net income soared 16 percent, boosted in part by strong sales growth from the drugmaker's top drugs.

The performance prompted the Indianapolis-based company to raise its 2010 earnings guidance three months after lowering it.

Lilly said it earned $1.35 billion, or $1.22 per share, in the three months that ended June 30. That's up from $1.16 billion, or $1.06 per share, in the same period last year. Revenue rose 9 percent to $5.75 billion.

Excluding charges, income was $1.24 per share.

Analyst polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of $1.10 per share on $5.58 billion in revenue.

Sales for Lilly's best-selling drug, the antipsychotic Zyprexa, rose 5 percent to $1.26 billion, while revenue from its second-best seller, the antidepressant Cymbalta, climbed 17 percent to $867.7 million.

The cancer treatment Alimta saw the biggest jump, with sales rising 43 percent to $551.8 million.

The company's total revenue growth outpaced an 8-percent rise in its cost of sales and a 3-percent increase in marketing, selling and administrative expenses.

Lilly now expects 2010 adjusted earnings of between $4.50 and $4.65 per share, up from previous guidance of $4.40 to $4.55 per share.

Analysts expect $4.49 per share.

Village Forum features Sheryl Lee Ralph

by Ytasha L. Womack

entertainment reporter

Sheryl Lee Ralph has had enough trials and tribulations in Hollywood to answer any question swirling around the industry and its loose grip on diversity.

The critically acclaimed actress/producer will share her experiences and field questions for the second Village Forum with Cliff Kelly, Friday at Epitome Restaurant, 2347 S. Michigan Ave., 5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m.

The Village Forum, sponsored by the Chicago Defender, WVON and Epitome Restaurant, showcases newsmakers and hot topics each Friday at Epitome. This week's topic, "The Impact of Film and Music on the African American Community," addresses the art imitating life argument and the challenges of diversity in Hollywood. The event includes a buffet and complimentary drink for $19.95.

Ralph will also host a film screening of local artists and a hip-hop party sponsored by Epitome Restaurant (E2) following the Village Forum.

A celebrated actress, Ralph most recently starred as the supportive mother, Dee, on "Moesha" with R&B star Brandy. She launched the popular Jamaican Film Fest "Cinema Inna Yard" and produces the annual AIDS fund-raiser "Diva's Simply Singing."

The Jamaican/Long Island, N.Y. native won 1991's Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress in the acclaimed film "To Sleep With Anger" starring Danny Glover. Her career was catapulted with her performance as Deena Jones in Michael Bennett's classic Broadway production "Dreamgirls."

Article Copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.

India approves halted hillside housing project

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's Environment Ministry has given its approval for a massive hillside housing project which it had halted a year earlier for violating altitude restrictions and failing to obtain proper permits.

Activists have alleged that state officials had allowed construction on the site in Maharashtra state to begin without permits because the agriculture minister's daughter once held a stake in the $565 million project. Authorities are investigating the allegation.

The Environment Ministry said Wednesday the developers, Hindustan Construction Co., must strictly comply with all environmental regulations.

The Lavasa project, to be completed in 2020, is to consist of four or five towns built on seven hills and be inhabited by about 200,000 people.

Taking the shine off

Put the words aluminum and vehicles together, and the brain fast-forwards into exotica. Images of Acura's pioneering NSX, Audi's A8 luxosedan, the lightweight S2000 and 78 roadsters soon to appear from Honda and BMW come to mind. Think Ford P2000 and Honda Insight, the featherweight platforms for advanced power trains. Think PNGV, and the importance of aluminum alloys in making an 80-mpg midsized dream become reality

Now snap back into the critical issues of cost and volume. Did you know that only five pounds of the average auto body-in-white built in North America this year is aluminum? The rest remains steel.

Are you aware that over half of aluminum's closure panel content in U.S. light vehicle applications is found injust one program - Ford's F-Series truck - and that its all in the hood?

And did you know that just four basic components - engine blocks, cylinder heads, heat exchangers and road wheels account for roughly two-thirds of the total aluminum content in North Arnerican-built light cars and trucks?

The sound design and engineering reasons for aluminium's steady rise in automobiles are well explained in the preceding feature story. Those many merits are causing the material s per-vehicle content to jump from about 130 pounds in the downsized 1980s, to nearly 350 Pounds by 2009, according to a 1999 study of North American vehicle material content by Ducker Research of Bloomfield Hills, Mich

Holy Sheet

All that glistens for the bright metal clearly is not gold. As competitors in the steel and plastics industries are quick to point out, aluminum's major gains are not necessarily where they're perceived.

"It's a common misconception that they're taking it out of our hide in steel body sheet," asserts Pete Peterson, director of automotive marketing for U.S. Steel. He notes that as the century wanes, steel still commands about 55% of the mass of an average vehicle - a percentage that hasn't changed in 20 years. But he admits that the decade's light truck boom has helped keep the proportion steady

About 80% of aluminum's automotive growth is in castings, mainly used in suspensions, transmission and differential cases, and particularly in engine blocks and heads These applications are displacing mostly iron castings, particularly in cylinder blocks, notes Peterson. Less than 2% goes into body structures and closures (doors, hoods, and decklids). That's still overwhelmingly steels kingdom because of cost and the industry's long experience with the material

And while the intake manifold arena was for many years a safe haven for aluminum, reinforced plastics are steadily capturing the business, due to the plastics lower mass and ability to mold separate parts, such as fuel rails, throttle bodies and EGR systems, into tidy, integrated modules.

The Ducker report also notes that about 13% of the aluminum content in the average North American built light vehicle is alu minum. foil, used mainly for radiators, oil coolers and other heat exchangers. In this growing role aluminum's primary threat has been to copper sheet and foil,

The steel industry has chosen the body structure in general and sheet applications in particular, as the Motherland it will defend to the death against aluminum's assault. Peterson and his colleague Darryl Martin, director of automotive applications for the American Iron and Steel Institute trade group, gleefully recite aluminum's losses of body panel busi ness to steel: among them, the decklid of Ford's 2000 Taurus, the hood on Jaguar's SType (changed to steel from aluminum during the design phase), and Ford's reported decision to reconsider a high-volume, aluminum-intensive sportwagon program (D219) for 2002, due to the cost of bodygrade aluminum-alloy sheet.

Debating the "Fleet Effect"

When steel wisely decided to aggressively protect its turf earlier this decade, in the face of aluminum's clear growth curve, it did it proactively - by studying how the material, and new processes used to form and fabricate it could help automakers improve new vehicles and even reduce weight, while keeping costs down. The plan worked, earning steelmakers new respect from engineering chiefs.

"Frankly, we're very impressed by the Ultra-Light Steel Auto Body (ULSAB) program, and the steel industry's similar investigations on making closure panels, suspension systems and the like lighter still," Bernard Robertson, DaimlerChrysler's head of advanced engineering, told AI earlier this year 'They've given us new reasons to appreciate steel."

As both metal industries search for new applications, they're also keeping the heat on each other in public. Last summer, steel and aluminum faced off on the environment specifically, a concept steelmakers call the "fleet effect" of aluminum.

The jousting began when the steel industry hired the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Materials Science Lab to research an aluminum industry contention: that on a product life-cycle basis, aluminum-intensive vehicles and their manufacture produce less CO2 than their steel counterparts.

The argument goes that by replacing two pounds of steel in a vehicle with a pound of aluminum, the resulting lighter weight velu cle will emit 20 pounds of CO2 less (due to its better fuel economy) than the heavier vehicle, over the vehicle's lifetime. Because it is burning less fossil fuel per mile, the aluminum vehicle thus begins cancelling out the C02 emissions generated in the aluminummaking process, sometime in the middle of its useful life. (Aluminum-making creates about six times greater CO2 emission, per ton, than is created during steelmaking, claims the aluminum industry.)

Steel pulled its Sheffield sabre out of the sheath, and waited for Wrs Dr Joel Clark a noted materials expert, to parry the lightweight metal's thrust.

Clark's analysis compared Ford's aluminum-intensive Sable AIV with its steel-bodied '92 Taurus cousin and with the ULSAB midsized sedan concept It concluded that a large-scale switch to aluminum-intensive vehicles could make CO2 emissions an even greater problem. Reasons included

Producing one ton of virgin aluminum creates about 10 times more CO2 emissions than does producing a ton of steel.

Building a fleet of 100,000 aluminum-intensive vehicles each year, for 12 years (a number picked as the typical life of avehicle), creates over 2.26 million tons of CO2. Clark says that output includes any emissions gains from the vehicles themselves. It would thus take 35 to 38 years of driving aluminum vehicles for the "crossover" to occur between CO2 saved in vehicle operation, versus CO2 creat ed in aluminum manufacturing.

Clark also found that the ULSAB vehicle, with its steel content optimized for low mass and strength, would generate a lifetime total of CO2 that's 678 pounds less than the aluminum-intensive Sable. "The AIV never does recoup its initial CO2 disadvantage," notes the MIT study

The aluminum industry naturally refutes the MIT study.

"Aluminum's record is clear and easily verifiable," retorts J. Stephen Larkin, president of the Aluminum Association. "No matter how complicated the steel industry tries to make the materials comparison, it will not change the simple physics behind the improved fuel efficiency achieved from substituting aluminum for heavier materials in automobiles,"the group asserted.

To the auto industry's product planners, designers, materials experts and engineers, the metallic ringing in their ears can only grow louder If you think aluminum and steel are battling it out now, just wait until the price of gasoline in the U.S. exceeds $2.00 a gallon. Then the sparks will really fly - only on the steel side, of course.

2 Ex-Colombian warlords enter pleas in Miami court

Two former warlords of a far-right Colombian paramilitary group have pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to a drug conspiracy charge.

Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, 60, and Javier Lindo, 38, are among 14 paramilitary members who were extradited to the U.S. in May. Authorities say they men, who entered their pleas Tuesday, were wanted for their alleged roles in a large-scale cocaine smuggling operation dating to the late 1990s.

Sentencing is set for October. Vanoy Murillo faces up to 19 years and Lindo over 17 years behind bars.

Colombian officials said they decided to extradite the men because they were still committing crimes from Colombian prisons and had failed to pay restitution to victims of atrocities blamed on the paramilitary group.

среда, 7 марта 2012 г.

BALCO Grand Jury to Charge Track Coach

SAN FRANCISCO - Track coach Trevor Graham, who helped launch a three-year federal probe of steroid use by elite athletes, is expected to be charged here as soon as Thursday with obstructing the investigation, two Justice Department officials with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been made public, the officials said Graham would be charged with making false statements to authorities investigating steroid use in sports.

Graham operates Raleigh-based Sprint Capitol USA, a team of about 10 athletes that includes 100-meter co-world record holder Justin Gatlin, who tested positive for testosterone and other steroids in April.

Graham also coached sprinter Marion Jones, who won five medals at the 2000 Sydney Games with him, and her former boyfriend Tim Montgomery, who was suspended from competition for two years, although he never tested positive for a banned substance.

Several of Graham's athletes, however, have tested positive for banned substances, and the coach is being investigated for lying to investigators looking into doping among elite athletes connected to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, the now-defunct Burlingame supplement company that served as a front for a steroids ring.

In August, Nike terminated its contract with the coach, and the U.S. Olympic Committee banned Graham from its training centers. He's the first coach to receive such a penalty, "based on the unusual number of athletes he has coached who have been convicted of doping offenses," USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said in a conference call at the time.

"We have not been advised of an indictment, nor would we, as this is a legal matter," USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said Wednesday. "That said, we've made our position very clear, and Mr. Graham is not welcome at any U.S. Olympic training facility."

Graham helped launch the federal investigation three years ago by anonymously mailing a vial containing "the clear," a previously undetectable steroid to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, Graham acknowledged mailing the drug, saying: "I was just a coach doing the right thing at the time."

Graham did not say why he turned in the syringe or how he got the material.

Neither Graham nor his Raleigh, N.C.-based attorney Joseph Zeszotarski returned telephone calls and e-mail inquiries from the AP.

A man who answered the door at Graham's home in Raleigh and identified himself as Graham's son said the track coach would not comment about the pending charges.

Graham steadfastly has denied ever providing banned performance-enhancing drugs to his athletes.

Jill Geer, a spokeswoman for USA Track & Field, the sport's national governing body, declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Last Thursday, Zeszotarski confirmed Randall Evans, the top assistant to Graham, testified to the federal grand jury investigating BALCO and its distribution of performance-enhancing drugs.

But Evans did not provide any incriminating testimony against Graham, the attorney said in a recent statement given to The Associated Press.

"Randall Evans agreed to speak with us about his appearance at the grand jury," Zeszotarski said. "Based upon our interview of him, it is clear that Mr. Evans did not testify 'against' Trevor."

Zeszotarski said Evans "told the grand jury that he knows nothing about Trevor being involved in the distribution of illicit substances."

One person familiar with the investigation told the AP that Graham would not face distribution charges. Instead, the track coach is expected to be charged with obstruction of justice in connection with statements he gave to investigators in 2004.

The grand jury that is expected to charge Graham is the same panel investigating baseball slugger Barry Bonds for tax evasion and perjury related to his testimony about not knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds testified that his personal trainer told him he was ingesting flax seed oil and arthritis balm when he really was being given steroids dubbed "the clear" and "the cream."

Five men connected to BALCO pleaded guilty to steroid distribution and other charges.

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Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Joedy McCreary in Raleigh, N.C.; AP national writer Eddie Pells in Colorado Springs, Colo.; and AP sports writer Robert Baum in Phoenix contributed to this report.

BALCO Grand Jury to Charge Track Coach

Graham also coached sprinter Marion Jones, who won five medals at the 2000 Sydney Games with him, and her former boyfriend Tim Montgomery, who was suspended from competition for two years, although he never tested positive for a banned substance.

In August, Nike terminated its contract with the coach, and the U.S. Olympic Committee banned Graham from its training centers. He's the first coach to receive such a penalty, "based on the unusual number of athletes he has coached who have been convicted of doping offenses," USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth said in a conference call at the time.

Graham did not say why he turned in the syringe or how he got the material.

Neither Graham nor his Raleigh, N.C.-based attorney Joseph Zeszotarski returned telephone calls and e-mail inquiries from the AP.