Generic Lipitor goes on sale Wednesday
Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Beginning Wednesday, the high cholesterol fighting drug Lipitor goes generic. That is the day the U.S. patent of Pfizer’s blockbuster drug expires, allowing generic versions of the statin medication to go on sale.
Some 8.7 million Americans take Lipitor for high cholesterol, and many patients have been anxiously awaiting for the lower insurance co-payment that comes with a generic medicine.
Lipitor, the biggest-selling prescription drug of all time, generated worldwide sales of $10.7 billion in 2010.
Pfizer hopes to retain market share by offering $4 co-pay cards, and working with health insurance companies to offer mail order prescriptions for Lipitor.
Lipitor has been on the market since 1997. Its biggest competitors in the statin drug market are simvastatin, a generic version of Merck’s Zocor and Astra Zeneca’s Crestor.
Some patients will be able to stay on Lipitor for the first 180 days. Patients can then talk with their doctors about getting prescriptions for the branded version or can work with their health plans to stay on Lipitor. Some plans will require patients to take generic versions.
Lipitor has been on a higher branded tier for prescription drug. Average co-pays for branded drugs are usually $29 or $49; generic co-pays average $10.
Agreement elusive at UN climate change summit
Tom Ramstack – AHN News Legal Correspondent
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – United States delegates to the United Nations climate change summit in South Africa that started this week are far apart from many other countries on how to combat global warming.
The U.S. delegation supports voluntary goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions while other countries demand strict adherence to standards set by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
The UN meeting this week is intended to find a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year.
The treaty requires developed countries to reduce emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Developing countries do not need to meet the goals.
The U.S. government signed the Kyoto Protocol but Congress never ratified it. The United States has so far failed to meet the 5 percent reduction goal.
Governments that sent representatives to the coastal city of Durban, South Africa have “clearly in mind that the future of the Kyoto Protocol” is at stake and “it is closely linked to decisions they make on a global agreement,” said Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.
She urged the 194 countries that sent delegates to be flexible in their negotiations, saying, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
The first two days of the two-week meeting showed that Japan, Russia and Canada oppose an extension to the Kyoto Protocol.
In addition, Japan wants China to be included in any new emissions reduction agreement.
China is the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases while the United States is second.
For the Kyoto Protocol, China won a classification as a developing nation, which freed it from complying with the treaty.
Saudi Arabia joined the United States in asking for voluntary goals, rather than a cap and trade system that allows participating countries to purchase credits from other countries that emit less pollution.
The cap and trade system was part of the Kyoto Protocol.
Some Latin American countries, led by Mexico, want to establish a “Green Climate Fund” that would ask developed countries to contribute money for projects to reduce greenhouse gases.
The proposal would require participating countries to contribute $100 billion a year by 2020.
Delegates from the 17-member nation European Union said they would like to extend the Kyoto Protocol. However, they want legally binding emission reduction goals rather than voluntary ones.
Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Union’s negotiator, said developed and developing nations must make firm commitments to emissions limits this year or risk “losing confidence in this traveling circus” by the public.
U.S. representatives have said they will agree to binding commitments on reducing greenhouse gases only if other countries with large economies, such as China, India and Brazil, reduce their emissions by the same margins.
They called China’s adherence to any new reduction goals a “basic requirement” of a new environmental treaty.
During the opening ceremony to the summit, South African President Jacob Zuma said “climate change is a matter of life and death” in Africa that is getting worse by the inability of countries to agree on how to reduce emissions.
Matthew Lockwood, who led a group from the public policy foundation Institute for Development Studies to the climate change summit, said, “The Durban summit is unlikely to yield breakthroughs to a global agreement. But it is a key opportunity to shape important elements of a deal.”
European leaders seek new economic rules in meeting with Obama
Tom Ramstack – AHN News Legal Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – European leaders met with President Barack Obama Monday at the White House to figure out how to avoid another worldwide economic collapse.
Obama is pressuring the 17-nation European Union to resolve its banking and debt crises before they drag down the U.S. economy’s shaky recovery from recession.
“This is something they need to solve and they have the capacity to solve, both financial capacity and political will,” White House press spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.
At the same time, the European Union is trying to show the United States and other countries that it is managing its economic problems appropriately as the Europeans seek foreign investment.
Few details of the meeting were released publicly after U.S. and European officials said they preferred to keep the negotiations private.
However, they gave a glimpse of what would be discussed in statements before the meeting.
“We need also to develop a transatlantic agenda to growth and jobs,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
He hinted that new regulations could be coming on U.S. and European trade when he said, “…we will also be discussing how to increase our international cooperation and build a stronger and fairer rules-based system.”
The meeting Monday was one of several recent discussions between Obama and European economic leaders.
He has telephoned Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Greek Prime Minster Lukas Papademos to talk about strategies for avoiding economic collapse.
First Greece, Ireland and Portugal were facing default on their debt, beginning about two years ago. Now Spain, Italy and France are facing the same kinds of problems.
Obama has called the European debt crisis one of the greatest threats to the U.S. economic recovery.
The European Union’s primary method of handling its debt crisis is through the $440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility, which provided emergency bailout loans to Greece, Italy and Ireland in exchange for concessions on how their budgets are structured.
European economic ministers still are trying to figure out how they will protect government bond markets.
Foreign investment from the United States could be one of the backstop funding sources they seek.
They also are considering allowing the European Central Bank to buy out at-risk national debt as the lender of last resort for member countries and their banks.
However, advocates of the proposal must overcome opposition from Germany, which has Europe’s largest economy.
Among European economic leaders at the meeting Monday with Obama was European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
“We will both need to take action to address the near-term growth concerns as well as fiscal and financial vulnerabilities,” Van Rompuy said. “Together, we will also look for ways to use our very strong economic ties for creating growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.”
The meeting at the White House comes less than two weeks before the European economic leaders are scheduled to discuss tighter controls over budgets of European Union member nations.
At the Dec. 9 meeting, Germany, France and Italy are expected to take the lead in a move to change the treaty that governs the European Union.
Their proposed revisions would force member nations to submit to frequent audits of their economic policies and to ask for agreement from other European nations before seeking outside financial assistance.
The proposals would be the broadest rewrite of Europe’s economic policies since the European Union was formed in 1967.
Illinois lawmakers to take up tax plan to keep CME, Sears in state
Kris Alingod – AHN News Contributor
Chicago, IL, United States (AHN) – Lawmakers in Illinois over the weekend presented a newly tweaked tax relief measure to entice the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Sears and other companies not to leave the state.
The bill provides $100 million worth of tax breaks to CME, which owns the federally regulated exchanges Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. It also restores research and development tax credits for Sears.
In addition, the measure extends a special property tax incentive given to Sears when the company moved its headquarters to Hoffman Estates two decades ago.
The General Assembly is expected to take up the bill, which would cost $250 million a year, when it convenes on Tuesday.
Rep. John Bradley, chair of the state House Revenue and Finance Committee, filed the bill with the legislature’s clerk late Sunday. He and Rep. David Harris, ranking GOP spokesman on the finance panel, crafted the bill after the original version stalled in the Assembly in the closing fall session day on Nov. 10.
The Democrat-controlled legislature in January passed a law raising the corporate tax to 7 percent from 4.8 percent, part of efforts to close a record $11 billion budget deficit.
The law has increased CME’s taxes by $50 million so far. The company had made clear its opposition to the bill, saying it would “negatively impact jobs and stifle economic growth.” Early this month during a legislative hearing, chairman and chief executive Terry Duffy revealed that his company was seriously considering offers from other states to relocate.
Sears has also threatened to pull out of Illinois. The retail giant is facing an end to an incentive it has enjoyed since it transferred in 1992 to Hoffman Estates, a tax increment financing (TI) district.
School District 300 in Carpentersville opposes the new proposal to extend the tax break for Sears. The district does not want to continue losing tax revenues to what it calls poorly funded incentives for Sears.
If lawmakers pass the tax proposal this week, Hoffman Estates would get a $5 million administration fee, $1.7 million more revenue for the community than if the bill is not approved. Most of the surplus is from District 300 school property taxes.
The expiring tax agreement requires Hoffman Estates to pay Sears for costs of developing infrastructure in the community. An extension would also continue Hoffman Estates’ control over how to distribute left over property tax revenues, including making payments to a facility, the Sears Center Arena, that it bought in 2009.
“How can any public servant allow school property taxes to be used to make payments on a facility that hosts half-naked women for lingerie football?” District Superintendent Michael Bregy said in a statement. “If this legislation is passed, it will set a dangerous precedent for school districts all across the state who will be forced to subsidize entertainment facilities.”
Sears and CME are two of the latest companies to threaten to move out of the state. Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, decided to remain in Illinois in April following a meeting with Gov. Pat Quinn. The following month, a $100 million incentive package from the governor convinced Motorola to stay in the state.
Building a flood-resilient city
Bangkok, Thailand (IRIN) – Less than a year after Bangkok was chosen as a “role model city” by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) as part of the UN’s 2010-2015 “Making Cities Resilient” campaign, the worst floods in half a century put that distinction to the test.
IRIN asked experts what the 3,000 low-lying cities such as Bangkok – which includes its delta neighbors – can do to improve their flood resilience.
Prioritize
A master plan capturing the city’s development visions, priorities and vulnerability is the first step, said Adri Verwey, an urban flood expert at Deltares a Netherlands-based water management think tank.
“Cities need to decide the levels of security that they want and which areas need more protection,” he said.
In the Netherlands, where 26 percent of land is below sea level, cities with a high density of human and economic capital are designed to withstand a one-in-10,000-years flood, while inland, rural and sparsely populated areas are designed to withstand a-one-in-1,250 years flood.
Find higher ground
Unbalanced development is the weakest point of urban planning in many Asian countries, but Thailand’s case is more extreme in that it has focused all its energy on the country’s business and political capital, said Anisur Rahman, land use planning specialist at the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Prevention Center (ADPC).
“Better planning would be developing the country with more attention given to other [surrounding] cities, so they can help share the pressure, especially in a catastrophic situation like this.”
Instead of allowing new businesses to set up in and around Bangkok, future investments should be diverted to less-developed areas on higher land, said Rahman.
Lawmakers from Thailand’s ruling party have submitted a parliamentary motion to move the capital to Nakhon Nayok Province – a sloping terrain with higher elevation.
Water resources management
“Store and divert” sums up all flood control strategies, said Takeya Kimio, a visiting senior adviser at the Bangkok office of Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
“Store” means building more reservoirs and retention ponds to retain water upstream and “divert” means develop sufficient canals and channels mid- and downstream to carry the overflow to sea.
For cities that are slowly sinking and have rising sea levels, governments need to regulate water resources, said Nat Marjang, a lecturer on water resources engineering at the Bangkok-based Kasetsart University.
“Before the law, which regulates groundwater extraction [in Thailand], was enforced, many factories built their own wells to extract water for industrial use. This is an important factor contributing to land subsidence.”
Bangkok is sinking by 30mm annually, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration .
Combined with a rising sea level of 25mm every year, the city could be under 50-100cm of water by 2025.
Private sector role
The private sector should be directly involved in flood management, said Jerry Velasquez, senior regional coordinator for UNISDR Asia Pacific.
“What we need from them is not only corporate social responsibility and money, but their active involvement. It can be as simple as building a dyke around their factories, choosing the right locations to build factories and coming up with disaster contingency plans.”
The Federation of Thai Industries estimated losses from the seven hardest-hit industrial estates could reach US$13 billion, covering 891 factories and 460,000 workers, according to local media.
Re-evaluate flood control system
Despite the extensive network of flood-control infrastructure already in place in Bangkok, experts said it largely failed to keep pace with the city’s dramatic urbanization and development.
From 1985 to 2010, the percentage of the total population living in urban areas in Thailand increased from 26.8 to 34 percent, adding 10.5 million people to cities, according to the most recent UN world urbanization prospects .
While many officials believe the barrier known as His Majesty King’s dyke, which runs north to south in eastern Bangkok, can save the city from flooding, Vewey said it was designed to handle only the typical annual rainfall and not a one-in-50-years flood like this year’s.
As a result, pumping stations failed under the pressure.
Vewey said flood-prone countries needed to be more prepared.
“I’m impressed by the speed of sandbagging and the distribution of food and water [in Thailand], but you can’t always solve problems with sandbags… It’s shocking how people are unprepared for the flood. It’s as if the phenomenon of flooding has been completely forgotten in Thailand,” Verwey said.
Flooding in 1995 killed more than 400 people and affected close to 4 million, according to the government.
Investing in flood prevention is a “calculated choice,” said Kimio at JICA. “There are only two options, either reduce the speed of development or invest more in flood control,” he said.
Since the 1980s, the risk of economic loss due to floods in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries has increased by more than 160 percent, outstripping the growth of GDP per capita, according to UNISDR.
Nine of the top 10 coastal flood-prone cities by 2070, including Bangkok, are in Asia, according to a recent World Bank report .
Asia accounts for more than half of the developing world’s cities most vulnerable to flooding, according to UN-HABITAT.
sh/pt/mw
– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.
Iran to pull out ambassador to U.K.
Windsor Genova – AHN News News Writer
Tehran, Iran (AHN) – Iran is pulling out its ambassador to the U.K. in two weeks after its parliament approved Sunday a bill downgrading diplomatic relations with Britain.
Iran will maintain only a charge d’ affaires, according to a bill passed by the Iranian parliament Majlis. The bill, which was approved by a vote of 179-4 also limits economic and cultural cooperation between the two countries.
The bill was introduced in retaliation for Britain’s latest sanction on Iran following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) findings that Tehran is building a nuclear explosive device. The British government ordered all banking links and transactions with Iranian banks and its central bank severed last week.
Iran’s central bank and commercial banks were accused of providing financial services to people involved in nuclear and ballistic missile development program.
Tehran accused the U.S. of pressuring the IAEA to make the report.
The Majlis also plans to reduce diplomatic relations with European countries that joined the U.K. and the U.S. in imposing new economic sanctions on Iran.
Dynasts’ Club: Arab Spring Spares Region’s Royals
The Media Line Staff
Jordan (The Media Line) – The contrasts couldn’t be any more stark.
In a space of five days, voters in the Gulf emirate of Oman quietly went to the polls to elect members to the country’s Shoura Council, a quasi-legislature that the country’s absolute ruler has promised will be granted more power, while in Libya another autocrat, Muamar Al-Qadaffi was dragged out of a drainpipe where he had sought refugee to be pummeled and killed by rebels, the denouement to a bloody six-month civil war.
Al-Qadaffi is the third Arab leader to lose his job in the 11 months since the Arab Spring erupted while a fourth, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced Wednesday that he was ready to step down. The fate of another, Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, hangs in the balance. But other leaders faced unrest in the early days of the Arab Spring only to turn back the popular tide.
Besides Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said, King Muhammed VI of Morocco has also succeeded in containing unrest as has King Abdullah of Jordan. At the outset of the Arab Spring, all looked ripe for revolution and experienced varying levels of unrest, but 11 months later all four leaders are still standing.
It pays to be a dynast rather than a dictator, or the son of a dictator. None of the region’s many royals has been toppled and only one – Bahrain’s Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa – has faced a serious challenge to his rule. All four autocrats to fall, as well as a fifth most likely to succumb, were dictators who made pretentions to democratic rule with rigged elections. Among non-royals, only Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has succeeded in restoring quiet.
The staying power of kings could be due to noblesse oblige, early-childhood training in statecraft or a traditional deference on the part of people to royalty, but Ibrahim Saif, a resident scholar at the Carnegie International Endowment for Peace suggests it is because royals rely more on their paternal image than on fear to maintain their rule.
“They are more responsive to the demands of the street. Historically they have been more tolerant,” Saif told The Media Line in a telephone interview from Beirut. “If you compare the monarchy in Jordan, for instance, to the regimes in Syria or Egypt, they try to respond to peoples demands, like quality of education, social conditions.”
The kingdom of Jordan scores 0.698 on the United Nations Human Development Index (the highest score is a 1.0), compared with 0.632 for the neighboring dictatorship of Syria. Oman scores a higher 0.705. Morocco is a much lower 0.582, but over the last decades its score has jumped by 14.8%. Politically, the monarchies are also relatively liberal.
Morocco is one of the few Arab countries to enjoy a “partly free” designation by Freedom House. In 2010, the human rights organization categorized Jordan and Oman as “not free,” but they scored higher on political rights and civil liberties than Tunisia, Syria or Libya.
Like much of the Middle East, Oman was by hit unrest, which left five people dead in he early weeks of the Arab Spring. But the opposition never gained traction as Qaboos responded with promises of limited reforms and financial handouts. The sultan fired ministers with the worst reputations for corruption and is promising the Shoura Council will get more powers.
Qaboos, 70 and in power for more than four decades, has used Oman’s limited oil revenue on social and economic infrastructure, but he has offered little in the way of political reform.
Months ago, he promised a $2.6 billion spending package and 50,000 public sector jobs. He also reshuffled his cabinet three times, removing some unpopular figures. The Shoura Council, for which voting took place October 15, is being given some legislative and regulatory powers for the first time, but only as part of the Oman Council, which includes an appointed upper house.
But other autocrats have promised reforms only to be laughed at or ignored. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who only weeks before rebellion exploded across his country boasted that his anti-Israel credentials made him popular, has repeatedly promised change to no avail. All the region’s autocrats have increased subsidies, raised public sector wages and created jobs where they can.
Marc Valeri, a Middle East politics lecturer at Britain’s Exeter University, told The Media Line that Qaboos built up a lot of credit with Omanis for his early steps, but he has failed to undertake deep reforms and time may be running out for him.
“He’s considered by the majority of population to be the one who can cope with corruption and implement reform. He still has a lot of legitimacy among the majority of the population,” said Valeri, who was in Oman for the elections. The sacking of corruption-tainted ministers was probably his most popular move, but he needs an Act II. “The problem is he doesn’t have anyone more to sacrifice.”
“Many people are saying the sultan has all elements in his hands to decide but that he hasn’t implemented the reforms we want. So now he will become the target of complaints and demands which was not the case before,” Valeri said.
A largely Shiite rebellion in Sunni-ruled Bahrain – the only monarchy to face serious unrest – was quashed when Saudi Arabia dispatched troops. Despite amnesties and promises of reform, the island emirate remains gripped by sectarian tensions. Valeri said sectarian tensions were an important factor, but perhaps just as importantly Bahrain’s king, Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, couldn’t count on the undivided support of his family and retainers.
“In Oman, the sultan is still regarded as very legitimate in contrast to Bahrain where the king has had to cope with a lot of opposition and division within the royal family,” he said. “That’s not the case in Oman, where ruling family is very small in number and the sultan hasn’t given much power to other members of the royal family.”
Jordan has been shaken over the months by street protests led by a disparate group of Islamists, tribal figures and leftist opposition figures demanding more political freedoms and an end to corruption. But a reform-minded man was sworn in last month and has the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, buying King Abdullah more time.
Saif of the Carnegie Endowment says that despite the turmoil in Jordan, no major group, including the country’s powerful Islamists, is calling for the king to step down. But, he adds, that King Abdullah has to keep on a pathway to reform to continue enjoying broad support.
“The monarchy in many cases is acting a moderator between various groups – Islamists, East Bankers and Jordanians of Palestinian origin,” Saif says. “It has reduced tensions by focusing on the future of the country rather than taking the side of one faction or the other. People admire it as a guarantor for stability, an insurance policy for everyone.”
In Morocco, the youth-based February 20th movement organized weeks of pro-reform demonstrations through websites such as Facebook and YouTube which brought thousands on to the streets. In response, King Mohammad, scion of a 400-year-old dynasty, quickly undertook a program of reforms to gently push Morocco into constitutional monarchy. He also almost tripled subsidies used to keep down the cost of food.
In June, voters overwhelmingly approved a package of constitutional amendments designed to rein in the king’s powers and expand civil rights, ignoring critics who said the reforms were granted by the king in an opaque rather than democratic process. Parliamentary elections last week, in which the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) emerged as the leader, went smoothly. PJD is loyal to the monarchy.
Nevertheless, Moroccan politics remain tumultuous. Last month, the February 20th movement brought thousands of supporters into the streets of Casablanca for a demonstration to demand deep political reform. But protests and sparse and analysts say Mohammad remains personally popular and trusted. Moroccan kings have a tradition of initiating reform from the top.
Anouar Boukhars, an expert on political extremism in the Middle East who teaches at Maryland’s McDaniel College, says that the February 20th movement lacks enough focus to mobilize great masses of people.
But, he adds, Moroccans are not ready to push for fundamental and radical change. They have seen the violence and anarchy in places like Egypt, Syria and Libya and have gotten a small taste of it themselves. Morocco has experienced continual small-scale strikes and protests as well as growing public disorder in the form of illegal construction and street vendors taking over public spaces, he says.
“Most Moroccans desperately want change, but insist on a peaceful transition that averts taking the country down the road of destabilizing protests that meet with violent state repression,” Boukhars wrote in the on-line journal Jadaliyya, following a field trip to Morocco.
But, he warned, if democratic reforms don’t advance, Moroccans may change their minds. “Such cycles of demonstrations and repression might eventually be the only means to advance the democratic process forward.”
Arab League (AL) gives 24-hour deadline to Syria, seeks U.N. support
AHN News Staff
Cairo, Egypt (AHN) – The Arab League (AL) has given Syria 24 hours to allow its monitors into the country or else face fresh sanctions. It also sought United Nations’ intervention to resolve the problem.
The latest call came during a foreign ministers’ crisis meeting in Egyptian capital Cairo following violence, which killed 32 people, including seven military pilots and 11 soldiers in Syria.
Top Arab League diplomats had long been denied international community’s interference into the Syria crisis, however, this time, in a sudden change of policy, they requested U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take necessary measures to back AL efforts in resolving the political impasse in the country.
AL chief Nabil al-Arabi disclosed said that the bloc has called on Syria to join them in a Friday meeting in Cairo and sign an agreement to allow monitors to observe ground situation in crisis-hit nation.
Syria has one-day time to take a decision on AL’s demand. If Damascus fail to agree to the demands, Arab finance ministers on Saturday vote on sanctions, including suspending flights, blocking government’s assets as well as financial transactions with Syrian central bank.
Stuffed! Ravens’ suffocating defense halts surging 49ers
Jojo Doria – AHN Sports Contributor
Baltimore, MD, United States (AHN Sports) – The anticipated rare matchup of coaching strategies between Jim and John Harbaugh turned out to be a battle of defenses, with the Baltimore Ravens proving to have a superior defense en route to a 16-6 victory over the San Francisco 49ers Thursday night at M&T Bank Stadium.
The Thanksgiving evening bout between the Harbaugh siblings, the first-ever meeting in the NFL of head-coach brothers, was won by older brother John thanks mainly to a suffocating defense that battered 49ers quarterback Alex Smith and their offense.
The Ravens played without middle linebacker Ray Lewis, but Baltimore showed it can still be effective in locking down opposing offenses even without the team’s leading tackler and spiritual leader.
Lewis was out for a second straight game with a foot injury.
Terrell Suggs was among those who stepped up in Lewis’ absence. He led the Ravens defense by recording three sacks.
Baltimore tied a single-game Ravens franchise mark as its defense unit sacked Smith nine times.
In the defense-dominated contest, Joe Flacco had a solid outing. He completed 15-of-23 passes for 161 yards with no interceptions and the lone touchdown of the tilt.
With the game tied at 6-6 entering the fourth period, Flacco led the Ravens in shattering that deadlock. He found tight end Dennis Pitta with an 8-yard TD pass, which proved to be the difference.
Ray Rice ran for 59 yards on 21 carries in the victory, the second straight for the Ravens (8-3).
Smith threw for 140 yards with an interception on 15-of-24 passing in the loss that halted the 49ers’ eight-game winning streak.
The setback also derailed the 49ers’ NFC West title bid. San Francisco (9-2) will have to wait at least one more week to seal its first trip to the postseason since 2002.
Fitch cuts Portugal’s credit rating
Linda Young – AHN News Writer
Lisbon, Portugal (AHN) – Credit ratings agency Fitch has downgraded Portugal’s sovereign debt rating to “junk” status and warned that it might cut it again.
Fitch lowered Portugal’s rating Thursday to BB+ from BBB- and issued a “negative outlook,” meaning it is likely to downgrade the rating again. Fitch said it had downgraded the rating because of Portugal’s “large fiscal imbalances, high indebtedness across all sectors and adverse macroeconomic outlook.”
Portugal has received $104 billion in bailout funds from the eurozone and International Monetary Fund this year and is slated to receive more funds through at least the end of 2013. Greece and the Irish Republic have also been bailed out.
However, many Portuguese have objected to the austerity measures the government has instituted in an effort to gain control of its finances and cut government spending in an effort to balance the budget. Protesters were in the midst of a 24-hour strike when news came that Fitch had downgraded the nation’s credit rating.
