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WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama told his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev that he was sending firefighting equipment and other aid to help Russia battle wildfires that have ravaged parts of the country, the White House said Friday. “President Obama called President Medvedev yesterday to express his deepest condolences for the tragic losses that Russia has

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WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama told his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev that he was sending firefighting equipment and other aid to help Russia battle wildfires that have ravaged parts of the country, the White House said Friday. “President Obama called President Medvedev yesterday to express his deepest condolences for the tragic losses that Russia has

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Two federal agencies are probing drugmaker Merck & Co. for possibly violating anti-bribery laws in multiple foreign countries. Merck, the world’s second-biggest drugmaker by revenue, has received inquiry letters from both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said in a regulatory filing. The letters “seek information about activities in a number of countries and reference the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” according to Merck. The act bars U.S. companies from bribing government or corporate officials in other countries to win business, among other things. Merck, which is based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, disclosed the investigation in a regulatory filing submitted to the SEC on Friday. Story continues below… “The company is cooperating with the agencies in their requests and believes that this inquiry is part of a broader review of pharmaceutical industry practices in foreign countries,” Merck said in a brief statement included in its quarterly financial filing with the SEC. Merck and most other large pharmaceutical companies for the past couple years have been hotly pursuing sales in emerging markets including China, Russia, India and Brazil. Government health programs in such countries often control the prices allowed for prescription drugs and decide which brands they will buy for millions of hospital and other patients. The industry sees high-volume sales in emerging markets as its best hope for growth. Companies have been adding thousands of salespeople and building factories staffed by low-paid workers in those countries. Revenue growth is waning in the U.S. and Europe. Reasons include the global recession, bigger U.S. government discounts under the health care overhaul and dozens of blockbuster medicines getting cheap generic competition in Western countries — with few big new products coming on the market to replace those billions in annual sales. Meanwhile, Merck has a history of trouble regarding promotion of its products. It’s paid out $4.85 billion to settle roughly 50,000 lawsuits brought by patients or survivors of people who took its former blockbuster painkiller Vioxx and claimed Merck downplayed the pill’s dangers. Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes, including fatal ones. Currently, Merck is operating under a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the government covering its promotional practices and price reporting. The agreement runs through February 2013 and is similar to two earlier, five-year corporate integrity agreements with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. Merck entered into one of the agreements in February 2008 and Schering-Plough Corp. entered into the other agreement in 2004 and later extended it for a couple years. Merck bought Schering-Plough for $41 billion last November. The agreements in general all require Merck and its Schering-Plough unit to maintain an ethics training program, as well as “policies and procedures governing promotional practices” and reporting of prices for its drugs to the Medicaid health program for low-income people. Medicaid is entitled to the lowest discount Merck, or any drugmaker, gives to other customers, such as hospitals or prescription benefit managers. Major drugmakers have repeatedly been investigated for allegedly overcharging Medicaid by reporting inflated drug prices to the government. That’s resulted in numerous multimillion-dollar settlements paid by the pharmaceutical companies. In afternoon trading, Merck shares rose 37 cents at $35.35. Source: AP Features Additional links from AP Features The Associated Press Mochila insert follows… Powered by Mochila

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The toxic smog smothering Moscow showed little sign of abating Monday as media accused officials of covering up the scale of the disaster and the authorities raced to put out a fire near a nuclear site. Amid Russia’s worst heatwave in decades, the raging wildfires and burning peat bogs in central Russia have choked Moscow for several days and even sent plumes of smoke as far as neighbouring Finland. The acrid smog from the fires burning in the countryside dozens of kilometres (miles) outside the city is seeping into apartments, offices and even underground into the Moscow metro, forcing Russians to flee the city in droves. Some 557 wildfires were still covering 174,000 hectares (430,000 acres) of land in Russia, only a slight improvement from the weekend, the emergency situations ministry said. Media reports said well-off Muscovites were spending nights at air-conditioned hotels and accused authorities of covering up the true scale of the environmental disaster and smog-related deaths and illnesses. Story continues below… “Authorities do not release statistics in order to conceal their incompetence,” the Kommersant daily quoted an unidentified head of an enterprise in the funerals industry as saying. “Morgues and crematoria are overcrowded.” There is no official data on the number of smog-related illnesses and deaths but a Moscow registry service official told AFP late last week the mortality rate in Moscow soared by 50 percent in July compared to the same period last year. A doctor with a Moscow ambulance crew told Russia’s top opposition daily Novaya Gazeta on condition of anonymity that the number of ambulance calls and deaths had gone up in recent days. “We have been strictly forbidden to hospitalize people barring the most extreme cases,” he said, complaining of hazardous working conditions. “There are no air conditioners in vehicles and those that are simply do not work. Temperatures inside reach 50 degrees…Sometimes our doctors faint.” A surgeon at a major hospital described a similar picture, saying the smog and heat were taking its toll on both patients and medical staff. “Air conditioners work only on the floor of the administration, temperatures reach 30 degrees in the operating room,” he told Kommersant on conditions of anonymity. “It’s hard to work in these conditions.” Many Muscovites laid the blame for the environmental catastrophe on the government which they say is not doing enough to shield them from the smog and heat. Officials, meanwhile, say the weather would likely deteriorate later in the day but could improve later this week. State air pollution monitoring service Mosekomonitoring said carbon monoxide levels in the Moscow air were 2.2 times higher than acceptable levels early Monday. “We are currently seeing a strong smoke,” spokeswoman Elena Lezina told AFP. “Pollution is currently growing.” Carbon monoxide levels had been 3.1 times worse on Sunday and 6.6 times worse on Saturday. Weather forecasters say shifting winds are expected to help clear the air in the middle of the week, while the heatwave would continue for the next few days and subside by early next week. Emergency situations minister Sergei Shoigu promised that peat bog fires around Moscow woud be put out in a week. “Moscow, Muscovites, 11 million are so tired of this smoke, of this smog so we all need to join forces,” he said in televised remarks. Shoigu had told firefighters to redouble their efforts Sunday to put out a wildfire threatening one of the country’s nuclear research facilities in Snezhinsk in the Urals region. “You have only seven hectares left, that’s not a big area and I hope you can put out that fire,” said the minister. The heatwave created a national catastrophe which has affected all areas of life, with 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of agricultural land destroyed and the government ordering a controversial ban on grain exports.

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Thousands of air travellers were stranded Sunday as Moscow choked in the worst smog in living memory from spreading wildfires that threatened a second Russian nuclear facility. Iconic buildings like the Kremlin towers and the city’s wedding-cake Stalin-era skyscrapers were obscured by the acrid smoke, while Saint Petersburg and neighbouring Finland were also starting to feel the effects. The wildfires have sparked a major crisis in western Russia, killing 52 people and sending authorities scrambling to protect strategic sites, including the country’s main nuclear research facilities. Emergency response minister Sergei Shoigu ordered firefighters to redouble their efforts to put out a wildfire near the Snezhinsk nuclear research facility in the Urals, some 1,500 kilometres (925 miles) east of Moscow. “As for Snezhinsk, I recommend you work through the night,” he said during a meeting with officials from regions hit by the blazes. Story continues below… He said all of the fires around the city of Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region, site of another major nuclear centre, had been extinguished. Authorities had removed radioactive and explosive materials from the facility. About 2,000 people were stranded at Moscow’s Domodedovo international airport when major delays hit their flights after they had crossed passport control to the departures area with food running short, state television said. Domodedovo, in the south of Moscow, was the airport worst hit with dozens of flights delayed Sunday. “Passengers need to be warned that delays are unavoidable,” said Sergei Izvolsky of aviation committee Rosaviatsia. The airport sent out requests to aviation companies to staff flight crews with pilots capable of flying in zero visibility conditions. “We are located at the very epicentre of wildfires,” Domodedovo spokeswoman Elena Galanova told AFP. “We’re asking them to take complicated meteorological conditions into account.” Moscow residents rushed to escape the smog-bound capital, with travel agents reporting package tours to destinations popular with Russians like Egypt, Montenegro and Turkey completely sold out. “In the last week the demand for tickets from Moscow sold online has gone up by 20 percent,” Irina Tyurina, spokeswoman of the Russian Union of Tour Operators, told the Echo of Moscow radio. “For this weekend there are no places on aircraft to resort destinations and next weekend very few. The smoke has prompted this desire of Muscovites to leave the city,” she said. The Canadian embassy started evacuating some of its staff and their families from the capital, the foreign ministry in Ottawa said. Moscow’s high-profile mayor Yuri Luzhkov, however, decided to return to the city after being ridiculed in the press for staying away during the crisis. His aides said he was interrupting treatment for a “sports injury”. State air pollution monitoring service Mosekomonitoring said carbon monoxide levels in the Moscow air were 3.1 times higher than acceptable levels on Sunday afternoon. The previous day they had been 6.6 times worse. Moscow residents and tourists tried to protect themselves by donning medical masks or even just clutching wet rags to their faces. About 554 fires were still blazing, covering 190,400 hectares (470,500 acres), down just 3,000 hectares from the figure the previous day, the emergency ministries said. Weather forecasters said Russia’s worst heatwave in decades would continue with temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit), although there would be a dip by Wednesday. “The situation with the wildfires in Russia remains difficult but a trend of improvement is being recorded,” the emergencies ministry said on its website. This video is from the Associated Press. Photo sample: Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press .

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It’s no secret that many of the world’s largest industrialized nations are somewhat eager to ease their reliance on the U.S. dollar. For months China and Russia have pushed ever subtly, for a new “global reserve currency,” to give governments around the world enhanced economic stability in the event of greater fluctuations in the dollar’s value. But what wasn’t known, until recently, is how far along the International Monetary Fund was in the planning of elevating its so-called “special drawing rights” from mere international agreement to an actual, legitimate global currency. The report examines what it calls the “imperfections” of the global reserve banking structures, and how hoarding of reserves by sovereign nations can subject the system to risk and occasional shocks. In 35 pages of extrapolation and footnotes, the IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department lays out the how and why of a global currency, which would move from an “inside money” as the SDR to an “outside money” that is traded by governments. However, they conclude that “the ideas discussed are unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future absent a dramatic shift in appetite for international cooperation.” Story continues below… The PDF document appeared to have been taken offline at time of this writing, but a cached version was still available. The document is from April, but was only recently noticed by Financial Times . “[In] the eyes of the IMF at least, the best way to ensure the stability of the international monetary system (post crisis) is actually by launching a global currency,” they note. “And that, the IMF says, is largely because sovereigns — as they stand — cannot be trusted to redistribute surplus reserves, or battle their deficits, themselves.” The IMF goes on to explain: Reserve accumulation has accelerated dramatically in the past decade, particularly since the 2003-4. At the end of 2009, reserves had risen to 13 percent of global GDP, doubling from their 2000 level, and over 50 percent of total imports of goods and services. Emerging market holdings rose to 32 percent of their GDP (26 percent excluding China). Twenty-seven of the top 40 reserve holders, accounting for over 90 percent of total reserve holdings, recorded doubledigit average growth in reserves over 1999-2008. Holdings have also become increasingly concentrated, with over half the total held by only five countries. These numbers exclude substantial foreign assets of the official sector not recorded as reserves, including in sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), and yet invested in liquid, dollar denominated financial instruments, that have grown even more in recent years. The global currency IMF envisions, they simply call “bancor”. They continue: though an SDR-based system would move away from a dominant national currency, the SDR’s value remains heavily linked to the conditions and performance of the major component countries. A more ambitious reform option would be to build on the previous ideas and develop, over time, a global currency. Called, for example, bancor in honor of Keynes, such a currency could be used as a medium of exchange—an “outside money” in contrast to the SDR which remains an “inside money”. Were the industrial nations of the world to agree to the IMF’s prescription for the global financial system, the fund would undertake a new realm of responsibilities. It describes them as: Encouraging reserve holders to adjust the currency composition of reserves onlygradually and discourage any “active” currency management that could potentially causelarge swings between reserve currencies. Requiring all reserve holding members to report their reserve composition to the Fund (possibly confidentially) including information on reserve holder’s benchmark for the currency composition of reserves. Using this information, the Fund could advise reserve holders on the pace of reserve diversification (if and when the latter express interest inadjusting the currency composition of their reserves) to maintain stability in theadjustment process, including during the transition phase to a balanced reserve system. For instance Truman and Wong (2006) propose an international reserve diversificationstandard comprising two basic elements: (i) routine disclosure of the currency composition of official foreign exchange holdings; and (ii) a commitment by reserveholders to adjust gradually the actual currency composition of its reserves to any newbenchmark for those holdings. Engaging with potential major reserve issuers to help remove obstacles to broader use oftheir currencies, if the authorities so desire. Considering mechanisms to facilitate the use of emerging market assets to draw liquiditywith greater certainty to attenuate their demand for hard-currency reserves. The report was issued months before a recent United Nations Economic and Social Council called on nations to move away from the dollar as their reserve currency. The U.N. based its advice on the adverse effects felt by developing nations that were hit especially hard during the 2008-2009 U.S. economic instability. President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have steadfastly maintained that the world does not need a new reserve currency. To the contrary, Russia has predicted the world is a mere decade away from that inevitability. “There is a need to make the IMF a true representative of the world’s leading economies. It’s not there right now,” said Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin during a June 2009 economic forum, noting that China had a lower representation quota than Switzerland or Belgium.

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WASHINGTON — The United States is close to activating a missile shield over southern Europe as part of its effort to shore up regional defenses in the face of a missile threat from Iran, The Washington Post reported . Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, the newspaper said the US Defense Department is nearing a deal to establish a key radar ground station probably in Turkey or Bulgaria. Installation of the high-powered X-band radar would enable the first phase of the shield to become operational next year, the report said. In September 2009, US President Barack Obama scrapped a missile shield project, which had been pushed by his predecessor George W. Bush and would have seen a powerful radar installed in the Czech Republic and 10 long-range ballistic interceptor missiles in Poland by 2013. The shield plan had enraged Russia, which called it a security menace on its doorstep, although Washington insisted the aim was to ward off a potential long-range missile threat from Iran. Story continues below… But according to The Post, a plan to protect southern Europe from missiles is still being implemented. The US military is also working with Israel and allies in the Persian Gulf to build and upgrade their missile defense capabilities, the report said. The United States installed a radar ground station in Israel in 2008 and is looking to place another in an Arab country in the gulf region, the paper said. The radars would provide a critical early warning of any launches from Iran, according to The Post. The missile defenses in Europe, Israel and the Gulf are technically separate and in different stages of development, the paper said. But they are all designed to plug into command-and-control systems operated by, or with, the US military, The Post pointed out. The Israeli radar is operated by US personnel, and it is already providing information to US Navy ships in the Mediterranean, the paper noted.

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