Novo bets on high-price niche for obesity drug

LONDON (Reuters) – Denmark’s Novo Nordisk is sizing up a high-price niche market for its drug liraglutide as a weight-loss treatment, with the United States the prime opportunity.The premium-price approach could turn it into a multibillion-dollar-a-year product, the company believes.Novo is studying the injected drug – already on the market as a treatment for type-2 diabetes under the brand name Victoza...

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Egypt opposition fears violence from Brotherhood

CAIRO (AP) — They showed a military-style precision: Crowds of bearded Islamists proclaiming allegiance to Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and chanting "God is great" as they descended on tents set up by anti-Morsi protesters outside the presidential palace, swinging clubs and firing rifles. They set up a detention facility, interrogating and beating captured protesters.The scene from bloody clashes...

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my...

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Singer feared dead in Mexican plane crash

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar.Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera’s relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged...

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Britain launches genome database to improve patient care

LONDON (Reuters) – Up to 100,000 Britons suffering from cancer and rare diseases are to have their genetic codes fully sequenced and mapped as part of government efforts to boost drug development and improve treatment.Britain will be the first country to introduce a database of genetic sequences into a mainstream health service, officials say, giving doctors a more advanced understanding of a patient’s...

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Obama, Boehner meet face-to-face on 'fiscal cliff'

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face Sunday at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks...

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Peru’s capital highly vulnerable to major quake

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The earthquake all but flattened colonial Lima, the shaking so violent that people tossed to the ground couldn’t get back up. Minutes later, a 50-foot (15-meter) wall of Pacific Ocean crashed into the adjacent port of Callao, killing all but 200 of its 5,000 inhabitants. Bodies washed ashore for weeks.Plenty of earthquakes have shaken Peru‘s capital in the 266 years since that fateful...

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Rick Ross cancels shows after gang threats

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Rick Ross has canceled two shows in North Carolina after a gang named Gangster Disciples published a series of YouTube videos threatening the Southern rapper.Ross, a solo artist, is the founder of Maybach Music Group, a record label that release albums through Warner Bros Records. He was set to perform with fellow Maybach artists Wale, Meek Mill and Machine Gun Kelly in Greensboro...

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Ariad drug proves effective in curbing chronic leukemia in study

(Reuters) – An experimental leukemia drug from Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc eliminated the cancer from the bone marrow of nearly half of patients with a chronic form of the disease who had stopped responding to other drugs, according to a 12-month follow-up of a pivotal drug trial.The trial of the drug, ponatinib, which involved 444 patients, including 267 with chronic myeloid leukemia who had previously...

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More Egypt protests called after Morsi concession

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's liberal opposition called for more protests Sunday, seeking to keep up the momentum of its street campaign after the president made a partial concession overnight but refused its main demand he rescind a draft constitution going to a referendum on Dec. 15.President Mohammed Morsi met one of the opposition's demands, annulling his Nov. 22 decrees that gave him near unrestricted...

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