WASHINGTON (AP) ? World finance leaders issued a somber assessment on Saturday of the global economy, saying the recovery remains uneven with growth and jobs in short supply.
The steering committee for the 188-nation International Monetary Fund issued a final communique that called for decisive action to bolster growth. However, the major economies remained at odds over the best mix of policies to pursue.
"An uneven recovery is emerging but growth and job creation are still too weak. New risks are arising while several old risks remain," the IMF group said.
"The commodity that is in shorter supply now is confidence," Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the chairman of the IMF panel and Singapore's finance minister, told reporters. "We need to regenerate optimism and confidence."
The World Bank announced that its policy committee had approved a proposal to establish a goal of eliminating extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.25 per day, by 2030. It is estimated that there are still 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for more than one-third of the world's extreme poor.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim called this goal "an historic moment" for the world. "We are no longer dreaming of a world without poverty. We have set an expiration date," Kim told reporters at a closing news conference.
Emma Seery, a spokesperson for Oxfam, the anti-poverty group, said while the World Bank's target was welcome "we are concerned that it will duck the tough choices needed to reach it."
The spring meetings of IMF and its sister lending agency, the World Bank, on Saturday followed two days of discussions among finance leaders of the Group of 20 nations, composed of traditional powers such as the United States, Japan and Germany and fast-growing developing nations such as China, Brazil and India.
The finance leaders sought to project an air of cooperation even though they were unable to resolve sharp differences that have risen to the surface following an initially botched bailout of Cyprus in March. The banking troubles in the small Mediterranean island country renewed fears that a prolonged European debt crisis still poses significant risks to the global economy.
The United States was represented at the finance meetings by Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The administration pushed for European nations to moderate their austerity programs of spending cuts and tax increases in favor of more stimulus to bolster growth and combat painfully high unemployment in countries such as Spain and Greece.
"'Strengthening global demand is imperative and must be at the top of our agenda," Lew said in his remarks to the IMF. "Stronger demand in Europe is critical to growth."
But this push was met with resistance from countries such as Germany and Britain, which believe that heavily indebted European nations must reduce their deficits to give markets confidence and keep government borrowing costs low.
In the end, the finance leaders sought to bridge the differences by issuing economic blueprints that left room for both the growth and austerity camps to claim victory.
Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup, encompassing the 17 finance ministers whose countries use the euro currency, told reporters Saturday said that European nations needed to keep pushing to reduce huge budget deficits but "we can and will adjust" the speed that the deficit cuts are implemented to take into account economic conditions.
The G-20 nations did reject proposals to issue hard targets for reducing budget deficits, a victory for the United States and Japan, who had argued for more flexibility.
The G-20 joint statement singled out the recent aggressive credit-easing moves pushed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying they were intended to stop prolonged deflation and support domestic demand.
Those comments were viewed as giving a green light to Japan's program, which has driven the value of the yen down by more than 20 percent against the dollar since October. That sizable decline has raised concerns among U.S. manufacturing companies that Japan's real goal is not to boost growth through increasing domestic demand but to weaken the yen as a way to gain trade advantages.
To address those concerns, the G-20 did repeat language it used in February that all countries should not use their currency as a trade weapon and guard against policies that could trigger currency wars.
Japanese officials said they were pleased with the support they had received at the Washington meetings for their aggressive efforts to lift the world's third largest economy out of a two-decade slump. "There has been international understanding" of our efforts, Huruhiko Kuroda, head of the Bank of Japan, told reporters.
Lew said in his IMF remarks that the Obama administration would keep working to gain approval of budget legislation that has been stalled for nearly three years in Congress. The congressional approval is the last major roadblock to implementing an overhaul of the IMF's governing structure to give more power to developing nations. The change is expected to shift two seats on the IMF's 24-member executive board from Western Europe to developing countries.
Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega blasted both the United States and Europe for the delay.
"America is unable and Europe is unwilling to follow through with agreed reforms," he said Saturday in his remarks to the IMF. "The institution's major shareholders are gambling ... with the IMF's legitimacy and credibility."
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TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index rose almost 1 percent on Tuesday, recovering some of the losses seen in Monday's dramatic selloff, as economic data helped spur a rally in financial and energy shares.
Data showed consumer prices dropped last month, leaving room for the Federal Reserve to keep up its economic stimulus efforts. The Fed's ultra-loose monetary policy has been one of the drivers of the stock market rally this year.
Still, the gain in Canadian stocks only partly made up for Monday's 2.7 percent fall, its biggest one-day percentage drop since June.
"Cooler heads have prevailed today; you're seeing some buying interest at these levels," said Julie Brough, vice president at Morgan Meighen & Associates.
"Some of these stocks were dramatically oversold yesterday. There was a panic sell that was going on," she added.
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed up 115.04 points, or 0.96 percent, at 12,119.92.
The benchmark Canadian index is down 2.5 percent since the start of the year, a sharp contrast to the rally seen in U.S. stocks.
Shares of gold producers remained depressed, falling almost 1 percent, after slumping 9 percent on Monday as the price of the precious metal lost 8.5 percent.
"I don't believe there's a real opportunity in gold or gold equities in the near term," said Stan Wong, vice president and portfolio manager at Macquarie Private Wealth."
"It's unlikely that gold will continue its previous upward trend without a strong catalyst, and I really don't know where that catalyst could come from."
News that the central bank of Cyprus might sell gold reserves to finance its European Union bank bailout was one of the triggers for the plunge in the price of gold on Monday.
Wong said investors need to watch out for the possibility of other European nations such as Italy and Portugal coming under pressure to sell their gold reserves, which are much bigger than those of Cyprus.
Nine of the index's 10 main sectors were higher on Tuesday.
The only group to slip was the materials sector as a 3.7 percent rise in base metal mining stocks was offset by gold shares, which fell despite gold prices gaining about 1 percent.
Miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd soared 9.3 percent to C$17.03.
Financials, the index's most heavily weighted sector, climbed 1.3 percent.
Energy shares added 1.3 percent. Suncor Energy Inc jumped 3.3 percent to C$28.41 and played the biggest role of any single stock in leading the market higher.
BlackBerry shares rose 1.4 percent to C$14.21 after Jefferies & Co analyst Peter Misek said no abnormally high return rates have been seen for the new Z10 touchscreen device, which underpins the company's attempt to reinvent itself. Demand for the smartphone appears to be positive in Asia, he wrote in a report.
Now that the new Game of Thrones season has started up, I am seeing Stark vs. Lannister items pop up in different stores. My favorite is the Game of Thrones Stark and Lannister on-ear headphones by Gear4. The Stark headphones are all white with a direwolf sigil on each ear, while the Lannister headphones are [...]
Different drug combinations work best for prevention versus treatment of colorectal tumorsPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Quattrone diana.quattrone@fccc.edu 215-728-7784 Fox Chase Cancer Center
Study evaluates the effectiveness of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and the cholesterol-lowering medication Lipitor in animal models more relevant to humans
WASHINGTON, DC (April 7, 2013)Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Once colorectal cancer has spread to other parts of the body, only 11 percent of patients will survive five years from the date of their diagnosis. Most colorectal cancers are adenocarcinomascancers that begin in cells that make and release mucus and other fluids. Adenocarcinomas begin as benign tumors called adenomas, which become malignant over time. By treating adenomas before they become cancerous, it could be possible to prevent colorectal cancer.
Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have tested the effectiveness of two promising drugs in preventing and treating colorectal adenomas in mice. A team led by Wen-Chi Chang, PhD, assistant research professor at Fox Chase, found that the effect of these drugs, which have already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of other conditions, depends on whether adenomas are present when drug treatment begins. Chang will present these findings at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 on Sunday, April 7.
"We often get focused on either the preventive or therapeutic setting and don't think about how these drugs are maybe serving more than one purpose," says senior author on the study Margie L. Clapper, PhD, co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase. "The most exciting thing for us was to be able to track these tumors and for the first time distinguish between prevention and chemotherapy, and to show that one agent is maybe effective in both settings if used appropriately, or in this case, in combination with another agent."
Past studies in animals have shown that colorectal tumors can be suppressed by combined treatment with two drugs: a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound called sulindac and a cholesterol-lowering medication called atorvastatinwhose brand name is Lipitor. But in those studies, tumors were induced in an unnatural waythrough exposure to carcinogenic chemicalswhereas in humans, cancer often has genetic origins.
To evaluate the effectiveness of sulindac and atorvastatin in an animal model more relevant to humans, Chang, Clapper and their colleagues used a unique mouse that had genetic alterations that cause them to develop multiple colorectal adenomas, without exposure to carcinogens. "No one had previously tested the effectiveness of this drug combination against colorectal cancer originating from alterations in the genome," Clapper says. "In some ways, using this type of preclinical tumor model represents a new paradigm for doing prevention studies and therapeutic studies."
In the new study, the researchers treated the mice with either drug alone or in combination for 100 days and used colonoscopic examinations to evaluate the presence and size of tumors before and after treatment. In mice that had tumors prior to treatment, only combination therapy reduced the number of adenomas in the colon by the end of the treatment period.
The results were strikingly different in mice that were tumor-free when treatment began. In these mice, exposure to atorvastatin alone or in combination with sulindac resulted in about a three-fold increase in the percentage of mice that were tumor-free by the end of the treatment period. Among these mice, 44 percent of those treated with atorvastatin alone and 30 percent of those treated with both drugs did not develop tumors, compared with 13 percent of mice that received no treatment and nine percent that received sulindac alone. Moreover, atorvastatin treatment completely inhibited the formation of microscopic adenomas in these mice.
The findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of the two drugs at preventing and treating colorectal adenomas depends on whether tumors are present prior to the onset of treatment. "Based on this study, we're able to say that if you don't have a tumor to begin with, maybe Lipitor is best, but if you do have a tumor to begin with, you need the combination therapy," Chang says. "We can start to tailor clinical care based upon the disease state as well as the establishment of tumors."
Moving forward, the researchers plan to study the specific genetic alterations in this particular mouse model, with the goal of identifying molecular pathways that could be targeted with therapies.
###
Co-authors on the study include Christina M. Ferrara, Stacy L. Mosier, Harry S. Cooper, Karthik Devarajan, Harvey Hensley, and Tianyu Li of Fox Chase. This research was supported by NIH R21CA129467.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of Temple University Health System, is one of the leading cancer research and treatment centers in the United States. Founded in 1904 in Philadelphia as one of the nation's first cancer hospitals, Fox Chase also was among the first institutions to receive the National Cancer Institute's prestigious comprehensive cancer center designation in 1974. Fox Chase researchers have won the highest awards in their fields, including two Nobel Prizes. Fox Chase physicians are routinely recognized in national rankings, and the Center's nursing program has achieved Magnet status for excellence three consecutive times. Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research and oversees programs in cancer prevention, detection, survivorship, and community outreach. For more information, call 1-888-FOX-CHASE (1-888-369-2427) or visit http://www.foxchase.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Different drug combinations work best for prevention versus treatment of colorectal tumorsPublic release date: 7-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Diana Quattrone diana.quattrone@fccc.edu 215-728-7784 Fox Chase Cancer Center
Study evaluates the effectiveness of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and the cholesterol-lowering medication Lipitor in animal models more relevant to humans
WASHINGTON, DC (April 7, 2013)Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Once colorectal cancer has spread to other parts of the body, only 11 percent of patients will survive five years from the date of their diagnosis. Most colorectal cancers are adenocarcinomascancers that begin in cells that make and release mucus and other fluids. Adenocarcinomas begin as benign tumors called adenomas, which become malignant over time. By treating adenomas before they become cancerous, it could be possible to prevent colorectal cancer.
Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have tested the effectiveness of two promising drugs in preventing and treating colorectal adenomas in mice. A team led by Wen-Chi Chang, PhD, assistant research professor at Fox Chase, found that the effect of these drugs, which have already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of other conditions, depends on whether adenomas are present when drug treatment begins. Chang will present these findings at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 on Sunday, April 7.
"We often get focused on either the preventive or therapeutic setting and don't think about how these drugs are maybe serving more than one purpose," says senior author on the study Margie L. Clapper, PhD, co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Fox Chase. "The most exciting thing for us was to be able to track these tumors and for the first time distinguish between prevention and chemotherapy, and to show that one agent is maybe effective in both settings if used appropriately, or in this case, in combination with another agent."
Past studies in animals have shown that colorectal tumors can be suppressed by combined treatment with two drugs: a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound called sulindac and a cholesterol-lowering medication called atorvastatinwhose brand name is Lipitor. But in those studies, tumors were induced in an unnatural waythrough exposure to carcinogenic chemicalswhereas in humans, cancer often has genetic origins.
To evaluate the effectiveness of sulindac and atorvastatin in an animal model more relevant to humans, Chang, Clapper and their colleagues used a unique mouse that had genetic alterations that cause them to develop multiple colorectal adenomas, without exposure to carcinogens. "No one had previously tested the effectiveness of this drug combination against colorectal cancer originating from alterations in the genome," Clapper says. "In some ways, using this type of preclinical tumor model represents a new paradigm for doing prevention studies and therapeutic studies."
In the new study, the researchers treated the mice with either drug alone or in combination for 100 days and used colonoscopic examinations to evaluate the presence and size of tumors before and after treatment. In mice that had tumors prior to treatment, only combination therapy reduced the number of adenomas in the colon by the end of the treatment period.
The results were strikingly different in mice that were tumor-free when treatment began. In these mice, exposure to atorvastatin alone or in combination with sulindac resulted in about a three-fold increase in the percentage of mice that were tumor-free by the end of the treatment period. Among these mice, 44 percent of those treated with atorvastatin alone and 30 percent of those treated with both drugs did not develop tumors, compared with 13 percent of mice that received no treatment and nine percent that received sulindac alone. Moreover, atorvastatin treatment completely inhibited the formation of microscopic adenomas in these mice.
The findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of the two drugs at preventing and treating colorectal adenomas depends on whether tumors are present prior to the onset of treatment. "Based on this study, we're able to say that if you don't have a tumor to begin with, maybe Lipitor is best, but if you do have a tumor to begin with, you need the combination therapy," Chang says. "We can start to tailor clinical care based upon the disease state as well as the establishment of tumors."
Moving forward, the researchers plan to study the specific genetic alterations in this particular mouse model, with the goal of identifying molecular pathways that could be targeted with therapies.
###
Co-authors on the study include Christina M. Ferrara, Stacy L. Mosier, Harry S. Cooper, Karthik Devarajan, Harvey Hensley, and Tianyu Li of Fox Chase. This research was supported by NIH R21CA129467.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of Temple University Health System, is one of the leading cancer research and treatment centers in the United States. Founded in 1904 in Philadelphia as one of the nation's first cancer hospitals, Fox Chase also was among the first institutions to receive the National Cancer Institute's prestigious comprehensive cancer center designation in 1974. Fox Chase researchers have won the highest awards in their fields, including two Nobel Prizes. Fox Chase physicians are routinely recognized in national rankings, and the Center's nursing program has achieved Magnet status for excellence three consecutive times. Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research and oversees programs in cancer prevention, detection, survivorship, and community outreach. For more information, call 1-888-FOX-CHASE (1-888-369-2427) or visit http://www.foxchase.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 7-Apr-2013
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