Tolkien class at Wis. university proves popular

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The vast collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts initially sold senior Joe Kirchoff on Marquette University, so when the school offered its first course devoted exclusively to the English author, Kirchoff wanted in. The only problem: It was full and he wasn’t on the literature track.

Undaunted, the 22-year-old political science and history major lobbied the English department and others starting last spring and through the summer and “kind of just made myself a problem,” he said. His persistence paid off.

“It’s a fantastic course,” said Kirchoff, a Chicago native. “It’s a great way to look at something that’s such a creative work of genius in such a way you really come to understand the man behind it.”

He and the 31 other students can now boast of their authority about the author who influenced much of today’s high fantasy writing. The course was taught for the first time this fall as part of the university’s celebration of the 75th anniversary of “The Hobbit” being published. And class wrapped up just before the film, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” was released Friday.

The class, which filled up fast with mostly seniors who had first dibs, looked at Tolkien as a whole, not just the popular “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit.” Students took their final exam this week, and the course was so well received, Marquette is considering more in the future.

“It’s the best class I’ve had in 27 years here … for student preparation, interest and enthusiasm,” said English professor Tim Machan. “And I can throw out any topic and they will have read the material and they want to talk about the material.”

Marquette is one of the main repositories of Tolkien’s drafts, drawings and other writings — more than 11,000 pages. It has the manuscripts for “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” as well as his lesser-known “Farmer Giles of Ham” and his children’s book “Mr. Bliss.” Marquette was the first institution to ask Tolkien for the manuscripts in 1956 and paid him about $ 5,000. He died in 1973.

Other significant collections are at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England and Wheaton College in Illinois.

Though Tolkien classes aren’t unusual nationwide, Marquette students had the added bonus of being able to visit Tolkien’s revisions, notes, detailed calendars, maps and watercolors on site at the school’s archive. And they got a lesson from the school’s archivist Bill Fliss.

“One of the things we wanted to impress upon the students was the fact that Tolkien was a fanatical reviser,” said Fliss said. “He never really did anything once and was finished with it.”

Chrissy Wabiszewski, a senior English major, described Tolkien’s manuscripts as art.

“When you get down and look at just his script and his artwork in general, it all kind of flows together in this really beautiful, like, cumulative form,” Wabiszewski said. “It’s cool. It is just really cool to have it here.”

The class also looked at Tolkien’s poetry, academic articles and translations of medieval poems; talked about the importance of his writers’ group, the Inklings; and explored what it meant to be a writer at that time.

“We’ve … tried to think about continuities that ran through everything he did,” Machan said. His students were also required to go to three lectures that were part of Marquette’s commemoration.

“The Hobbit,” a tale of homebody Bilbo Baggins’ journey, is set in Tolkien’s fictional realm of Middle-earth and takes place 60 years before “The Lord of the Rings.” The movie released Friday is the first of the trilogy, with “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” set for release on Dec. 13, 2013, and a third film to come out in the summer of 2014.

Most of the students were just finishing elementary school when the first “Lord of the Rings” film was released 11 years ago.

Kirchoff said he started reading “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” when he was in fourth grade, before the movies came out. He said the movies have introduced others to Tolkien’s ideas, making his love for Tolkien’s fantasy worlds more socially acceptable.

“The movies were fantastic enough and engaging enough to coexist in my mind with the literature I really do love,” he said.

Wabiszewski said it’s clear her classmates weren’t just taking the class as a filler.

“I definitely expected the enthusiasm from everybody but just the knowledge that everybody brought into the class, it’s cool,” she said. “We really have a smart group of people in that class who have a lot to offer.”

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Fitch affirms France “AAA”, says no room for slippage

PARIS (Reuters) – Fitch Ratings stuck by its triple-A rating on France in a much-awaited review on Friday but warned that an expected peak in debt in 2014 was the limit it could agree to for a country with a top-notch credit grade.

Fitch is the only agency to retain an AAA rating on the euro zone’s second-largest economy. It kept to its negative outlook, saying that indicated a slightly greater than 50 percent chance of a downgrade in future.

Fitch said it was raising its forecast for the country’s debt in 2014 to 94 percent of gross domestic product from an earlier 92 percent – higher than any other top-rated sovereign except the United States and Britain.

“This is at the limit of the level of indebtedness consistent with France retaining its ‘AAA’ status assuming the government debt is firmly placed on a sustainable downward path from 2014,” Fitch said in a statement.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici called Fitch’s rating an “encouragement” and a “motivating force” that confirmed the government was right to pursue its debt reduction targets.

“It’s a pointer for the way ahead. My take on this is that the French economy is solid and can be trusted, and it is absolutely essential that we keep to the path we have mapped out: European construction, budget solidity and competitiveness,” he told Europe 1 radio.

Last month, Moody’s cut France by one notch from AAA to Aa1 – causing only muted investor reaction – following a similar downgrade by Standard & Poor’s in January.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage; editing by Patrick Graham)

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Aides: Chavez in tough fight, may miss swearing-in

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Somber confidants of President Hugo Chavez say he is going through a difficult recovery after cancer surgery in Cuba, and one close ally is warning Venezuelans that their leader may not make it back for his swearing-in next month.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said Wednesday night that Chavez was in “stable condition” and was with close relatives in Havana. Reading a statement, he said the government invites people to “accompany President Chavez in this new test with their prayers.”

Villegas expressed hope about the president returning home for his Jan. 10 swearing-in for a new six-year term, but said in a written message on a government website that if Chavez doesn’t make it, “our people should be prepared to understand it.”

Villegas said it would be irresponsible to hide news about the “delicateness of the current moment and the days to come.” He asked Venezuelans to see Chavez’s condition as “when we have a sick father, in a delicate situation after four surgeries in a year and a half.”

Moving to prepare the public for the possibility of more bad news, Vice President Nicolas Maduro looked grim when he acknowledged that Chavez faced a “complex and hard” process after his latest surgery.

At the same time, officials sought to show a united front amid the growing worries about Chavez’s health and Venezuela’s future. Key leaders of Chavez’s party and military officers appeared together on television as Maduro gave updates on Chavez’s condition.

“We’re more united than ever,” said Maduro, who was flanked by National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, both key members of Chavez’s inner circle. “We’re united in loyalty to Chavez.”

Analysts say Maduro could eventually face challenges in trying to hold together the president’s diverse “Chavismo” movement, which includes groups from radical leftists to moderates, as well as military factions.

Tapped by the 58-year-old president over the weekend as his chosen political heir, Maduro is considered to be a member of radical left wing of Chavez’s movement that is closely aligned with Cuba’s communist government.

Cabello, a former military officer who also wields power within Chavez’s movement, shared the spotlight with Maduro by speaking at a Mass for Chavez’s health at a military base.

Just returned from being with Chavez for the operation, Cabello called the president “invincible” but said “that man who is in Havana … is fighting a battle for his life.”

After Chavez’s six-hour operation Tuesday, Venezuelan television broadcast religious services where people prayed for Chavez, interspersed with campaign rallies for upcoming gubernatorial elections.

On the streets of Caracas, people on both sides of the country’s deep political divide voiced concerns about Chavez’s condition and what might happen if he died.

At campaign rallies ahead of Sunday’s gubernatorial elections, Chavez’s candidates urged Venezuelans to vote for pro-government candidates while they also called for the president to get well.

“Onward, Commander!” gubernatorial candidate Elias Jaua shouted to a crowd of supporters at a rally Wednesday. Many observers said it was likely Chavez’s candidates could get a boost from their supporters’ outpouring of sympathy for Chavez.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in the October presidential election and is running against Jaua, complained Wednesday that Chavez’s allies are taking advantage of the president’s health problems to try to rally support. He took issue with Jaua’s statement to supporters that “we have to vote so that the president recovers.”

Maduro looked sad as he spoke on television, his voice hoarse and cracked at times after meeting in the pre-dawn hours with Cabello and Ramirez. The pair returned to Venezuela about 3 a.m. after accompanying Chavez to Cuba for his surgery.

“It was a complex, difficult, delicate operation,” Maduro said. “The post-operative process is also going to be a complex and hard process.”

Without giving details, Maduro reiterated Chavez’s recent remarks that the surgery presented risks and that people should be prepared for any “difficult scenarios.”

The constitution says presidents should be sworn in before the National Assembly, and if that’s not possible then before the Supreme Court.

Former Supreme Court magistrate Roman Duque Corredor said a president cannot delegate the swearing-in to anyone else and cannot take the oath of office outside Venezuela. A president could still be sworn in even if temporarily incapacitated, but would need to be conscious and in Venezuela, Duque told The Associated Press.

If a president-elect is declared incapacitated by lawmakers and is unable to be sworn in, the National Assembly president would temporarily take charge of the government and a new presidential vote must be held within 30 days, Duque said.

Chavez said Saturday that if an election had to be held, Maduro should be elected president.

The dramatic events of this week, with Chavez suddenly taking a turn for the worse, had some Venezuelans wondering whether they were being told the truth because just a few months ago the president was running for his fourth presidential term and had said he was free of cancer.

Lawyer Maria Alicia Altuve, who was out in bustling crowds in a shopping district of downtown Caracas, said it seemed odd how Maduro wept at a political rally while talking about Chavez.

“He cries on television to set up a drama, so that people go vote for poor Chavez,” Altuve said. “So we don’t know if this illness is for that, or if it’s that this man is truly sick.”

Some Chavez supporters said they found it hard to think about losing the president and worried about the future. His admirers held prayer vigils in Caracas and other cities this week, holding pictures and singing hymns.

Chavez has undergone four cancer-related surgeries since June 2011. He has also undergone months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Throughout his treatments, Chavez has kept secret some details of his illness, including the exact location and type of the tumors.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa wished his close ally the best, while also acknowledging the possibility that cancer might end his presidency. “Chavez is very important for Latin America, but if he can’t continue at the head of Venezuela, the processes of change have to continue,” Correa said at a news conference in Quito.

___

Associated Press writer Christopher Toothaker contributed to this report.

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Dozens sue pharmacy, but compensation uncertain

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dennis O’Brien rubs his head as he details ailments triggered by the fungal meningitis he developed after a series of steroid shots in his neck: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, exhaustion and trouble with his speech and attention.

He estimates the disease has cost him and his wife thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses and her lost wages, including time spent on 6-hour round trip weekly visits to the hospital. They’ve filed a lawsuit seeking $ 4 million in damages from the Massachusetts pharmacy that supplied the steroid injections, but it could take years for them to get any money back and they may never get enough to cover their expenses. The same is true for dozens of others who have sued the New England Compounding Center.

“I don’t have a life anymore. My life is a meningitis life,” the 59-year-old former school teacher said, adding that he’s grateful he survived.

His is one of at least 50 federal lawsuits in nine states that have been filed against NECC, and more are being filed in state courts every day. More than 500 people have gotten sick after receiving injections prepared by the pharmacy.

The lawsuits allege that NECC negligently produced a defective and dangerous product and seek millions to repay families for the death of spouses, physically painful recoveries, lost wages and mental and emotional suffering. Thirty-seven people have died in the outbreak.

“The truth is the chance of recovering damages from NECC is extremely low,” said John Day, a Nashville attorney who represents several patients who have been sickened by fungal meningitis.

To streamline the process, attorneys on both sides are asking to have a single judge preside over the pretrial and discovery phases for all of the federal lawsuits.

This approach, called multidistrict litigation, would prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings and conserve resources of all parties. But unlike a class-action case, those lawsuits would eventually be returned to judges in their original district for trial, according to Brian Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville.

Even with this approach, Fitzpatrick noted that federal litigation is very slow, and gathering all the evidence, records and depositions during the discovery phase could take months or years.

“Most of the time what happens is once they are consolidated for pretrial proceedings, there is a settlement, a global settlement between all the lawyers and the defendants before anything is shipped back for trial,” he said.

A lawyer representing NECC, Frederick H. Fern, described the consolidation process as an important step.

“A Boston venue is probably the best scenario,” Fern said in an email. “That’s where the parties, witnesses and documents are located, and where the acts subject to these complaints occurred.”

Complicating efforts to recover damages, attorneys for the patients said, NECC is a small private company that has now recalled all its products and laid off its workers. The company’s pharmacy licenses have been surrendered, and it’s unclear whether NECC had adequate liability insurance.

Fern said NECC has insurance, but they were still determining what the policy covers.

But Day says, “It’s clear to me that at the end of the day, NECC is not going to have sufficient assets to compensate any of these people, not even 1 percent.”

As a result, many attorneys are seeking compensation from other parties. Among the additional defendants named in lawsuits are NECC pharmacist and co-founder Barry Cadden; co-founder Greg Conigliaro; sister company Ameridose and its marketing and support arm, Medical Sales Management.

Founded in 2006 by Cadden and Conigliaro, Ameridose would eventually report annual revenue of $ 100 million. An NECC spokesman didn’t respond to a request for the pharmacy’s revenue.

While Federal Drug Administration regulators have also found contamination issues at Westborough, Mass.-based Ameridose, the FDA has said it has not connected Ameridose drugs to infection or illness.

Under tort law, a lawsuit has to prove a defendant has a potential liability, which in this case could be anyone involved in the medical procedure. However, any such suit could take years and ultimately may not be successful.

“I would not be surprised if doctors, hospitals, people that actually injected the drugs, the people that bought the drugs from the compounding company, many of those people will also be sued,” said Fitzpatrick.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they’re considering that option but want more information on the relationships between the compounding pharmacy and the hundreds of hospitals and clinics that received its products.

Day, the attorney in Tennessee, said the clinics and doctors that purchase their drugs from compounding pharmacies or manufacturers could be held liable for negligence because they are in a better position to determine the safety of the medicine than the patients.

“Did they use due care in determining from whom to buy these drugs?” Day said.

Terry Dawes, a Michigan attorney who has filed at least 10 federal lawsuits in the case, said in traditional product liability cases, a pharmaceutical distributor could be liable.

“We are looking at any conceivable sources of recovery for our clients including pharmaceutical supply places that may have dealt with this company in the past,” he said.

Ten years ago, seven fungal meningitis illnesses and deaths were linked to injectable steroid from a South Carolina compounding pharmacy. That resulted in fewer than a dozen lawsuits, a scale much smaller than the litigations mounting up against NECC.

Two companies that insured the South Carolina pharmacy and its operators tried unsuccessfully to deny payouts. An appellate court ruled against their argument that the pharmacy willfully violated state regulations by making multiple vials of the drug without specific prescriptions, but the opinion was unpublished and doesn’t set a precedent for the current litigation.

The lawsuits represent a way for patients and their families recover expenses, but also to hold the pharmacy and others accountable for the incalculable emotional and physical toll of the disease.

A binder of snapshots shows what life is like in the O’Briens’ rural Fentress County, Tenn., home: Dennis hooked up to an IV, Dennis in an antibiotics stupor, bruises on his body from injections and blood tests. He’s had three spinal taps. His 11-day stay in the hospital cost over $ 100,000, which was covered by health insurance.

His wife said she sometimes quietly checks at night to see whether her husband of 35 years is still breathing.

“In my mind, I thought we were going to fight this and get over it. But we are not ever going to get over it,” said Kaye O’Brien.

Marjorie Norwood, a 59-year-old grandmother of three who lives in Ethridge, Tenn., has spent just shy of two months total in the hospital in Nashville battling fungal meningitis after receiving a steroid injection in her back. She was allowed to come home for almost a week around Thanksgiving, but was readmitted after her symptoms worsened.

Family members are still dealing with much uncertainty about her recovery, but they have not filed a lawsuit, said their attorney Mark Chalos. He said Norwood will likely be sent to a rehabilitation facility after her second stay in the hospital rather than return home again.

Marjorie Norwood’s husband, an autoworker, has taken time off work to care for her and they depend on his income and insurance.

“It doesn’t just change her life, it changes everyone else’s life around her because we care about her and want her to be happy and well and have everything that she needs,” said her daughter, Melanie Norwood.

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“The Voice” finale taps Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and the Killers

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The season finale of “The Voice” has enlisted some high-profile talent to help send the show’s third cycle off with a bang.

Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and The Killers have been tapped to perform on the two-hour extravaganza, which will culminate with the crowning of a new champion, NBC said Wednesday.

An additional special guest will be named at a later date, the network added.

Rihanna will perform her song “Diamonds,” while “American Idol” alum Clarkson – who has served as a guest mentor on the show, as well as hosting the rival singing competition “Duets” – is set to sing “Catch My Breath.”

The Killers, meanwhile, will play their single “Runaways,” and Mars will debut the song “When I Was Your Man” from his sophomore album “Unorthodox Jukebox,” which was released Tuesday.

The season finale of “The Voice” will air live on December 18 at 8 p.m.

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Stock futures point to flat-to-lower start

LONDON (Reuters) – Stock futures pointed to a flat-to-lower open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.1 percent at 0950 GMT (4.50 a.m. ET).

Contracts on the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 were flat in percentage terms.

Japan’s Nikkei <.n225> average surged above 9,700 for the first time in eight months, led by exporters, as the yen fell to a multi-month low on mounting expectations of aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan after a general election at the weekend.</.n225>

European shares slipped on Thursday after persistent concern about U.S. austerity measures that could hit growth in the world’s largest economy overshadowed fresh stimulus steps from the Federal Reserve.

Google’s navigation tool has returned to the iPhone, months after Apple‘s home-grown mapping service flopped, prompting user complaints, the firing of an executive and a public apology from Apple‘s CEO. [ID:nL1E8ND0P2]

Adobe Systems , the maker of Photoshop software, reports results, expected to show earnings per share fell to $ 0.57 in its fourth quarter, from $ 0.67 one year earlier.

GrainCorp Ltd on Thursday rejected a sweetened $ 2.9 billion bid from Archer Daniels Midland , putting pressure on the U.S. agribusiness giant to boost its offer for Australia’s last major independent grains handler.

Knight Capital Group Inc expects to make a decision on its future ownership by early next week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The U.S. unit of Britain’s BAE Systems Plc said it has won a contract valued at up to $ 400 million to maintain and service more than 300 U.S. Navy trainer aircraft, beating out incumbent Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies , and L-3 Communications .

The Pentagon will pay about 4 percent less for each new Lockheed Martin Corp F-35A fighter jet when it signs a deal worth $ 3.8 billion with the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor on Friday, according to sources familiar with the deal.

American Airlines creditors want a potential merger with US Airways Group Inc to be an all-stock deal rather than one that pays some claims in cash, three people familiar with the matter said, in a move that underscores confidence in a merged airline.

Solar installer SolarCity is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq after halving the value of its initial public offering. The deal has been highly anticipated in clean tech and venture capital circles as alternative energy startups have had a difficult time attracting investor interest.

The U.S. Labor Dept releases first-time claims for jobless benefits for the week ended December 8 at 1330 GMT (8.30 a.m. ET). They were expected to show 370,000 new filings, a repeat of the previous weeks figure.

The U.S. Commerce Dept’s November retail sales, also due out 1330 GMT (8.30 a.m. ET), were forecast to show a 0.5 percent rise, compared with a 0.3 percent decrease in October. Excluding automobiles, sales are expected to be unchanged, a repeat of the October level.

Producer prices were forecast to show a 0.5 percent decrease compared with a 0.2 percent drop in October. Excluding volatile food and energy items, PPI is expected to rise 0.2 percent versus with a 0.2 percent decrease in October.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 2.99 points, or 0.02 percent, to 13,245.45 on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> inched up just 0.64 of a point, or 0.04 percent, to 1,428.48. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 8.49 points, or 0.28 percent, to end at 3,013.81.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

(Reporting By Francesco Canepa. Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)

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Australian prank call radio to donate profits to nurse’s family

CANBERRA (Reuters) – The Australian radio station behind a prank call to a British hospital will donate its advertising revenue until the end of the year to a fund for the family of the nurse who apparently took her own life after the stunt, the company said on Tuesday.

Southern Cross Austereo, parent company of Sydney radio station 2Day FM, said it would donate all advertising revenue, with a minimum contribution of A$ 500,000 ($ 525,000), to a memorial fund for the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who answered the telephone at the hospital treating Prince William’s pregnant wife, Kate.

The company has suspended the Sydney-based announcers, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, scrapped their “Hot 30″ programme and suspended advertising on the station in the wake of the Saldanha’s death. Southern Cross said it would resume advertising on its station from Thursday.

“It is a terrible tragedy and our thoughts continue to be with the family,” Southern Cross Chief Executive Officer Rhys Holleran said in a statement.

“We hope that by contributing to a memorial fund we can help to provide the Saldanha family with the support they need at this very difficult time.”

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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New tests could hamper food outbreak detection

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation’s ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.

Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient’s illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.

The problem: These new tests can’t detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.

“It’s like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don’t know where it came from,” explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ’s fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.

“These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick,” said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.

That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe’s peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.

It all comes down to what’s called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient’s bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don’t require it.

Here’s the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what’s there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.

Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.

There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it’s time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.

But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you’re a sick patient.

What’s in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.

This isn’t just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

If you were the patient, “you’d want to know how you got sick,” she said.

PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe’s peanut butter.

Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren’t very many illnesses in any individual state.

To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn’t lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.

But it’s not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country’s largest testing labs.

A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.

Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.

“As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques,” Lieberman said.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Elijah Wood, Aaron Paul rally fans to save north Hollywood taco joint

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Elijah Wood and Aaron Paul are on a mission to save a North Hollywood taco stand.

The actors are rallying fans around Henry‘s Tacos, which has been on the corner of Tujunga and Moorpark for 51 years and is closing December 31 due to a conflict with the building’s landlord.

In an announcement posted on Facebook, the stand’s owner, Janis Hood, said that running the restaurant is too much of a burden for her – but the landlord, Mehran Ebrahimpour, isn’t allowing “prospective buyers committed to continuing the tradition” to take over the lease.

The reason, Hood believes, is because she “unwittingly” angered him by nominating Henry’s to become for a Historic Cultural Monument a year ago. Ultimately, the city council never voted on her request, but the damage was done.

Once loyal customer Wood heard the news, he immediately took to Twitter: “Los Angeles institution, Henry’s Tacos to shut,” Wood tweeted. “Please retweet. Very sad situation.”

Over 250 followers and counting have heard his cry, including a few famous friends like Aaron Paul, Colin Hanks and “Bridesmaids” director Paul Feig.

“This can’t happen. Save LA history,” Feig added, after retweeting Wood’s words.

But instead of just wishing for a Christmas miracle, Paul has a plan – not to mention a cool opportunity for his fans. The “Breaking Bad” star is asking “the masses” to join him for lunch this coming Sunday.

“We must save @HenrysTacos from closing,” he tweeted. “Come join me for lunch this Sunday at 2pm!! Join the masses and eat some tacos!! Tell your friends.”

While he may bring Henry’s some extra business before serving its last burrito, owner Hood makes it seem like the chances of changing Henry’s fate are slim.

“The current prospective buyers have agreed to all the landlord’s terms, but he has ceased communicating with them,” she wrote. “Therefore, I have given my notice and it has been accepted by the landlord.”

Neither Hood nor Ebrahimpour immediately responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.

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Pensions plans ‘will cost jobs’

11 December 2012 Last updated at 05:42 ET

The CBI has renewed its attack on a European scheme aimed at strengthening pension finances – claiming it will lead to thousands of job cuts.

The proposals, first outlined by the European Commission in 2010, aim to make company pension schemes more robust if the firm goes bust.

But the CBI said the plans were “completely unnecessary” and would add billions to schemes’ costs.

The UK government is continuing to press for the plans to be dropped.

Costs and jobs

One of the Commission’s aims is to bring the solvency rules for occupational pension schemes in three years time in line with its so-called “Solvency 2″ rules, which will be aimed at strengthening the finances of insurance companies.

This would mean that a company pension scheme would need to cover the full cost of pensions, in case the employer went bust. Normally, a scheme never has to cover the full cost of paying pensions all at once.

A study for the CBI by economic consultants Oxford Economics claimed that the changes could result in extra costs of £350bn over 10 years and 180,000 jobs could be lost.

“Imposing £350bn more costs on business would be a disaster for the economy and for pension saving,” said CBI chief policy director Katja Hall.

“The long-term economic outlook is so fragile and uncertain that it is crazy to entertain proposals which would cost jobs and cut so deeply into our long-term growth and competitiveness.

“We have a tough regulatory system in this country, so these changes are completely unnecessary.”

‘Reckless’

The plans have been criticised by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), the TUC, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW).

In June, Pensions Minister Steve Webb said the government remained “resolute” in its determination to fight off the Commission’s plan and to make the European authorities “see sense”.

He said the rules would be pointless and so onerous for employers that more schemes would simply be shut down altogether.

“I continue to meet senior Commission officials, to persuade them to rethink their reckless plans,” he said.

The Commission said it had yet to make any firm legislative proposals.

BBC News – Business

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