Chain-smoker star in health drive

India's anti-smoking campaign has a new ambassador - chain smoking
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
Health Minister Ambumani Ramadoss found a new face for the cause in
Khan after he pledged to quit smoking on the eve of his 40th birthday.

Shah Rukh Khan celebrated his birthday on 2 November and in an
interview to an Indian media channel said he would try to quit
smoking.

The health ministry is trying to ban smoking scenes in films.

Inspiring youth

Shah Rukh Khan has rarely been seen without a lit cigarette in his hand.

He has also not been shy of puffing away while being photographed or
interviewed on camera, unlike other Bollywood actors who smoke.

In a letter to the film star, Dr Ramadoss said "such a public health
initiative taken by a charismatic personality like you would go a long
way in inspiring and protecting the youths of our country from being
addicted to the use of tobacco".

He smokes and quits for himself and I smoke for myself. I won't leave
it because he does

Martin Lewis

The federal health ministry has been seriously pushing its
anti-smoking campaign and this is yet another initiative taken in that
direction.

Earlier this year the ministry announced its move to ban images of
smoking in films and on television. It is currently working out the
finer details of the ban with the information and broadcasting
ministry.

If the ban comes into effect it would mean that no new movies or TV
programmes could portray smoking. Old films would have to carry
warnings.

Celebrity endorsers

The health ministry has used celebrities in the past to promote their
health campaigns.

Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai were roped in to urge people to get
their children immunised against polio.

So will Shah Rukh Khan prove to be a motivator for people to quit cigarettes?

People on the streets of Mumbai (Bombay) have mixed feelings.

Twenty-five-year-old Martin Lewis says "He smokes and quits for
himself and I smoke for myself. I won't leave it because he does."

Twenty-nine year old media professional and regular smoker Kaustubh
Mahajan thinks it would be very difficult for Khan to quit after being
a chain smoker for years.

"It will not motivate me to throw mine. However, a reasonable number
of youngsters would certainly follow his cue as they are affected by
what film stars do," he said.

The actor himself is not in the country as he is busy shooting for
Bollywood movie in New York.

His office confirmed they had received the letter from the health ministry.

But the big question is - is he living up to his pledge and not smoking?

www.news.bbc.co.uk

Schwarzenegger focuses on energy in first phase of China trip

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved through a packed schedule on his
first official business day in China, from a morning speech praising a
Silicon Valley-designed solar chip as part of "the future" of energy
efficiency to a ceremonial dinner at the historic Great Hall of the
People.

Schwarzenegger, who arrived Monday for a three city trade mission,
used his first full day in Beijing to highlight renewable energy and
preside over a series of business roundtables with Chinese and
California business leaders.

He was set to address students at Quinghua University and host a
showcase of California products Wednesday before departing for
Shanghai in the evening. He heads to Hong Kong later in the week.

The day featured an announcement of at least one high-profile business
deal between a California company and a Chinese media partnership.

Mark Mosher of the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth
said an agreement had been struck between Alameda-based UT Starcom and
two Chinese media companies to deliver television over the Internet.
UT Starcom produces the delivery equipment; a partnership of Shanghai
Media and China Telecom will provide content and market the service to
Chinese subscribers.

Mosher was quick to emphasize that the deal had been in the works long
before Schwarzenegger's trade mission. But he said the publicity
surrounding the governor's visit prompted the companies to announce
the agreement here.

"This is going to be a huge deal" in China, Mosher said.

Schwarzenegger aides know not to hype business deals connected to his
trade missions.

After a 2004 trip to Israel, the governor boasted that he had struck
agreements to bring almost 1,000 jobs to California.

But officials at those companies later said they made the deals
without help from Schwarzenegger or his administration.

Earlier Tuesday, the governor promoted energy efficiency at a
conference sponsored by former President Bush and his public policy
school at Texas A&M University.

Bush introduced Schwarzenegger and described him as a "dear personal friend."

The governor's remarks came as China struggles to balance its
explosive growth with its energy needs and outsized power consumption.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that at least one major power
plant is completed in China each week - usually fueled by coal, which
produces high levels of air pollution.

Schwarzenegger praised an innovative solar chip - designed by Silicon
Valley-based SunPower Corp. and manufactured in China - as "an amazing
China-California success story" that had great potential in both
countries.

"This is the future, ladies and gentlemen," Schwarzenegger said,
hoisting the chip as cameras whirred.

Schwarzenegger's environmental record received mixed reviews in a
report last week by the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental group.

While praising his efforts to pass legislation promoting solar roofs
and his overall leadership on the problem of global warming, the
report concluded that "those achievements were overshadowed by more
potentially far-reaching, though less publicized decisions to aid
developers, energy companies, big corporate farms, and other polluter
interests."

Schwarzenegger and a 79-member delegation are on a mission to promote
California products and encourage Chinese officials to crack down on
rampant piracy of intellectual property - from movies and music to
pharmaceuticals, wine and designer apparel.

First Lady Maria Shriver kept her own schedule Tuesday, touring the
Maples Women's Psychological Counseling Center, which offers aid to
victims of domestic abuse in Beijing. The center, which receives no
government money, has taken 80,000 calls since its opening in 1988.

Shriver, who has promoted women's issues during her tenure, also met
privately with two clients of the center.

"I wanted to learn about the struggles of the women in China and the
struggle about starting a center like this," Shriver told reporters
after her visit.

The visit was considered significant because domestic violence and
other social ills are largely hidden from public view.

www.mercurynews.com

Abbott to License J&J Catheter Technology

Pharmaceutical firm Abbott Laboratories said Tuesday that it is
licensing a catheter technology from health care products maker
Johnson & Johnson.

Abbott said its deal is depends on J&J completing its acquisition of
Guidant Corp. J&J announced separately Tuesday that it had
renegotiated the deal with the troubled pacemaker manufacturer for a
lower price.

Catheters are the flexible tubes used in a range of surgeries,
particularly heart operations. Abbott said the license covers certain
technology for developing and commercializing "rapid exchange"
delivery systems and related products such as drug-covered stents.

Abbott did not provide financial details of the deal.

Shares of Abbott Laboratories rose 98 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $41.50.

www.forbes.com

Scientists Express New Hope for Malaria Vaccine

Scientists at an international conference on malaria in Yaounde,
Cameroon, have released new findings, which show major progress has
been made in efforts to create a vaccine for the deadly disease. The
vaccine's proponents hope a partnership with donors will make it
available to the world's poor.

Work has been under way on the candidate vaccine, known as RTS,
S-AS02, for more than two decades. But test results presented at the
Pan-African Malaria Conference in Yaounde Tuesday are being touted by
its makers, American-based pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, as a
critical breakthrough.

Results from a study conducted in cooperation with Mozambique's health
ministry published last year showed the vaccine reduced severe malaria
episodes by more than half.

There had been fears that level of effectiveness would fade over time.

Tuesday's results indicate that, 18 months later, the level of
efficacy has indeed dropped, but only very little.

Inventor, Dr. John Cohen says, if the findings hold up, even in its
current form the vaccine could eventually save hundreds of thousands
of lives every year.

"To put things in perspective, you must remember that it is estimated
that between one and three million kids, mainly, die of malaria every
year in the endemic regions. So a vaccine that can protect with a 50
percent efficacy against the severe form of the disease has the
possibility of protecting against many of these deaths," said Dr.
Cohen. He adds that he's now working to make the vaccine even better.

"We will also be reporting at this MIM conference on a potential
improvement of the vaccine, changing a little bit what we call the
formulation," he said. "We will be testing that new formulation in the
field very soon, over the next year or so. And there is, we feel, a
good chance that this formulation will further increase the level of
efficacy of the vaccine."

Work on the vaccine is being funded through a private-public
partnership, pairing money from GlaxoSmithKline with funding from
donor organizations.

The Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which is managing the clinical
development, last month received more than $107 million from Microsoft
founder Bill Gates.

Its director, Melinda Moree says this new method of funding drug
research is making headway in the fight against diseases endemic in
the developing world.

"For a lot of these diseases that only affect poor countries, the
industry doesn't really have the reward system in place that
encourages them to work on these things. So, for malaria vaccines, for
many years, very few people were working on them," she said.

Ms. Moree says, if hopes for Dr. Cohen's vaccine do pan out, she hopes
that same level of cooperation will go into making it available to
those that need it most.

"We've got over a million kids a year dying of malaria, 2,000 kids a
day are dying of malaria," she said. "We should be putting more money,
more effort into doing something about this. We just need to do
something to stop these deaths."

RTS, S-AS02 is among several candidate vaccines currently in
development. Several phases of testing remain, but researchers hope it
will be on the market by 2010.

www.voanews.com

Cisco Bundles Small Business IP Tools

Linksys One communications platform supports mix of voice, data,
applications and Internet access.

Cisco's Linksys division announced Monday a hosted IP communications
platform for small businesses that offers voice, video, data
networking, business applications, and high speed Internet access
through a single connection from a service provider.

Called Linksys One, the initiative includes an IP Phone, an integrated
switch and router, and a voice gateway, Linksys officials said.

The IP phone is priced at $229; the router, $1195; and the gateway, $279.

Product Specs
Martin De Beer, vice president and general manager for Linksys Small
Business Systems Business Unit, said Linksys One is a plug-and play
system where customers can use one converged services infrastructure
for telephony, data networking, and business applications.

Customers can arrange for the service through a service provider.

"Linksys One provides support and technology for all the needs of a
small business--IP phones, PCs, faxes, as well as a security
concerns," De Beer said.

The Linksys PHM12000 Color Manager IP Phone is SIP-based and includes
a speakerphone voice mail and an application developer toolkit.

The SVR3000 Services Router includes a 16-port LAN switch, which can
host e-mail services, a firewall, and a virtual private network. It
also provides power to all the attached devices, including phones
using Power over Ethernet.

A VGA2000 Analog Voice Gateway integrates with traditional public
telephone system technologies to connect analog phones and fax
machines into the Linksys One network.

All-in-One Approach
With the launch, Cisco is attempting to offer an integrated, low-cost
IP communications system, says Michael Howard, a principal analyst
with Infonetics Research.

"This [product launch] seems to be a convenient, all-in-one package
for small business," said Howard, listing the voice, router, and
security features of the offering.

www.pcworld.com

Microsoft to remove Sony malware from PCs

Microsoft said it would remove controversial copy-protection software
that CDs from music publisher Sony BMG install on personal computers,
deeming it a security risk to PCs running on Windows.

The XCP program, developed by First4Internet in Britain and used on
music CDs by Sony BMG to restrict copying and sharing, has generated
concern amongst computer users, because it acts like virus software
and hides deep inside a computer where it leaves the backdoor open for
other viruses.

"We have analyzed this software and have determined that in order to
help protect our customers, we will add a detection and removal
signature for the rootkit component of the XCP software to the Windows
AntiSpyware beta, which is currently used by millions of users," Jason
Garms, group program manager of the Anti-Malware Technology Team, said
on Microsoft's Technet blog.

Microsoft will also use it in other anti-virus software. "Detection
and removal of this rootkit component will also appear in Windows
Defender when its first public beta is available. We also plan to
include this signature in the December monthly update to the Malicious
Software Removal Tool," Garms added.

(MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
Other computer virus fighters such as Sophos in Britain have offered a
removal kit since Thursday but have stressed it was a tricky operation
resembling open heart surgery.

Sony BMG last week provided a patch to make the program more visible
after the discovery that hackers had taken advantage of the weakness
to install viruses on PCs.

Outcry
Responding to public outcry, the music publishing venture of Japanese
electronics conglomerate Sony Corp. and Germany's Bertelsmann AG also
said on Friday it would temporarily suspend the manufacture of music
CDs containing XCP technology.

Asked to comment, the music publisher referred to its Friday
statement. Last week, Sony BMG was targeted in a class action lawsuit
complaining it had not disclosed the true nature of its
copy-protection software.

Sony BMG's patch does not remove the program, which installs itself on
a Windows-operated personal computer when consumers want to play
certain Sony BMG music CDs. According to programmers it still leaves
a security hole.

That was after the U.S. government had weighed in. A representative
of the U.S. government last week warned entertainment publishers
against using CD and DVD copy protection software that hides inside
computers.

"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property;
it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of
intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the
security measures that people need to adopt in these days," said
Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary the Department of Homeland
Security, at a conference.

The Sony copy-protection software does not install itself on Macintosh
computers or ordinary CD and DVD players.

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