Two HIV-positive patients in the United States who underwent bone marrow transplants for cancer have stopped anti-retroviral therapy and still show no detectable sign of the HIV virus, researchers said Wednesday.
The Harvard University researchers stressed it was too early to say the men have been cured, but said it was an encouraging sign that the virus hasn’t rebounded in their blood months after drug treatment ended.
The first person reported to be cured of HIV, American Timothy Ray Brown, underwent a stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat his leukemia. He was reported by his German doctors to have been cured of HIV two years later.
Brown’s doctors used a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that provides resistance against HIV. So far, no one has observed similar results using ordinary donor cells such as those given to the two patients by the Harvard University researchers.
The researchers, Timothy Henrich and Daniel Kuritzkes of the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, announced last year that blood samples taken from the men – who both had blood cancers – showed no traces of the HIV virus eight months after they received bone marrow transplants to replace cancerous blood cells with healthy donor cells. The men were still on anti-HIV drugs at the time.
The men have both since stopped anti-retroviral therapy – one 15 weeks ago and the other seven weeks ago – and show no signs of the virus, Henrich told an international AIDS conference in Malaysia on Wednesday.
“They are doing very well,” Henrich said. “While these results are exciting, they do not yet indicate that the men have been cured. Only time will tell.”
The HIV virus may be hiding in other organs such as the liver, spleen or brain and could return months later, he warned.
Further testing of the men’s cells, plasma and tissue for at least a year will help give a clearer picture on the full impact of the transplant on HIV persistence, he said.
Kuritzkes said the patients will be put back on the drugs if there is a viral rebound.
A rebound will show that other sites are important reservoirs of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring these reservoirs will be needed in developing a cure, Henrich said.
“These findings clearly provide important new information that might well alter the current thinking about HIV and gene therapy,” Kevin Robert Frost, chief executive of The Foundation of AIDS Research, said in a statement. “While stem cell transplantation is not a viable option for people with HIV on a broad scale because of its costs and complexity, these new cases could lead us to new approaches to treating, and ultimately even eradicating, HIV.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/07/03/2-stem-cell-patients-stop-hiv-treatment-no-virus-seen/#ixzz2YH

By Diane Bullock

Americans are happy to spend as we mark the Fourth of July, but it’s often not U.S. companies that should be celebrating.

As humorist Erma Bombeck famously mused, the way we’ve expressed national pride on July 4 has morphed over the years from ceremonious shows of military might on Pennsylvania Avenue to casual barbecues in the backyard. But whether we honor this 237th birthday in a martial or merry way — with the exception of the potato salad and the flies — little is left of the holiday that’s authentically American.

Much like the other 364 days of the year, July 4 finds the American dollar going to products and goods made in China. But what adds a special sting to this particular day is its ironic dependence on a foreign country to commemorate our autonomy.

‘You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.’

Erma Bombeck
Starting with the very hallmark of the holiday — the emblem of our freedom, the subject of our national anthem, that gallantly streaming symbol to which we pledge our allegiance, an object so sacred that its public desecration is a misdemeanor offense — the American flag, well…isn’t.

Of the $3.6 million worth of stars and stripes imported every year to the U.S., $3.3 million worth comes from China. They flutter, not just over our front porches, but over our government buildings — even the federal ones. The farming out of our flags has become so pervasive that lawmakers in the House of Representatives are trying to stop the government from buying and flying flags made outside of the U.S.

Going down the holiday shopping list, those disposable dishes, utensils, cups, napkins, and tablecloths are largely outsourced to China, squaring with the U.S. trade deficit totaling $62 billion in paper, plastic, and wood products to the country. And if Congress allows the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods Inc. SFD -0.05% , to be purchased by Shuanghui International, the Chinese will be processing our hot dogs for next year’s Independence Day cookout — right atop our Chinese-made outdoor grills.

For some Fourth of July fun, American families will no doubt participate in one of our favorite national pastimes, but playing catch with a Rawlings JAH +0.62% minor league or consumer baseball is another homerun for Chinese manufacturing. Tossing the Frisbee? That American cultural touchstone — along with the Hula-Hoop, Silly String, and the Slip ‘N Slide — hasn’t belonged to Wham-O since the iconic toy company was bought out by Hong Kong group Cornerstone Overseas Investments Ltd. in 2006.

Click to Play
Fast and furious cleaning takes over households
Packaged products giants are increasingly catering to people whose cleaning style is to clean with a million touchups in as little time as possible. And they are willing to pay for products that help them do this.

When the sun goes down, our “great anniversary Festival,” as John Adams called it, is capped off with “Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.” Macy’s M +0.19% annual televised extravaganza is still homegrown by California-based Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, but fireworks from China — despite their failure to pass U.S. safety controls — are making record profits for the country’s manufacturers. In 2011, Chinese pyrotechnics were the overwhelming majority of all American-imported fireworks at $223.6 million out of a total of $232.5 million.

Perhaps we should return to celebrating the Declaration of Independence with the pomp of military parades. Well, not only are Chinese factories churning out our service members’ uniforms, but defense contractors like Raytheon RTN +0.58% , L-3 Communications LLL +0.87% , Boeing BA +1.46% , and Lockheed Martin LMT +0.92% are making weapons with Chinese parts.

And when the U.S. markets open the morning after, it might be events in China that will determine how well our S&P 500 SPX +0.28% performs — as recent history has taught us.

If we don’t like it, we can always go cry to our George Washington bobbleheads…courtesy of you-know-who.

Diane Bullock is a freelance writer and Minyanville contributor .

Delay Announced for Penalties and Reporting Requirements of the Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions

The Obama Administration announced on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, that it would delay the penalties and reporting requirements of the Employer Shared Responsibility provisions (also known as the employer “play or pay” mandate) of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) until 2015. The Administration’s announcement added, that “within the next week, we will publish formal guidance describing this transition.”  The announcement noted that the decision to delay was in response to comments from interested parties concerned with the complexity of the proposed Shared Responsibility regulations amid looming implementation deadlines.  The announcement further noted that the delay would allow time to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law and provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers move toward making health coverage affordable and accessible to their employees.  Accordingly, both the employer and insurer reporting requirements – and any penalties under the employer mandate – have been delayed until 2015.
 
In the interim, the Administration intends to simplify certain requirements under the ACA that will now be effective in 2015 – annual informational reporting under Sections 6055 and 6056 of the Internal Revenue Code:  

•   Section 6055 reporting is required by insurers and employers that sponsor self-insured plans on each individual for whom they provide the coverage.  

•   Section 6056 reporting generally applies to certain large employers with respect to the terms and conditions of health coverage offered to their full-time employees during the prior year.  

It is expected that these reporting requirements will be part of any enforcement mechanism used to assess penalties due under the employer mandate or the individual mandate (the individual mandate continues to be effective in 2014, although individuals who are eligible for non-calendar year coverage may wait until their 2014 plan year to enroll without penalty).  Additional guidance simplifying these reporting requirements is expected later this summer. 

The announcement also stated that the Administration is working to adapt and be flexible about reporting requirements as it did back in April, when it turned the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application. During the transition period in 2014, the Administration encourages employers to voluntarily extend coverage to employees in accordance with the employer mandate, in preparation for 2015.  
 
The delay does not affect the availability of premium credits for individuals eligible for federal subsidies (although without the informational reporting under Sections 6055 and 6056, it remains to be seen how eligibility for such credits will be verified).  Nor does the delay affect any other provision of the ACA.  
 
In the short term, the delay reduces the financial and regulatory burdens on businesses that otherwise had to comply by 2014 with the employer “play or pay” mandate. Employers should continue to evaluate their options under the ACA and monitor changes to these requirements.   

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ADP maintains a staff of dedicated professionals who carefully monitor federal and state legislative and regulatory measures affecting human resource, payroll, tax and benefits administration, and help ensure that ADP systems are updated as relevant laws evolve. For the latest on how federal and state tax law changes may impact your business, visit the ADP Eye on Washington Web page located at www.adp.com/regulatorynews.

ADP is committed to assisting businesses with increased compliance requirements resulting from rapidly evolving legislation. Our goal is to minimize your administrative burden across the entire spectrum of payroll, tax, HR and benefits, so that you can focus on running your business. This information is provided as a courtesy to assist in your understanding of the impact of certain regulatory requirements and should not be construed as tax or legal advice. Such information is by nature subject to revision and may not be the most current information available. ADP encourages interested readers to consult with appropriate legal and/or tax advisors. Please be advised that calls to and from ADP may be monitored or recorded.  

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Last updated: July 3, 2013

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By Darrell Delamaide

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Although they sang Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in Zagreb to mark Croatia’s official entry into the European Union Sunday night, there was little to be joyful about either there or in other EU capitals.

As Croatia limped to the finish line battered by five years of recession, it was far from certain that the former Yugoslav republic’s accession as the EU’s 28th member was an untarnished blessing for either party.

The country immediately became the third-poorest nation in the bloc, and if it were able to join the euro, it would almost certainly be the next in line for a bailout.

Shutterstock Enlarge Image
Croatia has joined the European Union as its 28th member, but Europe is hardly celebrating.
For the EU itself, the prospect of another poor peripheral country seeking refuge (Bulgaria and Romania, the last two to join in 2007, are the poorest nations) was hardly a vindication of European integration’s tonic effect on small economies.

Opponents of EU membership charge that just getting ready for EU entry has crippled Croatia in the same manner as Brussels’ neoliberal ideology has damaged other peripheral countries like Greece and Spain.

“Croatian governments,” Srecko Horvat and Igor Stiks, organizers of the annual Subversive Festival in Zagreb, wrote this week in an op-ed for the Guardian, “have followed obediently the EU’s austerity advice, even before the accession.”

They rattle off a litany of complaints about the resulting state of the economy in Croatia — an unemployment rate of 20%, with a youth jobless rate topping 50%; foreign debt that has mushroomed from $3 billion when the country gained independence in 1991 to more than $60 billion now; and a decline from being the most prosperous republic in Yugoslavia to now having virtually no industry and relying more heavily on tourism, which accounts for only 20% of gross domestic product.

All this, Horvat and Stiks say, means that “Croatia has not actually joined only the EU; in reality, it has become a fully fledged member of the EU periphery.”

Enlarge Image
The European Union is growing.
For the dubious benefit of being exposed to the German economy, Croatia is cutting itself off from other former Yugoslav republics — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro — as it becomes the EU border raised against these other Balkan nations.

One of the EU’s longest external land borders at 1,300 kilometers (800 miles), Horvat and Stiks write, “will, by the mere functioning of its police apparatus, necessarily cut Croatia off from its immediate and natural surrounding and bring further isolation from its neighbors.”

The Slovenian daily Delo said that the Balkan countries may be the only ones that still believe in the EU, even though they are “the periphery of the periphery.” Read summary in German press review (in German).

Meanwhile, Iceland has ended its negotiations to join the EU, Sasa Vidmajer writes, while Ukraine is dithering and public opinion in Turkey has turned against the EU.

Even though Croatia cannot immediately join the euro EURUSD -0.1277% , it is maintaining a fixed exchange rate with the common currency to qualify for joining, effectively depriving it of the chance to devalue and make its tourism industry more competitive, blogger Alen Mattich points out this week on the Wall Street Journal’s Moneybeat.

As it is, the country’s tourist infrastructure can hardly compete with more developed countries like Italy or Spain, and even Greece.

Politicians in Lisbon apparently didn’t get the memo declaring the euro-zone debt crisis over. The long-dormant drama re-awakened this week, with Portuguese bond yields soaring to alarming levels as the country’s government teetered and investors pondered the possibility Lisbon could require another bailout. European markets were hit hardest, but U.S. and other investors will watch closely. Here’s what you need to know:

What exactly is going on?

It started Monday with the resignation of Vitor Gaspar, Portugal’s finance minister, austerity advocate and architect of the country’s international bailout. The country’s foreign minister, who heads one of the party’s in the coalition government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, followed suit on Tuesday, stoking calls for early elections. Coelhos is resisting, but markets fear some renegotiation of the bailout terms or even a second rescue that could hit bondholders may eventually be in the works.

Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak, notes that the turmoil marks an unfamiliar turn for Portugal, which has long been viewed as the “good citizen” of the euro-zone drama.

What does it mean for European markets?

Portugal was ground zero, of course. The bid yield on the 10-year government bond topped 8% for the first time since last November (see chart above) while the bond recently traded at a yield near 7.69%, according to Tradeweb. If Portugal weren’t already in a bailout program, that would raise big questions about its ability to fund itself. More worryingly, borrowing costs for other stressed euro-zone countries, including Italy and Spain, continued to rise, though they so far remain far off crisis levels.

European stocks tumbled, while Portugal’s main index dropped nearly 6%.

Will this finally trigger the European Central Bank’s OMT program?

Probably not. According to the ECB’s own guidelines a country must be “regaining market access” in order to qualify for the program of potentially unlimited short-dated bond buys. While the ECB’s guidance has been “a little blurry,” it’s unlikely that Portugal, despite having issued some new debt his year, would qualify, say analysts at Danske Bank. They note remarks by ECB President Mario Draghi in March, who said:

Countries should be in the market under their own steam. To be in the market, I think I clarified what we mean: being able to issue along the yield curve, being able to issue to a fairly broad category of investors, and being able to issue certain quantities.

That’s a test Portugal doesn’t yet meet, they say.

What does this mean for U.S. markets?

U.S. stocks were under pressure, but stock-index futures had trimmed initial, Portugal-inspired losses after a round of stronger-than-expected private-sector jobs data from ADP and initial weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department. For now, expect investors to keep one eye on Europe, though the main focus is likely to remain on U.S. economic data, particularly Friday’s June nonfarm U.S. payrolls figures, and what it means for the Fed’s monetary stimulus efforts.

That said, Portugal’s latest round of turmoil combined with mounting unrest in Egypt are set to increase uncertainty, “which the market does not like generally, but certainly not now” with the Fed signaling it’s set to seek the normalization of interest rates, said Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank. The prospect of slower Fed stimulus has served to boost bond yields around the world, including the euro-zone’s troubled periphery.

What does it mean for commodities?

The dollar index DXY -0.40% is under pressure Thursday, reversing some of its recent gains on ideas political turmoil could unseat the Fed’s tapering plans, observes Miller Tabak’s Wilkinson.

“Gold, copper and crude oil prices are each holding their own as investors have a rethink about the prospects for the greenback on the back of a volatility spike,” he said.

– William L. Watts

Follow The Tell @thetellblog

Follow William @wlwatts

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By Michael Casey

Think of it as the financial-market equivalent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

When China’s government eventually fulfills its pledge to lift restrictions on international fund flows into and out of its financial system, the Chinese economy will undergo profound changes — with global implications.

Chinese producers will lose access to a source of abundant, artificially cheap credit that fueled two decades of prodigious growth. In China itself, the dismantling of capital controls will test the profitability of state-owned enterprises and thus challenge the financial foundations of the Communist Party. And for the global economy, it will reshape the geographic balance between savers and spenders.

Reuters
Chinese leaders may speed up the removal of capital controls, which have fueled the country’s speculative credit bubble.
If we’re to take China’s top central banker at his word, this paradigm shift will come faster than many have assumed. People’s Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan said Friday that the government intends to accelerate its program for stripping back capital controls. Those controls, among many other restrictions, block Chinese citizens from sending more than $50,000 a year offshore for anything other than to fulfill an import contract.

Zhou’s comment failed to garner much attention. Investors were more obsessed with his assessment of the turmoil in Chinese money markets, where a credit crunch had pushed rates sharply higher. But if Zhou is to be believed, they should start paying attention.

With 102 trillion yuan, or $16 trillion, sitting in deposits at China’s tightly controlled banks, there’s enormous potential for the relaxation of capital account rules to drive dormant Chinese money into investments overseas. A mere 10% of that total is almost equivalent to the gross domestic product of Canada.

Then there’s the prospect for money flows into China. A total $636 billion in international portfolio investments went to emerging markets in 2012, according to the Institute of International Finance. Opening up access to yuan-denominated Chinese assets would likely draw a major portion of those funds.

Caixin Online
People’s Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan
What’s more, removing capital controls would create pressure for liberalizing the financial sector, setting up a possible bonanza for foreign banks, insurers and investment firms. Their CEOs salivate at the idea of hundreds of millions of new customers.

Yet the risks, both to China and its trading partners, are daunting.

If the country’s biggest savers used their newfound freedom to seek higher returns in foreign currencies, the outflow would force the PBOC to ratchet up or abandon its mandated “ceiling” on deposit rates so as to repair banks’ deposit balances. This in turn would force banks to drive up the rates they charge for loans to stay profitable.

Higher borrowing costs would leave Chinese exporters — already struggling with higher wages and a stronger yuan — unable to compete with cheaper competitors from around Asia. It could mean massive job losses.

Click to Play
Clashes in Xinjiang expose ethnic stresses
A week of clashes in China’s Xinjiang province between members of the Uighur minority and the military has raised tensions there. WSJ reporter Brian Spegele tells us about the Chinese government’s efforts to calm the region.

And they would pose a threat to many of China’s 100,000 or so state-owned enterprises, an integral feature of the country’s political structure. SOEs now average a return on assets of less than 5%, which is already below their cost of capital, says Nicholas Lardy, a China specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Lardy expects the government to remove the cap on interest rates before it lifts capital controls, so as to gradually ease into the change. Such a move, he says, will force many SOEs to sell assets or shut down.

These firms’ problems will in turn hurt commodity producers in places such Australia or Brazil, which have plied Chinese industry with raw materials.

Despite these risks, the Chinese government says it’s moving ahead with capital liberalization. Zhou’s comment left it unclear whether a previously set 2015 deadline had now been brought forward. Nonetheless, his statement underscores a determination to deliver a substantially more open financial system in relatively short order, even if many economists expect some degree of capital control to remain for many years after that.

One reason for the urgency: Chinese leaders, who’ve already taken numerous measures to increase offshore transactions in yuan, want it to become an internationalized currency, giving them more clout on the world stage. This is impossible while the yuan remains “nonconvertible” on the capital account.

Just as importantly, Zhou and others also know capital controls are at the root of many of the country’s newest ills, including the surge in debt that’s now feeding fears of a U.S.-style credit bubble. The controls have fostered a system of financial repression that exploits China’s famously frugal households and companies, whose combined savings rate stands at a world-beating 50% of GDP. They also create vast distortions in the economy.

Capital controls left savers no option but to park their money in domestic bank accounts at punitive rates. (For many years, the ceiling deposit rate was fixed below inflation.) In so doing, they provided a giant, guaranteed pool of low-cost funding for Chinese banks, which could profitably re-lend the funds at or above a mandated “floor” lending rate. The result: a river of low-cost credit, funneled relentlessly to state-owned enterprises, private merchandise exporters, and infrastructure and property developers. Those borrowers’ debts, now worth close to 200% of GDP, have financed a nationwide network of unoccupied buildings, underutilized toll roads and cavernous, empty train terminals.

With foreign demand for its exports waning, China’s leaders know they must get off this treadmill. They must transform a saver-subsidized investment-dependent system into a more sustainable, consumer-led economy. Indeed, the entire world needs them to succeed at this. Sooner or later, that means China’s capital account must be opened.

So, buckle up.

Michael Casey is managing editor for the Americas at DJ FX Trader, a foreign-exchange news service from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. Follow him on Twitter @mikejcasey.

@SHRM: MIDWEEK MOTIVATION:

“You don’t lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.” –Dwight Eisenhower

By Darrell Delamaide

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Although they sang Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” in Zagreb to mark Croatia’s official entry into the European Union Sunday night, there was little to be joyful about either there or in other EU capitals.

As Croatia limped to the finish line battered by five years of recession, it was far from certain that the former Yugoslav republic’s accession as the EU’s 28th member was an untarnished blessing for either party.

The country immediately became the third-poorest nation in the bloc, and if it were able to join the euro, it would almost certainly be the next in line for a bailout.

Shutterstock Enlarge Image
Croatia has joined the European Union as its 28th member, but Europe is hardly celebrating.
For the EU itself, the prospect of another poor peripheral country seeking refuge (Bulgaria and Romania, the last two to join in 2007, are the poorest nations) was hardly a vindication of European integration’s tonic effect on small economies.

Opponents of EU membership charge that just getting ready for EU entry has crippled Croatia in the same manner as Brussels’ neoliberal ideology has damaged other peripheral countries like Greece and Spain.

“Croatian governments,” Srecko Horvat and Igor Stiks, organizers of the annual Subversive Festival in Zagreb, wrote this week in an op-ed for the Guardian, “have followed obediently the EU’s austerity advice, even before the accession.”

They rattle off a litany of complaints about the resulting state of the economy in Croatia — an unemployment rate of 20%, with a youth jobless rate topping 50%; foreign debt that has mushroomed from $3 billion when the country gained independence in 1991 to more than $60 billion now; and a decline from being the most prosperous republic in Yugoslavia to now having virtually no industry and relying more heavily on tourism, which accounts for only 20% of gross domestic product.

All this, Horvat and Stiks say, means that “Croatia has not actually joined only the EU; in reality, it has become a fully fledged member of the EU periphery.”

Enlarge Image
The European Union is growing.
For the dubious benefit of being exposed to the German economy, Croatia is cutting itself off from other former Yugoslav republics — Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro — as it becomes the EU border raised against these other Balkan nations.

One of the EU’s longest external land borders at 1,300 kilometers (800 miles), Horvat and Stiks write, “will, by the mere functioning of its police apparatus, necessarily cut Croatia off from its immediate and natural surrounding and bring further isolation from its neighbors.”

The Slovenian daily Delo said that the Balkan countries may be the only ones that still believe in the EU, even though they are “the periphery of the periphery.” Read summary in German press review (in German).

Meanwhile, Iceland has ended its negotiations to join the EU, Sasa Vidmajer writes, while Ukraine is dithering and public opinion in Turkey has turned against the EU.

Even though Croatia cannot immediately join the euro EURUSD -0.1277% , it is maintaining a fixed exchange rate with the common currency to qualify for joining, effectively depriving it of the chance to devalue and make its tourism industry more competitive, blogger Alen Mattich points out this week on the Wall Street Journal’s Moneybeat.

As it is, the country’s tourist infrastructure can hardly compete with more developed countries like Italy or Spain, and even Greece.