Philip Roth Is Retiring; Amazon Glitch Disables Buy Buttons

Today in books and publishing: Philip Roth confirms his retirement; Amazon‘s mysteriously vanishing buy buttons; Kobo expands to Italy, Kindle considers China; cities in literature.

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Philip Roth wraps it up. One of America’s most celebrated living novelists has been hinting at retirement for a while now. But he didn’t choose to make a big announcement in a prominent stateside literary organ like The New York Review of Books. He chose instead to let it out in interviews with the foreign press over recent weeks. Last month he told Nelly Kaprièlian of French magazine Les Inrockuptibles that he hasn’t written new material in three years, and doesn’t plan to write any new novels. “To tell you the truth, I’m done,” he said frankly, “Nemesis will be my last book … Enough is enough! I no longer feel this fanaticism to write that I have experienced in my life.” He said the same thing in an interview with Italian magazine La Repubblica earlier this month. His publisher Houghton Mifflin confirmed that Roth is entering retirement. It looks the 74-year-old writer will have plenty of time to go over his life story and thoughts on literature with his new biographer, Blake Bailey. [Salon]

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Where did Amazon‘s buy buttons go? Late last night, customers looking to replenish their Kindles with fresh e-books were probably quite frustrated. No matter how hard anyone clicked, there was no way to purchase e-books from Penguin, Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins through Amazon. A company spokesperson later confirmed that it was just a technical slip-up, and buy buttons were quickly restored. But given Amazon’s propensity to punish publishers that don’t bend to its will with disabled buy buttons, this brief black-out set off a minor panic in publishing land. Why were only Big Six publishers affected? Did it have anything to do with the ongoing agency pricing legal battles or the Penguin Random House merger? Though it seems to have been nothing more serious than a technical goof, it’s a stark reminder that Amazon has the ability—as well as the leverage—to shut down publishers’ most important connection with consumers at the click of a mouse. [New York Observer]

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E-reading takes a global turn. E-books may be taking firm holds in the U.S., but they have a long way to go before they became the global format of choice for readers. Italy may be going in an increasingly digital direction soon, with the country’s largest bookseller Mondadori Group partnering with Kobo to stock Touch e-readers in its hundreds of stores. 34,000 e-books will be available for Italian readers. China is another largely untapped market, one that Amazon is eyeing enviously. ZDNet’s Liau Yun Qing reports that Kindles may become available there as early as this month. “If Amazon brings its e-reader to China, it will face competition from Chinese e-commerce player Dangdang which launched its e-reader in July at a retail price of 599 yuan (US$ 79),” she writes. “In comparison, the cheapest Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, which includes “Special Offers”, retails at US$ 119 in the United States.” [ZDNet]

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Cities in literature. Mark Binelli’s new book Detroit City Is the Place to Be is all about the Motor City—its ascent during America’s industrial golden age, and its struggle to redefine itself. Given his obsession with the urban, Publishers Weekly decided to tap Binelli for a list of his favorite books that take specific cities as a central theme. It’s more interesting than most lists on this subject might have been. For instance, he shines a light on Joan Didion not for her classic takes on San Francisco or New York, but for her book Miami. And his favorite books to take on New York—Ben Katchor’s The Jew of New York and Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel—are refreshing inclusions. His favorite book about Detroit, Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval, is also a bit surprising. [Publishers Weekly]

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Weinstein Co., Clear Channel, Madison Square Garden Hosting Benefit Concert for Sandy Relief

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Clear Channel Media, The Madison Square Garden Company and The Weinstein Company are joining together to produce a benefit concert to raise money for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

The concert, titled “12-12-12,” will feature live music, although the producers did not reveal who would be performing. The roster should be an A-list one though, given that this is the same group of corporate entities that backed “The Concert for New York City,” a star-studded affair with the likes of The Who and Billy Joel on hand to raise money for 9/11.

The concert for Sandy Relief will be held on December 12, 2012, at Madison Square Garden in New York, and the money raised will be dispensed through the Robin Hood Relief Fund.

Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Eastern Seaboard last week, leaving 110 people dead and more than 1 million without power. Damage from the storm is estimated to be between $ 30 billion to $ 50 billion in economic losses.

“12-12-12″ will be produced by James Dolan, executive chairman of The Madison Square Garden Company; John Sykes, president of Clear Channel Entertainment Enterprises; and Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and chairman of The Weinstein Company.

In a joint statement, the producers said: “The Concert for New York City was a night filled with emotion, courage and tremendous hope when we came together as a city following the 9/11 attack. Once again, our city, as well as millions of our neighbors in the tri-state area, are in desperate need of our assistance as they recover from Hurricane Sandy and rebuild their lives. We have no doubt that the event we are planning will be filled with unforgettable music, entertainment and that uniquely American spirit of community, compassion and generosity.”

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Gilead posts positive results in mid-stage Hepatitis C study

(Reuters) – Gilead Sciences Inc on Saturday reported a 100 percent cure rate using a combination of drugs in a small number of patients with the most common and hardest to treat form of hepatitis C.

Rival Abbott Laboratories Inc, meanwhile, said a trio of its oral medicines to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in a larger number of patients who had failed to benefit from standard treatment, as well as very high cure rates for newly treated patients.

Data from both companies’ mid-stage trials were released Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease in Boston.

Gilead’s study, dubbed Electron, examined 25 patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection who were treated for 12 weeks with a combination of three drugs: sofosbuvir, ribavirin and GS-5885.

GS-5885 is from a promising new class of drugs known as NS5A inhibitors, which prevent the hepatitis C virus from replicating.

The infection was undetectable four weeks after completing therapy in all of the patients who had never received this combination of drugs before, Gilead said.

The drugs generally were well tolerated in the study, Gilead said.

In the sofosbuvir combined with GS-5885 and ribavirin patient groups, one patient dropped out because of an adverse side effect that the company said was unrelated to the drugs.

Sofosbuvir and GS-5885 are still being studied for their safety and efficacy.

The biopharmaceutical company will present the data on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston.

Mark Schoenebaum, a biotech analyst with ISI Group, said in a research note that he expects Gilead shares to rise on Monday based on these “best case” results.

UBS analyst Matthew Roden said “these data strongly support Gilead’s leadership position” in the hepatitis C virus space.

Gilead recently started the first Phase 3 trial evaluating a fixed-dose combination of sofosbuvir and GS-5885 in patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C virus infection who had not received these drugs before.

This study is evaluating the fixed-dose combination with and without ribavirin for 12- and 24-weeks in 800 patients, 20 percent of whom have evidence of cirrhosis, or liver scarring.

(Reporting By Debra Sherman; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Administrator cuts 330 Comet jobs

9 November 2012 Last updated at 12:02 ET

The joint administrators of Comet say 330 staff are being made redundant.

The cuts will be made at the retailer’s head office and support centres in Rickmansworth (99), Hull (53) and a call centre in Clevedon (42).

There have been no redundancies at Comet distribution centres or stores, which continue to trade as normal and no further redundancies are planned.

All 236 Comet stores continue to trade as normal, and staff will continue to be paid, administrators say.

Administrator Neville Kahn said: “Staff will continue to be paid for the work they do while Comet is trading in administration. We remain extremely grateful to the staff and management for their continued loyalty and support at what is clearly a very difficult time.”

All employees who have been made redundant will be receiving full wages earned during the administration. The administrators will also provide assistance in claiming payments from the government’s Redundancy Payments Office.

Comet’s future

Joint administrators Neville Kahn, Nick Edwards and Chris Farrington, from the business advisory firm Deloitte, were appointed last Friday to oversee a possible revival of Comet or sale of the business.

“We are in discussions with a number of parties who have expressed interest in parts of the business and we continue to work hard to preserve jobs,” said Mr Kahn.

He added: “An in-store sale across all stores commenced yesterday and will continue through the coming weeks. We are pleased with the response so far, as the discounts have helped generate record levels of sales.”

It is reported that rival electrical retailers Dixons and PC World enjoyed a surge in shoppers last weekend after Comet called in administrators.

Comet was forced into adminstration after its US backers pulled the plug.

OpCapita and its founder Henry Jackson agreed a deal to buy Comet from Kesa last year for just £2. The private equity advisory firm has been under fire from critics for allowing the retailer to collapse.

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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On Twitter, pope to get different type of followers

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict already has 1.2 billion “followers” in the standard sense of the word but he soon will have another type when he enters what for any 85 year old is the brave new world of Twitter.

Vatican officials say the pontiff, who is known not to love computers and still writes most of his speeches by hand, will have his own handle by the end of the year.

“It will be an officially verified channel,” said a Vatican official.

Primarily the tweets will come from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion or so Roman Catholics will not, of course, write the tweets himself, but he will sign off on them before they are sent in his name.

But even divine intervention might not help squeeze the gist of a papal encyclical, which can run to more than 140 pages, into 140 characters.

Those tweets will probably be limited to a link to a url with the entire document.

The papal handle has not yet been disclosed but it is widely expected to be @BenedictusPPXVI, his name and title in Latin.

The pope has given a qualified blessing to social networking.

In a document issued last year, he said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity”, but warned of the risks of depersonalisation, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

In 2009, a new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, went live, offering an application called “The pope meets you on Facebook”, and another allowing the faithful to see the pontiff’s speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican famously got egg on its face in 2009 when it was forced to admit that, if it had surfed the web more, it might have known that a traditionalist bishop whose excommunication was lifted had for years been a Holocaust denier.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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Italy lifts ban on Novartis flu vaccine

ROME (Reuters) – Italy lifted a ban on Novartis‘s flu vaccines on Friday after accepting the drugmaker had shown they posed no risk to safety.

The company said it hoped to quickly resume regular supplies around the European Union.

Italy banned the sale of anti-influenza vaccines produced by Novartis on October 24, pending tests for possible side effects after small particles were found in some of the injections.

The Italian pharmaceutical agency AIFA, a government body, said on Friday it had lifted the ban “following careful checks on the documentation produced by the company.”

The agency said its analyses had gone beyond its routine controls and had “confirmed the absence of defects” in the products, Agrippal and Fluad.

After Italy imposed its ban several other countries followed suit, including Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Canada and Singapore.

Canadian and Swiss authorities lifted their bans on October 31, and Singapore ended its suspension on November 2.

Novartis welcomed Italy’s decision and said it would “continue to work with other European Union countries to lift remaining precautionary measures and resume supply there as soon as possible.”

It said in a statement that for the 2012-2013 season more than one million doses had been administered “with no unexpected adverse events reported.”

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by James Mackenzie and David Cowell)

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Draghi open to ECB rate cut, done helping Greece

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – The euro zone economy shows little sign of recovering before the year-end despite easing financial market conditions, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday, leaving open the possibility of an interest rate cut in the months ahead.

But after keeping rates on hold on Thursday, Draghi said the ECB cannot do much more to help Greece with its debt burden and gave Spain none of the assurance it wants that ECB bond buying will lower its borrowing costs.

“The ECB is by and large done,” Draghi told his monthly news conference when asked what the bank could do for Greece.

The euro zone is grappling to find a formula to make Greek debt sustainable, with Germany and the International Monetary Fund at odds over the need for governments and the ECB to take a “haircut” on Greek bonds they hold to make the numbers add up.

The ECB agreed earlier this year to hand over to euro zone governments profits on its Greek bonds but has refused to take a hit on the value of the paper, saying that would be “monetary financing” which it is prohibited from doing.

The ECB held its main rate at 0.75 percent, deferring any cut while it waits for a cue to use its new bond-purchase plan. That wait may be prolonged after Spain completed its 2012 funding at affordable rates on capital markets on Thursday.

A Reuters poll had given an 80 percent chance the ECB would hold its main rate, but most of the 73 analysts polled expect it will be cut to a new record low of 0.5 percent within the next few months.

Draghi said ECB monetary policy is “very accommodative”. He declined to comment when asked whether markets were right to expect a rate cut next month and said the policymaking Governing Council had not discussed what it would do next year.

Economist Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said: “Draghi appeared to ease open the door to a cut in interest rates over the coming months and potentially as soon as December.”

Not everyone expects a cut that soon.

“Our sense is that the ECB is firmly on hold,” said JP Morgan economist Greg Fuzesi, though he added: “Next year, the ECB will act if growth disappoints more fundamentally.”

Describing “a picture of weaker economies” in the euro zone, Draghi said this would influence new ECB economic forecasts due next month. Inflation would remain above the ECB’s target for the rest of the year, before falling below 2 percent in 2013.

“We certainly continue monitoring economic activity and we stand ready to act,” he said.

“We stand ready to act with OMT (bond-purchase plan) once the prerequisites are in place. We also stand ready to act with the rest of standard, normal monetary policy instruments.”

OMT READY TO GO

Recent survey evidence gave no sign of improvement towards the year-end and the risks surrounding the euro area remain on the downside, Draghi said. As he spoke, the euro fell against the dollar and hit a session low in early New York trade.

Gloomy data this week indicated the euro zone economy will shrink in the fourth quarter, which the ECB could eventually respond to by cutting rates.

Before making any decision to cut rates further, the ECB will focus on making sure that its looser policy reaches companies and households across the euro zone, a mechanism that has been broken by the bloc’s debt crisis.

The new bond-purchase plan – dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) – is the ECB’s designated tool for this but can only be activated once a euro zone government requests help from the bloc’s rescue fund and accepts policy conditions and strict international supervision.

So far no request has been made, but the announcement of the policy alone has calmed markets.

“We are ready to undertake OMTs which will help to avoid extreme scenarios, thereby clearly reducing concerns about the materialization of destructive forces,” Draghi said.

Asked whether he could imagine an extreme scenario in which the bank began buying bonds without conditions, he said the answer was ‘no’.

CALLING FOR HELP

Investors and euro zone policymakers have been urging Spain to seek aid but Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has so far held off a request, saying he wants assurances that ECB intervention would bring down Spain’s debt costs.

Draghi gave Rajoy no comfort.

“The Governing Council will take the final decision in total independence,” he said of any decision on whether to use the OMT programme. “In so doing, it cannot give any assurance ex ante”.

Spain sold 4.8 billion euros of debt including its first longer-term issue in 18 months on Thursday, enough to complete its 2012 financing programme and begin raising funds for next year. So there is little immediate pressure on that front.

Yields on Spanish government bonds have dropped by around 2 percentage points since Draghi said in late July the ECB was ready to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” – a pledge that heralded the bond-buying plan.

Investment funds have started flowing back into the euro zone since then, particularly from U.S. money market funds, Draghi said.

Some economists have now raised the possibility that the OMT might never have to be activated considering its impact so far.

But Matteo Cominetta, European economist at UBS, said it would eventually be put to the test because of the large amount of Spanish sovereign debt coming up for refinancing next year, roughly 140 billion euros according to Reuters data.

“Next year, you will have a record supply of Spanish bonds up for renewal in a situation where macro economic data will remain very bad for a long time in Spain,” Cominetta said.

(Reporting by Eva Kuehnen and Paul Carrel, writing by Mike Peacock; Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

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Assad fans vent over Syria at Qatar soccer match

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria blames the state of Qatar for arming rebels bent on overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. Qatar has accused Assad of genocide. On Thursday afternoon, the two countries battled it out on the soccer field.

“Our souls, our blood, we sacrifice them for Bashar,” the Syrian fans screamed, waving their national flag, as the under-19s played in the United Arab Emirates in an Asian Football Confederation tournament.

Twitter was ablaze with politicized messages on the game from a group of pro-Assad social media enthusiasts.

“Doesn’t matter who wins a football game, at the end #Syria is kicking #Qatar’s mercenaries asses everyday,” said a Twitter user whose tag is @ProSyriana.

The game was broadcast live on Syrian state television, though the commentators steered clear of politics.

Peaceful pro-democracy protests hit Syria’s streets in March 2011 but were met with live ammunition. Nineteen months later, Assad is fighting a civil war against a majority-Sunni Muslim opposition. Assad is an Alawite, a sect that is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Damascus said from the beginning that the uprising was a foreign-backed conspiracy and ever since, Assad supporters have directed vitriol at Sunni states Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“#Qatar players (are) falling down like #FSA scum,” said @Syriancommando, a prominent online activist, referring to the Free Syrian Army, a group of Syria army defectors who joined rebel fighters.

In the end, after a Syrian red card and a couple yellows, Qatar won 2-1 but fell out of the tournament on points, while Syria stayed in.

“#Qatar u may have won the battle but u didn’t win the war. #Syria goes on to play next game, Qatar is out. We’ll win the real war too.” said @Partisangirl, a Syrian YouTube commentator.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Tom Perry and Paul Casciato)

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