Sean Bean replaces Brendan Fraser in TNT pilot “Legends”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – TNT‘s upcoming pilot “Legends” is getting a Stark makeover.

Sean Bean, who played ill-fated Lord of Winterfell Eddard Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” has signed on to replace Brendan Fraser in TNT’s upcoming pilot “Legends.”

Fraser dropped out of the pilot last month; the show would have marked his first starring turn on a TV series.

Bean will play Martin Odum, a deep-cover operative who has a chameleon-like ability to transform himself into a different person for each mission. The project is based on a book by spy novelist Robert Littell.

“Homeland” duo Howard Gordon and Alexander Cary are executive-producing the pilot, which comes from Fox 21, as are Jeffrey Nachmanoff (“The Day After Tomorrow”) and Jonathan Levin (“Charmed”).

Deadline first reported news of Bean’s “Legends” casting.

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Dueling Fiscal Cliff Deceptions

A fog of misinformation has settled on the fiscal cliff, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have traded conflicting, misleading and false statements in recent days on the president’s deficit-reduction plan:

• Geithner falsely claimed on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s proposals to slow Medicare growth are “not shifting costs to seniors.” There are four proposals that would increase costs to some seniors by $ 32.9 billion over 10 years, beginning in 2017, including higher premiums and new fees and surcharges.


• Boehner, also on Fox News, wrongly stated that the administration has proposed “$ 400 billion worth of unspecified cuts.” The administration has itemized nearly $ 600 billion worth of what it calls “cuts and reforms to mandatory programs” — half of that from Medicare.


• Geithner exaggerates when he says the ratio of spending cuts to tax increases is “roughly 2 to 1.” The administration’s $ 3 trillion in “spending cuts” includes more than $ 800 billion on two wars financed by deficit spending and already set to end, and tens of billions in new or higher fees and surcharges described as “reforms.”


• Boehner and other GOP leaders claimed in a letter to Obama that the president’s “proposal calls for $ 1.6 trillion in new tax revenue, twice the amount you supported during the campaign.” But the fact is that Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal calls for $ 1.6 trillion in new tax revenues — which his opponent, Mitt Romney, attacked during the campaign.


• Boehner repeatedly (and falsely) says the president’s fiscal 2013 budget plan will create “trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.” It’s true the fiscal 2013 deficit is projected to be close to $ 1 trillion, but annual deficits would fall each year thereafter — dropping to $ 488 billion by Obama’s final year in 2017.

There is also much confusion on what exactly is in the president’s plan — despite Geithner’s briefing to Republican leaders and their staffs on Nov. 29.

Boehner says the administration has proposed more in new stimulus spending than it proposes in spending cuts. His office says the new stimulus spending could exceed $ 600 billion but the president proposes only $ 400 billion in spending cuts. The administration tells us that the stimulus package would not exceed $ 200 billion.

Obama’s Plan: Neither Painless nor Lacking Specifics

Geithner and Boehner have been the point men for their respective sides of the fiscal cliff debate.

Geithner briefed Republican leaders on Nov. 29 and made multiple TV appearances on Dec. 2 to talk about the president’s plan — which we detail in our Nov. 30 article, “Facing Facts on Fiscal Cliff.”

Geithner and Boehner both appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and each provided misleading information about the Obama administration’s proposed plan.

Geithner claimed that the president’s deficit reduction plan is about “strengthening Medicare, not shifting costs to seniors.” However, the president’s plan does shift some costs to seniors — mostly to higher-income beneficiaries, but also for all new beneficiaries.

There are four proposals, contained in both the president’s 2011 deficit-reduction plan and his fiscal 2013 budget, that would increase costs to seniors by $ 32.9 billion over 10 years. All four proposals would begin in 2017 — after Obama leaves office:

• Expanded means testing for Medicare Parts B and D Premiums. The administration proposes to increase premiums under Medicare Part B (medical insurance) and D (prescription drugs) for higher-income seniors by 15 percent and freeze the high-income thresholds at current levels “until 25 percent of beneficiaries under parts B and D are subject to these premiums.” In 2012, only 5.1 percent of Part B enrollees and 3 percent of Part D enrollees pay higher premiums based on income, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The current thresholds for higher premiums are $ 85,000 for individuals and $ 170,000 for couples. Kaiser estimates that the income thresholds for paying higher premiums by 2035 will be equivalent to about $ 47,000 for individuals and $ 94,000 for couples “in today’s adjusted inflation dollars.” Cost to seniors: $ 28 billion over 10 years (pages 34-35).


• Increased Medicare Part B deductible for new beneficiaries. The administration would increase the deductibles paid by new beneficiaries by $ 25 in 2017, 2019 and 2021. Cost to seniors: $ 2 billion over 10 years (page 35).


• A copay for Medicare home-health care for new beneficiaries. There’s currently no copay. This proposal would create a new copay of $ 100 for each “home health episode.” Cost to seniors: $ 350 million over 10 years (page 35).


• Medicare Part B premium surcharge for new beneficiaries who purchase Medigap coverage. The administration would impose a Part B premium surcharge for new beneficiaries who purchase “near first-dollar Medigap coverage.” Medigap policies cover Medicare’s out-of-pocket expenses, such as copays and deductibles. The administration’s plan says Medigap provides “less incentive” to make cost-efficient health care decisions. Cost to seniors: $ 2.5 billion over 10 years (page 35).

As he made the rounds of the other Sunday talk shows, Geithner gave an accurate — but incomplete — accounting of the president’s Medicare proposals. On “Meet the Press,” for example, Geithner said that “we’re proposing to modestly increase premiums for high income beneficiaries of Medicare.” But he did not mention that the president’s plan also raises costs for all new beneficiaries, not just those with high incomes.

For his part, Boehner twice criticized the administration for failing to provide detailed cuts, claiming the administration “put $ 400 billion worth of unspecified cuts that they’d be willing to talk about.” Geithner said that’s not true, claiming the administration has “proposed $ 600 billion of detailed reforms and savings, to our health care and other government programs.”

Boehner is wrong.

The president’s deficit-reduction plan, as proposed to Congress in September 2011, itemizes “nearly $ 580 billion in cuts and reforms to mandatory programs, of which $ 320 billion is savings from Federal health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.” Those proposals are also listed in the president’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal in a section, beginning on page 23, titled “Cutting Waste, Reducing the Deficit.”

The Medicare proposals, for example, are a mix of reduced payments to certain providers, including teaching hospitals and post-acute care facilities — as well as the higher premiums and new fees for certain beneficiaries that we mentioned above.

White House spokesman Jay Carney made this point at a press briefing on the day of Geithner’s meeting with Republican leaders.

Carney, Nov. 29: [T]he President has put forward, in September of 2011 with his proposal to the so-called super committee, in his budget in February of 2012, very specific spending cuts, including savings from health care entitlement programs.

Spending Cuts vs. Tax Increases

Geithner and Obama, however, exaggerate the amount of spending cuts in the president’s plan.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Geithner said, “We have laid out a very detailed plan of spending cuts, $ 600 billion dollars in spending in mandatory programs over 10 years.” The president made the same claim in a Dec. 4 interview with Bloomberg News, saying his proposal has “$ 600 billion in additional cuts in mandatory spending.”

It’s true that there’s nearly $ 600 billion in estimated savings from mandatory programs: $ 326 billion in health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and $ 254 billion in other programs, such as farm subsidies. But not all of these are “spending cuts,” and the administration’s own deficit-reduction plan doesn’t label them as such — instead calling them a combination of “cuts and reforms.”

There are tens of billions in new fees and surcharges and increased premiums in Medicare alone. Table S-10 of the revised fiscal 2013 budget proposal outlines numerous other new and higher fees under the section titled “Mandatory Initiatives and Savings.”

“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace asked Geithner about the spending cuts-to-tax increase ratio in the president’s plan, and the Treasury secretary replied, “roughly 2 to 1.”

When we asked how Geithner arrived at his 2-to-1 ratio, Treasury told us there is roughly $ 1.6 trillion in new tax revenues (which is not in dispute) and $ 3 trillion in spending cuts — which is not quite 2-to-1, even if you accept the administration’s definition of cuts.

In addition to the $ 600 billion, the list of $ 3 trillion in “spending cuts” provided to us by the administration includes:

• The caps on discretionary spending approved in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which will reduce future spending by an estimated $ 1 trillion. Republicans don’t view these as new spending cuts, because these were approved in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in 2011 and they are not part of the current negotiations.


• An estimated savings of more than $ 800 billion from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as we have written before, Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, called this a “gimmick,” because the wars were financed by deficit spending and already set to end.


• About $ 600 billion in reduced debt service payments.

The administration’s $ 3 trillion in “spending cuts” also does not take into account its proposal for at least $ 200 billion in new stimulus spending — which, obviously, reduces the net savings.

Treasury declined to give us a detailed list of proposals for new spending, although it did confirm published reports that some of the elements of the stimulus plan could include an extension of the Social Security payroll tax holiday ($ 110 billion), infrastructure spending ($ 50 billion) and an unemployment benefits extension ($ 30 billion).

The Republicans, however, are also playing fast and loose with the facts when they calculate the ratio of spending cuts to tax increases.

In a Dec. 3 letter to the president outlining the GOP counterproposal for deficit reduction, Boehner and other GOP leaders said there is “four times as much tax revenue as spending cuts” in the president’s proposal.

The GOP math works like this: Obama’s proposal includes $ 1.6 trillion in new tax revenue and roughly $ 400 billion in spending cuts. In an email to us, Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said that “when Sec. Geithner made his proposal to us, the number he used – repeatedly – was $ 400 billion.” However, as we mentioned earlier, on several Sunday talk shows, Geithner said the total savings comes to $ 600 billion over 10 years.

In part, the discrepancy is a matter of language. Republicans are saying “spending cuts” while Democrats are saying “savings,” “reforms” and “spending cuts.” But the more substantial difference between the Democrats’ and Republicans’ spending cuts-to-tax hike ratios is that Republicans do not count the $ 1 trillion in discretionary spending cuts agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The White House argues those are part of the ongoing negotiations to resolve a deficit crisis. Nor does the GOP include the $ 800 billion “saved” from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Stimulus Spending: How Much?

The two sides also disagree on how much the president’s plan would provide in new stimulus spending.

On Fox, Boehner claimed that “all of this stimulus spending would literally be more than the spending cuts that he was willing to put on the table.” Geithner said that is “not true.”

Who’s right? It’s hard to say since, as we mentioned earlier, the Obama administration has not provided specifics on its stimulus package.

Boehner’s claim assumes, again, that the Democratic plan is for $ 400 billion worth of spending cuts. His office released a comparison of the Obama and GOP plans that shows the administration seeking anywhere from $ 287 billion to $ 617 billion worth of new stimulus. The White House says it is seeking $ 200 billion.

According to the calculations provided by Boehner’s office, the White House offer included $ 110 billion for a payroll tax extension; $ 30 billion for unemployment insurance; $ 27 billion for stimulus tax extenders; $ 25 billion in unpaid expense related to the so-called “doctor fix” to prevent a cut in Medicare payments to doctors; and anywhere from $ 95 billion to $ 425 billion in infrastructure spending. According to Buck, in Geithner’s meeting with Republican leaders, the way White House officials described the infrastructure spending was $ 50 billion in the first year of a multi-year bill, and $ 25 billion above baseline for five years after that. “One could calculate that at $ 425 billion,” Buck said.

A Treasury official told us, however, that Obama’s proposal includes “around $ 200 billion in short-term measures to strengthen the economy and create jobs.”

“This could include a variety of measures such as infrastructure, the payroll tax, unemployment insurance benefits, refinance, and extension of 50 percent of bonus depreciation — and would very likely be a mix of revenues and spending,” the official said. “It’s not possible to allocate these measures until we know what this mix would look like, but it’s unlikely that they would greatly change the ratio. In addition, these are short-term jobs measures that would be in place only on a temporary basis. In thinking about the mix of revenues and spending, it makes more sense to focus on the permanent policies in the package.”

We can’t fact-check what was or was not offered in a closed-door session, but that explains the difference between the stimulus-to-spending cuts ratios cited by the opposing camps.

Double the Revenue?

In their letter to Obama, GOP House leaders also claimed that Obama’s “proposal calls for $ 1.6 trillion in new tax revenue, twice the amount you supported during the campaign.”

Did Obama renege on a campaign promise to raise just $ 800 billion in new revenue, and double his proposal during the fiscal cliff negotiations? In short, no. Obama has not wavered from his 2013 budget proposal, which included roughly $ 1.6 trillion in new revenues over 10 years.

Boehner’s spokesman said that during the campaign Obama only ever talked about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for upper-income earners — which would only generate about $ 850 billion.

“The average American (as well as every reporter I’ve quizzed on this) would say that the President campaigned on allowing the top rates expire,” Buck wrote to us in an email. “You’d be hard pressed to find him talking about going beyond that when campaigning. (He also regularly calls on Congress to pass a bill that does nothing more than allow top rates to expire.) That yields about $ 800 billion in revenue. He’s now asking for double that.”

Actually, just raising the rates on the top two income brackets is estimated to generate $ 442 billion over 10 years, according to the president’s budget plan (page 219). But there’s more to the Bush tax cuts than just marginal rates. Allowing all of the Bush tax cuts to expire for upper-income earners — as Obama has proposed — would also include such things as higher capital gains and dividends tax rates. Together, those come to about $ 850 billion.

But there was more revenue than that in Obama’s budget plan. For example, Obama proposed to reduce the value of itemized deductions and other tax preferences to 28 percent for families with incomes over $ 250,000. That is expected to generate $ 584 billion over 10 years — even more than raising the top tax rates (page 220).

It’s true that Obama made little or no mention of those particulars on the 2012 campaign trail — focusing instead on “everybody … doing their fair share” and “a balanced approach that says folks like me can pay a little bit more and go back to the Clinton rates.”

Neither, however, did Obama change course or distance himself from the fuller fiscal plan that he outlined in his budget.

More often, Obama vaguely said, “I’m not going to ask middle-class families to give up their deductions for owning a home, or raising their kids, or sending their kids to college just to pay for another millionaire’s tax cut.” He made no mention of upper-income deductions.

“He was campaigning on what he was asking for in the budget,” said Roberton Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “He may not have outlined the particulars during the campaign. But we always knew that was his plan, and that it was more than just tax rates.”

Mitt Romney knew. In fact, the Republican presidential nominee campaigned against it. In an April 17, 2012, press release, the Romney campaign warned: “In 2013, President Obama Will Usher In ‘One Of The Biggest Tax Increases In History’ By Passing $ 1.5 Trillion In New Tax Hikes.”

In other words, Obama may not have detailed his proposal to reduce the value of itemized deductions and other tax preferences to 28 percent for families with incomes over $ 250,000. That’s quite a mouthful for a campaign speech. But Obama never backed off his 2013 budget plan, which did lay out that proposal, and others, in greater detail.

Trillion-Dollar Deficits?

Lastly, Boehner falsely claimed on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s budget will create “trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.” He repeated the claim at a Dec. 5 press conference.

It’s true that the fiscal 2013 deficit under the president’s proposed budget would be close to $ 1 trillion, but the deficit would fall steadily after that for the next three years — dropping to $ 488 billion by Obama’s final year in 2017, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Boehner, Dec. 2: We have a debt burden that’s crushing us, and it is — you look at the president’s budget, we’ve got trillion-dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see.

The federal government has run trillion-dollar deficits for four consecutive years, so it’s not partisan hyperbole when he speaks of “a debt burden that’s crushing.” However, he does misstate the facts when he speaks of future deficits.

In its analysis of the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2013, CBO projects an end to the string of $ 1 trillion deficits in 2013 — but just barely. CBO estimates the deficit at $ 977 billion in 2013 and dropping every year thereafter until it reaches $ 488 billion by 2017. At that point, deficits are projected to rise again — but not reach $ 1 trillion. The highest the deficit would reach from 2014 to 2022 would be $ 728 billion in 2022. (See Table 1.)

– Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley

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WestJet embraces tech to woo business travelers

TORONTO (Reuters) – WestJet Airlines Ltd will use technological innovation, including a new Internet ticket booking system, to help it transform from a no-frills carrier to a lower-cost full-service airline courting lucrative corporate travelers, its chief executive said on Monday.

Canada’s second-biggest airline plans to launch a series of technology systems, most notably the new online booking engine, which will sell three tiers of tickets, in the next two months.

“Companies evolve or they die,” Chief Executive Gregg Saretsky told Reuters in a phone interview from the company’s Calgary head office.

“We’re 16 and going on 17 years old and we can’t stay just as we were 17 years ago. The world has changed. And we are changing to be more relevant for a broader segment of guests.”

The new Internet booking system, which WestJet hopes to launch in late January, will sell economy, mid-tier and premium tickets. That is a major shift from its current system, which sells only the lowest-priced ticket available.

Economy tickets under the new system will continue to sell the lowest available fare, but the cancellation fee for them will jump to C$ 75 ($ 75.48) from C$ 50. Mid-tier tickets will have a C$ 50 cancellation fee.

Premium tickets, unavailable until late March when WestJet finishes reconfiguring its 100 Boeing 737 planes to allow more leg room, will include priority screening and boarding, free cancellations and flexibility on ticket changes.

Pricing for those tickets, which may include free meals and drinks and an extra baggage allowance, has not yet been determined. Fares will be well below half the price for business class at WestJet’s bigger competitor, Air Canada, Saretsky said.

“It’s time for us to be more serious with respect to going after business travelers because frankly, they’re the ones who are booking last-minute and are happy to pay for the conveniences,” Saretsky said.

WestJet will launch its premium economy service with 24 seats per plane, but will consider expansion if it proves “wildly successful,” he added.

POISED FOR CHANGE

WestJet, which has spent about C$ 40 million over the past two years on technology projects, is poised for major changes in 2013 as it readies to launch a new regional airline, Encore.

Saretsky hopes that WestJet’s switch in coming weeks to a new Internet phone system will allow ticket reservation agents to work from home and help make room for Encore staff.

Some 750 reservation agents work at WestJet’s Calgary offices, which house about 2,400 staff. Space will be needed for Encore employees over the next 18 months while their office, hangars and maintenance stores are constructed at the WestJet campus.

Encore will be launch in the second half of 2013, “probably closer to July than December,” Saretsky said, with seven Bombardier Q400 planes.

While WestJet won’t announce Encore’s schedule until Jan 21, the carrier will initially serve only “a handful” of new cities, with ticket prices up to 50 percent below Air Canada’s, he added.

Over the next two months, WestJet will also roll out a guest notification system that alerts travelers via email about their flights, allowing them to check in remotely.

Such self-service technology will be critical as WestJet faces increasing labor costs, Saretsky said.

Wage and benefit costs, which represent about a third of operating costs, have climbed 50 percent since WestJet was founded in 1996.

“You can see that creates a little bit of drag on earnings,” Saretsky said. “We’ve got to find ways of reducing our component costs.”

If WestJet can increase self service options for travelers, that could limit the need for new employees, Saretsky said. Management also wants to improve attendance management, so that fewer employees book off sick around long weekends, and more quickly clean and process planes between flights, he said.

(Reporting By Susan Taylor; Editing by Peter Galloway)

(This story was corrected to show that WestJet is replacing its Internet booking engine, not entire reservation system, in the first and second paragraphs)

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Amazon launches Kindle content service for kids

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is launching a subscription service for children’s games, videos and books aimed at getting more kids to use its Kindle Fire tablet devices.

Amazon.com Inc. plans to announce Wednesday that the Kindle FreeTime Unlimited service will be available in the next few weeks as part of an automatic software update.

Amazon said subscribers will have access to “thousands” of pieces of content, though the company did not give a specific number. Kids will be able to watch, play and read any of the content available to them as many times as they want. Parents can set time limits, however.

The service, aimed at kids aged 3 to 8, will cost $ 4.99 per month for one child. It’ll cost $ 2.99 per child for members of Amazon Prime, the company’s premium shipping service. Amazon Prime costs $ 79 per year for free shipping of merchandise purchased in the company’s online store.

Family plans for up to six kids will cost $ 9.99 per month and $ 6.99 for Prime members.

The Kindle already allows for parental controls through its FreeTime service. Parents can set up profiles for up to six children and add time limits to control how long kids can spend reading, watching videos or using the Kindle altogether. With the content subscription service, kids can browse age-appropriate videos, games and books and pick what they want to see. They won’t be shown ads and will be prevented from accessing the Web or social media. Kids also won’t be able to make payments within applications.

Amazon is launching the service as competition heats up in the tablet market among Apple, Barnes & Noble, Microsoft and Samsung. Amazon’s strategy is to offer the Kindle at a relatively low price and make money selling the content.

Offering a subscription service aimed at kids helps set the Kindle apart from its many competitors.

“We hope that our devices are really, really attractive for families,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon’s Kindle business.

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Hugh Hefner heads to altar again, with “runaway bride”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is headed to the altar again – with the blonde Playmate who ditched him five days before their planned wedding in 2011.

Hefner, 86, and his former “runaway bride” Crystal Harris, 26, obtained a marriage license in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, Los Angeles County Recorder spokeswoman Elizabeth Knox said.

Celebrity website TMZ.com said the couple, who reunited earlier this year, are planning a New Year’s Eve wedding.

Harris was Playboy magazine‘s Miss December 2009 and appeared on the July 2011 cover of the adult magazine with a “runaway bride” sticker covering her bottom half.

In what was described at the time only as a “change of heart,” Harris dumped the magazine mogul and left his Playboy Mansion five days before a lavish June 2011 wedding before 300 guests.

This time around, the couple are playing it low-key, staying mum on their busy Twitter accounts with Hefner’s spokeswoman declining to confirm or deny their plans.

Hefner, founder of the Playboy adult entertainment empire, has been married twice before. He and his second wife Kimberley Conrad, also a former Playmate, divorced in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He has two children from each marriage.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant)

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Countries With the Greatest Use of High-Fructose Corn Syrup Also Have More Diabetes

The soaring rates of diabetes in the United States and many other developed countries over the past three decades has been generally blamed on obesity. We’re getting fatter, and that puts us at risk for developing diabetes. But a new theory suggests that the diabetes epidemic is not just a matter of eating too much and moving too little. It could have more to with some components  of our diet.

High-fructose corn syrup, that staple of many soft drinks and packaged snack foods, is associated with a higher prevalence of diabetes regardless of obesity, according to a new study. The paper raises the question of whether our bodies respond to a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup by becoming resistant to insulin and developing the inability to process sugar—which results in diabetes.

The paper strikes at the heart of an ongoing controversy in the nutrition world about whether high-fructose corn syrup is just another sugar, like it’s cousin sucrose, or acts differently in the body. That debate is far from settled.

MORE: FDA Says No to Corn Sugar

“It’s controversial,” Dr. Michael I. Goran, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and a co-author of the paper, told TakePart. “There are strong feelings on both sides.”

Goran’s paper, co-authored with researchers from the University of Oxford, found that countries that use high-fructose corn syrup in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use the substance. Even when researchers controlled for obesity rates and total sugar intake, the presence of high-fructose corn syrup in the diet significantly boosted diabetes rates. The paper appears in the journal Global Public Health.

“Fructose may contribute to obesity and obesity contributes to diabetes. We are not denying that,” says Goran, director of the Childhood Obesity Research Center and codirector of the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. “But not all obese people are diabetic. On top of that, there is an independent affect of fructose on diabetes over and above what you get from obesity.”

The authors examined data from 42 countries. The United States has the highest per capita consumption of high-fructose corn syrup at 55 pounds per year. The second highest is Hungary, with an annual rate of 46 pounds, per capita. Canada, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Belgium, Argentina, Korea, Japan and Mexico are also heavy users of the substance.

MORE: High-Fructose Diet Makes You Stupid

Countries that have lower consumption rates include Germany, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Egypt, Finland and Serbia. And countries that average only about one pound per person annually include Australia, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay.

The study found that countries with higher use of high-fructose corn syrup had an average prevalence of type 2 diabetes of 8 percent compared to 6.7 percent in countries not using the sugar.

About 6.4 percent of the world’s population is diabetic, a rate that is expected to rise to 7.7 percent by 2030, according to the paper. In the United States, 8.3 percent of adults are diabetic.

“What was different about our study is we took a much broader, macro look at the issue,” Goran says. “We did that because there is no other good way to look at it. It’s really impossible to know how much is consumed by an individual because it’s so ubiquitous in the food supply and in unknown amounts.”

MORE: Government Subsidizes Junk Food More Than Produce

The study has limitations, he notes. The research only looks at high-fructose corn syrup produced in that country and does not take into account imports.

High-fructose corn syrup is a manmade sweetener that is a popular ingredient in processed foods like ketchup, crackers, cookies and salad dressings. It’s found in many types of soft drinks. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, domestic production of the substance increased from 2.2 million tons in 1980 to an average of 9.2 million tons during the 2000s “as high fructose corn syrup replaced more expensively priced sugar in a variety of uses.”

Diabetes rates in the United States began to climb at about the same time that high-fructose corn syrup began playing a bigger role in the food supply. But how high-fructose corn syrup might contribute to diabetes is unknown. Some nutritionists contend that the substance is chemically similar to table sugar and is metabolized similarly in the body. But others say that high-fructose corn syrup causes a different biological reaction than does exposure to sugar. Fructose is also sweeter, which may lead consumers to crave it more or consume more of a food item containing fructose.

“Even in the scientific community, I hear people say all the time that there is no difference” between fructose and sucrose, Goran says. “They are clearly not identical. The next question is how they are different? One of the main things that make them different is in their most popular form, high-fructose corn syrup has more fructose in it, at least 10 percent more. The higher fructose makes it sweeter, so people will probably consume more of it. It’s cheaper to make and you need to add less.”

MORE: Sugar Shock: 9 Drinks Worse Than a Candy Bar

The food industry is sensitive to the idea that fructose is somehow worse than sugar. In a statement, the Corn Refiners Assn., said the study “uses a severely flawed statistical methodology and ignores well established medical facts to ‘suggest’ a unique link between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and type 2 diabetes…Most importantly, Dr. Goran’s newest attack on HFCS fails to account for widespread agreement among scientists and medical doctors that HFCS and sucrose (table sugar) are nutritionally equivalent.” 

High-fructose corn syrup is eyed suspiciously be some consumers, however. In May, the Food and Drug Administration turned down a request by the Corn Refiners Assn. to allow them to use the term “corn sugar” on labels instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

Goran is in favor of stricter labeling regulations regarding high-fructose corn syrup. The type of sugar in a product should be clearly labeled in the same way that various types of fats are specified on food labels, he argues.

“Trans fat labeling is a good analogy,” he says. “The public totally buys into the trans fat thing. Trans fats are bad and omega 3 fats are good. You don’t need to understand the chemistry of that. It’s just good fat and bad fat. I think the label should indicate the amount of fructose and let the consumer decide.”

Question: Is high-fructose corn syrup worse than regular table sugar? Tell us what you think in the comments?

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Shari Roan is an award-winning health writer based in Southern California. She is the author of three books on health and science subjects.

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The U.S.-China Cold War Over Accounting

U.S. regulators are cracking down on Chinese companies for issuing misleading financial reports. But the feds have been stymied so far by a wall of resistance to U.S. accounting rules—and not just from the companies.

The Securities Exchange Commission on Dec. 3 formally accused the Chinese affiliates of the Big Four accounting firms of violating U.S. law. The issue at hand: failure to provide documents in ongoing accounting fraud investigations of nine U.S.-listed, China-based companies.

Ernst & Young Hua Ming, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants, KPMG Huazhen, and PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian CPAs have been charged “with violating the Securities Exchange Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires foreign public accounting firms to provide the SEC upon request with audit work papers involving any company trading on U.S. markets,” said a statement on the SEC website. The SEC also named a fifth U.S. firm, BDO China Dahua.

“Only with access to work papers of foreign public accounting firms can the SEC test the quality of the underlying audits and protect investors from the dangers of accounting fraud,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a prepared statement. “Firms that conduct audits knowing they cannot comply with laws requiring access to these work papers face serious sanctions.”

Over the past two years, the SEC has audited scores of Chinese firms amid concerns that many are issuing financial statements that don’t reflect their real operations. The alleged violations include overstating revenue and profit. Many of them have listed on U.S. exchanges through so-called reverse mergers—when a company buys a largely inactive shell company that already has a listing and so can avoid strict disclosure requirements. To date, the SEC has deregistered almost 50 companies, including China MediaExpress Holdings, and launched fraud investigations against more than 40 issuers and company executives.

The investigations, however, have faced serious obstacles to gathering evidence within China. Beijing’s attitude has been that its own accounting system is fully adequate and that there is no need for the U.S. to conduct its own probe. And China’s security regulators and finance officials have been loathe to participate in any joint investigation.

The international accounting firms, for their part, say compliance with SEC demands would mean breaking Chinese law. “The fact that the action is being taken collectively against all of the four largest audit firms and one other firm demonstrates that this is a profession-wide issue,” Caroline Nolan, a PricewaterhouseCoopers spokeswoman, said in an e-mail statement. “For its part, PwC China has cooperated with the SEC at every opportunity. However, PwC China will, and must, comply with its legal obligations under China law.”

“Ernst & Young Hua Ming supports close working relationships between regulators to enable them to cooperate and share information with one another,” Will White, director of global and EMEIA media relations for Ernst & Young, said in an e-mail statement. “We hope that an agreement can be reached between U.S. and Chinese regulators that will enable our compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

The issue is also tied up with China’s historic resistance to perceived foreign meddling in its internal affairs, says Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and an expert on China’s accounting standards. National security has also been raised as a possible concern by Beijing. This makes any resolution even less likely, and the impasse could eventually lead to the delisting of all Chinese companies in the U.S., predicts Gillis.

“The U.S. is looking at this in terms of its own laws and regulations,” says Gillis, who maintains a blog on China accounting. “China is approaching this issue more ideologically, from a national sovereignty issue. This involves Chinese views of foreign oppression going all the way back to the Opium Wars and Japanese occupation. The idea of foreigners pushing around Chinese is deeply offensive.”

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Official: Syria moving chemical weapons components

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday, as the Obama administration strongly warned the Assad regime against using them.

A senior defense official said intelligence officials have detected activity around more than one of Syria‘s chemical weapons sites in the last week. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, reiterated President Barack Obama‘s declaration that Syrian action on chemical weapons was a “red line” for the United States that would prompt action.

“We have made our views very clear: This is a red line for the United States,” Clinton told reporters. “I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”

Syria said Monday it would not use chemical weapons against its own people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Syria “would not use chemical weapons — if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances.”

Syria has been careful never to confirm that it has any chemical weapons.

The use of chemical weapons would be a major escalation in Assad’s crackdown on his foes and would draw international condemnation. In addition to causing mass deaths and horrific injuries to survivors, the regime’s willingness to use them would alarm much of the region, particularly neighboring states, including Israel.

At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said, “We are concerned that in an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. And as the president has said, any use or proliferation of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line for the United States. “

Administration officials would not detail what that response might be.

Although Syria is one of only seven nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, it is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol that bans the use of chemical weapons in war. That treaty was signed in the aftermath of World War I, when the effects of the use of mustard gas and other chemical agents outraged much of the world.

Clinton didn’t address the issue of the fresh activity at Syrian chemical weapons depots, but insisted that Washington would address any threat that arises.

An administration official said the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons or movement with the intent to use or provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking on condition of anonymity this person was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

The senior defense official said the U.S. does not believe that any Syrian action beyond the movement of components is imminent.

An Israeli official said if there is real movement on chemical weapons, it would require a response. He didn’t say what that might be and spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal government response to the reports of the latest activities.

Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.

Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads.

Its arsenal is a particular threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria’s rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.

Clinton said that while the actions of President Bashar Assad‘s government have been deplorable, chemical weapons would bring them to a new level.

“We once again issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behavior is reprehensible, their actions against their own people have been tragic,” she said. “But there is no doubt that there’s a line between even the horrors that they’ve already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons.”

Activity has been detected before at Syrian weapons sites, believed to number several dozen.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.

Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence related to the weapons.

Senior lawmakers were notified last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept informed.

“I can’t comment on these reports but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles,” said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world,” he added.

Syria is believed to have one of the world’s largest chemical weapons programs, and the Assad regime has said it might use the weapons against external threats, though not against Syrians. The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria’s chemical and biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.

___

Klapper reported from Prague. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Kimberly Dozier, and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

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Judge gives initial OK to revised Facebook privacy settlement

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday gave his preliminary approval to a second attempt by Facebook Inc to settle a class action lawsuit which charges the social networking company with violating privacy rights.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in California rejected a settlement in August over Facebook‘s ‘Sponsored Stories’ advertising feature, questioning why it did not award money to Facebook members for using their personal information.

But in a ruling handed down Monday, Seeborg said a revised settlement “falls within the range of possible approval as fair, reasonable and adequate.”

In a revised proposal, Facebook and plaintiff lawyers said users now could claim a cash payment of up to $ 10 each to be paid from a $ 20 million total settlement fund. Any money remaining would then go to charity.

The company also said it would engineer a new tool to enable users to view content that might have been displayed in Sponsored Stories and opt out if they desire, a court document said.

If it receives final approval, the proposed settlement would resolve a 2011 lawsuit originally filed by five Facebook Inc members.

The lawsuit alleged the Sponsored Stories feature violated California law by publicizing users’ “likes” of certain advertisers without paying them or giving them a way to opt out. The case involved over 100 million potential class members.

A spokesman for Facebook said the company was “pleased that the court has granted preliminary approval of the proposed settlement.” Lawyers for the plaintiffs weren’t immediately available for comment Monday evening.

Outside groups and class members will have a chance to object to the latest settlement before Seeborg decides whether to grant final approval. A hearing on the fairness of the deal has been set for June 28, 2013. The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Angel Fraley et al., individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Facebook Inc, 11-cv-1726.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Michael Perry)

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Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Don Cheadle Sign on for James Cameron’s Climate-Change Doc

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – James Cameron‘s climate-change documentary “Years of Living Dangerously” has lined up some high-level talent to get its message across. Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin and Don Cheadle have signed on to narrate the documentary, Showtime – which will air the project over multiple episodes next year – said Monday.

Actor Edward Norton is also expected to come aboard, Showtime said, with additional talent to be announced.

As previously reported exclusively by TheWrap, Cameron is teaming with producer and noted philanthropist Jerry Weintraub on the project, which will report on first-person accounts of people who’ve been affected by global warming. Cameron and Weintraub will executive “Years of Living Dangerously,” along with Arnold Schwarzenegger.la

“60 Minutes” producers Joel Bach and David Gelber are also executive-producing, along with climate expert Daniel Abbasi.

“The recent devastation on the East Coast is a tragic reminder of the direct link between our daily lives and climate change,” Showtime Networks’ president of entertainment David Nevins said. “This series presents a unique opportunity to combine the large-scale filmmaking styles of James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger – arguably some of Hollywood’s biggest movie makers – with the hard-hitting, intimate journalism of ’60 Minutes’ veterans Joel Bach and David Gelber. I believe this combination will make for a thought-provoking television event.”

“We’ll make it exciting,” added Cameron. “We’ll make it investigative. We’ll bring people the truth. And people are always hungry for the truth.”

In addition to the narrators, “Years of Living Dangerously” will use reporting from the field, with New York Times journalists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, columnist Mark Bittman and MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

“Years of Living Dangerously” will air over six to eight one-hour episodes, Showtime said.

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