Wall Street ends flat as wary investors stay defensive

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Thursday as the prospect of a drawn-out battle over impending tax and spending changes made investors wary of getting into the water, while retailer Wal-Mart tumbled after disappointing sales.

The S&P 500 is down nearly 2 percent for the week, adding to last week's selloff and eroding more of the market's gains for the year.

What had looked like a stellar 2012 for stocks has turned into merely an average year, and as 2012 draws to a close, investors are becoming more inclined to protect the gains they have.

The worry is the economy could contract again if no deal is reached in Washington to avoid the "fiscal cliff" - large, automatic budget cuts and tax hikes that begin to take effect in the new year.

Combined with the euro zone debt crisis, the uncertain outlook for corporations makes it hard to know how much a stock is worth, said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates in Toledo, Ohio.

"Valuation is going to be uncertain because you don't know what the growth will be," said Lancz. "That is definitely not a good scenario for someone to step up to the plate and do a lot of buying."

The euro zone relapsed into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter as the region was hurt by its debt problems.

Wal-Mart fell 3.6 percent to $68.72 and was the biggest drag on the Dow as frugal consumers hurt the company's quarterly sales.

Investors will be watching Friday's meeting at the White House between President Barack Obama and Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress over deficit reduction for any sign the two sides are moving closer.

The memory of last year's political impasse over raising the debt ceiling has also made analysts nervous.

"(There is) uncertainty of whether we're going to have a functioning government going forward. That is a weight that sits on markets right now," said Troy Logan, managing director and senior economist at Warren Financial Service in Exton, Pennsylvania.

Even if the economy avoids an outright recession, there are fears a lengthy political dispute could sap business investment and consumer spending.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> slipped 28.49 points, or 0.23 percent, to 12,542.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 2.16 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,353.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was off 9.87 points, or 0.35 percent, to 2,836.94.

The S&P 500 sunk to a 3 1/2-month closing low and was well below its 200-day moving average, which it pierced last week.

Data on Thursday showed new claims for unemployment benefits surged last week, while factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region unexpectedly shrank in November as the economy felt the effects of superstorm Sandy.

A flare-up in violence in the Middle East added to market unease as Israeli warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza city for a second day, while two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip targeted Tel Aviv.

Apple Inc shares dragged the Nasdaq lower, falling 2.1 percent to $525.62 and down about 25 percent since September's high.

Also in the tech sector, shares of Dell Inc fell in after-hours trading after it reported revenue that was shy of Wall Street's expectations. Dell was down 2.2 percent at $9.35.

Target Corp bucked the trend, rising 1.7 percent to $62.44 after it reported a profit that beat expectations.

Volume was roughly 7.26 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, topping the year-to-date average daily closing volume of around 6.5 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by 2,069 to 975 on the New York Stock Exchange. Decliners also had the upper hand on the Nasdaq, outpacing advancers 1,506 to 948.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Palestinian Rockets Kill Three Israelis and Trigger Air Sirens in Tel Aviv

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas widened their deadly conflict over Gaza on Thursday, as militants fired dozens of rockets — including one that killed three civilians in an apartment block in this small southern Israeli town — and two longer-range rockets aimed at Tel Aviv, causing no harm but triggering the first air raid warning there set off by incoming fire from Gaza. The death toll in Gaza from Israeli airstrikes rose to at least 19, including five children and a pregnant teenager.

There was no sign that either side was prepared to dial back the confrontation that has threatened a new war in the Middle East, despite entreaties for restraint by world leaders including President Obama and Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, who planned a visit there in coming days. If anything, the Israelis intensified their attacks on Gaza after the Tel Aviv scare and made new moves toward a possible ground invasion.

The Israeli deaths were the first since Israel’s military launched ferocious aerial assaults on Wednesday to stop the chronic rocket fire from Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave controlled by Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a cryptic statement that one of the two longer-range rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed but did not hit the ground — meaning that it likely crashed into the Mediterranean Sea — and that the other appeared to have landed far outside the city. Exact locations were not specified.

But the Tel Aviv air raid warnings — which residents of Israel’s largest metropolis had not heard except for drills or malfunctions since Saddam Hussein’s Scuds threatened them in the first Persian Gulf War, more than two decades ago — were a reminder of their vulnerability to an attack from Gaza, less than 40 miles away. They also underscored Israel’s stated reason for seeking to destroy the missile-launching sites in Gaza.

Ehud Barak, the minister of defense, said the targeting of Tel Aviv and the scope of the Palestinian rocket fire “represents an escalation, and there will be a price for that escalation that the other side will have to pay.”

Mr. Barak also dropped a further hint that planning for a ground invasion of Gaza had begun, saying he had instructed the army to broaden its draft of reservists to “be prepared for any kind of development if and when it will be required.” Israeli officials said 30,000 reservists could be called, and heavy machinery and tanks rumbled south along Israeli roads leading to Gaza on Thursday in preparation for a possible invasion.

The Israel Defense Forces said that within hours of the Tel Aviv air raid warning, they had attacked 70 underground rocket-launching sites in Gaza, and “direct hits were confirmed.” There were also unconfirmed reports that Israeli rockets had struck near Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt, forcing the Egyptians to close it.

.

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said its aerial assaults had hit more than 200 sites in Gaza by late Thursday, and “we’ll continue tonight and tomorrow.” He also said militants in Gaza had fired about 300 rockets into southern Israel and at least 100 more had been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.

The Israeli aerial assault on Gaza that began on Wednesday was the most intense military operation by Israel in Gaza since an invasion four years ago.

The regional perils of the situation sharpened as President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt warned that his country stood by the Palestinians against what he termed Israeli aggression, echoing similar condemnation on Wednesday.

“The Egyptian people, the Egyptian leadership, the Egyptian government and all of Egypt is standing with all its resources to stop this assault, to prevent the killing and the bloodshed of Palestinians,” Mr. Morsi said in nationally televised remarks before a crisis meeting of senior ministers. He also instructed his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza on Friday and said he had contacted President Obama to discuss strategies to “stop these acts and doings and the bloodshed and aggression.”

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, Israel, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi, Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo, Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Sina’s profit beats on Weibo; co forecasts weak 4th-quarter revenue

(Reuters) – Chinese internet company Sina Corp eked out a profit in the third quarter that beat analysts’ estimates as strong advertising sales on its microblogging platform offset weaker website advertising but it forecast current-quarter revenue below expectations.

Shares of the company fell 6 percent to $ 49.72 in extended trading. They closed at $ 53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

Sina expects adjusted net revenue to range between $ 132 million and $ 136 million in the fourth quarter, with advertising revenues forecast to increase between 6 percent and 8 percent from a year earlier.

Analysts on average were expecting revenue of $ 151.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and through its microblogging platform, Weibo, is facing stiff headwinds this year as firms slash advertising budgets due to a worsening economic outlook.

Analysts said the spat between Japan and China over a few uninhabited islands in the East China Sea may have affected Sina’s website advertising sales as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China.

Net profit was $ 9.9 million for the September quarter, compared to a loss of $ 336.3 million a year earlier. The profit beat analysts’ expectations of $ 7.5 million.

Sina’s advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $ 120.6 million in the third quarter, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $ 31.8 million. Overall net revenue was $ 152.4 million, up from $ 130.3 million, a year earlier.

The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.

Weibo contributed about 10 percent to total advertising revenue in the second quarter and had 368 million registered accounts.

(Reporting By Melanie Lee in Shanghai & Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hope Solo Weds Jerramy Stevens Amid Assault Allegations?

By Dahvi Shira

11/14/2012 at 06:35 PM EST

Jerramy Stevens and Hope Solo

NFL/Getty; Jeff Vinnick/Getty

One day after former Seattle Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his fiancée, U.S. women's soccer team goalkeeper Hope Solo, the pair reportedly tied the knot.

"Confirmed," Sportsradio 950 AM and 102.9 FM radio host Dave Mahler Tweeted on Tuesday. "Jerramy Stevens and Hope Solo were married tonight. Events of yesterday morning didn't change plans."

The pair, who had only been dating for about two months, applied for a marriage license last Thursday. According to court documents, the athletes were arguing over whether to wed in Florida or Washington State.

Stevens, 33, was reportedly released from custody by a Kirkland, Wash., Municipal Court judge on Tuesday after determining there wasn't enough evidence to hold the former football star.

All of the former Dancing with the Stars contestant's social media pages have gone silent since Nov. 6., and calls to her rep have not been returned.

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New gene triples risk for Alzheimer's disease

Scientists have identified a new gene variant that seems to strongly raise the risk for Alzheimer's disease, giving a fresh target for research into treatments for the mind-robbing disorder.

The problem gene is not common — less than 1 percent of people are thought to have it — but it roughly triples the chances of developing Alzheimer's compared to people with the normal version of the gene. It also seems to harm memory and thinking in older people without dementia.

The main reason scientists are excited by the discovery is what this gene does, and how that might reveal what causes Alzheimer's and ways to prevent it. The gene helps the immune system control inflammation in the brain and clear junk such as the sticky deposits that are the hallmark of the disease. Mutations in the gene may impair these tasks, so treatments to restore the gene's function and quell inflammation may help.

"It points us to potential therapeutics in a more precise way than we've seen in the past," said Dr. William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer's Association, which had no role in the research. Years down the road, this discovery will likely be seen as very important, he predicted.

It is described in a study by an international group published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

About 35 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer's is the most common type. In the U.S., about 5 million have Alzheimer's. Medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. There is no known cure.

Until now, only one gene — ApoE — has been found to have a big impact on Alzheimer's risk. About 17 percent of the population has at least one copy of the problem version of this gene but nearly half of all people with Alzheimer's do. Other genes that have been tied to the disease raise risk only a little, or cause the less common type of Alzheimer's that develops earlier in life, before age 60.

The new gene, TREM2, already has been tied to a couple other forms of dementia. Researchers led by deCODE Genetics Inc. of Iceland honed in on a version of it they identified through mapping the entire genetic code of more than 2,200 Icelanders.

Further tests on 3,550 Alzheimer's patients and more than 110,000 people without dementia in several countries, including the United States, found that the gene variant was more common in Alzheimer's patients.

"It's a very strong effect," raising the risk of Alzheimer's by three to four times — about the same amount as the problem version of the ApoE gene does, said Dr. Allan Levey, director of an Alzheimer's program at Emory University, one of the academic centers participating in the research.

Researchers also tested more than 1,200 people over age 85 who did not have Alzheimer's disease and found that those with the variant TREM2 gene had lower mental function scores than those without it. This adds evidence the gene variant is important in cognition, even short of causing Alzheimer's.

"It's another piece in the puzzle. It suggests the immune system is important in Alzheimer's disease," said Andrew Singleton, a geneticist with the National Institute on Aging, which helped pay for the study.

One prominent scientist not involved in the study — Dr. Rudolph Tanzi, a Harvard Medical School geneticist and director of an Alzheimer's research program at Massachusetts General Hospital — called the work exciting, but added a caveat.

"I would like to see more evidence that this is Alzheimer's" rather than one of the other dementias already tied to the gene, Tanzi said. Autopsy or brain imaging tests can show whether the cases attributed to the gene variant are truly Alzheimer's or misdiagnosed, he said.

___

Online:

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

Alzheimer's info: http://www.alzheimers.gov

Alzheimer's Association: http://www.alz.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Changing of the Guard: Corruption in China Military Poses Test

Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

Hostesses posed outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday as the Communist Party Congress closed.

BEIJING — An insider critique of corruption in China’s military, circulating just as new leadership is about to take over the armed forces, warns that graft and wide-scale abuses pose as much of a threat to the nation’s security as the United States.

Col. Liu Mingfu, the author of the book, “Why the Liberation Army Can Win,” is not a lone voice.

Earlier this year, a powerful army official gave an emotional speech describing corruption as a “do-or-die struggle,” and days later, according to widely published accounts, a prominent general, Gu Junshan, a deputy director of the logistics department, was arrested on suspicion of corruption. He now awaits trial. The general is reported to have made huge profits on illicit land deals and given more than 400 houses intended for retired officers to friends.

Those excesses may be mere trifles compared with the depth of the overall corruption, the speech by Gen. Liu Yuan, an associate of the presumptive new party leader, Xi Jinping, suggested.

For Mr. Xi, who boasts a military pedigree from his father — a guerrilla leader who helped bring Mao Zedong to power in 1949 — China’s fast modernizing army will be a bulwark of his standing at home and influence abroad.

But the depth of graft and brazen profiteering in the People’s Liberation Army poses a delicate problem for the new leader, one that Colonel Liu and others have warned could undermine the status of the Communist Party.

As part of the nation’s once-a-decade handover of power, Mr. Xi is also expected to assume the chairmanship of the 12-member Central Military Commission immediately. Hu Jintao, the departing party leader, is expected to break precedent and not retain his position atop the body, which oversees the armed forces, for an extended period after his retirement, unlike previous leaders.

Recent territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors have raised nationalist sentiment in China, and the popular desire for a strong military could make it politically dangerous for Mr. Xi to embark on a campaign that unmasks squandering of public funds.

In his opening speech to the 18th Party Congress, Mr. Hu said China would aim to become “a maritime power.” It was one of the few references in the address about foreign affairs, and one that suggested the government would continue the double-digit increases in expenditures for the military.

But along with the modernization and bigger budgets has come more corruption, a problem that pervades China’s ruling party and its government.

For the first time in the history of the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese analysts say, the land-based army has had to give up its dominance of the military commission.

The former commander of the air force, Xu Qiliang, will be a vice chairman, giving the air force new weight in big decisions, they said. An army general, Fan Changlong, the former commander of the Jinan Military Region, will also be a vice chairman.

These two men will run the day-to-day operations of the military, Chinese analysts said.

In his book, Colonel Liu, a former professor at China’s National Defense University, wrote that the army had not been tested in decades and had grown complacent. “As a military that has not fought a war for 30 years, the People’s Liberation Army has reached a stage in which its biggest danger and No. 1 foe is corruption,” he wrote.

Colonel Liu first became prominent in 2010 with the publication of his book “The China Dream,” an ultranationalist tract arguing that China should build the world’s strongest military and move swiftly to supplant the United States as the global “champion.”

In his new work, the colonel drew a parallel with 1894, when China’s forces were swiftly defeated by a rapidly modernizing Japan, even though the Chinese were equipped with expensive ships from Europe. Historians often attribute the defeat to corruption.

Another retired army officer, and a member of the aristocratic class known as the princelings, said that corruption existed throughout the military but that the new commission would probably refrain from a sustained campaign against it.

Bree Feng contributed research.

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Android 4.2 For Nexus 7, Galaxy Nexus Now Available

When Google’s Nexus 10 tablet was unveiled recently, it was running Android 4.2, a new version which adds several features. That version is coming to your Nexus 7 or Galaxy Nexus device as well. Here’s what Android 4.2 brings, where to get it, and which Nexus devices are missing out.

​New features in Android 4.2

Mashable’s Christina Warren has the scoop on what Android 4.2′s bringing. Flashy additions include Daydream, a sort of screensaver for your smartphone or tablet, and Photo Sphere, a new way to take panoramic photographs that capture the whole world around you. Right now you can only see Photo Sphere images on Google+ or in Google Maps, but according to David Ruddock of the Android Police blog Google has made it so “Anyone could, in theory, build a Photo Sphere viewer.”

Less immediately noticeable improvements include a Swype-style gesture keyboard, where you don’t need to type individual letters, and a feature that lets multiple people share the same Android tablet without their apps and things getting in each others’ way. You’ll also be able to mirror your Android device’s screen on your HDTV, Apple AirPlay style, although instead of an Apple TV box you’ll need a third-party wireless display adapter.

​Who’s getting the upgrade now

Nexus 7 owners are already beginning to receive the Android 4.2 upgrade over the air. Your tablet will automatically check for it every so often, but if you want to hurry it along you can go to Settings -> About tablet -> System updates, and tell it to check again. You can also download it from Google and manually install it using Liam Spradlin’s instructions, although this is not recommended unless you’re an experienced Android hacker and are using the Wi-Fi version of the Nexus 7.

Galaxy Nexus owners who bought their phones from a wireless carrier have had to wait an unusually long time for upgrades, as long as several months after a new Android version’s announced. If you bought your Galaxy Nexus phone from a wireless carrier, an upgrade probably won’t be available anytime soon. People who purchased their Galaxy Nexus from the Google Play store are reporting that they are getting the upgrade, though, and Spradlin again has instructions for how to install manually if you are using a Galaxy Nexus bought from the Google Play store.​

Who’s being left out

While announcing that Android 4.2′s programming code was being released to the Android Open-Source Project, Google rep Jean-Baptiste Queru said “There is no support for 4.2 on Nexus S and Xoom.” The Nexus S was a Nexus smartphone released about two years ago, in late 2010, while the Motorola Xoom was the first tablet released (in early 2011) running the Honeycomb version of Android. The Xoom was not an official Nexus device, but was also made in close partnership with Google, and showcased the latest Android software.

Both devices received upgrades to Android 4.1, the first Jelly Bean version. It looks like this is where the upgrade train ends for them, though, after almost two years of support. In contrast, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, released in mid-2009, just recently received an upgrade to the latest version of iOS.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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GIF Named Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year

By Maggie Coughlan

11/13/2012 at 07:10 PM EST

Being a computer geek just got a little sexier.

Oxford Dictionaries announced Monday the Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year for 2012 is GIF.

If you're not familiar with the verb, it's defined as "a compressed file format for images that can be used to create simple, looping animations," according to Katherine Martin, Head of the U.S. Dictionaries Program at Oxford University Press USA.

After popping up everywhere from PEOPLE.com to Tumblr, the word had an amazing year.

The tech-savvy term beat out some fierce competition, including Eurogeddon (the potential financial collapse of the Eurozone), Superstorm (an unusually large and destructive storm), YOLO ("you only live once"), Nomophobia (anxiety caused by being without one's mobile phone) and more.

While you're contemplating what buzzword will make the cut next year, ogle these sexy GIFs of Hugh Jackman, Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello, Zac Efron and William Levy!

PEOPLE's choice for the Sexiest Man Alive title will be revealed Nov. 14. Be one of the first to find out.

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Report: FDA wanted to close Mass pharmacy in 2003

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly a decade ago, federal health inspectors wanted to shut down the pharmacy linked to a recent deadly meningitis outbreak until it cleaned up its operations, according to congressional investigators.

About 440 people have been sickened by contaminated steroid shots distributed by New England Compounding Center, and more than 32 deaths have been reported since the outbreak began in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That has put the Framingham, Mass.-based pharmacy at the center of congressional scrutiny and calls for greater regulation of compounding pharmacies, which make individualized medications for patients and have long operated in a legal gray area between state and federal laws.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a detailed history of NECC's regulatory troubles on Monday, ahead of a meeting Wednesday meeting to examine how the outbreak could have been prevented. The 25-page report summarizes and quotes from FDA and state inspection memos, though the committee declined to release the original documents.

The report shows that after several problematic incidents, Food and Drug Administration officials in 2003 suggested that the compounding pharmacy be "prohibited from manufacturing" until it improved its operations. But FDA regulators deferred to their counterparts in Massachusetts, who ultimately reached an agreement with the pharmacy to settle concerns about the quality of its prescription injections.

The congressional report also shows that in 2003 the FDA considered the company a pharmacy. That's significant because in recent weeks public health officials have charged that NECC was operating more as a manufacturer than a pharmacy, shipping thousands of doses of drugs to all 50 states instead of small batches of drugs to individual patients. Manufacturers are regulated by the FDA and are subject to stricter quality standards than pharmacies.

The report offers the most detailed account yet of the numerous regulatory complaints against the pharmacy, which nearly date back to its founding in 1998. Less than a year later, the company was cited by the state pharmacy board for providing doctors with blank prescription pads with NECC's information. Such promotional items are illegal in Massachusetts and the pharmacy's owner and director, Barry Cadden, received an informal reprimand, according to documents summarized by the committee.

Cadden was subject to several other complaints involving unprofessional conduct in coming years, but first came to the FDA's attention in 2002. Here are some key events from the report highlighting the company's early troubles with state and federal authorities:

__ In March of 2002 the FDA began investigating reports that five patients had become dizzy and short of breath after receiving NECC's compounded betamethasone repository injection, a steroid used to treat joint pain and arthritis that's different from the one linked to the current meningitis outbreak.

FDA inspectors visited NECC on April 9 and said Cadden was initially cooperative in turning over records about production of the drug. But during a second day of inspections, Cadden told officials "that he was no longer willing to provide us with any additional records," according to an FDA report cited by congressional investigators. The inspectors ultimately issued a report citing NECC for poor sterility and record-keeping practices but said that "this FDA investigation could not proceed to any definitive resolution," because of "problems/barriers that were encountered throughout the inspection."

__ In October of 2002, the FDA received new reports that two patients at a Rochester, N.Y., hospital came down with symptoms of bacterial meningitis after receiving a different NECC injection. The steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, is the same injectable linked to the current outbreak and is typically is used to treat back pain. Both patients were treated with antibiotics and eventually recovered, according to FDA documents cited by the committee.

When officials from the FDA and Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy visited NECC later in the month, Cadden said vials of the steroid returned by the hospital had tested negative for bacterial contamination. But when FDA scientists tested samples of the drug collected in New York they found bacterial contamination in four out of 14 vials sampled. It is not entirely clear whether FDA tested the same lot shipped to the Rochester hospital.

__ At a February 2003 meeting between state and federal officials, FDA staff emphasized "the potential for serious public consequences if NECC's compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved." The agency issued a list of problems uncovered in its inspection to NECC, including a failure to verify if sterile drugs met safety standards.

But the agency decided to let Massachusetts officials take the lead in regulating the company, since pharmacies are typically regulated at the state level. It was decided that "the state would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action against NECC as necessary," according to a summary of the meeting quoted by investigators.

The FDA recommended the state subject NECC to a consent agreement, which would require the company to pass certain quality tests to continue operating. But congressional investigators say Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy did not take any action until "well over a year later."

__ In October 2004, the board sent a proposed consent agreement to Cadden, which would have included a formal reprimand and a three-year probationary period for the company's registration. The case ended without disciplinary action in 2006, when NECC agreed to a less severe consent decree with the state.

Massachusetts officials indicated Tuesday they are still investigating why NECC escaped the more severe penalty.

"I will not be satisfied until we know the full story behind this decision," the state's interim health commissioner Lauren Smith said in a transcript of her prepared testimony released a day ahead of delivery. Smith is one of several witnesses scheduled to testify Wednesday, including FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg.

The committee will also hear from the widow of 78-year-old Eddie C. Lovelace, a longtime circuit court judge in southern Kentucky. Autopsy results confirmed Lovelace received fungus-contaminated steroid injections that led to his death Sept. 17.

Joyce Lovelace will urge lawmakers to work together on legislation to stop future outbreaks caused by compounded drugs, according to a draft of her testimony.

"We now know that New England Compounding Pharmacy, Inc. killed Eddie. I have lost my soulmate and life's partner with whom I worked side by side, day after day for more than fifty years," Lovelace states.

Barry Cadden is also scheduled to appear at the hearing, after lawmakers issued a subpoena to compel him to attend.

The NECC has been closed since early last month, and Massachusetts officials have taken steps to permanently revoke its license. The pharmacy has recalled all the products it makes, including 17,700 single-dose vials of a steroid that tested positive for the fungus tied to the outbreak.

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Microsoft leads Wall Street lower, but retailers gain

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