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<span class="articleLocation”>(Reuters) – Shares of drug research company Quintiles Transnational Holdings (Q.N) rose as much as 11 percent in its market debut, valuing the company at as much as $5.73 billion.

The Durham, North Carolina-based clinical trials company’s initial public offerings is the largest among the 11 expected to be priced this week. The week could see the highest IPO volume since late 2007, according to market data firm Ipreo.

Other offerings that have been priced this week include those of residential mortgage company PennyMac Financial Services Inc (PFSI.N) and biotech company Receptos Inc (RCPT.O).

Quintiles raised $947 million in its IPO, more than planned, as it had priced 23.7 million shares at $40 each, compared with its plan to sell 19.7 million shares at $36 to $40 each.

Quintiles, founded in 1982, is backed by private equity players Bain Capital LLC and TPG Capital LP.

They became the lead investors in Quintiles in January 2008 after One Equity Partners sold its stake in the company. Britain’s 3i Group Plc (III.L) and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings are also investors in Quintiles.

The company is the largest provider of contract research services in the world to biopharmaceutical companies, including medical device and diagnostics companies.

Quintiles generated adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $177.5 million on revenue of $4.9 billion in the year ended December 31, 2012.

The company’s sales were 70 percent higher than its nearest competitor Covance Inc (CVD.N) said Morningstar analyst Lauren Migliore in a research report. Covance is valued at about $4.15 billion.

Quintiles spent about $135 billion on R&D in 2012, which will grow to about $139 billion in 2015, according to the prospectus it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Of all the new drugs approved between 2004 and 2011, Quintiles helped develop or commercialize 85 percent of the central nervous system drugs, 76 percent of the oncology drugs, and 72 percent of the cardiovascular drugs, according to Morningstar.

A recent slowdown in R&D spending did not have an effect on Quintiles’ performance as the company focuses primarily on Phase II-IV clinical trials.

This has saved Quintiles from having to endure the steep pullback in early-stage spending, particularly for animal testing, toxicology, and preclinical services, that has plagued other contract research firms.

Quintiles shares were trading up 10 percent at $44.05 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

Morgan Stanley, Barclays and JPMorgan are the lead underwriters to the offering.

(Reporting by Tanya Agrawal in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal and Joyjeet Das)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng called on the United States on Friday to ensure his family in China would be treated fairly, saying his imprisoned nephew was not receiving proper medical care from Chinese authorities, whom he accused of “hooligan tactics.”

Chen, who made international headlines last year when he escaped house arrest and spent 20 hours on the run before finding refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, said his nephew was suffering from appendicitis and being treated only by a fellow inmate who had received some medical training.

“He’s not being given proper medical treatment or being taken to a medical facility outside the jail,” Chen told Reuters in an interview, speaking through an interpreter.

Chen, who was born blind and taught himself law, said China was using “ruffian, hooligan tactics to try and scare me into silence.”

He said his relatives had been increasingly harassed by Chinese authorities since mid-April, around the anniversary of his escape from 19 months of harsh house arrest in eastern Shandong province.

He said he was “extremely happy and very grateful” to learn of the State Department’s announcement on Thursday that Secretary of State John Kerry would raise the case of his nephew, Chen Kegui, with China. He said he had not been contacted by anyone at the department about the plan.

Kerry tried calling Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss Chen’s imprisoned nephew, but Wang was not available, the State Department said on Friday.

Chen’s nephew was charged after using knives to fend off local officials who burst into his home the day after Chen’s escape was discovered. He was sentenced to more than three years in jail in November after a trial Washington described as “deeply flawed.”

Chen said, “There’s not enough power behind closed-door diplomacy,” and that the United States needed “to strengthen their criticism of the Chinese government,”

“What I mean is at the moment the methods that the U.S. government may be using to bring up these matters with the Chinese government is clearly not enough, it’s too weak. What they need to do is strengthen their criticism of the Chinese government.”

Chen came to prominence by campaigning for farmers and disabled citizens and exposing forced abortions before he was placed under house arrest.

Chen’s older brother, Chen Guangfu, said this week that local authorities had harassed him repeatedly since mid-April by throwing rocks, bottles and dead poultry at his home in a village in Shandong province in retaliation for what they believed were Chen’s plans to visit Taiwan and Tibet.

Chen said on Friday he planned to visit supporters in Taiwan next month but had no plans to visit Tibet. He spoke with Reuters after giving a speech at the launch of a report into Chinese censorship by PEN International, an association of writers that advocates for freedom of expression.

Chen, who lives in New York with his wife and is studying law at New York University, said he hoped to return to China.

“Part of the issue is, if I go back, will I be able to leave at any time?” he said.

(Editing by Paul Thomasch and Peter Cooney)

<span class="articleLocation”>May 13 (Reuters) – U.S. fertilizer company Mosaic Co
said it favors buybacks over dividends to deploy about $2
billion in surplus cash it expects to have as of May 31.

The company has about $3 billion of debt capacity, Mosaic
also said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission on Monday. ()

Minnesota-based Mosaic, which has a market capitalization of
about $26.94 billion, is the world’s largest producer of
finished phosphate products and North America’s second-biggest
potash producer.

BARCELONA (Reuters) – Mercedes urged their many Formula One technical boffins to “think outside the box” and consider the unconsidered after a Spanish Grand Prix that left the team baffled by their cars’ lack of race pace.

Despite scorching to their third pole position in a row, with Germany’s Nico Rosberg notching up his second in succession, Mercedes flopped when it mattered most at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Lewis Hamilton went from second to 12th, in what he said was his worst race for a very long time, while Rosberg finished sixth.

How to manage and extract performance from the Pirelli tyres is the conundrum and Mercedes, who have a stellar line-up of senior technical figures, planned to throw all their brainpower into finding an answer.

“Generally what you can say is that the car is a quick car,” Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff told reporters after emerging from a two-hour post-race technical debrief at the circuit.

“This is not about a car or a team struggling with lacking pace, a car where you end up 15th on Saturday and then 12th or 16th on Sunday. It is a car that is tremendously fast on the Saturday and has real speed. And then on Sunday we are not able to manage the car with the tyres.

“One could say ‘Did the others go even much more conservative in terms of race setup?’ I don’t think so. It’s something else and I think it requires out of the box thinking,” added the Austrian.

“It’s about everybody in the team sticking their heads together and saying let’s analyse what we do from a Saturday to a Sunday. Is there anything we need to be looking at which we didn’t look at until now?”

DRAGSTER RACE

Barcelona, like Bahrain before it, is punishing for even the hardest tyres and it would be comforting for Mercedes to think that the circuit characteristics did not suit them and things will improve elsewhere.

However the next circuit on the calendar is Monaco, a tight and twisty circuit without high energy corners, which must be treated in isolation.

The risk is that if single lap speed is compromised in exchange for better race pace, Mercedes could lose out in Monaco where pole position carries a premium and overtaking is extremely difficult.

Wolff said he was “pretty sure” any solution would cost the team in qualifying pace. He added that it would be looking at matters through rose-tinted glasses to think the problems were more related to the track than the car.

“It’s not an inherent car problem. I think it’s probably something about processes,” he declared.

“The question is: ‘Is there anything we can be looking at which is similar to previous years?. Is it that this car is being made for a dragster race instead of for a grand prix? A German journalist said that,” he smiled. “No. I don’t think so. My opinion is it’s something else.

“As I am on the rather pessimistic side, I don’t believe in magic or a golden key. But it could be. The car is good. It’s just changing the approach or looking at these processes for racing.”

Wolff said Mercedes, who had problems particularly with their rear tyres last year, had done a good long run in final practice and set the car up for qualifying and the race accordingly but it had not worked.

The priority now was to analyse everything, to look at how the tyres were treated, how they were heated up and how that heat is retained.

“It’s how you drive it, slow or fast in the first couple of laps. How you build it up. We are looking at our competitors and what you can see is that clearly some cars are having an easier life with the tyres,” said Wolff.

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Justin Palmer)

Story By: by Ella Taylor

Serena Williams (left) and her sister Venus Williams in action during their first-round doubles match on Day 2 at Wimbledon in 2010.

Venus and Serena

Rated PG-13 for some strong language

With: Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Oracene Price, Richard Williams, Anna Wintour, Chris Rock, Billie Jean King, John McEnroe

What’s left to know about Venus and Serena Williams? Probably not much that the tennis titans would be willing to share, given how heavily exposed they’ve been already, and how eager the press has been to wedge the sisters into ready-made narratives about race, celebrity and the daughters of a Svengali.

The lively if slightly worshipful new documentary Venus and Serena breaks little new ground in this regard. And maybe it doesn’t matter, given the size of the personalities who leap out of the well-rehearsed, up-from-Compton tale of two sisters who took a white, upper-middle-class sport by the ears and shook it hard on their own terms.

For that part, producer-directors Maiken Baird and Michelle Major rely heavily on well-known news footage, sprinkled with commentary from celebrities like Bill Clinton, John McEnroe and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who say pretty much what you’d expect them to say about the sisters’ agile grace and disciplined professionalism under pressure.

Comedian Chris Rock nails the sisters’ boisterously uncompromising personal style and pride in their race: “Their braids are not country-club black,” he says. “They are black-black.”

In part that sense of self and heritage, so evident when the Williams women exploded onto the tennis scene in their early teens, comes from the flamboyant father who, for better and worse, shaped their careers. Born into abject poverty in Louisiana, Richard Williams moved to Los Angeles and built his own security company before devoting himself to shaping a gold-plated career for his daughters. We see him admit in a television interview to not being terribly interested in tennis for its own sake.

“I wanted for both of them to become No. 1 in the world,” he says, grinning. That worked out pretty well, but Venus and Serena is also long on the details of how Williams supported, protected, bullied and prodded his two girls into becoming champions.

Barely into adolescence in footage dating back to the early ’90s, the girls seem none the worse for the intense, unorthodox training regimen their father put them through, which included ballet, jazz and throwing rackets (and, later, pole-dancing), in addition to the rigors imposed by a fleet of top-tier coaches, none more demanding than Richard himself.

A serial womanizer who fathered so many kids that one sister can’t remember all their names on camera, Richard makes for great copy. But Baird and Major also scored interviews with the Williams sisters and other family members, and Venus and Serena is most compelling as a portrait of domestic solidarity. Given the possibilities for friction in a clan divided by parentage, talent, wealth distribution, and the loss of one sister in a Compton shooting, that’s either pretty astonishing or a diplomatic gloss on the Williams family’s internal politics.

Certainly they come across as an intensely loyal gang. Long divorced from Richard, Venus and Serena’s mother, Oracene, remains central to their lives and careers, and the source of their faith as Jehovah’s Witnesses. We see her patiently seeing off idiotic questions from a reporter about “grunting” on the court, and commenting delightedly on the several women who co-exist within Serena — including a homegirl they call Taquanda, who periodically emerges to yell at recalcitrant umpires.

There’s unqualified support from sisters and half-sisters unfazed by an interviewer’s attempt to draw them out on the question of bloodlines and conflict. “We’re black,” says Venus and Serena’s older sister Isha, firmly. “We don’t do that.”

As for Venus and Serena themselves, they seem as tight as two peas in a pod, which is remarkable for siblings compelled by their careers to be partners and rivals all at the same time. Romantic attachments come and go, but Venus and Serena are essentially a couple who live together, work out together, play together and, to judge by this film, would rather spend time in each other’s company than be with anyone else. Together they have somehow figured out how to overcome the fact that Serena, a force of nature who has taken her father’s competitive aggression more fully onboard than has her older sister — has achieved more success on the court.

Venus and Serena focuses mainly on the 2011 tennis season, when both were recovering from serious illnesses: Serena suffered a pulmonary embolism, while Venus was diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome. Despite all this, and the fact that the two have hit their early 30s, their astonishing “comebacks” separately and together at Wimbledon and the Olympics make for a triumphalist ending any sports documentarian would pray for.

That’s fun, and watching the sisters’ beauty and casual physical grace on and off the court is always a trip. Yet some will come away thinking that the Williams family has grown so skilled at managing their public image that perhaps no filmmaker will ever get between the cracks.

Me, I wanted to know what these two remarkable young women will obsess about once the whole world has stopped watching, whether they will always be together — and what it would really feel like to be one of their much less famous siblings. We’ll probably never know, except in someone else’s future fiction feature.

Fourteen hundred audience members rushed out in a panic, when James Holmes allegedly opened fire in Aurora’s Century cinema on July 20, killing 12 and wounding nearly 60 more.

The confused crowd swarmed around ambulances and police cars, blocking access to the building and the parking lot and hindering rescue efforts, the Aurora fire department said Wednesday in a preliminary analysis of the incident.

First responders recount initial chaos

Emergency vehicles inundated by crowds were forced to drive over medians and curbs to gain access to the wounded found at eight different locations on the property, according to the fire report.

Story By: Tell Me More

Many Muslim people were hoping the Boston bombers didn’t share their religion. However, the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is indeed Muslim, according to family members. Host Michel Martin speaks to Muslims from different ethnic backgrounds about the conversations they’re having at dinner tables and in their neighborhoods.

Syria has denied being responsible for two car bombs which killed 46 people and wounded dozens more in a Turkish border town on Saturday.

According to the Associated Press, during a news conference on Sunday, Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said that “no one has the right to make false accusations.” 

“This is not the behavior of the Syrian government,” he added. 

Turkish police say that nine people have been arrested in connection with Saturday’s attacks in Reyhanli. 

Ankara has said that it suspects the involvement of Syrian intelligence.

Release Date: 04/15/2013Contact Information: Jennah Durant or Austin Vela at 214 665-2200 or r6press@epa.gov

(Dallas – April 15, 2013) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is recognizing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, NM, for their efforts in increasing the amount of waste recycled from 158 tons in 2011 to 10,756 tons in 2012, resulting in a 6,708% improvement. This achievement by the facility has earned them the award for the Highest Overall Level of Performance nationally in the Federal Green Challenge.

The Federal Green Challenge (FGC) is a national effort under EPA’s Sustainable Materials Management program that challenges federal agencies throughout the country to lead by example in reducing the federal government’s environmental impact. Federal agencies are recognized through the FGC for outstanding efforts that go beyond regulatory compliance and strive for annual improvements in selected areas.

In 2012, nearly 300 participating federal facilities, representing 500,000 federal employees, reduced their environmental footprint in several target areas, which in many cases resulted in significant cost savings. Some of the accomplishments made by the FGC participants included diverting more than 360,000 tons of waste, saving over 52 million kilowatts of electricity, saving 488,000 gallons of oil, and reducing potable water usage by 133 million gallons.

These combined efforts resulted in an estimated cost savings of more than $31 million to the U.S. taxpayer.

For more information please visit www.epa.gov/fgc
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But as he got older, he developed an interest in photography. And that made him stop taking the vibrant autumn color for granted.

Great leaf-peeping experiences

“I suddenly began to notice the stunning colors that seemed to blanket the hills in fire each fall as the days got shorter and the nights became colder,” he remembers. “Slowly but surely, as I gained experience and insight, I began to really understand what a special place Vermont is, and I began to fall in love with my home and the stunning colors.”

Collier is now a staff photographer for the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. This year, he decided for the first time to document the fall beauty of his state.

He shared his images alongside dozens of other photographers on CNN iReport. The best of his shots, along with other images of autumn around the world, are in the gallery above.

Hit the trail: 7 gorgeous hikes

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Offers of help are pouring in from around the world for three Cleveland women who were kidnapped and held in captivity for a decade, with people offering cash, furniture and even use of a vacation home to help them rebuild their lives.

Three members of the Cleveland City Council have set up a fund to provide financial assistance to Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32.

“It’s a big healing process that is beginning,” Councilwoman Dona Brady said on Saturday.

Since it was established earlier this week, the fund has raised more than $50,000, said Cleveland Councilman Brian Cummins, who helped arrange the Cleveland Courage Fund, which is administered by a non-profit organization.

Ariel Castro, a 52-year-old former school bus driver, has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and raping the three women while keeping them locked up in a rundown Cleveland home.

DNA tests released on Friday identified Castro as the father of Berry’s 6-year-old daughter, who was born in captivity.

The Cuyahoga County prosecutor also plans to seek murder charges, which could carry the death penalty, against Castro because police say there is evidence Knight suffered forced miscarriages.

Berry and DeJesus, along with Berry’s daughter, left the hospital earlier this week and have been reunited with their families. Knight, who is estranged from some of her family members, according to her grandmother, was discharged from the hospital on Friday and went into seclusion.

Knight was kidnapped in 2002 at the age of 20; Berry in 2003 the day before her 17th birthday; and DeJesus in 2004, when she was 14. During their captivity, police said, the women endured beatings, rapes and at times confinement in ropes and chains.

Berry told police that her escape on Monday had been her first chance to break free in the 10 years she was held, seizing an opportunity during Castro’s momentary absence. With the help of neighbors, she and her daughter broke free, and police freed the other two women.

BUSINESSES, INDIVIDUALS PITCH IN

Cummins said the fund for the three women had received donations from people across the United States, as well as Canada, France and Australia.

The money will not go directly to the victims, but be distributed to organizations to help the women pay for therapy, doctor’s visits, housing and other expenses, Cummins said.

City officials said they were working to respond to a flood of emails with offers of assistance from companies, businesses and individuals.

Business owners have offered free healthcare, beauty and spa services and furniture, said Johanna Hamm, a City Council administrative official.

One offer was an all-expenses-paid stay at a lakeside vacation home, she said.

A Cleveland pizzeria said it planned to donate all the money from its sales on Thursday to the Cleveland Courage Fund. Workers at Angelo’s Pizza also said they intended to give their hourly wages that day.

In a message posted on the fund’s Facebook page, one woman said she hoped the women would one day recover from their horrific ordeal.

“If everyone donated just one dollar, it would make a difference in these girls’ lives,” said June Barter Green. “Maybe someday they can live a normal life.”

(Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Peter Cooney)

BERLIN May 12 (Reuters) – Germany’s finance minister has
called for a “two-step approach” towards European banking union,
writing that a limited “timber-framed” union, set up without
changing European treaties, would buy time to create a future
“steel-framed” union.

In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Wolfgang
Schaeuble wrote that today’s EU treaties provide a foundation
for the new single banking supervisor but not for a central
resolution authority to restructure or wind up failed banks.

“As the rescue of Cyprus has shown, we need predictability
about when shareholders and creditors – and in what order -
would be called upon to bail in or wind up a bank,” he wrote.

In June last year European Union leaders committed to a
banking union but since then deep cracks have emerged in the
visions they have of the scheme, with Germany in particular
raising doubts about its overall feasibility.

While the first step – to create a single bank supervisor
under the ECB – looks set to be in place by mid-2014, a second
pillar, a “resolution” agency and fund to close failed banks, is
in doubt. And there is little prospect that a third leg, a
single deposit guarantee scheme, will ever see the light of day.

“Limited treaty changes would not just provide a safe legal
base for a European resolution authority; they could create a
better separation between supervision and monetary functions in
the ECB,” Schaeuble wrote.

“Amending the treaties takes time. Luckily, the alternative
is not between a legally shaky resolution authority now and the
postponement of repair work on the banks.”

A two-step approach, he continued, could start with a
resolution mechanism based on a network of national authorities.

“Instead of a single European resolution fund – which the
industry would take many years to fill – such a model would lean
on national funds, which already exist in several member
states,” he wrote.

“A banking union of sorts can thus be had without revising
the treaties … this would be a timber-framed, not a
steel-framed, banking union. But it would serve its purpose and
buy time for the creation of a legal base for our long-term
goal: a truly European and supranational banking union.”

Group of Seven finance officials meeting in Britain agreed
on Saturday to redouble efforts to deal with failing banks.

(Reporting by Alexandra Hudson; editing by Andrew Roche)