Exclusive: Banks offer to help Sony offload battery unit – sources

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp has been approached by at least three investment banks offering to sell its battery business as the struggling Japanese group looks to offload non-core assets and focus on reviving its consumer electronics business, banking sources said.

Selling the unit, which employs 2,700 people and had sales last year of $ 1.74 billion, would help Sony cut costs and generate cash as it restructures its operations, three people involved in the preliminary discussions told Reuters.

The company, a byword for innovative gadgetry in the 1970s and 80s, has been battered by weak demand for its TVs in a fiercely competitive market. The TV business has racked up huge losses; Sony’s market value has slumped to below $ 10 billion and ratings agency Fitch last week downgraded the company’s debt to “junk” status – a move likely to push up borrowing costs and make asset sales more attractive.

CEO Kazuo Hirai has pledged to rebuild Sony around gaming, digital imaging and mobile devices, while nurturing new businesses such as medical devices. He is axing 10,000 jobs, closing facilities and selling assets. Any disposals would be part of a broader “garage sale” by Japan’s leading electronics groups that are hurting in weak markets and tight financing.

Potential buyers for Sony Energy Devices Corp – founded in 1975 as Sony-Eveready, a joint venture with Union Carbide Corp – could include Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry and BYD Co Ltd, a Chinese carmaker backed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, said one of the sources. Hon Hai is also in negotiations to become rival TV maker Sharp Corp’s biggest shareholder.

FOREIGN INTEREST

Despite a strong yen, interest is likely to come mainly from potential foreign buyers, said the sources, who did not want to be named as the talks are private.

Selling the business overseas may not go down well with a Japanese government that in the past has kept technology at home by promoting alliances between local producers. Panasonic Corp, NEC Corp and Hitachi Ltd also make lithium-ion batteries, though the firms’ fabrication technology differs.

Sony declined to comment on the possible sale of the business, which makes lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones, tablets and PCs. “At our corporate strategy announcement in April, (Hirai) said we would explore possible alliances in E-vehicle batteries and battery storage,” said spokesman George Boyd.

As with TVs, Sony has struggled to compete against South Korean rivals in a battery business that is worth $ 18 billion a year. The small cells that power mobile devices now account for around 60 percent of the market, ahead of those used in cars and electrical tools, according to research company IHS iSuppli.

While lithium-ion battery demand has steadily expanded with the boom in mobile consumer electronics, severe price competition has resulted in razor thin margins that favor large-scale manufacturers with weak local currencies.

“The battery business is a prime example of the company’s loss-making and unwanted assets. It doesn’t make sense for them to keep it,” said one of the banking sources.

FALLING MARKET SHARE

As Hirai doubles down on Sony’s strength in consumer electronics, the company has sold a chemicals company, with 2,900 workers, and may also let go its U.S. headquarters building in New York go. At the same time, it has spent close to $ 2 billion on a U.S. game clouding company and a stake in medical equipment maker Olympus Corp.

Sony produced 74 million lithium-ion battery cells in July-September – almost 40 percent fewer than in the first quarter of 2008, when its output topped Samsung SDI Co Ltd’s 110 million and LG Chem Ltd’s 54 million, according to Techno System Research in Tokyo. Sony’s market share is now 7 percent, dwarfed by Samsung SDI’s 27 percent, Panasonic’s 21 percent and LG Chem’s 17 percent.

Sony’s battery unit, which also makes button batteries for watches and smaller appliances and optical devices, has three factories in Japan and two overseas assembly plants in China and Singapore. It has yet to enter the more lucrative business for automotive batteries.

In its most recent filing, Sony valued the battery unit’s fixed assets, including production sites and machinery, at 52 billion yen ($ 633 million). Under Sony’s accounting rules, asset sales are typically booked as operating profit.

The cost to protect $ 10 million of Sony debt against default for five years has edged higher this week to almost $ 400,000. The CDS spreads had tumbled earlier this month – from above 480 basis points – after Sony said it would raise 150 billion yen ($ 1.9 billion) through a sale of convertible bonds.

($ 1 = 82.1200 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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In elf ears and wizard hats, ‘Hobbit’ fans rejoice

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Wearing elf ears and wizard hats, sitting atop their dad’s shoulders or peering from balconies, tens of thousands of New Zealanders watched their favorite “Hobbit” actors walk the red carpet Wednesday at the film trilogy’s hometown premiere.

An Air New Zealand plane freshly painted with “Hobbit” characters flew low over Wellington’s Embassy Theatre, eliciting roars of approval from the crowd.

Sam Rashidmardani, 12, said he came to see Gollum actor Andy Serkis walk the red carpet — and he wasn’t disappointed.

“It was amazing,” Rashidmardani said of the evening, adding his Gollum impression: “My precious.”

British actor Martin Freeman, who brings comedic timing to the lead role of Bilbo Baggins, said he thought director Peter Jackson had done a fantastic job on “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”

“He’s done it again,” Freeman said in an interview on the red carpet. “If it’s possible, it’s probably even better than ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ I think he’s surpassed it.”

While is unusual for a city so far from Hollywood to host the premiere of a hoped-for blockbuster, Jackson’s filming of his lauded ‘LOTR’ trilogy and now “The Hobbit” in New Zealand has helped create a film industry here. The film will open in theaters around the world next month.

One of the talking points of the film is the choice by Jackson to shoot it using 48 frames per second instead of the traditional 24 in hopes of improving the picture quality.

Some say the images come out too clear and look so realistic that they take away from the magic of the film medium. Jackson likens it to advancing from vinyl records to CDs.

“I really think 48 frames is pretty terrific and I’m looking forward to seeing the reaction,” Jackson said on the red carpet. “It’s been talked about for so long, but finally the film is being released and people can decide for themselves.”

Jackson said it was strange working on the project so intimately for two years and then having it suddenly taken away as the world got to see the movie.

“It spins your head a little bit,” he said.

Aidan Turner, who plays the dwarf Kili in the movie, said his character is reckless and thinks he’s charming.

“I don’t get to play real people it seems, I only get to play supernatural ones,” he said. “So playing a dwarf didn’t seem that weird, actually.

Perhaps the most well-known celebrities to walk the carpet were Cate Blanchett and Elijah Wood, who reprise their roles in the LOTR in the “Hobbit.”

“Mostly I came here to see everyone. I like them all,” said fan Aysu Shahin, 16, adding that Wood was her favorite. She said she wanted to see the movie “as soon as possible. I’m excited for it.”

At a news conference earlier in the day, Jackson said many younger people are happy to watch movies on their iPads.

“We just have to make the cinema-going experience more magical and more spectacular to get people coming back to the movies again,” he said.

Jackson said only about 1,000 of the 25,000 theaters that will show the film worldwide are equipped to show 48 frames, so most people will see it in the more traditional format. The movie has also been shot in 3D.

A handful of animal rights protesters held signs at the premiere.

The protest by the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals comes after several animal wranglers said three horses and up to two dozen other animals had died during the making of the movies because they were housed at an unsafe farm.

Jackson’s spokesman earlier acknowledged two horses had died preventable deaths at the farms but said the production company worked quickly to improve stables and other facilities and that claims of mistreatment were unfounded.

“No mistreatment, no abuse. Absolutely none,” Jackson said at the news conference.

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Salary growth lagging for primary care doctors

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Despite rising spending on health care in the United States, primary care doctors don’t seem to be reaping the rewards on their paychecks, a new study suggests.

The findings could have implications for what some predictions say will be a primary care shortage in some parts of the country in the coming years.

Researchers found that since the late 1980s, the average doctor‘s earnings have grown more slowly than the salaries of other health professionals, such as pharmacists, dentists and registered nurses.

“It is possible that there are some specialties that have done extremely well in the past 10 or 15 years,” said health policy researcher Amitabh Chandra from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who worked on the study.

But, “In terms of the experience of the median doctor, the median doctor is not at the heart of all the cost growth we’re seeing in America.” And that may have implications for the primary care field in the future, he noted.

For their study, Chandra and his colleagues analyzed data from a nationally-representative survey of Americans’ occupations and earnings conducted every year between 1987 and 2010. Each round included people older than 35 from 60,000 different households.

Over the 14-year study, 30,556 health professionals were surveyed, including 6,258 doctors.

The researchers found that between 1987-1990 and 2006-2010, the median doctor’s annual earnings grew from $ 143,963 to $ 157,751 – a difference of 9.6 percent. That was after taking into account any salary differences based on gender, age and location.

In comparison, the average pharmacist’s earnings increased by 44 percent, from $ 70,341 to $ 101,279, and the average dentist’s by 23 percent, from $ 105,511 to $ 129,795, the researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Looking closer, the study team found that doctors’ salaries grew between 1987-1990 and 1996-2000, but then were stagnant over the next decade – a time when other health professionals continued to get bigger paychecks.

Because the earnings reflect pay for doctors in the middle of the salary pack, Chandra said the slow growth probably represents patterns for primary care doctors rather than specialists – and earnings for some “procedure-driven specialties,” such as cardiology, may have grown a lot.

Medicare payment cuts, as well as tougher bargaining by insurance companies, may be partly to blame for the “sluggish” growth in the primary care field, he added.

THE WHOLE PACKAGE?

In addition, more women and minorities are becoming doctors – and research has suggested they make less money than white, male physicians, said Bob Konrad from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied doctor salaries.

He said the new findings may also not tell the whole economic story for primary care doctors.

Recently employers have started offering to pay off more of new doctors’ college and medical school debt as a way of luring top candidates, he said – but such financial benefits wouldn’t show up on their paychecks.

“Going forward, thinking about physician incomes, you have to think about the whole package,” Konrad, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

But Chandra said the study may have implications for some parts of the U.S. that are already facing a shortage of primary care doctors.

“If as a country we want more people to go into primary care, this anemic, jaundiced earnings growth is not going to be a motivator to get people to join primary care,” he told Reuters Health.

One profession not covered by the new research, Konrad pointed out, is wage workers such as home health aides.

“That’s a big part of the healthcare workforce and growing much faster than many other occupations,” he said. What’s more, “The hourly wage of a home health aide has been going down every year for the last 10 years… Half the people in the health sector are in the bottom half (of American workers) – they’re making less than $ 40,000 a year.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/JjFzqx Journal of the American Medical Association, online November 27, 2012.

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Oil below $87 after OECD cuts growth forecasts

BANGKOK (AP) — The price of oil fell below $ 87 a barrel Wednesday after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its growth outlook for the U.S. and the 17 countries that use the euro currency.

Benchmark oil for January delivery was down 23 cents to $ 86.96 per barrel at late afternoon Bangkok time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 56 cents to finish at $ 87.18 a barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

The Paris-based OECD said Tuesday that the combined economy of the 17 euro countries will contract by 0.4 percent this year, worse than May’s 0.1 percent forecast. For 2013, it will contract a further 0.1 percent.

The OECD also downgraded its forecasts for the U.S. economy. Even if the White House and Congress strike a budget deal before Jan. 1 and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, the OECD said the U.S. will grow by only 2 percent next year, down from May’s forecast of 2.6 percent.

Traders said weak economic growth would likely hurt demand for energy.

Michael Hewson, senior market analyst of CMC Markets, said the OECD report refocused concerns on “the toxic effect the European crisis continues to have on global growth prospects.”

Brent crude, which is used to set prices for many international varieties of oil, fell 28 cents to $ 109.59 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange.

In other energy futures trading on the Nymex:

— Wholesale gasoline was down 0.3 cent at $ 2.692.

— Natural gas fell 2 cents to $ 3.749 per 1,000 cubic feet.

— Heating oil fell 0.2 cent to $ 3.023 a gallon.

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Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout

CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — A 20-year-old state beauty queen died in a gun battle between soldiers and the alleged gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with in a scene befitting the hit movie “Miss Bala,” or “Miss Bullet,” about Mexico’s not uncommon ties between narcos and beautiful pageant contestants.

The body of Maria Susana Flores Gamez was found Saturday lying near an assault rifle on a rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, the chief state prosecutor said Monday. It was unclear if she had used the weapon.

“She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout,” state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. “That’s what we’re going to have to investigate.”

The slender, 5-foot-7-inch brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. In June, the model competed with other seven contestants for the more prestigious state beauty contest, Our Beauty Sinaloa, but didn’t win. The Our Beauty state winners compete for the Miss Mexico title, whose holder represents the country in the international Miss Universe.

Higuera said Flores Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an hours-long chase and running gun battle on Saturday near her native city of Guamuchil in the state of Sinaloa, home to Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel. Higuera said two other members of the drug gang were killed and four were detained.

The shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol. Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house in the town of Mocorito. The other men escaped, and the gunbattle continued along a nearby roadway, where the gang’s vehicles were eventually stopped. Six vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.

It was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants have been linked to Mexico’s violent drug gangs, a theme so common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.

In “Miss Bala,” Mexico’s official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of this year’s Academy Awards, a young woman competing for Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into performing.

In real life, former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga was stripped of her 2008 crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. She was later released without charges.

Zuniga was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $ 53,300 with them inside a vehicle.

In 2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for Paraguay‘s national football team and Mexico’s Club America. She was also later released.

Higuera said Flores Gamez’s body has been turned over to relatives for burial.

“This is a sad situation,” Higuera told a local radio station. She had been enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling and in pageants since at least 2009.

Javier Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants entitled “Miss Narco,” said “this is a recurrent story.”

“There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself,” Valdez said.

“It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need,” said Valdez. “For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn’t offer many opportunities for young people.”

Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.

“I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend,” he said. “She practically took out a classified ad saying ‘Looking for a Narco’.”

The stories seldom end well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they simply disappear.

“They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed,” Valdez said.

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Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report

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HTC confirms 5-inch ‘Deluxe’ smartphone won’t launch in Europe

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Halle Berry’s ex claims he was victim in Thanksgiving brawl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Halle Berry‘s ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry on Monday won a restraining order against the actress’s current lover, as the two men fought in the Los Angeles courts over who started their Thanksgiving Day brawl.

Releasing photos of himself with a black eye and cuts to his face, Aubry claimed that he was the victim in the November 22 punch-up with Berry’s fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, in the driveway of her Los Angeles house.

“I suffered numerous injuries as a result of the attack, including a fractured rib, multiple bruises on my face and a number of cuts which required stitches,” Aubry said in court papers, alleging that Martinez had threatened the day before to kill him.

“It all happened so fast and so suddenly; I did not see Mr Martinez’s actions coming and thus I was not ready for it and was not able to defend myself,” Aubry wrote.

Aubry, Martinez, and the Oscar-winning “Monster’s Ball” actress have been embroiled for months in a custody fight over Berry’s 4-year-old daughter, Nahla. Berry wants to take the daughter she had with Aubry to live with her and Martinez in France, but a Los Angeles judge denied that request earlier in November.

Aubry claimed in his request for a restraining order on Monday that Martinez told him, “You cost us $ 3 million,” while the French actor punched and kicked him on November 22.

Aubry, a Canadian model, was arrested last week for battery after the fist fight, and ordered to stay away from Berry, the child, and Martinez.

Neither man has been yet been formally charged in the case.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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Outbreak-Tied Peanut Butter Plant Shut

Nov 26, 2012 7:37pm

The Food and Drug Administration today shut down the country’s largest organic peanut butter processor following a salmonella outbreak that sickened scores of people nationwide.

For the first time the FDA has utilized new power granted by the 2011 food safety law and shut down Sunland Inc.’s New Mexico processing plant.

In a statement on their website, the FDA said that the link between the company and the salmonella outbreak that sickened 41 people in 20 states along with “Sunland’s history of violations led FDA to make the decision to suspend the company’s registration.”

Between June 2000 and September 2012 eleven product lots of nut butter tested positive for presence of Salmonella. And, according to the FDA, between March 2010 and September 2012, Sunland Inc. distributed at least a portion of eight product lots after they had tested positive.

The FDA also found the presence of Salmonella in 28 environmental samples during a September and October 2012 inspection.  FDA inspectors reported that employees of Sunland Inc. failed to wash hands, improperly handled equipment used to process food as well as providing  ”no records” to document cleaning of equipment. Additionally, the building housing the production and packaging had no hand-washing sinks even though employees had “bare-handed contact” with the product.

“The super-sized bags used by the firm to store peanuts were not cleaned despite being used for both raw and roasted peanuts.  There was a leaking sink in a washroom which resulted in water accumulating on the floor, and the plant is not built to allow floors, walls and ceilings to be adequately cleaned.

Finally, investigators found that raw materials were exposed to potential contamination.  Raw, in-shell peanuts were found outside the plant in uncovered trailers. Birds were observed landing in the trailers and the peanuts were exposed to rain, which provides a growth environment for Salmonella and other bacteria.  Inside the warehouse, facility doors were open to the outside, which could allow pests to enter.”

In a November 15 statement the president and CEO of Sunland, Jimmie Shearer, emphasized that at “no time” did the company distribute products they knew to be contaminated. The company has submitted a response to the FDA outlining their response to the recall and contaminated product testing.

“We believe that drawing any inferences much less conclusions about the Company’s practices based solely on the observations as set forth in the Form 483 without considering the Company’s response would be wholly premature and unduly prejudicial to Sunland.”

Food Safety Modernization Act, which the FDA acted under to shut down the plant, grants the agency the authority to suspend manufacturing when there is “reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, and other conditions are met.”

Sunland Inc., can request an informal hearing to lift the suspension.  However the 24-year-old company will only have its registration returned after the FDA decides the company has safe manufacturing practices.

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Work programme ‘to miss targets’

27 November 2012 Last updated at 04:11 ET

Government figures assessing the success of its welfare-to-work programme are expected to show a crucial target has been missed.

Firms and charities are paid to help find jobs for the long-term unemployed in the hope of helping 2.4m people.

But the first set of official figures, due out at shortly, are expected to show they are getting less than 5% of jobseekers into “sustainable” work.

Ministers argue the programme will help cut welfare payments and change lives.

But critics say only those in already economically successful areas will benefit.

The figures will show how many people are still in employment six months after joining the Work Programme, which was launched by the coalition in June last year.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson says the figures are expected to show that only around 3% of jobseekers meet this criteria.

Continue reading the main story

The work programme was part of what ministers called a revolution in welfare ”

End Quote

And failing to hit the 5% target will mean “as many unemployed are getting sustainable jobs as if the work programme had never existed”, he said.

He added that the government will not accept the scheme is a failure and will claim the work programme is taking longer than expected to succeed and the next set of figures will be better.

Under the scheme – replacing the New Deal, Employment Zones and Pathways to Work – approved providers in England, Scotland and Wales, mostly private companies, try to find work for claimants on a payment-by-results basis.

‘Still early days’

People aged over 25 become eligible when they have been out of work for a year and under-25s after nine months. Some younger people in certain circumstances, like young offenders, are eligible after a shorter period of time.

Ahead of the release of the government’s figures, the Employment Related Services Association, the trade body for the welfare-to-work industry, said 20,000 jobseekers were being helped each month. More than 200,000 have found employment since the scheme’s launch, it added.

But these figures do not show how many have remained in a job for six months after being helped off long-term unemployment, unlike the official ONS figures.

Employment minister Mark Hoban said: “The Work Programme has already helped more than 200,000 of the hardest-to-help unemployed people into jobs. This is great news.

He added: “It’s still early days, but it’s a welcome sign that one year in providers are getting more and more people into sustained jobs.”

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion think-tank predicted that the official data would show performance targets missed as a result of the poor state of the UK’s economy.

Under the programme, providers can earn between £3,700 and £13,700 per person helped into work, depending how hard it is to give support to an individual, with an initial payment of between £400 and £600.

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

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