By Ross KerberBOSTON, Oct 18 (Reuters) - A developer who acquired
property in a faulty transfer cannot sue the original owner,
Massachusetts’ highest court ruled on Tuesday, the second time
it has sided with a homeowner in a high-profile housing case
this year.The decision by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court turned
on technical reasons and left the developer facing the prospect
of suing banks and title companies that had left him with
faulty documentation, rather than the original homeowner who
had been foreclosed upon.The result could make it easier for individuals to fend off
financial companies in similar cases elsewhere, said an
attorney who had argued against the developer’s case.”The banks are the ones that violated the law, so why
should homeowners have to pay for the violations?” said Max
Weinstein, an attorney and Harvard Law School lecturer who had
filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the homeowner.Housing industry executives had previously warned a ruling
against the developer, Francis Bevilacqua, could destabilize
the real-estate finance system.Bevilacqua’s attorney, Jeffrey Loeb, said he was
disappointed the court did not accept parts of his argument,
but pleased with a section of the ruling in which the judges
reaffirmed that even a flawed foreclosure deed could “operate
as an assignment of the mortgage itself.”The result, he said, “gives Fran Bevilacqua and people in
his position the right to re-foreclose.”Loeb said he has not had a chance to discuss the ruling
with Bevilacqua or to decide their next course of action.SECOND CASE FOR COURTIn January, the state’s highest court voided the seizure of
two homes by Wells Fargo & Co and US Bancorp
after they failed to show they held titles at the time of the
foreclosures.Issues of foreclosures done without proper documentation
have flared up nationwide as banks and regulators grapple with
the aftermath of the housing boom and the loose oversight that
accompanied it.In this case, banks and mortgage companies had lined up
behind the developer, while state officials and housing
activists had cited his claims as examples of a flawed system.The matter began when US Bancorp transferred to Bevilacqua
the title for a building in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a suburb
north of Boston. He turned it into four condominiums.In a bid to establish clear title, Bevilacqua sued the
previous owner who had been foreclosed upon. But a lower court
ruled that Bevilacqua did not hold title to the property and
said his lawsuit would be better directed at those that gave
him the faulty title.The original owner and defendant in the suit, Pablo
Rodriguez, has not appeared at hearings or filed motions in the
case.The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the lower court ruling
dismissing Bevilacqua’s lawsuit, but left the door open for him
to refile his lawsuit in a different form.The case in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is
Francis J. Bevilacqua III vs. Pablo Rodriguez, SJC-10880.
It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.The Occupy movement, decentralized and leaderless, has mobilized thousands of people around the world almost exclusively via the Internet. To a large degree through Twitter, and also with platforms like Facebook and Meetup, crowds have connected and gathered.As with any movement, a spark is needed to start word spreading. SocialFlow, a social media marketing company, did an analysis for Reuters of the history of the Occupy hashtag on Twitter and the ways it spread and took root.The first apparent mention was that July 13 blog post by activist group Adbusters (r.reuters.com/suc54s) but the idea was slow to get traction.The next Twitter mention was on July 20 (r.reuters.com/tuc54s) from a Costa Rican film producer named Francisco Guerrero, linking to a blog post on a site called Wake Up from Your Slumber that reiterated the Adbusters call to action (r.reuters.com/vuc54s).The site, founded in 2006 “to expose America’s fraudulent monetary system and the evil of charging interest on money loaned,” is a reference to the biblical verse Romans 13:11 that reads in part: “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”Guerrero’s post was retweeted once and then there was silence until two July 23 tweets — one from the Spanish user Gurzbo (r.reuters.com/wuc54s) and one from a retired high school chemistry teacher in Long Island, New York named Cindy tweeting as gemswinc. (r.reuters.com/xuc54s)Gurzbo’s post was not passed along by anyone but Cindy’s was, by eight people, including a Delaware-based opponent of the Federal Reserve, a vegan information rights supporter, a Washington-based environmentalist and an Alabama-based progressive blogger.Again, there was relative silence for nearly two weeks, until LazyBookworm tweeted the Occupy hashtag again on August 5. (r.reuters.com/zuc54s) That got seven retweets, largely from a crowd of organic food supporters and poets.HASHTAG REVOLTThe notion of Occupy Wall Street was out there but it was not gaining much attention — until, of course, it did, suddenly and with force.Social media experts trace the expansion to hyper-local tweeters, people who cover the pulse of communities at a level of detail not even local papers can match.In New York, credit goes to the Twitter account of Newyorkist, whose more than 11,000 tweets chronicle the city in block-by-block detail. His was one of the first well-followed accounts to mention the protests in mid-September.Trendistic, which tracks hashtag trends on Twitter, shows that OccupyWallStreet first showed up in any volume around 11 p.m. on September 16, the evening before the occupation of lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park began. Within 24 hours, the tag represented nearly 1 of every 500 uses of a hashtag.The first two weeks of the movement were slow, media coverage was slim and little happened beyond the taking of the concrete park itself. But then a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge prompted hundreds of arrests and the spark was ignited.On October 1, #OccupyBoston started to show up on Twitter. Within a couple of weeks, #OccupyDenver and #OccupySD and others appeared.The Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook started on September 19 with a YouTube video of the early protests. By September 22, it reached critical mass.”Newcomers today, welcome! Feel free to post. Advertise your own pages of resistance. Network until it works,” read one posting meant to inspire protests elsewhere.For young activists around the world, who grew up with the Internet and the smartphone, Facebook and Twitter have become crucial in expanding the movement.They are pioneering platforms like Vibe that lets people anonymously share text, photos and video over short distances for brief periods of time — perfect for use at rallies.”No one owns a (Twitter) hashtag, it has no leadership, it has no organization, it has no creed but it’s quite appropriate to the architecture of the net. This is a distributed revolt,” said Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at City University of New York and author of the well-known blog BuzzMachine.Some reports say the protesters have raised as much as $300,000 in donations to cover everything from pizza to video equipment but others put the figure much lower.The Alliance for Global Justice, which calls itself “the fiscal sponsor for Occupy Wall Street,” has raised $23,200 via WePay.com.OCCUPY EVERYWHEREAs of Monday afternoon, Facebook listed no fewer than 125 Occupy-related pages, from New York to Tulsa and all points in between. Roughly 1 in every 500 hashtags used on Twitter on Monday, all around the world, was the movement’s own #OWS.The websites keep proliferating — We Are the 99 Percent, Parents for Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together, even the parody Occupy Sesame Street (concerned mostly with the plight of monsters living in garbage cans).Online streaming video has also been a huge resource for the protesters, using cheap cameras and high-speed wireless Internet access.Supporters, opponents and the merely curious got the chance last Saturday to watch the Occupy Wall Street protesters decide whether to occupy a major public park, Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village area.They saw warnings the police were about to arrive in riot gear and with horses, vans and buses to take away protesters if there were mass arrests. Local media reported about 10 arrests among the 3,000 or so people in the park.As the seconds to a possible confrontation ticked down, the tension led to various reactions from those watching online.”Anyone arrested is a political prisoner,” said one.”Here comes Czar Bloomberg’s Cossacks,” said another, in reference to New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the appearance of the mounted police.There were “we are watching” messages of support from cities across the United States and some who found it the best entertainment going on a Saturday night.”So much more exciting than a TV show” was one comment.
A team of researchers led by the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge used cutting-edge methods to correct a genetic mutation in stem cells derived from a patient’s skin biopsy, and then grew them into fresh liver cells.By putting the new liver cells into mice, they showed they were fully functioning.”We have developed new systems to target genes and … correct … defects in patient cells,” said Allan Bradley, director of the Sanger Institute.At a briefing about the work, Bradley said the technique — the first success of its kind — leaves behind no trace of the genetic manipulation, except for the gene correction.”These are early steps, but if this technology can be taken into treatment, it will offer great possible benefits for patients,” he added.Stem cells are the body’s master cells, the source for all other cells. Scientists say they could transform medicine, providing treatments for blindness, spinal cord and other severe injuries, and new cells for damaged organs.Research is focused on two main forms — embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from embryos, and reprogrammed cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which are reprogrammed from ordinary skin or blood cells.When they were first discovered in 2006, iPS cells looked like a perfect solution to the ethical debate over the use of embryonic stem cells because they are made in a lab from ordinary skin or blood cells. Embryonic stem cells are usually harvested from leftover embryos at fertility clinics and their use is opposed by many religious groups.But in recent years, concerns have been raised that iPS cells may not be as “clean” or as capable as embryonic cells.Last year, a group led by Robert Lanza, of the U.S. firm Advanced Cell Technology, compared batches of iPS cells with embryonic stem cells and noticed the iPS cells died more quickly and were much less able to grow and expand.CORRECTING MUTATIONIn Wednesday’s study, published in the journal Nature, the British team took skin cells from a patient with a mutation in a gene called alpha1-antitrypsin, which is responsible for making a protein that protects against inflammation.People with mutant alpha1-antitrypsin are not able to release the protein properly from the liver, so it becomes trapped there and eventually leads to liver cirrhosis and lung emphysema. This is one of the most common inherited liver and lung disorders and affects about one in 2,000 people of North European origin, the researchers said.Having harvested the skin cells, the scientists reprogrammed them back into stem cells and then used a type of “molecular scissor” technique known as a zinc finger nuclease to snip the cells’ genome at precisely the right place and insert a correct version of the gene using a DNA transporter called piggyBac.The leftover piggyBac sequences were then removed from the cells, cleaning them up and allowing them to be converted into liver cells without any trace of residual DNA damage at the site of the genetic correction.”We then turned those cells into human liver cells and put them in a mouse and showed that they were viable,” David Lomas, a Cambridge professor of respiratory biology who also worked on the team, told reporters at the briefing.Ludovic Vallier, also from Cambridge University, said the results were a first step toward personalized cell therapy for genetic liver disorders. “We still have major challenges to overcome…but we now have the tools necessary,” he said.The researchers said it could be another five to 10 years before full clinical trials of the technique could be run using patients with liver disease. But if they succeed, liver transplants — costly and complicated procedures where patients need a lifetime of drugs to ensure the new organ is not rejected — could become a thing of the past.”If we can use a patient’s own skins cells to produce liver cells that we can put back into the patient, we may prevent the future need for transplantation,” said Lomas.
A team of researchers led by the Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge used cutting-edge methods to correct a genetic mutation in stem cells derived from a patient’s skin biopsy, and then grew them into fresh liver cells.By putting the new liver cells into mice, they showed they were fully functioning.”We have developed new systems to target genes and … correct … defects in patient cells,” said Allan Bradley, director of the Sanger Institute.At a briefing about the work, Bradley said the technique — the first success of its kind — leaves behind no trace of the genetic manipulation, except for the gene correction.”These are early steps, but if this technology can be taken into treatment, it will offer great possible benefits for patients,” he added.Stem cells are the body’s master cells, the source for all other cells. Scientists say they could transform medicine, providing treatments for blindness, spinal cord and other severe injuries, and new cells for damaged organs.Research is focused on two main forms — embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from embryos, and reprogrammed cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which are reprogrammed from ordinary skin or blood cells.When they were first discovered in 2006, iPS cells looked like a perfect solution to the ethical debate over the use of embryonic stem cells because they are made in a lab from ordinary skin or blood cells. Embryonic stem cells are usually harvested from leftover embryos at fertility clinics and their use is opposed by many religious groups.But in recent years, concerns have been raised that iPS cells may not be as “clean” or as capable as embryonic cells.Last year, a group led by Robert Lanza, of the U.S. firm Advanced Cell Technology, compared batches of iPS cells with embryonic stem cells and noticed the iPS cells died more quickly and were much less able to grow and expand.CORRECTING MUTATIONIn Wednesday’s study, published in the journal Nature, the British team took skin cells from a patient with a mutation in a gene called alpha1-antitrypsin, which is responsible for making a protein that protects against inflammation.People with mutant alpha1-antitrypsin are not able to release the protein properly from the liver, so it becomes trapped there and eventually leads to liver cirrhosis and lung emphysema. This is one of the most common inherited liver and lung disorders and affects about one in 2,000 people of North European origin, the researchers said.Having harvested the skin cells, the scientists reprogrammed them back into stem cells and then used a type of “molecular scissor” technique known as a zinc finger nuclease to snip the cells’ genome at precisely the right place and insert a correct version of the gene using a DNA transporter called piggyBac.The leftover piggyBac sequences were then removed from the cells, cleaning them up and allowing them to be converted into liver cells without any trace of residual DNA damage at the site of the genetic correction.”We then turned those cells into human liver cells and put them in a mouse and showed that they were viable,” David Lomas, a Cambridge professor of respiratory biology who also worked on the team, told reporters at the briefing.Ludovic Vallier, also from Cambridge University, said the results were a first step toward personalized cell therapy for genetic liver disorders. “We still have major challenges to overcome…but we now have the tools necessary,” he said.The researchers said it could be another five to 10 years before full clinical trials of the technique could be run using patients with liver disease. But if they succeed, liver transplants — costly and complicated procedures where patients need a lifetime of drugs to ensure the new organ is not rejected — could become a thing of the past.”If we can use a patient’s own skins cells to produce liver cells that we can put back into the patient, we may prevent the future need for transplantation,” said Lomas.
On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite ended up 3
percent at 2,420 in its biggest single-day gain in about a year.HIGHLIGHTS:* Chinese financials continued to take centre stage and were
the main drivers of the rally on Wednesday. China Construction
Bank rose 2.5 percent providing the biggest boost to
the Hang Seng index. ICBC rose 1.2 percent. Hopes that
Chinese authorities would take steps to bolster confidence in
beaten down financial shares received a boost earlier this week
when Central Huijin, the domestic investment arm of the
country’s sovereign wealth fund, was upping its stakes in the
“Big Four” Chinese banks.* Shares of Esprit Holdings slumped 7.5 percent
but ended off their lows after a media report that the company
exaggerated the number of its outlets in China, putting more
pressure on the retailer that saw its annual profits slump
nearly 100 percent.
