Three dead in shooting at New Jersey grocery store

OLD BRIDGE, New Jersey (Reuters) - An employee at a suburban New Jersey supermarket opened fire in the store in the pre-dawn hours on Friday, killing two co-workers and then taking his own life, a prosecutor said.

The 23-year-old shooter, who had not yet been identified, was on a night shift at the Pathmark grocery when he left the store about 3:30 a.m. EDT (3.30 a.m. EDT) and returned shortly after with an AK-47 automatic rifle and a handgun, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said at a news conference.

Shots were heard inside the supermarket in Old Bridge, about 35 miles from New York City, just as employees were preparing to open the store for business.

The two victims, identified as an 18-year-old female and a 24-year-old male, were Pathmark employees and were among a dozen workers in the store at the time. They were shot in separate areas of the store, Kaplan said.

"He entered the store firing his weapons," and magazines were found scattered around the store, Kaplan said.

The incident comes just one week after an unemployed New York City man shot and killed a former co-worker near the Empire State Building before being shot dead by police.

In July, a gunman opened fire in a crowded Colorado movie theater, killing 12 people; and earlier this month a white supremacist opened fire in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, leaving seven people dead.

Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry described the suspected shooter as a former marine and a disgruntled worker who had been employed by Pathmark for just a few weeks, the Star-Ledger newspaper said.

"This is the worst phone call a mayor can receive," Henry told the newspaper. "You can prepare for these things but you can't prevent them."

Kaplan said he could not confirm details about the shooter beyond his age.

Hours after the shooting, the store remained closed and police had blocked off one of the roads leading up to the shopping plaza that houses the Pathmark.

"We express our deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and our appreciation to local law enforcement. Our main concern is the safety of our associates and customers," Pathmark said in a statement.

Local residents expressed shock that violence had come to their community.

"It's a quiet neighborhood," said Maritza Hernandez, whose daughter works as a cashier at the Pathmark but was not at the store when the shooting occurred.

"This is insane. I am shaken up," said Dragan Jovanovic, 46, the manager of a nearby Staples office supply store. "As a manager, you think about it. You think about your own staff."

(Writing by Edith Honan; editing by Paul Thomasch and Todd Eastham)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/several-dead-shootout-jersey-shopping-plaza-report-114910297.html

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Can China Take Ford to $12?

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Ford Motors (F) is betting big on China. The automaker is launching and developing cars for the affluent as well as the more price sensitive Chinese customers. Ford is gearing up to launch its luxury brand Lincoln in the country from 2014 onward. This represents an investment in addition to the $5 billion the automaker has already spent in the country since 2006. It will not be easy for Ford though. The luxury brand would attract an import tax of 25% since the Lincoln cars were not manufactured in China initially.[1] Chinese vehicles sales growth has slowed down in 2012 but the country overtook the U.S. last year to become the largest auto market in the world. However, the luxury sales in China still trail those in the U.S. but are expected to surpass them by 2020.

At the same time, Ford is in developing a low cost model in its Hangzhou plant in Eastern China which is due to begin production from 2015 onward. Currently, the cheapest model that Ford offers is Ford Fiesta, priced at around $13,000, 30% more expensive than GM?s Sail. Thus, offering a low cost model is critical to Ford?s long term sustainability in the country. Ford only has 6 models in China currently (compared to GM?s 30) but is adding a seventh model, the Kuga compact SUV by the end of the year. In total, Ford plans to launch 15 new car models by 2015.[2] The automaker also plans to double the workforce as well as the number of dealerships in China by 2015

Increasing Presence

Ford has traditionally lagged behind other major autos such as General Motors (GM), Volkswagen and Toyota Motors (TM) in China primarily because it was too slow to enter the Chinese market. In 2011, Ford could boast a market share of only 2.5% in the country; trailing Volkswagen?s 18% and GM?s 10%.[3]

But Ford is going full throttle with investments in China and Asia/Pacific. Currently, eight plants are being built in the region to expand capacity with the most recent being the decision to invest $760 million in a manufacturing plant in Hangzhou to cash in on the growing opportunity in a nation whose auto market Ford expects to surge to 30 million vehicles by 2020 from 18.5 million in 2011.

We have a price estimate of $12 for Ford Motors, which is about 30% more than the current market price.

Notes:

1. Ford readies Lincoln launch in China by 2014, August 28, 2012, reuters.com
2. Ford invests $760 million for new China plant, more capacity, April19, 2012, reuters.com
3. Ford breaks ground on China plant key to growth plans, August 27, 2012, reuters.com

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Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/838821-can-china-take-ford-to-12?source=feed

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Human and soil bacteria swap antibiotic-resistance genes

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2012) ? Soil bacteria and bacteria that cause human diseases have recently swapped at least seven antibiotic-resistance genes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report Aug. 31 in Science.

According to the scientists, more studies are needed to determine how widespread this sharing is and to what extent it makes disease-causing pathogens harder to control.

"It is commonplace for antibiotics to make their way into the environment," says first author Kevin Forsberg, a graduate student. "Our results suggest that this may enhance drug resistance in soil bacteria in ways that could one day be shared with bacteria that cause human disease."

Among the questions still to be answered: Did the genes pass from soil bacteria to human pathogens or vice versa? And are the genes just the tip of a vast reservoir of shared resistance? Or did some combination of luck and a new technique for studying genes across entire bacterial communities lead the scientists to discover the shared resistance genes?

Humans only mix their genes when they produce offspring, but bacteria regularly exchange genes throughout their lifecycles. This ability is an important contributor to the rapid pace of bacterial evolution. When a bacterial strain develops a new way to beat antibiotics, it can share the strategy not only with its descendants but also with other bacteria.

Earlier studies by other scientists have identified numerous resistance genes in strains of soil bacteria. However, unlike the seven genes described in this report, the earlier genes were dissimilar to their analogs in disease-causing bacteria, implying that they had crossed between the bacterial communities a long time ago.

Most of the antibiotics used to fight illness today originated from the soil. Bacteria use the antibiotics, in part, as weapons to compete with each other for resources and survival. Scientists have long acknowledged that gives environmental bacteria an evolutionary incentive to find ways to beat antibiotics.

"We wanted to try to get a broader sense of how often and extensively antibiotic-resistance genes are shared between environmental bacteria and pathogens," says senior author Gautam Dantas, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology.

The researchers isolated bacteria from soil samples taken at various U.S. locations. The bacteria's DNA was broken into small chunks and randomly inserted into a strain of Escherichia coli that is vulnerable to antibiotics. Scientists treated the altered E. coli with multiple antibiotics.

"We knew that any E. coli that continued to grow after these treatments had picked up a gene from the soil bacteria that was helping it fight the antibiotics," Forsberg says.

Scientists took the DNA from soil bacteria out of the surviving E. coli and prepared it for high-throughput sequencing. Dantas' laboratory has developed techniques that make it possible to simultaneously sequence and analyze thousands of chunks of DNA from many diverse microorganisms. The DNA can be selected for a single function, such as antibiotic resistance.

When the scientists compared antibiotic-resistance genes found in the soil bacteria to disease-causing bacteria, they were surprised to find some genes were identical not only in the sections of the genes that code for proteins but also in nearby non-coding sections that help regulate the genes' activities.

Since bacteria have such large population sizes and rapid reproduction times, their DNA normally accumulates mutations and other alterations much more quickly than the DNA of humans. The lack of changes in the resistance genes identified in the study suggests that the transfers of the genes must have occurred fairly recently, according to Dantas.

In some soil bacteria, the genes are present in clusters that make the bacteria resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics, including forms of penicillin, sulfonamide and tetracycline.

"I suspect the soil is not a teeming reservoir of resistance genes," Dantas says. "But if factory farms or medical clinics continue to release antibiotics into the environment, it may enrich that reservoir, potentially making resistance genes more accessible to infectious bacteria."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University School of Medicine. The original article was written by Michael C. Purdy.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. K. J. Forsberg, A. Reyes, B. Wang, E. M. Selleck, M. O. A. Sommer, G. Dantas. The Shared Antibiotic Resistome of Soil Bacteria and Human Pathogens. Science, 2012; 337 (6098): 1107 DOI: 10.1126/science.1220761

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/3mnlGgQnIhg/120830141343.htm

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