Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told a news conference that "no one has the right to make false accusations." He says that "this is not the behavior of the Syrian government.

Zoubi's comments were the first official Syrian response since Saturday's bombings in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, near Syria.

The Syrian minister alleged that Turkey is responsible "for all that happened in Syria and what happened in Turkey yesterday," but did not explain.

He also launched one of the harshest personal attacks on Turkey's prime minister by an Syrian official so far, demanding that Recep Tayyip Erdogan "step down as a killer and as a butcher."

Also on Sunday, Syrian rebels released four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers they abducted last week, a military spokesman in the Philippines said.

The four, seized Tuesday, were apparently unharmed, but will undergo a medical checkup and stress debriefing, said Brig. Gen. Domingo Tutaan.

The peacekeepers are part of a U.N. contingent that patrols a buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

It was the second abduction of Filipino peacekeepers since March, when 21 were held for three days by rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Philippine foreign secretary has said he would recommend withdrawing Filipinos from the peacekeeping contingent in Syria, but the final decision is up to the country's president.

Nearly 1,000 U.N. peacekeepers are patrolling the Golan Heights. Other major contributors are India and Austria. Croatia has recently withdrawn its contingent.

The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan had been largely quiet for four decades, but tensions have risen there since the outbreak of the revolt against Assad more than two years ago.

The uprising escalated into a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions of Syrians. The two sides have been largely deadlocked on the battlefield.

In the latest violence in the capital, Damascus, six mortar shells struck a neighborhood causing damage and casualties, a Syrian official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to brief reporters.

The mortars hit the predominantly Alawite district of Mazzeh 86 during morning rush hour, he said. Sunday is the first day of the work week in Syria.

Alawites, including Assad, are followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and have dominated government under Assad family rule. Rebels and regime forces have been fighting in parts of Damascus, and have fired mortars at neighborhoods seen as pro-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, confirmed that mortars struck Mazzeh 86, but said it had no immediate reports of casualties.

The plan allows Utah to continue to run its existing health insurance marketplace for small businesses, a system that lets employees pick health care plans in an online exchange. The federal government will run the state's individual exchange. The two marketplaces will operate independently of each other.

Gov. Gary Herbert first requested this arrangement in February, and the two sides had been negotiating since. Gary Cohen, head of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, announced the agreement's approval in a letter sent to the governor Friday.

Other states will have the option to consider this model after the U.S. Health and Human Services approves an official rule, a process that usually takes several months, allowing Utah's deal to go forward.

Herbert said in a conference call with media Friday that it was an important and historic day for Utah. He emphasized that the state didn't back down in negotiations. For example, he said, Utah made sure the government knew it would not share information about its residents or businesses with a federal database.

"They've granted us everything that we asked for, and for that I'm grateful," Herbert said.

He applauded Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for her willingness to work with Utah in crafting a plan that works for both sides. The governor said Sebelius told him in February she hoped to find a way to say yes to Utah's proposal.

"That's proven prophetic," he said. "We've found a way to get to yes with this announcement today."

Health and Human Services granted the request after carefully review, agency spokesman Fabien Levy said.

Until now, states have been choosing from three options:

Federally run exchanges in which states default to the U.S. government, a plan selected by 26 states including Arizona, Texas and Montana.

State-run exchanges in which states operate their own marketplaces, a plan chosen by 17 states including Nevada, Colorado and Idaho.

Federal-state partnerships in which the two sides work together, a plan chosen by seven states including Delaware, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Utah's model is different in that the two sides will work totally independently of each other Utah as it continues to improve and expand its small business exchange created in 2009, and the federal government in creating a marketplace where regular residents can go to buy health insurance.

Utah was in a unique position, being one of two states, along with Massachusetts, with existing exchanges. But unlike Massachusetts, Utah's marketplace offered no plans for individuals.

Massachusetts has opted to continue to oversee its existing marketplace.

Utah previously considered expanding the marketplace to offer plans to individuals. But Herbert said in February that after meeting with staff, legislators and insurance industry representatives, he ultimately decided a combined state and federal effort would work best.

By being able to focus on the small business marketplace, Utah can move forward with expansion plans that had been on hold due to the uncertainty that came with the passage of the health care overhaul, Herbert said.

These health insurance marketplaces are required under the Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect Jan. 1. Consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect next year.

Utah's marketplace, called "Avenue H," allows small businesses to offer their employees the opportunity to select health care plans in an online exchange that resembles websites that sell airline tickets. About 340 small businesses use the exchange, covering 8,000 employees and their families.

Utah should be given credit for putting "skin in the game" and for being willing to engage the federal government in creating a plan, said Jason Stevenson, education and communication director for the Utah Health Policy Project, a non-partisan, nonprofit health research and advocacy organization.

"They were looking for a willing partner and Utah has stepped forward," Stevenson said.

But the organization has concerns that the division between Utah's state-run business exchange the federal individual marketplace could prevent Utah residents from figuring out what option is best for them. For instance, Avenue H doesn't screen participants to see if they are eligible for Medicaid, Stevenson said.

Another example: it's unclear how a person whose employer is in Avenue H will find out if he could actually get a plan better suited to his family in the individual exchange since the two marketplaces will operate independently.

"We hope that any walls put up around Avenue H are low enough that people and information can pass over them," Stevenson said.

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Follow Brady McCombs at https://twitter.com/BradyMcCombs.

Crowds watched the inflatable duck being pulled by tugboat across Victoria Harbor in front of Hong Kong's signature skyscraper skyline.

Tourist Zhang Wenjin from Shanghai says it's a big surprise. "This is huge. My daughter liked it when she saw it just now. Because kids like cute stuff."

Yu Kwan Yee of Hong Kong was part of the crowd. "The duckie is swimming," the 2 -year-old said.

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman created the bright-yellow duck, and it was built of PVC material in New Zealand by a company specializing in large sails.

Hofman was on hand as the duck arrived and said it later had to be deflated because high winds and waves created a "big challenge."

The duck has been transported around the world since 2007, bringing a message of peace and harmony. It has previously been to Osaka, Japan, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Auckland, New Zealand, and Amsterdam.

It will be anchored at a Hong Kong terminal for display until June.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - After the failure of "Rise of the Guardians," DreamWorks Animation desperately needs a hit, so the studio has a lot riding on "The Croods."

The prehistoric animated film features the voices of Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone and lands in theaters on Friday. Most critics enjoyed the film, although a few reviewers groused that it failed to achieve the emotional highpoints of classic children's movies like "Toy Story" and "Up."

"The Croods" received a respectable 61 percent "fresh" rating on critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. It may not be as revolutionary as the discovery of fire, but from the sound of most reviews it makes for a perfectly diverting, family friendly hour and a half at the multiplex.

TheWrap's Alonso Duralde hailed the film for applying a light touch to the Stone Age antics and for playfully sending up teenage angst by setting its central father-daughter conflict against an early man backdrop.

"After the dreary 'Ice Age' movies made Pangaea tedious and stridently unfunny, it's a thrill to get a movie that gives tectonic shift a good name," Duralde wrote. "This new effort from writer-directors Chris Sanders (co-director of 'How to Train Your Dragon' and 'Lilo & Stitch') and Kirk De Micco ('Space Chimps') offers genuine comedy and compelling characters with dazzling visuals that feature both imaginary beasts (carnivorous birds, a candy-colored saber-toothed cat) and moments that approach photo-realism."

Neil Genzlinger complained in the New York Times that the film's plot is burdened with cliches, though he enjoyed the animation and the voice cast's work.

"The movie is at its most interesting and amusing when riffing on how cavemen might have reacted to new experiences and ideas, like fire and shoes," Genzlinger wrote. "Whether the kiddies will appreciate that is unclear, but they'll certainly like the voice work done by Emma Stone as Eep. She puts refreshing spunk into a character who otherwise is, alas, doomed to follow the same old story line."

Kyle Smith in the New York Post hated Cage's vocalization almost as much as Genzlinger adored Stone's performance. Though to be fair, that was hardly his only gripe.

"I'd like to take back all those times I said Nicolas Cage was one of the most annoying actors on film. It turns out he's equally terrible when he's only on the soundtrack," Smith wrote in a one-star review. "And yet Cage is the least of the problems with 'The Croods,' an animated comedy about cavemen whose writers took things a little too literally when they were told to write Cro-Magnon humor."

The Associated Press' Christy Lemire found delight in many of the same elements where Smith found disdain. She praised the film as brisk even if the plot is overly familiar. In particular, Lemire was dazzled by the animated picture's use of 3D imagery.

"Much of the lush landscape and vivid details feel as if they were taken directly from 'Avatar,' and a similar sense of wonder propels these stronger segments," Lemire wrote. "The lighting can indeed be magical, so it's no surprise that we are urged over and over again to step into it."

For Keith Staskiewicz of Entertainment Weekly, "The Croods" falls pretty far down the animated film evolutionary ladder.

"A handful of adrenalizing sequences of animated anarchy can't save this story from feeling overly primitive," he wrote.

Collins, who played with the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards this season and is now a free agent, made the announcement in an interview with Sports Illustrated, published on Monday,

"I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation," he said.

"I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand," he added.

The 34-year-old has played for six teams in the NBA and reached the NBA finals twice and says he intends to continue in the sport. (Reporting by Simon Evans; editing by Julian Linden)

Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.

But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks."

It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.

Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there's a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

"If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way," Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.

Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.

Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank's many suppliers are located.

If there's a home of the Abrams, it's politically important Ohio. The nation's only tank plant is in Lima. So it's no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol's Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.

"The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country," said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.

The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there's enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents.

Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army's position.

Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment.

"When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them," Kennedy said.

Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks' materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.

The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The plant is Lima's fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. "All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company's spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually," Berger said.

Jordan, a House conservative leader who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon's budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.

Still, said Jordan, it would be a big mistake to stop producing tanks.

"Look, (the plant) is in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District, so I understand that," he said. "But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do."

The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren't brand new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat panel displays, a more capable communications system, and other improvements. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.

Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2, and service officials said they have plenty of them. "The Army is on record saying we do not require any additional M1A2s," Davis Welch, deputy director of the Army budget office, said this month.

The tank fleet, on average, is less than 3 years old. The Abrams is named after Gen. Creighton Abrams, one of the top tank commanders during World War II and a former Army chief of staff.

The Army's plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks for the Army, according to service officials, but congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.

This pause in tank production for the U.S. would allow the Army to spend its money on research and development work for the new and improved model, said Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army's Ground Combat Systems office.

The first editions of the Abrams tank were fielded in the early 1980s. Over the decades, the Abrams supply chain has become embedded in communities across the country.

General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that there were more than 560 subcontractors throughout the country involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.

A letter signed by 173 Democratic and Republican members of the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program on Capitol Hill. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.

Portman, who served as President George W. Bush's budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess.

"People can't sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back," Portman said. "That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant."

Pete Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman, said the money from Congress is allowing for a stable base of production for the Army, which receives about four tanks a month. With the line open, Lima also can fill international orders, bringing more work to Lima and preserving American jobs, he said.

Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all of their own costs. That's a "success story during a period of economic pain," Keating said.

Still, far fewer tanks are coming out of the Lima plant than in years past. The drop-off has affected companies such as Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, which makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. Ed Verhoff, the company's president, said his sales have dropped from $20 million to $7 million over the past two years. He's also had to lay off about 25 skilled employees and he expects to be issuing more pink slips in the future.

"When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?" Verhoff said.

Steven Grundman, a defense expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the difficulty of reviving defense industrial capabilities tends to be overstated.

"From the fairly insular world in which the defense industry operates, these capabilities seem to be unique and in many cases extraordinarily high art," said Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations during the Clinton administration. "But in the greater scope of the economy, they tend not to be."

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Online:

Abrams tank: http://www.army.mil/factfiles/equipment/tracked/abrams.html

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Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rplardner

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SUNDAY, APRIL 28: BALTIMORE WOES

Profile America Sunday, April 28th. The agony of defeat became particularly acute on this date a quarter century ago, when the American League's Baltimore Orioles lost to the Minnesota Twins, 4-2.The loss was the 21st straight defeat for the Orioles, and set a most unwelcome league record for consecutive losses.Baltimore ended the string the next day by beating the Chicago White Sox, 9-0. They won only 53 more games that season but the timely win over Chicago helped the franchise avoid the all-time record for consecutive losses. That streak of 23 belongs to the national league's Philadelphia Phillies in 1961.There are 814 professional sports teams and clubs in the U.S., 272 of them are baseball squads.Profile America is in its 16th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sources: 2007 Economic Census, NAICS 711211

Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on a monthly CD or on the Internet at(look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).

SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau

The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said. Much of the gain came from a jump in consumer spending. While that marked a healthy rebounded from the anemic 0.4 percent growth rate in the October-December quarter, growth still lagged the 3.1 percent rate forecast by economists polled by FactSet, a financial data provider.

While the report is backward-looking, it strengthens the perception that the economy is grinding, rather than charging, ahead. Stocks started the year with a surge that pushed both the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index to record highs. The gains though have slowed in April on signs that the economy is beginning to flag.

Corporate earnings are also driving stock trading this week.

Among the big names that investors were focusing on Friday, Amazon.com fell 6.2 percent to $257.51 after the company said it may report an operating loss in the second quarter. The online retailer's income fell in the first quarter as it continued to spend heavily on order fulfillment and rights to digital content.

Homebuilder D.R. Horton surged 5.8 percent to $25.95 after saying its income nearly tripled thanks to a continuing recovery the housing market. The results were well ahead of the forecasts of financial analysts who follow the company.

Of the companies that have reported earnings so far, 69 percent have exceeded Wall Street's expectations, compared to a 10-year average of 62 percent, according to S&P Capital IQ. However, many have missed analysts' revenue estimates. That's a warning sign to investors that some of the improvement in earnings is coming from cost-cutting instead of increased sales.

The Dow was up 12 points, or 0.1 percent, at 14,711 as of 10:27 a.m. It was moving between small gains and losses in the first hour of trading.

The S&P 500 index fell three points to 1,581, or 0.3 percent. The Nasdaq composite was down 14 points at 3,275, a decline of 0.4 percent.

Among other stocks making big moves, J.C. Penney jumped 6.7 percent to $16.26 after the billionaire financier George Soros disclosed that he had taken a 7.9 percent stake in the company. Earlier this month the struggling department store chain fired its CEO, Ron Johnson, after 17 months on the job and rehired his predecessor Mike Ullman. An ambitious turnaround plan by Johnson had backfired and caused sales to plummet.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 1.68 percent from 1.71 percent, matching its lowest rate of the year.

Images and data fromshow that the compound doesn't seem to be getting replenished fast enough on Titan's surface to keep the methane cycle sustainable, scientists say.

Besides Earth, Titan is the only known place in our solar system to have stable liquids on its surface. The huge moon's clouds, lakes and rain are made up of hydrocarbons, or molecules composed of hydrogen and carbon, such as methane and ethane. []

Cassini images have revealed that Titan's hydrocarbon lakes stay remarkably consistent in size and shape over time. This means that either the lakes evaporate at a crawling pace, or there are enough downpours to offset the evaporation. Since scientists have observed only occasional bursts of rain on , they believe that the lakes must have quite stable, slowly evaporating contents, and may be dominated by ethane, which doesn't vanish as quickly as methane.

When methane floats high into Titan's soupy atmosphere, the compound is broken apart by sunlight. Many of its hydrogen atoms keep rising and disappear into space, while the remaining elements go on to make carbon-rich products like ethane. Scientists say this process should eventually diminish the overall amount of methane in Titan's environment, as compounds pieced together out of methane's leftovers continue to get dumped on the moon's surface.

"We are seeing an active Titan whose active chemistry may come to an end in some tens of million years," said Christophe Sotin, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who has been analyzing Cassini measurements of Titan's lakes and seas. That might sound like a long time away, but it could mean that Titan's "methane era" is somewhat short-lived, at least on a geological timescale.

Researchers look to Titan's methane cycle for answers about what Earth looked like before life evolved; the moon's chemistry could produce , complex organic compounds that are believed to have marked an early step in the emergence of life on Earth.

"The discoveries made by Cassini have revolutionized our understanding of Titan," Sotin said in a statement from NASA. "They open new avenues for seeking habitable worlds around . They also trigger new questions about the exchange processes between the interior and the atmosphere and about the composition of these organic particles that only future missions to Titan will be able to answer."

The research was detailed in the journal Icarus in December, alongside other findings based on new observations in a previously unexplored part of Titan's northern hemisphere. The researchers said they discovered two knee-deep lakes and another three new, mirror-smooth lakes in the area. They also found a swampy area or a cluster of small rivers connecting two of Titan's seas, Ligeia Mare and Kraken Mare, a lake bigger than the Caspian Sea.

New observations at optical wavelengths of Titan's northern realm have been possible since the seven-year seasons started changing on the moon. An icy cloud has been disappearing over Titan's north pole, and the region entered spring in August 2009.

Meanwhile, researchers recently confirmed that it's fall in Titan's southern hemisphere. An icy haze like the one that dissipated up north has been forming over the moon's south pole, meaning that winter is coming for the southern realm.

The Cassini probe launched in 1997 and has been studyingand its rings and moons since it arrived in orbit around the planet in 2004. Cassini's mission has been extended through 2017.

Follow Megan Gannon onand .Follow us,or. Originally published on

(Reuters) - The U.S. government filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Novartis AG on Tuesday, accusing a unit of the Swiss drug maker of causing the Medicare and Medicaid programs to pay tens of millions of dollars in reimbursements based on fraudulent, kickback-tainted claims.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp had since 2005 induced at least 20 pharmacies to switch thousands of kidney transplant patients to its immunosuppressant drug Myfortic from competitors' drugs, in exchange for kickbacks disguised as rebates and discounts.

He said Novartis tried to conceal the scheme by omitting the agreements from rebate and discount contracts with pharmacies.

In one alleged case, Novartis offered a Los Angeles pharmacist a "bonus" rebate of 5 percent of that pharmacist's annual Myfortic sales, or several hundred thousand dollars, to switch as many as 1,000 patients to Myfortic.

"Novartis co-opted the independence of certain pharmacists and turned them into salespeople," Bharara said in a statement.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and seeks civil penalties and triple damages from Novartis for violating the federal False Claims Act.

Novartis disputes the claims and will defend itself, spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an email.

Novartis is "committed to high standards of ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance in the sale and marketing of our products," Masow said.

Myfortic net sales totaled $579 million in 2012, up 12 percent from a year earlier, according to Novartis' annual report. The Novartis Pharmaceuticals unit has offices in East Hanover, New Jersey.

In his announcement, Bharara called Novartis a "repeat offender," referring to a settlement of health care fraud charges based on kickbacks less than three years ago.

Novartis in September of 2010 agreed to pay $422.5 million to resolve criminal and civil liability over its marketing of several drugs, including the epilepsy drug Trileptal. (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-civ-1102.html)

The company violated a federal anti-kickback statute, "choosing instead to put sales growth and profits before its duty to comply with federal law," according to the new complaint.

The federal anti-kickback statute prohibits paying people to buy drugs or services that Medicare, Medicaid or other federal healthcare programs cover, according to the complaint.

The scheme has been highly lucrative for Novartis, according to the complaint, resulting in "rapid, sometimes exponential growth in Myfortic sales."

A pharmacy in Arkansas, for example, increased its annual sales of the drug to more than $1 million from $100,000 over four years, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit also claims a Novartis account manager admitted the kickback scheme generates "an ongoing stream of revenue" for Novartis "as long as the patient is still living and using (Myfortic)."

These types of cases "are one of the highest priorities of the FBI's health care fraud program," FBI Assistant Director Ronald Hosko said in a statement.

The case is U.S. v. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-08196.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Bernard Vaughan in New York; Editing by Gary Hill, David Gregorio and Tim Dobbyn)