New South Wales state police said in a statement the search using aircraft and ships was called off late Friday after failing to find any sign of the couple.

Paul Rossington, a 30-year-old paramedic, and his 26-year-old girlfriend Kristen Schroder were discovered missing Thursday morning after the Carnival Spirit docked at Sydney's Circular Quay at the end of a 10-day South Pacific cruise. The search began within hours. Police call off search for 2 cruise passengers lost overboard off Australian east coast.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Several governments in Asia have ordered tougher screening of air travelers from China in an effort to contain a possible spread of a new strain of bird flu that has killed 23 people in the mainland and infected one visitor from Taiwan.

The H7N9 virus has infected 109 people in China since it was first detected in March. The Geneva-based World Health Organization said it has no evidence so far of sustained transmission between people but added that this strain was more easily transmitted than an earlier, more deadly H5N1 strain that has killed hundreds around the world since 2003.

Taiwan, which reported the first H7N9 case outside of mainland China on Wednesday, said it would test air travelers for bird flu if they displayed suspicious symptoms. The island's first victim, a 53-year-old man who had returned from a visit to China's eastern city of Suzhou days before, was being treated in hospital. He said he had not had any contact with poultry.

Vietnam began screening temperatures of all visitors at its airports, officials said on Thursday, while Japan said it will allow airports and seaports to make "thermographic inspections" of travelers from China starting in May.

Thai Health Minister Pradit Sintawanarong said the country must step up precautions, adding that the health ministry will soon submit a plan to the prime minister to address the problem.

"From our assessment of the situation, there is a chance that the H7N9 virus may spread to Thailand," Sintawanarong said.

The moves came a day after a WHO expert said the H7N9 strain is "one of the most lethal" of its kind. An international team of scientists led by the WHO and the Chinese government said on Wednesday they were no closer to determining whether the virus might become transmissible between people after a five-day investigation in China.

Singapore's health ministry said its healthcare institutions "remain on heightened alert".

TAIWAN AIRLINES TANK

Shares in Taiwan's airlines fell sharply on Thursday after news of the island's first bird flu victim sparked worries that the outbreak could spread and hurt travel.

China Airlines shares shed 2.2 percent, the stock's worst daily loss since April 8. Eva Airways fell 2.4 percent to close at its lowest in about two weeks. Both underperformed the main TAIEX index, which finished flat on Thursday.

However, most Asian airlines said they had not experienced a noticeable change in bookings to China.

Raj Tanta-Nanta, a vice-president for investor relations at Thai Airways International, said the number of passengers to destinations in China had declined slightly but the national carrier had not canceled flights to China.

Thai AirAsia also said it is not trimming flights.

"We're not cancelling flights and that may be because we fly to Yunnan, which has not faced bird flu disease," Chief Executive Tassapon Bijleveld told Reuters.

Still, the current spate of cases has sparked reminders of the impact on travel from SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed 774 people, mostly in China and Hong Kong in 2003.

Japan's Sharp Corp. urged its employees to "take extra precaution" when visiting China, telling them on Monday to avoid contact with birds, wash their hands and wear a mask if they develop cold or flu symptoms.

Many companies across Asia that have operations in China, including India's Tech Mahindra Ltd, said they were evaluating the situation but had not yet placed any restrictions on employees there.

POULTRY IMPORTS BANNED

Some countries tightened screening of poultry imports from China, where some bird samples had tested positive for H7N9.

Vietnam banned poultry imports from China in early April, its agriculture ministry said. The Philippines, which has banned poultry imports from China since 2004, is tightening quarantine measures on all poultry products, said Davinio Catbagan, assistant secretary for livestock at the agriculture department.

Manila has also strengthened measures to prevent the entry of smuggled poultry and other poultry products such as pigeons, Peking ducks and chicken, especially those coming from China, Catbagan said.

"The department had been notified that there are businessmen in the Philippines who illegally imports these products, which may have been contaminated by the highly pathogenic H7N9 virus and are now openly served in five-star hotels and well-known Chinese restaurants in the country," Catbagan said.

(Additional reporting by Pairat Temphairojana, Panarat Thepgumpanat and Manunphattr Dhanananphorn in BANGKOK, Kaori Kaneko and Tim Kelly in TOKYO, Clare Jim in TAIPEI, Kevin Lim in SINGAPORE, Sui-Lee Wee in BEIJING, Rosemarie Francisco in MANILA, Prak Chan Thul in PHNOM PENH, Prashant Mehra and Harichandan Arakali in NEW DELHI, Kazunori Takada in SHANGHAI, Hanoi Newsroom in HANOI, Jonathan Thatcher in JAKARTA, Writing by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Ken Wills)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton, already the front-runner in the minds of many Democrats for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is writing a memoir about world affairs and her time as secretary of state that will likely fuel more speculation about her political future.

The presidential prospects of Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, are a subject of feverish speculation in Washington and elsewhere as Democrats look to see over the horizon past President Barack Obama.

The book, her fifth, is to be published next year, and a tour to promote the memoir in 2014 would serve only to generate more guessing about her plans for 2016.

Her inner circle insists Clinton has made no decision one way or the other. This has not stopped the formation of a "Ready for Hillary" political action committee to promote her potential candidacy and seek volunteers and monetary contributions.

Among the subjects Clinton will explore are the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, diplomacy pertaining to Iran and North Korea and relations with U.S. allies.

"Hillary Clinton's extraordinary public service has given her a unique perspective on recent history and the challenges we face," said Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of the Simon & Schuster Publishing Group who will edit Clinton's as-yet untitled book.

The book will also address trends in economics, energy and climate change, democracy and human rights, the critical role of women and girls, technology and innovation and health and human development, Simon & Schuster said on Thursday.

When she left the State Department February 1, Clinton, 66, had been suffering from a blood clot near her brain. She said she needed some time to rest and to settle on ways she can help women and children in the United States and around the world.

She is now re-emerging. Last month she announced that she now supports marriage rights for gay Americans. Back when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 she had backed civil unions for gay couples.

On Tuesday night in Washington, she spoke about global women's rights at an event held by the non-governmental organization Vital Voices, sharing the stage with a potential 2016 rival, Vice President Joe Biden.

She will give her first paid speech in Dallas on April 24, the day before she attends ceremonies there marking the opening of George W. Bush's presidential library.

Polls show Clinton as the runaway frontrunner at this stage among Democrats for their party's 2016 presidential nomination and that she leads all potential Republican contenders, including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

(Additional reporting by Chris Michaud in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Jackie Frank)

Rebels have for several years controlled some of the diamond-producing areas in the north, but with the overthrow of President Francois Bozize in March the Seleka rebel coalition now is the government, posing one of the greatest challenges in years to international efforts to stem the trade of "blood diamonds."

Fighters are blocking off diamond-producing areas, residents and local officials told an Associated Press reporter who recently visited Ndele, a rebel-controlled town in northern Central African Republic.

Central African Republic's new government insists that it intends to fully comply with the Kimberley Process, which aims to curb the trade in blood diamonds whose profits have driven some of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa over the past 20 years. It went into effect in 2003 in the aftermath of the brutal West African civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia where diamonds were used by armed groups to fund the conflicts.

"We remain in the Kimberley Process and we respect the principle," said new Information Minister Christophe Gazam Betty.

Newly appointed Minister of Mines Herbert Gontran Djono-Ahaba declined on several occasions to be interviewed on the subject. He is a member of the Seleka alliance, whose fighters have set up checkpoints along the dirt paths leading to mining areas around Ndele.

Seleka rebels are now in control there, say residents who fled the town of Sangba, about 85 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Ndele.

"The diamond business is now forbidden to anyone who is not with Seleka," said one local official who fled from Sangba. The official refused to be identified because of security concerns.

Even more worrisome, the Seleka members are according to several people who fled Sangba being aided by armed fighters from neighboring Sudan known as the Janjaweed, who were accused of committing atrocities against civilians in Darfur. Sudan, whose leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court, is not part of the Kimberley Process. Observers fear many of Central African Republic's illicit diamonds are being funneled into Sudan.

The residents spoke to AP only on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the rebels, who roam through the area's towns in stolen vehicles full of rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.

The Kimberley Process system for certifying the origin of diamonds is meant to inform customers about where the stones originated. Diamonds are exported with certificates saying they are conflict-free. Countries found to be in violation cannot legally export their gems to the major diamond cutting hubs of Belgium, Israel and India. The case of Central African Republic could become the most significant test in years of the Kimberley Process.

The Kimberley Process has initiated procedures that could lead to a temporary suspension of Central African Republic until a review mission can be sent, Kimberley Process chair Welile Nhlapo told a meeting of the diamond industry in Tel Aviv on Monday.

"The developments in the Central African Republic inform us that there are still situations where conflict diamonds continue to fuel rebel activities to remove elected official governments," Nhlapo told the meeting of the World Diamond Council.

Members in the initiative are set to respond by Friday to the proposed suspension, which would go into effect shortly thereafter if approved by majority, Nhlapo told the AP on the sidelines of the meeting.

The Kimberley Process says conflict diamonds today account for less than 1 percent of the gems worldwide, yet their definition is limited to "rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflicts aimed at undermining legitimate governments."

The Seleka rebels maintain the government they overthrew was in fact not legitimate. Bozize, the president they ousted, himself came to power in 2003 following a rebellion.

The chaos in the north has scared off many foreign diamond traders, but local dealers still purchasing gems confirm that Seleka elements have been deeply entrenched in the industry in recent months. Some were digging for diamonds before the offensive on the capital, Bangui, and they joined the final push to force out Bozize.

"The majority of miners here are in the rebellion so production has been down," said one local diamond buyer a few weeks after Bangui fell to rebel rule. "With the return of Seleka home, it could increase."

The rebels began their advance in December, descending upon a dozen towns across in the north in rapid succession, taking the diamond-producing areas around Sam Ouandja, Ouadda, Ndele, Bamingui and Bria in little over a week's time.

Kimberley Process will likely impose an embargo on Central African Republic's diamonds, said Alan Martin with Partnership Africa Canada, a nonprofit organization that has worked for more than a decade to halt the trade in conflict diamonds and is an official observer with the Kimberley Process.

"The fact that rebels are now in control of the government would mean that they would be the ones taking the proceeds of the diamonds, so that's the problem," he said.

Martin said the Kimberley Process took similar action against Ivory Coast in 2005 amid concerns about the role that rebels were playing in the diamond industry there. The ban remains in effect.

Even if there is an embargo, diamonds could still be smuggled out with sellers attempting to mask their origin so they instead appear to come from a nearby Kimberley Process-compliant country. Already an estimated 30 percent of the country's diamonds leave the country illicitly, according to the International Crisis Group. Martin said some smuggled diamonds are believed to end up in Dubai.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, who is also taking part in the Tel Aviv conference this week, said the Kimberley Process has "moved slowly" in stemming the flow of conflict diamonds in Central African Republic and that the initiative has been hobbled by its restrictive definition of conflict diamonds, which allows for intervention only in the case of rebel groups attempting to overthrow a government.

"The Central African Republic is an example of why we need to take a more expansive view of what is a conflict diamond," he said. "We feel that we ought to be able to include systematic armed conflict."

Central African Republic's diamonds have been under heightened scrutiny since 2010, when the International Crisis Group detailed abuses by rebels of the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity, or UFDR, seeking to control the diamond mines in the north.

"When a rebel hears that miners have begun to find diamonds, he sometimes works with them and claims a share of the profits," the ICG found. "More often, he forces the miners to hand over diamonds at gunpoint or drives them out and pays others to mine for him."

That same year the United States Embassy in Bangui expressed concern about the role diamonds could be playing in a succession of rebellions across the north.

"We are increasingly suspicious that diamonds are playing a role fueling and funding the conflict," the U.S. Embassy wrote in a January 2010 cable published by WikiLeaks.

Those same rebels who made up the UFDR later joined forces with fighters from other groups to form Seleka in December 2012.

It is unlikely that the Kimberley Process participants will accept the trading of diamonds certified by Seleka, said ICG's Central Africa director Thierry Vircoulon: "I don't believe that the new authorities under (African Union) sanctions are going to be well accepted by the diamond business world."

___

Associated Press writer Ariel David in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Kimberley Process:http://www.kimberleyprocess.com

Armstrong was banned for life and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by the International Cycling Union (UCI) in October after USADA found that he had taken performance enhancing drugs throughout his career.

The USADA report into Armstrong's doping also alleged that the UCI had not done everything in their power to catch the former rider, who later admitted to cheating.

The UCI pledged to look into the past and set up an independent commission to investigate the allegations, only to disband it weeks later in favor of a broader "truth and reconciliation process" that has yet to start.

Speaking before a French Senate committee investigating doping on Thursday, Tygart, the man behind Armstrong's fall, repeated the accusations and said that the UCI was trying to "play a stall game".

In reply to Tygart, the UCI said on Friday that USADA and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) were also to blame for the dismantling of the independent commission.

"It's all very well Mr Tygart talking about cooperation, but let's not forget that the Independent Commission was only disbanded because of USADA's and WADA's point-blank refusal to cooperate with it," the UCI said in a statement.

"Simply, the UCI was left with no choice but to close it down; it made no sense to go forward without the participation of these two bodies."

The Swiss-based body also suggested others had been to blame for the failure to catch Armstrong sooner.

"One can only assume that their refusal to cooperate with the Independent Commission was due to their fear that their own shortcomings would be exposed," the statement said.

"After all, USADA and WADA also tested Armstrong over many years and also failed to catch him. It was only with the benefit of the US Federal Investigation that USADA was finally able to gain evidence of Armstrong's doping."

(Writing by Gregory Blachier; Editing by Patrick Johnston)

Jonathan Toews and Co. also know all the reasons for concern heading into their playoff series against the Minnesota Wild.

The Blackhawks are favored to make it to the Stanley Cup for the second time in four seasons, but the Wild bring plenty of talent into Game 1 on Tuesday night. Then there is Chicago's recent postseason history, and the checkered performance for past winners of the Presidents' Trophy, adding to the intrigue.

"Everyone knows, if you look at how the playoffs have gone the past couple years, if you're the first or the eighth seed, it doesn't really matter," Toews said after the Blackhawks practiced at the United Center on Monday. "So as soon as Game 1 starts tomorrow, everything that happened before that is pretty meaningless and we know that."

Minnesota was thought to be a Stanley Cup contender after it gave free agents Zach Parise and Ryan Suter identical 13-year, $98 million contracts last summer. But the Wild struggled when they finally got on the ice following the lockout, managing just 22 goals while sputtering to a 4-5-1 start.

They got hot in the middle of the season, winning seven in a row and 17 of 24 over one stretch, then slumped a bit at the end. With a chance to clinch a postseason spot, they lost 6-1 at home to Edmonton on Friday.

Minnesota finally secured its first playoff appearance in five years when Niklas Backstrom stopped 29 shots in a 3-1 win at Colorado on Saturday night.

"I think we expected ourselves to be in the playoffs, and I don't think you're going to find a lot of guys who are relaxing now and exhaling and just being satisfied that we're here," Parise said. "We want to win. We're not just happy that we made it. We want to keep playing, and we think that we're capable of it."

The Wild could get a boost in Game 1 from the return of Jason Pominville, who missed the last two games after taking an elbow to the chin against the Los Angeles Kings. The right wing practiced on Monday, but coach Mike Yeo was tight-lipped about his status for the opener at Chicago.

Blackhawks goalie Ray Emery and center Dave Bolland have been ruled out with lower-body injuries, but they could return for Game 2 on Friday night. Emery teamed with Corey Crawford to form the league's best goalie tandem this season, making his absence of particular note heading into the matchup with Mikko Koivu and Minnesota.

"They're a scary team," forward Patrick Kane said. "You look at the talent they have, guys like Parise, Suter, Koivu, you could go on and on naming players. They got a great goaltender in Backstrom, who's proven that he can steal games. I think we just got to worry about ourselves first and foremost, but when you're facing a team like this, you know that they can win any game they play in."

Kane had the winning goal in Game 6 of the 2010 Stanley Cup finals, lifting Chicago to its first championship since 1961. But it's been nothing but playoff heartbreak for the Blackhawks since the celebration in Philadelphia.

They were eliminated by Vancouver in seven games in the first round in 2011. They lost to Phoenix in six games in last year's quarterfinals, when each of the first five games went to overtime.

"Even the Vancouver series two years ago, we were frustrated with the way things ended up," defenseman Duncan Keith said. "Now two years removed now, I don't think we can be any hungrier to have success."

That frustration from the loss to the Coyotes turned into motivation for the Blackhawks, who set an NHL record by recording at least one point in the first 24 games of the season. They also finished strong, going 11-2-2 in their final 15 games to secure the Presidents' Trophy awarded to the team with the most points.

"Obviously we know how good they are, and we know the season that they've had and we know the challenge that it is," Yeo said. "We just have to make sure that we're focused on ourselves."

And about that Presidents' Trophy.

The team with the most regular-season points has been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in three of the past four years. San Jose was bounced by Anaheim in 2009, and Washington lost to Montreal three years ago. Vancouver lost to Boston in the finals in 2011, then was eliminated by Los Angeles in the first round last season.

The Kings were the eighth seed in the West when they stormed to the Cup last year, and now the Wild are hoping for a repeat performance.

"I think we should be going into these playoffs knowing that anything can happen," Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "We're very respectful for our opponent. When we look at their lines and look at their lineup, it's a dangerous team. But I'm going to be concentrating on what we have to do."

___

AP Sports Writer Dave Campbell in St. Paul, Minn., contributed to this report.

___

Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap

LONDON (Reuters) - British manufacturing almost returned to growth in April and house prices showed their biggest annual rise in more than a year, suggesting that a slow economic recovery is on its way.

A senior central banker made a similar assessment of the economy, saying it was starting to mend.

"If we can just sustain it for a few more quarters, we really can begin to turn the corner again," Bank of England deputy governor Paul Tucker said in a newspaper article published on Wednesday.

"I think there's a long way to go but there's certainly reason for hope."

The economy grew 0.3 percent in the first quarter and analysts hope that the signs of a recovery in manufacturing, which accounts for a tenth of Britain's gross domestic product, mean the start of a stronger second quarter.

The Markit/CIPS Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to 49.8 in April from an upwardly revised 48.6 in March, putting the sector within a whisker of the 50 line that separates growth from contraction.

Economists had expected a much weaker reading of 48.5.

Britain's housing market also showed signs of resilience.

House prices inched down 0.1 percent in April from March, but rose 0.9 percent compared with a year ago - the best growth in 14 months, data from mortgage lender Nationwide showed.

Moreover, Nationwide said the central bank's recently extended credit scheme should buoy the market in coming months.

The Funding for Lending Scheme provides cheap funding to banks to encourage them to lend to businesses and households and will now run for an extra year until the end of January 2015.

LONG AND WINDING ROAD

Although the latest data points to an economy slowly gathering momentum, it also shows that the road to recovery will not be easy.

Chancellor George Osborne on Tuesday urged the Bank of England's new financial regulators not to jeopardise a recovery by forcing banks to ramp up their capital buffers too quickly.

"It will be a rough ride, but there are chinks of light that mean a return to modest growth is likely towards the end of the year," said Rob Wood, economist at Berenberg Bank.

Meanwhile, he added, the manufacturing sector will probably continue to weigh on GDP growth for a couple of quarters.

April's improvement in factory activity was helped by the first expansion in new orders since January.

New export orders rose for the first time in more than a year and at the fastest pace since July 2011, on the back of increased sales to North America, the Middle East, Latin America and Australia.

But demand from the euro zone - the main market for British exports - remained weak.

"Domestic demand for manufactured goods is handicapped by current muted investment intentions and tightening public spending," said Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight.

He also noted that Britons' budgets had come under renewed pressure from a recent rise in inflation and slow wage growth.

Nonetheless, economists think that the overall improvement in the economy so far this year after it shrank at the end of 2012 will deter the Bank from approving more asset purchases next week.

More action is likely after the bank's new governor, Mark Carney, takes over in July.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken; editing by William Schomberg; editing by Ron Askew)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a tobacco industry challenge to a federal law that expanded restrictions on the advertising and marketing of cigarettes.

The provisions of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act under attack included one requiring the display of a large health warning on packaging and another banning the sponsorship of public events.

The law also requires that before a tobacco product can be marketed, the manufacturer must prove to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it is less dangerous than other tobacco products. This provision is aimed at descriptive marketing terms such as "light" and "mild."

Those challenging the provisions of the law included companies owned in part or in full by Reynolds American Inc, British American Tobacco Plc, Imperial Tobacco Group Plc and Lorillard Inc.

The companies claimed the law violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, imposing "myriad restrictions on truthful, non-misleading speech to adult tobacco consumers."

In response, the Obama administration noted in court papers that the law was specifically drafted to battle a recognized public health problem. Congress was particularly interested in restricting the marketing of cigarettes to young people, government lawyers wrote.

The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law in full, saying the warnings "are reasonably related to the government's interest in preventing consumer deception."

The case is distinct from a separate industry challenge to regulations the FDA issued to implement the graphic warning requirement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed out the regulation. The FDA is currently drafting a new one.

The case is American Snuff Company v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-521.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Howard Goller, Gerald E. McCormick and John Wallace)

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's competition body accused GlaxoSmithKline of market abuse for striking deals with three generic drugmakers that paid them to delay launching cheap copies of its antidepressant Seroxat.

GSK, Britain's biggest drugmaker, said it believed it had acted lawfully. If it is found to have broken the law, it could be fined up to 10 percent of its worldwide turnover, which amounted to 26.4 billion pounds ($40.4 billion) in 2012.

The move by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is the latest example of regulators trying to curb "pay-for-delay" deals, following a series of investigations against drug companies by U.S. and European antitrust officials.

The OFT alleged on Friday that GSK concluded anti-competitive agreements with Alpharma, Generics (UK) and Norton Healthcare over the supply of paroxetine - a top-selling medicine sold by GSK under the brand name Seroxat.

The case relates to deals struck a decade ago. The patents protecting paroxetine - known as Paxil in the United States - have now expired and the supply agreements under investigation were terminated in 2004.

The British watchdog said the agreements included substantial payments from GSK to the generic companies in return for their commitment to delay launching their products. This amounted to an abuse of GSK's dominant market position, it said.

GSK disputes the allegations, which relate to deals that were effective between 2001 and 2004.

"GSK supports fair competition and we very strongly believe that we acted within the law," the company said, adding that the deals resulted in generic versions of paroxetine entering the market before GSK's patents expired.

GSK also said the paroxetine case had been reviewed by the European Commission in 2005-2006 and the EU body, which acts as antitrust regulator, formally concluded its inquiry last year with no further action.

COST SAVINGS

The OFT said it had a duty to investigate the case given the importance of generic medicines in keeping a lid on costs for the country's National Health Service (NHS).

"The introduction of generic medicines can lead to strong competition on price, which can drive savings for the NHS, to the benefit of patients and, ultimately, taxpayers," said Ann Pope, senior director of services, infrastructure and public markets at the OFT.

The companies will have an opportunity to respond to the allegations before the OFT decides if competition law has been infringed.

Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said the case had taken the shine of GSK shares, following a strong performance earlier in the week, even though Seroxat/Paxil sales were only 1.4 percent of group sales in 2012.

The stock was down 0.5 percent by 5:18 a.m. ET, underperforming a 0.4 percent rise in London's FTSE 100 index.

The issue of brand-name pharmaceutical companies paying makers of generic drugs to drop patent challenges was also at the center of a European review of the sector in 2008-2009, which did not result in any action against GSK.

The topic has been thrown into the spotlight in recent years because of the growing role of generics in supplying cut-price copies of ageing blockbuster medicines in Western markets at a fraction of the cost of the originals.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has also fought against pay-for-delay deals in court for more than a decade. The issue is now in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a decision by the end of June.

($1 = 0.6539 British pounds)

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, Editing by Erica Billingham)

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of one of the world's biggest Internet companies, is the highest-profile U.S. executive to visit North Korea a country with notoriously restrictive online policies since young leader Kim Jong Un took power a year ago. His visit has drawn criticism from the U.S. State Department because it comes only weeks after a controversial North Korean rocket launch; it has also prompted speculation about what the businessman hopes to accomplish.

Schmidt arrived on a commercial Air China flight with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has traveled more than a half-dozen times to North Korea over the past 20 years.

Richardson, speaking ahead of the flight from Beijing, called the trip a private, humanitarian mission.

"This is not a Google trip, but I'm sure he's interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect. So this is why we are teamed up on this," Richardson said without elaborating on what he meant by the "social media aspect."

"We'll meet with North Korean political leaders. We'll meet with North Korean economic leaders, military. We'll visit some universities. We don't control the visit. They will let us know what the schedule is when we get there," he said.

U.S. officials have criticized the four-day trip. North Korea on Dec. 12 fired a satellite into space using a long-range rocket. Washington condemned the launch, which it considers a test of ballistic missile technology, as a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions barring Pyongyang from developing its nuclear and missile programs. The Security Council is deliberating whether to take further action.

"We continue to think the trip is ill-advised," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday, reiterating the U.S. position that the visit is badly timed. However she added that the government would be open to hearing from the delegation after they return from North Korea.

The trip was planned well before North Korea announced its plans to send a satellite into space, two people with knowledge of the delegation's plans told The Associated Press. AP first reported the group's plans last Thursday.

Schmidt, a staunch proponent of Internet connectivity and openness, is expected to make a donation during the visit, while Richardson will try to discuss the detainment of a U.S. citizen jailed in Pyongyang, members of the delegation told AP. They asked not to be named, saying the trip was a private visit.

"We're going to try to inquire the status, see if we can see him, possibly lay the groundwork for him coming home," Richardson said of the U.S. citizen. "I heard from his son who lives in Washington state, who asked me to bring him back. I doubt we can do it on this trip."

The visit comes just days after Kim, who took power following the Dec. 17, 2011, death of his father, Kim Jong Il, laid out a series of policy goals for North Korea in a lengthy New Year's speech. He cited expanding science and technology as a means to improving the country's economy as a key goal for 2013.

North Korea's economy has languished for decades, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which since the mid-1940s had provided the country with an economic safety net. North Korea, which has very little arable land, has relied on outside help to feed its people since a famine in the 1990s.

In recent years, North Korea has aimed to modernize its farms and digitize its factories. Farmers told the AP that management policies were revamped to encourage production by providing workers with incentives.

Computer and cellphone use is gaining ground in North Korea's larger cities.

However, most North Koreans only have access to a domestic Intranet system, not the World Wide Web. For North Koreans, Internet use is still strictly regulated and allowed only with approval.

Schmidt, who oversaw Google's expansion into a global Internet giant, speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology.

Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea's neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.

Accompanying Schmidt is Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who heads Google's New York-based think tank. The two collaborated on a book about the Internet's role in shaping society called "The New Digital Age" that comes out in April.

Also leading the delegation is Kun "Tony" Namkung, a Korea expert who has made frequent trips to North Korea over the past 25 years and has worked as a consultant for The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press writer Gillian Wong in Beijing and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.