LONDON (Reuters) - Britain turned up the pressure on other rich economies to clamp down on secretive money flows at a summit next week by pressing its overseas tax havens into a transparency deal and announcing new disclosure rules for British firms.

Prime Minister David Cameron wants to make progress on closing global tax loopholes when he hosts a meeting of leaders of the Group of Eight economies in Northern Ireland on Monday and Tuesday.

"It is important we are getting our house in order," Cameron said in a speech in London on Saturday after representatives of overseas tax havens linked to Britain agreed to sign up to an international transparency protocol.

"It is a very positive step forward and it means that Britain's voice in the G8 and the campaigning on this issue around the world for proper taxes, proper companies and proper laws ... will be stronger."

Ten territories and self-governing regions will join the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters which has been agreed by more than 50 countries.

They also pledged to produce plans on how to provide more information on the ownership of so-called shell companies.

Those included in the agreement were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.

The convention will help developing countries trying to trace money they suspect belongs in their state coffers, to request tax information from offshore centres.

Also on Saturday, the British government said it will introduce new domestic rules to combat tax evasion and money laundering, by forcing shadowy "shell" companies to throw off their cloak of anonymity and reveal who really runs them.

Under the new British rules, companies will be required to obtain and hold information on their ownership and control which will then be held in a central registry, available to police and revenue agencies.

Chancellor George Osborne said it was essential that British law enforcement and tax authorities had access to information about the ultimate owners of companies, and it was time for others to act.

"These commitments demonstrate the concrete action we are taking ourselves but it is vital that we take collective international action through the G8 to tackle the international challenges of tax evasion, money laundering and illicit finance," Osborne said in a statement.

But aid campaigners said Britain's action will count for little if the rest of the G8 - the United States, Japan, Canada, Russia and Europe's biggest economies - does not follow suit.

"The acid test of the prime minister's efforts will be whether he delivers a G8 deal that clamps down on tax haven secrecy and phantom companies, and will help poor countries collect the money they need to end the scandal that sees one in eight people go to bed hungry," said Melanie Ward, a spokesperson for the Enough IF campaign.

It represents more than 200 anti-poverty campaign groups.

A consultation on the design of Britain's new rules, including whether the register of beneficial ownership should be publicly available, as sought by anti-corruption campaigners, will be published by the government in the coming months.

Global tax evasion could be costing more than $3 trillion (1.9 trillion pounds) a year, according to researchers from Tax Justice Network while as much as $32 trillion - twice the size of U.S. gross domestic product - could be hidden by individuals in tax havens.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by William Schomberg)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Doctors should regularly screen babies and young children for delays in motor skill development - including trouble sitting, standing and speaking - at well-child visits, pediatricians said today.

In a clinical report, an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) panel said diagnosing and treating those problems early on may ultimately improve kids' outlook and help families gain additional support.

"Identifying children with delays and motor abnormalities, theoretically or hopefully would set them on a better trajectory," said Meghann Lloyd, who studies motor development at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada.

Lloyd, who was not involved in the new report, called it "a really big step forward for the field."

Dr. Garey Noritz and colleagues on the AAP's neuromotor screening expert panel lay out the skills that a child should have developed by office visits at ages 9, 18, 30 and 48 months.

For example, a 9-month-old baby should be able to roll to both sides, sit well without support and grasp objects. At 18 months, that child should be able to walk, sit and stand on its own.

Pediatricians should also ask parents open-ended questions about their child's development and watch the child play for signs of delays or loss of motor skills at well-child visits, the panel said.

On a general exam, it recommended that doctors measure head size and look at children's muscle tone, reflexes and eye movements.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed expert panel, said in 2006 there wasn't enough evidence to recommend for or against screening instruments designed to detect speech and language delays in young kids. The task force does not have screening recommendations for motor delays in general.

"The AAP recognized that we as a profession weren't necessarily doing a good job screening for motor problems," Noritz, from Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, told Reuters Health.

Cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy are two of the most common motor-related diseases and could both be picked up and treated earlier than they typically are now, according to Noritz.

He said families often refer to the "diagnostic odyssey" involved in getting a definitive diagnosis for a sick child.

"We're hoping that people can get to a specialist more quickly and thus get diagnosed more quickly, but that primary care clinicians at the same time as they're looking for a diagnosis, will refer (kids) to therapy," he said.

PROMOTING MOVEMENT

There is normal variation in how kids develop, Lloyd said - so if a child is a couple of months late to walk, for example, parents shouldn't be overly concerned.

But longer delays, or combinations of multiple motor problems, are a good reason for a visit to the pediatrician, she told Reuters Health.

"Other types of movements that don't seem right, like a tremor or a rigidity or some sort of repetitive motor movement would be another red flag for me," Lloyd added.

Typical motor delays that aren't a result of more serious underlying conditions are treated with physical or occupational therapy.

Parents can bring their children to an early movement program such as Kindergym to promote development of motor skills, Lloyd said, regardless of other treatments and whether or not they are delayed.

Having poor motor skills in general "sets you on a trajectory for low levels of physical activity, which of course is related to obesity," she said.

"The prevention of these delays or the promotion of motor ability can actually impact your health for your lifespan."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online May 27, 2013.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Programs designed to prevent childhood obesity in the home don't affect kids' weight a year or more down the line, according to a review of the evidence.

But that conclusion comes from only a small number of available studies on the programs, and doesn't prove that such studies can't work, according to lead author Dr. Nakiya Showell.

"We need additional studies to answer this question, especially studies with greater number of participants, greater program exposure among participants and longer participant followup," said Showell, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Other studies have shown that family influence and home environment play an important role in preventing childhood obesity, which affects about 17 percent of American children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the review, the researchers analyzed the results of the six best studies on home based programs for kids. Three included diet and exercise, one was on diet alone and two also included primary care or school programs. The kids ranged from two to 18 years old.

"Most programs involved educating children and their parents or family about healthy diet and physical activity choices (i.e. increasing fruit and vegetable intake, increasing daily physical activity, decreasing TV/computer screen time, etc.)," Showell told Reuters Health by email.

Some, but not all, included actual exercise sessions, she said.

The studies either compared the home-based program to another program or to a comparison group of kids not enrolled in any program. All measured the kids' weight or body mass index (BMI), an indication of body fat percentage, at least one year after the program had ended, to see if it had any effect.

Some of the programs did result in kids eating more fruits and veggies or getting up and moving around more than the comparison groups, but none affected kids' weight or BMI, according to results published in the journal Pediatrics.

In each study, the percentage of kids qualifying as overweight or obese was the same in the program group and the comparison group.

Among the three studies that showed the programs worked, although not for weight, the findings may have been because those programs had components in schools or primary care.

There isn't enough evidence out there to draw real conclusions about these programs, according to Helen Skouteris, who was not involved in the study.

And the few that were available for study included children in a wide range of ages, in fact too wide a range to synthesize the results, Skouteris, of Deakin University in Burwood Victoria, Australia, told Reuters Health.

It is also troubling that the study did not include details about parental influences like role modeling, encouragement and feeding behaviors, which should not be ignored, she said.

It's unclear how best to improve these programs, but "In my opinion as a pediatrician and pediatric obesity researcher, home-based obesity prevention programs should include additional components beyond what is described in this particular review," Showell said.

The programs should stress family and parental involvement and also address access to healthy food and space for play in the community, she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/13yAfIs Pediatrics, online June 10, 2013.

A non-Saudi, whose nationality and age were not given, died on Tuesday, the Health Ministry said on its website late on Wednesday. It said he had been admitted to a hospital in al-Qassim several days ago with an "acute respiratory syndrome".

"Most cases recorded so far are among elderly patients and people with multiple chronic diseases," it added.

A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman confirmed it had been notified of the new death from the disease, which the WHO plans to call Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

"It is in a different area and doesn't appear to be linked to the recent outbreak and cluster in the eastern part of the country," Glenn Thomas told reporters in Geneva.

The WHO's tally of people who have died in the kingdom from nCoV/MERS since it surfaced last year is 18, including one who died in Britain last year after arriving from Saudi Arabia.

The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, is from the same family as the one responsible for an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that killed 775 people worldwide in 2003.

The WHO says a total of 44 cases of the new virus have been recorded so far, 22 of them fatal. Saudi Arabia has had 33 of the cases.

WHO officials say the new virus appears to be transmissible between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact.

(Reporting by Amena Bakr; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Kevin Liffey)

BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and the FBI, aided by authorities in more than 80 countries, have launched a major assault on one of the world's biggest cyber crime rings, believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts over the past 18 months.

Microsoft said its Digital Crimes Unit on Wednesday successfully took down at least 1,000 of an estimated 1,400 malicious computer networks known as the Citadel Botnets.

Citadel infected as many as 5 million PCs around the world and, according to Microsoft, was used to steal from dozens of financial institutions, including: American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, eBay's PayPal, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada and Wells Fargo.

While the criminals remain at large and the authorities do not know the identities of any ringleaders, the internationally coordinated take-down dealt a significant blow to their cyber capabilities.

"The bad guys will feel the punch in the gut," said Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit.

Botnets are armies of infected personal computers, or bots, which run software forcing them to regularly check in with and obey "command and control" servers operated by hackers. Botnets are typically used to commit financial crimes, send spam, distribute computer viruses and attack computer networks. (See graphic http://link.reuters.com/vem68t)

Citadel is one of the biggest botnets in operation today. Microsoft said its creator bundled the software with pirated versions of the Windows operating system, and used it to control PCs in the United States, Western Europe, Hong Kong, India and Australia.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation told Reuters it is working closely with Europol and other overseas authorities to try to capture the unknown criminals. The FBI has obtained search warrants as part of what it characterized as a "fairly advanced" criminal probe.

"We are upping the game in our level of commitment in going after botnet creators and distributors," FBI Assistant Executive Director Richard McFeely said in an interview.

"This is a more concerted effort to engage our foreign partners to assist us in identifying, locating and - if we can - get U.S. criminal process on these botnet creators and distributors."

Microsoft has filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina against the unknown hackers and obtained a court order to shut down the botnets. The complaint, unsealed on Wednesday, identifies the ringleader as John Doe No. 1, who goes by the alias Aquabox and is accused of creating and maintaining the botnet.

Boscovich said investigators are trying to determine Aquabox's identity and suspect he lives in eastern Europe and works with at least 81 "herders," who run the bots from anywhere in the world.

The Citadel software is programmed so it will not attack PCs or financial institutions in Ukraine or Russia, likely because the creators operate in those countries and want to avoid provoking law enforcement officials there, Microsoft said.

FINDING 'JOHN DOE'

According to Microsoft, Citadel was used to steal more than $500 million from banks in the United States and abroad, but the company did not specify losses at individual accounts or firms.

The American Bankers Association, one of three financial industry groups that worked with Microsoft, said any success in reducing the number of active Citadel Botnets will reduce future losses incurred by banks and their customers.

"I am hopeful we have a model that will allow us to get closer and closer to those who are the ultimate perpetrators of these crimes," said ABA Vice President Doug Johnson.

In the United States, banks typically reimburse consumers when they are victims of cyber crime, but they may require business customers to absorb those losses, the ABA said.

Microsoft's team of digital detectives, who are based at corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington, have been involved in seven efforts to attack botnets since 2010. Wednesday's marked its first collaboration with the FBI.

The software maker sought help from the FBI about 10 days ago. At that time the agency told Microsoft that it had already done significant work on a criminal probe into the Citadel Botnets, the FBI's McFeely said.

Microsoft said it and the FBI are working with law enforcement and other organizations in countries including: Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Of the more than 1,000 botnets that were shut down on Wednesday, Microsoft said 455 were hosted in 40 data centers in the United States. The rest were located in dozens of countries overseas.

Technicians from Microsoft, accompanied by U.S. Marshals, visited two U.S. data centers in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Absecon, New Jersey to collect forensic evidence.

Boscovich said the data center operators typically are not aware that their servers are being used to run botnets. "There is no responsibility on their part to see what is in the pipes," he said.

DEJA ZEUS

It was the second time Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit sought to bring down a large number of botnets at once. In March 2012 it targeted hundreds of Zeus botnets, which use similar software and infrastructure as Citadel, though they were not as sophisticated.

That effort succeeded in shutting just a quarter of the approximately 800 targeted Zeus command and control servers, according to Microsoft. Zeus is not controlled by a single developer like Citadel, which made it harder for investigators to track and knock out herders.

Cyber criminals typically infect machines by sending spam emails containing malicious links and attachments, and by infecting legitimate websites with computer viruses that attack unsuspecting visitors. Some bot herders rent or sell infected machines on underground markets to other cyber criminals looking to engage in a wide variety of activities.

The Citadel software disables anti-virus programs on infected PCs so they cannot detect malicious software. It surfaced in early 2012 and is sold over the Internet in kits that cost $2,400 or more.

Boscovich said he believes that Aquabox also gets a percentage of money stolen by his customers using Citadel.

These kits allow herders to easily set up and run botnets on pirated versions of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, according to court documents. The kits include modules for infecting PCs, as well as stealing from online banking sites, sending spam and engaging in other types of cyber crime.

Some Citadel Botnet operators have used infected machines to disrupt bank websites in so-called distributed denial of service attacks, hoping to distract those firms from thefts that are occurring or have occurred, according to the complaint.

Aquabox provided herders a secret forum where they could suggest new features for the Citadel kits, as well as exchange ideas on best practices in botnet herding, Microsoft said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu and Leslie Gevirtz)

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Bollywood actress Jiah Khan was found dead at her home in Mumbai, police said on Tuesday.

Khan, 25, was found hanged in her room on Monday night by her mother with a post mortem to be carried out to establish the cause of death, a Mumbai police official said.

But a police source said the death was not being treated as suspicious as it appeared to be suicide although no suicide note was found.

He said police had questioned Suraj Pancholi, son of actor couple Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab, to whom Khan had made her last phone call.

Khan, whose real name was Nafisa Khan, was born in New York and grew up in London. Her website said she went to New York to study acting at the Lee Strasberg's Institute.

Khan made her Bollywood debut in 2007 with Ram Gopal Varma's "Nishabd", playing the 18-year-old female lead opposite one of India's leading actors, Amitabh Bachchan, in a film loosely based on Vladimir Nabokov's classic novel "Lolita".

"Nishabd" received mixed reviews and did not do well at the Bollywood box office but Khan went on to play supporting roles in two blockbusters, the psychological thriller "Ghajini" in 2008 and the comedy "Housefull" in 2010.

Her death shocked the Indian film industry.

"Never ever seen a debutant actress with more spunk and more spirit than Jiah when i was directing her in Nishabd," filmmaker Varma wrote on Twitter.

"I don't know the reason what led to this but jiah was very depressed about her career and scared for her future," he said in another tweet, adding that the actress had not worked for the past three years.

Fellow actress Dia Mirza tweeted: "RIP Nafisa (Jiah) Khan. You were too young and beautiful."

(Editing by Tony Tharakan and Belinda Goldsmith)

MIAMI (Reuters) - When San Antonio Spurs power forward Tim Duncan takes the court for Game One of the NBA Finals on Thursday, he will be aiming to become only the second player to win championships in three different decades.

That is just one of many reasons why LeBron James of the defending champion Miami Heat believes the soft-spoken 37-year-old Duncan deserves to be counted among the game's greats.

"He is probably one of the best players to ever play the game of basketball," said James, about going up against the Duncan and the Spurs in the best-of-seven championship series.

The only other player to accomplish the feat was John Salley, a power forward who won titles with the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990 and then was a bit player in the Los Angeles Lakers' run to the championship in 2000.

Duncan has been a central figure in each of San Antonio's NBA triumphs.

"If I just look at the last 15 years, he's probably been the most consistent, most dominant player that we've had as far as 15 years all together. He's won four titles, multiple All Stars, MVP, and so on and so on," James said on Wednesday.

A quick glance at Duncan's career achievements, with titles in 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007 and league Most Valuable Player awards in 2002 and 2003, raises the question as to why he gets so little attention.

Kobe Bryant, with five rings would be the only other player of this generation who could argue his case to be above Duncan in the pecking order of NBA greats, and he certainly enjoys a higher profile.

Perhaps playing for a Spurs team which, despite their success has a lower profile in the media, has eased the spotlight on Duncan.

But James believes the modest style of the man from Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands is also a factor.

"I think he doesn't get a lot of recognition because he's not flashy like a lot of guys are," said James.

"He's not jumping over people and highflying and doing the things that attracts people to the game. But I think true basketball, true IQ people, the players, they know how great he is," said James.

James credits Duncan's ability to compete at the highest level in the sunset of his career to a smart approach to fitness and the quality of the Spurs' staff.

"I think it's about him staying in shape, his conditioning level. I think it's the great support that they have in San Antonio. Also I think it's him being a true professional," James said.

"When you give everything to the game, the game rewards you. He's a champion. He has championship DNA."

Typically, Duncan credits San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich for his long shelf life.

"I have been playing a little less in the summertime," said Duncan, saying that translates into less stress on his knees. "Then Pop has made all the other adjustments for me basically, whether I like it or not. My minutes are down.

"Every once in a while, whether healthy or not, I have a couple of games off. Don't play in many backtobacks, things that were really wearing my body all season," he said.

Popovich, however, says playing at such a high level for such a long time is mostly about Duncan's character.

"He's a consummate pro. He takes great pride in fulfilling his responsibility to his team mates. He feels it very strongly. It's just a personal character quality that he has. It's as simple as that," said Popovich.

"He works himself hard all summer long. He's got high standards. He wants to participate and compete at a high level, and he has the discipline to do it. It's about character, and he's got it."

(Reporting By Simon Evans; Editing by Larry Fine)

LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Philip, the 91-year-old husband of the Queen, was to undergo "exploratory" surgery on his abdomen on Friday.

His wife of 65 years carried on with her official engagements, visiting the BBC just half a mile from the hospital where Philip's operation will take place.

Philip, who turns 92 next week, was admitted to the London Clinic on Thursday and is expected to remain for two weeks after what Buckingham Palace described as "an exploratory operation following abdominal investigations".

Royal aides said the surgery would be done on Friday. It will be fourth time Prince Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, has undergone hospital treatment since Christmas 2011.

Philip was admitted to hospital during the queen's Diamond Jubilee last year with a bladder infection, putting a dampener on celebrations to mark the milestone.

The 87-year-old queen visited the BBC's newly opened headquarters alone on Friday. She left without making public reference to Philip's hospital stay.

Philip was taken to the London Clinic by appointment after attending a garden party at Buckingham Palace with the Queen. Television footage showed him in a grey top hat and tails, smiling and chatting with guests.

Married in 1947, Philip - the son of the exiled Prince Andrew of Greece - has proved a steadfast albeit sometimes controversial consort to the Queen, renowned in Britain for his outspoken comments and off-the-cuff remarks.

"I think he has done a fantastic job supporting the queen," said Margaret Stead, 66, near the clinic. "He's in the best hands at the London Clinic."

Against a backdrop of trumpets and cheering crowds, the queen and Philip were recently joined by 2,000 guests at Westminster Abbey on Tuesday to celebrate 60 years since her coronation.

"My best wishes to the Duke of Edinburgh who is in hospital," Prime Minister David Cameron said on Twitter on Thursday evening. "I hope he has a swift recovery."

(Additional reporting by Mark Anderson, editing by Stephen Addison and Mark Heinrich)

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1. "Random Access Memories," Daft Punk

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7. "Almost Home EP," Kid Ink

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(copyright) 2013 Apple, Inc.

LONDON (Reuters) - The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) could be enlisted to help end "Big Four" dominance of blue chip company book-keeping, the Competition Commission has said.

The accounts of most top UK companies are checked by PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, or KPMG, sparking policymaker concerns the four are too cosy with banking clients in particular.

The Commission outlined in February its potential "remedies" to make it easier for the next tier of accountants like Mazars, Grant Thornton and BDO to pick up more business.

It will say next month what actual measures it will use to shake up Britain's "sticky" audit market.

In a late but not unusual move on Wednesday it unveiled an extra potential remedy: enlisting the help of the FRC to underpin other anticipated measures.

Each year the FRC samples audits of big firms to check on quality and has just published its findings.

"The further proposed remedy we are considering is to give the FRC a secondary duty to promote competition between firms providing audits to the FTSE 350 companies," the Competition Commission said in a statement.

This secondary duty would require the FRC to consider how it might review and report on audits of large companies in a way which promoted competition, the Commission said.

The FRC's audit checks could help companies and shareholders better assess the quality of service they are getting and, in combination with other remedies, could make a company more likely to switch auditors, the Commission said.

The FRC said its primary focus should remain audit quality and it was meeting with the Commission later this week to find out precisely what it envisages.

A public consultation on the Commission's latest potential measure was opened until June 19.

The idea echoes the move to give the new UK Financial Conduct Authority, which protects consumers, a secondary requirement to promote competition in financial services.

Like the FCA, the FRC would not have powers like the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to enforce competition rules that directly change market structures.

A senior official from one of the Big Four firms said it could be operationally quite challenging for the FRC which, in the past, has said the OFT or Competition Commission should be the bodies looking at competition in auditing.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Ron Askew)