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Patrick Roche, an 80-year-old grocer who credits a parochial school in Roslindale with helping his family when his mother died, said yesterday he is giving $20 million to a Boston College center that is attempting to revitalize the nation’s struggling Catholic schools. Roche, the cofounder of Roche Brothers supermarkets, joins a small but prominent group of wealthy Boston Catholics who are increasingly devoting their philanthropy to Catholic schools at a time when the Archdiocese of Boston has been closing several small parish schools each year. “It hurts, really, to think of what’s going on with the financial trouble,’’ Roche, who...

Mind you, this is a guy who beat Hannity — a show that airs in primetime — in both total viewers and the demo last Friday at 5 p.m. Every last one of these advertisers is simply biding their time, wondering how long they have to wait until nutroots wrath is appeased and they can start advertising on Beck’s show again. I give it six months. Less if Greta gets dumped and GB ends up moved to 10 p.m. Twenty companies have pulled their ads from Beck’s show in just the last two weeks. The moves come after the Fox...

Early data for Roche Holding AG's drug Avastin shows enough promise in treating patients with a certain brain cancer to be considered for quick approval, a U.S. advisory panel said on Tuesday. The drugmaker is seeking accelerated approval to market the drug for patients diagnosed with a recurrence of the particularly deadly disease after trying other therapies first. The drug, made by its recently acquired Genentech unit, is already used to treat lung, colon and breast cancers. Data from two early studies showed enough of a response in patients whose disease did not advance and some whose tumors decreased in...

Excerpt - BASEL (Thomson Financial) - Roche Holdings AG said has proposed to acquire the outstanding publicly held interest in Genentech Inc. at $89.00 per share in cash, or a total payment of approximately $43.7 billion to equity holders of Genentech other than Roche. Roche acquired a majority in Genentech in 1990 and currently owns 55.9 percent of all outstanding shares. ~ snip ~

Democrats for Boeing The truth about the tanker deal. by Christian Lowe 03/24/2008, Volume 013, Issue 27 It was one of those insider deals that give the defense industry a bad name, conjuring up images of smoke-filled negotiations between the brass and corporate fat cats in plush leather chairs. By the time it was over, two fat cats were in jail, a top Pentagon official had been forced to resign, a corporate CEO had lost his job, and the reputation of an iconic company that had served American troops for decades had suffered irreparable damage. Then it turned out it...

Associated Press Government health regulators recommended adding label precautions about neurological problems seen in children who have taken flu drugs made by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline. The Food and Drug Administration on Friday released its safety review of Roche's Tamiflu and Glaxo's Relenza. Next week, an outside group of pediatric experts is scheduled to review the safety of several such drugs when used in children. FDA began reviewing Tamiflu's safety in 2005 after receiving reports of children experiencing neurological problems, including hallucinations and convulsions. Twenty-five patients under age 21 have died while taking the drug, most of them in Japan. Five...

LOS ANGELES — On Thursday, the world stopped for the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Harvard is electing its first woman president, and the country may be ready to do the same, but the woman of the hour was the one who, as the producer of her most recent film put it, “had the market cornered on the dumb blonde act.” Why is there still such a vibrant market for “the dumb blonde act?” “People will see that maybe I have a little talent and will take me serious as an actress,” she said, in explaining her decision to star...

TMZ has obtained a photo of the inside of Anna Nicole Smith's refrigerator taken after she died, and the contents are shocking on several levels. TMZ has 100% verified the authenticity of this photo.

George Roche, Captain of Hillsdale Ship by Ron TrowbridgePosted May 16, 2006George Roche, president of Hillsdale College for 28 years, from l971 to l999, died May 5 at age 70. His body had been torn by diabetes most of his life. It is nearly impossible to exaggerate his accomplishments. He made Hillsdale College what it is, even today where the foundation he established remains, with the college presently building upon it. He was the captain of the ship, steering the boat and giving us mates direction. He gave the college the best faculty and the best students it had ever...

Making oseltamivir, the antiviral drug that has become the world's first-line defense if an influenza pandemic strikes, is a long and complicated process. But in papers published online yesterday by the Journal of the American Chemical Society, two research teams say they have found alternative synthetic routes that could make oseltamivir--better known by its brand name Tamiflu--easier to produce and perhaps affordable for developing countries too. More than 65 countries have ordered stockpiles of oseltamivir; Roche, the Swiss company that produces it, is rapidly ramping up production capacity, and generic drug makers have started producing oseltamivir as well (ScienceNOW, 21...

SO it wasn't a political stunt. It isn't about Iraq. And the threat of Islamist terror right here is more real than many pretend. How real? If the police are right, they have saved scores of you from being blown up -- as people in Madrid and London were blown up. As NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney put it, the arrest yesterday of 17 Muslim men disrupted "the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack". He said explosive material had already been collected. Yet only last week, Prime Minister John Howard was pilloried by many for having warned of an...

Ousted Army Chief Blasts Bush Iraq Policy Tue Sep 2, 4:49 PM ET By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer WASHINGTON - Thomas E. White, forced to resign as Army secretary in May, has fired back in a book that describes the Bush administration's postwar effort in Iraq (news - web sites) as "anemic" and "totally inadequate." The book, which presents a blueprint for revitalizing Iraq, asserts that the administration underestimated the difficulty of putting that country back on its feet after the fall of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). "Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would...

CONVICTED terrorist will have to wait until next year to argue a claim that prison authorities are discriminating against him by not serving enough halal meat. Halal meat, including chicken and beef, has to be killed in the presence of a Muslim who prays to Allah as the carcass is left to bleed out.

U.S. Air Force Secretary James Roche has resigned, the Pentagon said in a statement Tuesday. Roche, a 23-year Navy veteran and former Northrop Grumman Corp. executive, told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early October that he planned to retire at the end of the first term of the Bush administration, the statement said. "Jim Roche has led the Air Force during an important period in history," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a visit to Quito, Ecuador. "Combined with his distinguished career with the U.S. Navy, Secretary Roche has served our country capably and with honor." more...

Terror suspect Jack Roche failed in his only attempt to recruit for an Australian al-Qaeda cell before being ordered to abandon the plan by Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a court was told. Roche, 50, is on trial in Perth District Court for plotting to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Canberra. In earlier excerpts of a taped interview Roche gave to the Australian Federal Police (AFP), which were played to the trial jury, Roche named Bashir as the leader of South-East Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah (JI), which was blamed for the Bali bombing in 2002. Bashir, who is facing...

Islamic convert Jack Roche was asked to set up an Australian al-Qaeda cell whose members would be trained in explosives and sniper techniques, a court was told today. British-born Roche, 50, is on trial in Perth District Court for plotting to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra, and as a consequence, harm diplomatic staff. He has denied the charge. The trial jury was today played a further instalment of a nine-hour videotape of an interview with Roche conducted by two Australian Federal Police agents in November 2002. During the interview, Roche said he travelled to Kandahar in March 2000 where...

Jill Doimer's mother died in 2002 from ovarian cancer, detected too late to be effectively treated. So Ms. Doimer is eagerly awaiting the introduction of a new test that holds the promise of detecting early-stage ovarian cancer far more accurately than any test available now, using only blood from a finger prick. Not only does she plan to be tested, but an advocacy group she helped found, Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky, also intends to spread the word to women and doctors. "If it's going to happen to me or anyone I know, I want it to be caught at an...

MY TITLE above...This is an excerpt... "By Fred Kaplan It was thoroughly predictable that, after the swift victory in Gulf War II, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would wage his next war against the hidebound generals of the U.S. Army. Now that war has begun. Rumsfeld fired his first shots last Thursday night when he let it be known that a man named James G. Roche will be his new secretary of the Army. Roche is an extremely intriguing—and, to any senior Army officer, an equally shocking—candidate for the job. First, he's a 23-year veteran, and retired captain, of the...

Australian accused of plot to bomb embassies An Australian man charged after a series of counter-terrorism raids this month allegedly planned to bomb Israeli diplomatic buildings in Canberra and Sydney. The 49-year-old man, named as Jack Roche, was arrested in Perth late last night over an alleged plan to bomb diplomatic posts in Australia. The Australian Federal Police said he faced a charge of conspiracy to bomb diplomatic premises in Australia when he appears in the Perth Court of Petty Sessions this morning. AFP general manager national operations Ben McDevitt said his arrest was not connected to the Bali bombings....