Banc of America Investment Services Inc, a unit of Bank of America Corp, has settled charges it failed to disclose it favored affiliated mutual funds, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday. The SEC said Banc of America Investment Services Inc (BAISI), a broker-dealer, and Columbia Management Advisors have agreed to pay $9.8 million to settle the charges.

The agency said BAISI from July 2002 through December 2004 did not tell clients that, in selecting investments for discretionary mutual fund wrap fee accounts, it favored two mutual funds affiliated with BAISI.

Columbia, a successor to Banc of America Capital Management, was charged with aiding and abetting and causing some of BAISI's violations, the SEC said. An attorney for BAISI declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the company could not immediately be reached for comment.

"BAISI's selection of mutual funds for wrap fee clients was compromised when it favored its own proprietary funds over non- affiliated funds," said SEC enforcement director Linda Thomsen in a statement. "By using a method to select funds that was at odds with information it provided to clients, BAISI violated its duty of loyalty to its clients."

The SEC said the $9.8 million in disgorgement and penalties will be put into a fund to benefit BAISI's affected clients.

Under the agreement, Parmalat will issue to class members 10.5 million existing shares "in full satisfaction of any and all claim asserted against it in the class action, worldwide," the company said in a statement. Those shares would be valued at $36.8 million at the current market price.

Parmalat will also pay up to 1 million euros ($1.55 million) of the cost of notifying the class members of the settlement, the statement said.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of former Parmalat shareholders and other investors, who claimed they were damaged by Parmalat's 2003 collapse.

The settlement removes the threat of a suit that had been weighing on the Italian company's stock. Parmalat shares jumped on the news and by late morning they were trading up 2.6 percent at 2.25 euros ($3.50), outperforming an overall positive market.

Oregon's high court ruled unanimously Thursday that smokers must show actual harm to make a negligence claim against cigarette manufacturers — not just the possibility they will be harmed.

The lawsuit, brought by Patricia Lowe on behalf of about 400,000 Oregonians, argued the tobacco companies were negligent because they "knew or should have known that their cigarettes contained toxic and hazardous substances likely to cause lung cancer."

Lowe argued the industry should pay for tests to detect lung tumors at their earliest and most treatable stage.

The court ruled instead that Oregon law has long recognized that "a threat of future physical harm is not sufficient" grounds for a legal claim.

James Coon, who represents Lowe, said the ruling shows the law is trailing behind science.

"Certain toxic products put people at risk for future injury," Coon said, but "medical monitoring is a concept that ancient common law has trouble dealing with, and the court in this case applied old common law concepts without flexing them in any way."

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who specializes in torts, or damage claims, agreed.

"It doesn't fit in the box of traditional tort law," Tobias said. "Tort law by definition is after the fact. It aims primarily to compensate for past harm — not to prevent future harm."

But Tobias noted that Justice Martha Lee Walters, in a concurring opinion, left open the possibility the law could change "when science and medicine are able to identify harm before it becomes manifest."

Such techniques may be coming soon, said Thomas Glynn, the American Cancer Society's cancer science and trends director.

"We're probably about two years away before we can say whether we can detect lesions early enough to know what the effect will be," Glynn said.

Ben Zipursky, a Fordham University School of Law professor who specializes in product liability, said it was ironic the ruling came from the same court that recently affirmed a nearly $80 million punitive damages award against tobacco giant Philip Morris after it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This is the very court that has most aggressively ruled against Philip Morris," Zipursky said.

The ruling was similar to those in state courts around the nation in similar cases, despite a move toward loosening the definition of actual harm, he said.

Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., two of the five companies named in the lawsuit, welcomed the ruling in a statement released Thursday.

The other companies were Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group Inc.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) -- the body that controls the prescription of new drugs -- must be more transparent about how it calculates the cost-effectiveness of new treatments.

In a ruling delivered Thursday, the judges found the process by which NICE decided to restrict Alzheimer's drug Aricept to patients with a moderate version of the degenerative brain disease "was procedurally unfair".

They added that NICE should release a full version of the cost-effectiveness model used to produce guidance for the drugs.

NICE had decided in 2004 that the drugs, which cost about £2.50 a day and slow down the progress of the disease, are not cost-effective for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's. This decision was upheld by a court in 2007.

Drug companies Eisai Ltd and Pfizer Ltd, which challenged the NICE decision, welcomed the Court of Appeal's ruling, saying it brought new hope for Alzheimer's patients.

Nick Burgin, managing director of Eisai, said: "We believe that this decision represents a victory for common sense. As soon as we have reviewed their cost-effectiveness calculations we will submit any new findings to NICE.

"We hope that this action will ultimately restore access to anti-dementia medicines for those patients at the mild stages of Alzheimer's disease."

NICE chief executive Andrew Dillon said: "We will be considering very carefully the findings and the implications for the time it takes us to provide advice to patients and the NHS on the use of new treatments.

"It is important to recognise that we have not been asked to amend or withdraw our current guidance on the use of these drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease: the drugs continue to be recommended only for people with moderate Alzheimer's disease."

Neil Hunt, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society said: "Today's decision is a damning indictment of the fundamentally flawed process used by NICE to deny people with Alzheimer's disease access to drug treatments."

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting around 417,000 people in the UK.

The bride was also accused of breaking a speaker in a dispute over the music at the April 5 reception. Fabiana Reyes has been sentenced in Village Court to the six days she already spent in jail. The 41-year-old also paid the band $1,500 for the damage.

Her 42-year-old husband and their 21-year-old daughter were accused of interfering with Reyes' arrest. Elmo and Helen Fernandez pleaded guilty Thursday. Police used stun guns on both during the fracas.

The daughter says the couple were legally married in 1986 but delayed their church wedding until last month.

Clinton was underscoring her call for a summer-long hiatus on collecting the federal gas tax by pulling into an Indianapolis gas station with sheet metal worker Jason Wilfing, 33, who pumped regular unleaded.

"Sixty-three dollars for just about half a tank," exclaimed Clinton.

Wilfing told Clinton that the high price of gas means his family won't be able to take an annual summer trip to Lake Michigan.

The Obamas headed to suburban Beech Grove, where they had lunch and chatted with Mike and Cheryl Fischer, hearing their stories of struggle. He's a machinist at a local Amtrak facility where 77 jobs are threatened this summer.

"They say it's not personal," Fischer said. "Yes, it is very personal."

Their tactics were different, but the goal for both Democratic presidential candidates was to connect with blue-collar workers who will play a key role in primaries Tuesday in Indiana and North Carolina. In addition to a frenetic campaign schedule, Obama is running about $2.8 million in ads in Indiana and about $2.5 million in North Carolina, oupacing Clinton's spending by about 2-to-1 in each state.

Clinton began airing new ads in the states this week. One that is running in both states points out that she has called for a freeze in foreclosures and a summer-long suspension of the gasoline tax and that Obama has opposed both steps. She also is airing an ad in North Carolina featuring noted poet Maya Angelou and one in Indiana that invokes the memory of her parents and growing up in Illinois.

Obama on Wednesday responded to Clinton's housing and gasoline price ad with a 60-second spot airing in both states. In the ad, Obama likens the benefits of a gas tax suspension to "half a tank of gas." Another ad in North Carolina focuses on education and urges parents to turn off the television set and read to their children.