(02-07) 09:19 PST PHILADELPHIA (AP) —

Merck & Co. has agreed to pay a combined total of $671 million to settle claims that it overcharged Medicaid programs for two big-selling drugs, Vioxx and Zocor, and to resolve allegations of improper marketing to doctors, U.S. prosecutors and company officials announced Thursday.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) Д Merck and Co. has agreed to pay $399 million plus interest to the federal government, 49 states and the District of Columbia to settle claims that it overcharged Medicaid programs for two big-selling drugs, U.S. prosecutors announced Thursday.

The settlement with Merck also resolves allegations that the company paid improper inducements to doctors to prescribe the cholesterol drug Zocor and the painkiller Vioxx.

Drug companies are required to report to the government the lowest price for its product to ensure that Medicaid programs get the benefit of the same discount. Merck, however, was hiding the steep discounts it gave to hospitals by reporting higher prices to the government, prosecutors said.

From 1997 to 2001, Merck also gave money and perks to doctors and other health care professionals to entice them to prescribe Merck drugs, a practice the government called excessive.

The only state not involved in the settlement is Arizona.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan was joined at the news conference by officials with the Department Of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General and representatives from the state Attorneys General in Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts and Nevada.

NEW YORK: The News Corporation, the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch, nudged up its full-year outlook on Monday and said it has not seen any weakness in the television advertising market, after posting a moderate rise in quarterly profit.

News Corp., which owns Fox News and the Fox television network in the United States, forecast its fiscal 2008 operating income would grow in the mid-teens percentage range, above its previous estimate in the low teens.

“Now I know there are concerns about the health of the ad market. But we here at Fox have not seen any weakness to date. Pricing remains very strong for both entertainment and sports,” News Corporations chief operating officer, Peter Chernin, said on a conference call with analysts.

Fears of an economic recession and a two-month-old strike by Hollywood screenwriters, which has crippled TV production, have raised concerns about advertising spending in the United States this year.

But unlike rival TV network NBC Universal, owned by General Electric, which said it was considering canceling its May upfront advertising presentations to introduce new prime-time TV shows to marketers, Fox said it will hold them.

Fox reaped about $250 million in TV network ad revenue from Sunday nights broadcast of the Super Bowl, making it “the biggest day in the companys history,” Murdoch told analysts on a conference call.

News Corporation said net profit in its fiscal second quarter ended December 31 rose to $832 million, from $822 million, a year earlier.

While profit per share missed Wall Street expectations by 1 cent, News Corporations revenue growth of 9.5 percent to $8.6 billion beat analysts average forecast of $8.3 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

The results were driven by higher advertising sales at the Fox News channel and the Fox television network, which offset a decline in its movie studio business.

A one-time write-down of BSkyBs investment in ITV also dragged affiliate earnings by $299 million.

Excluding the write-down, Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said, News Corporation did “significantly better than expected” on an operating basis.

Operating income at the New York-based media conglomerate, which closed a $5.6 billion deal to buy The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones in December, jumped 23 percent to a record $1.4 billion, lifted by double-digit percentage gains in nearly all of its operating businesses.

News Corporation said operating profit at its cable networks, which also includes its regional sports networks and international channels, rose 23 percent to $337 million.

Movie studio profit fell 14 percent from the absorption of costs to release box office hits “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and the “timing and delivery” of shows from its TV production studio.

Television profits more than doubled to $245 million, boosted by the Fox network and Star, primarily in India, offsetting a decline from its TV stations.

Fox Interactive Media helped boost operating income in News Corporations “other” segment to $23 million, a $22 million improvement.

The company said the divisions profit growth was driven by higher search revenue from its Google agreement. It said it was confident Fox Interactive Media, which owns the online teen hangout MySpace, will meet its $1 billion revenue target.

Murdoch said the company had no interest in bidding for Yahoo or Time Warners AOL, if it is up for sale, highlighting that the company prefers going after start-ups rather than established companies.

Microsoft offered last Friday to buy Yahoo for about $45 billion, stoking speculation that other companies would attempt to counter-bid.

“Were not interested in bidding,” Murdoch told reporters on a conference call, answering a question about Yahoo.

Regarding any other deals, he said, “Were not considering anything of significance at this moment.”

News Corporation was widely expected to make the Web site of the Wall Street Journal freely available to Web viewers, but in January said it would give away parts of the site for free.

Murdochs company also snapped up a stake in German pay-television broadcaster Premiere in January, putting the company in play as a takeover candidate, analysts said.

Comedy has been waiting a long time for its first cyberspace superstar. We’re forever being told that the internet will revolutionise the genre, usually by old media companies desperate to control the process. But no one has controlled the rise and rise of Limmy, quite possibly the first “dot comic”, whose giddy ascent through cyberspace has been very much his own work. Yes, Brian Limond is comedy’s very own Arctic Monkeys. “I’m genuine!” he says. “I’ve not got some dark, shadowy corporation behind me pulling the strings.”

Limond’s success is down to a podcast made in his bedroom, called Limmy’s World of Glasgow, released daily from September to December 2006. It’s as jaundiced a take on his city as you’ll find, a talking-heads audio parade of ex-junkies, “neds” (violent yobs) and cynical ad-men, all providing unemployed Limond with “a release”, he says, “for my sick, sadistic sense of humour”. The podcast entered the iTunes top 20, won the blessing of Franz Ferdinand and garnered Limmy much media attention in Scotland, though not everyone was impressed. “What kind of society are we living in,” wrote one correspondent, “when people can promote this filth and then be courted by a Sunday newspaper?”

Limond, 32, owes it all to Labour’s New Deal, actually, which lifted him off the dole after he flunked school at 16, and trained him in web design. By day, he worked in various Glasgow new media companies; by night, he was the “mad guy” behind «www.limmy.com», a website he founded in 2000 as an outlet for “wee animations, wee interactive toys, that kind of thing”.

They’re not the sort of toys you’d let children near: one of Limmy.com’s successes includes a swearing xylophone. But the site wasn’t, says Limond in a broad Glasgow accent, a bid for fame from a frustrated comic: “It was just about making stuff up, making people laugh, getting people to like me.” It had the desired effect. Word spread. Franz Ferdinand were early converts to his oddly elegiac animations and short films: in an article for Q Magazine, frontman Alex Kapranos cited them as an influence on the band’s second album. “I don’t take that too seriously,” says Limond. “I don’t say, ‘The album wouldn’t sound like that if it wasn’t for me.’”

Still, he knew the endorsement was priceless publicity. Although unassuming in person, he possesses a sharp sense of self-promotion. Sensing his time was nigh, in 2005 he quit his job to focus on a web comedy career. The great leap forward came in early 2006 when he heard the Guardian’s Ricky Gervais podcast. “It was hilarious,” he says. “And, technically, it would be really easy to do.”

The result was Limmy’s World of Glasgow: a three-month series of monologues featuring nine Glaswegians, all played by Limond. A typical episode might involve the naive Englishman Phil learning sectarian vernacular ahead of his first Rangers-Celtic match, or heroin survivor Jacqueline perusing Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. “I wanted to look at Glasgow folk in general,” says Limond. “The booze and violence and smashing things up. I’m not saying Glasgow’s like that. But things that are well out of order, I find them funny.”

Like the priest Tom, for example, invoking the Lord to assuage his homicidal fantasies: “I whispered quietly, ‘Christ! Christ! Why have you put her in the lift with me? She will surely die.’” Limond is terrifying, meanwhile, as teen psycho John Paul. “I’ve been battered by neds,” says Limond. “I hate them. But there’s something I like about their one-dimensional hatred and violence. Maybe they’ve been brought up badly or something like that, but they don’t care. They’re just evil - and there’s something I like about that.”

This, then, is the unreconstructed Glasgow that mainstream Scotland likes to suppress: “I did think, ‘If I make it the way people actually talk in pubs, if I don’t tame it and tailor it to grannies, surely that’s newsworthy?’” He was right. Soon World of Glasgow was rising up the iTunes chart, and Limmy found himself in demand, not least from the Glasgow Comedy Festival. “I said no,” he says, “because I don’t do stand-up. The idea terrifies me.” But his girlfriend persuaded him to try live performance, and he ended up on the Edinburgh Fringe last month. He was clearly a novice performer, and some of his material (as on the website) was crude. But his skewed, unsentimental perspective on deadbeat, dead-eyed Glasgow marked him out as an intriguing talent.

Limmy’s journey from online to onstage continues this week, when he appears at Glasgow’s Merchant City festival. Meanwhile, talent-spotters circle, and comedy overlords Avalon and Hat Trick have taken an interest. So does Limmy’s success represent the internet comedy revolution we’ve all been waiting for? Perhaps not. He seems a reluctant revolutionary, whose greatest ambition is simply to re-cast the podcast for TV. “There’s nothing quite like sitting watching the telly on a Saturday night,” says Limmy, somewhat unexpectedly. “It has such a nice, homely feel.”

Limmy’s Show is at Blackfriars Basement, Glasgow (0870 013 5464), on Thursday.